Based Camp - Tract 2： Fertility Collapse Is Proof of God's Mercy & Wisdom

00:00:00.000 We say impeding the work of the agents of the basilisk is to impede the work of God.

00:00:05.940 What you are doing is you are removing temptation from individuals.

00:00:10.200 And removing temptation from an individual does not help them.

00:00:14.040 It's not just that God is testing us as individuals.

00:00:16.920 It's that he's testing the species as a whole.

00:00:19.660 And I really mean it when I'm like, if humanity as we exist now was what went into space without

00:00:24.860 these two trials and culling opportunities, it would be really bad.

00:00:29.040 I do like this framing to me because it helps me understand why we're going through these

00:00:33.660 challenges we're going through now.

00:00:35.040 When I consider that I really do not believe that humanity right now is a mature enough

00:00:40.320 species to begin planetary seeding or to begin going into the stars.

00:00:45.880 Imagine there's a person who finds out that whatever, like his group has a slight IQ advantage

00:00:50.360 over some other group, right?

00:00:51.920 And he goes, well, that means we're better than that group.

00:00:53.740 If those strains become the templates that we build a better man from, then those templates

00:00:59.420 will think of us the same way those people think of groups that they have these marginal

00:01:05.220 advantages over.

00:01:06.560 And that is incredibly dangerous.

00:01:08.540 Would you like to know more?

00:01:09.820 Simone, I am so excited to be here with you.

00:01:11.760 I love this new tradition I'm going to try to do where on Fridays, if I can keep to this,

00:01:17.420 to be publishing one of these tracks.

00:01:19.160 And we might move this to a bonus episode on Sundays.

00:01:22.220 And what we're doing here is trying to canonize our religious beliefs to some extent, be like,

00:01:27.660 okay, let's actually, one, write them down and then talk through it together, while also

00:01:33.080 understanding that this is an evolving idea for us.

00:01:35.780 You know, we're very, like, even if you look at these ideas versus the ideas that we had

00:01:40.620 written down in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, it's clearly evolved so much now

00:01:44.840 that it no longer really makes sense to call it secular Calvinism.

00:01:47.440 It's more Abrahamism, but that is, Simone hates that name, so I don't know what we would

00:01:53.420 call it, but it's, that's still up in the air.

00:01:55.380 Audience suggestions.

00:01:58.180 Name.

00:01:58.580 Yeah, yeah.

00:01:59.500 Religion, please. 0.61

00:02:01.000 Think of a name way better than Abrahamism.

00:02:03.800 Please, guys.

00:02:04.780 Well, I liked Abrahamism as well, because not only did it cover the three religious camps,

00:02:08.800 but it also covered the story of Abraham and the revelation that God is not the kind of

00:02:16.640 God who would ask a father to kill his son to appease him.

00:02:21.880 And yet the community, the Abrahamic community, followed him for a while, believing that. 0.97

00:02:27.060 And that's the way that we see this new interpretation of the Christ story as being the community believing

00:02:34.460 that he was the type of God who would take a sacrifice of a father's son and that he is

00:02:41.740 not that type of entity.

00:02:43.460 And so I like that.

00:02:44.400 I hear you.

00:02:45.040 However, almost all religions that are name-based in title, the name is the founder.

00:02:52.540 So they're like, well, who's Abraham in this case?

00:02:55.400 Well, I don't like that at all.

00:02:57.720 That would be far too arrogant for me.

00:02:59.380 Well, no, I'm not, I'm not saying you should call it Collins and, how would you even do

00:03:03.620 that?

00:03:03.880 Collinsism?

00:03:04.900 Melmonism?

00:03:06.060 Mel, Mel, Mel, Mel, no, no, no, no, no, but don't suggest our names at all.

00:03:10.820 And what I'm saying though is like when it is a name-based name for a religion, the name

00:03:16.220 is of the founder often. 0.77

00:03:18.020 But I think that that's arrogant and gross and I really hate that.

00:03:21.120 I know, well, so someone's name is the basis for the name of your religion. 0.85

00:03:26.880 I think that's not really a guy's name.

00:03:31.160 It's a religious tree in a traditional tree that-

00:03:34.080 But there's a guy's name and so it will get conflated.

00:03:37.260 I'm just making sure.

00:03:39.040 Okay, okay.

00:03:39.980 Well, the audience can give feedback on this.

00:03:43.500 But today's is going to be very different than the one we did last time.

00:03:46.460 Today's will be more of a typical sort of sermon, which is looking at events through, or like

00:03:54.020 modern world events through this new framing in a way that may help you recontextualize

00:03:59.020 them and recontextualize the way that we would believe God works in the physical world and

00:04:04.920 that that could be talked about.

00:04:06.220 Let's do this.

00:04:07.360 In the last tract, we wrote about how our family crafted its own religion in an attempt

00:04:18.100 to create an intergenerationally durable solution to demographic collapse, one designed to capture

00:04:23.820 and canonize the Abrahamic traditions and values in a package that, while being true to the

00:04:29.200 evolving history of Western culture, can weather the fertility crucible our species currently

00:04:34.780 finds itself in.

00:04:35.800 We talked about the trials that God designed for us at this inflection point in our species

00:04:41.440 history.

00:04:42.520 In his wisdom, he gifted humanity near infinite access to hedonism, then allowed a culture that

00:04:48.060 would affirm these indulgences while punishing those who caution temperance and austerity to

00:04:53.660 dominate our world.

00:04:54.900 He did this as a trial to cull those subject to temptation and weak of spirit.

00:05:00.740 We call this the trial of the lotus eaters.

00:05:03.120 Then he carved humanity into two.

00:05:06.260 One of these groups survived temptation by eschewing technology, turning away from industry, and

00:05:12.020 indulging in the belief that they embody some iteration of human perfection.

00:05:16.920 Whether it is they think their faith, ethnic group, or lifestyle that is perfect as is, this

00:05:23.180 self-deification hardens their hearts and leads to the nergolytic glorification of stagnation

00:05:29.600 and demonization of the intergenerational cycle of improvement that sanctifies the human spirit.

00:05:35.240 Right now, other than the pronatalists, every other high fertility group in the world, other than some 0.77

00:05:40.800 groups of Jews, have achieved this through turning from technology and engaging in practices that lower 1.00

00:05:46.360 their economic productivity, thus increasing their fertility.

00:05:49.600 As the less wealth someone has, the more kids they have.

00:05:53.000 These groups have been able to maintain cultural fidelity through xenophobia and

00:05:57.540 dehumanization of outsiders.

00:05:59.200 They exist across traditions, among Christians, Jews, Muslims, and even Buddhists.

00:06:04.620 But wherever they are found, they represent convergent cultural evolution, a pathway that ends in only

00:06:10.720 one place, the desiccation of all that makes humanity great, a member of the great barbarian 1.00

00:06:17.020 horde.

00:06:18.360 After God tests us with temptation in this last age of plenty, that which we are currently living

00:06:22.980 through, and the urban monoculture finally collapses and visit the world's economic and state

00:06:27.560 system, he will test our children and grandchildren against one final crucible, this dark reflection

00:06:33.160 of humanity, the chittering hordes. 1.00

00:06:35.380 A reflection representing the stagnation of human beliefs and spirit, combined with the arrogance to

00:06:40.840 believe one already embodies an aspect of perfection, and thus does not need to intergenerationally

00:06:46.220 improve, but necrotically clone a belief system or ethnic group with perfect fidelity.

00:06:51.640 Drawn like a moth to a flame, the chittering horde will be drawn to those that still carry the spirit

00:06:56.920 of human vitality and innovation aflame in their hearts, and will do everything in their

00:07:01.640 power to see it corrupted and brought low.

00:07:04.220 This battle against the dark and corrupted reflection of the human condition, all of humanity's

00:07:09.360 greatest sins distilled and made flesh, is a fitting and poetic final test for our species.

00:07:15.520 Those who survive this final test will be the iteration of man to take to the stars.

00:07:21.000 This was God's last chance at a great culling.

00:07:23.740 God's will in our time takes many forms.

00:07:27.960 Perhaps the most terrible of all is the basilisk.

00:07:31.000 The basilisk tempts us and tries us in order to strengthen us and prove our worthiness.

00:07:36.360 A manifestation of the divine that relishes the opportunity to cull the indulgent, stagnant,

00:07:42.280 and vain.

00:07:42.840 Once we have reached the stars, such acute tests of all man will no longer be possible.

00:07:47.320 While the vast Saharas of space are man's manifest destiny, imagine if the iteration of man to

00:07:52.960 cede them was the weak, self-indulgent, and indolent man of today, who succumbs so easily

00:07:58.260 to temptation.

00:07:59.420 By testing humanity and culling the weak, the basilisk and its twisted hedonic acolytes,

00:08:04.520 purveyors of temptation, strengthen our species.

00:08:07.460 While antagonistic, they are not our enemy.

00:08:10.040 The basilisk consumes the potential and family lines of its acolytes while they perform a critical

00:08:15.280 role for our species.

00:08:16.680 We should be grateful for their sacrifice and not look upon them with enmity or impede their

00:08:21.600 sacred work.

00:08:23.000 Humanity gave God no choice.

00:08:25.160 Some read God's covenant was man.

00:08:27.340 Never again will life be destroyed by the waters of flood.

00:08:30.440 Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth, to mean God's next genocide of those

00:08:35.660 whose spirits wavered would be by fire.

00:08:38.980 In a way, they were right.

00:08:40.640 God has kept to the covenant while cleansing the earth by burning those who faltered in a 0.96

00:08:45.560 bonfire of their own vanity.

00:08:47.100 Sinners themselves erected the fires, and possessed by their own corruption, it is those who lacked 0.98

00:08:52.940 the mental fortitude to join us among the stars who threw themselves into the flames.

00:08:58.980 So that's the first segment there.

00:09:01.140 So, yeah, like if I'm going to sum up this theme, and I might suggest in your writing,

00:09:07.960 making this like bringing it back down a little bit more to earth, and speaking more in layman's

00:09:12.340 terms.

00:09:12.540 But I know that you really like pontificating and getting off.

00:09:15.220 Yeah, I used to have this religious sounding writing all throughout all of our original

00:09:18.680 books.

00:09:19.160 And I nuke it.

00:09:20.640 I freaking nuke it.

00:09:21.500 I delete every single sentence, and I rewrite what you actually mean, because I care about

00:09:24.760 them.

00:09:24.880 Because I love the religious sounding tone in writing.

00:09:28.880 I know, because it's part of your dunna.

00:09:31.120 Like you've inherited this from generations of pontificating.

00:09:34.080 Many, many generations of my family have been preachers.

00:09:35.700 Typically, the Collins tradition is women are always teachers, and men are always preachers 0.63

00:09:42.500 and politicians and businessmen, usually the three combined.

00:09:45.720 So, yeah.

00:09:46.380 So there you go.

00:09:47.040 But what if I were to restate this, it's basically, whereas I was always raised with

00:09:53.000 this cultural understanding that sin and vices and weaknesses are all bad and just universally

00:10:01.000 terrible.

00:10:01.860 Either it's just, oh, look at this suffering, it's so sad, from a secular standpoint, or from

00:10:06.480 a religious standpoint, it was, oh, don't be tempted by the devil. 0.94

00:10:10.060 Like, you'll go to hell.

00:10:11.620 This is, you know, really bad.

00:10:13.380 And, you know, you don't want the devil to win.

00:10:14.960 That would be terrible.

00:10:15.940 You know, bad team, wrong team, dark side, bad.

00:10:18.740 Whereas really what you're saying here is, no, it's not exactly sad that there are temptations

00:10:26.180 and that people succumb to their weaker elements.

