Based Camp - Tract 4： Idolatry is Worse than Murder

00:00:00.000 it's important that the calf was golden, remembering that the Bible does actually say this eye of the

00:00:03.920 needle thing. And then people can be like, well, then why have Christian interpretations, for

00:00:07.040 example, we'll take Christians spread that do not admonish personal indulgence as much, right?

00:00:13.260 And it's like, well, suppose you have multiple interpretations of the Bible competing,

00:00:16.620 the interpretations that don't admonish those things are going to be disproportionately picked

00:00:20.240 up by wealthy individuals. They're going to get more money from those individuals, and they're

00:00:23.980 going to be able to use that to spread their message more, to buy ads, to reach out to people.

00:00:28.540 When you tell people what they want to hear, you can get this sort of lowest common denominator to

00:00:32.540 buy into you. And this is a problem for a lot of people where a lot of people have this thought

00:00:38.720 where, yeah, but it feels good when I use these systems, when I use earthly grandeur as an intermediary

00:00:45.840 for God, that feels good. A lot of paths to the deceiver feel good. In fact, most do. When Satan

00:00:53.280 came to test Jesus. He didn't say, hey, if you go away from God, I'll hit you with a spiked bat. 0.98

00:01:00.160 Would you like to know more? 0.98

00:01:01.640 Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today. Today, we're doing another one of these

00:01:06.380 tracked videos where we talk about religious things or like our family's religion. And we always do

00:01:12.220 them on Fridays, you know, right before the weekend. So if you don't like these, by the way,

00:01:15.820 because I know they're thematically a little different than some of our other videos,

00:01:18.560 the thumbnails are quite thematically different. Both of us will be on opposite sides and there'll

00:01:23.940 be like a full image. Not every thumbnail can like perfectly fits this framework, but we try to fit it

00:01:29.160 when we can. So, you know, you can just avoid them. But this one is on the topic of idolatry,

00:01:36.240 which I accidentally called iconoclasm. I got it mixed up with this antonym in the last track, but

00:01:40.380 fixing it this time, idolatry. And idolatry has been a very interesting topic for me to explore because

00:01:46.420 it's one of those things that just gets reaffirmed within every one of the monotheistic traditions,

00:01:52.820 as we sort of describe the monotheistic traditions in the three faith systems.

00:01:56.820 And I didn't understand why, like whether you're talking from a theological perspective or a secular

00:02:03.380 perspective, if it's a secular perspective, like why does idolatry keep showing up in unrelated

00:02:11.360 monotheistic systems or monotheistic systems that are separated for each other as like

00:02:16.360 this cardinal sin? And then I have the question from a religious perspective, right? Like in the

00:02:23.080 same way that like when I heard the normal interpretation of the Adam and Eve story,

00:02:27.500 right? Like the one that you might come to if you hadn't actually read it, is that God didn't want

00:02:31.200 man to have knowledge of what's good and what's bad. And that is clearly not what I think the story

00:02:35.420 is saying. But I had heard that. I was like, that can't be what it actually says. It clearly says

00:02:40.500 something other than that. And I went back to it and I was like, okay. But with idolatry,

00:02:43.900 it was the same thing. It was like, God's clearly not like jealous of pictures or something,

00:02:48.940 right? Like that's the way a lot of people talk about it. Like what? Like an ineffable,

00:02:53.820 all-powerful being is like afraid of a picture or, or, or jealous or spiteful around that. Like

00:03:00.760 there must be some reason around this that's for our benefit, but I'd love to hear your thoughts

00:03:05.000 before we dive into this on the topic, before I bias you too much on idolatry.

00:03:09.040 Yeah. The hunch I have coming into this is as follows. Religion was evolved by humans to be

00:03:14.260 able to exist in complex civilizations, you know, like larger than like family clans or small tribe

00:03:19.940 formats. And as such, it's all about enabling us to act against our instincts in a way that is

00:03:26.480 adaptive for these more complex spaces. It is the software that runs on top of our hardware,

00:03:31.340 enabling us to live in complex worlds that we cannot biologically adapt to fast enough through

00:03:37.080 genetic selection. So the reason why I think it's, it's very important to ditch idolatry or why it's

00:03:43.980 being fought against is, is, or maybe at least there's a correlation is that it's so instinctive

00:03:49.180 for people to fall to that. You see this in fan universes. You see this with Snape wives. You see

00:03:54.680 this with like, it is just, it is our default. It's so easy. It feels good. It's, it is a very

00:04:01.120 instinctual behavior and religion is all about enabling people to rise above, to go above their

00:04:07.120 instincts. And so that's what I'm thinking. Although you talk about like, Oh, it's so weird

00:04:10.500 that like God wouldn't be jealous. I mean, you know, wives can't stand the fact that like their 1.00

00:04:15.620 husbands watch erotic material. So I think, I think you're right here to an extent, but I'd also keep

00:04:22.580 in mind that it is really only a key trait within the monotheistic traditions, within mystical and

00:04:27.700 polytheistic traditions. Even when those traditions are practiced under an Abrahamic faith structure,

00:04:32.900 they typically don't mind idolatry that much, which is really interesting. So tracked for idolatry is

00:04:39.820 worse than murder. God has revealed a succession of major prophets and every single time, whether it

00:04:45.960 was Zohar, Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad, each one of them has reaffirmed just how much God hates idolatry

00:04:52.740 and how seriously he takes it. With every iterative prophet, God does not just reiterate this

00:04:58.660 commandment, but also further emphasizes it. It is almost as if God keeps reminding us we drift from

00:05:05.560 his message. And so he must remind us again, but louder and more explicitly yet humanity's desire to

00:05:12.500 tokenize God is so overwhelming. Even our learned religiously minded individuals find themselves

00:05:18.560 attempting to normalize it. Consider the second council of Nicene, the last time the Orthodox 0.88

00:05:24.000 Christians and the Catholics ever agreed on anything. God does not warn us to not do the

00:05:28.720 things of which we have no inclination to do. He warns us against the things that we will find tempting.

