Uncovering the Hidden Technological Messages in the Bible In this deeply thought-provoking episode, we dive into one of our most controversial track series yet, exploring the intersections of religious beliefs, modern science, and physics. We challenge traditional interpretations of the afterlife as presented in the Bible and propose a compelling re-interpretation aligned with a scientific understanding of reality. We delve into various biblical texts, discussing concepts such as soul, heaven, and hell, and how they may actually describe a future technological scenario where humanity's consciousness is preserved and raised. We address the paradigm shifts this interpretation brings, consider the implications for the problem of suffering, and explore how these ideas harmonize with scientific principles. This episode promises to be a paradigm shift, offering a fresh perspective on how religion can relate to science, and how the Bible may have predicted advanced technological concepts thousands of years ago.
Note: First we have a transcript made by notepad (to hopefully be more accurate) then the original write up (which was changed significantly in the reading). Some day I will create a master version of all these but as you see with this one I am already updating significant past beliefs. If you are looking for specific ancient Hebrew or Greek words I mispronounced go there.
Hello, it's Simone. Today is going to be one of our controversial track series where we talk about our religious beliefs. If you're new to the channel, that's why the gear was read this time. It is warning you this is going to be extremely controversial interpretations, maybe the most controversial of all of the track series we have done. Anything you want to say that we would add on to the beginning of this now that you've seen the whole thing?
Yeah, having having spent the vast majority of my life thinking the concept of an afterlife was both ridiculous and impractical, also not very plausible based on all the descriptions of it, you've just presented to me something that actually seems compelling, but also based in our current understanding of of physics and science. Definitely a paradigm shift for me. So, I'm glad you just a paradigm shift for me as well. And that's why I made it so long to make sure I left no argument untouched.
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, who knows, right? Our whole thing is if we're wrong, we want someone to be right. And that's why we're glad so many people disagree with us. But I think you're really on to something here. And I have fewer qualms with your arguments than I do with the typical arguments of most other religious traditions. Well, all other religious traditions that I've been introduced to and I've read about. these texts I've reviewed. So,
well, we'll see. Is this going to be my Rubyard take, Simone? My 10-hour video.
I mean, everyone has a moment
because in this one, we are going to go over what the I believe the Bible says happens to people after they die. What the Bible says about the human soul. And in both of these cases, it is not what the mainstream Christians would argue, which I think comes down from beliefs around like Allesium and and is much closer to Greek conceptions of what happens after death than original Christians or I think correct Christian conceptions or Jewish conceptions where the modern Christians believe that like you immediately go to heaven when you die which is a supernatural plane which actually creates a bunch of logical problems for other lines in the text and people can be like no that definitely happens there's definitely a heaven or hell like doesn't the Bible talk about like Gehenna and it's like well gehenna was a place like we know where it was and the way it's described in the Bible makes it pretty clear in those passages it is talking about a place or doesn't the Bible talk about humans having spirits or souls and I'm like actually if you go to the original words being used it's there it's usually saying something else like it's talking about breath or being alive like the life left his body not the spirit left his body um or you can be like but what about Lazarus what about Lazarus there was the time when Jesus talked about hell right in that one parable and it goes well unfortunately and we'll get into this in a lot more detail. The word used in the Lazarus parable was not show the Jewish hell. It was literally Hades, which creates a universe problem because that that unfortunately if he didn't mean that as a parable to get his story across to somebody with a Greek world view, it means that he has canonizing.
We're crossing the cannons. We're It's like now there's suddenly Gandalf is talking to Darth Vader and it's getting a little bit awkward. What's happening?
Please allow me to finish this because it's going to seemed like a bit of a jump. We see Thanos who was the villain teased at the end of the first Avengers movie. If he holds the reality gem, that means he can jump from different realities. This will be our link from to the Marvel universe from the Star Wars universe.
Is this an audience or a mosaic? Hey, how you doing? Looking good. Nice dress.
So, Hades, you finally made it. How are things in the underworld?
Well, they're just fine. You know, a little dark, a little gloomy, and as always, hey, full of dead people.
And there's a reason he didn't use the Jewish conception of hell to change the same parable. Okay,
so the point of the parable is if somebody was dead and they came back to life and said you should follow the rules that are set out by the old teachers, even then a person wouldn't believe them. The problem is if he framed this story with a traditional Jewish understanding of hell, the dead person would neither be conscious or in pain. So they would have no motivation to go back and warn their family. So he needed to use another culture's conception of hell to create this story.
Yeah. The plot can't work with the Jewish hell. I see.
Yeah. So it seems pretty clear that that wasn't what was intended by that, but we'll go into that in a lot more detail when you consider other parts that explicitly say that this stuff didn't exist, which are more commonly ignored.
Do you see Swiper?
Where this is?
Now, I went over a bit of this with you going into all this. Simone, what was your thoughts on this as I went into it with you?
Well, honestly, the problem is you explain all this to me and everything just makes sense. And I'm like, well, yeah, of course.
Because I didn't come into this with anything more than a pop culture understanding of Christianity, which never made sense. And yeah, also an atheist's understanding of Christianity, which I think is divorced from what most Christians attending church are sort of led to believe that like, oh, Christians believe that you go to heaven after you die. Kind of like whatever in the Simpsons, you know.
Yeah. And then it's like, but also, don't Christians believe that we're all brought back to life in a future kingdom? Like, why are we all brought back to life if heaven's already operational?
Yeah. And there, you know, and then I I hear about hell and and, you know, there's all these cartoon devils and people talking about hell and threatening hell and I I read the Divine Comedy and then I read the Bible and I'm like, where where is hell? I'm looking for hell. Where is hell? And it's not showing up and I'm getting really confused. So, when you come come at me and you explain things this way, my Oh, of course. Right. That now it makes sense. Of of course.
More than any of the tracks we've done so far, writing this one has for me really deepened my faith in this worldview because it harmonizes so well with a scientific understanding of reality. And it has given me a different perception on how religion can relate to science in a way that has made me rethink a lot of fundamental things I thought I knew about Christianity. M
which it turns out were middle-ag myths that were staple gunned into Christianity.
Yeah.