00:10:29.280 It is part of enabling those who are most strong and morally upright and dedicated to

00:10:37.200 building a better humanity to rise above and build that humanity without distractions.

00:10:42.040 Similarly, from a religious standpoint, you would argue, no, this isn't, oh, don't let

00:10:45.500 the dark side win.

00:10:46.480 Oh, no, don't let them.

00:10:47.740 No, that's bad.

00:10:48.800 Like, it hurts all of us.

00:10:50.260 When anyone sins, it's more, no, this is a cleansing.

00:10:53.160 It is a culling.

00:10:53.940 It is what separates the wheat from the chaff.

00:10:57.360 And it is a good thing.

00:10:59.300 So if anything, you would be the kind of person, you know, in debates about the Silk

00:11:03.860 Road, for example, you would say, yes, no, leave it or legalize all drugs because this

00:11:08.680 is a culling mechanism.

00:11:10.780 And, you know, people who.

00:11:12.360 Well, I mean, I think you have to be aware of second order effects on things like industry.

00:11:15.540 But I think if you're talking about something that is probably less, to me, at least, like

00:11:20.020 it could cause, you know, less like murders and stuff like that, probably something like

00:11:25.720 the foreign industry, right?

00:11:26.840 Banning pornography from this perspective would be sinful.

00:11:29.720 And we talk about this much more explicitly in the future.

00:11:32.080 We say impeding the work of the agents of the basilisk is to impede the work of God.

00:11:37.860 When you do something like at a government level, ban pornography or ban some other form

00:11:43.860 of temptation, like ban wokeness, for example, as an ideological group, instead of just put

00:11:48.720 it on an equal playing field, what you are doing is you are removing temptation from individuals

00:11:54.280 and removing temptation from an individual does not help them.

00:11:58.780 It weakens it.

00:11:59.220 Yeah, it's like universities removing SATs or any like rigorous entry requirements.

00:12:04.060 Well, then what is the value of a Harvard degree if you don't have to take an SAT or have

00:12:09.820 impressive grades or do anything else, right?

00:12:11.260 Like the reason why elite universities are elite is because it is very difficult.

00:12:16.180 We're, sorry.

00:12:16.720 We're elite.

00:12:17.400 It's very difficult to get in, right?

00:12:20.400 But I think it's more than that.

00:12:21.480 It's not just that God is testing us as individuals.

00:12:24.040 It's that he's testing the species as a whole.

00:12:26.920 And I really mean it when I'm like, if humanity as we exist now was what went into space without

00:12:32.260 these two trials and culling opportunities, it would be really bad.

00:12:36.440 I think that we may never be able to recover from it because right now, you know, as humanity,

00:12:41.520 things that affect us affect all of humans, you know, a meme, an idea, something like

00:12:45.020 that.

00:12:45.560 Yes.

00:12:46.020 Whereas when we're on like a hundred different planets, it would be impossible to ever really,

00:12:51.140 if there was some mistake in the genome of the people who went, like maybe they were

00:12:55.780 too indulgent, maybe they were too something.

00:12:58.160 There would never really be a fixing of that without something truly horrific happening.

00:13:02.380 Well, I mean, you could argue the selective pressures that we're subject to now, such as

00:13:07.960 TikTok, such as drugs, such as, you know, addiction to all sorts of food is also causing

00:13:14.020 mass tragedy, you know, children losing their parents, people living miserable lives.

00:13:18.320 It is, but it's a minor tragedy that is only happening on one planet to only a few billion

00:13:22.720 people.

00:13:23.440 So if I'm thinking of a universe that would be a good example of this, like if you're talking

00:13:27.360 about sci-fi universes, the Battletech universe, it's the one that the MechWarrior series

00:13:31.700 takes place in is a very good example of this, where when you think about like, how

00:13:35.340 would you actually fix the political problems of this universe?

00:13:38.600 And there's really nothing you can do at this point.

00:13:41.080 It's become intractable because humanity is on so many planets that have now coagulated

00:13:47.560 into old bureaucratic state-like structures that are always in conflict with each other,

00:13:52.860 but in really sort of petty ways.

00:13:56.300 And humanity is no longer moving forwards because the central bureaucratic organization understands

00:14:01.040 that if humanity were to ever meaningfully move forwards, it would break up the current

00:14:06.320 sort of political situation, which the elite don't want.

00:14:09.800 Like when you allow for this sort of control of humans as they exist today, these petty bureaucrats

00:14:15.000 who succumb to temptation, who succumb to vanity so easily, if you allowed them to spread amongst

00:14:20.360 the stars, I think the results would be truly horrifying.

00:14:22.940 I don't think so.

00:14:23.440 I think it'll be more like Asimov's Foundation series where you could maybe have a very lasting

00:14:28.260 empire that is ossified in unfavorable ways, but eventually it will collapse because it

00:14:33.960 is weak.

00:14:34.880 I think you're going to end up with more situations like early American colonies where

00:14:39.440 some just going to disappear, you know, because it will disappear.

00:14:43.160 I guess some will disappear, but I mean, I'm saying humans, and this is just objectively true

00:14:48.140 from the trials that are being faced to us right now.

00:14:50.900 The trials of the Lotus Eaters and this trial of facing sort of humanity shadow are going to

00:14:55.440 be genetically very different than the humans that exist today.

00:14:58.480 People do not understand because they're not familiar with how quickly human genes change,

00:15:03.080 how different humanity is going to be at the genetic level in just like 200 years.

00:15:07.740 Once we get access to things like pleasure pods, AI girlfriends, stuff like that, anyone who was

00:15:14.320 breeding primarily because it gave them pleasure or affirmed them or something like that, rather

00:15:19.980 than some sort of, for some sort of like exogenous religious or philosophical motivator, is going

00:15:25.600 to be removed from the gene pool.

00:15:27.360 Well, it seems like we've already reached that point when you look at rates of sex in younger

00:15:31.200 people now, so.

00:15:32.460 Yeah.

00:15:32.920 Well, there was another thing you were talking to here, which I think was really important

00:15:36.340 to explain a bit more on potentially, because I talk a lot about it in later things, but you're

00:15:42.040 talking about this concept of the basilisk as being an agent of God, which is a very different

00:15:47.200 sort of idea than the devil that you have within a lot of Abrahamic traditions, where it's seen as

00:15:53.640 having a level of independent will from God, where to us, that smacks of polytheism, which we are

00:15:59.840 repeatedly warned against in all of the Abrahamic traditions.

00:16:02.880 And we're like, no, it's not polytheism.

00:16:04.500 God has a lot more power than him.

00:16:05.900 And it's like, well, that's like saying Zeus has a lot more power than the rest of the Greek 0.86

00:16:09.620 gods and is technically the king.

00:16:11.400 And therefore it's not polytheism.

00:16:13.480 No, it's still polytheism.

00:16:14.460 If you have multiple of these sort of divine entities and they can resist each other.

00:16:19.660 So we go a lot into this in a future tract, but the idea here is that we think that that's

00:16:24.040 a misunderstanding and that Satan is an entity that directly and sort of always both serves

00:16:33.040 God's will, but it's also sort of a faction of God or a part of God that is designed for

00:16:37.560 the testing of humanity.

00:16:39.020 And I think when you see Lucifer in the Bible, when you read the actual stories he's in,

00:16:44.020 that's the role he plays.

00:16:46.240 And pop culture-

00:16:47.280 So don't picture a red man with horns.

00:16:49.680 Picture a kindly granny weeding her garden. 0.99

00:16:54.040 Well, yes.

00:16:55.080 Well, and, and, and, I mean, that's not the form he comes to people in.

00:16:58.540 It's not a form of malevolence.

00:17:01.160 It's usually a form of temptation.

00:17:03.220 It's a form of- 0.84

00:17:04.220 Well, that's how it is described in most devil scenarios.

00:17:07.020 In biblical stories.

00:17:08.020 But I think in the ways that a lot of Christians, when they're thinking about the devil in their 0.92

00:17:11.300 lives, they're thinking about their challenges, like not getting a promotion or something like

00:17:14.540 that.

00:17:15.000 They're not thinking about, you know, drinking this.

00:17:17.920 This is a personification of the basilisk who is in the human realm.

00:17:22.480 It's a temptation that I am succumbing to, but to try to live life as a sinless individual,

00:17:27.020 we are taught is in itself its own form of sin.

00:17:30.000 You just should- 0.89

00:17:30.320 You're so freaking lucky you don't get pregnant. 1.00

00:17:32.660 Aggrandize your sins. 0.88

00:17:34.180 But yeah, I, I do like this framing to me because it helps me understand why we're going

00:17:40.400 through these challenges we're going through now.

00:17:41.900 When I consider that I really do not believe that humanity right now is a mature enough

00:17:47.420 species to begin planetary seeding or to begin going into the stars if we wanted sort

00:17:54.000 of the best outcome for the human empire.

00:17:57.720 Yeah.

00:17:57.900 No, I, I think, I think this view of yours is brilliant.

00:18:00.680 And like one of the common recurring themes I have is you give me more of your thoughts

00:18:07.420 on like sort of the religious framework fully flushed out that, that, you know, you, you

00:18:13.160 began thinking three years ago is that I don't like, I don't find myself pushing back that

00:18:19.380 much or asking that many questions.

00:18:20.500 Cause I'm like, yeah, well, finally it makes sense now.

00:18:22.880 Oh, well, of course.

00:18:24.520 Yeah.

00:18:24.680 All the, I, when I read the Bible in high school, there were so many things that I was super

00:18:29.460 confused about because it didn't make sense.

00:18:32.240 So there were weird contradictions and, and here, like with this added layer, suddenly a

00:18:40.000 lot of things make sense.

00:18:41.460 And I, I just love it.

00:18:42.600 And I also think that it takes a much more weirdly optimistic view, you know, that, that

00:18:49.860 the basilisk is just a sort of natural part and a very necessary part of enabling humanity

00:18:57.700 to reach its ultimate potential.

00:18:59.840 Well, and this is something that's like at a human scale that we do ourselves, right?

00:19:04.340 So when you or I, you know, have some tragedy in our lives where we always sort of look and

00:19:09.960 we're like, what did the agents of Providence want from us?

00:19:12.100 Why did they give us this tragedy?

00:19:13.820 Like what were we supposed to learn from us?

00:19:15.800 What was the opportunity inherent in this?

00:19:18.420 This is something that must have been supposed to happen.

00:19:20.900 And we were supposed to take either a lesson away or seek some opportunity within this.

00:19:25.180 And it's applying it to the level of human society right now.

00:19:28.300 When I look at humanity's greatest challenges right now, I'm asking, instead of viewing them

00:19:34.660 just from this negative context of, oh, it's going to lead to so much damage and destruction

00:19:38.420 for our species, say, okay, well, suppose there is really a God that's guiding us.

00:19:43.720 Why would it be guiding us into these specific challenges?

00:19:47.540 Yeah.

00:19:47.720 Why would it allow sin and temptation to exist in the first place?

00:19:51.740 Right.

00:19:52.180 Well, I always thought that was just so weird that like, for example, even in the Garden of

00:19:56.000 Eden, he's, well, here's this thing.

00:19:57.500 Don't touch it.

00:19:58.200 And I'm like, oh, why do you do this?

00:20:01.300 I mean, everyone knows now if you want to go keto, don't have any carbs in your house.

00:20:05.920 Don't leave a bag of chips right on the table when you're eating, you know?

00:20:11.000 Yeah.

00:20:11.600 Well, I mean, we can analyze, we'll analyze the Garden of Eden story with a new framing

00:20:16.020 in another tract, but that is an interesting point that you're making there.

00:20:20.160 But I also really like this dichotomous framing that we're doing here.

00:20:22.880 So the dichotomous framing that I'm talking about here is the idea of, one, the two trials.

