In this compelling episode, we dive into the reinterpretation of Christian beliefs and ancient religious practices through a techno-puritan lens. Explore the redefined concepts of the kingdom of God, heaven, and sin, and understand the ethical debates between deontological and consequentialist systems. Our journey takes us through the intriguing intersections of polytheism and monotheism, revealing how rituals like sin transference and animal sacrifice have transitioned from their polytheistic origins to modern faith practices. Delve into the implications of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the shifts in spiritual and moral understandings, and uncover the critiques of figures like Maimonides and Ramban in interpreting sacrificial traditions. Join us as we rethink spirituality, individual responsibility, and the evolving role of technology in God's overarching plan.
[00:00:00] Of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, . What is the kingdom of God? That's heaven. That's what's being described here. Heaven is a time.
You don't become one flesh with someone by having sex with them. Is that two people having a child together does literally make two people one spirit. That makes a lot more sense. Yeah. What is being talked about here isn't Sex. It's the creation of a new person, . That just, like, when I read it with the techno puritan framing, it makes so much sense to me.
When I read it with the traditional Christian framing, it makes so much sense to me. It makes a bunch of weird claims where you need to like get all metaphorical and everything and yeah, it feels like you're bending over backward to make it work. And this is just correct. It just seems correct. Of course.
Real worship is not done through [00:01:00] masturbating emotional states. Even if they include feelings of grandeur and awe, they are still basal emotions.
Of course they feel good. That is what masturbation does. It makes you feel good. That is not a sign that it is good. As a side note here, people will use the story of the gold used in the tabernacle from Exodus as an excuse to worship in luridly decorated buildings.
However, it is important to remember that we believe , some polytheistic stories and tales worked their way into the religious texts like the Bible. especially when you're talking about older texts like Exodus, but that God loudly and explicitly marks where this has happened, so anyone paying even the littlest bit of attention will notice. what's being done in this tabernacle
Imagine you go up to a place of worship, and you saw this ceremony being carried out. Quote, He must kill the young bull and priests must bring its blood and sprinkle it on all sides of the altar It must be a dove or young pigeon. the priest will bring it to the altar and pull [00:02:00] off its head, which he will burn on the altar.
The bird's blood must be drained out of the altar. the side of the altar. Then he must tear the bird open by its wings
end quote. It is not like any of this is subtle , but it does mean that God expects you to actually be paying attention when you read it, and use the smallest amount of discretion when doing so. It's like someone saw that scene
Siva, Om Nam S to
and they walk away and they go, Yeah, that was definitely a bunch of good Christians . that's what this story is meant to teach us, is what ball light worship looks like
that this bull light sin transference, virtual doesn't work. It's also recorded for us in the Bible Eve. It did work both Moses and the other Israelites would have been able to go into the promised land. when I look at Christians who pray to a God of [00:03:00] precious metals and animal sacrifices, the God that gets off to humans ripping apart birds as an act of worship, I am reminded of
All will be well, and you will know the name of God. The one true God. Behemah Coital. Behemah what? Behemah Coital. He's here. He's everywhere. He's coming. Come,
he's talking about a bug. He thinks God is a bug? He's got religion. Maybe we should kill him. Why? Because he believes in God like you?
It's the wrong God!
Would you like to know more?
Hello, Simone! We're going to be doing another Tracked episode. For people who are new watchers and not familiar with these, we marked them with a different color gear logo, just so you know that you're going to get into some real weirdness. It's on our personal religious beliefs and re engaging.
With the [00:04:00] abrahamic tradition for us and finding an iteration of it that I think is true. And you can take a bit like an outline for another denomination of christianity that we call techno puritanism And i'm just gonna jump right in because I like that. I like the active theological conversation But there's also some risk with that because when you're having an active theological conversation about what you believe That really opens you up to criticism and can make you look kind of foolish, especially if it includes well, any sort of religious component, right?
If you don't have a big community to back you and you say something like, oh, well, this guy was walking on water, people are like, oh, you must be in a cult, you know? So as Nigel says in the opening scene of The Devil Wears Prada,
All right, everyone, gird your loins. Did someone eat an onion bagel?
All right. How do technopuritans define good?
Although this one could also be called the new covenant. I saved this tract for later because I suspect it is going to anger more people than our other tracts. Most because it has much more radical reinterpretations of [00:05:00] classical biblical stories than we have gone into before this. Like the,, the tabernacle, as well as Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and it regards sin and telling people that they are sinners, which is never popular.
But as Galatians 1 10 says,
For do I now persuade men or God, or do I need to please men? For if I pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. Modern Christians have narrowed their concept of sin by focusing on the sins of others that cause disgust in them. They say, that person has gay sex, that's a sin.
And that person masturbates, that's a sin. And it's like, yes, that is true, but you should be more focused on your own sins than those of others. What does the Bible tell us about how we should live our lives? Let's go over a few lines here. Corinthians 10 31 instructs, Whether therefore you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God, end quote. Corinthians 5. [00:06:00] 10, which states, and he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again.
Colossians 3. 23 states, and Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men, Romans 14, 23. But if you have doubt about whether or not you should eat something, you are sinning.
If you go ahead and do it for you are not following your convictions. If you do anything that you believe is not right, you are sinning. The Bible is pretty clear about what is sin. Sin is anything you do not for God, whether that's listening to music, watching a sports game, playing video games, looking at art, or gay sex.
If your response to this is, no one can live a sinless life then, congratulations, you just found out you're not a God. In this tract, we will focus on technopuritans conceptions of good and evil. But we talk about what I think [00:07:00] the traditional interpretations of Christianity get wrong about sin, let's talk about what broader society thinks about good and evil, and how it got there.
So, what are your thoughts so far on, like, what the Bible says sin is? Does that sound right to you, or? I mean, it, I like, I like the focus, at least in the quotes provided. On the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law, though I imagine that there's plenty in the Bible that could probably shove people toward the letter of the law.
Instead, you know, how people select things from the Bible very advantageously toward their goals. , I think you are right, but I also think clearly and repeatedly throughout the Bible, as I have shown here, it states sin is anything you do not for God.
So while there's a bunch of specific rules that are mentioned in the Bible, I'll go over why I don't think those are as relevant in modern times. And this broader, stricter definition of sin is probably right, but then you need [00:08:00] to consider, which we'll go into later in this, Well, if you're doing it for God, what does that mean?
Like, what is the nature of God? How do you know you're not doing it for a false God? Right. So, now we're going to go into the way sin is conceptualized in secular society. I would just add though, I really love that passage about if you think of food, isn't right to eat. then don't eat it. Like if you, if you, I think let's just convictions.
Yeah. Let's put it this way. Sinning, I think is a lot like porn, you know, when you see it. So if you're like, well, this seems a little sinful, it probably is. And so what is sinful can differ between individuals in that line shows that because not everyone's going to have the same reaction to something.
And I think that the strength of your reaction to something is correlated to your individual susceptibility to that form of sin. When I talk about susceptibility to a form of sin, it's how much is that sin going to pull you away from God? And so you think of something like drinking, right? Like drinking, To one individual, drinking [00:09:00] might not be much of a sin at all because they can drink and it doesn't affect their ability to work or to worship or anything like that.
Right. Another person, they engage a little bit with a drink and now all of a sudden it's the entire focus of their life. Yeah. Or it's the same thing with certain types of sexuality. Some people can engage with it without consuming their entire lives, and for them it's less of a sin. Well, for other people it's more of a sin because of the temptation involved in it for them.
Like pain, sin is very context dependent. Yes. To your average member of society, good and evil are determined by what, if widely believed, would help the average person maximize their own emotional state, e. g. general utilitarianism. However, general utilitarianism, maximally distributing positive emotional states among humans, is on its face stupid as those emotional states are just the things that when felt in response to certain environmental stimuli led to some of our ancestors having more surviving offspring than others.
They are things that we were serendipitously pre coded to react to based on environmental conditions that haven't existed for thousands of [00:10:00] years. As we have said ad nauseum, humans coming up with a utilitarian value system is like a society of paperclip maximizers coming together and building an ethical system based on the number of paperclips in the world.
Your programming is just that, your programming, not a sign of intrinsic value. However, society does not tell us that utilitarianism is a politically correct value system to signal because most people genuinely hold it as their value system.
It chooses to follow it because most people are at their core hedonists. And when you ask a hedonist what you should value, it is in their best interest to tell you not to be a hedonist, but to be a utilitarian. The secular world is a world of hedonists trying to maximize a combination of their emotional state and their self perception as a good high status person, all while trying to reduce any in the moment suffering.
However, because perceived status and being a good person. are in part determined by an individual's ability to loudly signal they hold a utilitarian value set. The secular world has become a world of hedonists [00:11:00] constantly signaling to each other that they are utilitarians. It's a pathetic masquerade. Yeah, checks out. Consequentialist ethical systems are those systems interested in the consequences of one's actions with some goal in mind. Deontological ethical systems are those based around a set of rules. In a broader sense, deontological ethical systems are kind of dumb.
Quote, lying slash stealing slash cheating are bad and always evil, end quote. Quote. Okay, well, what if someone has a gun to a kid's head and will shoot if you don't lie slash cheat slash steal? End quote. Almost every deontologist I know caves in this scenario about what their right thing to do is.
Because they are really consequentialists who are just using deontological systems to make daily decisions. So while it is dumb to believe deontological systems are absolutely right or wrong, it is actually quite smart to build a deontological system to follow for your daily life, as it is easier to create a set of rules about right and wrong than [00:12:00] thinking through the long term consequences of every little decision you make.
This is especially true if you are of average or below average intelligence. Thus, at the level of a population, it would always make sense for God to reveal deontological ethical systems, especially to the philosophically less sophisticated man that existed thousands of years ago.
If God was operating on a consequentialist ethical system, he would have revealed varying deontological value systems to early man, . tailored to that iteration of man's time and context. This is exactly what he did. Most of the true Abrahamic traditions have a collection of varying deontological ethical frameworks given to them by God based on their time, technology, and social circumstances.
This is why many of the true revelations of God have prescriptions around things like slave treatment, even though we know that owning slaves is wrong. In a world where slavery was the norm, God was able to ensure more mass good action for his people by giving specific prescriptions on [00:13:00] how to treat slaves than outright banning slave ownership.
Because if he had done that and the harsh reality of our ancestors, his people would have been outcompeted by their neighbors. However, we can clearly see that God is not a deontologist through the fact that the deontological ethical systems he gifted man across time differ.
If God was using these systems because they were his actual ethical framework, he would not have varied them. But If he was using them to drive specific consequentialist outcomes, then he would have. And let's be honest here. Anyone who claims God really believed those earlier deontological value systems has to bite the bullet and admit that God thought slavery was a good or okay thing.
, so before I go further, do you have any thoughts? I think about things analogously with children a lot. So when I think about deontological. Rule following sets.
I think of parents saying, because I told you so, but then I also think about how that degrades really quickly with our children, if we just give them a [00:14:00] rule and they don't know why the rules there, they're just going to break it. And I kind of feel like that happens a lot. Sometimes with religions, like Catholicism, there are rules that are almost expected to be broken, but then you just ask for forgiveness, but then just please keep following the rule and asking for forgiveness.
And I just personally much prefer explaining to our children, for example. Here's what's going to happen if you do this thing, here's the consequence, here's in general, what we value and hoping that they'll make the right decision, but it doesn't always work. And I can, I can understand why sometimes trying to explain to our children why, for example, like their safety or being nice to a sibling and learning how to share is important because they're just not going to get it.
So sometimes we just have to say, you have to do this thing because I said so right now. And they're just not going to be able to, they have to follow the letter of our law. And I feel as though you could say, God is doing the same thing. Sometimes he [00:15:00] wishes he could explain to us why something is in our better interest.
But we just don't have the capacity at that time. I, yeah, I completely agree with you. And for people who don't know how bad these deontological systems are within a modern time period, you can go to our Why Are Catholics Going Extinct video, but in that you can see things like Catholics which have strong religious prohibitions against things like terminating fetuses use things like Plan B at almost the same time.
The same rate as a secular person does or non Catholics do and, and, you know, uses other types of contraception and abortion related things at very similar rates to the secular world. So it just doesn't hold that. Well, I don't feel like this was true historically. I mean, if you look historically, like.
And when I say even recent history, like 70s, 60s these deontological value systems in Catholics really did keep them from using early contraceptive techniques and did keep their fertility rates really high. And I suspect that this is just an evolving society thing in the same way that like kids mature over time and need a different explanations for why they need to do something.
If you're going to actually have them follow it, [00:16:00] humanity has sort of grown up. And I think these deontological ethical, ethical systems are actually, Probably not hard for people of our distant past to follow. They're just hard for people of this era to follow, given our philosophical maturity and the level of information that we have access to just do it because X book says so isn't as strong a motivation for people anymore.
And so it's not driving the, the outcome, you know, so you talk about something like. Prohibitions on contraception. You know, these are probably made to increase the number of kids people are having. And if you create arguments like, well, you know, you're preventing a human being from coming into existence.
That is a more powerful argument than because I said so these days. Well, I also think deontological systems or following the letter of the law really only works in societies where enforcement is very strong, either through social shaming or through like a caliphate. Yeah. That is capable of enforcing those values when you can't enforce [00:17:00] some kind of punishment for rule breaking.
I think non community based enforcement weakens a religion over time. This is what we've seen in governments that try to Oh, no, sure. Outsourcing is, is totally broken. You need a person's community to do the shaming. So like when you get a divorce, you need Nobody to want to marry someone who's gotten divorced before, and then people don't get divorced again.
But if you create like government laws around this, people always find a right way around it. I mean, that's what we learned from the prohibition, right? Like you cannot enforce morality and prohibition is a great example of this because it was during it wasn't really a religious thing. You know, Jesus turned water to wine.
You know, he's not intrinsically against alcohol. So, this was the government trying to enforce morality. And it. Cause more immorality of the type it was trying to enforce. But the point I'm making also is that when people don't understand the spirit of the law, they'll only follow the letter of the law.
If they know that they have to, if they're being punished very consistently and severely [00:18:00] punished in terms of status, not punished by a governing entity, because the punishment that people actually react to is status punishment. So for example people didn't react to prohibition by drinking significantly less.
They actually started drinking more or at least the individuals who are susceptible to that individual sin. And, and we'll go over this in other sins where you see people actually doing it more when it's prohibited on a top down level. But if drinking decreased the status of an individual, Then they would stop drinking.
People are very sensitive to community enforced status norms, which is what these deontological systems used to have on their side. And that armor has sort of been removed from humanity. And you need to figure out ways to enforce this yourself, even though it's not. Following the rules may even hurt your status.
Same with your kids. How do you, how do you pass this down to your kids when the rules that you're passing down to them may hurt their status? You don't sleep around with a lot of girls while you're in high school. That's certainly going to lower a kid's status. How do you pass that down to them? If that's an option for them?[00:19:00]
How do you address the conundrum of erotic material consumption then in conservative states, for example, where it is, it is shamed to consume, but it's not shamed. It's not shamed because people don't know about it. It's, it's, it's a sin that someone can do in private the top down. So what she's referring to, we actually get this to this later in the track.
But in, if you, if you look at the U S like which state consumes the most porn, Utah, the state was the highest prohibitions against pornography.
Mormons are not supposed to masturbate at all. If you look by zip code and you look at the level of religiosity of zip code, you see more engagement with pornography in those districts.
Why is this happening? I think it's because there isn't actually a social consequence to these people for masturbating. So that's another thing is it can't be a sin that someone can do in private. I remember, you know, in, in Muslim countries, one of the things I would always find like walking down the streets was like hidden hard alcohol And like alcoves and stuff like that, it doesn't prevent somebody, you know, social [00:20:00] shaming around drinking doesn't prevent somebody from not drinking.
It prevents them from not drinking at home. It prevents them from not going to bars to drink, right? Which may make it harder for them to drink overall. But the way people relate to sin, it's important to like, psychologically understand this and build. Self mastery over sin. But that's what a lot of this tract is going to focus on.