Yeah. It it to me it almost feels irresponsible that these myths have been per perpetuated for as long as they have been. How have people let this fly when it's almost like continuing to practice bloodletting and the application of leeches well past the development of the scientific method and our understanding that there's no evidence based support for it. It's so weird because you can go back to the Bible and I mean at least the clergy in in the height of the Catholic Church could reference doctrine and
well guys actually hell heaven it's
well and if you look at biblical scholars they'll be like yeah it does seem true that like ancient Jews didn't believe in a heaven or hell as we understand it. They believed that there was a what they would have called heaven is the world to come which is when everyone's raised from the dead which is a completely different concept and and that heaven was, I guess, in hell were revealed with Jesus. I guess you could say, but why would they be revealed with Jesus? And why did they just happen to not be recorded that they were revealed by Jesus? And why did they just happen to be remarkably close to the understandings of the afterlife that the dominant culture that this was spreading by Roman culture would have had, i.e. Tartarus and Allesium. So, we'll get to all that, but it makes a lot more sense when you drop the Tartarus and allesium heaven and heaven actually and and what the Bible describes doesn't just correlate with science. It's almost the most logical way you could view reality.
One thing we've heard from some religious leaders is that they agree with a lot of what you're saying and they're like, "Yeah, that's that's what most people who actually deeply study religion have concluded as well. It's just that we don't talk with the public about that because
they can't handle it." And
do you think that that's what's going on here? Do you think that that's why these views are not pervasive and mainstream despite the fact that if you really do a close reading of texts that this is what you're probably going to conclude.
Yeah, it is really interesting. Is it Yeah. Like super like Jewish history nerds, Christian history nerds who are like really into their faith, they typically don't bristle that much at what we say. They're like, "Oh, yeah, a lot of this stuff makes
Yeah. And Mormons, too." Yeah. Like several different religions. That's that's a crazy thing.
And it's the casual sort of Well, because there's sort of two religions that are superimposed. And we'll get into this, which one I'd call Sunday school Christianity. And then there's real Christianity, which is what's in the Bible. And Sunday school Christianity. I think people can be Sunday school Christians and have an incredible amount of conviction that they know what they're talking about when they are reading things that in some cases look like they may have been deliberately misinterpreted when you go back to the original words. We'll get into a few cases of that. And so they just haven't gone through like every word in important passages that edify like huge parts of their world perspective. So, in other words, it's kind of like pop science versus academic research science.
Yes. And then there's the urban monoculture person who's like trust the science and you're like, well, you actually go to the scientists like that all those scientists are wrong, they're not real. It's like, well, I know a lot of scientists and most of them not real.
So, anyway, let's dig into this.
Let's this track is called a god of the gas is a god of ignorance. Supernatural is a word that individuals use to denote things that can't be reliably measured, tested, or have predictable effects upon reality. They will claim that this makes these things above the quote unquote real things. But I think this framing is easily seen through as coke. Many used to believe heaven was a place in the stars. But then science got better and we could see the solar system. So something that was a real place became a supernatural one. Supernatural is all the stuff science and technology pushed off the table of reality. This is where the god of the gaps comes from. Science move in and explain things like how we make decisions, how love is created, and as it encroaches, the purview of the soul retreats further and further. When instead what we should be saying is the thing the Bible describes as human sentience, life, our emotions, we understand that thing now. That thing is the brain and not an incaporeal soul. But sure, Clearly admitting this would cause problems with the Bible, right? There is no way somebody writing between the fifth and 2nd century CE would have known that unless they had divine guidance. Well, let's turn to Ecclesiastes. Quote, and this this absolutely shocked me when I read it. As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals. The same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so does the other. All have the same breath. Now, this is a word used for souls in many other parts of the Bible.
Ah,
humans have no advantage over animals. I I love how you translates to breath there, but then like later in the same vers translate to spirit.
H
everything is meaningless. All go to the same place. All come from dust and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upwards if the spirit of the animal goes down into earth. So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them? So let's break down what's saying here. First, as for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. That's very clear. Okay. Here it is stating in no uncertain terms that man does not have a soul that is different from the souls of animals. But not just that, God tests us to make sure that we know that and to deny that it's a sin because that's to deny God's will. Okay, sure. But we go to heaven after death, right? Then quote, "Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals. The same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same spirit, breath, whatever word you want to use here. Humans have no advantage over the animals. End quote. Yes, it's super clear on that point. Now, the next line is really interesting and it is mistransated in the version I am using. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place. All come from dust and to dust all return. End quote. Now, the word that is translated here as a meaningless can be translated as meaningless, but it also means transient or eancent which is much better in context which means that what is really being said here is your existence as a human is a fleeting one and when you die you become dirt okay but what if you disagree what if you think you know more than god well a convention that's established here in the text is to say who knows x like because it says this right afterwards for who can bring them to see what will happen after them end quote to point out some type of information that God knows and man does not. So whenever it says who knows X, it's saying God knows X. Okay. So then if you after reading that first part are like no man definitely goes up to heaven and animals definitely go down below then it says quote who knows if the human spirit rises upwards and if the spirit of the animal goes down to earth end quote. Basically predicting this kind of heresy and telling the person committing it to knock it off, pointing out that they don't know as much as God does. So, it gives you the answer up front. The same thing happens to you that happens to animals. You have the same type of soul as animals. God specifically is testing to make sure you know this to deny this as a sin. And then it says, "Do you think you know more than God human? Who would know this? I God would know this." Then it goes on into what can only be thought of as the perfect technopuritan mantra, further edifying our beliefs. Quote, "So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them end quote. As we have pointed out, your emotional state and relation to things like work is fundamentally under your control and to indulge in a negative emotional state is a sin. Approach work was a plum. This tract will go into the Sunday schoolification of the idea of a soul that is separate from our brains and bodies and the concept of heaven. The Bible is extremely clear as we will be going over your soul is not separate from your brain. And after you die, if you serve God well, you are raised again with a different type of body at some point in the future. Heaven and hell, as they are taught in public schools, there is the heaven, the world to come. They are not Christian or Jewish conceptions, but pagan Greek conceptions, which are stapled onto Christianity by people who wanted to believe the ancient Greek scholars were better than divine revelation. But also, this is kind of obvious when you think about what Sunday school Christians as we will call them believe. So ancient Jews and what is written in the Bible say that when you die in the future your body is resurrected but somehow different. Ancient Greeks believed that what happened when you died is if you were favored by the gods your soul was taken to Alisium and if not it was taken to Tartarus. Well early Christians attempted to staple these two beliefs together and ended up creating a rather similar junction. In this conjunction, we have both people going to either heaven or hell, but then also everyone comes back to life with different bodies. Like, what? So, one day, God just shuts down heaven and reopens on earth. It's like he goes around telling all the souls in heaven. And he's like, "Come on, guys. It's moving day." Small amount of self-reflection. It's fairly obvious this belief is a childish piecing together of two views about the afterlife. One Christian/Jewish and one pagan. It does not even make Since why God would do this? If all the people he plans to res resurrect are already in heaven or will soon die and go to heaven. Is their new revised state in any way significantly better than being in heaven? If it is, then heaven is not heaven. And if it isn't, then what's the point of it? So if it is true that this is like a significantly better existence or fuller existence than heaven, then what heaven is it's just the waiting room until the real afterlife can be built. This see strictly worse than just dying and then waking up in the sparkling of an eye or in a moment from your perception. Waking up with no perception of time having passed in the kingdom of heaven or in the kingdom of God. Right.