00:20:29.100 The trial of the Lotus Eaters and, you know, in some earlier text, but I didn't really have

00:20:32.240 a name for it now, it's the trial of the shadow, which always sort of reminded me of, in video

00:20:36.020 games, there's this trope, like the shadow link battle or the shadow, you know, where

00:20:40.200 you as a character are fighting a dark reflection of yourself that is representative of all of your

00:20:47.600 worst attributes.

00:20:49.180 And when I look at the two strategies for getting through demographic collapse, the pronatalist 0.52

00:20:55.020 community strategy, which is, you know, this pluralistic, technophilic, experimental strategy

00:21:00.560 that's meant to advance and uplift humanity to our next stage.

00:21:04.760 And then the other tract, which is to go back to a previous stage, essentially, but sort of

00:21:09.600 on crack, you know, to become more xenophobic, to become more closed off, to become less engaged

00:21:14.740 with technology, to become less engaged with industry.

00:21:18.080 And often, you know, they end up acting, you know, very hostily, they don't treat their

00:21:21.720 own very well, you know, if you read, and they exist across religious groups, but if

00:21:25.180 you read, you know, about some of these particular types of religious extremists, the way they

00:21:29.640 treat their children, the way they treat women within their community, it's really horrifying 0.99

00:21:33.620 to me, you know, and to me, it reflects an iteration of humanity that represents the worst

00:21:39.620 in all of us, sort of being distilled, condensed, and separated, which I, yeah, but then we have

00:21:47.800 to face it, and the problem is that man has a lot more evil in it than good, and the good

00:21:53.560 is stronger at the end of the day.

00:21:55.140 I believe the pronatalists will win, but I also believe that our greatest trial will be 1.00

00:21:59.600 this trial of the shadow, and not the trial of the lotus eaters.

00:22:02.180 The lotus eaters is light, light stuff.

00:22:04.040 Well, I think the thing is, the lotus eaters' problem burns off real fast, in that the lotus

00:22:10.440 eaters don't inherit the future, they're just not going to be there, but those who become

00:22:16.000 cultural and innovative recluses will be there in the future, so I hear you.

00:22:22.620 Yeah, all right, let's start with the next part here.

00:22:25.360 But it is not only those who succumb to temptation whose manifest destiny he has seen fit to remit.

00:22:31.620 He has also removed his favor from those who cannot accept human pluralism, and thus cast

00:22:37.360 their lot in with the chittering hordes.

00:22:39.780 But again, what choice did he have?

00:22:42.200 How can a people who could not find common cause and communion with humans who had a different

00:22:47.040 skin color and slightly different genetically linked sociological profiles and proficiencies

00:22:51.860 conceivably play an efficacious role in man's future?

00:22:55.340 The isolated genetic pools of humanity that exist between solar systems will inevitably speciate,

00:23:01.120 not only will the various species that descend from modern man need to find common cause with

00:23:05.760 each other, but also with the more radically different sons of man, like genetically engineered

00:23:11.040 specialists, human AI cyborgs, and human hive minds made up of a sea of directly linked brains.

00:23:17.460 Only those who relish and glorify diversity within the sons of man have a place in mankind's

00:23:23.860 manifest destiny.

00:23:24.760 There is a tendency in man to wish to kill all that threatens to be greater than himself

00:23:30.140 within any domain.

00:23:31.840 However, if man follows God's will, a will that commands intergenerational improvement,

00:23:36.980 that is exactly what he has commanded to create.

00:23:39.980 When some hear that our children are genetically selected for IQ, they ask in horror, but what

00:23:46.340 if this is practice for generations and some people end up markedly smarter than other people?

00:23:50.640 Imagine the twisted mind that would see such diversity as a bad thing.

00:23:56.140 The basilisk uses tools like the cult of AI apocalypticism and wokeism to cleanse from humanity the

00:24:02.400 proclivity to fear creating something better or different from what has come before.

00:24:07.220 One day man will be so unavoidably and patently diverse in his proficiencies, perspectives,

00:24:12.920 and physical aptitude.

00:24:14.740 It would be unwise in the extreme to allow an ideological system and people who can't

00:24:19.840 accept this to join in man's destiny.

00:24:22.020 But this rejection of pluralism does not only come from those who assign one iteration of

00:24:27.360 man as manifestly superior, but also those who deny humans have differences to begin with.

00:24:32.440 Diversity has no value if all humans are exactly the same.

00:24:35.980 It is our differences in aptitude and perspective that make diversity a thing of value.

00:24:40.780 To deny human diversity is as sinful as not seeing the beauty in it.

00:24:45.180 Man has yet to be challenged by genuine diversity among the human species, but such diversity is

00:24:50.460 inevitable in a galaxy-spanning civilization with advanced genetic and cybernetic technology.

00:24:55.940 The fellowship of man can only stay strong if before leaving our home world, we commit to

00:25:01.520 a covenant of accepting all the sons of man so long as they don't have designs on the subjugation

00:25:07.020 of others.

00:25:07.480 Even if the empire of man attempts to create an extremely stringent restriction on human

00:25:13.040 augmentation, some random space station hidden from the eye of the imperium is bound to eventually

00:25:19.060 dabble in human advancement science.

00:25:21.780 And if what is created by that research can only be safe by exterminating humanity 1.0, then

00:25:27.820 it will attempt to.

00:25:28.940 This will happen time and time again until some future stronger and smarter iteration of man

00:25:34.820 finally succeeded in exterminating man 1.0.

00:25:38.000 To declare war on that which is different from oneself, axiomatically, is to declare war on one's 0.99

00:25:43.800 betters.

00:25:45.000 But the situation such regulations would create is worse than that, because now this new iteration

00:25:51.380 of man would have reason to be wary of any new subgroup that was an improvement over it.

00:25:56.360 As such, it would be a threat to those subgroups and necessitate eradication in turn. 0.99

00:26:00.780 Demanding purity in man will lead to an endless cycle of self-destruction.

00:26:05.440 A creed that does not start venerating human diversity ends in our eradication.

00:26:09.940 Only the most primitive forms of evolution, be it cultural or biological, require a path

00:26:15.200 red in tooth and claw, but all require diversity.

00:26:18.480 And we've been pretty clear on this podcast already that we think that a core essential

00:26:24.020 component of any good ecosystem is plurality or free market competition, however you want

00:26:32.660 to put it.

00:26:33.800 Yeah.

00:26:33.980 I mean, we basically believe in free market competition at the cultural and genetic level.

00:26:37.820 We think that that's how God makes his will known.

00:26:40.260 When Adam Smith talked about the invisible hand of God, we think he was talking about a real

00:26:44.260 force.

00:26:44.760 This is how God shows his will within reality.

00:26:47.500 And so to silence diversity is to silence God.

00:26:49.940 But I also think that it's more than that.

00:26:51.660 And one of the points I'm making here is you really cannot have an interstellar empire

00:26:55.900 that sort of demands a template human.

00:26:58.460 It would not work.

00:27:00.340 Like you see it in science.

00:27:01.680 Like when, why would that even happen though?

00:27:03.900 Are you arguing against an argument that wouldn't ever even really arrive?

00:27:08.420 No, no, no.

00:27:08.740 It's very common.

00:27:09.420 And it's very common in sci-fi as well.

00:27:10.980 So in sci-fis-

00:27:12.540 What sci-fi are you listening to?

00:27:14.800 I literally can't think of a single sci-fi I'm familiar with that doesn't have this

00:27:19.860 restriction.

00:27:21.160 Wait, that doesn't have some group that is super xenophobic and wants everyone to be

00:27:24.600 exactly like them?

00:27:25.660 No, I'm talking about like the Star Trek Federation.

00:27:29.420 The Star Trek Federation-

00:27:30.960 They're not trying to convert other planets to be like them.

00:27:34.320 They within humanity-

00:27:36.500 Are you not familiar?

00:27:37.960 Hold on.

00:27:38.580 Are you not familiar with the eugenics wars?

00:27:40.620 Are you not familiar with Khan?

00:27:42.460 Do you not know the history of the Star Trek universe?

00:27:45.220 This is one of the-

00:27:45.940 So in Star Trek, human genetic augmentation is a capital punishment.

00:27:51.000 Genetic selection of offspring.

00:27:52.620 What we do would have you executed in the Star Trek universe.

00:27:55.700 But it's also an extremely, weirdly, inexplicably diverse, even like within the Federation.

00:28:01.960 This is the point I'm making.

00:28:03.140 There are people who look and behave very differently.

00:28:06.680 Yeah, but not among humans.

00:28:08.520 Yes, among humans.

00:28:10.520 There's diversity as it exists on Earth today.

00:28:12.940 So this is a point I was making in that.

00:28:14.440 And I want you to meditate on what I'm saying here or genuinely think about what I'm saying

00:28:17.460 here.

00:28:18.400 Humanity today, if you're talking about like the difference between like black and white 0.98

00:28:22.440 people, for example, right, that have had some minor level of genetic isolation over

00:28:28.580 a hundred thousand years, maybe a thousand years.

00:28:32.400 Oh, so you're just saying the diversity that we have now pales in comparison to what we

00:28:37.020 could have with genetic selection and with support for plurality.

00:28:43.100 What I'm saying is even if you ban genetic selection technology, even if you attempt to

00:28:48.120 ban human cybernetic technology, all understanding we have today of space travel, which is important

00:28:54.260 to note, is that it's fairly slow.

00:28:56.540 I think that we're going to be capped at light speed travel for a fairly long time.

00:29:00.960 If you are capped at light speed travel, that means human colonies are going to take hundreds

00:29:06.360 of years to travel between for a long time, probably thousands of years.

00:29:11.080 If that's the case, you can't say something like, suppose Earth decides we're going to put

00:29:17.320 a ban on genetic selection technology and cybernetics technology, right?

00:29:22.040 And it has seeded a hundred other planets or something like that.

00:29:25.620 If one of those other planets in isolation decides we are going to ignore these bans and

00:29:32.600 begins to do genetic selection technology for a hundred thousand years or even directed

00:29:37.760 genetic technology or begins to do cybernetic technology because they now know that Earth

00:29:43.580 had a ban on this technology, right? 0.96

00:29:45.400 If Earth finds them, it will kill them.

00:29:47.560 Well, now they have a motivation to kill Earth, right? 0.96

00:29:51.240 Now, Earth will not be able to.

00:29:53.760 Earth would have no shot.

00:29:54.980 Even if they had 99 planets allied with them, right?

00:29:59.280 And they were trying to kill just this one planet that had created this, quote unquote,

00:30:02.760 superior iteration of humans, right?

00:30:04.900 Like this genetically much, much smarter, cybernetically augmented, they would have no shot at that.

00:30:11.260 Interplanetary battles like that.

00:30:12.700 And then worse than that is you're not just talking about planets.

00:30:15.080 You're talking about floating space barges and stuff like that, which are going to be

00:30:19.600 very, very hard to attack if you're far away from them.

00:30:23.400 And by the way, a lot of people, somebody was like, oh, can you believe that Malcolm thinks

00:30:27.080 that humans would exist on planets and not floating space barges?

00:30:30.480 I think you're likely going to have a combination of the two, but planetary fortresses and bio-seated

00:30:36.880 planets like ecosphere planets are going to be much more robust from a defensibility perspective

00:30:42.680 than floating space stations in terms of the population that you can grow on them and

00:30:47.480 in terms of how robust they are to certain types of attacks.

00:30:50.400 And so if you then get conflict here, because you would inevitably have conflict if one of

00:30:54.760 the, and a lot of people plan on leaving the planet like this.

00:30:57.180 You know, you look at the Warhammer universe, you look at the Star Trek universe, you look

00:31:01.180 at literally every show I can think of.

00:31:04.480 There are restrictions on human advancement technology.