All right. These systems were given to man to achieve some consequentialist outcome. But what, what is the thing we see in the communities around the world that followed one of God's true revelations? A period of technological and cultural flourishing. For more on this, see tract six. God's deontological ethical systems were gifted to man in order to help us intergenerationally expand humanity's potential.
And I really want to note here that people can be like, no, God's about you. Happiness, but those regions didn't really have more happiness in their neighbors, so that couldn't have been what he was motivating for. It's about peace, but those regions weren't more peaceful than their neighbors. So what? What did those regions have that [00:21:00] their neighbors of other types of face systems?
Incorrect face systems? I believe not have. It was unique periods of technological and cultural flourish. Now that we are under the new covenant, we are expected to accept responsibility for thinking through the consequences of our actions ourselves.
What do we mean by the new covenant and what signal man's transition into it?
We categorize God's revelation with man existing in three stages that we know of so far. These stages are, one, primordial man. Biblically speaking, this is before man was cast out of the garden,
which as we go over in this video on the Garden of Eden, we believe to be a story about man building the first temple.
Permanent settlements and ethical systems man created in opposition to God's ethics to govern those settlements. God did not really have a connection to man at this stage of history, given that we were too developmentally simplistic to understand him or intergenerationally transmit that understanding.
To transitional man, [00:22:00] transitional man is marked by the quote unquote curses. God gave man as he transitioned into the age of settlements and early civilization, having to work the land for food. pain in childbirth, and women existing beneath men slash having an irrepressible attraction to men. Again, death was clearly not one of these curses, see tract six.
God built very simplistic deontological frameworks to help the flourishing of civilization for this natal version of humans and largely related to the transitional man in the way we now relate to children, as you were saying earlier. The religions God gave to this form of man are analogous to us giving our children stories of Santa.
We see that these stories delight them and help teach them valuable lessons, but also that one day they are going to have to grow out of them. Three. Thank you. Realized man. Realized man is marked by a period after which God, through humanity's ingenuity, lifted the curses he placed on transitional man.
In relieving these [00:23:00] curses, he marked the coming of a new covenant and revealed that they were never in fact curses, but more like training wheels. As without them, most of humanity lacked the will to resist temptation And continue the species realized man is expected by God
to seek understanding himself rather than be told right from wrong. To keep himself disciplined without simplistic rules. And master his own nature without the assistance of fairytales. In the transition from the era of primordial man to transitional man, many human groups were unable to make the leap.
These groups were called were to use a euphemism outcompeted by transitional man, because transitional man was different from primordial man, as primordial man is different from the beast. The same is true for realized man. When looking at use deconversion rates to the urban monoculture, it is easy to see those who cling to the transitional frameworks as being like an overly sentimental captain going down with his ship.
But this [00:24:00] too is too harsher reading. They are simply not like realized man. They are the bronze man in an iron world. Their traditions cannot save them from the temptations of the valley of the lotus eaters. In the final stages of the transition from primordial man to transitional man, we were told a story of God sending a flood to clean the world of those not ready for the age, those too sinful for it.
After this act, God promised he would never again genocide humanity in. flood. And that is why the genocide we are living through represents a perfect inversion of the last. It is done not by God, but by man himself. In this cleansing of the earth, it is the unworthy themselves who possessed by their own passions, do not drown, but march with lifeless eyes to burn in a bonfire of their own vanity.
And. This is one of the things that gets me. It's almost like, you know, we're living in a society right now where people are like randomly running off and [00:25:00] stabbing themselves in the neck with like scissors. Genetically speaking, at least. It's like a world of mass suicide. It's like we're living through that movie, The Happening, where like everybody starts randomly killing themselves and people like don't see this as like a cosmic or biblical event.
Christ, men! Amen!
They're like, Oh yeah, this is normal. It makes sense for people to be like, throwing themselves into genetic woodchippers right or left, and then the mainstream society being like, that's good, way to go. I mean, what do you, like, do you feel the weight of this, this, this period of history? Don't, well, we, we don't.
I think we, we can logically [00:26:00] know it and not feel it. And this isn't along the lines of a very common human fallacy that I think is never discussed, which is that I think we feel the need to get permission. Or to get a very clear sign to do a lot of things. Now, if we, you keep talking about the demographic collapse apocalypse, essentially, as it's going to play out, everyone is picturing road warrior.
And what you're trying to tell everyone is that no, really what you can more expect is what South Africa is like today. These things will happen, or there could be an American revolution or a complete failure of democracy, but it's not going to look like that. Like that it's going to look like, you know, election sort of losing integrity and we won't really know it necessarily.
So I think what's happening is that we expect. War. We expect mass death. We expect all sorts of crazy, dramatic things to be happening. We [00:27:00] expect cinematic drama. And because we don't see it, we're assuming that, okay, well, the alarms haven't gone off. Like the fire alarm isn't going off and therefore we don't need to take action.
And this was, this was something else, like when people are thinking about, should I have kids? Or when you and I were doing our search for a company and trying to decide what company to acquire, we expected someone to kind of come out of the bushes and say, yes, buy this one. As, as though one of our investors would say, yeah, go ahead, buy it.
I think it's a good thing. Instead of them just saying, well, who else is invested? I don't know. What do you think? In the end, it is the responsibility of each individual person. To recognize a threat or an opportunity or their capacity to take something on and then to do it. And I think the biggest risk to many people, especially people with privileged backgrounds who are lucky enough to be born in developed nations like the United States, like many European countries, like many Asian countries all over the place.
Now the responsibility falls to [00:28:00] them to recognize these things. No one's going to give you a warning or give you permission. And it's very hard to know what's true and what's false these days. You have to judge for yourself and you have to make that call because no one's going to make it for you. Yeah, no, I actually think that you're right about this.
And I would say that. Some events in biblical history, I believe, are meant to foreshadow other events that are going to happen and teach you lessons about it. You know, as I've said, like the story of Abraham about to sacrifice his kid and then God saying, like, it's not the type of God I am. I think reflects you know, the misunderstanding of the story of Jesus as we see it, and you can read about this in like track two or one, we go over this.
But I think that this is what the story of Noah is, you know, it's a story about man going through a specific era, a transitional era, you know, transitioning from the primordial to the transitional man. And it's being mirrored in this new transition, and you are experiencing, I believe, our generation is experiencing the events that the [00:29:00] story of Noah being recorded was supposed to warn us about.
The world is flooding. Everyone is dying around you. You have people out there warning you and everyone is scorning them for warning you, you know, they look like crazy people to everyone else, even though we can all see the rain, we can all see the lowlands filling with water at this point, you know, I think that we're beginning to get to that point in the Noah story where people are whispering like, hey, you know, maybe we should be building boats to people aren't.
Right? And also you can think of the story of Noah. Like, what was it meant to signal to us? The importance of maintaining diversity through the flood. That, that's what the story is. You only need to maintain one family from each tradition to maintain that tradition. But you should make an effort to maintain as many traditions as you can.
That is what the story of Noah is telling us. If we are trying to take lessons from it in this modern context, if we believe that it was meant to warn us about the world we're going into right [00:30:00] now any thoughts on that before I go crazier, I love it. When you go crazy, just go straight into that.
As an aside here, let us speak of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar as interpreted by Daniel. For context, the king had a recurring dream he believed was a vision and decided to kill all the wise men in the kingdom because they could not guess what the dream was and interpret it. And here I'm going into, but I said we're transitioning from the age of bronze into the age of iron.
And I mean this biblically speaking, I mean this from the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. So Daniel replied, No wise man, enchanter, magician, or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he asked about. But there is a God in heaven who reveals many mysteries. He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the days to come.
Your dream and the visions that pass through your mind as you are lying in bed are these. First, it's important to note here that he clearly laid out how prophecy is meant to be done. Magic. Witches, rituals, chanting, et cetera, [00:31:00] are not the way God communicates and should be avoided. So it's very good here on like how to do like true interpretation of things.
Don't, none of the rituals, none of the chanting, everything like that, just like get into it immediately. As your majesty was lying there, your mind turned to things to come. And the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen. As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me. Not because I have greater wisdom than anyone else alive, but so that your majesty may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind.
Your majesty looked, , and there before you stood a large statue, an enormous dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, it's chest and arms of silver, it's belly and thighs of bronze, it's legs of iron, and it's feet were Partly of iron and partly of baked clay.
While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on the feet of [00:32:00] iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace, but the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain.
And filled the whole earth.
This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. Your majesty, you are the king of kings. The god of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory. In your hands, he has placed all of mankind and all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler of them all.
You are the head of gold. After you, another kingdom will arrive, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Now, this line is often bizarrely misinterpreted. People are like, oh, the bronze kingdom was Greece, or Rome, or any number of other ancient kingdoms. But it clearly was [00:33:00] not as it stated the kingdom of bronze ruled over the whole world and none of them did the first culture to ever rule over the whole world was the urban monoculture the kingdom of Inferior to the High Classical Age was Rome and the Dark Ages, a period of human history that mostly just copied the Classical Age.
So right here, just as a note, what we're saying is the Gold Age is the Classical Age.
Then you have the Silver Age, which is the Dark Ages, Rome, that general period of history. Then you have the Bronze Age, which is the lead up to the Urban Monoculture in the Urban Monoculture, one group that's ruling over the entire world. So what happens after the Urban Monoculture conquers all of Earth?
That is when we move from the world of transitional man to the world of realized man. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, for iron breaks and smashes everything. And as iron breaks and smashes things to pieces, so will it crush and break all the others. [00:34:00] Just as you saw the feet and the toes were partially of baked clay and partially of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom.
Yet it will have some of the strengths of iron in it. Even as you saw iron mixed with clay, as the toes were partly of iron and partly of clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united any more than iron mixes with clay.
The kingdom of iron in clay is describing the covenant of the sons of man, a kingdom made up of multiple types of man living among each other, a world of AI and augmented I would note here that the primary component of clay is silicon. If I wanted to describe a world of silicon to a king in the classical age, how would I do it?
I would call it. In the time of kings, the god of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it [00:35:00] be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of the mountain, but not by human hands
a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold pieces. The great god has shown the king what will take place in the future. , the dream is true and its interpretation trustworthy. Here we see that in the ultra pluralistic world of the covenant of the sons of man, the kingdom that eventually becomes god will be generated because of the conflict between the groups.
But that conflict is necessary for the creation of quote, the kingdom that will never be destroyed, end quote. It also makes it clear that realized man, the men of iron, , will be one of the players in the conflict and is pivotal to setting up the kingdom that will never be destroyed, the kingdom of God.
This is also a reminder that even if we live through times of peace, we should never falter in our advancement of military [00:36:00] technology. As it is through a great conflict yet to come that the kingdom of God is created.
Actually, I'm going to Not going to this yet. I wanted to go into a slight aside here, which is in the Bible, like the way that we interpret the Bible, whenever you read the word heaven, that is traditionally be interpreted as a place. People hear that. And they're like, oh, that's a place. And because we can look out into the cosmos and not see heaven, we assume it's a supernatural place.
IE I think in a big way, less than natural in many ways. Yeah, it says supernatural, but it's like kind of different than the type of things we can study and examine in the real world. And that's why when I call you know, Techno puritanism, a secular religion, what I mean is we don't assume any supernatural things.
We don't need to assume these supernatural places because I think it undermines the message of God, that God is absolutely real, as real as the table I'm touching right now. And heaven is absolutely real, but heaven is not a place, it's a time. [00:37:00] So whenever you read heaven in the Bible, you can read that as in the future.
And it's actually very clear in this prophecy that heaven is a time. So, I'm going to read this last part again. Of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. What is the kingdom of God? What is the kingdom of God that is never destroyed? That's heaven. That's what's being described here. Heaven is a time. But I am going to go to the summary here now. To summarize what we just went over, man is transitioning from his child like transitional state where he understands God through simplistic fairy tales the same way we tell children about Santa and gives them strict rules to an adult like state.
With With adulthood came additional responsibilities, such as developing a clear understanding of reality and taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Quote, I was following the rules, [00:38:00] end quote, is no longer an excuse for men of iron. Any thoughts on that? I just, it makes, it's one of those things where it makes so much sense for heaven to be a time and not a place.
And heaven, even when described in very famous pieces, like in Dante's defined comedy as a place, just feels so forced and contrived and not. Also not good that I love finally coming across an explanation for heaven that resonates, but in a very relaxing way. As in, oh, of course. Yeah, it doesn't force me to, to, to, like, swallow, like, big things that, that go against my current understanding.
No faith, no leap of faith is required here. Yeah, and that's also very interesting, because when we talk about this in other things, it's, there isn't, like, I don't have that much faith. Faith in this system. I believe it because it seems logically true and a lot of people consider that to be like a a lesser form of religion one that doesn't [00:39:00] cause you to like bite the bullet on a lot of logical inconsistencies and I think that a lot of people have taken faith to mean that like I'm willing to But, but I like this because it just makes sense.
It explains so much. And then I'll read other parts of the Bible, parts that I haven't read in ages, and I read the word heaven as in the future, and just the passage makes a lot more sense and will seem a lot less insane. Like it's really interesting. Like you will, you will, you know, your ancestors again in the future.
Oh yeah, that makes sense. You know, our bodies will be recreated in heaven in the future. Oh yeah, that makes sense. You know, you, you, you, you see all these lines and they're no longer like insane things. They're like, oh yeah, that seems probable at the current level of technological development.
, but I just find it fascinating that all of this is in the Bible, in the Bible, in that it says the kingdom of God. It's a time. It's a time in the future and it's a time and all of this crazy stuff, the men of iron after the men of iron live alongside the men of silicon, like what? And there will be division between them [00:40:00] because those two things don't go together.
Like, how did they, how did they but they need to try. They need to try to create this kingdom because it is through their conflict that the kingdom of heaven is created. And I believe that it is through their conflict that some better form of the men of iron is created. The post men of iron people.
The transcendent man. So I'm gonna keep going here. So what does the consequentialist life dedicated to the expanding of human potentiality look like? Winwin Reid lays this out eloquently. Up until now, I have been heavily censoring his writing to keep the quotes short and tight, but we'll go long with this one to give you a full context of some of the quotes that we have been using often.
The reason I have been reading around these quotes will become obvious given that many in our audience are traditional Christians. I will note here that as I believe in iterative prophecy, I believe the prophets to be imperfect,
and I think at the time, Reed was unable to see the potentiality of [00:41:00] Christianity to evolve. Oh I should note here for our audience, we see Wynwood Reed as a divinely inspired text, and see it as sort of canonical within our larger biblical canon. If you want to see why, see track six. You blessed ones who shall inherit that future age of which we can only dream. You pure and radiant beings who shall succeed us on the earth. When you turn back your eyes on us, poor savages, grubbing in the ground for our daily , eating flesh and blood, dwelling in vile bodies which degrade us every day to a level with the beast, tortured by pains and by animal propensities.
Buried in the In gloomy superstitions, ignorant of nature, which yet holds us in her bonds. When you read of us in books, when you think of what we are and compare us with yourselves, remember that it is to us, you owe the foundation of your happiness and grandeur to us who now in our libraries and laboratories and star towers and dissecting rooms and workshops are preparing the materials of [00:42:00] human growth.
And as for ourselves, if we are sometimes inclined to regret that our lot is cast in these unhappy days. Let us remember how much more fortunate we are than those who lived before us a few centuries ago. The working man enjoys more luxuries today than the King of England did in the Anglo Saxon times.
And at his command are intellectual delights, which, but a little while ago, only the most learned in the land could not obtain. All this we owe the labors of other men. Let us therefore remember them with gratitude. Let us follow their glorious example by adding something new to the knowledge of mankind.
Let us pay to the future the debt which we owe the past. All men indeed cannot be poets, inventors, or philanthropists, but all men can join in that gigantic and godlike work in the progress of creation. Whomever improves his own nature improves the universe which he is a part. He who strives to subdue his evil passions, vile remnants of the old four footed life, and who cultivates the social affections, [00:43:00] he who endeavors to better his condition and to make his children wiser and happier than himself, whatever may be his motives, he will not have lived in vain.
But, If he act thus not from mere prudence, not in the vain hope of being rewarded in another world, but from a pure sense of duty as a citizen of nature, as a patriot of the planet on which he dwells, then our philosophy, which once appeared to him so cold and cheerless, will become a religion of the heart and will elevate him to the skies.