Right. Yeah.
And what about the experience of being in this state? If souls experienced time in this intermediate state, some people would have to wait thousands of years while others would wait only moments before resurrection. This creates an inequality in the experience that's never mentioned inript. If souls don't experience time in this state, which many people say because they go like when you're with God, it's like time passes really quickly, then it's functionally identical to being immediately resurrected from the perspective of the deceased. So why did he make the secondary heaven?
Is this what happens when you die?
This is what happens when you die. That is what happens when he dies. And that is what happens when they die. It's all very personal.
Why would God create an elaborate intermediate state only to later resurrect everyone in bodies? What theological purpose to serve. Why isn't this ex crucial cosmological feature explicitly described in scripture? And it's all silly anyway because prophecies in the Bible are almost exclusively, if not exclusively, temporal in nature, describing things that happen in the future, not that are currently happening in other plains of reality or far away places. That would make this totally inconsistent with the way the rest of the Bible works. And now, if I was to explain these problems differently. The traditional supernatural interpretation has to reconcile two seemingly contradictory biblical concepts. The idea that believers are quote immediately present with the Lord in quote upon death to Corinthians 5:8. And the conception of a bodily resurrection at the end of time, 1 Corinthians 15. This creates problems because if souls are already with God in heaven, why is bodily a resurrection necessary? Why would souls need to quote unquote come back to
Yeah, that always struck me as so weird. Like creepy zombieish, you know, like we
those are gone. Like let's let it go.
Yeah.
What happens to the experience of time for souls in this intermediate state? The technological interpretation resolves these tensions by recognizing that from different reference frames, both can simultaneously be true without contradiction. From a dying person's perspective, death occurs. The next conscious experience they have is resurrection in a new form. This is not perceived as a gap or a waiting period. This matches Paul's description of being quote changed in the twinkling of an eye end quote. From God's perspective, existing outside normal temporal constraints, the person's consciousness/information can be preserved at the moment of death. This information can be used to reconstruct them at a new form at any point. No intermediate quote unquote holding area or waiting room is needed. The consciousness is effectively quote unquote with God immediately while being resurrected quote at the last day. End quote. The interpretation eliminates the need for complex theological explanations of intermediate state, aligns with biblical descriptions of death as quote unquote sleep, matches the Jewish understanding of resurrection without requiring Greek concepts of immaterial souls, better explains why the Bible never describes the details of this intermediate state, which is a huge effing problem if it exists, resolves the apparent contradiction between the immediate presence with God and the future bodily resurrection. It is similar to how someone under general anesthesia has no perception of time passing. From their perspective, the operation is instantaneous, even though hours may pass in the external world. This technological reading allows both an immediate presence with God in a future resurrection to be true without requiring supernatural explanations or immediate states. All right, Simone, thoughts?
Now, it finally makes sense. So many things, the the contradictions are gone, you know, assuming we're not getting completely terrible translations.
Well, and no, later in this piece, the reason why this episode's going to be long is we're going to go over every single line in the Bible that could be used to argue that there isn't an immaterial that there is an immaterial soul or that you go to heaven or hell after death.
Crossing those tees and dotting those eyes. All right.
Oh, no. Every single one. Like when Jesus is like, "Oh, you know, you'll be in paradise with me today, my friend." Except paradise didn't have that meaning back then. Paradise had a different meaning back then. But we'll get to all of this. I'm going to be very very thorough in arguing this. The other thing about this is it makes not it doesn't just solve the biblical contradictions. It makes the Bible the most logical prediction of what's going to happen in the future in a really weird way that I hadn't realized till I was putting this together with our current understanding of the world.
This is why I find claims from Sunday school Christians that I am not a quote unquote real Christian because I believe what the Bible says and they believe what people authority told them the Bible says so laughable. God warned us he would test us so that we may know that we are not different from animals and they failed that test and worse they are bragging about it. Oh sorry for those who are new here. Hi we are technopuritans and we believe that God revealed in the Bible is the entity that mankind eventually becomes millions of years in the future and that the Bible is actually pretty clear about this. Now before Before we get too deep into scripture to the skeptics who want to say, "Well, that's all still pretty far-fetched, why and how would a future all powerful entity descended from us raise people from the dead?" I would counter that if you actually think through it, such an entity would almost inevitably raise people from the dead. So, think about it. Millions of years from now, our descendants have transcended to become something both benevolent and nearly all powerful and with the ability to project itself backwards in time. It would feel for all the people who suffered, died, and sacrificed themselves for humanity for it, but also know that if it interfered too much with the timeline by removing suffering, it would negate itself and its ability to remove their suffering. So, what's really cool here, and we'll go into this more, is this also solves the problem of suffering, which is to say, why does God allow for suffering if God's an all powerful entity? So, what's the next best thing it could do? Well, it would be a near trivial effort for it to grab the consciousnesses of those it favored when they died, given it can project itself at any point in time in history and place them within a virtual environment that represents the perfect reward for them.
And I just want to hammer this home because when when Malcolm at first was like, yeah, the the thing is that God, which we see is the future of humanity in millions of years, it will just essentially digitize us and and give us a digital existence, an in afterlife. I was like, well, yeah, but what about Usi, you know, the guy who we found in ice who died so many so many so many thousands of years a Well, not thousand, I don't know how many years ago. A lot of years ago, a long time ago. And then, duh, they could just go back at any time and quickly sample and sequence everyone and get everything they need to absolutely take them at the moment at which they passed or an amalgam of their consciousness throughout their lifetime. and give them the ideal afterlife in a digital realm. It's I mean
I said I think that the entity relates to time differently than we do, relates to space differently than we do, probably relates to information differently than we do. And it has the ability to see and interact with us. Uh but it's it's it it's um ability to do that in radical ways is limited in that it would deny its own existence and then remove any of the good that it was creating. Um but that this did reveal the Bible to us. It did well, we'll get into this in just a second here. You only have to assume three things for this to be a likely scenario. The first is that time is in some way malleable, which we basically already know. I mean, time is malleable by gravity. Time can be projected backwards into through quantum events. The question is how macro can those be and how precise can those be? I would assume a super advanced entity. Pretty macro and pretty precise. The second question is does humanity keep surviving? keep improving into the future. And if we don't, then what's really the point of anything we're doing now? But if we assume that we're in a timeline that matters, where humanity does keep improving, well, then humanity is eventually going to become ultra ultra ultra advanced. And so an ultra advanced thing that can interact with time in that way, then the only final question is, is this ultra advanced iteration of humanity in any way compassionate? And I guess I would say that, well, we're in a bad timeline if it turns out it's not. So again, our actions don't really matter because they're going to culminate in some evil demonic super entity. But in scenarios where humanity does continue on a good path and does continue to improve, this happens in all of those scenarios of all humans being resurrected within virtual environments. But it's wild that the Bible could have predicted that. In fact, why would it not do this given both how easy and low effort it would be for such an entity? Moreover, does this not perfectly align with what God revealed he would do, raising us in immortal bodies that are somehow similar to but fundamentally different from the ones we have today. How else would you describe a virtual body to someone thousands of years ago?