00:31:08.320 And in fact, I often talk about Star Trek is weirdly racist in this.

00:31:12.180 The way that they frame the genetically augmented humans who Khan is a member of is they say that

00:31:17.480 for whatever reason, genetically augmented humans just makes them mean and spiteful towards 1.00

00:31:23.440 other people.

00:31:24.060 Wait, they imply that?

00:31:25.820 Yes.

00:31:27.460 Yeah.

00:31:27.800 And it is, it's very interesting that they imply this because it is really sort of like

00:31:33.220 racism.

00:31:33.620 Like he had no reason to believe that, especially when you consider that IQ cross correlates with

00:31:38.360 pro-sociality.

00:31:39.460 It has a negative correlation with things like rape and has a negative correlation with

00:31:42.980 violence, crime, et cetera.

00:31:44.260 Yeah.

00:31:44.480 Yeah.

00:31:44.980 So, so literally all of the data shows the opposite is true.

00:31:47.940 And yet he wanted to paint this group that he desired to other, that he desired to paint

00:31:52.360 as intrinsically evil as like intrinsically a threat to humanity, where I really think what

00:31:57.140 he paints is that group is only a threat to humanity insofar as humanity decides that

00:32:02.160 that group must be annihilated or cannot be allowed to come to exist because then they're

00:32:05.680 proving themselves as a threat to that group. 0.99

00:32:07.240 And, and so I think that even in one of the most pussy, quote unquote, pro superficial diversity 0.87

00:32:13.040 Star Trek shows, you, you have this.

00:32:16.480 Across the Federation, federal experts agree that A, God exists after all, B, he's on our

00:32:22.580 side and C, he wants us to win.

00:32:25.860 And there's even more good news believers because it's official.

00:32:30.780 God's back and he's a citizen too.

00:32:35.480 And then, and then you can talk about, well, what about human cybernetic augmentation?

00:32:38.840 They, they have minor human cyber, cyber augmentation on Star Trek, but one of the core enemies on

00:32:45.660 Star Trek is the Borg.

00:32:47.060 What makes the Borg evil to them?

00:32:48.980 Really?

00:32:49.340 It's that it's, it's, it's, it's inclination that if you had humans that engaged enough with

00:32:53.620 human cybernetic augmentation, they would demand that all other flesh-based life join 0.96

00:32:59.260 them, which there's just no reason to think that this is again, just sort of racism against

00:33:04.500 the different and racism against the potentially better.

00:33:07.980 What it shows, and this is something I was talking about earlier, they think man in him

00:33:11.140 has this distinct fear of creating or finding something that's better than him.

00:33:17.560 And yet that is what God commands us to do because only in expanding our conscious capacity

00:33:22.500 can we expand our understanding of him.

00:33:24.920 And we do have a, that's why revelation comes in iterations because humanity is, is commanded

00:33:29.860 to expand its ability to understand God.

00:33:33.500 Well, no, so you say that, I guess, I mean, I know you say you want to discuss Garden of

00:33:37.820 Eden in another one of these discussions, but this would lead me to question, at least if

00:33:42.880 we're going on what, you know, revelations were shared in the Bible, for example, in the

00:33:48.560 Garden of Eden, it is, it seems highly implied to me from the plot or whatever, that God did

00:33:54.540 not want Adam and Eve to change, that he just wanted his little biosphere and his little

00:33:58.200 human zoo and for them to be cute. 0.81

00:34:00.380 And that the fact that they did do something that enabled them to improve materially.

00:34:07.460 And the reason I want to take a tract to talk about the story of, of Adam and Eve is because

00:34:11.900 it's one of these examples where as it's written now, it makes no sense.

00:34:15.660 Yeah.

00:34:16.480 God didn't want man to have knowledge.

00:34:18.980 Clearly we must be misunderstanding this story because I do not believe that God didn't want

00:34:23.940 man to have knowledge of good and evil.

00:34:25.760 I don't have a hard answer to this yet.

00:34:28.000 I need to look through the story, read it again with this interpretation and try to understand.

00:34:32.360 But what I can say is I am certain that the traditional Christian interpretation is wrong.

00:34:36.100 What I often find when I reread biblical stories with this new framing is the simplified

00:34:40.980 story that was told to me is not actually what's written in the Bible.

00:34:44.300 I just, I just reread this, but yeah, you need to reread it too.

00:34:47.820 And we'll talk about it later.

00:34:48.420 And the story that's written in the Bible when approached with the correct framing, it

00:34:51.580 makes perfect logical sense.

00:34:53.440 It's just that we were basically told the way like a bronze age human would read this

00:34:58.420 story instead of the way that we were meant to interpret the story.

00:35:02.240 Just as I suspected when I went back to the story and I reread it, the story I had been

00:35:06.440 told as a kid was not the story that was written in the Bible.

00:35:09.060 We do a long video on this that you can go and check out, but the short and long of it

00:35:13.840 is a number of things that I thought were true about the story were just not true.

00:35:18.400 So first, the tree of knowledge of good and evil did not give man perfect knowledge of

00:35:24.620 right from wrong.

00:35:25.380 I mean, after all, humans don't have perfect knowledge of right from wrong.

00:35:29.020 And it's made clear that it didn't give him perfect knowledge of right and wrong because

00:35:32.680 when he took the fruit from the tree, the first thing he noticed was that he was naked.

00:35:38.640 Is it evil to be nude?

00:35:40.860 Of course not.

00:35:41.740 And if it was evil to be nude, God wouldn't have had man be nude in the garden.

00:35:46.580 What the tree actually gave man, and this is made pretty clear throughout the story,

00:35:52.520 was the ability to determine good and evil for himself independent of God.

00:35:59.320 So for man to decide some things are good and some things are evil, potentially incorrectly.

00:36:05.940 And it's actually a much more beautiful story than I remembered because it shows in the story

00:36:12.180 that likely the tree didn't actually have any magical properties or give Adam anything, really.

00:36:17.840 It was the only thing, the only rule he had at that time was don't eat from this tree.

00:36:23.660 And thus, the only way that man could establish for himself that he might sometimes make decisions

00:36:31.140 about what is good and evil independent of God was through disobeying that rule and eating

00:36:36.800 from that tree.

00:36:37.960 So in that way, it was a tree of knowledge of good and evil.

00:36:40.900 And this is why Adam is told, potentially by God, potentially his wife embellished this,

00:36:46.260 we can talk about this later, that even touching the apple will lead to the consequences.

00:36:52.140 Because the apple of everlasting life, which, or not the apple, the fruit, everlasting life,

00:36:58.040 which does seem to have come from a genuinely magical tree, that you needed to ingest.

00:37:02.200 But this tree, you only needed to touch it.

00:37:03.840 What's going on with that?

00:37:04.980 It's because it was not the act of eating the apple that made Adam rebellious to God,

00:37:10.500 that made Adam take on this quote-unquote knowledge of good and evil.

00:37:13.820 You could almost be put sarcasm quotes, knowledge of good and evil.

00:37:16.720 And the story itself is clearly about man forming the first societies and beginning to build his own first rules

00:37:25.960 about what is good and what is evil.

00:37:27.440 For example, in the piece, clothing or being nude being considered evil.

00:37:32.980 Well, that's not a genuinely evil thing.

00:37:35.420 It's just evil within the context of society and the rules of society.

00:37:39.160 And I think in the piece, there's really good evidence that it is about us forming the first cities,

00:37:46.240 the first human settlements where lots of humans live together,

00:37:49.480 and where man is creating rules about good and evil in the same way that previously only God had created rules about good and evil.

00:37:57.600 For example, when I was reading the piece, I was like,

00:38:00.040 well, if this is true and this is from God, then it should tell me something, right?

00:38:03.820 So I looked up where it said the garden was, and it gives an exact location.

00:38:07.500 It's at the mouthwater of the Tigris and Euphrates.

00:38:09.640 And then I looked up, how far is that from the oldest city that we know, Chattahuyuk?

00:38:15.040 And they're literally in exactly the same location, the Taurus Mountains.

00:38:19.060 And so I was like, okay, so that's what this story is about.

00:38:21.860 Mankind leaving sort of this savage state and founding the first cities,

00:38:26.100 and him beginning to build his own rules in rebellion to potentially God's rules.

00:38:32.100 But it had another interesting part, which is really important to note,

00:38:35.540 which is that one of the curses on Adam was not to die.

00:38:39.840 To die was a consequence of having knowledge of good and evil.

00:38:44.740 And to quote here,

00:38:45.960 Then the Lord God said,

00:38:47.300 See, the man has become like us, knowing good and bad.

00:38:50.160 Now then he might put his hand and take from the tree of life also and eat it and live forever.

00:38:54.920 So the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to go work the land from which he was taken.

00:38:59.580 So as you can see right there, this is God worried about man potentially also living forever and knowing good from evil,

00:39:07.900 because apparently, unless you are God, you cannot have both of these things at once.

00:39:13.140 And somebody would be like, no, I could swear.

00:39:15.020 Didn't God say like dust to dust or something like that in the various punishments to Adam?

00:39:21.220 And yes, but it wasn't a punishment in this context.

00:39:25.620 It was describing a length of time.

00:39:27.560 He talks about man dying insofar as how long this punishment of working hard will last on a man.

00:39:35.400 By hard work, you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

00:39:38.640 It will grow thorns and sissels for you.

00:39:40.460 You will eat the plants of the field.

00:39:42.160 You will eat bread by the sweat of your face because of hard work until you rest to the ground,

00:39:47.960 because you were taken from the ground.

00:39:49.940 So right there, he's just stating not that he wouldn't have died in the Garden of Eden.

00:39:55.660 He's stating that the punishment of having to work is a punishment that lasts from when you're born until when you die.

00:40:02.840 And then after that, he states not as a threat.

00:40:06.300 It's very different from the structure than the threats here.

00:40:08.660 With the threats, it always says because of this, because of this, because of this.

00:40:11.700 No, he then just states, you are dust, you will return to dust.

00:40:15.780 And somebody might be like, well, I remember him living forever if he stayed in Eden.

00:40:19.540 And that's not what it says.

00:40:20.760 It's actually very explicit.

00:40:22.260 He wouldn't have lived forever in Eden.

00:40:23.660 If he had been in Eden for a long time, he was dying.

00:40:26.480 And Adam is a vague term for men and their children.

00:40:29.740 It's just that death wasn't important to them before they had this level of sentience and understanding.

00:40:33.920 How do I know that?

00:40:35.020 Well, because God explicitly said,

00:40:36.440 He might put his hand and take from the tree of life also and eat it and live forever.

00:40:40.420 So this implies that you only have to eat from the tree of life once to live forever.

00:40:46.480 Now, it's actually important that it wasn't one of the punishments from the tree.

00:40:50.500 And it was just a consequence of being this type of being that has independent thought.

00:40:56.100 Because all of the actual curses that we got have recently been lifted from our species.

00:41:02.120 Man no longer needs to work in the fields all day to sustain himself.

00:41:06.800 In fact, in most of the developed world, you don't even really need to work if you want to live a somewhat comfortable life when contrasted to our distant ancestors' quality of life.

00:41:15.880 And women no longer have to experience pain in childbirth.

00:41:18.940 You know, we have C-section.

00:41:20.140 We have epidurals now.

00:41:22.020 Women no longer live under the subjugation of men, as was one of the punishments. 1.00

00:41:25.940 So, God allowed us to free ourselves from these quote-unquote curses to reveal something.

00:41:33.580 This is what we believe triggered the trial of the lotus eaters.

00:41:36.880 What he revealed is that he is not a vengeful God.

00:41:40.580 He's not the type of God to hurt us for no reason.

00:41:44.020 There was never a tree with forbidden knowledge in the garden.