The virtues which were once for him mere abstract terms will become endowed with life and will hover round him like guardian angels, overseeing with him in his solitude, consoling him in his afflictions, teaching him how to live and how to die. But this condition is not to be easily attained, as the saints and prophets were forced to practice long vigils and fastings and prayers before their ecstasies would fall [00:44:00] upon them.
And their visions would appear. So virtue in its purest, most exalted form can only be acquired by means of severe, long continued culture of the mind. Persons with a feeble and untrained intellect may live according to their conscience, but the conscience itself will be defective. To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty.
And when. This truth is fairly recognized by man, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith will inevitably fall. So, I love how much he predicted there, that the religion would look cold and unfeeling to outsiders, but once you, like, get it, And begin to adopt it, you realize it's exactly the opposite.
It is like a constantly warm blanket of angels around you every day. It is your spiritual armor, but to an outsider, they're like, that's an overly harsh interpretation of things. Or [00:45:00] that's an overly what's the word I'm looking for? Like joyless interpretation of things as he, as he points out.
But your thoughts. I find it all incredibly optimistic and encouraging. It's not what makes it more warm and full of love and happy also is how much this is about sacrificing for the future, but also riding the wave, surfing the wave of everyone who came before you. So it's though you understand that everyone who came before you has sacrificed and pushed and participated in this game, this relay race, essentially.
That was very difficult. All the steps before you were way more difficult than your step. And you're just trying to carry the baton to the next phrase. Right. Yeah. And that it's all for a future. This is so much better than the interpretations of heaven or goodness that you get from many other classic [00:46:00] interpretations of Abrahamic religions where it's about you getting into heaven.
I want my hedonic. eternal pleasure in the special place. You know what I mean? Instead of let's bring this vision, let's all be a part of this amazing race toward the perfection of humanity, toward the ascendance. It's cool. However, this concept can be hard to convey to children when contrasted with traditional systems of good and evil.
For that, we are fortunate God crafted perfect child friendly propaganda for this concept in the anime Gurren Lagann and its presentation of the concept of spiral energy and anti spiral energy, an easy to understand representation of good and evil from a techno Puritan religious standpoint. Spiral energy is
represented by a constant spiral expanding, something that increases its size exponentially with each turn, just as human potential does. This anime is also an exemplar of the concept of anti spiral energy, the [00:47:00] personification of God's reflection, of the Basilisk, those forces that would temper and constrain man's spirit and potential.
Spiral energy is the subjugation of reality, what is possible to man's will. Anti spiral energy is the subjugation of man's will to reality. Below is a list of concepts captured in either spiral and anti spiral energy as they relate to each other. So first I will read the spiral energy concept, then I will read the anti spiral energy inversion of that concept.
Ambition, harmony. Improvement, balance. Industriousness, rest. Invention, tradition, human industry, the natural world, discipline, tranquility, vitality, calm, logic, spirituality, striving and persistence, innate ability, complexity, simplicity, diversity, unity, capitalism, communism, evolution, spontaneous creation, passion, detachment slash overcoming attachment.
pronatalism, [00:48:00] life extensionism, biome seeding, conservation, descendant worship, ancestor worship. Now here it is important to note that while the basilisk is a pure manifestation of anti spiral energy, he is also part of God and never acts outside of God's will. If God wanted to, he could erase the devil with virtually no effort.
Man faces temptation because God wills it. And, as a mirrored reflection of God, we are commanded to not interfere with temptation as removing temptation from man weakens man. It does not strengthen man to remove the trials God intended him to overcome, except where the removal of temptation comes through humanity's own industry.
For example, it would be sinful for a government to ban pornography, ensuring a human never encounters it, but blessed for humanity to develop neural implants or genetic technology that removes arousal completely from man. It is the motivation created by the temptation of something like porn that helps motivate man in uplifting himself by developing this [00:49:00] type of technology, removing sin, our animal instincts, and bringing us closer to God.
If we remove the temptation. created by sin, we slow the progress of overcoming it. The new covenant demands we move to a consequentialist ethical system because consequentialist ethical systems do not have strict rules but must be thought through. They are much harder to follow faithfully and this is why God waited so long to expect this transition from man.
However, they also allow for things that would have been banned in deontological ethical systems. Let's return to the pornography example. Pornography nor masturbation is banned explicitly anywhere in the Bible, but lustful thoughts are named as a sin in a few areas, as is looking lustfully at a woman.
However, Most of the successful branches of the Judeo Christian tradition do have prohibitions against pornography and masturbation. Why? Because it wastes time and lowers the fertility rates among those communities. I agree. For these reasons, [00:50:00] pornography is sinful. Anything you are not doing for the glory of God is a sin.
is a sin, even if it's not explicitly banned in the Bible. Apparently, Simone and I are called the Cronwell twins in fundie circles. Likely, this is because I am a Puritan extremist and a descendant of him, though I am also descended from John Knox, who they probably hate just as much. They may think I would take this as derogatory, but I quite like Cronwell.
And while he was wrongheaded in a few areas, I think America could use a figure like him. These milquetoast quote unquote fundamentalists make fun of him for banning things like theater, sports, and makeup. People who would ban porn have given the choice. But Cronwell was right. Porn is bad because it wastes time that could be dedicated to God and industry, as well as lowering the desire that should be directed to one's spouse.
But sports do the same, as do movies, theater, video games, dancing, art, and music. Music. In fact, wasting time in watching a sports game is multiplicatively worse than masturbation, because [00:51:00] it takes more time and has fewer positive externalities. Wait, sin can have positive externalities? Yes, almost no sin is purely bad.
Playing video games can help masturbate some of a young man's pre evolved desire for conquest. Music can help a person work harder. And at the societal level, in countries where porn was made illegal, and then it was legalized, rates of child grape dropped Music. Dramatically. Dramatically. So you are, when you ban something like this, Condemning children to be graped. And I find that horrifying that someone could knowingly do that by the data. Even at the individual level, Something as allured as porn can be efficacious. Consider masturbation being used , to lower sexual desire and prevent you from making a move on someone during a date that you otherwise would have known better not to. If used judiciously, porn can be efficacious. Masturbation can increase the probability of a relationship that leads to kids. Older traditions banned it because if it was ever allowed, those with low mental fortitude would not be able to restrict [00:52:00] themselves. But now the training wheels are off.
The entire world has been flooded in sin and lasciviousness. Telling your kids to avoid their sexuality is a display of futility at best and reckless naivety at worst as it makes them easy targets for peeling off the path of righteousness. Teaching them The discipline to engage with their sin judiciously is the only path through.
Cronwell was right about what he banned, but wrong to have banned it. Judiciously engaging with sin is what builds spiritual discipline. Having a child grow up in an environment where they can never fail nearly ensures a feeble spirit the same is true with sin. You should note earlier. I mentioned spirituality as being the opposite of spiral energy.
That is not the definition of spirituality I'm using here. You all know the definition of spirituality I meant there. So you're arguing though that Oliver Cromwell was the moral equivalent. Yeah, he was the moral [00:53:00] equivalent to Helicopter Parent, and I believe if you look at his victories, he should not have had all the victories he had.
He shouldn't have come to rule over England. He clearly had divine help in his journey. Like, he just stopped literally anyone he came into contact with. So if somebody has divine help and fails, then that's a failure. Like they, they never should have achieved the success they achieved, but failed, God was using that person to teach us something today in the same way that I think, like the Akhenaten God, the early Egyptian Pharaoh who tried to create a monotheistic tradition that, that didn't answer for Morpheus God, God, God divinely inspired that and helped him through that to show us that The people at those earlier ages couldn't learn about a non anthropomorphic God and believe it, right?
Like he needed to give them a simpler explanation. With Cronwell, what he was teaching us is you cannot, at the government level, legislate sin. He legislated the right sins. Yes, you should have banned music and porn and everything like that if you're, if you're banning that. But. You can't legislate sin.
It doesn't work that way. And it, everything falls apart if you try to do that. And I think that that is the [00:54:00] lesson that he was meant to teach. It's a point you've made multiple times that you strongly believe that the state cannot mandate morality. It has to happen at the level of a society and through social shaming, not through well, not just through your own spiritual discipline.
I think historically in the old deontological cultures, Social shaming is what did it, but there aren't large enough communities to get away with doing that anymore. Well, so what are your thoughts on Islamic caliphates? I feel like they combine that they, they legalize. social shaming, but there's also strong social.
Yeah. And we have seen that the Islamic caliphates have been unable to transition from transitional man to realized man. Islamic caliphates are not enormous. The modern ones are not enormous centers of culture and technology. They are clearly going to be left behind in the flood. You know, they, they, they, they may be left behind in a different way than those that are just succumbing to hedonism, but they're still being left behind.
And. Therefore, we must come up with an even harder system, which [00:55:00] is not social shaming, but self discipline. We need to learn to Self. Discipline again, and how to teach self discipline again, which is harder than any of these other systems. However, it is important to know yourself. The mental fortitude we have to resist different sins varies between individuals, and sometimes you will need deontological rules for yourself within certain areas.
For example, we have pointed out simply banning yourself from engaging with a thing requires much less mental fortitude than engaging with the thing in moderation and with discipline. Consider something like alcohol. If you know you cannot engage with alcohol with discipline, it is better just to create a deontological rule for yourself around it.
, all or nothing is easy, but learning to drink a little bit, responsibly, that's a discipline. Discipline, come from within.
Here I would note that some Christians will say No, I want to note on this previous point that I was making here, like, I really mean this sins are not the same across people. How sinful a thing is, how tempting that thing is to you. [00:56:00] When I say how tempting it is to you, how much if engaged with will it overturn your life?
You're, you're human because we're not God, we're not sinless, we can't avoid all sin. We have to choose the sin that we're going to build deontological rules around. And in doing that, we can avoid the sin that is going to be most tempting to us while offering us the least potential benefits. Any thoughts on that before I go further?
I agree. This is everything's so different for different people. So, yeah, I think that this is similar to moderation being the right answer for so many things. When people really just want to black and white rule, I would say consequentialism is much harder to pursue than Oh, no, absolutely true. And that's why God didn't demand this of us until now.
Yeah. Until the new covenant. Anyway, here, I would note that some Christians will say, No, some sin is worse than other sin. What about, [00:57:00] quote, flee from your sexual immorality? All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually sins against their own body. End quote. This is from Corinthians.
Except it is very clear in context that this is not talking about all forms of sexual impropriety, but prostitution specifically, as it comes immediately after the line, quote. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?
Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her body? For it is said, the two will become one flesh, but whomever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. And yes, prostitutes are a unique form of sin, especially those who are not. Especially in ancient times because you risk getting them pregnant and creating an unwanted child when you take a techno puritan framing of the above line what is really being said when they say quote?
Do you not know that your bodies are members of christ himself in [00:58:00] quote? How does that line work in traditional Christian interpretations? Your body is not Christ's body, but if you take the techno Puritan framing that the martyr Christ describes all movements where humans are martyring themselves, sacrificing for the future generation, it makes perfect sense.
And I always love how, like, I'll read this was this new framing in a line that didn't make sense. We are not the same body as Christ. What? That's not Elsewhere in the Bible, but if you take this interpretation, you're like, oh yes, of course, that's what it's talking about, right? No logical leap is necessary.
No, like fudging the, what's being said is necessary. Also consider the second line, quote, Do you know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her body? For it is said the two will become one flesh. , but whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit, end quote. In traditional Christian interpretations, is it really possible for sex with a prostitute to be one with God in the act of sex with a prostitute?
That they really become one spirit through sex? [00:59:00] No, that's silly. That you, you don't become one flesh with someone by having sex with them. Is that two people having a child together does literally make two people one spirit. That makes a lot more sense. Yeah. What is being talked about here isn't Sex. It's the creation of a new person, the baby. In addition, this helps better flesh out the nature of the martyr. The martyr is literally the act of intergenerational procreation to make humans better than ourselves.
An act where two people become a one, but that also unites us with the Lord in one spirit by encoding us in the blockchain of humanity. The sacred act is two people becoming one flesh, whether that happens in a lab, or through a human having sex. That just, like, when I read it with the techno puritan framing, it makes so much sense to me.
When I read it with the traditional Christian framing, it makes so much sense to me. It [01:00:00] makes a bunch of weird claims where you need to like get all metaphorical and everything and yeah, it feels like you're bending over backward to make it work. And this is just correct. It just seems correct. Of course.
Yes. Yeah. When you, when you have sex, you may. Produce a human from that that will be like in this case, like you are, if you masturbate to not engage with a prostitute, like if that helps you not engage with a prostitute while it's a sin, it's, it's, it's a lesser of sins because the highest of all sins in the system is creating an unwanted child, a child who isn't going to be better off than the last generation.
Here we need to highlight, banning yourself from engaging with all acts that contain elements of sin, sports, theater, movies, porn, music, dancing, etc., is impossible in the modern era nor is it a maximally efficacious way to live life. Man as he exists today is fallen.
And a creature of sin. To believe oneself capable of living a sinless life is itself the sin of pride. [01:01:00] What it expected of us is merely not to confuse sin with virtue. Here we can think of Cronwell's banning of church music. He was right. Few things are more genuinely perverse as worship through sin. To decorate a church in human fineries like gold in music is to worship through an act of sin. It is but a degree from projecting pornography on the walls of the pulpit or considering the act of non reproductive sex sacred when we see people worshiping alongside human indulgences meant to masturbate man into positive emotional states like music, art or gold.
This is what we see.
In this way, I see people who succumb to or indulge in basal human emotions during worship. So yeah, yeah, as a lover Cornwall said, like the goal is to move away from basal human emotions to evolve paths of those. And these are. ways to [01:02:00] descend into them within your, your, your worship. I mean, it is but a degree from the naked people dancing around a fire in ecstasies.
You know, when I see people worship through, you know, the, these, these displays of, of fervor and ecstasy and other, other sorts of like, talking in tongues. Real worship is not done through masturbating emotional states. Even if they include feelings of grandeur and awe, they are still basal emotions.
Of course they feel good. That is what masturbation does. It makes you feel good. That is not a sign that it is good. Real worship is only done in a state of industry. Only in our moments where we have pushed ourselves past our limits in service of his mission for us are we truly aggrandizing him instead of just masturbating in a fancy room.
When you are so exhausted you could pass out, but you keep pushing through. When you stay at the lab until 3am or you push yourself to go talk to that potential partner who is likely to reject [01:03:00] you, that is when you are truly in service of God. As a side note here, people will use the story of the gold used in the tabernacle from Exodus as an excuse to worship in luridly decorated buildings.
However, it is important to remember that we believe that given their proximity to some polytheistic stories and tales, some polytheistic stories and tales worked their way into the religious texts like the Bible. especially when you're talking about older texts like Exodus, but that God loudly and explicitly marks where this has happened, so anyone paying even the littlest bit of attention will notice.
So first, let's look at the worship that was practiced in the tabernacle, and let's look At what happened to the people who built it. So first I want to say here, you've got to keep in mind how we're reading these early stories like Exodus and stuff like that. We're reading them as God beginning to try to reveal to a primitive, primordial man who is still practicing these polytheistic faiths.
You can see our three faiths. Track video if you want to get more understanding of [01:04:00] this a true monotheistic tradition a true understanding of God, but they still do some of the basal things and those things are still recorded. It's just loudly marked in the Bible whenever they're recorded. So what did worship look like in the tabernacle?
Quote, tell the people of Israel, when you bring an offering to the Lord, bring as your offering an animal from the herd or flock. If the offering is a whole burnt offering from the herd, it must be a male that has nothing wrong with it. The person must take the animal to the entrance of the meeting tent so that the Lord will accept the offering.
He must put his hand on the animal's head and the Lord will accept it to remove the person's sin. So, he will belong to God. He must kill the young bull before the Lord, and Aaron's sons and priests must bring its blood and sprinkle it on all sides of the altar at the entrance to the meeting tent, end quote.