Yeah of I mean of course you would be like yeah you you go to we'll call it heaven. It's like a garden. It's really nice.
It's really nice. That's what paradise meant was a walled garden by the way. And what's really interesting about this interpretation is it explains wording that we're going to go into that was used when they talk about heaven in these bodies because they're actually very clear that in in the words that are used. It's not clear when you translate it to English that these bodies are not spiritual supernatural bodies. They are not bodies made up of like just our soul. They are a different type of physical body that is somehow closer to air but not exactly air. And that's exactly the way I would describe a virtual body to somebody during this time period. But what got me is I was like it's inevit able that if an all powered entity comes to exist in the future that relates to time differently than us that it would create these it would say well I can't get rid of suffering but I can do the next best thing which is to give good entities that suffered for the future whatever world they would want as a virtual environment okay also consider and consider how that works with the problem of like suffering it can say well you know they might have suffered a lot in life but I can give them like infinitely more like a million times more like pleasant memories in the recreation in the the heaven or in the God's kingdom. But we'll get to this because it's really weird how much the language of the Bible when you go to do the original words that were translated described things like a simulation better than they describe the way that the medieval people translated them when they were trying to translate them into English and stuff like that, which is really fascinating.
Also consider how much more ethical this is. than the various Sunday school Christian and corrupted modern Jewish interpretations. So what? We die and then all of our souls have to hang out in a cosmic waiting room for thousands of years and the Bible never sought to explain how this thing worked or what it was like despite it being a super important part of reality's metaphysical metaphysical cosmology. Or the Bible literally explained the whole thing and people are willfully ignoring it. You die and then millions of years in the future you are brought back in a simulation but from your perspective no time would have passed, no waiting room. room. No, just snap dead back. Okay. Consider lines like, quote, "Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." End quote. Or for we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down, that is, when we die and leave this earthly body, we will have a house. in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands." End quote. Now, that's a really interesting term there. Did you know that it said that the eternal body is made by God
and not by human hands? Yeah.
Why Why would you assume that alternately the body might have been made by human hands? Humans don't make human bodies, do they?
I mean, yeah, they do.
No, they don't make it with their hands. They make it with their wounds.
Yeah.
They don't make it with their hands. That's because it's describing a body that is technological in nature. And it is saying that God creates this body, not human hands that fashion this body, which is aing weird thing to note. Not by human hands. Why is it saying not by human hands? Why would anybody assume if it was a spiritual or supernatural body that it was made with human hands? Right? I will note a plausible explanation from this comes if you go to the original text which is it is using a tint as a metaphor and then the translation I was using added the line about a body so it was clear that the tint was a metaphor for the body. The point still stands why is it specifying that it wasn't made with human hands when it could have used other words that would have worked better with the metaphor. But you could say well because the metaphor was about tent it makes sense to talk about it in terms of human hands. Okay. Now does that not sound a lot closer to the logical future I have predicted than the bizarre pagan fanfiction of Sunday school Christians. But it gets worse than that. As this insistence, I would argue, is the core reason for Christianity's current fragility and massive amount of deconversion. Rather than when the Bible seems to contradict science and what we know about the world, saying, "Well, I guess we just don't understand this part of the Bible yet," which is what I think we should be doing.
Yeah.
They instead divide the world into the supernatural where nothing can challenge their intuition. and the natural where science begins.
In a world of advanced science, if the only things that your religion covers are the supernatural, you have already lost. You're just setting a playing field where it's like encroaching on your territory more and more and more every day. I would note here that this really changes how we think about God in that we believe in a real God, not a supernatural God. Now, a lot of people who believe in a supernatural God would say, "No, quote, Supernatural means extranal, more than real. End quote. To which I would ask them to explore all of the other things they would use the word supernatural to talk about, whether it's vampires, werewolves, witches, magic, or poltergeist. A big dinosaur or a little dinosaur? Oh, just a skeleton, huh? Which way was it heading?
Wait a sec. What was chasing you in the park? The park bench was chasing you. I
What?
Wait a second.
Lieutenant, I think you better talk to this guy.
I'm busy here. It's some doc supervisor down at Pier 34.
What's the problem?
He says the Titanic just arrived.
You know as well as I do that those things are the purview of children's stories. You know as well as I do that those things are for the mind of a child or the enabled superstitious mind of the forest hermit. The quote unquote super prefix to supernatural is the same one we use with superstitious. From our perspective, those that pray to a supernatural god are praying to a fairy tale and a part of them knows it. They know that they don't believe in a real god. God is not a spiritual being, but a mechanistic one. Note here, the reason I say mechanistic rather than physical is because I somewhat doubt that God relates to physicality and time in the way that we do. And I would point out here that if God is real, like whatever god you believe in, if he's real, then the thing that he is using to manipulate our timeline is technology. It's not magic. Things that can manipulate physical space are forms of technology, or at least real ones are. Ones that we don't understand, we call magic, but presumably God understands it. So from his perspective, it's technology. We originally described our religion as secular Calvinism as I think this is the core religious innovation of Calvinism. Many of the attempts to refortify religion for our world of science do so by surrendering to science and redoubling on spiritualism and the idea of other worlds beyond this one. An alternate reality beyond our own. I am not denying that such a world exists, but if it does, it is for us to explore with science, physics, particle colliders, not look for in old books. If that world exists, it can be used for faster than life travel. Free power. It's not that science would not have a reason to probe it. It craves purity. It devours purity, it seems to me.
What the hell is this thing made out of?
All right, fine. I might have used a few unorthodox parts.
Just Tell me one.
An orphan.
Did you say an orphan?
Yeah, a little orphan boy.
It's powered by a forsaken child.