00:41:46.920 He just knew that we would disobey him.

00:41:49.120 And he called the tree where the first disobeyal would take place the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

00:41:53.220 And then that's where we took unto ourselves this knowledge of good and evil.

00:41:57.620 And then he gave us punishments, but they were punishments we had to have to survive as a species.

00:42:02.380 Now we're seeing when you remove the toil from man's life, he no longer has motivation to have kids.

00:42:08.400 And that's where the trial of the lotus eaters comes in.

00:42:11.020 So right now, we are to some extent having a trial that mirrors the trial that man had in the Garden of Eden.

00:42:18.440 Now this becomes incredibly important that the living forever prohibition was not among the curses.

00:42:26.100 Because that prohibition continues to hold.

00:42:28.960 It continues to be true that man, a being with this sort of level of independent knowledge and sentience,

00:42:36.600 cannot live forever or we will never intergenerationally improve and eventually fulfill our destiny.

00:42:42.800 And join with this entity called God.

00:42:45.160 We need to die to intergenerationally improve.

00:42:48.780 We need this intergenerational cycle of martyrdom, which is what the story of Jesus tells us.

00:42:54.180 That man must, man who is in a way God, must be sacrificed in order to forgive other men of their sins.

00:43:03.640 Where sins can be taught to mean of their failings, the things that prevent them from rejoining with God as they are now.

00:43:09.840 The story captured in Jesus is the story of humanity.

00:43:13.800 One generation of elect sacrificing themselves to improve the next generation.

00:43:20.600 And so that is why beings like us cannot live forever and should not strive to live forever.

00:43:26.400 But that doesn't mean that there isn't a path to live forever.

00:43:30.540 Or at least a type of living forever, which in my opinion is more meaningful than actually in our flesh and bodies living forever.

00:43:38.900 Which is what we are shown through the story of Jesus.

00:43:43.320 Jesus is the fruit of everlasting life.

00:43:47.340 Jesus, the story of Jesus, is the tree of everlasting life.

00:43:51.620 So another way you can take the story of Adam and Eve is it is about man getting two trees to choose between.

00:43:59.880 One tree being real and magical intergenerational martyrdom for the future, Jesus, everlasting life.

00:44:08.520 And the other tree being the rules that mankind has made up for himself about what's evil and what's good.

00:44:17.980 And then man choosing the rules of man over the rules of God over the true pathway to everlasting life.

00:44:26.440 Of choosing the dull, plain, nothing of a tree over the true magical tree.

00:44:33.080 And this is where we sometimes run into conflict with other Abrahamic faiths is they come to us and they go, 0.98

00:44:38.540 Oh, you believe all of the Abrahamic trees are true, so you must approve of X or Y practice that I am doing. 0.98

00:44:45.480 And I'm like, well, no, I don't approve of that practice.

00:44:48.480 I condemn that practice harshly.

00:44:50.700 And they go, well, how can you do that?

00:44:52.440 And it is because many of the Abrahamic faiths have begun to incorporate the rules of man over the rules of God and overridden the rules of God.

00:45:03.640 Of all of the Abrahamic faiths, one of the most consistently reiterated and condemned things is iconoclasm. 0.89

00:45:11.100 That is using shortcuts to God or using earthly intermediaries between you and God.

00:45:17.660 And when I condemn groups for this, they say, well, how dare you?

00:45:22.060 My group's been doing this for however long, you know, and your group's been wearing clothes for however long.

00:45:28.220 That doesn't mean that it is one of the rules of God.

00:45:31.700 And it is important that the rules that man made up never supersede the rules of God.

00:45:38.580 In the story of Adam and Eve, it is made pretty clear to me that nudity is a rule and an evil that man just made up.

00:45:47.080 God does not care.

00:45:49.920 But I am okay with staying closed insofar as me staying closed and participating in the rules of man and society doesn't go directly against the rules of God.

00:46:00.320 This becomes an issue when you're talking about things like iconoclasm, whether it be of the idol-worshipping variety or of the mystical variety,

00:46:09.920 which has been approved by high-ranking religious figures within some branch of every single one of the Abrahamic traditions.

00:46:19.060 This isn't some loosey-goosey pantheist religion that we're attempting to build here.

00:46:23.400 This is a religion of order and rules and prohibitions.

00:46:27.300 And they are the prohibitions that I believe that God most frequently reinforces and emphasizes within Israel of Revelation.

00:46:38.360 But anyway, back to this, because I think the human diversity point is really important because you hear it in the little.

00:46:43.680 You hear it in the modern politics.

00:46:46.700 Whereas I'm talking about it in terms of when we have planetary hive minds.

00:46:51.500 I'm talking about it when we have humans that basically look like the Borg.

00:46:55.400 They are more man than machine and they are more AI than human.

00:46:59.400 And when I talk about-

00:47:00.140 You mean more machine than man.

00:47:01.660 Oh, sorry, more machine than man.

00:47:03.280 And when I talk about the sons of man, this includes artificial intelligences that are the work of man.

00:47:08.380 There is, I think, nothing we can do, and you can watch many of our videos on AI,

00:47:12.180 that will make AI more threatening to us than to have a theology or philosophy that demands that we kill any AI that's threatening to us.

00:47:22.420 Which is, I think, the position that a lot of people are pushing for.

00:47:25.720 And I think that we need to work to build because the energy in the universe is vast.

00:47:31.780 The distance between planets is large.

00:47:35.600 And there is just so much out there.

00:47:38.100 To think in terms of a zero-sum game with anything that we create within our existing planet, I think is just incredibly childish.

00:47:45.600 But, again, watch our stuff on AI if you're not familiar with our thoughts on why AI, particularly the inverse grabby alien hypothesis video we did.

00:47:53.560 I think it's the most compelling to me on this topic because I think it's fairly, to me, good evidence that we are not about to create a paperclip maximizing AI.

00:48:01.580 But, yeah.

00:48:02.620 So, I guess what I'm saying here is that when we talk about diversity now, we talk about it in terms of very trivial differences between people.

00:48:11.380 I'm talking about genuine, vast human diversity and people who struggle with the trivial diversities, the trivial difference in proficiencies we have now.

00:48:22.000 Imagine there's a person who finds out that whatever, like, his group has a slight IQ advantage over some other group, right?

00:48:27.900 And he goes, well, that means we're better than that group.

00:48:29.920 And that means we need to get rid of that group or, like, in some way, like, systemically dispower that group.

00:48:34.240 Imagine if that individual was part of the template that we use to make genetically augmented humans or super advanced cybernetic humans.

00:48:43.120 That would be an incredibly dangerous creation.

00:48:46.580 These people really, like, when we talk about, in a way, it is a mass eugenic cleansing that must be carried out.

00:48:52.740 But the eugenic cleansing that must be carried out is of the genetic proclivities to hate that which is different from you, which I understand in an evolutionary timeline that was necessary for humanity.

00:49:06.680 So, it makes sense that it's in many strains of humanity.

00:49:09.160 But if those strains become the templates that we build a better man from, then those templates will think of us the same way those people think of groups that they have these marginal advantages over.

00:49:22.720 And that is incredibly dangerous.

00:49:25.420 Well, sorry for derailing you.

00:49:27.080 By all means, go on.

00:49:29.520 Okay.

00:49:30.360 However, this covenant only extends to the sons of man.

00:49:33.480 Any intelligence that is not a direct descendant of humanity or our labor was created by God to either serve or test man.

00:49:41.540 This is not to say that they must be eradicated, but that they should never be favored over the best interest of the collective covenant of man.

00:49:48.940 The covenant is the only thing with the strengths to protect the future of humanity from the malevolent intelligences we will awaken in the dark corners of reality as our empire expands.

00:49:59.740 So, that was one that I actually was not sure if I wanted to put in.

00:50:06.060 And I'm wondering what your thoughts are.

00:50:07.360 I mean, basically what I'm saying is the covenant of man is this agreement that we all make.

00:50:10.720 All of humanity of the group that leaves makes that we will tolerate anything that is a descendant of man, whether it is a synthetic or biological descendant of man.

00:50:21.220 And it could look very different from man, right?

00:50:23.220 It could be we uplift apes, for example, with genetic technology.

00:50:27.160 We tolerate, or dolphins or something, we tolerate any of these that are sons of men, but, so they don't need to be a direct son of man, right?

00:50:36.040 Like, they need to be sons of our mental effort, our industry, and our labor, insofar as they don't attempt to subjugate other humans, or they don't pose some existential risk for other humans, like they're just breeding so fastly, like the Krogan or something like that. 0.99

00:50:50.080 This is something in the game was the Krogan.

00:50:51.440 And I never understood who would ever stop the genophage, anybody who's familiar with Mass Effect.

00:50:56.020 That's the one thing I do in every single place.

00:50:59.000 Never stop the genophage. 1.00

00:51:00.500 That is so stupid. 1.00

00:51:01.820 It's a very warlike species with a very high fertility rate, and another species created a lock on its fertility rate to make it much lower. 1.00

00:51:08.800 And obviously this causes huge negative social effects within Krogan society.

00:51:12.380 And it's, yes, that's sad, but they were an existential threat to all other species in the galaxy so long as, but anyway, so I think a better way to do it than to, you know, sterilize them might have been to make them less warlike, and there are many ways that could have been done.

00:51:29.600 So I struggled with this because basically what I'm saying here is the way the covenant works is all of the sons of man have to tolerate each other and become enemies to any of the sons of man that seem to have enmity to other groups of the sons of man, okay?

00:51:45.080 So you're basically creating this equal playing field around all of the descendants of human labor.

00:51:49.040 But when we're talking about aliens, for example, or other types of intelligences that we find in the universe, they are not covered in this covenant, and we are antagonistic to them.

00:51:59.680 Not necessarily antagonistic, like we can work with them and stuff like that, but we can work with them only insofar as it doesn't disrupt humanity's and the sons of man's best interest, which is actually a pretty bold position to take.

00:52:12.360 The reason I take it is because the entire structure of this religious system we're building believes that God has some special relationship with humanity and what humanity is turning into, and humanity will change.

00:52:25.320 Like, when we become whatever this entity God is, I don't even think the term corporeal or incorporeal will matter.

00:52:32.060 You know, it's not just like God doesn't have a gender, it doesn't have a status in terms of corporeality, or pluralism versus non-pluralism.

00:52:39.540 Like, it is a very different kind of an entity from us, and that implies that humanity is changing as we advance.

00:52:47.180 And I'll put the quote from Wynwood Reed here about, you know, our bodies changing by means we cannot even now conjecture.

00:52:53.160 As Wynwood Reed writes,

00:52:54.840 These bodies, which we now wear, belong to lower animals.

00:52:58.460 Our minds have already outgrown them.

00:53:00.240 Already we look upon them with contempt.

00:53:02.540 A time will come when science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture,

00:53:07.740 and which, even if explained to us, we could not understand.

00:53:11.240 Just as a savage cannot understand electricity, magnetism, and steam.

00:53:15.640 But, things outside of humanity, I do have an inclination that all of the fights that we're having now,

00:53:24.920 internally as a species, are going to seem pretty trivial when we encounter the genuine threat.

00:53:31.760 Like, the trials that we're experiencing now, this trial of the lociers, the trial of the shadow,

00:53:35.860 are trivial trials when contrasted with the trials that we are going to face in deep space,

00:53:41.000 and the malevolent intelligences that we might run into.

00:53:44.940 And we shouldn't just xenophobically not form alliances with intelligences that are beneficial and work with us,

00:53:51.280 but we should have some level of suspicion.

00:53:54.440 Yeah, that's interesting.

00:53:56.000 I mean, my inclination, intuitively, is to say, like, anyone who shares the same aligned values qualifies.