If you heard about a group of people who practiced a ceremony where they transferred their sins to animals, [01:05:00] killed those animals, then splashed the blood about where they were worshiping, would you think that they were ball lights slash witches or Jews? Slash christians
For some other person that's virtual. You have slaughter, the goat for the sin offering for the people and bring its blood. Behind the veil and whiz its blood. He must do as he did with the bull's blood. He is to sprinkle it against the mercy seat and in front of it.
dot.dot. He used to take some of the bull's blood and some of the goat's blood and put it on all the horns of the altar. He has just sprinkled some of the blood on it with his fingers, seven times to clean that and consecrate it for the uncleanliness of the Israel lights. When Erin has finished purifying the most holy place, the tent of meeting and the altar he is to bring the live goat. Then he has to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it. All the iniquities. And rebellious acts of the Israelites in regards to all their sins. He has to put them on the goat's head and send it away into the [01:06:00] wilderness. By the hand of a man appointed for the task, the goat will carry on itself. There are inequities into a solitary place. And the man will release it into the wilderness. No. It is really interesting to note is the animals used in this ritual specifically a bull and a goat. Bulls and goats were the two primary animals associated with the worship of ball. this is why, , Satan is traditionally depicted as having a goat's head.
And I think that this is, you know, the Bible and God loudly signaling to us.
Hey, this is one of these examples of these old polytheistic rituals that you guys are supposed to stay away from.
Now, if you are here thinking I am going too far in suggesting that ancient Israelites practice a worship of ball alongside the worship of the, did we know is your way or the real God. , I would point you to an event. 800 years after this. So [01:07:00] just you get an idea of how long this had been happening. King's 2 23, 4 where the Bible states. That the king commanded.
He. the high priests, the priests of the second order and the keepers of the threshold to remove all items made for ball Asheville and the starry hosts from the temple of the Lord, the king then ordered those items to be burned outside your Reese alum in the Kaduna. And valley field and that the ashes be taken to Bethel. So. It's important to note here.
This is not a temple. This is the temple.
This is the temple in Jerusalem. The most holy place in the religion of the time. Baal had a separate shrine there. 800 years after Moses, it is not wild to think that some of the rituals being recorded. In these early books were ball light rituals. And I need to point out here that this wasn't a one-off thing. You know, [01:08:00] we can see the worship of ball alongside your way. In Israel to the very early periods. For example, in the book of judges, it mentions ball worship occurring during the time of the judges, which predates the monarchy. We can also, , see,
Ball worship had become particularly widespread during the reign of Ahab in the ninth century, BCE who married Jezza bell, a Finnish and princess. And a devoted ball worshiper. In addition to that. , we see ball light names throughout Israeli history. So some early Hebrew figures that had ball light names. , like the judge, Gideon also called Gerald Ball or ting.
Saul's son called Isha ball. And if you want to accuse me of being anti-Semitic or anti-Christian by pointing these things out, I mean, these things are. These are in your own. Bible. Okay. Judges three, five. Three six. The Israel lights lived among the Canaanites Hittites Amorites peasant rates heavyweights, and [01:09:00] Jebusites they took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons. And they served their gods in quote.
And even if we look outside the Bible, we can look at DNA evidence and find that the ancient Israel light population was about 50%. , Israel light in about 50%. Canaanite
This is not like some insane conspiracy theory. This is very clearly written out in the Bible. And we should note that archeological evidence suggests that, , bullet worship didn't end with the reforms of Josiah., but continued, , up until the Babylonian exile in a sixth century BCE. And I would note here that, you know, even the writers of the Bible had been less scrupulous. They could have chosen to leave all this out. God didn't need to allow all of this to happen and be recorded in the Bible that this is recorded in the Bible is intentional and a sign to us that we need to continue to be vigilant about it. And this is why [01:10:00] it's very important, actually. Whichever of the Abrahamic face, you follow that you. When you are reading something from one of your texts, use your critical thinking skills, use your knowledge of what ball light worship looks like and what worship of the real God looks like. To note where you see ball light incursions into these tags.
And just like we see in Kings, it is up to us to not say that the antiquity of a tradition, you know, th these, these bite shrines had been in the temple for 800 years. Somebody could have been like, well, this is a part of our religion. It's always been here. , you don't get to say that. Okay. It's responsible for you to be able to use critical thinking skills.
A great example of this. The Jewish friend brought to me. A stand from the gig. Or, , Ghia. I dunno, I can't pronounce things in other languages, but anyway, And he was like, well, this comes off is very polytheistic because you remember my three religion thing and he goes, how do you address this? And so I will read the passage to you. And use your critical [01:11:00] thinking skills.
Remember? Okay. What. And it's associated was Bowl is a storm. God that is worshiped through Bulls and goats and is basically a random Mesopotamian old timey policy. A stick God, and it with a random old timey Mesopotamian polytheistic religion. Whereas your way is the God that helps explain to us the true nature of reality and the universe. So when you're reading this think. Hmm, which does this sound more like.. All right. So here's the quote. Upon what does the earth stand upon? Pillars? The pillars. Stand upon the waters, the waters upon the mountains, the mountains upon the wind, the wind upon the storm, the storm it's suspended upon the strength of the holy one.
Blessed be he, as it is written. And here beneath the everlasting arms, this Sage is same. It says upon 12 pillars as written, he set the bounds of the tribes, according to the number of the sons of Israel. According to others' seven pillars, as it is written, [01:12:00] she had hewn out seven pillars. Upon one pillar and its name.
Zadek. Medica is written, but the righteous is an everlasting foundation. There are two firmaments, as it is written behold, the Lord God belong the heavens and the heavens of the heavens.
, and then it gives a bunch of random names here, serve no purpose, whatever. Save. This, that it enters the morning and goes forth in the evening and renews every day, the work of creation. Where Kiko is that in which our set the sun and moon stars and constellation shall AECOM is. That which the millstone stand and grind manner for the righteous is a blue hole, is that, which is the heavenly Jerusalem and the temple.
And the altar is built there. And Michael is the great prince which stands upon the offering. Now. If you are a.
You know, just not completely brainwashed and you read this, you're like, oh, that's a polytheistic religious framework for how the world is structured. You know, it's talking about. , the world standing on [01:13:00] pillars and all sorts of numerology and all sorts of other mysticism. , and you could, you could then see that in the Bible and say, oh, well, this supports that the Bible is supporting a polytheistic framework.
But again, you have to remember that the Bible says that when stuff like this was written ball light practice was happening alongside the practice of. The true God Jehovah. And then you need to just search these words really closely. What is the God that's being described as, as the holy one here? It is a God that holds up the world using a storm.
This is ball that's being described here. But fortunately for us, by the grace of God, these incursions are one. Intentional. God leaves the things in the Bible. He allows ball to be worshiped in the temple for a period for. Of century. So that we can learn from these. All right. This is not accidental. That these things make their way into these stories.
They are very, very loudly signposted as we'll see in a second with the tabernacle being a very [01:14:00] loudly signposted case of ball light worship. Being within the Bible. And you can say like, well, there's no way he can make it into the holy of Holies, the Bible, our core central texts, but it was happening in the temple. And God had to allow it to happen in the temple so that it could be recorded in the Bible so that we could know, yes, even in our most holy of texts, you will find this stuff.
But fortunately it will always be very loud. It will always be very clear that this is not normal monotheism and that it was maintained was in our texts. So that even within modern times, we could look around and find where ball light worship was happening. Just as a final side here before I go further. , if you. Or wondering how something, so obviously polytheistic ended up in the Bible. Ended up in Jewish texts. , you can tell by looking at the way the story is written likely what happened. Whenever it is. Citing stuff that we know from Genesis, it will use copious [01:15:00] citations. But whatever it is, citing stuff that appears polytheistic, it will not use citations, which to me implies that we need is citing stuff. , That his policy is stick.
It is assuming this stuff is common knowledge, but we needed. Assigning stuff that is real coming from Genesis. , it is citing stuff that.
Is more obscure. Which implies to me that this was an instance in which,
An individual. With preaching, a fairly unknown religion. IE, the monotheistic tradition. To an audience which had more familiarity with these policy historic stories. And was trying to merge the two. You can almost think of it as, , somebody today trying to merge. Christianity with science. And talking about like photons and electrons and everything like that in a sermon. And then, , you know, [01:16:00] 5,000 years from now, we no longer believe in photons and electrons and everything like that. , and yet we find them in this ancient text.
And so we assume they are a Christian thing instead of something that randomly got inserted into a Christian thing, when we were trying to preach to somebody that believed in these things about Christianity.
now before I go further because it gets even crazier than this you when I mentioned this to you You're like that that does not sound like a true god that people can transfer their animal their sins to animals Like can you go over like what your thoughts were when I read to you that that's what's being done in this tabernacle It's mighty convenient Well, it's not just convenient.
It's deeply unfair why is the animal being punished for my sin? Like why and then worse than that? Why why did jesus get punished for my sin because clearly I think the misunderstanding of this causes this misunderstanding of Jesus as someone who we are sacrificial animals, sacrificial animal that we're transferring our sins into like Jesus died for your sins, et cetera.
That would be a very [01:17:00] unfair interpretation instead of we are murdering ourselves for our most people's interpretation of God is that God is deeply unfair. You know, unfair is the wrong word. I wouldn't say unfair. It's just like, obviously like a policyistic ritual. Like, I don't think like the God of the universe was like, okay, I made it to the man can send, but I came up with this trick where you can transfer.
God, isn't like the IRS where a bunch of people lobbied him to make a bunch of loopholes. Like, yes, okay, that, don't sin, right, but just bear with me, God, just let me, if I touch a bull's head and then I kill him, then, then, okay, just, I will know this, no one else needs to know this, then I have no sin, right?
Yeah, and then it will splash blood all around the place of worship, like, it's just, obviously, like, the scene is obviously, Demonic to me like I I am it is very clear to me like a god was not like mixing things here For like a true monotheistic audience the whole animal sacrifice thing. Very clearly like bad mojo jojo.
This this is this is But [01:18:00] I'll go further with this, because it gets, it gets wilder. Still not convinced. Imagine you go up to a place of worship, and you saw this ceremony being carried out. Quote, It must be a dove or young pigeon. The priest will bring it to the altar and pull off its head, which he will burn on the altar.
And it does appear that this was supposed to be a living bird at the time. So the priest was ripping off a living birds head. And then throwing that head into a fire. And not just any bird, but a dove. The symbol of peace of God, to love of humanity that was sent to Noah, to allow him to know that there was still hope for the world. The bird's blood must be drained out of the altar. the side of the altar. The priest must remove the board's crop and its contents and then throw them on the east side of the altar where the ashes are. Then he must tear the bird open by its wings without dividing it into two parts. He must burn the bird out on the altar, on the [01:19:00] wood, which is on the fire.
End quote. It is not like any of this is subtle in the Bible, but it does mean that God expects you to actually be paying attention when you read it, and use the smallest amount of discretion when doing so. It's ironically like someone saw that scene in, in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,
Have you ever seen anything like this? Nobody's seen this for a hundred years.
Siva, Om Nam S to
And they walk away and they go, Yeah, that was definitely a bunch of good Christians.
I hadn't read this story in ages, so coming back to it I was kind of shocked to see how plain and clear it was that this was not the real God talking to Moses in these scenes, but that [01:20:00] this is a story about how the devil uses the way we relate to God to trick an otherwise godly and well intentioned people into worshiping him.
I mean, come on bro, ripping a living bird's head off, splashing its blood around, then ripping it in half? Like, Yikes. The god I worship ain't about stuff like that. And I mean, just imagine, like, thinking the god of the universe. Like, the god that created the universe is like, I want birds ripped in half.
That, that's the god. It's the god of Ripping up animals and gold and no, I, I think that the story of the gold being used in the tabernacle was meant as a sign that these are the types of things that sinners do. , that's what this story is meant to teach us, is what ball light worship looks like. It looks like worshiping was gold and ripping apart animals and doing chants and throwing blood around the place of worship.
It looks like and we see this, you know, it's like a heavy metal [01:21:00] concert.
Go, go,
Yeah. It looks like worshiping a golden calf. It looks like worshipping gold or calves or animals or nature or, like, it's all very clear here. Now as an aside here, I want to talk about the idea. Well, we already talked about the idea of sin, sin transformance, but another aside here that I
Wanted to note here that while this is obviously the sacrificial animal metaphor was what was used to help early Christians understand the story of Jesus. But this is obviously not the way techno Puritans interpret this story, but I suspect the reason that this obviously a heretical practice was kept in the Bible was to make it easier for early Christians before they understood the true revelation of Jesus to accept Jesus.
as this sort of polytheistic sin transference practice. Oh, so you think Jesus [01:22:00] as sacrificial lamb was a sort of short term. Yeah. This is your kind of thing, right? You love sacrifices. Yeah. So, and I think you see this a lot in the Bible where you see like temporary rituals that were obviously misinterpreted.
So like a great example here would be like how easy it is to pick out obviously heretical ideas from pretty clear stuff in the Bible. Like Jesus telling us to remember him at jovial feast, feast was eating and drinking of alcohol through the metaphor of the food representing his body and the alcohol, his blood, a completely sensible thing.
And then some nut job deciding that Jesus was commanding us to eat his literal body and his literal blood. Like, That sounds insane to me, but I, I get it now. I'm like, Oh, okay. Well, so he needed like some simpler saying when the true method of the Eucharist is when you are enjoying with your friends and family, a party with alcohol and food, remember Jesus in those times.
That sounds like a [01:23:00] very reasonable request. Instead of eat my body.
Pfft! Whoa, is that really the blood of Christ? Yes. Man, that guy must have been wasted 24 hours a day, huh?
It's literally insane from what the Bible actually says that somebody read that.
And they're like, Yeah, we're supposed to eat Jesus. And it's literally turning into Jesus in my mouth. Oh, Malcolm. We've got to go. Okay. I'll go. Love you. I love you too. I'll be downstairs. Thoughts on the Eucharist while I go pick up the kids. It mostly just kind of reminds me of sympathetic magic and I think the reason why we're into the Eucharist is because humans have, when they devolve into what we call in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion, a super soft religion. They devolve into this concept of sympathetic magic and you see it show up in anything from like the witch doctor markets of the townships in South Africa that we walked through at one point [01:24:00] to like literally intuitive stuff that you might have come up with as a kid.
Like when I was in preschool, we always got to choose. The cake that our amazing preschool director would make for us, Eunice Katwalder, she was the best woman ever. And I always asked for a swan cake because I intuitively thought as a child that if I consumed a cake that was shaped like a swan, I would become a swan and how cool would that be?
And I think that the reason why a bunch of people just decided to conclude that the Eucharist is just eating and drinking bits of, in some cases, transubstantiated Jesus is because. We have that super soft tendency. So , in other words, the Eucharist is a sign of a lack of religious discipline and not a sign of any sort of meaningful or helpful [01:25:00] religious conclusions.
And the fact that it was included is a sign of degradation in the religion and not a sign of religious fidelity or dedication. That's my very offensive to Christianity take, I guess, or at least to Catholicism take. I'm sorry. Catholics. I love you. I do.
Which one is it? You must choose. But choose wisely. For as the true grail will bring you life, the false grail will take it from you.
I'm not a historian. I have no idea what it looks like. Which one is it? Let me choose.
It's more beautiful than I'd ever imagined.
This certainly is the cup of the king of [01:26:00] kings. Is happening to me? He chose poor.
Be made out of gold. That's the cup of a carpenter.
you have chosen wisely.
Hello Drew
Yeah, but I, okay. So I'm getting the impression that you're kind of. You're saying that God is like the husband's parents in my big fat Greek wedding when they tried to give a Bundt cake to the Greek family and [01:27:00] they were so confused and they're like Bundt cake and then they put flowers inside it for like a vase and they're like okay fine just Yes, take the cake.
Sure. It's for flour. The hole's for flours. But just, they took the cake and that's what matters for that point. No, I mean, it's like, he gave them the bundt cake with the instructions on what it means and they just decided to throw out the instructions. And just put flours in the center. Like, that's why.
Like, oh yeah, the place with all the, the heavy metals and the, the animal ripping apart. That is definitely not meant as a sign. And I actually think that this is why the Jewish temple hasn't been rebuilt. Because, If the Jewish temple was rebuilt the majority of the major conservative Jewish texts today would restart animal sacrifices.