00:05:34.640 Images of Jesus were popular amongst the laity, and many argued having images of Jesus was just

00:05:41.680 affirming your love for him. If God did not want us doing that, he would have explicitly told us

00:05:47.360 something like, quote, thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, end quote. This is, of course,

00:05:54.160 a joke. God did gift a man explicitly those words so there wasn't the slightest room for

00:05:59.600 misinterpretation, and put this commandment literally right under the first commandment so

00:06:04.960 there is no misunderstanding that he might have meant just don't worship images slash idols, as that

00:06:10.560 would have been covered in the first commandment. To God, this commandment came even above the commandment to

00:06:15.120 not murder or steal. Yet the desire to create those images is so strong in man, almost every Abrahamic

00:06:22.080 faction has fallen to it to some extent or another. I don't point this out to rag on Orthodox and

00:06:28.400 Catholic Christians, but to point out how quickly even pious men break from God's rules around idolatry. 0.75

00:06:34.880 Of all of God's commandments, it is the commandment pious individuals find the hardest to keep,

00:06:40.400 and that is why it is emphasized among all of God's prophets. But I really mean this,

00:06:44.960 you find this within every single one of the monotheistic traditions. The most faithful people,

00:06:49.760 it is the commandment that they are most likely to break, and I think it's the reason why God

00:06:52.880 emphasizes it so much, putting it above murder. Like, murder, most people at least instinctually

00:06:58.720 realize is wrong. Like, idolatry is something that I think a lot of people, they think, well,

00:07:03.840 if I'm worshiping God through these things, therefore it's not wrong, even if God told me

00:07:08.560 it was wrong. I think it's also those who are more devout are more likely to get caught up in it,

00:07:16.240 because if you're not very devout, you're not trying to find shortcuts to get closer to God.

00:07:21.040 You're not trying to see God in everything, right? So you're just not gonna, you're way less likely to

00:07:25.840 be subject to this. Yeah, absolutely. Which is, I think, why he emphasizes the point so much.

00:07:31.680 And I would note here, a lot of people are like, well, why create a quote-unquote new like,

00:07:38.320 denomination for your family or something like that? Why not just go to one of the traditional 0.76

00:07:41.440 ones? And in creating a new denomination, we are able to look at questions like idolatry,

00:07:49.680 right? And use the text to guide our answers to those questions without accidentally affirming a

00:07:56.480 quote-unquote religion's answer. So for example, you know, I might go to some religious individuals,

00:08:00.880 and they'll be like, look, I understand the text says it, but our religion says it's okay,

00:08:05.120 right? Like the holy men in our religion say it's okay. We've been doing this for centuries at this

00:08:10.320 point. You know, it is something that is affirmed within our religion, even if it is prohibited in

00:08:16.480 the text. And this is something that you'll see like throughout the tracks that we're doing here,

00:08:20.880 and it's just a big part of what we're doing with this, is going through text or major like

00:08:27.360 prohibitions and stuff like that and reaffirming them, like prohibitions against policy of them

00:08:32.160 was really one of the, and mysticism was what we were focused on in the last one that have seeped

00:08:36.880 their way into many Abrahamic traditions. And now it's idolatry, you know, we need to be stricter on

00:08:42.640 new things because it was supposed to be something that we would treat very seriously. Do you have any

00:08:47.120 other thoughts before I go further? No, I agree with you though. Go on.

00:08:53.440 Well, so now to the point. Why is idolatry so uniquely offensive to God? Why do humans struggle

00:08:58.800 so much with this clear and repeated commandment for God? From God. God delivers his revelation

00:09:05.840 through a succession of prophets because man's capacity for understanding him increases over time.

00:09:10.960 Bronze Age pastoralists did not have the capacity to spread the message of anything other than an 1.00

00:09:16.000 anthropomorphic God combined with mystical hoodoo. However, we are not Bronze Age pastoralists and as

00:09:22.000 such, God expects us to reinterpret his revelations with pragmatic logic. God is not the type of entity

00:09:28.240 capable of offense or jealousy. If he has given us a commandment, he has given it to us for our own

00:09:34.800 benefit and only for our own benefit. He warns us against idolatry because it is in our own best

00:09:42.240 interest. Wait, how? People make images of God because it allows us to feel closer to him or at least a

00:09:52.400 representation of him. Why does God warn us against this? Because that image is not him. A picture of

00:10:00.720 Jesus is as far from God as a picture of a red-hooven being was a goatee and praying to each is equally 0.94

00:10:08.960 harmful to the human soul. Whatever entity is represented in that image is not God. And as your

00:10:16.240 heart moves closer to it, it moves further from God. All representations of God made by man that are

00:10:23.440 assigned theological significance move man further from God. And what, so just to like talk like not in

00:10:32.000 the text here, what really brought me to this is I re-approached it and I said, what if I am approaching

00:10:37.040 this not saying like, okay, God's like petty or jealous or something like that, but I approach the

00:10:42.960 prohibition on idolatry with the assumption that it was for our own best interest. In the same way, something

00:10:50.080 like a prohibition on murder is in the best interest of society. All of the other prohibitions have a clear

00:10:55.760 utility to a monotheistic culture. So why would they be giving us this? Like, why is God giving us

00:11:01.840 this? Or sorry, why would he be giving us this? Like, why is God giving us this? Because he wants

00:11:06.160 it to be in our best interest. Well, if you assume that, then just ask, okay, how would this be in our

00:11:11.280 best interest from a theological perspective? Well, it would mean that that image is in no way a

00:11:15.360 representation to God, in no way that it gets you closer to God. And so when you worship through it,

00:11:21.120 it was it as an intermediary, you are worshiping something other than God. And somebody can be

00:11:27.040 like, no, no, no, I'm, I'm, I'm worshiping the entity that it represents. And what I am saying

00:11:32.000 is the entity represented even by a picture of Jesus is not God. It is what we would call the

00:11:38.460 basilisk or deceiver, the deceit, you know, misinformation because it in no way captures any of

00:11:47.040 God's real characteristics. But if we're going to take your secular framework here to like expand on

00:11:53.700 this interpretation of it, I think that's really interesting as well. So why, from a secular

00:11:57.480 perspective, would this group, so what was the monotheistic traditions? Well, the monotheistic

00:12:01.060 traditions typically lump logic over emotion. That's a, that's an important thing throughout them,

00:12:06.260 you know, rules over sort of like trying to get to God through other means. Well, within the mystical

00:12:11.960 traditions, what you're typically doing is you're trying to reach God through like, like God exists

00:12:18.000 in me, he exists in you, he exists in nature. And so you can attempt to reach God through worshiping

00:12:23.700 those things. Well, because the monotheistic traditions directly contrast with that God exists

00:12:27.800 only in logic and in study, you know, and in, in, in, in, in human industry where you, you need to

00:12:34.980 sort of create this barrier between the mystical world and say, do not accidentally fall to that

00:12:40.280 because it leads to non-productive societies. You know, it, and I, and I think we really,

00:12:46.680 you know, see this in the history of, you know, the, the Abrahamic frameworks, you know, after