Might be kind of. I mean, I didn't use the whole thing.
Instead of retreating to the supernatural, we posit religion's purview is everything we do know. Our jobs, our daily lives, our history, industry, civilization, economics, physics. When you retreat from The real fortifications built out of supernatural spiritualism based on the world of superstition acts as a flimsy moral fortress and can easily be corrupted by the urban monoculture values like utilitarian ethics. As an aside here, this is why the churches fell first. When somebody tells me, why don't you just go back to normal Christianity? I point out to them that seven out of 10 of the closest churches to me are institutions which fly the colonizers flag, the corrupted fly pride flag, the very sign of urban monocultural conquest from their doors. And the same is true if you live near any city. The churches fell first. They fell before the companies. And anyone who is not asking why looking for the weakness that allowed this is running over the hill against the urban monocultures gatling gun imp placement. And they will be torn down just like the others. You're the idiot in the horror movie who is still nailing wooden planks over the windows after it has been confirmed that the call came from inside the house. You're just ensuring your own doom. The rot, the core rot of the urban monoculture uses is spiritualism. Instead of indulging in spiritual exploration as you would an orgy, what you need is spiritual fortification. Your spirit and will must be made hard as iron, reinforced and tempered. So before I go further, any thoughts?
Proceed.
So how does secular religion differentiate from theological religion. Theological religions are left with two choices as they relate to science. They can claim as their domain the things not yet explored by science or they can claim that science is wrong. This puts them in a very dangerous world where science powers like the very thing you're using to watch this. Instead of retreating at the encroachment of science, technopiritinism does the opposite. The realm of technopuritan truths is scientific truth. Instead of focusing on the things science does not fully understand yet, that is where we point scientists. The things science is yet to fully understand are the very things they should be most focused on studying. The realm of scientific uncertainty and ignorance is not some bastion we hide behind. We are on the other side with the scientists and the battering ram trying to break down those walls. And here I should know what I mean real scientists, not the urban culture, monoculture corrupted academics. What we believe is a direct inversion of the older systems. It is not the things that science has yet to explain that are for us to offer explanation, but those are the domain of science. We instead focus on imbuing what we do understand about our reality with meaning and creating a larger framework which navigates and stitches science and tradition into a unified reality. To understand what we mean by this, you can look at how we relate to the concept of non-material souls that can separate from our bodies. Someone might say, Do you believe in one? And I would say that's a question for scientists. I don't know whether one exists, but I think the evidence and the Bible right now would both suggest that one does not exist. And therefore, I assume one does not exist. Note, this does not mean a soul does not exist. A soul in a historic context was just our decisions, emotions, thought, perceptions, etc., which I'd see as an emergent property of our physical brain. And what I should do with that soul is I I study religion. I remember and and this is like suppose you know you go to a tribe and you're explaining wetness to them and you're like well actually the way water interacts with itself we understand that now it's like a bunch of molecules and they have like different uh polarity and that causes them to like bind and create this fluid that you call water. And they go, "Oh, so you you don't believe in wetness?" And I'm like, "No, no, no. I believe in wetness. I'm just saying that wetness is a other thing that we know how it works.
Yeah.
And they're like, "But that means you don't believe in wetness because wetness is no, I do believe in wetness. I do believe in a soul, but I just believe it's something that we understand." Okay. To an extent and we can come to understand it further. I remember in one of our past videos, someone was like, "How can God know you before you were conceived if you don't have a soul that exists before you were conceived?" Again, remember we think of God as an entity that exists outside our time and thus is omnipotent. And a God that doesn't exist outside of time is omnipotent, which is really weird that they would argue that he but anyway, knowing all things past, present, and future. We stand on the timeline, so everything is either in front of us, observable to us at that given moment, or behind us. God stands above it, looking down at it, so everything is observable to him in any given moment. This perspective is both biblically aligned given not only that we know from the dream of that God's kingdom is a time and not a place. But also throughout old Jewish scriptures, God's kingdom is called ha which translates to the world to come or the coming world. Now I bring us back to this line because you can see how silly the other interpretation looks when contrasted with ours. So when you have a line like I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb and you can either do what we have done and say ah that obviously means that either predestination is real and God can see the future. God exists outside time or our God is looking in the future back at us. Or like an effing crazy person, you can make up a waiting room where God is hanging out with all the souls of every potential human just to explain this one line. And yet nowhere else mentioned in the Bible does God feel the need to elucidate on such an important space. And it's even a silly space beyond that. It's like that Mormon weight room where like all of the kids waiting to be born are like hanging out.
Hi, I'm Todd
Richards. I know
we're in love. And um so we were wondering if it's possible if you could put us down in the same town,
right?
Or the same street.
At least at the same time, if possible.
How about the same family?
That would be great. Yeah.
No, no, no.
Why are you positing this entire additional supernatural realm? Catholics are by far the worst. This for example there will be a line in the Bible about praying for the dead and another about post death purification and instead of saying something like ah it's clearly talking about those people who will be raised in the future they invent an entire metaphysical realm never mentioned in the Bible purgatory and then because the moral issues that realm they just invented introduces like babies and those who haven't heard of Christianity they invent yet another metaphysical realm also never mentioned in the Bible limbo from our perspective Catholicism is just a crack ship fanfiction to try to combine Christianity and Roman paganism.
Yeah. The problem is adding in all this stuff almost to us reflects a fundamental lack of respect for the actual religion and and source material
because you don't need to add these things. It it It's elegant and beautiful by itself. Adding them suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the religion itself.
I I think yeah. Well, I think more than that, it suggests a fundamental disrespect for what's actually written in the Bible and an elevation of the Greek thinkers. As I know when I often get in debates with Catholic priests, I'll often go to like Aristotle and other Greek thinkers because to them and I respect this act. I I do respect this about Catholicism. I think we need to understand that the Greek thinkers had a of interesting ideas which helped develop and create Christianity and advance it beyond the Judaism of the past. However, I think the domain of ideas that they got super wrong was the supernatural ideas, their gods, their pantheons, Hades, Allesium, all of that that was the wrong part. Okay. And I think that they show a fundamental that they respect those thinkers for I guess you could almost call it their they sort of see the Jewish thinkers as like plebeium in comparison and those thinkers is more I guess you could say sort of like aristocratic or higher class and therefore it's okay to sort of poo poo what the Jews thought where this tradition was evolving out of for the more sophisticated ancient Greek thinkers
but I think God chose J God could have chosen the ancient Greeks as his chosen people and he did why and and this is one of the biggest questions and we get to this in another track why did God choose the Jews were like the Jews different genetically no were like the Jews like better than other people no were they uniquely powerful or situated or educated. No, they were definitely technologically and artistically behind the Greeks. So why did he choose them as his chosen people? It must be because of what they believed. Meaning that they had beliefs that were closer to true than the ancient Greeks had.