The only reason they're not doing the animal sacrifices now is because they don't have the temple and that's where the animal sacrifices were supposed to happen. I think that is why God had the temple destroyed in part because it is what allowed Jews to move to a more sophisticated of their religion, i.
e. get away from the old polytheistic [01:28:00] animal sacrifices, and nothing else. Just remove the venue where the problem happens in the first place. Yes, and I think Just like in major cities, sometimes where a crime ridden neighborhood exists, if you just Zero out the neighborhood and build a mall there or a hotel.
Suddenly all the crime is gone because there's just no place for it anymore. Yeah. I mean, getting rid of the temple was a pretty big thing to do and that it's not rebuilt today is kind of a miracle. I, I, and I think that it's, it's there for a reason. I think once the majority of the Jewish population.
accepts and builds rules around not doing animal sacrifices at the temple.
Essentially my extremely offensive take from actually reading the Bible is what is being asked of the Jewish people is a second Josiah reform. Like period where their religion is combed through for ball light practices and these are removed. So a sanctified temple can be rebuilt.
Without again, being used for ball light [01:29:00] worship. And again, you guys have done this before you did it with the first Josiah.
Reforms. It's not an impossible thing to do. , and,
And again, it is recorded in the Bible that the temple was being used for ball light worship in the past. And that this required pretty significant and extreme action. This isn't me saying some like random anti-sematic nonsense. Do you think that the Jewish population, if, if suddenly we just, okay, now everyone wakes up, a wild temple has appeared, they would do animal sacrifices there? Geopolitical events could shift in a way that makes it possible. Right, but, would, would they, if there was just a temple there tomorrow, randomly, and no problem accessing it?
Oh yeah, they absolutely would. Yeah, they still believe that the animal sacrifices are commanded of them. The only reason they don't do it is because there's no temple. No, no, what? Really? That's why Jews don't do animal sacrifices, because they don't have a temple, not because it left them. But they would, oh.
Yeah, you can see, even [01:30:00] from a God's perspective, you get it now. If they had a temple tomorrow, They'd have maybe a conversation. Do we really want to do this? They wouldn't have a conversation. It would happen. Jews, comment in the comments below, especially those who know the, the Haredi communities. Because yeah, they would be all about those animal sacrifices.
Uh, Blood would be streaming from the temple. , Bal would take great pleasure in the new sacrifices being made to him. Um, We'll see. Yes. Let us know. But anyway, I'm going to continue here. When I look at Christians who pray to a God of precious metals and animal sacrifices, the God that gets off to humans ripping apart birds as an act of worship, I'm reminded of this scene
I never doubted it for a second, sir. Before I do now, everything's gonna be okay. All will be well, and you will know the name of God. The one true God. Behemah Coital. Behemah what? Behemah Coital. He's here. [01:31:00] He's everywhere. He's coming. Come, well, they say God has many names, but I've never heard that one before.
He's talking about a bug. He thinks God is a bug? He's got religion. What do we do now? Maybe we should kill him. Why? Because he believes in God like you?
It's the wrong God!
From his fruits, you will know him.
And what happened to the people who brought this very obviously policyistic practice into the Jewish tradition, quote, in this wilderness, your bodies will fall. Every one of you, 20 years old or more, who has counted in the census and who has grumbled against me, not one of you will enter the land I swore with an uplifted hand to make your home, end quote.
And I should note here that this event proves irreconcilably. Th the sin transference ritual that took place in the [01:32:00] tabernacle. Was not divinely, ordained. Because he did not work. If there was a working ritual for transferring an individual sins into an animal, both Moses and the other Israelites who became fearful when they were scouting the land of Canaan. Would have had that sin transferred to the animal and would have been able to go into Israel yet.
They were not able to.
The Bible records for us in no uncertain terms. This ritual. Does not work. But if this ritual didn't work. Then how did the Israelites have their sin cleared for them so that they could enter the promised land?
Even in the old Testament, we see the techno Puritan understanding very clearly laid out. It is through inter generational martyrdom. Their kids were able to enter. Through their parents sacrifice [01:33:00] through the parents, murdered him to build a generation that is better than themselves. Their sin was cleared. They them selves. No individual can sacrifice another to relieve themselves of their own sin. Only in your own martyrdom in your own sacrifice. Can your sin be forgiven? Can your sin be alleviated? Can you find Ascension? It is only through intergenerational improvement and sacrifice as is seen in one of this earliest of biblical tales.
That humanity can become closer to God. And that it then retold in the story of Christ. As we have gone over in our other tracks. Scapegoating doesn't work. You must take responsibility for your own sins. So yeah, they didn't get nice things, the people who started this form of worship.
The transition between primordial man and transitional man was not an instant, like a snap of the fingers with a [01:34:00] single revelation. It happened over time. , I think this story was preserved for us as a warning of how the deceiver will infiltrate otherwise holy movements and infect them with ideas like the worship of precious metals and animal sacrifice.
It seems clear, even in the story, Moses had a quote, Oh, I fucked up in quote moment where we are taught Why churches should not make demands for precious metals because too much stuff was being donated. Quote, From what you have taken offering for the Lord, let everyone who is willing bring this offering to the Lord, gold, silver, bronze, end quote.
Quote, Then Moses sent this commandment throughout the camp. No man or woman should make anything else as a gift to the holy tent. So the people were kept from giving more, end quote. So even Moses seemed to have realized this was a kind of a mistake, but, you know, sort of too deep at that point is, is, is what I take from this.
And people here are like, no, I'm not worshiping the gold. I'm worshiping God through the gold. But that's [01:35:00] the very point of being commanded not to make idols. And of course you're going to try to worship God or the Jesus through the gold or through the act of sex or through ripping apart an animal, but you're not supposed to do that.
But again, all I can do is ask you to search your heart. Do you really believe the God of this reality is one who is gratified by the suffering of animals and precious stones, or is the entity of gold and animal slaughter more likely to be that which you call the devil.
But while worshipping sin is the height of evil, we are commanded to overcome sin, not just avoid it. Simply avoiding sin is no longer an option. Transitional man was able to just avoid sin. If God told everyone to overcome water, they did it by avoiding streams.
But realize man, the man that must travel through this valley of the lotus eaters, lives at the bottom of an ocean of sin. For us, overcoming sin means something quite different. It means that we need to develop an immunity to sin. We must learn to breathe sin and allow it to pass through us without possessing our hearts.
You can [01:36:00] live a life avoiding pain or learn to be the master of pain.
Put your right hand in the box. What's in the box? Pain.
I hold at your neck a gongja bark. This one kills only animals. Are you suggesting a duke's son is an animal? I suggest you may be human. Your awareness may be powerful enough to control your instincts. Your instinct will be to remove your hand from the box. If you do so, you die. Must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I am prepared to pass over me and through me.
Take your hand out of the box and look at it. Young human.
. A human can resist any pain. Our test is crisis and observation. I see the truth of it.
You are an animal if you cannot subjugate your lower instincts and it is learning to subjugate those lower instincts. What God has done is basically put our [01:37:00] hand in one of those pain boxes, but it's a box of pleasure. And then put the ganja bar at our throats and said, can you still motivate having kids?
Can you still motivate passing down your traditions?
If you had been unable to control your impulses, Like an animal, We could not let you live. You inherit too much power
The same is true of sin. Avoiding it is no longer a choice for man. We must master it. So any thoughts? Yeah, it sits right with me. I always found the rules associated with many religions to be quite weird and draconian and in many ways arbitrary, but they make a lot of sense for some people. So when you look at rules in a consequentialist rather than deontological context, they make a lot more sense.
Because for some people, they're very necessary. For other people, they're not. Like the rules around slavery. If you actually read the rules in the Bible around [01:38:00] slavery, they are extremely progressive for the time period that they were put out there. When I say progressive, I don't mean in like a modern progressive sense.
I just mean that they were very forward thinking. They were very kind to slaves and gave people a lot of instances in which they had to release slaves that other cultures around them wouldn't have had and limits on how they could have slaves and how badly they could treat slaves. And so they, they were very obviously, I think, leading to a positive outcome for, the average person in those cultures, if those cultures could survive.
But I don't think that they would have been able to survive had they removed all the slavery laws because, you know, slavery was a part of the economy back then. You know, you, you can't not have it. And I think that, yes, you see the laws that God has given us over time have changed. The question is, if had their intent Changed and we can tell their differential attempt differential and contrasted with untrue religious systems by the fruits of the societies that followed them.
And again, there it is the advancement of humanity, [01:39:00] not times of peace or times of extra amounts of love or times of, you know, all of these hippie dippy ideas around God times of extra hedonism. No, the times of God are very rarely times of additional hedonism. Um, so. Uh, yeah, and I love you to death, Simone, and we'll get to this, uh, soon to finish off.
I'm sorry to waste your time with this. I know You're not wasting my time with this. I love this stuff. These are really fun, thoughtful conversations. You know, we Both get up super early to start work so that we can finish early enough to get these in.
This is what all that work is for. Well, I want to keep them high quality and I know that like my crazier takes are things like actually the tabernacle to me seems to be, and this is when I kept checking with myself, like did it really feel right to say that this is not the god of our universe who is telling people and I, and I, like, when I think about it, because this is quite a heretical thing to say.
One of the things that Moses [01:40:00] thought that God had told him was actually the devil, and just to me, I couldn't get a louder message. They, they were worshiping through precious metals and they were ripping apart animals and spraying. If I walked across that ceremony in the woods, I'd say witches. I'd be like, this is obviously witches, right?
Like, and it's in the Bible. Like I don't, it doesn't seem vague to me what was meant to be conveyed by that. But it is quite a heretical thing to point out.
So at the end of this track, there's now quite a long addendum on this because as I researched further on this particular topic and looked up different translations, because this has actually been removed from most of the English translations, but it's very clearly in the Hebrew. , edition of the Bible and a. It's in some of the,
English translations. Which is to say this ritual that we're talking about here, it actually says that it is not for God it's for as Hazel that goat the sin transference goat. That was sent to a Zazzle.
Speaker 5: most scholars see Azazel as a demon [01:41:00] in the text. Yahweh and Azazel are paralleled. A goat is given to each of them since the name Yahweh is used here and it's paralleled with Azazel. Many see Azazel as a name as well rather than a generic term
jewish interpreters and writers also understand Azazel as a demon, or at least a malevolent supernatural personality. In 2nd Temple literature, like 1st Enoch, Azazel appears as not just any demon, but a chief of demons. In 1 Enoch, Azazel is something like the commander of Satan's armies, or maybe even equated with Satan himself.
In one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Azazel is the leader of the angels that sinned in Genesis 6,
So it's actually recorded in the Bible very specifically
and that kind of chilled me. It's one of these crazy things where like, I started reading biblical stuff, seriously, like looking for truth in the Bible. That one it's been incredibly compelling to me that there does seem to be some sort of supernatural inspiration behind these stories as I go through them. But very unfortunately. The [01:42:00] intent of that inspiration seems to be orthogonal to what many of the traditional Abrahamic faith read that intent to be. And it's very clear what the intent is when I'm reading it. To an extent where.
You know, it's, it's easier for me.
It was easier for me when I didn't. Believe that these stories are real, because then I could just say, okay, well I just need to create, you know,
Beliefs for my kids that are broadly. Inoffensive, and that will guide them towards positive action. And, and I can do that without offending any of the established religious players. Yet when I actually read these stories and they, you know, ripping apart the sign of God's love like a dove. I'm like, okay, very, obviously this is not. This has meant to be a warning of what we're not supposed to do. And then, then everyone who was involved with the creation of that wasn't allowed in Israel and was punished very severely.
Okay. Very obviously, you know, pharmacy. Fruits. And then I'm like, well, You know, And [01:43:00] I know some people, it was a more traditional take on the Bible are going to, to see this and be like, wow, you know, your takes are very deviant for mainstream, you know, Christian Jewish. Et cetera, it takes, And so I'd ask you, you know, If you, if you have to choose. Aside here, you know, if you're going to condemn me. For these. I am here reading what's in the Bible and thinking.
Does the God of the universe.
One is ripping apart, live birds like that. Something that, that he sees as a like intrinsically good sanctified thing that, that.
Does he want us transferring our sins to animals? I'm like, is that something the God of the entire universe? Of reality.
I don't.
I just can't take that position. And then. The question is if you are. If you are condemning me.
Is that the position you're taking?
Is that the DOD you are siding with the one that rips the head off of live. Dubs. The sign of [01:44:00] God's love for humanity and throws them in a fire, then rips the dove apart into sprinkles. This site was blood. . And don't say, well, it's preserved in our traditions because we know that those traditions have been infected with ball light worship before. We don't, we don't get to use that as an excuse.
We are in an active religious time.
The Bible isn't. Closed new ideas are added all the time. I think that that's, what's expected of us.
Do we treat our religions as living things or as dead things as books that are sealed or is books that are meant to be engaged with, with the living heart. I think that's the core of what makes techno puritanism different from some other traditions is it's meant to be an always living tradition. The heart is never meant to stop beating.
So it's not good. I don't know. A lot of it comes down to, I think that that's, that's why Protestantism is so scary and revolutionary that the interpretation has been left up to the individual reading the Bible instead of the church [01:45:00] deciding for you.
One thing I'd also love to hear from listeners that have left a traditional faith and are now atheists, would you have left this tradition? Would it have tripped whatever the trip lines were that caused you to leave your other faith? Oh, you mean the animal sacrificing tradition? Well, no, not that. I'm asking whatever their old faith was.
If somebody's staying up with the tract tradition, I imagine a number of them are atheists who left traditional Abrahamic frameworks. Would you have left, had you been raised in this tradition? Which tradition? This one, the one I'm reading about here today. Technopuritan tradition.
No. Th this was recorded over two days. So you had a bit of an ending amble there before we go back into the rest of this stuff. As a reminder to what I was talking about in the text immediately before , this was right after I was saying that we. Need to learn, to relate to thin differently. We need to learn to build immunity to thin immunity to temptation and not just avoid it anymore because we are now [01:46:00] living in it.
We now need to bereave it. We are like one of those. , little mice from, The abyss.
Fluid breathing system. We just got them. Anyway, you breathe liquid so you can't get compressed. The pressure doesn't get you. Check this out., can I borrow your rat?
What are you doing? You're gonna kill her! It's okay, I've done this myself. She's gonna be fine. Look, look, she's freaking out. She's just going through a normal adjustment period.
She's gonna drown! He's He's taking the fluid into his lungs. Still has a bit of anxiety here. Damn rat's breathing that shit. That is . The goddamnest thing I ever saw. See, the fluid's harder to push in and out than air. It's a little more work to breathe.
. She's diggin it. She's doin it. She ain't diggin it. If the only way you or those of your tradition can defend against sin is avoiding it. You will drown in the valley of the low to theaters. There is no longer avoiding sin. Any more. What is expected of us is more difficult than what was expected of our ancestors. [01:47:00] It is not as easy to breathe water as it is to breathe air.
It is not easy. To live among sin yet not let it control you. But we don't have a choice anymore. It's the only path through the valley of the Lotus eaters.
However, there are advantages to this. First, it allows techno puritans to unlock worlds that traditional Christians have no access to. The world of the debauched and the depraved is caustic to them. It burns away their skin, but to us, it is a mild inconvenience at best.
This allows us to proselytize to communities with language traditional Christians cannot effectively minister to. We know the truth. There is no more sin in something like hentai than there is in video games, music, or sports. Human sexuality is just another mystery to be dissected, then sorted, in a quest for useful tools.
Tools that improve our efficiency, mental discipline, and ability to prevent our children from falling to the madness that exists outside the protective walls of our home. The urban monoculture uses the fact that traditional Christianity has [01:48:00] engaged with sexuality through simply attempting to build a moat around it as an easy pathway to attack and inject self replicating memetic structures into your children's brains.
Our children will be immune to this because they will have a truer understanding of human sexuality and its place in their lives than the cult can provide. They will have nothing to tempt them with because they know whatever form of sexual gratification they shun, they have personally chosen to shun that specific negative for the effects it has on their lives, not because it is simply banned.