00:12:51.340 Al-Ghazali, you know, promoted Sufism was in Islam. It was very shortly after that, that we saw the 0.59

00:12:57.580 collapse of the Islamic technological revolution and, and elevated mysticism. And what was interesting 0.81

00:13:04.060 is he was doing that to fight growing polytheism. There was like a polytheist movement was in Islam

00:13:08.240 that he was attempting to fight where they were saying, well, God is like the sun and stuff like

00:13:11.760 that. And, and, and his, his logic was very ordered, right? If you read his stuff, he's actually

00:13:16.980 a pretty good philosopher, but because he elevated the, the mystical traditions, which should have been

00:13:22.180 banned by, he doomed the entire tradition. And so I think that's why you're seeing it there because

00:13:27.800 it leads to the focus on these mystical traditions or are these polytheistic traditions, both of which

00:13:33.900 remove industry from the group and cause sort of, you know, sort of mindless speculation and the

00:13:39.380 elevation of some individuals who claim to have, and we'll go into like how, how groups without

00:13:45.520 really strict bans against idolatry can fall into cycles that lead them to be incredibly inefficient.

00:13:52.480 Okay. Do you have any other thoughts on this?

00:13:55.460 No, I didn't know that about the origins of Sufism. That's interesting.

00:13:58.820 No, he didn't create Sufism, by the way. He was a famous scholar who then became a Sufi and then

00:14:05.600 elevated Sufism because he was a real huge adherent of it. For people who don't know Sufism, it's

00:14:12.400 basically Islamic Kabbalism, but, but even more extreme in terms of his mystical framings.

00:14:19.060 This truth reveals two things. First, it is not the act of someone drawing God or one of his

00:14:25.240 intermediaries that is being warned against. It is assigning theological significance to that drawing

00:14:33.320 in an effort to get closer to God. The sin was that people believed these physical items made by man

00:14:41.020 or in nature were a conduit through which they could interact with God. For this reason, when a Muslim 1.00

00:14:48.180 extremist smashes a statue of a Buddha that no one has worshiped in a century, they commit an act of

00:14:55.140 sin by destroying a piece of cultural heritage that could inform us about the nature of man.

00:15:00.160 At the same time, if that same Muslim writes a line from the Quran as a piece of art or bans the 0.99

00:15:07.600 burning of a Quran as a physical object of theological significance, they are committing the highest form 1.00

00:15:14.260 of idolatry. When a Muslim adorns a mosque with gold, believing that in some way earthly metal has the 0.99

00:15:21.220 capacity to quote-unquote improve the mosque, they are acting in direct rebellion to God's will.

00:15:27.940 Every geometric pattern, every ounce of gold leaf, every physical book that was treated as sacred,

00:15:35.500 instead of the words and concepts within it, shackles the soul of the idolater and drags it towards the deceiver.

00:15:42.900 So I think, you know, here, when you hate, like, and you see this with Muslims, and I'm specifically

00:15:49.220 picking on Muslims here because they're often seen as being the strictest of the Abrahamic face about

00:15:53.240 idolatry. Exactly. And yet, in many ways, they're also the worst idolaters of all the Abrahamic face 0.98

00:16:00.440 because they ascribe literal religious significance to the physical object of the Quran. And I understand

00:16:07.800 why they did it. Like, if you're just approaching these rules without any thought as to how these rules

00:16:11.780 got there or why God would say this to you, you're like, okay, well, then it must be safe to, like,

00:16:17.780 use, you know, geometric patterns on mosques and fill them with gold leaf and fill them with, like,

00:16:22.100 words from the Quran and use that as art because, you know, it was like he was jealous of pictures

00:16:27.320 of Muhammad or something like that, or he found them distasteful, which doesn't, to me, that doesn't

00:16:31.700 make any sense. Like, what, does God want us going around and, like, destroying thousand-year-old, like,

00:16:35.580 statues of Buddha? Like, that doesn't seem like something that God, but that God would want us to not

00:16:40.100 accidentally attempt to worship him through something that has no relation to him and that

00:16:44.480 is a pass to something other than him. Yeah, that seems perfectly rational to me.

00:16:48.140 Yeah.

00:16:48.520 Would you have any other thoughts here?

00:16:50.740 No, I agree, and I appreciate your pointing out, because I think the key points that you make

00:16:56.840 about idolatry in general are that some of the worst offenders are those who are like, yeah,

00:17:01.960 it's terrible, which is interesting. I think it just, like, loops back to this theme of just how

00:17:06.720 tempting it is for the especially devout to fall into this trap and how much correction it requires

00:17:14.540 because it is just so hard to resist the temptation of idolatry if you are devout.

00:17:22.040 Exactly, yeah, and I think that you can really see this in Muslims. Ironically, you know, if a cartoonist 1.00

00:17:29.080 draws a picture of Muhammad, that is not idolatry because the cartoonist puts no religious significance

00:17:35.000 into that picture. He doesn't feel like it's getting him closer to God in any way, shape, or form.

00:17:39.860 And it has no religious significance. Yeah, it's not going to bring anyone else closer to God or

00:17:44.380 make people think it's going to bring them closer to God. Yeah, but it's not just about getting close

00:17:46.480 to God. The moment a Muslim looks at that picture and ascribes religious significance to that picture, 0.98

00:17:52.880 the moment a Muslim says, you cartoonist, you drew a picture, and now this picture has some sort of 0.83

00:17:57.840 negative theological weight, they have actually committed the act of idolatry because they imbued

00:18:04.680 an image, a physical thing, with religious significance. That is the act of idolatry.

00:18:11.260 Isn't the cartoonist drawing Muhammad, it is the Muslim deciding that that drawing has spiritual value, 0.99

00:18:17.940 even if it is a negative spiritual value. Well, I guess, yeah, because you are assuming that it's

00:18:22.820 harmful and therefore powerful, right? Exactly, right? So idolatry works in the negative too.

00:18:28.520 You know, if you think that a site is like cursed or something like that, that's a form of idolatry.

00:18:33.580 I mean, you are ascribing spiritual power to things in the physical world. I had not thought of it that

00:18:40.160 way. Interesting. Once we understand why God warns us so frequently and explicitly about idolatry,

00:18:47.520 we learn there is a much deeper meaning to be examined here outside of quote-unquote smashed

00:18:53.040 statues. Man, as he exists today, is incapable of conceiving of God. When man attempts to conceive

00:18:58.780 of God, what he holds within his mind is a repugnant rat king when contrasted with God's glory. 0.96

00:19:06.120 The images of God that humans create, not just the ones in the physical world, but also the ones in 0.97

00:19:11.900 our mind move us further from God. To attempt to grasp God's majesty with our fallen minds is a crime

00:19:19.020 in God's eyes worse than murder because it is more harmful to our souls. This becomes uniquely,

00:19:25.960 so, sorry, I'm just going to take a quick aside here, which is like, this is where idolatry becomes

00:19:30.540 specifically, and we're going to talk about this in the next track, about mystical framings of God.