Mhm.
But we go into that more in other things. Okay. So now we need to go through all the parts in the Bible that could be used to argue that the Bible claims that the soul is separate from the human body or that heaven exists as a place separate from God's future kingdom. Okay,
here I would note I have undoubtedly made numerous mistakes whether it is in the word translation or in the interpretation of specific verses. Uh I am trying my best. If I made mistakes and you point them out, I'm likely going to do a separate one of these so that I can improve them. However, when judging the efficacy of the overall argument, I would ask you to not look for individual lines or word translations where I am wrong, but focus on the plurality of the argument. Ag, I love it when people are like, "Oh, here you made a mistake. Here you made a small mistake. I don't love it when people are like, "Here, you made a small mistake, therefore your entire argument is wrong." What you will quickly realize is that most of them are mistransations that translate a Jewish word meaning something else to soul or spirit.
So, let's go through the various words that are mistransated here.
And well, and on what grounds are you saying that the translation is incorrect?
Because these words are used in other parts of the Bible to mean other things. Like remember, I said that this one word was used to mean, oh, our breath is the same as animal breath and then later they'll use the same word to mean spirit and it's like wait why why didn't you say our our spirit is the same as the animal spirit that causes a bit of problems with your world belief the Jewish word ruhak which means spirit and wind or breath it can also mean air or direction it is often associated with a mood or emotional state then we have nahesh which is associated with appetite desire and life force used in contexts involving blood and vital essence can mean a living being or a person. Then you have shama related to the word for breathing. Oh, I think that was the word that was used there. It's it's used very um associated with divine inspiration or intellect. Then you have I literally meaning uh living or life. It can also mean animal or beast in some context. So if you're using that word to mean soul, it definitely means that animals have a soul. Then you have yikada which means singular or unique. It's related to the word Achad meaning won. Okay, so now you might be thinking, wait, did the Jews not have a word for soul? Ding, ding, ding. Tell them what they won. This is particularly evident in Genesis 2:7, which is often translated as, quote, "God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul." End quote. But the Hebrew literally says, quote, "Man became a living nephesh," quote, or a living person. suggesting humans don't have a soul. They are a living being. The crucial distinction here is that it doesn't say quote and God put a nephesh into man end quote or quote and man received a nephesh. Instead, the text literally says quote and the man became a living nephesh end quote. The construction suggests that being a nephesh is what you are, not something you have. The Bible could have had man be a living thing. and then God breathing sentience into him. But it didn't. He breathed life into him. This is reinforced by how the same phrase nephesh chahai is used elsewhere in Genesis to describe animals. For example, in Genesis 1:20 when describing sea creatures and birds and in Genesis 1:24 when describing land animals. They are also called nephesh chahai. This suggests that in the original Hebrew understanding that nephesh isn't a spiritual essence separate from the body. It's not unique to humans. Animals also nepheshai. It's more about being a complete living creature. It's something you are, not something you possess. The modern translation as quote unquote soul carries Greek philosophical implications that weren't present in the original Hebrew concept. They literally didn't have the concept. It's more accurate to understand this passage as saying, quote, "And the man became a living being/ creature. end quote. Similar to how we might say, quote, I am a person, end quote, rather than quote, I have personhood, end quote. And what's important to note here, and we'll get into this more, there are many other ways that this could have been worded. And it was intentionally not worded that way. It was worded to exclude the possibility that the soul and man are two different things, which is fascinating to me. Now, it's translated. Hear, you seem to be loving me getting passionate about this. It's fun.
But can you like this is wild to me. Like this is why I believe the Bible is divinely inspired because it aligns so much with modern technology even in the face of those who would corrupt it with false interpretations. It aligns with exactly what science has shown which shows to me remarkable foresight when other traditions of the time did believe in a soul that was different from the body.
Yeah.
And Jesus as an ancient Jew would have believed this as well. Quotes that people tried to use to argue Jesus believed in a soul separate from the body or a heaven that was not God's kingdom in the future are universally modern translations that ignore what Jesus actually said. Take something like Jesus telling the prisoner on the cross, quote, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." End quote. Okay, so today paradise is often used to talk about heaven or a place of endless pleasure because of that line. Yeah, we see paradise today as a place of in pleasure because people associated that line with Ellesia. But in both ancient Greek and the ancient Hebrew meaning of the word paradise. It just means a garden. Now to speak of a garden when you are dying, it would be much more sane to assume he meant a cycle of life and death or a place of endless pleasure. Because I'll tell you what I don't associate with gardens is a place of endless pleasure. But what I do associate with them is places of life and death. Now does it make more sense to assume that Jesus meant what he said or invent an entirely different metaphysical plane that the Bible doesn't appear to think is important enough to give us any information about. But how do I know he definitely wasn't talking about being with him in the Christian Sunday school understanding of heaven that very day? Well, because Jesus didn't rise for three more days from the Christian Sunday school understanding. So, their own understanding negates that inter retation of that inferring that he'd be there with him that very day. And you could also say, well, even if he did mean a piece of endless pleasure and he could have been from his perception, he'll be there with him that very day because again, they'll be raised instantaneously from that person's perception.
Yeah. As far as you're aware, it's very much like in those sci-fi books where you have a backup.
Yeah.
And then you get killed and then you just
get, you know, reinstalled into a new body or like in a game, you respawn. There's no there's no gap.