They will be able to turn the poor and twisted understanding of human sexuality contained within the cult back at their attackers and use the cult's most frequently cheesed attack vector as an opportunity for ministry. This is, I believe, the core transition that is needed to be made to make it through the Valley of the Lotus Eaters for any tradition. A transition from an aesthetic or deontological ethical system to a consequentialist one. Sin is inevitable. Just learn to engage in it in a way that does not corrupt your heart, where corruption is [01:49:00] defined as spending significantly less time on industrious activities or less focus on your spouse and kids.
Having a sports game on in the background while cleaning your house or masturbating to save the time of sex are not signs of being an unvirtuous person. The key is to not allow sin to capture your heart and pull you from the righteous path to worship sin.
For example, treating sex as a sacred act. Do not be seduced by those who would worship the flesh. Outside of the chemical bonding facilitated by it and any efficiency gains from a mood and self perception boost, marital sex that cannot produce children is just using your partner's body. And time for masturbation, non reproductive sex is a fetish where fetish is defined as a misfiring or circumvention of arousal pathways to receive pleasure from them in an act that will not lead to their intended function.
The Bible makes it clear on multiple occasions the body is a vessel for what is sacred, and any divinity the body has is only a result of what it carries. What about man being made in God's [01:50:00] image? Well, it explicitly does not say that man's body was made in God's image.
And let's be serious, do people actually think that God is some giant naked human floating in the ether?
Reports from all over the country have been coming in about what appears to be a giant naked man over the continental United States. Well, the eyes aren't twinkling and the dimples aren't Mary, but I'm standing under a nose like a 70 mile cherry. We've got feet here on the West Coast, Bill. Even relative to the giant man's size!
The human body and its functions are in no way sacred in and of themselves. Those who claim it is are but a step from the Satan worshipper who holds their services using a naked woman as their podium.
That said, the naked human form is not inherently sinful either. It is a tool, a vessel, and no more worthy of veneration or fear among the righteous than animated clay. For now, it is also the only vessel we get. And for that reason, our own [01:51:00] bodies must be treated with an amount of restraint and respect.
This is like any activity that puts your body at risk for the sake of masturbating, some emotional state is extremely sinful here.
I am speaking of activities like free climbing crew, cheerleading, kickboxing, etcetera. So any activity where you are putting your life at risk, like your body's Wholeness and function at risk in order to masturbate some emotional subset, like free climbing is probably the best example of this, is extremely sinful, much more sinful than something like non reproductive sex.
And we'll come, many people will be like, oh, but doesn't the Bible say that like, when you come together and then you're one person and that's a divine thing to do? And it's like, yes, but you're not one person when you have sex. You're one person when you create a child. Through the act of sex to people having sex.
Like God isn't stupid. He's not like confused. Like, Oh, my penis touched someone now. We're one person. No, this makes so much more sense. This definition of one flesh being like [01:52:00] literally the one flesh that you create by creating a human. Now I get it. Okay. Yeah. Before it was like, well, I don't know. I mean, does that mean that when you hug someone, you're one flesh or when a surgeon puts their hand inside you during.
Surgery or one flesh. Like none of that really made sense to me. Oh no. It's it's when you're married, that makes the act extra sacred. And I'm like, like, why? I also love this idea where people will be like, man was made in the image of God and they're like, okay, there's like a giant naked dude floating in space, I guess, like what?
Like they don't mean like, like the body. They would have said man's body was made in the image of God. They meant. Well, you, you can tell very much from our belief system, when we say man was made in the image of God, we believe that literally God comes from man, eventually. So, yes, we are made in the image of God.
So as a reminder for people who haven't watched her other tracks, we think millions upon millions of years from now.
Mankind eventually becomes the entity, which is recognized as God [01:53:00] in the Bible. And is being influenced to become that entity by this God who lives within the future.
But if you actually read the part where it says that man was created in the image of God, this line takes on a new meaning when you're interpreting it through this lens, God created humankind in his own image.
In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. So while the Hebrew word. Used here. Barbara. Is used. To represent a completed action. It is not strictly a past tense word. It can also be used to describe a future action that is certain to occur. , prophetic. Perfect action. You could call it. So.
It can actually grammatically correctly be read to mean. God is in the process of creating man in his own image.
But I always found this idea of like a giant naked dude in space really weird. I mean, [01:54:00] if you have clothes Naked dude in space. Yeah. I mean, that's true. This is again where I differentiate like a secular perspective versus a non secular perspective, where I would say, what do people mean when you say you have like a secular theology?
And I mean, like, well, we believe that God, like, literally exists. And they're like, well, like, I believe he literally exists. And it's like, well, I mean, you believe he exists in like a different type of reality than our reality. You don't believe that there is a literal God. Right. Somewhere in this universe, whereas we believe there is a literal God somewhere in this universe and he is in the future.
But anyway, I'll, I'll keep going from here. And I do think that religion should be, especially modern religions need to be much more strict when it comes to things that can damage your body for no reason other than masturbatory. And this is really where it comes to like this consequentialist framing, right?
Where it's like, well, I mean, you might be over focused on masturbation and under focused on free climbing which is going to. Okay. For the sake of masturbating some emotional pathway within your body, be more deleterious to your [01:55:00] ability to live out the life plan that you're supposed to be living out.
Like, anyway, I'll continue. All this comes with a huge caveat. While non reproductive sex with your spouse is just a form of mutual masturbation, sex does help us chemically bond with our spouses, and many people require some amount of it to feel satisfied. As Christians, our highest duty, after our children and God, is our spouse. To ensure that they maximize their potential. Ensure that they are as sexually satisfied as we can make them, with the minimum amount of daily time investment,
is part of that duty. In this task, it is our duty to, without judgment, learn as much about our spouse's unique sexual profile and dedicate our actions to maximizing its fulfillment.
Ain't no demons in the red pink boots King size, colored so, yes, a wife does have a conjugal duty, but this duty extends far past [01:56:00] simple sex and is not limited to that. to the woman.
It extends both ways. Both the husband and the wife have a duty to their partner to give them the best life they can and fulfill the sinful desires that the partner chooses not to suppress. Here, I would note that those sinful desires may not be sex, but might be something like jewelry or indulgent travel.
Absolutely. You are not living for God if you live a life where the satisfaction of your partner is not chief among your concerns. Your life is part of a LARP to satisfy your partner's deepest fantasies however, this duty towards ensuring your partner is satisfied, never supersedes your duty to ensure their continued self improvement in industry.
So here in a, what I'm saying is in relation to your partner, the highest duty is ensuring that they continue to improve, to become a better version of themselves. But under that duty, you have a, I'd say like a moral obligation [01:57:00] to masturbate specifically what is needed for them to feel satisfied with their lives.
And that may not be through non reproductive sexual encounters with you and them. It may be through buying them fancy clothes, which is a sinful act. It may be through going to sports tournaments with them or playing video games with them or all of these things. It's just important that you understand That you not attempt to sanctify the sinful acts, that you not attempt to say, well, I'm doing it with my wife.
What you're saying is I have a duty to give them the best life possible while ensuring they spend the lowest amount of time on this stuff. But if you, for example, decided, started to get addicted to something and it started to prevent you from spending as much time on industrial activities as we would want or industrialist activities I would also have an obligation to lead you away from that, to let you know and work to lead you away from that.
So I don't think that there's really anything sort of off limits in a marriage. It's just don't sanctify it. And, and not only is nothing off limits, [01:58:00] but you have a bit of a duty to learn what your partner wants, because you might be able to. For example, sexually satisfy them in using far less time and make them far more satisfied by doing something outside of normal sexual mores.
Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that or? No, it's just with, with your track stuff, I think my problem is that it just is so intuitive to me that I'm just like, yeah, okay. Absolutely. That's how it is. Because it is. And this drive towards efficiency is also how you should relate to sin in your own life.
Does music help you work more efficiently? Does masturbation clear your mind before a meeting or a date? Does indulging in watching sports every now and then help you stay motivated during a boring work week? That is for you to judge. We used to live in a world of simple rules, but now you are burdened with making these judgments to yourself and being honest about them. When making these judgments, it is crucial to not make the mistake of assuming [01:59:00] a sin's severity in the eyes of gods is in any way modulated by how severely it is judged by our society. In fact, it is those sins which can not be used for positive social signaling that are less severe than those which society sees as a sign of status as they become amplified by pride and vanity.
Worse, they are much more likely to blind you to their sinful nature because those around you will affirm you for engaging in them. Leading you to spend time, resources, and other proximates for industry on them. It is for this reason that something like watching a pervy anime, or reading a slash fanfic, is magnitudes less sinful, and less dangerous, than enjoying a night watching a symphony, , or reading classical literature for entertainment.
The pain purifies my predilection for pleasure. Your alliteration sounds dangerously like poetry. My apologies. Strike me, silence!
But yeah, do you have any thoughts on that? I love that and I love emphasizing that. Because I think [02:00:00] most religions evolved in an era in which people lived in religious communities. Meaning that if the community wasn't okay with it, it was probably not okay per the religion.
Now we live in a largely secular society or in a very heterogeneous religious mix, at least in the United States, and many open to immigration cultures. I mean, even Japan has seen record levels of immigration in the past few years. So. Yeah. Right. Meaning that you can no longer rely on society to be a good litmus test for alignment with your values.
And I totally agree that even to, to the extent that tech talk is a weapon of China, right. To a great extent. Yeah. A lot of the things that are being celebrated are, are quite literally. meant to hurt and destroy us that they can use these old systems. Like don't engage with Tik TOK with their kids.
But then when it happens, the kid leaves the house, he engaged with [02:01:00] Tik TOK and it's over, right? You need to train. Tik TOK is the basilisk. It is so yeah. You need to train them in the spiritual discipline to resist. A temptation like TikTok. Yeah. So we're not in ban TikTok team. We are in the Well, I actually am from a geopolitical perspective.
I think it's bad that we're allowing China to use this to dumb down our Yeah, it's not, it's not fair. But I don't know, like, religiously, we're not against it. Yeah, religiously, I'm not against it. But it's a I think there's a big difference between our own citizens, like, going out and engaging with some sinful activity, like, you know, music or something like that, and a foreign power intentionally putting music into our communities that is all about, like, gang violence.
I'm like, okay, that's, you know, clearly they're trying to mess us up, right? Anyway, back to this. But again, and this is the single most important thing to be vigilant of, never confuse a sin with a virtue, , or even worse, with an aspect of your identity. It is okay to exercise a little more than you [02:02:00] need to for health purposes, because you want to look good or get really into the lore of one of your favorite video games.
But don't confuse this with a virtue, or even worse, attempt to sort yourself above others based on a sin. So, what do I mean by sort yourself above others based on a sin? That means that you are using a sinful activity for social hierarchy signaling, and this is very important that you never, ever, ever do this.
And with our kids, this will be one of the things that I emphasize the most of them. So if something was done for indulgent purposes, like not for health, like you are way buffer than you need to be for health reasons or for attracting a mate reasons. Then you are using that to social signal within that community.
And that's a sin. Or you spend a lot of time learning about the lore of a game or obscure music artists, and you try to use that to, within communities that are dedicated to these things, signal superiority to another person that is an incredibly sinful thing to do because you are sorting your identity.
Like you are building the sin into your identity and sense of self worth. Yeah, [02:03:00] absolutely. And you've seen people do that. You know what I'm talking about, right? Well, but this is very related to getting caught up in the Governance trap of dominance hierarchies within any insulated social group. Right. So I think it's very easy when you're in an insulated social group, be it like a forum or your office or your D and D group, whatever it might be to start to just think that more equals better because.
In that dominance hierarchy battle it is, but that's not the same as your values and virtues. About having a mandate around this is it will make you a much more pleasant person to be around. Nobody likes the people that do this. Oh, no, yeah, who's like, well, I did this and who's always trying to one up you.
Yeah, no one likes that person. No one wants to be around that person. Yeah, so just don't, you know, it's okay to know, like, for example, you might be really into, like, gun stuff, right? And there are two ways you can engage with somebody who knows less [02:04:00] than you. One way is designed to assert your dominance, and the other way is to enjoy the hobby with them because They mutually care about the same thing you mutually care about.
And all of us have interacted with people in these two camps. And I think that you have a religious mandate, not just that it's preferable, not just that it's good, but you have a religious mandate to not glorify the sin and just enjoy what you enjoy with your friends. Okay. Now it is not to say that we lower the status of sin arousal pathways without producing their intended outcome, a child.
It is just to say that. We also see this in, in things designed to masturbate the other types of emotional and arousal pathways in humans without producing their intended outcomes either, like theater, music, art, and sports. Puritans have always been known for engaging more with their sexuality and sexual topics than other groups, as we see in Albion Seeds for British Folkways in America.
Many of their writings had to be heavily censored until the 21st century. [02:05:00] This can be Seem very confusing to outside groups, given how strict they are about sin. The reason for this apparent paradox is we simply see the truth sins associated with sexuality are not worse or a different category than our other sins.
And in this new world, drowning in lasciviousness, we, Must learn to breathe temptation without succumbing to it. Finally, it is critical to remember that you have significant influence over the emotional state you present to other people, and you are responsible for that state. To lower the efficacy of those around you, Particularly loved ones by allowing yourself to enter a negative mood is a fairly severe sin happiness High energy and an upbeat mood are not just a choice They are a responsibility and a duty to every parent who has asked their child to stop crying But then acts as if their own emotional state is totally out of their control.
Are you lesser than a toddler? This is something I see all the time. Girls are like, I can't help it. It's just, I feel this way. And then they're like, shut up. Stop [02:06:00] crying. Like, well, do you not have the ability to do that? And it's like, why do you want them to stop crying? Because it's not efficient. It's not helping the family, right?
I don't get mad at my kid for crying when they're like genuinely hurt and need to alert me. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There are no caveats or special exceptions to this expectation of us, especially as we relate to those counting on us to be their foundation, like our children and spouses, except of course, where emotional displays could be used to motivate another person to help you towards God's plan.
Your parents died. How does crying bring them back? It just hurts the living family. You lost your job. Is crying gonna get you a new one? Crying and sadness are emotions we evolve to signal to parents that we are distressed before we are verbal. They are vestigial in adults. But you will look foolish.
Fine, then look foolish. And own how you are different from this sad and dying world. When people look towards techno puritans, [02:07:00] they should see an . unflappable vision of the future of humanity and gratitude for the gifts of our lives.
And here what I mean, you know, when I didn't put up a big fuss about my mom dying, because we had an author who was writing a book on genius, who was like living with us at the time. He was really surprised and kind of like, What? And you can watch our episode on like, we have a weird relation to death in this society.
I was like, how does it help? How does it help my family? How does it help my kids? Like, do my kids need to see me crying about this? Like, would that make them better people? Anyway, many churches today get people in their door by draping their walls in various forms of man made vulgarities, literally making sin their primary advertising point, but saying it's okay because it's sin about Jesus.
It sickens me when I see mega churches ban their kids from listening to secular rock, but then love when those same kids listen to Christian rock. Christian rock might as well be abortions for Christ. We need to get back to owning our sin.
When sin and idolatry become the [02:08:00] primary advertising mechanism of your church, then the church becoming a den of sin is the inevitable result. Is it any wonder that so many megachurch founders cheat old people out of their savings through promises of salvation?
Or that indulgent St. Peter's Basilica, meant to seduce people into a state of simulated piety, was bought and funded with indulgences?
The parishioners you lure by making your worship sexier corrupt the souls of your leaders. Jesus said we will know them by their fruit. And yet, many feel they can sweep the Evangelical and Catholic sex scandals and systemic cover up under the rug. You will know them by their fruit is not an idle statement.
Don't attempt to revive your traditions by sexing up your worship, returning to nature worship, or worse, worshipping human flesh. Return to the simple pragmatic tradition of work, discipline, austerity and industry.
I see. Roses are red, violets are blue, both are useless, plant some wheat!
The best ministry a belief system can have is to be the type that creates [02:09:00] the kind of people who when people first see them, they laugh at you because of how different you are. Then keep watching you because you make them feel good. Then begin to become envious of you and realize it is something they want.