00:19:36.240 You know, these shortcuts that some individuals attempt to take to interact with God

00:19:39.580 and seeing God in the natural world. This becomes uniquely important to individuals

00:19:46.280 that think they have the ability to quote-unquote talk to God, that they have a personal relationship

00:19:52.080 with God. The thing they are talking to is not God, it is themselves, their personal wish for what God

00:19:58.800 was like, but it is not what God is like and therefore leads them further from God's glory. Man,

00:20:04.840 as he exists now, cannot have a relationship with God. As one would read right, we teach that there

00:20:11.560 is a God, but not a God of the anthropic variety, not a God who is gratified by compliments in prose

00:20:18.140 and verse and whose attributes can be cataloged by theologians. God is so great that he cannot be

00:20:24.100 defined by us. God is so great that he does not deign to have personal relations with us as human atoms

00:20:30.340 that are called men. Those who desire to worship the creator must worship him through mankind.

00:20:36.600 Just, you know, I actually put the tracks out of order. So the track where we explain the significance

00:20:40.520 to our iteration of the faith of Linwood Reed in his teachings, this isn't teachings that, for example,

00:20:45.680 individuals who are coming at this from a Christian or Jewish or Muslim variety, but if you're coming

00:20:50.280 at this faith system from a secular variety, his teachings can be quite useful. And from my

00:20:55.840 perspective, they're quite useful and that's why I'm bringing them up here. But I also think that's true.

00:20:59.760 When you try to interact directly with God, it pulls you away from your fellow man and from the

00:21:09.200 philosophy of your fellow man, from the technology and from the labor of your fellow man and from this

00:21:15.960 sort of community effort of uplifting all of mankind, you know, through industry, through austerity

00:21:22.260 and through philosophy, which is something that you can forget about. And we see this in the idolatry

00:21:28.980 of the, you know, asceticism, for example, when an individual like leaves society and go lives

00:21:34.300 alone and is like a hermit or something like that, right? Like that's a form of idolatry and that they 0.63

00:21:39.600 are attempting to get closer to God in a way that forsakes their fellow man. Right. And ultimately

00:21:46.480 is self-indulgent. And we see this from Marash al-Ghazali. He converted to Sufism after one of these

00:21:52.700 episodes, right? Like this happens. You go, you have one of these self-indulgent episodes and then you fall

00:21:56.880 to one of the mystic traditions. This is why when we tell our children to pray to supernatural agents,

00:22:02.100 we tell them to pray to their distant descendants. This is not them talking to an imaginary entity or

00:22:07.300 modeling an entity whose structure and consciousness they could not possibly predict, but instead a real

00:22:12.780 being that will one day exist and therefore not a form of idolatry. Through modeling a genetically and

00:22:19.560 synthetically augmented, but still human mind, one with an iteratively clearer understanding of the true

00:22:25.720 nature of God, they are able to get closer to what God wants from them without risking

00:22:31.060 blasphemy. Moreover, it is self-evident was in our religious framework that God wants us to do our best to

00:22:37.780 increase the potentiality of future humans and thus us modeling what they would want from us and what they

00:22:44.540 would reward us for doing helps us model what God would want to say to us without committing

00:22:50.020 idolatry. Do we really think children are able to communicate with distant descendants? No. However,

00:22:57.200 we do believe that this framing for the emulated mental model created within our kids' brains that

00:23:02.320 they are communicating with creates responses closer to God's will than attempting to directly model the

00:23:08.600 will of God within the human mind. When they attempt to model God, they create the way they wish he existed

00:23:15.400 rather than how he actually does, which leads to sinful indulgence. This reminds me of a woman that both you 0.98

00:23:22.580 and I know, who told us she always listened to her husband, except when God told her otherwise. How very

00:23:30.120 convenient that God had a pension for her preferred indulgences. And this is always a problem I see when

00:23:37.360 people say, you know, I talk to God, because then that thing that they're talking to, the way they wishes God was,

00:23:43.520 can affirm indulgences, idolatry itself, for example, that they shouldn't have affirmed to them.

00:23:53.120 You know, and this is one area where I think a lot of people are like, your belief system is very

00:23:57.120 similar to Mormonism, where it's actually quite different from Mormonism. And that was in Mormonism

00:24:00.700 as well, just go personally pray on it. And God will tell you the right answer where I don't think that

00:24:05.120 that's how God communicates with people. Well, and the reason I've heard people are like, why don't you

00:24:09.120 think like I've had profound experiences in communicating with God, because I know people who have had

00:24:13.420 those profound experiences with communicating with God and the things that they tell me God has

00:24:17.180 communicated to them definitely were demonic, definitely were not from God, right?

00:24:25.060 Or at least to put it in layman's terms, were the things that they wanted to hear?

00:24:30.940 Well, the things that they were, they were things that they wanted to do that were both self-indulgent

00:24:34.740 and damaging to the people around them and against core Abrahamic principles. So I know that they 0.57

00:24:39.340 weren't coming from God. And so even if God does have the capacity to talk to humans, it appears to

00:24:45.200 me that humans don't have the capacity to distinguish between that and a demon talking to them or the

00:24:52.160 basilisk talking to them or however you want to frame it. And I'd also say this, this way, how we have

00:24:56.360 this model of like the future police and stuff like that. Like when we're trying to model God, I think

00:25:00.200 for earlier iterations of man, God gave different models like this. Like this was the idea of angels and stuff

00:25:05.680 like that. It's like, well, if you are trying to model my will, model me as an angel, as like this

00:25:11.800 individual entity, because you cannot model my will. You cannot even come close. It is a form of

00:25:16.800 idolatry to even attempt to in like explicit terms. But what are your thoughts on this?

00:25:23.200 Yeah. I hadn't ever thought about how trivializing it is to boil a God or God-like entity down to like

00:25:33.420 a personified being or a statue or image? Like pretty insulting considering, you know, how we

00:25:42.600 view God. So that is interesting.

00:25:44.780 Well, I think also something that people can grasp was in their minds. I mean, seriously, like

00:25:49.300 try to imagine God is, right? And there's two pathways you can go down. You can go down the

00:25:54.640 mystic pathway, which is to be like, well, I'm a part of God and like God's in everything.