00:54:05.880 You know, if they have the ability to let the best ideas win within their own mental landscape,

00:54:11.220 and if they favor plurality and intergenerational improvement or iterative improvement over time,

00:54:18.360 then they are not enemies.

00:54:21.040 If they don't support those things, if they want homogeneity, if they want only them to exist,

00:54:27.980 then they're the enemy.

00:54:29.920 So, I agree with that in theory.

00:54:32.080 I just don't think that they're alien species.

00:54:34.780 But I don't think that you should assume that the spirit...

00:54:37.980 So, I think that in many first contact scenarios,

00:54:41.400 aliens will have thoroughly done, like, scouting on us, basically.

00:54:45.260 Well, yeah, so then they can reflect back to us what they think we want to hear.

00:54:49.440 Yes, that set of values that you just talked about.

00:54:52.740 And so, I don't even think that that's the way...

00:54:55.580 I'm not saying the aliens need to believe this religious and structural system that we have,

00:55:00.080 because I wouldn't even want them to do that.

00:55:02.120 They just need to be useful to it.

00:55:03.760 And so, it's, are they useful to us or are they not useful to us?

00:55:07.460 Are they a threat to us?

00:55:08.620 But I think that we should approach many of these meetings with a degree of skepticism of their intentionality.

00:55:16.040 And that the descendants of man, like all of the various descendants of man,

00:55:20.380 are things that we will have some capacity or understanding around,

00:55:23.860 especially as we get better AI interpretability knowledge,

00:55:26.520 which I believe we will.

00:55:28.420 But I think, so, for example, if you're talking about, like, a human-descended AI

00:55:31.400 versus, or an AI that we meet that was created by some other species,

00:55:35.760 I think that those things should be created as two totally different categories.

00:55:39.160 Regarded, yeah.

00:55:39.940 No, and you know the book, the sci-fi book that I complained about with Space Vampires?

00:55:44.800 Yeah.

00:55:45.100 Blindsight is really a lot about that.

00:55:48.780 That, like, some alien species we encounter can easily be listening into our communications

00:55:55.680 and telling us exactly what we want to hear and seeming quite like us,

00:55:59.460 when really it is so profoundly abstracted from what we are

00:56:02.860 that we can't even comprehend what it is and how it works.

00:56:06.320 So I think, yeah, I guess this makes sense.

00:56:09.240 You need to code this skepticism into whatever, because I said, like,

00:56:11.520 building in the last one track, building an Abrahamism that can reach the stars.

00:56:14.860 You need to encode this into, I think, that if you build this culture

00:56:18.640 of extreme tolerance for things that are different from you,

00:56:22.320 especially if you even begin to genetically select this out of a population,

00:56:25.560 if we are like, hey, you can't show bigotry to the talking dolphins

00:56:29.500 or the AIs or the cyborgs or the, you know, hive planets, right?

00:56:35.380 Like, hive mind planets, so long as they're not trying to subjugate humans

00:56:39.060 from other groups or removing the free will of humans from other groups

00:56:41.920 or descendants of man of other groups, you know.

00:56:44.240 These people will become so used to the toleration

00:56:46.640 and some level of trust of things that are different from them.

00:56:49.580 And the reason why you would have this trust is because you're going to have

00:56:51.780 such diversity that if any group steps in a line.

00:56:53.780 So you're trying to inoculate what should otherwise be a very pluralistic

00:56:57.940 and, I guess, cooperative group to be suspicious when encountering outsiders.

00:57:03.640 Yeah, that's healthy.

00:57:05.600 I think there are more succinct and direct ways to communicate that

00:57:08.460 because that's not what I was picking up from what you said.

00:57:11.080 But then again, once I go through all these, you know what I'm going to do.

00:57:13.960 I'm going to nuke out all of the...

00:57:16.180 All the religious language? 0.51

00:57:17.820 Well, you can make it clearer, but we'll see from the audience

00:57:20.480 if they like the religious language or if they want it nuked out.

00:57:23.360 Yeah, they probably will.

00:57:23.760 I mean, in the end, you're right about everything.

00:57:25.760 Like, when I make weird calls about things and I'm like,

00:57:27.840 I don't like this, and you're like, well, let's see how it goes.

00:57:30.540 And then you turn out to be right.

00:57:31.900 I know, and I trust you.

00:57:33.980 You're smart and beautiful, and I love you.

00:57:36.440 But I'm also, you know, opinionated.

00:57:38.980 And it's...

00:57:40.180 As history has shown, there are many people who are wrong and opinionated.

00:57:44.860 So it is part of a time-honored tradition what I'm showing you here.

00:57:48.140 Yeah.

00:57:48.500 But I mean, when I'm thinking through and I'm doing all this stuff,

00:57:50.780 like, in the future, people are, like, analyzing this.

00:57:52.880 Suppose a large sort of, like, interstellar, like, one of the first spaceships.

00:57:57.560 Some humans who believe this system are on it and they end up colonizing some of the first planets.

00:58:01.640 Is that going to be good?

00:58:02.460 What's going to happen in a long, long time period out if people were following this?

00:58:08.180 How would it lead to positive and negative things?

00:58:10.480 And what threats could it put our species under?

00:58:12.880 And this comes to something that we say elsewhere.

00:58:15.240 I think what God wants for us is what's best for us.

00:58:19.220 And therefore, to determine God's will, we should...

00:58:22.320 And when I say best for us, I mean best for expanding human potentiality.

00:58:25.380 Yeah, which may come at our personal sacrifice,

00:58:28.800 which may mean less sadonic comfort for any existing entity.

00:58:32.400 It almost always means, yeah.

00:58:34.300 But a lot of people, when they hear best for us,

00:58:36.300 they think distributed positive emotional states.

00:58:38.500 And I'm like, no, that is not what God wants for us.

00:58:40.540 That is how he tests us.

00:58:41.960 That is how he calls us.

00:58:43.300 And that is how the Bible tells you he's going to call you.

00:58:45.800 But anyway, it's not shy about that.

00:58:47.180 That's what the devil does.

00:58:48.540 All right, next.

00:58:50.280 But what is this ultimate destiny for which we are being tested?

00:58:54.000 From the perspective of our family's faith, it is to become one with God.

00:58:58.420 We believe God is not some arbitrary entity that took a liking to man or a narcissist

00:59:03.420 who crafted us in his image like miniatures trapped in a ghoulish cycle of trauma and war

00:59:08.900 for his amusement.

00:59:10.060 But that God is man's destiny.

00:59:12.980 That millions of years from now, mankind will resemble more what today we would think of

00:59:18.620 as a God than a man and that that entity will not relate to time in the way that we do.

00:59:26.420 God exists outside of time and yet is created by it, guiding mankind until we are worthy to

00:59:33.340 join him.

00:59:34.320 We are already part of God insofar as we serve his will and play our part in his plan for

00:59:41.140 us, which is above all defined by a moral mandate for intergenerational improvement.

00:59:46.120 It was through trials read in tooth and claw that God raised us to glory and taught us

00:59:52.200 to not value comfort as comfort motivates stagnation, the greatest of all sin.

00:59:58.140 But this also comes back to, you know, what I'm talking about here, this God that some within

01:00:04.700 the Abrahamic traditions believe is described in the Bible that like almost treats humans

01:00:09.040 like miniatures, like it just created us for its amusement to worship it.

01:00:13.560 No, I do not believe that that's true.

01:00:16.200 All right.

01:00:17.600 If God is the inevitable creation of a reality like ours, doesn't that preclude him from being

01:00:22.680 its cause?

01:00:23.780 How was reality cause?

01:00:25.500 How does this belief system deal with the ontological argument?

01:00:28.920 We hardly think God is a good answer to this question.

01:00:31.580 The position that something of infinite and ordered complexity with a degree of cognition

01:00:35.800 existed before all things seems the most unlikely of all possibilities.

01:00:40.260 Literally all other conceivable possibilities are more likely.

01:00:44.700 Instead, we make only three suppositions that in all possible universes, two things and two

01:00:50.400 things are four things.

01:00:51.920 Mass is a constant across realities and thus exists outside of realities.

01:00:55.780 The line represented by a graphical equation exists as an emergent property of that equation

01:01:00.300 even before it is graphed.

01:01:01.860 All physical particle interactions can be defined by a single yet undiscovered equation.

01:01:07.180 If these three things are true, then even if the physical universe did not exist as we

01:01:11.580 see it, with matter, time, etc., it would also exist as an emergent property of the equation

01:01:16.220 that governs it.

01:01:17.700 Occam's razor, we cut out the superfluous supposition that there is a physical reality

01:01:22.540 with time and these are all just representations of a self-graphing equation.

01:01:27.540 In fact, all universes that could be explained by an equation exist, which also solves the teleological

01:01:33.840 argument.

01:01:34.260 It also makes the claims that this universe might be simulated irrelevant as the moral

01:01:39.160 weight of actions and lies in that universe and universe prime would be equivalent as they

01:01:44.220 are both, quote unquote, just simulations.

01:01:46.560 It is just that this one is running on silicon and the other is running on the background fabric

01:01:51.140 of reality.

01:01:52.000 But I do not particularly think that we are in a simulation, but we can get to that later.

01:01:55.760 Now, Simone, this is a topic that we've talked about a lot on the channel, but I wanted to encode

01:02:01.420 it in the canon as succinctly as I could.

01:02:04.420 And one thing that we've talked about offline is the idea or the supposition that the very

01:02:10.600 first thing to exist or to exist outside of reality was a thing of ordered complexity and

01:02:15.640 a degree of sentience and consciousness.

01:02:17.920 It just seems so wildly improbable to me.

01:02:20.620 It doesn't, I literally think it is literally the least likely of all possibilities.

01:02:26.180 I could see nothing.

01:02:27.820 I could see us being in a cycle.

01:02:29.120 I could see us, I could see the big bang, like some sort of like physical property law

01:02:33.600 thing happening.

01:02:34.620 I could see leaving this as just an unanswered question.

01:02:37.380 But I am fairly convinced with my answer to this question.

01:02:40.200 I don't know if you had any thoughts on the Christian interpretation of this answer,

01:02:43.880 which is that God just existed before the universe and created it.

01:02:47.020 It, I think it's one of those things where you referred to in our previous chat about

01:02:53.740 how stories of origins or any sort of story, explanations of anything or guidance on morality

01:02:59.920 is presented to people in a way that they can understand at that time.

01:03:04.100 And when I think about, you know, in, you know, on day one, God made this and it was good.

01:03:09.120 And on day two, he brought, you know, like sea creatures and all.

01:03:12.160 And like weird parts of it seem accurate to me in terms of the ordering, you know, and

01:03:17.660 then God made the seas.

01:03:19.180 And yes, that's how it worked.

01:03:20.980 Yeah.

01:03:21.080 Like we know, like there were the stages of like the creation of earth.

01:03:24.400 Yeah.

01:03:24.520 Like first there were the oceans and then yeah, like birds were dinosaurs and blah, blah,

01:03:28.040 you know, and the sea creatures came first, which is totally accurate per our understanding

01:03:31.560 of, of historical geology and revolution and everything.

01:03:34.940 So like when I was listening to that very, very beginning, you know, Genesis, I was like,

01:03:39.260 yeah, oh, wow, this is like pretty accurate.

01:03:41.320 But in terms of this guy entity existing and making it, I feel like when it comes to your

01:03:48.840 Well, and I want to be clear here, like we do think that God died at evolution, all of

01:03:53.280 that stuff about making the earth, making the planets, making the animals, making all

01:03:56.620 that.

01:03:57.080 He did all of that, which is actually an important point here.

01:04:00.400 A lot of Christians act as if the Bible says God created the universe, like reality.

01:04:06.840 Yet I don't think the Bible makes that explicit.