The last Puritan movement ultimately fell because it became a virtue spiral around signaling sobriety and somberness. And yet that was not even the most efficacious emotion to signal. We will learn from the mistakes of our ancestors and build the city on a hill that is mankind's manifest destiny.
And by the way I, I said here, and I'd love a fan to draw this because I want to have this in there I've tried to get AI to draw it, but I can't, so we'll see if I can, which is to have Joy in Inside Out just be like a fascist dictator. I think, I think that that's the way it's supposed to look.
It's interesting that in Inside Out they don't have like a logic thing. But you do need a partnership. Logic and Joy as a married couple who are fascist dictators of the household. Everyone else is a child and does what the husband and wife, Logic [02:10:00] and Joy, tell them to do. That sounds ideal.
The fact that the last time that people try to create a movement like this, the last Puritan revival was killed by. Virtue spirals tied to somberness in seriousness that aren't even again, as we've said, particularly efficacious.
It has been important from us from the very name that we chose, techno Puritan to instill the tradition with an element of lighthearted, goofiness and non seriousness, because that is the.
Best defense against another similar virtue spiral. So in this. Effort. We frame things like somberness as a sin being overly serious. As a sin.
And instead would encourage individuals to. Do everything they can to foster and.
Kendall. A light heart. Because when an individual, and I'm not saying I've [02:11:00] achieved this data at all, but when an individual achieves a state.
Of pricelessness. And. Let's talk about what pride means in this context, pride isn't knowing or not knowing you're better than somebody or believing yourself to be better than someone. That's the question of truth. Pride. Is.
Pride stems from a desire to signal that to both of them and to yourself for non efficacious reasons. Now there's efficacious reasons to signal to somebody. For example, I am an expert in why subject, therefore you should listen to me when I'm talking about why subject. That's not pride. Pride. Is when you are signaling to them, something that you think gives you status as a form of masturbating this feeling of, I am better than you.
And when you are able to genuinely let go of that entirely.
Two things happen. First. Achieving a state of true lightheartedness becomes much easier.
And the second is that when you have no pride, nothing can offend you [02:12:00] anymore because you have no insecurity.
So this isn't to be a person without things to be proud of it's that you don't care about signaling those things to other people. But yeah, I mean, do you have any thoughts on this? I like it. It's just straightforward. And it, I think the overarching theme in all of this is look at the results, look at the outcome, not at the act. Yeah. That's it. Just be hyper focused on are you achieving the outcomes that matter to your objective function or your values or both.
So after I recorded this track, I, , shared it with one of my,
Jewish theology, nerd, friends. And I was like, okay. Like how offensive theologically are these concepts that I'm bringing up here? And he responds, oh, actually my monities had a very similar idea and here it is, , which would make it because I'm out [02:13:00] underneath the three well-respected among Jewish theological circles, , which would make it very non-offensive from a Jewish perspective. , which I was grateful for, but I want to go into my monities ideas here is sort of an afterthought to this track, as well as where I disagree and agree with my monities. As well as a few just, , points to get into, , that I thought about in terms of reactions, people may have as they're going through the tract. So first is one of the,
Pushbacks somebody may have from the track that they would say, well, actually the sin transference ritual did work, but it only works for little sins and not big sins. And that's why the Israelites weren't allowed in the promised land, even though they perform this in transference ritual.
And then the, , unfortunate response to this is.
When you're contrasting between little and big sins. You put.
God telling you, Hey, go kill that country full of people. And you being [02:14:00] like, Hey, , I've got some thoughts on that. You know, one, they do look like they outnumber us extremely. And to, you know, it is a country of people, , maybe mass murder. , and turning it down. Isn't in the category of absolutely unforgivable sins. The second one is somebody will, you know, they'll, they'll read a one of our tracks and they'll be like, oh no, here look, it says, here's one of the rules. That God gave us in the Bible. , and your teachings go against this particular rule.
And again, this is where it's very important to move from the deontological to consequentialist framing of the purpose of these rules and why they were there at the time. , because here, you know, you are looking at things like rules around slavery, you know, I could point to those rules and be like, what?
So, you know, God wants us to do this with our slaves. Right. These, these rules were for a different time and cultural framing, and what's expected of us is to Use the intelligence, God has gifted us ways to interpret [02:15:00] what he meant by them in that context Also before I get into my monities. , I'd point out.
That when you interpret the story of the tabernacle, the way that I have, it makes a lot more thematic sense. When you're considering it alongside the various other stories from the wilderness period, where I believe that what is trying to be conveyed and discussed in this section of the Bible is the period where the Jewish people were transitioning between more polytheistic religions and the monotheistic religion that they came to adapt.
And the constant backsliding that was part of that process that you see in. Things like the story of the golden cow.
Essentially. I'm arguing that what the Jewish people were doing during this period was they were pulling something of a Benny from the mummy.
Speaker: How funny. No. [02:16:00] Okay.
Speaker 3: Jojo! Who's there? Bao!
They were trying different gods and seeing which ones worked and being punished when they were worshiping the wrong ones. To incrementally, move them towards a truer understanding of the real God. And yes, I am very confident in my stance that the God of blood magic and animal sacrifice and gold and gemstones and.
All of that. Hookah is not the real God or a benevolent entity. And I would also say here,
Is that in some places when this sin transference ritual is talked about, it's specifically talked about as a ritual that is being done for,
A different deity named Azazel. A [02:17:00] demon or a fallen angel, depending on which interpretation you're looking at. , some Jewish interpretations have tried to argue that Azazel is the name of a cliff. , and so it, wasn't actually a different God that this ritual was being done for, But the problem is. In context, it's very clearly not a cliff. , so you can look at it here. And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel.
How, how is that a cliff it's being contrast it with one's going to God. And the other is going to a cliff. No, this is like a parallel entity to God that's being discussed here. It's very clearly a specific other entity.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Beneath the Bible, where we're helping you dig deeper and uncover the world beneath the sacred book.
Speaker 5: , most scholars see Azazel as a demon in the text. Yahweh and Azazel are paralleled. A goat is given to each of them since the name Yahweh is used here and it's paralleled with Azazel. Many see Azazel as a name as well rather than a generic term like scapegoat the wilderness. The place where Azazel [02:18:00] resides in the text was a place associated with malevolent supernatural forces in Israel in the wider ancient world.
Jewish interpreters and writers also understand Azazel as a demon, or at least a malevolent supernatural personality. In 2nd Temple literature, like 1st Enoch, Azazel appears as not just any demon, but a chief of demons. Some have even suggested the name means something like fierce god or angry god, and no one's quite sure what the name Azazel actually means, so other suggestions include mighty one of El, El is strong, or even mighty goat.
Okay, so some of that needs unpacking. First, let's look at the wilderness as a place of demons. The scholar Chaim Tawil surveyed Mesopotamian literature and showed that in Mesopotamian demonological texts, malevolent spirits were believed to come up from the underworld through fissures and cracks in the earth.
And once they had entered our world, they most frequently lived in the steppeland, or the desert, which is often called the wilderness in the Hebrew Bible. Mesopotamian incantations and magical texts tell magical practitioners and exorcists how to drive demons out of human environments, And back [02:19:00] to the desert where they belong.
Tavel demonstrates that the language of Leviticus 16 and even the later texts that discuss Azazel, like 1 Enoch, are influenced by the language of Mesopotamian, demonological, and exorcism texts. In 1 Enoch, Azazel is something like the commander of Satan's armies, or maybe even equated with Satan himself.
In one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Azazel is the leader of the angels that sinned in Genesis 6, that weird story about the sons of man who sinned with human women and made them Nephilim. That story is incredibly important for the development of Judeo Christian ideas about angels and demons, and it features prominently in Second Temple literature about the subject, but for now, all we'll say is that by this period, Ezezel was thought to be the leader of the group of Watchers in Genesis.
All this evidence together is why most scholars see Ezezel in Leviticus 16 as a personal name of a supernatural entity that resided in the desert. This figure is opposed to Yahweh, and early interpreters understood Ezezel to be not only a demon, but a leader among demons.
Or look for the [02:20:00] other places as Hazel entity has mentioned where it says.
And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.
So what the, the goat itself is, is leaping off a cliff. No, they'd say like that. Once you take the cliff interpretation, you're like, well, then you would take it to the cliff. And then push it off the cliff, but that's not what's being talked about here. Like they wanted you to take it to a cliff.
It would've said a cliff. It doesn't say a cliff. If that's too, as Hazel. Which appears to be a different deity. And it also explicitly says that the goat is being offered to this entity.
I think in, in, in both of the text and too many modern, , scholars of the text, , that Zazzle who the goat with being sacrificed to in the sin transference ritual. , was either a policy, a mystic entity of a different religion. , [02:21:00] specifically it may have been the Canaanite DD tied to plague and war. , or, , he may have been, A combination of two names as a N as the yell. , two fallen angels mentioned in the Babylonian tell mood. , it could be. , easel.
One of the fallen angels mentioned in the book of Enoch. , it could be as the oath. An Arab God associated with the Morningstar worshiped in Syria. , It could be as a demon and Zoroastrian mythology associated with greed and lust. Or it could be through him. Goat demons mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and that are often associated with as Hazel in some traditions. Now. Who do I think as Hazel is? I think it's pretty clear when I read the Bible, who is Hazel was, is Hazel, was the deity that elsewhere in the Bible is spoken of as Asherah the names sound very similar to each other. , Asherah for those who don't know when the temple was being, , cleared out [02:22:00] of polytheistic, ritualistic implements, the two gods that were specifically named as having worship of them still happening. In the holy of Holies. The, the temple in Jerusalem. We're the gods ball and Asherah, , what I'm putting out here is we know that worship to the God Asherah was performed alongside worship of the God y'all way for hundreds and hundreds of years. , so it would make perfect sense that it would be included in this early ritual.
And it would make perfect sense that the name would change a little bit over those hundreds of years. So I'm not particularly, or maybe it was a local variant or maybe it was a, you know, we don't know, but the names are very similar to me. It seems to be the same entity.
Speaker 5: This ritual is actually known in other forms in the ancient world. Texts from the site of Ebla in Syria, dating back to the 24th century, over 4, 000 years ago, describe a similar ritual, though there are important differences. The Greeks practiced a similar scapegoat ritual, and these were a kind of elimination ritual, wherein something that causes [02:23:00] contamination or pollution, like sin, is transferred onto the goat, in order to physically remove it from the community.
Scholars have theorized that this kind of scapegoat elimination ritual originated in southern Anatolia or northern Syria and spread from there to Greece and Israel, among other places. This would explain why similar rituals appear in very different places with very different religious traditions.
But
you're like, okay, well then who is this Astra character? Ashura
with the Canaanite goddess that was known as the consort of ball.. So this was a. Even recorded in the Bible, a demonic ritual. So the questions can be well it's recorded in the Bible that if the demonic ritual send transference, Why do people treat it?
So. Positively. , and there's different interpretations here. I'll give one from a contemporary Jewish scholar called Milgrom, who argues that the tourist mentioned of a semi divine being and the association of that being with the ritual death of an animal, do not actually call the theological problem because quote Azazel himself is [02:24:00] deprived of an active role.
He neither receives the goat nor acts on it, regardless of his origins in pre Israel light practice, he surely was a true demon, perhaps a Seder. , and here he's looking at Ezra on 1 6, 8 who ruled in the wilderness. In the preflight ritual. He is no longer a personality, but just a name. Designating the place to which impurities and sins are banished. As for the survival of the name is Hazel demons often survive as figures of speech, EEG, gremlins, long after they have ceased to be figures of belief. , in quote, now I look at this and this is, I read this so that you know, that many modern biblical scholars and modern Jewish scholars, they're like, oh yeah, obviously his Hazel was a demon or a different polytheistic entity, but the ritual was okay because, , we're not, we're, we're giving the sacrifice to the demon to Azazel. Who himself is one of God's [02:25:00] servants. And therefore it's like, we're giving the sacrifice to God. Whereas I think the much easier interpretation of all of this is just to say, oh, this is a demonic ritual.
That is from an older tradition and we're not supposed to be performing it. And it is meant as a warning of the type of thing we are not supposed to do.
And as an example of what demonic rituals or Canaanite or ball lighter as Hazel worship looks like. Now to my monities specifically the sections of my monities that we're going to be referencing here. Is my monities guide to the perplexed 3 29 to 31. So first I'm going to start with a quick summary of what my monities appears to have thought God did. My Monday thought that God took an early polytheistic people and gradually, , because they couldn't quickly shift their belief practices to the true belief practices gradually helped them move to truer and truer practices. While allowing them [02:26:00] to worship him through their policy, mystic rituals, by changing sort of the names and intentions of the policy of stick rituals to focus on himself rather than the polytheistic.
God. With the belief that eventually they would come to just holy worship him.
No to give exact quotes here. For a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossible. And therefore, man, according to his nature is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he is accustomed.
As therefore God sent Moses our master to make out of us a kingdom of priests and a holy nation through the knowledge of him.
May he be exalted according to what he has explained to saying. Unto thee, it was shown that dowel might've said no. And so on. No to this day and lay it on the heart and so on so that we should devote ourselves to him. Shall ye serve. And at that time, the way of life. Generally accepted and customary in the whole world and the [02:27:00] universal service. , upon which we were brought up, consisted in offering various species of living beings in the temples in which images were set up in worshiping the ladder and in burning incense before them. The pious ones in the aesthetics being at the time as . We have explained the people who were devoted to the service of his temples, consecrated to the stars. He has wisdom.
May he be exalted in his gracious ruse? Which is manifest in regards to all his creatures did not require that he give us a law prescribing the rejection, abandonment, and abolition of these types of worship.
For one could not, then it conceive the acceptance of such a law, considering the nature of man, which always likes that I, to which it is accustomed.
And at the time, this would have been similar to the appearance of a prophet in these times. Who calling upon the people worship, God would say, quote, God has given you a law, forbidding you to pray to him to fast. To call upon him to [02:28:00] help him misfortune. Your worship should consist solely in meditation without any works at all in quote, therefore he may be exalted and suffered the above-mentioned kinds of worship to remain, but transferred them. From created. Or imaginary and unreal things to his own name.
May he be exalted, commanding us to practice them with regards to him? May he be exalted?
All right. So essentially he's arguing that all of this was a raised by God, and it was a ruse by God in the same way that somebody, I guess, kind of like I have. Couldn't come down and be like, well, I mean, actually, God doesn't want you doing this sorts of like, worship that right now you're doing in cathedrals and temples. , that is not worshiped to the tear.
God, that's, you know, 10 judged with older Polish. Polytheistic stuff. , and, , he's right about that. It is a hard message to swallow. I just take a much harder stance than him. And I think that by now, you know, 2000 years later, God expects us to get the message at this point. [02:29:00] And, , have advanced enough. So.
Well, I. I see the logic in his perspective, the reason why I am so hostile to it, , is that. If it had been the perspective that was held during the Josiah reforms. They wouldn't have removed the statues to ball and Asherah from the temple, they would have said, well, you know, God's allowing us to worship him through these and some of the people needed and you can't change too quickly.
No, we need to always be attempting to purify our beliefs. And look for the improprieties and imperfections that came from the mistakes of our ancestors.
Now, if I continue with this quote, he gets even more specific here. , quote, through this divine ruse, it came about that the memory of idolatry was a faced and that the grandness and truest foundation of our belief, namely the existence and oneness of the deity was firmly established. While at the same time, the souls had no [02:30:00] feeling of repugnance and were not repelled because of the abolition of modes of worship. To which they were accustomed and. Then which no other mode of worship was known at the time, basically saying what we didn't know, another way to worship to God at the time. And so we were using these polytheistic practices. So basically my Monety sees Richard was being done. And his take on it is yes, these are polytheistic rituals in the same way that I think that they're polytheistic rituals, but that God had think defied them and transformed their meaning to be focused on himself.
Whereas I do not believe that I believe that these are purely demonic rituals. These were not think defied by God. And I see as proof that they were not sanctified by God through the fact that. One. Defenseless animals were being tortured in to, , they didn't work this in transference ritual. I didn't work.