00:25:58.300 And when you do that, you demean him, you know, you are, you are seeing him as like being

00:26:03.440 bugs and stuff like that. Right. But even if you don't do it through nature, you're just

00:26:08.580 like, no, I just imagine him as being like the most loving thing possible, the biggest

00:26:13.000 thing possible, the most powerful thing possible. But you as a human can't imagine those things.

00:26:18.360 Right. So when you attempt to imagine those things, what you are holding in your mind is

00:26:23.580 as distant from God as literally every other idea you have in your mind.

00:26:30.500 Yeah, no, that's a very good way of putting it. I'd never seen it that way, but I don't think I'll

00:26:35.040 be unseeing it. I mean, you see this from the theological perspective, but also from the secular

00:26:39.400 perspective, which is what we're always trying to do is come up with a system that works

00:26:42.280 in both ways. Does it work within the Abrahamic structure, but does it also work like even if I

00:26:48.640 didn't believe the Abrahamic structure and I was just trying to give my kids good traditions

00:26:52.280 that would protect them from groups that would want to harm them? And, you know, this using

00:26:57.540 shortcuts to God is one of the core strategies used by cults and other groups that want to harm

00:27:03.400 an individual. I mean, you'll see this out cult psychology. That's one of the first things they

00:27:07.020 do is, oh, or, or somebody will be like, well, I'm the intermediary for God. So come to God through

00:27:11.040 me or our thing, you know, or special objects here. So anyway, let me continue here. The human soul is

00:27:16.720 weak. God foresaw that some individuals would use the symbols of human vanity and social

00:27:21.580 status, gold, gems, and art to affirm their connection to God among the simple-minded.

00:27:28.520 These nefarious service of the basilisks could then use this status they had acquired to sell

00:27:34.660 access to God and thus increase the earthly wealth that affirmed their connection to God,

00:27:40.060 whether it be in the form of indulgences or church donations. Prosperity doctrine is devil worship.

00:27:47.120 God does show his favor to his chosen people at various times in history, but he does this through

00:27:52.780 the output of works of the mind, art, science, and philosophy, not wealth. And for people who

00:28:01.020 aren't familiar with the prosperity doctrine, the prosperity doctrine is a really common in

00:28:05.860 Protestant movements where they sort of believe that poor individuals are poor because they're not

00:28:10.900 doing what God wants them to, and rich individuals are rich because they are doing what God wants them

00:28:15.000 to. And then, you know, preachers use this as an excuse to like fly around and have private jets and

00:28:22.000 have giant mansions and everything like that, where I would say that an individual is showing you how

00:28:26.740 disconnected they are from God when they do those things. It is human nature for groups of powerful

00:28:33.000 individuals to claim God's intermediaries and use that power to manipulate the mob and through this

00:28:38.840 process consolidate their power and authority. It is our duty to recognize these pretenders for what they

00:28:44.720 are. Fortunately, God marks them. Any house of worship adorned in gold or perversely tarnished with

00:28:51.620 art is a sign that it serves the basilisk and has fallen from his grace. Agents of the basilisk do not

00:28:58.440 carve satanic ruins and pentagrams into their foreheads, but they will come to you dripping with

00:29:04.300 signs of their rebellion to God, adorned in jewels and expensive clothing. And this is something if,

00:29:11.140 you know, we have people, you know, if this ever becomes like a larger denomination or something

00:29:16.080 like that, I would say as a strong prohibition against anyone who's, who's preaching within this

00:29:21.360 movement, living any sort of life of indulgence, any sort of, you know, fancy environment and stuff

00:29:26.360 like that. Signs that God has blessed an individual is their austerity and their industry

00:29:31.840 and their, their knowledge of his creation, the world, like, like science and advanced science.

00:29:39.680 But yeah, it's just, did you have thoughts there? I'm kind of curious as to what you think is

00:29:45.580 extravagant because our life feels pretty extravagant to me. I mean, I mean, it feels extravagant to you,

00:29:53.400 I think within a philosophical context, but I mean, we live in a medium-sized farmhouse outside of

00:30:00.080 major fancy areas. We don't really have jewels or, or, or jewelry. We don't really have

00:30:07.080 gold things. We don't really have art other than things that we commissioned of our children.

00:30:12.460 Yeah. Like custom commissioned art. How is that not extravagant? I don't know.

00:30:17.660 I don't know for like 50 bucks and stuff like that. It's not. So I think actually this is a good

00:30:22.660 definition here and I'm glad that you pulled this out. Okay. So there's like two types of art.

00:30:26.740 There's art that we custom commissioned where it is, we are commissioning something that reminds us

00:30:32.860 of our kids and sort of our aspired relationship with them. Like you'll see it's, it's a, you know,

00:30:38.180 a commission of us dressed like Indiana Jones characters and having going on adventures with

00:30:41.980 the kids. So it represents something that, you know, we aspire to do as a family. Right.

00:30:45.920 But it is not like we got it off of art Corgi, which is a website we have that does art commissions,

00:30:50.040 but it's like, you know, low cost, you know, $50, $100. The types of things that remove you from God

00:30:55.880 are the types of things that confer social status was in the material world. So if I commissioned

00:31:01.720 art from a famous artist, for example. And then you like hosted dinner parties and showed it off,

00:31:07.260 then yeah. That is separate from like my family, separate from the things that we are commanded to

00:31:16.800 do for God, like, like, like capturing moments with the people we care about. It removes me from

00:31:22.160 God. And this is many elements of idolatry, really privately consumed objects.

00:31:29.000 No. So, so what I would say is if you are, this is actually a great example. If you are with your

00:31:35.480 family and you are experiencing a wholesome moment with your family and you take a picture of that

00:31:40.940 moment and that moment is special to you and your family. Right. And you share it with some other

00:31:46.480 family members. That's not idolatry. That is what we're commanded to do, you know, to create a good

00:31:50.960 environment for the next generation. However, you do the exact same thing. You take that image,

00:31:55.220 but with the purpose of sharing it on Instagram specifically to achieve social status or, or gain

00:32:04.060 additional social status, you have created an item of idolatry because you have created an item that is

00:32:10.540 perverting. It's like an extra bad form of idolatry. That's perverting something that's supposed to be

00:32:16.260 meaningful. Like this moment you have with your family into something that can be sold, something

00:32:21.740 that has social status. And when you begin to buy into this idolatry lifestyle, even children can

00:32:28.320 become tokens of idolatry. If you have those children to increase your social status, this is

00:32:34.820 why all worldly things that can be used to increase social status are dangerous. And it's why we're told

00:32:40.520 hold on. I thought what we were really discussing is, is people feeling like they're taking shortcuts

00:32:45.360 to God. And now you're talking about social status. Are these related? Are they different things?