And I want to be clear here, even the Bible itself does not usually translate the word parades to mean a place of pleasure. In Neaheen 2:8, it refers to the king's forest. In Ecclesiastes 25:5, it's translated as orchards. In the Song of Solomon 4:13, it's described as or translated into a orchard of pomegranates. So, this itself is a weird way to translate the word paradise from the perspective of the Bible. Now, when I put this tract into an AI and ask what the weakest part of the argument was it initially said it was under the impression that the use of the word paradise to mean the way we think of it today was already pretty common around Jesus's time. So I asked it to find a single contemporary source that used it in that way and this is what it returned. The interesting thing is that a thorough examination of contemporary sources actually strengthens your argument rather than weakens it. The word paradise for adissios in Jesus's time period was primarily used to refer to literal gardens especially walder enclosed gardens. This comes from old Persian paradesia meaning walled enclosure. It's used this way in xenopon's writings about the Persian gardens. It appears in the Septuagent Greek Old Testament to describe the garden of Eden, specifically royal or noble gardens. Joseph uses it to describe the gardens of wealthy Judeans. Appears in documents describing herald's gardens used in descriptions of Persian rural parks. Agricultural and cultivated spaces. Administrative texts refer to paradise in the context of managed orchard used in property documents to distin cultivated from a wild land. What's particularly interesting is that I can't find a clear contemporary example of quote unquote paradise being used to mean a supernatural afterlife realm in the way modern Christianity uses it. That metaphorical extension to paradise to mean quote unquote heavenly realm appears to have developed later. Gotcha. Now, here's where it gets worse. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls, so for people who don't know, the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by a sect of Jews shortly before Jesus lived. Uh When paradise was mentioned, it is typically in the context of a historic garden of Eden, future restoration of a Eden-like conditions on earth or metaphors involving literal gardens. This historical context actually strengthens your argument that Jesus's use of the word paradise would have been understood in the terms of gardens and cycles of life and death rather than a supernatural realm. If this is shocking to you, I think this snippet from a Times article does a good job talking through how ancient Jews related to the concept of an afterlife. And I would remind you before reading this because it does not do a good job of explaining what Jesus and ancient Jews did believe was that God would raise righteous people from the dead at some point in the future in the kingdom of God. And the the place we would call heaven, eg when we say heaven doesn't exist. We don't we mean like the supernatural heaven doesn't exist. The real heaven does exist. I am quoting from the times here so that you can see that what I am saying is not some crazy screed, but the mainstream understanding of biblical scholars, just one that has been ignored by the Sunday school Christians who cling to their pagan witchcraftlike understanding like a child clinging to a blanket for security when it is the very thing corrupting their hearts. And so you might think that I'm being crazy or stretching here. So this is a quote from the Times in an article on what Jesus would have thought of heaven and hell.
And mind you, the Times, urban monoculture, I understand corruption. The point I'm making with this is these arguments are what like people who study the Bible for a living often believe about this stuff if they are not already bought in to a Christian or Jewish theological interpretation if they're the you know more like secular type of theologian. Neither Jesus nor the Hebrew Bible he interpreted endorse the view that departed souls go to a place of everlasting pleasure pain. Unlike most Greeks, ancient Jews traditionally did not believe the soul could exist at all. Apart from the body. On the contrary, for them, the soul was more like the quote unquote breath. The first human God created Adam began as a lump of clay. Then God breathed life into him. Genesis 2:7. Adam remained alive until he stopped breathing. Then it was dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Ancient Jews thought, so like breath in this context just means life. And then when you lose life, you decay.
Ancient Jews thought that was true of us all. When we stop breathing, our breath doesn't go anywhere. It just stops. So to the quote unquote soul doesn't continue on outside the body subject to postmortem, pleasure or plain.
It just doesn't exist any longer. This is accept and is raised again in the future.
The Hebrew Bible itself assumes that the dead are simply dead, that their bodies fly and there is no consciousness ever again. It is true that some poetic authors, for example, in plasms use the mysterious term shiel to describe a person's new location, but in most instances, shiol is simply a synonym. for tomb or grave. It is not a place where someone actually goes.
Now, here I note that there was shortly before Jesus's time some interpretations of Judaism that did begin to to contradict this article believe that Shaw was a place, but that was a fairly new idea and not all rabbis would have believed it this time. In traditional English versions, he occasionally does speak of quote unquote hell. For example, in the warnings in the sermon on the mount, anyone who calls another a fool or who allows their right eye to hand in sin will be cast into quote unquote hell. Matthew 5:22 2930. But these passages are not referring to quote unquote hell. The word Jesus uses here is gehenna. The term does not refer to a place of eternal torment, but to a notorious valley just outside the walls of Jerusalem, believed by many Jews at the time to be the most unholy, god-for-saken place on earth.
So just like a bad neighborhood.
Well, more like a trash dump where animal carcasses were born, but yes, like a very bad place. lived and was used as a yeah an active dump which you would have had carcasses the poor people would have been thrown in it etc.
So like bodies were thrown. Yeah.
Okay.
It was where according to the Old Testament ancient Israelites practiced child sacrifice to foreign gods. So it's treated as like corrupted or like we would think of it today as like poisoned or or whatever land. The God of Israel had condemned it as a forsaken place. In the ancient world, whether Greek, Roman, or Jewish, the worst punishment a person could experience after death was to be denied a decent burial. Jesus delivered this view into a repugnant scenario. Corpses of those exumed from the kingdom would be unceremoniously tossed into the most desecrated dumping ground on the planet. Jesus did not say the souls would be tortured there. They simply would not exist. And we're actually going to quote and go over this quote in more detail because it very explicitly says the worms live forever. Not the people live forever. It says the fire lives forever. It does not say the people live forever or are tortured forever. It says their bodies are thrown into a place where worms live forever and fire is burning forever. Basically permanent deletion.
Yes. Well, in which this place had fires going on and worms there all day and night because it was filled with carcasses and it was disgusting and horrible.
Probably burning trash. Maybe
trash. Well, a lot of trash was animal waste back then. So, rotting animal waste, maybe rotting horses.
Yeah.
Of like the ultra poor plague vists and stuff like that.
Jesus's stress on the absolute annihilation of sinners appears throughout his teachings. At one point, he says there are two gates that people pass through. Matthew 7:13:14. One is narrow and requires a difficult path, but leads to quote unquote life. Few go that way. The other is broad and easy and therefore commonly taken, but it leads to quote unquote destruction. It is an important word. The wrong path does not lead to torture. So too, Jesus says, "The future kingdom is like a fisherman who hauls a large net." Matthew 13:47:50. After sorting through the fish, he keeps the good ones and throws the others out. He doesn't torture them. They just die. Or the kingdom is like a person who gathers up the plants that have grown in his field. Matthew 13:36:43. He keeps the good grain, but tosses the weed into a fiery furnace. Those don't burn forever. They are consumed by fire and then are no more. Now, I will note it does appear that some unrighteous people may be raised from the future in God's kingdom to endure some sort of punishment, but we'll get to the lines that suggest that, but they're not the lines that people often think of. Still, other passages may be seen to suggest that Jesus believed in hell. Most notably, Jesus speaks of all nations coming for the last judgment. Matthew 25:31-46. Some are said to be sheep and others are goats. The good sheep are those who have helped those in need, the hungry, the sick, the poor, the foreigner. Those are welcomed into the kingdom, quote, prepared for you from the foundation of the world. End quote. The wicked goats, however, have refused to help those in need, so are sent to quote, "Eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." End quote. At first blush, this certainly sounds like the hell of popular imagination. But this summarizes his point. He explains the contrasting plates are quote unquote eternal life and quote unquote eternal punishment. They are not quote unquote eternal pleasure and quote unquote eternal pain.