It still recorded in the Bible that this ritual is a ritual done for [02:31:00] demons. For Satan. That is what's in transference. Is. , and obviously this isn't going to, you know, Jews are like, oh my gosh, how dare he say this? Consider this doesn't sit well with mainstream interpretations of Christianity either.
If I am worried about this. , and it's a much stronger and harder stance than my monities, rather than saying that. Oh, well this was just a period of transfer over. Instead what I see as the foundation of the Jewish tradition and later the Christian and Muslim traditions as not being a holistically, pure monotheistic foundation, but instead the intertwining of a predominantly. Canine religious policy. Mystic system and the IAE ball. All light worship as I call it in the true monotheistic practice. , one practice representing a form of true evil and the other practice representing true monotheism in a form of true good. [02:32:00] And that we are. You know, like in the, Josiah reforms, And in a way through the fact that the GSA reforms are recorded. Commanded to always be vigilant.
And on the hunt with, in scripture was in our traditional teachings for these demonic. Teachings and the demonic teachings, aren't there by accident. They're there for a reason. They're there to teach a things. For example, this one is there to teach us what a demonic ritual looks like and how to avoid it.
And it's very clearly marked to us as a demonic ritual because well, the Bible says it's being done for the demon is Hazel basically. , and because it doesn't work and because it involves animal sacrifice and because it involves idolatry and because it involves the worship of, , earthly metals and, you know, A lot of reasons.
It's pretty clearly to me, marked as a demonic. , But it's not an accident that it's there. You just need to, you know, Be actually paying attention when you're reading. [02:33:00] Oh, it says this is a ritual done for demons. Okay. Let's not do that. Ritual. Let's not have Jesus be a stand in for that ritual.
I note, I was talking about this with one of my friends and he was like, wait, so do you not believe that. G, this was the son of God who martyred himself. , you know, to save mankind. And I was like, no, of course I believe that it's just that. All of those words mean something different to me. , I believe that Jesus was a representation of what's expected of us as humans in our moments of martyrdom. Which is to say that we are the son of God and that we will eventually through intergenerational martyrdom. , alleviate the deficiencies or sins of mankind and allow mankind to elevate itself to the point where it can rejoin God. But what I definitely don't believe is that Jesus. The son of God was sacrificed to Satan. , to save man from his sin. No, that seems wrong to me because we know from the Bible that sin transference. , the only place [02:34:00] we find it happening is when the send transference is being sent to Azazel. It's never sent to God. There is no sin transference ritual for God. And why would there be it's so obviously an immoral thing to attempt to do. , and consider what it means. If you take this other interpretation, we know from the line, my Lord, my Lord.
Why have you forsaken me that Jesus would have been a non-voluntary sacrifice. I love that many Christians for 10. With a voluntary sacrifice when we know no, this was a non-voluntary sacrifice. So what we took a guy like the one sinless guy, and then God had him. And voluntarily sacrificed for your sins.
That's. F up. That is like, if you're like, that's the God I worship. I'm like, , , that sounds like a malevolent entity to me. And I can see why sin transference was done , for as Hazel and why the Bible clearly mark [02:35:00] set for us. So we don't make this mistake.
Now, if you're going to get really deep here, we're going to go into a different,
Famous Jewish scholar. This is a man called NEC or Ramban, , he was a prominent Jewish scholar, rabbi, a philosopher and physician who lived in the 13th century. , so again, Prominent figures here. I'm really going into this. The people are like, your, your ideas are not antisemitic. I don't want to get called.
Like, because if some people could say that this is a pretty, antisemetic take, , that these rituals, which are key to early Jewish history. We're in fact, polytheistic rituals. , so what does he say about these rituals? Right. Does he also agree with me? So he says, quote, This is the secret of the matter.
They used to worship gods, which are the angels making offerings to them, which were pleasing aroma to them, as it is said basically dot, dot dot. He reads it. Learning from the Bible here. And you need to contemplate the verse in the text, in the tradition., then.dot dot. The intention of the [02:36:00] scapegoat is not that it should be an offering from us to him as Hazel. , God forbid, but that our intention should be to do the will of our creator who commanded us. The analogy for this is like one who made a feast for our Lord and the Lord commanded the one, making the feasts give one portion to my servant at so-and-so. The one, making the feast is not giving anything to that servant, nor is he doing it in his honor, but everything is given to the Lord and the Lord gives a reward to his servant.
This one kept his commandment and did for the honor of the Lord. All that. He commanded him. Indeed the Lord in his compassion for the one, making the feast, wanted all his servants to benefit from it so that he would speak of him favorably and not unfavorably. This is the reason for the lot, for. If the priest had sanctified them verbally to the Lord and to Azazel, it would have been like worshiping him in bowing in his name, , but he would place them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of the meeting for both are a gift to the [02:37:00] Lord and he gave. From them to his servant, the portion that would come from him for the Lord. He cast lots for them in his hands, divided them, as it is said, quote, this lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof. , the Lord in quote. Even after the lot he would place. It before the Lord and say it is his, and we do not intend in sending it except for the will of his name, as it is said in verse 10 quote, but the goat on which the lot fell for his Hazel shall be set alive before the Lord to make atonement over him, to send him away, et cetera, in quote, therefore we do not slaughter it at all. Unclaimed translated, quote. The name of the Lord and to Azazel in quote for one is the name of the Lord and not to him.
The second is to Azazel and not the name of the nasal. , so basically. He's arguing here in a way that is really, really Jewish in argument. And isn't going to [02:38:00] make sense to most Christians. Which is to say he's arguing in very, very specific technicalities, which is a unique part of the Jewish faith.
I have found, , Catholics do this too. Sometimes Orthodox do this too, but you don't see this as much in the low church face versus a high church versions of Christianity. , like most of the Protestant groups don't do this. , and, and this that I'm talking about, if he's like, well, God got out of having a sacrifice that goat to a demon using a technicality and the way he was choosing the goat and the way that he was doing the wording. And, With low church stuff.
You just don't really believe in technicalities. Like why would the God of reality need to work in like IRS style technicalities to get us out of worshiping demons? He got to just told us don't worship the Damon, right? , what is the more logical interpretation of this story? Oh, we actually are supposed to be worshiping a demon, but you know, we're actually worshiping God through the demon and there's all sorts of technicality to prevent us from accidentally worshiping the demon.
When I talk about Jews and [02:39:00] technicality. I mean, I think nothing better shows this Jewish technicality thing, the net, the line that they spend, like a million dollars a year to keep up around New York. It's this little line that goes around the city and it's used, so that. All of this city counts is one place on the Sabbath because otherwise I'm probably miss explaining this a little bit, but Jews can explain it better. , but basically if you're an Orthodox Jew, , sir, taking items from one location to another location can count as labor. Which can get very hard to live during the Sabbath.
So some Jews believe that you can get around this. By putting up these aligns. , and everything within one of these lines is technically considered the same place that you can go and move things more broadly during the Sabbath because of this. And then there's me, you know, a Protestant who is like, I'm pretty sure God doesn't care about the fishing line. I'm pretty sure that God is interested in more sort of consequentialist [02:40:00] outcomes and very specific, oh, we had sex through a hole in the sheet, so therefore it doesn't count. So I'm pretty sure that when God was like, Hey, rest on the Sabbath. What he meant was, Hey, don't work every day of the week. You know, maybe take one day off. That seems like a reasonable thing for God to want from us in a reasonable request that would have improved people's quality of life. And again, I know that not all Jews do this. , this is a sub faction of Jews who go into these weird, really specific arguments, but there is almost no group of Christians who does this in the same way. Groups of Jews do this, or make these types of arguments., another thing that rabbi Lei. Or does here, which is really interesting. , is.
Well, quote, And they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices unto the goat demons. The word is compound and it has many companions by that. He doesn't use the word goat demons. He uses the word Serim.
The matter, it's clear, except if you investigate what is the matter of the separate intellects and spirits in the sacrifice.
And this is known regarding the spirits [02:41:00] in the wisdom of necromancy. And is also known regarding the intellect. In the hints of the Torah for one who understands their secret. And I cannot explain. For, we would need to muzzle the mouth of those who are wise in nature, who follow the Greek, who deny everything except what is tangible to him and who arrogant in his opinion, he and his wicked disciples, thinking that any matter that he did not comprehend with his reasoning is not true.
So let's talk about what he's talking about here. This is really interesting. Um, He's singing that we should actually be looking into these rituals different from the way I look into them. See, I look at these rituals and I see them as very clearly marked as demonic and satanic, and just like labeled that way.
This is a ritual for a demon. Don't do this stuff. And he looks at them and he goes, no, the reason that they're recorded and they're part of our tradition. Is not as a warning, but,
As something that we are supposed to. I investigate to [02:42:00] understand certain types of supernatural phenomenon and forces. , essentially investigate this thing, which he recognizes is associated with the demonic or what I would call the demonic. And we can get a better understanding of like the true nature of reality and spirits of the world. , where I'm like, no, no, no.
Just if it's demonic, it's bad and stay away from it now.
And I'm like very, very different way to approach things. , I, you know, when I reflect on, , which am I more comfortable with? Like who, what do I feel like in my heart of hearts is probably right. If the Bible's recording something and it's recording it as demonic, do I think it wants us to like, try to investigate it and understand it and empathize with it or do I think it wants to see it as emblematic of. The way that people can use even true faith systems. , like the Christian system and stuff like that to manipulate us into demonic acts and worship.
, I think the [02:43:00] latter, for sure. And, and do I think that it shows this intertwining. Of sort of original sin into the Abrahamic tradition. Yes. As well. , but it also gives us an easy way to spot. And disintermediate, , this. Original sin within the Abrahamic tradition. And I knew it. It's not just here. It's not like I'm just like taking one long and then building a whole idea out of this. You see this across early Jewish literature. Us, you can look at like the track tape getting 68 a and B. , which records that, , when Solomon was building the first temple, he used the help of the king of demons. Called, , as a modus. To our issue, Medina, depending on, are you saying anyway? The point being. King of demons. Helped, obtain the instrument that cut the stones.
The first temple was built out of this idea of the very, very early church, having an element of the [02:44:00] demonic. Woven into an element of the holy, because they were coming out of a polycystic tradition and they couldn't just. Snap over like that, you know, to a fully new type of worship is. Throughout. These early traditions. And they final note because somebody was mentioning this in one of our other comments. And I was like, we should probably clarify our stance in this. Which is to say in Christianity is salvation achieved through work or through faith alone. , and I think that this is a false dichotomy. , I think salvation is only achieved through Providence.
The elect who is among the elect is something that is decided by Providence. Your actions are determined both by your genetics and the events of your life. E there is no independent. You that's controlling you other than the things that you have experienced in your life that make up who you are, the thoughts that you've had in the past that were influenced by those things. That happened to you, which led to your actions. Also, we don't believe in a persistent [02:45:00] individual entity. So by that, what I mean is you cannot offload your thin to another being. I can't force my sin onto. An unwilling human sacrifice. Okay. Or a goat sacrifice. , I am always responsible for that sin in it. It's only through my own martyrdom that that sin can be alleviated.
, but. The iteration of me that send me when I'm sending that time is always lost to humanity. I can't make up for that time being lost. It's always lost the day that I spent playing video games or watching. , sports game or, indulging in something else. , that's time that I can never get back and I can never reach, contribute to humanity.
And I am a holistically lost to being a meaningful contributor to the act of salvation, the act of the uplifting of humanity. During that time period, I will never be able to turn the iteration of myself that with indulging and soon. Into a meaningful iteration of humanity. It's [02:46:00] completely gone. However, the iterations of me in the moments where I am being productive in a way that ends up contributing to the grand scheme of humanity, those iterations of martyrdom, those iterations of my individual sacrifice for the betterment of mankind.
Those iterations are always doing that and they are. Truly saved.
, and this is what we mean when we say something like.
Your past sin. It. Is made irrelevant. When you turn to Christ by that, what I mean is. There's nothing you can do about those moments in the past anymore. So there's no need to dwell on them. The only thing you have control over the things that you do in the future. Therefore it is a useful mental framing device to see your past sin. As being something that is wholly irrelevant.
Finally, I'd note if you're like, I really like what you guys are doing.
I want to donate to something We are getting the church registered the techno puritan Church is what [02:47:00] it's called, right? Yeah, the Techno Puritan Federation. The, the Techno Purin Federation. I love it because we were looking at a few other what was the few other names that it could have been?. The Jewish Federation, one of the Jewish groups was called The Federation and I was like, I like that so much more than like congregation or something.
The techno purs in Federation.
Young people from all over the globe are joining up to fight for the future. I'm doing my part. I'm doing my part. I'm doing my part. I'm doing my part, but if you want to donate, one of the things that you can do instead of actually 'cause like.
We don't want your money right now, right? It's nice. It helps. But, you know, is write us into your will. If you don't have any descendants and you want stuff like our, our stuff to work out or our goals to work out that's where the real advantage could be. But obviously only if you do not have any descendants we are not, this is more of the money is going to the U.
S. Government. Fine. Other than that it should go to people who you [02:48:00] personally care for. Yeah. We just noticed that, for example, the Audubon Society, which is right by where we live is So many old birdwatchers. It's insanely well funded. Yeah, I guess there's a lot of childless birdwatchers out there so they just wrote in the Audubon Society, and they're doing well.
Oh, that's great. Beautiful.
It tracked! It tracked! Our family is going to have so many inside jokes like that. And I can't wait. I can't wait. Yeah, I really think that people underestimate, and this was clear to me when I, you know, we were spending time with the family recently, that when you create a kid, you're creating an adult who's going to live a full life.
Yeah. I was around all my cousins, who I feel like just, you know, You know, 10 years ago, I saw them and they were little squidges and now they're all in like college and stuff and, and, and dating. And I'm like, Oh, you guys are like fully developed human beings that I [02:49:00] saw in like three slices throughout my life.
When people talk about bringing a new life into the world, it's typically they use words. Along the lines of, would you like to have a baby? Should we have a kid? So you're just picturing this low agency, dependent, small being instead of a full human life with the full range of human experiences who will have an impact on the world, who will feel joy and pain.
And yeah, one of my cousins was trying to convince me to not have a kid. And they were like, well, you know, you already have four and you're not going to be able to do things with them that are like big life experiences because you know, you're having so many. And I was like, yeah, but like, that's another kid.
That's not going to get to exist. I should've been like, no, that's like another person, another family member, another cousin of yours, who you have denied existence. So somebody else can go on more vacations. Like, but that's, you know, prenatalism is for the super fans. It's for the people who are [02:50:00] really into having a lot of kids and want to have a lot of kids and are set up to do that.
I don't think prenatalism is for people who want to have small families. So it's, it's not about shaming people for making the decision to choose. Non scalable family model. Prenatalism is just for the people who want to scale, who, who like the economies of scale to kick in after child number four.
Yeah, sorry, I'm trying to find which number we're on. I think we're on number nine. I'll just trust myself on this. Sorry about Hiccups McGee over here. She's going hard. I really do apologize for cute little baby. She is. You're the cutest. Yeah, you see your dad. And this one's going to be longer than others, so I will just jump in pretty quickly.
Power through, friend. Power through.
Just know Malcolm that I love you because if you're editing this and you're watching this, you are probably finding out. So this is my secret message to you that while I'm still asleep and you're waking up at 2am in the [02:51:00] morning to put together these episodes, I deeply love you and really appreciate the hard work that you're doing.
Cause I know that it's a lot and I know you put a lot into making this podcast work in addition to maintaining your full time job and everything else that you do. So just know, I'm very grateful to you. And I love you and I admire you a lot. You're very special and your kids are amazing too, which is a testament to you as a parent, because kids are the equivalent to like human versions of a drunk you, right?
You can't hide. All of your flaws with your children, they show up in your children. And so if your children, especially in their toddler format, turn out to be okay, people, it's probably a sign of your quality, both from a genetic and a behavioral standpoint. So also it is not just my opinion that validates the fact that you are [02:52:00] a fantastic and brilliant person.
It is the fact that. Our kids are pretty solid, fantastic people. So thank you, Malcolm. I'm going to stop recording now, but know that I love you.
Tract 8: Is Baalite Worship Being Mistaken for Christianity? (How Techno-Puritans Define Good)