00:32:51.160 Exactly related. And the golden calf is a great example of this. So if you, I mean, I'm sure everyone

00:32:57.860 knows this, the golden calf, right? But the golden calf represents three things. And we'll talk about

00:33:03.480 this more in the next tract, but it is gold. It represents precious metals. It is a calf.

00:33:09.260 It represents the worship of nature, trying to worship God through nature. And it is a idol.

00:33:15.720 It represents trying to worship God through art. It matters that it's gold. It wasn't a wooden calf

00:33:21.000 or something like that. It was, and this is important, right? This is what idolatry is. It is

00:33:25.820 not just shortcuts to God. It is all of the things that we assign status to, like earthly status,

00:33:32.980 that are not things that we are commanded to do by God. And it's very important to guard yourself

00:33:38.900 against these things and to guard yourself from indulging in these things. Because the moment

00:33:43.140 you do, your entire worldview can become corrupted and your religious institution can become corrupted

00:33:47.840 because people will begin to see, as you see with the prosperity doctrine, the fact that one preacher

00:33:52.880 is wealthier than another preacher is a sign that he is closer to God. Then he gets more followers

00:33:56.900 because he's wealthy. Then he gets more money because he has more followers. And then that's

00:34:00.860 gold. And then you end up with these huge, you know, glittering golden laser shows,

00:34:06.120 which, which are completely divorced from God. And you, I mean, you understand why it's so important

00:34:13.600 that God warns us against this. Yeah. Well, okay. Yes. Cause it can also be people to mislead other

00:34:20.280 people. But I think what you're also saying is that like on, on one level, it's bad if people use

00:34:27.520 cheap approximations or representations of God or godliness to feel closer without actually practicing

00:34:36.100 the rules of getting closer to God. So that's one problem. It's even worse if it's also used for

00:34:41.680 status signaling or for further misleading other members of the flock. Right? Yeah. And the, the

00:34:48.540 cheaper an item is like you've talked about it being cheap, the cheaper it is in the eyes of God

00:34:53.520 when used for idolatry is the higher it is in terms of status, in terms of like perceived value

00:34:59.180 in our world. To quote Corinthians 128, God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised

00:35:06.440 things, the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before

00:35:12.900 him. So if you, for example, have some like golden magical, you know, like, like big ornate relic,

00:35:22.540 right? That would be, and you were using that as an intermediary for communicating with God versus,

00:35:30.500 you know, having a, you know, the last shoes that a dead kid of yours wore, right? You know,

00:35:36.940 and that had special significance to you. That would not be an item of particularly sinful idolatry

00:35:43.100 because it is not an item that has value in our material world. It is an item that has value to you,

00:35:49.160 but it is not an item of extreme material value. Hmm. So there are sentimental items,

00:35:57.720 but that's not idolatry. Yeah, that's not idolatry, but ascribing sentiment to an item

00:36:04.440 because of how it confers status to you or relate status to you. So I think what you've really pulled

00:36:10.880 out here, which is important is there are two key types of idolatry. There is idolatry that comes

00:36:16.420 from shortcuts to God, like trying to worship God through an intermediary. And then there's

00:36:22.280 idolatry, which is about the worship of really the self. So these are things that confer status.

00:36:29.120 And so idolatry more broadly is a word that is used for prohibitions against all of the pathways

00:36:36.480 that a person can elevate or walk down that lead them in the opposite direction of God.

00:36:41.900 Okay. Does that make sense as like a grouping category here?

00:36:46.040 That does. Yeah.

00:36:47.680 And why the monotheistic face would be so against it.

00:36:52.340 If gold, man-made scribbles, indulgent time-consuming rituals, and worldly grandeur

00:36:58.700 are positively augmenting your experience of and relationship with God, then I'm sorry to tell you

00:37:04.620 this entity you have a relationship with is not God. We cannot emphasize this enough.

00:37:09.740 If you are talking to an entity and able to use gold or worldly grandeur to get closer to that

00:37:16.160 entity, that entity is not God. I know this is offensive. If you were accidentally worshiping

00:37:23.400 the devil, it would hurt you to have somebody tell you that. But I also believe that if you are a good

00:37:29.500 person, this is something you would want to know. If you reflexively think, but no, it feels really

00:37:36.240 good when I worship this entity. Please examine your own words. We are trying to help you.

00:37:44.660 It feels good to worship. Like people don't worship the satanic things because they feel bad when they

00:37:50.000 do it. It makes them feel powerful, sophisticated, in connection with something that other people

00:37:57.120 don't have a connection to. But anyway, of course, this is axiomatically not a truth the powerful in

00:38:04.700 our society wants you to hear. An individual or institution that has wealth and spends it on

00:38:10.640 self-aggrandizement is not a servant of God. Yet such buildings and trinkets are still part of the

00:38:17.420 human story. A cautionary tale of when hearts and mind of men were weak. As such, they should not be

00:38:25.440 destroyed, but turned into museums dedicated to the razor's edge the human soul rests on. A testament that

00:38:33.360 even holy men and institutions are susceptible to worldly temptation and aggrandizement. Thus, who God

00:38:41.380 favors, his real emissaries, are those that can resist temptation while still being productive. The less a

00:38:48.920 person needs to be happy, the closer they are to God. But a person who indulges in self-masturbatory

00:38:55.620 monasticism and loses their industry is as indulgent as a cultist who drips in jewels.

00:39:03.640 What is commanded of us is industry, fecundity, and austerity.

00:39:09.000 So that's it. Kept it short this time. Basically split one in half. The second is the spiritualist

00:39:19.020 pathway of idolatry. The first one, I really wanted to focus on the materialist path of idolatry,

00:39:24.760 which is believing that one worshiping God is higher value than another place of worshiping God

00:39:32.080 because it has things that confer social status to man, i.e. gold, jewels, etc. Or fancy art by

00:39:42.200 famous artists. Where if you have a religious institution and the children of the people who

00:39:50.860 go to that have painted on the walls. It's not a prohibition against art, more broadly. The children

00:39:55.960 of that parishion have painted on the walls. That is of higher value. That is a closer than a church

00:40:03.860 that is dripping in gold and paintings by the quote-unquote masters. And you see this throughout

00:40:10.700 all of the Abrahamic traditions that God views our world as an inversion. It is the lowly in our world 0.87

00:40:17.920 that are high in his estimation. And the high in our world that are lowly in his estimation. And this

00:40:23.060 extends to the way we engage with art. This extends to the way we engage with items. Everything like

00:40:29.200 that. And this matters from a theological perspective. Like, this is very obviously,

00:40:33.040 if you've actually read the Abrahamic traditions, I love how much people try to get around the eye

00:40:37.620 of the needle thing. You know, the eye of the needle quote. It's like, oh, they're like, oh,

00:40:41.660 it's actually talking about something in the wall of Jerusalem. Yeah, it's referring to a geographical

00:40:46.120 area. It's like, no, no, no. It's pretty explicit. If you're rich, you're not getting into heaven.