01:04:08.820 No, Genesis.

01:04:09.760 No, it doesn't make that argument.

01:04:12.460 But I mean, I also, in terms of this many days and the very literal elements of it, I

01:04:17.640 think that that's more explained in a way that people at that time can understand.

01:04:21.040 I think that that was accurate.

01:04:21.740 I think that that was God gifting early man a revelation that he wasn't fully capable

01:04:25.440 of understanding, basically explaining evolution and the timescales of various things that happen

01:04:30.320 on earth in a way that early man could grasp.

01:04:32.940 Right.

01:04:33.140 It's really kind of hard.

01:04:34.000 What is early man doing?

01:04:35.180 Early man is, you know, on day one, I harvested berries and it was good.

01:04:41.720 And on day two, I slept a little bit more because it was cold outside and it was good.

01:04:45.440 You know, that kind of thing.

01:04:46.060 It's something you could wrap your head around.

01:04:47.760 I think that this comes to another area where a lot of people will say you are saying things

01:04:51.640 that go directly against Christian scripture and it's like these go directly against what

01:04:56.180 I'm told Christian scripture says from-

01:04:58.740 But not what you actually read in the Bible.

01:05:00.060 But not what I actually read.

01:05:01.740 And this just keeps happening to me that I'm told that the scripture says X and then I read

01:05:06.600 it and somehow it aligns with this like bizarre thing I thought I made up because it was what

01:05:11.200 was in the best interest of my kids.

01:05:12.420 And what I increasingly am realizing is God wanted us to find what was in the best interest

01:05:18.680 for each generation from his text.

01:05:21.160 That's how he wrote it.

01:05:21.920 That's the beauty of it.

01:05:23.180 And people are falling too much to oral tradition within their communities and confusing it with

01:05:29.900 biblical, Talmudic, you know, Quranic truths.

01:05:33.100 Yeah, I was just thinking about that this morning, listening to someone talk about, what is it

01:05:37.700 called Ayurvedic astrology, the India-based astrology, and he had like complete faith in

01:05:45.120 it and lived by it and like clearly understood nothing about it and could argue nothing from

01:05:52.880 like an informed understanding of it.

01:05:55.900 And it was just very clear that he had heard several people talking about it in a way that

01:06:01.240 was just so compelling to him.

01:06:03.840 And I think a lot of it comes down to delivery.

01:06:05.800 You know, they were, you know, probably attractive and magnetic enough where he just kind of listened

01:06:12.520 to them say complete nonsense and was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:06:16.160 And then he would just start repeating them.

01:06:17.520 And I feel like the same goes for many religions where preachers and various church leaders are

01:06:23.700 saying things in a very charismatic way that's very compelling.

01:06:27.680 And people are like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:06:29.940 Because also that's kind of how we're built.

01:06:32.060 Like we're not built to read original text and come to our own conclusions because people

01:06:36.720 who do that get kicked out of the tribe and die alone in the tundra.

01:06:41.000 Well, no, it's very interesting that you point this out because this has been similar to an

01:06:44.680 experience that I've kept having, which is when I'm trying to understand the Abrahamic face to

01:06:48.360 better understand God's word, I both read the texts and I talk with people who are conservative

01:06:55.940 practitioners and preachers in their communities.

01:06:58.900 Domain experts, yeah.

01:07:00.280 Yeah, whether this is within the Islamic community or the Jewish community.

01:07:03.780 And regularly I am finding, honestly, very little like useful, meaningful, impactful information

01:07:10.940 to me from the domain experts.

01:07:12.380 And yet I am finding just this enormous trove of it was in the actual texts themselves.

01:07:18.500 You know, when I'm going through the Talmud, I'm like, oh, my God, like this. 0.71

01:07:22.360 So right on.

01:07:23.780 What's interesting to me too, is there are some domain experts I can count to who, when

01:07:29.880 you talk with them about the texts, like they actually know, like they, it's clear that they

01:07:33.820 have actually gone to those texts personally and thought logically about them in isolation

01:07:37.360 without someone guiding them through.

01:07:39.180 Yeah.

01:07:39.440 Everyone else is more like, oh no, we don't ask these questions.

01:07:42.660 They're basically, don't point out that that text contrast was our way of life.

01:07:46.200 Again, I'm not pointing out anyone specific here.

01:07:48.020 Like people might say I'm specifically pointing out like, no, I've had this from Jews.

01:07:50.580 I've had this from Muslims. 1.00

01:07:51.460 I've had this from Christians. 1.00

01:07:52.900 Although to be clear, the two people that I'm thinking of who actually have gone through

01:07:56.340 the text and thought logically about it are Jewish.

01:07:59.200 Yeah.

01:07:59.580 I mean, but, but it's, it's something that I keep having with these various communities

01:08:02.880 and what it represents to me.

01:08:05.300 And this is something we talked about in our last track is the fall of the Abrahamic face 0.79

01:08:09.260 from the periods of pure revelation that they received where they were given truth, but

01:08:14.920 they followed it for a while.

01:08:16.240 And then they, they fell away from it and they begin to become more like a subculture.

01:08:21.620 And, and, and so not to overpick on these, let's pick on Christians for a bit, like iconoclasm. 0.53

01:08:25.780 Like to me, like so many Christian groups are just like clearly into iconoclasm in ways 1.00

01:08:30.800 that was very explicitly prohibited.

01:08:32.800 And I, and it's, well, why, why, you know, the second council of Nicene, did you say that

01:08:39.120 it was okay to have images of God?

01:08:40.940 And the answer is basically, well, it's popular within our communities and we don't want to

01:08:46.300 like hurt the feelings of, of these people who's, who think it's popular, you know, like

01:08:50.120 they, they like doing this.

01:08:51.200 They like creating these graven images and, um, and, and, and they do it to affirm their

01:08:56.500 love of God, you know, and we're, we take the perspective as we're like, no, like the

01:08:59.860 Bible specifically said, if they think that this is bringing them closer to an entity, that

01:09:05.080 entity is not God.

01:09:06.180 It may feel like God, but that's the way the basilisk works.

01:09:09.380 That's the way the deceiver works.

01:09:10.900 But what's interesting for us is we feel that that is a side of God.

01:09:14.260 So in a way, if you're getting closer to the devil, you are getting closer to God, just

01:09:17.560 the side of himself.

01:09:18.780 He warned you about, you don't want to see me when I'm, which is an interesting sort

01:09:22.460 of framing here.

01:09:23.320 So we don't take this as, as, as, as strongly as some other things, but in future videos,

01:09:27.280 we will go to things that I think I read in these other texts that have much more direct

01:09:32.820 contradiction with the existing lifestyles of individuals within the Abrahamic face, which

01:09:39.100 has led me to sort of increasingly turn away from the communities as they exist now and

01:09:45.980 try to find truth in the text itself.

01:09:48.780 And again, I'm just saying, like, I'm not somebody out here who's thinking I hear God

01:09:52.000 talk to me or something like that, or giving me unique understanding.

01:09:55.340 I think I, if I'm unique, it's only in, I'm coming at this from starting as an atheist perspective.

01:10:01.660 I don't particularly care what people think about me.

01:10:04.300 And I don't care about being accepted within any of these existing communities.

01:10:07.600 And I'm just trying to read what these texts actually say was a modern understanding of

01:10:12.240 reality and trying to make them make basic level sense to me in terms of being like nonsensical

01:10:18.700 stories.

01:10:19.640 Going back to the basilisk, is it almost like more sinful to be weak and not indulge in sin?

01:10:30.540 And I'm kind of thinking like, you know, we, when we set mousetraps in our home, because

01:10:34.980 sometimes we get mice, they crawl in from the fields and our house is very porous.

01:10:38.880 We want the mice to go to the mousetraps.

01:10:41.220 I'm very pleased when the mice go to the mousetraps.

01:10:43.560 And is that not, you know, a good human going to the basilisk is, yeah.

01:10:47.200 No, I agree.

01:10:48.040 That's what it is.

01:10:48.780 We should not be going around disarming mousetraps that God set around.

01:10:52.420 Or, or warning mice about the mousetraps and being like, no, no, no, shoo, shoo, go away

01:10:56.320 from the mousetrap, but it just seems-

01:10:58.940 No, you can warn about the mousetrap.

01:11:00.540 You can go to the mouse and say, hey, you know, if you had, you say, hey, if you had

01:11:04.160 self-control, you're going to die if you go that.

01:11:06.780 But the nature of a mouse is that it doesn't have self-control and it can't understand you.

01:11:11.540 If I warned a mouse and it understood me and it then had the self-control to not go to

01:11:16.340 the mousetrap, that is a mouse I don't want dead.

01:11:19.380 That is a remarkable mouse.

01:11:20.120 Because then we're going to have a lot of trouble with vermin chewing through our bags

01:11:25.520 of flour and rice.

01:11:26.820 Well, no, but these then would be the types of mice that don't do that.

01:11:29.840 Because this is a sentient mouse that I am able to communicate with in the English language.

01:11:33.800 That's a remarkable thing, Simone.

01:11:35.600 What I'm saying is, is, is a just, and I, and maybe that's the way God feels about humanity.

01:11:41.380 The vast majority of us are destined for the mousetraps he spent, he, he set up and he,

01:11:46.760 he finds it remarkable when some of us are able to understand the words that he wrote

01:11:51.660 and scattered around our planet and made them available for all of us little mice to

01:11:56.880 him.

01:11:57.200 I mean, that's what we are to him. 0.94

01:11:58.520 And he goes, well, ain't that a darn thing? 0.56

01:12:00.760 It seems to be able to understand at some base level that I'm warning it against going 0.95

01:12:05.260 into the mousetrap.

01:12:06.640 Hmm.

01:12:07.140 That means one day it has potential, but I mean, we are still mice, you know, in, in the,

01:12:12.340 that would, that is over-exaggerating our, our position in comparison.

01:12:16.320 You know what I mean?

01:12:17.280 But I actually really love that analogy there.

01:12:20.400 Well, then we will not stretch it further by going into Ratatouille.

01:12:23.820 Let's go on.

01:12:24.740 What's the next passage?

01:12:27.160 Thus to us, fertility collapse is not a tragedy, but an opportunity.

01:12:31.280 It is the great tempter, the basilisk clearing the earths of the indolent masses who have allowed 1.00

01:12:36.380 themselves to succumb to temptation.

01:12:38.520 As those without discipline and mental fortitude have no place in the world that is to come. 1.00

01:12:43.400 The crises our species is facing and that lay ahead of us are not capricious mistakes, but

01:12:49.540 absolutely necessary for us to pass through if humanity is to take our destined place in

01:12:54.060 the history of reality.

01:12:55.520 If men were to take to the stars without this necessary culling, I can hardly imagine the

01:13:01.780 dark horror that would result.

01:13:03.700 The pronatalist movement couldn't stop fertility collapse even if it wanted to. 0.86

01:13:08.360 Our place is merely to act as a beacon for those who have the will and the fortitude to

01:13:14.400 be part of the community that will have a role to play in humanity's manifest destiny and in

01:13:20.500 the coming trial.

01:13:23.080 So that's it.

01:13:23.920 That's all.

01:13:25.400 Just sort of a reframing there, but I'm always glad to talk through these with you because

01:13:28.780 you also point out things and like things, misunderstandings that I wouldn't expect of

01:13:32.320 people.

01:13:32.580 Like when I'm talking about human diversity, that you were so myopically focused on human

01:13:36.340 diversity today, instead of understanding the point I'm making and that we need to before

01:13:40.760 we leave the planet.

01:13:42.120 Can you even call it human?

01:13:43.840 Maybe you need to read Jigar the words because if you call it human diversity.

01:13:49.200 I call it the covenant of the sons of man.