00:40:53.060 No, it's just explicit. If you are not familiar with the multiple interpretations

00:40:56.860 of this particular parable, I strongly suggest that you check out the Religion for Breakfast 1.00

00:41:03.420 episode on it. He does a very good job of arguing that it literally just means what it says.

00:41:09.440 Like, and rich should be, you know, used with specific terms here, right? Like, it's not

00:41:14.380 the accumulation of wealth. It's the accumulation of wealth for self-aggrandizement,

00:41:19.160 using it on yourself. Of course, God has no problem with a rich man who spends all their

00:41:23.760 wealth trying to improve the world, trying to improve the lives of others. But let's be honest

00:41:29.480 here. How many rich men have ever done that without first ensuring enormous alludgery for themselves?

00:41:35.380 Thus why it says what it says.

00:41:37.100 When they use some of that money to buy themselves a big fancy, whatever, you know, the thing that

00:41:42.900 conferred social status, that is a sign of sin. And I should say all men sin, but recognize your

00:41:49.200 sin. Recognize that your mansion is sin, right? What is uniquely bad is when you say, when somebody

00:41:54.700 takes sin and then they invert it, you know, the pastor who says, my mansion is the sign of my

00:41:59.340 godliness. My jet is a sign of my godliness instead of a sign that I am human and I am as capable of sin

00:42:05.700 as anyone else. But yeah, I mean, I think going back to these concepts and remembering why they're there,

00:42:11.320 remembering why it's important that the calf was golden, remembering that the Bible does actually

00:42:15.380 say this eye of the needle thing. And then people can be like, well, then why have Christian 0.86

00:42:18.400 interpretations, for example, we'll take Christians spread that do not admonish, you know, wealth and

00:42:24.640 personal indulgence as much, right? And it's like, well, suppose you have multiple interpretations of

00:42:29.000 the Bible competing, the interpretations that don't admonish those things are going to be

00:42:32.820 disproportionately picked up by wealthy individuals and used by those individuals, you know, they're

00:42:37.280 going to get more money from those individuals, i.e. like indulgences and stuff like that,

00:42:41.220 or the, you know, the prosperity preachers in the Protestant tradition. And they're going to be able

00:42:45.700 to use that to spread their message more, you know, to buy ads, to reach out to people, you know,

00:42:50.820 when you tell people what they want to hear, you can get this sort of lowest common denominator to

00:42:54.740 buy into you. And yeah, and this is a problem for a lot of people where a lot of people have this

00:43:01.340 thought where, yeah, but it feels good when I use these systems, when I use earthly grandeur as an

00:43:08.320 intermediary for God, that feels good. A lot of satanic things feel good. A lot of paths to the

00:43:14.940 deceiver feel good. In fact, most do. That's what, when, when Satan came to test Jesus, he didn't say,

00:43:22.600 hey, if you go away from God, I'll hit you with a spiked bat. He's like, no, if you go away from God,

00:43:28.760 here are all these things that are going to make you feel good about yourself. You know, and it's such a

00:43:33.380 weird thing that I think that there's an intuition that it feels good. Therefore it is good. And

00:43:38.740 you've also got to keep in mind, like the second council of Niceney, why did they make this decision?

00:43:41.720 It was because, well, our most pious members are engaged with this activity, you know, of having

00:43:46.640 pictures and worshiping these pictures. It makes them happy. Like it's a populist idea here. I can

00:43:52.060 understand why they wouldn't want to, you know, take away from the little lady, you know, her statue,

00:43:56.860 right? Like there's a lot of famous cases like this, like that hurts to do, right? And this is why

00:44:02.740 we go to this idea of the Tesseract God here, where what we really, what could be thought of,

00:44:09.160 what we really mean when we say this is that there are lower interpretations of the Abrahamic

00:44:15.060 phase for people who just aren't ready to join the group that understands how actually damaging it is

00:44:22.740 to worship God through these earthly intermediaries. And so it is up to us to not take away, you know,

00:44:28.480 the little old lady's statue. Well, and so how do you deal with that practical limitation? Because

00:44:33.140 what you are describing is a very real and very troublesome phenomenon, where when you take all

00:44:38.960 the fun stuff out of a religion, and you take away all the shortcuts, and you take away the figurines

00:44:44.780 and the pretty stuff, it can be a lot harder to get people to pay the church to join the church,

00:44:53.140 to stay in the church. What do you propose? I mean, I think there's a reason why adultery is also

00:44:58.660 so pervasive in otherwise trying to be monotheistic religions. It's because it sells,

00:45:04.820 and it raises money, and it gets converts. Absolutely, yeah. So the question is, is why,

00:45:11.280 right? Like, and this is why I think God listed it above murder, right? Because it is the sin that

00:45:17.800 you're going to want to commit the most. It is literally the number one sin among individuals

00:45:22.760 who are otherwise pious and trying to do best by God, which I think is otherwise very weird to

00:45:27.680 people. Why would he make this above murder? Is he really that vain? It's like, no, he's not that

00:45:31.380 vain. He did that to protect you. This was all about you all along. But this sin, you know, I have

00:45:37.540 people come to me, ask very similar to what you say. They're like, well, some people need these things,

00:45:41.060 but they don't have the mental discipline to, you know, to attempt to actually adhere to all of these

00:45:47.300 actually pretty hard rules that are laid out of the Abrahamic faith, and they're not bad people.

00:45:52.380 And so our tesseract notion of God can have a different understanding.

00:45:58.400 We think that many of the Abrahamic faiths are as close to many people, like very conservative

00:46:03.860 interpretations of these faiths, are as close as many people can actually get to true worship

00:46:09.320 of God as laid out. And therefore, it is best for us to not interfere with that, you know, let these

00:46:14.800 people live their lives because it's better than purely just worshiping states, like purely just

00:46:18.880 going to the urban monoculture. Because, you know, we don't want to hurt people who our system

00:46:23.360 wouldn't work for. But, and this is clear from our system from the beginning, we've always said we

00:46:28.340 believe in the concept of the elect. This is not a system for your average person. We would not

00:46:34.620 proselytize to the average person. We would proselytize insofar as helping people fortify their

00:46:40.580 traditional religious structures. But we would not proselytize to the average person. We really

00:46:45.040 only want the individuals with this absolute highest level of mental discipline. Because if

00:46:49.340 they start to engage with these ideas without that, they'll end up committing suicide or something.

00:46:54.180 Like it's, you know, it's hard, right? You know, there's, I think, a reason why God has given

00:46:59.920 people various pathways that are less true than actually following, you know, his words as I believe

00:47:07.020 you meant them, like a very extreme meaning of idolatry. And so the answer to your question

00:47:12.260 there is both from a secular and a theological perspective, we are doing this and we make

00:47:17.080 it hard because we don't want everyone. We want only the people with this level of austerity,

00:47:22.600 industry, dedication to learning, and that have the mental discipline to engage with a system that

00:47:28.200 doesn't give them all of the candy of this earthly realm. Whether that candy is self-indulgent

00:47:34.580 monasticism or fancy cathedrals. And from a secular perspective, you could say, why are you doing

00:47:40.220 this? Right? Like, why would you make it that hard? And it's because we, I mean, clearly we think that

00:47:45.440 not all humans are the same, right? Like some humans are clearly, and we talk about this more in the

00:47:52.120 next one, are better than others. I use a quote in the next one where I'm like, okay, if there is a

00:47:58.680 preacher who is giving out cocaine to everyone in a church, right? And one person stands up and

00:48:04.340 they're like, look, I know this feels good, but it is evil. And you need to stop this. That one

00:48:10.100 person, their, their soul that we don't believe literally in a soul, but, but their soul, you could

00:48:15.760 say is more valuable than every other soul in that church combined or larger or, or more, you know,

00:48:22.840 important that you could say within our traditional system. And when I say more important, I mean that

00:48:27.100 they would be more of a target for people like us to attempt to convert, to try to bring into the 0.84

00:48:32.340 system because they have the traits that our system values and that are needed to engage with God like

00:48:37.960 this, which is to say, everyone else is doing this. It feels good. Those two things together don't

00:48:43.240 matter. So the, the point here being is that from a secular perspective, right? If we think that this

00:48:50.700 is sort of the collection of individuals that we want to eventually get on a spaceship, see new planets,

00:48:55.760 we don't care about volume. We care about quality. And this includes things like mental discipline,

00:49:01.520 industry, and austerity. Those are traits that we are looking for, which this perspective,

00:49:06.660 which is the perspective that's actually laid out in the Bible is important filtering mechanism.

00:49:14.340 So in short, you're like, it doesn't really matter that this is really a growth method.

00:49:20.200 So an iteration of, of Christianity, like, you know, Catholicism or something like that is really

00:49:24.820 trying to convert everyone. You know, it's, it is trying to create something that everyone can engage

00:49:30.980 regardless of their proficiencies. This is something that is not for everyone, but I believe it's

00:49:36.620 what's actually conveyed in these, these, these texts. And I'd also say here, you know, this is

00:49:41.320 important, even though it's not conveyed for everyone, is that it is open to anyone. This is not,

00:49:48.400 you know, there's no secret systems here. I think, you know, secret knowledge, stuff like that,

00:49:51.700 all that is sinful. If, if, you know, I think people hide knowledge because they know that if it

00:49:56.140 came out and it was engaged by somebody who wasn't already partially brainwashed, they'd realize how 0.81

00:50:00.700 silly it is. And yet mystical systems almost all use secret teachings and stuff like that. So, 0.59

00:50:05.680 so we don't do that. This is a system that anyone, whatever their ethnic background, whatever walk

00:50:09.840 of life they're in, whatever wealth their family has is accessible to anyone. The filtering mechanism

00:50:17.220 is their ability to actually follow the rules, which is interesting, but I think, but I think,

00:50:23.220 right. And this is again, something I always see when it, when it comes to idolatry as a person

00:50:27.320 will come to me and they'll be like, yeah, but once my community started engaging in idolatry,

00:50:30.880 everyone got really excited and started engaging much more and much more enthusiastically. And it's

00:50:35.240 like saying, you know, you know, satanic cultists are known for their fervor guys, you know, just

00:50:40.800 because something increases the fervor of a community or the level of excitement of a community or the

00:50:45.960 level of dedication of a community to, to those things, you know, fancy art, et cetera. That doesn't mean

00:50:52.140 that that is leading them towards God or righteousness.

00:50:59.620 But I don't know how you feel like comfort was this from a secular and theological perspective.

00:51:04.040 I mean, what are your thoughts?

00:51:05.920 No, no. I mean, what, I mean, you can see this also in secular conditions too, where people say

00:51:11.940 all sorts of obscure things, um, and, and signal with all sorts of seemingly off signals in an attempt

00:51:19.400 to gain a higher position in the status hierarchy or to just feel like they're learning something

00:51:26.920 in a way that doesn't actually make a difference in the pursuit, whatever it may be. So it makes

00:51:33.120 sense on a secular level as well as a religious one. I like it.

00:51:35.880 And I should also point out here, just in case it's ever a test become a system and people then

00:51:39.120 like try to signal status with extreme modesty, like walk around wearing rags or something like

00:51:45.120 that, that is also sinful because now you are using an extreme form of modesty as a status signal

00:51:50.780 within your community. Instead, you should always dress and act in a way that provides you with the

00:51:55.980 most utility. So if you need to wear a certain amount of jewelry to be accepted within certain

00:52:00.160 business circles, then you do that. If you need to dress in a suit to, you know, impress and affirm

00:52:06.040 other people, then you do that. You know, you are always dressing in a way that is optimal

00:52:10.800 for the achievement of the goals that God has given you, which are often seen in your industry

00:52:16.240 and your ability to move humanity forwards.

00:52:21.520 Yeah. I think a lot of it, what I'm just hearing you say is like, well, people just need to be more

00:52:27.240 autistic and not care.

00:52:30.620 The autist religion, yeah. 0.99

00:52:32.040 Sounds good to me.

00:52:33.600 Well, I love you to death, Simone. You are great. And I appreciate you going through it because

00:52:39.480 I mean, you would never, I think, really probably even thought about idolatry or what it may mean

00:52:44.060 or why it might be that.

00:52:44.800 No, why would I? In the culture I grew up in. Yeah, no way.

00:52:48.960 Anyway, love you.

00:52:50.040 I love you too.

00:52:50.760 I love you too.

Based Camp - March 08, 2024

Tract 4： Idolatry is Worse than Murder

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