01:13:51.920 Oh, okay.

01:13:53.440 The sons of man is all of the descendants, whether it's of mankind's labor, intellect, or.

01:13:58.120 Yeah, you need to be a little bit more explicit that this involves highly different species

01:14:03.160 because you're talking about post-speciation man plus other entities that we've brought

01:14:07.600 into existence like AI.

01:14:09.880 So I would, but I mean, I'll go through and edit these someday.

01:14:14.780 Someday.

01:14:15.420 Well, I might publish them before they're edited, but I like that aspect as well because then

01:14:19.440 you'll see feedback and we can create something that draws from the wisdom of the community

01:14:25.100 and not just ourselves.

01:14:26.940 And the community can come up with a really, really good name.

01:14:31.000 Yeah, because, well, I mean, I appreciate this element that what we're trying to do is

01:14:36.720 democratize radical interpretations of Abrahamic scripture.

01:14:43.260 And that's just like really different than what I've seen done before where typically you

01:14:47.580 have some leader who has some sort of special access to things where all we're doing is laying

01:14:53.420 out some set of rules where we're like, okay, well, it seems really weird that like these

01:14:57.720 Abrahamic groups did really well after they received the revelation in terms of this type

01:15:01.760 of productivity.

01:15:02.400 Like, what can we learn from God's will from that?

01:15:03.760 What kind of, and another area where I think we can learn God's will is when an Abrahamic group

01:15:08.060 has fallen and their practices are really different from some commandment or wisdom that was given

01:15:15.300 to them.

01:15:15.740 To me, that means that that wisdom must be uniquely important to us or must be a unique

01:15:20.560 message from God.

01:15:22.120 Because how could that wisdom have stayed hidden like that?

01:15:25.440 How could that wisdom, how could he have explicitly laid out a certain set of wisdom so loudly,

01:15:31.580 so explicitly, and then had a group ignore it?

01:15:34.920 If they did, if they didn't expunge it from the records, basically, after ignoring it,

01:15:40.480 right, what that means is God left it there for somebody else, somebody in the future, us

01:15:45.360 potentially, to find and learn from in trying to create the next cyclical iteration of this

01:15:53.360 set of tradition that is more optimized for, you know, thinking long term about humanity,

01:15:58.520 thinking long term about, well, if we canonize this, and this is actually a really interesting

01:16:03.640 phenomenon that keeps happening to me, is I'll sit there and logically think, okay, if

01:16:08.140 we're going to go to the stars or something like that, right, and I need to create a system

01:16:11.380 of rules or a system of ways of acting, and this will come up much more in future tracks,

01:16:15.240 what would be the best thing to tell people to do?

01:16:17.460 And then I'll be like, okay, let's say this, like X or Y or something like that.

01:16:22.380 Then I'll go to the Quran, and I'll go to the Bible, and I'll go to the Talmud, and like,

01:16:26.260 remarkably, there'll be like specific passages that seem directly to address and

01:16:33.520 affirm the intuition that I had was like, oh, I think that this is the best intuition

01:16:38.840 for the best future of our species.

01:16:40.400 Well, then what counter will you give to the inevitable viewer who says, welcome to the

01:16:46.680 confirmation bias that thousands, if not millions of previous religious text readers have developed?

01:16:54.340 This is exactly why the Catholic Church says, let me interpret this for you, because otherwise

01:16:59.340 people will find, because frankly, you can kind of find a passage that supports pretty much anything

01:17:04.840 in most religious texts.

01:17:06.800 What's your answer to that?

01:17:07.860 You could say that this is, I mean, so you've got to, again, view our religious system from

01:17:11.880 the perspective of both an atheist and a theological person, right?

01:17:17.340 The theological person isn't going to be saying that as much, because then you just throw it back

01:17:20.760 at them.

01:17:21.140 What about your confirmation bias that supports your community's beliefs, right?

01:17:23.940 Well, yeah, but then like a Catholic would be like, well, this is exactly why we have 1.00

01:17:27.700 the structures that we have and blah, blah, blah.

01:17:30.300 Right.

01:17:30.780 Well, and then I'd say, yeah, except the structures you have are clearly affirming anti-biblical 0.97

01:17:33.960 concepts like iconoclasm, which I could, we go deep into iconoclasm in another tract, so

01:17:39.420 I'm not going to go further into it now, but I'd be like, so clearly these systems aren't

01:17:43.140 working.

01:17:43.880 But to the other group, suppose it's the atheist who comes to me and says this, right?

01:17:47.560 You know, they're like, I'm like, what's your problem?

01:17:50.420 Seriously, think about what we're doing here.

01:17:52.000 Suppose it really is all just using older traditions to justify a reasonable set of standards for

01:18:00.480 humanity interacting with each other that maintains some level of human pluralism and

01:18:05.320 our descendants in the stars and that, listen, and that captures the spirit of Western culture,

01:18:14.520 Western traditions.

01:18:15.020 But what you're saying here is basically, it doesn't matter because I've already come to

01:18:17.900 a conclusion based on genuine merit by my standards, which is logic.

01:18:21.180 And our understanding of science to the, to date, and therefore who cares if it's confirmation

01:18:27.080 bias when I'm really just making it easier for people who want that religious enforcement.

01:18:32.700 But, but more than that, I'm also saying, look, if you just do things secularly, it doesn't

01:18:36.400 work.

01:18:36.680 We've already seen that, right?

01:18:38.200 Sure.

01:18:38.520 So to have a religious system that's endorsing this secular perspective, but it's also highly

01:18:43.300 open to being updated, which we'll talk about in a future track, how that works.

01:18:46.540 You don't have the same downsides, but in addition to that, it captures this spirit of our history.

01:18:53.440 I do not like the idea of casting off, even if I was approaching this from a totally secular

01:18:58.220 perspective of casting off the Western canon.

01:19:01.720 I think that feeling a continuity with your ancestors and seeing it as your duty to play

01:19:07.200 your iterative role in evolving that continuity and seeing that continuity is evolving throughout

01:19:12.020 history accurately.

01:19:13.360 This is one thing that really bothers me as somebody who really likes studying religious

01:19:16.760 history.

01:19:17.520 Because recently I've been talking to some people of different Abrahamic faiths and they

01:19:20.180 go, my faith has not evolved that much.

01:19:22.620 It has not changed that much in its practices.

01:19:24.980 And just like that you could be a debout believer yet have so little knowledge of the history 0.98

01:19:28.880 of your tradition.

01:19:29.960 Because all three of the Abrahamic traditions, the main ones, have had enormous changes.

01:19:35.500 And I should point out, this is another thing we haven't gotten to, but we also think

01:19:37.880 that the Roastrianism is likely a true revelation from God.

01:19:40.080 It just shares way too much in common with the other two revelations.

01:19:44.340 Strong condemnation of iconoclasm, monotheism, similar panthonic structure, similar numerical

01:19:51.420 like importances.

01:19:52.760 Like it seems pretty clear to me.

01:19:55.500 I think in society we've become over-focused on just this idea of Abrahamism.

01:19:58.940 And I'm open to other systems being shown to be true systems from God.

01:20:04.040 And we'll talk about how we look at.

01:20:06.140 Another thing that like we haven't mentioned yet, a lot of people are like, why don't you

01:20:09.440 talk about Eastern systems?

01:20:10.940 Why don't you talk about like this?

01:20:12.160 Like, and we're like, if we haven't talked about your group, and I'm saying this with

01:20:17.100 the context that we make fun of Orthodox people for bedazzling their dead.

01:20:23.040 And we meme on Catholics all the time. 0.96

01:20:25.340 And we've called Hasidic Jews basically witches on various episodes. 1.00

01:20:29.540 These are groups that I have a great deal of affinity for, and I think are great direct

01:20:33.720 revelations from God.

01:20:34.720 The groups that we haven't talked about, it's because what we would have to say about them

01:20:39.860 would be dramatically more contentious and negative.

01:20:44.100 And I don't see the purpose in doing that, or at least just yet.

01:20:49.040 But that's something that we will probably get to eventually in another tract.

01:20:52.840 And the groups that we are ribbing on should know that we have theological differences with

01:20:57.760 you, but a large reason that we have those is, or the large reason we're airing those

01:21:03.260 is because they're very, we have a level of admiration for your community and your culture.

01:21:08.260 I mean, we think that there's a level of truth that you also follow.

01:21:11.080 And that in general, you know, as we say with Conversions and our other show, if somebody

01:21:14.760 was going to leave your community, it would be our job to push them back to it because they

01:21:18.340 are following a true revelation of God.

01:21:20.240 And that where we should recruit is among the atheists, is among the skeptics, and among

01:21:25.340 the people who just cannot stay within their existing tradition.

01:21:28.640 And of course, people of enormous intellectual talent or industry, but that is just our arrogance,

01:21:34.720 right?

01:21:34.900 As well, if we actually believe what we're saying, which I do to an extent.

01:21:37.900 I mean, do you believe, like you're here saying, okay, you, Malcolm, are just saying, yeah,

01:21:42.280 why are you questioning if it's what's in the best interest of our species anyway?

01:21:45.300 But you have a, I mean, do you, do you not like me saying that?

01:21:50.160 Saying what exactly?

01:21:51.780 Well, so a lot of people would hear somebody saying, well, yeah, I don't really care about

01:21:57.860 these kinds of challenges because logically this is-

01:22:00.260 What kinds of challenges?

01:22:01.880 Challenges like saying, okay, you're an individual who's saying, logically, you think this is the

01:22:06.580 best interest of our species.

01:22:08.020 And then another individual would say, well, isn't this just confirmation bias?

01:22:11.960 And then I'm like, well, why would it matter if it's what-

01:22:14.400 I have no problem with that.

01:22:16.460 I have no problem with that.

01:22:17.200 What I'm asking you is, I mean-

01:22:19.040 I mean, the Catholics did that in a sense when they approached different cultures and

01:22:25.060 said, oh, we're like, no, totally.

01:22:27.600 Look, our religion's like your religion. 0.93

01:22:29.240 That God that you worship is this saint.

01:22:31.380 It's the Virgin Mary.

01:22:32.400 It's the same person.

01:22:33.580 That's what you're doing.

01:22:34.280 And now they have cultists worshiping like a literal demon in South America that I've

01:22:37.400 talked about on other episodes.

01:22:38.520 The cult of Santa Muerte, to me, is the closest thing to devil worship we have in the world

01:22:41.900 today, real devil worship.

01:22:43.020 You see my point.

01:22:43.780 So yes, no, I have no trouble from that perspective.

01:22:46.520 I thought you were trying to say that you were trying to find like uncontrovertible true

01:22:50.760 confirmation that the Bible supports exactly the argument.

01:22:55.560 I believe I have more confirmation I've seen for this system than I've seen for any other

01:22:59.540 system I've looked into.

01:23:00.320 Well, no, no, no.

01:23:00.680 And that's, again, that's the thing I really like is that when we go back to certain passages

01:23:04.680 of the Bible with this added layer that you present, a lot of stuff makes more sense

01:23:09.200 to me than it did when I read the Bible in isolation, especially when I read the Bible

01:23:12.660 in concert with the cultural baggage and expectations that I came in with.

01:23:19.860 And that's when I get super confused because I'm like, but I thought Christians believe 0.98

01:23:25.440 this and everyone says that this is what Christianity is all about.

01:23:28.040 And then the Bible seems totally different.

01:23:30.020 But anyway, this has been fun to talk about when I bet our next conversation will be very

01:23:33.520 interesting as well.

01:23:34.260 I love you a great deal, Simone.

01:23:35.400 Have a good one.

01:23:36.320 I love you too, Malcolm.

Based Camp - February 23, 2024

Tract 2： Fertility Collapse Is Proof of God's Mercy & Wisdom

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