Oh, so either it's it's existing or not existing. You're trying to argue
the opposite of life is death, not torture. So the punishment is annihilation. But why does it involve quote unquote eternal fire? Because the fire never goes out. The flames, not the torments, go on forever. And Why is a punishment called quote unquote eternal? Because it will never end. And note, I'm still reading from the Times article here. These people will be annihilated forever. That is not pleasant to think about, but it will not hurt once it is finished. But the torments of hell were not preached by either Jesus or his original Jewish followers. They emerged among later gentile converts who did not hold the Jewish notion of the future resurrection of the dead.
These later Christians came out of Greek culture and its belief that souls were immoral. mortal and would survive death. From at least the time of Socrates, many Greek thinkers had subscribed to the idea of the immortality of the soul even though the human body dies. And note here Jesus on many parts says the soul isn't immortal. It can be destroyed. He says this is punishment all the time. The human soul both will not and cannot die with the human body. Later Christians who came out of the gentile circles adopted this view for themselves and reasoned that if souls were built to last forever, their ultimate fates will do so as well. It will be either eternal bliss or eternal torment. So, you can see I'm not crazy here, Simone. Other people are arguing the same thing before I get into all of this, but I think
yeah, this is not you presenting some new and untested and unproven and unfounded view. This is you coming to the same conclusion that many people have. What I think is novel is the road that you have taken to it.
Well, no.
Most people coming to this are like come from a religious background or some other I'll tell you what's actually novel about this. It's most of the people who take this interpretation don't believe that the Bible is right. What's novel about this is I'm saying actually this original interpretation which many people see as like a less sophisticated interpretation. The way they may sneer at the parts of the Bible that disguise describe God as plural, right? And I'll argue that those are actually really important. They'll be like, "Oh, a long time ago, you go to really ancient Judaism, they still thought of as God as a plural entity, but there was like one God that mattered more than and the other gods and he was in like a court of gods. But we don't believe that anymore. Even like modern Jews, they'll be like, "Oh, that old Jewish stuff was like really unsophisticated. It was it was really barbaric. It and I believe there were forms of Judaism at that time that were barbaric. I don't believe that this form I actually think that this form was why Judaism was favored over the ancient Greeks.
Ah, okay.
Why they were the chosen people. And I think that that it is rare to combine this interpretation with a strictly religious view. view and a strictly religious belief in heaven and point out that this means heaven and God's kingdom are real and not supernatural.
Okay. Okay. Before we go further, let's go through all the times in the Bible people take to support the pagan conception of heaven and souls. All right. Two Corinthians 5 6-8. Therefore, being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be home with the Lord. This is very obviously not talking about death. It is clearly talking about the moments of life when you are not focused on the things of the body. Being quote at home in the body end quote does not mean being alive. There is a separate word that means alive. It means being focused on things of the flesh.
Philippians 1:21-24 For to me to live in Christ and die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me, and I do not know which to choose. But I am hardpressed for both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better. Yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake. End quote. This can be interpreted in two ways, neither of which require capitulating to be taken version of heaven. What he is talking about here is entering God's future kingdom that Jesus lives in. From his perspective, he doesn't need to wait before he gets there. Once he dies, remember when he dies, he dies. There is not some cosmic waiting room. The next conscious experience he has or will be aware of after death is resurrection in the kingdom of God. However, it could also be interpreted as saying that when he departs, he will be with Christ doing the same sort of thing Christ is currently doing. And because we believe Christ lives eternally in the past and through his sacrifices. Then this is accurate and again not describing a pagan heaven. Then you have Luke 23:46 and Jesus crying out with a loud voice said quote father into your hands I commit my spirit end quote. Having said this he breathed his last. Remembered when Jews thought of spirit or soul the word is translated to spirit here literally means breath or the thing God breathes into man eg life. He is just saying he is giving back his life. that God gave him. No reason to invent an entire cosmological realm over this. This is extra clear as right after saying into your hands I commit my breath. The text Jen says, "Having said this, he breathed his last." It could not be clearer that it is talking about breath and soul, not soul. No Simone, you see what I mean here. I'm like, you actually sort of have to misinterpret these to get these other interpretations.
Yeah, it it feels more like a stretch to go the other way. The way I originally heard it inter interpret it.
Yeah. Where I think a lot of when you when I first go into this, people can be like, "Oh, he's going to stretch things. Oh, he's going to be." But it's like, "No, actually the other interpretation feels like more of a stretch." And it's because, well, we know that Jesus wouldn't have believed in this stuff as a Jew of this period. Genesis 1:2. Some take this to be positing an incaporeal supernatural God as opposed to a real God. Quote, "Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The problem is all the word used to mean over here is used in temporal contexts in other parts of the Hebrew Bible. Not just that, it can also be used for prophetic events or to denote impending actions. Next, for the word merchett, the word that is translated to hovering. It means in a state of motion or animated. For example, Jeremiah 23:9 used it in a different context where he describes trembling or shaking. He says, quote, "My heart is broken within me. All my bones shake or end quote using that that word that's translated covering. Now, let's go back to the original text. Now, the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. So, it seems very clear here to me that the surface of the deep is referring to the same waters that God is quote unquote over. If both of these overs are referring to a location, it means that God's spirit is the darkness. Why would a divinely inspired book write something so silly? Why include the superculous words? Why assume the second over does not mean in the future and the word translated as hovering means animated? That makes a ton more sense. Why mention that he's animated or in a state of motion? Because it is contrasting him with the formless and empty darkness rather than equating him to it. It is contrasting his animated state with the darkness and formless inactivity that existed before reality. It is contrasting the thing that exists before reality with the thing that is the culmination of reality.
Anyway, so that makes sense to you. Like it's really interesting how something becomes poetic and meaningful that before was just pointless words. Why does it matter that God's hovering over?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's one of those things where if you're reading in the Bible, you're like, "Okay, blah blah blah." Kind of like when you're reading all the, you know, so and so beget so and so and you're like like Why did it why did it think it was so important to mention this? And what I'll note is you will find when you understand parts of the Bible that the the various words have a very significant meaning and they wouldn't include just superulous conceptions like that.
Yeah. Yeah. That it's at my
Genesis 1:26-27. Some read this as saying we are fundamentally different from animals. Quote, "Then God said, let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness." End quote. followed by quote, "So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female he created them." End quote. I actually find this passage extra reinforcing of our interpretation. As how can this be in a book that also tells us that God tests us so we don't think that we are different from animals? Well, if our interpretation of God is correct in that he is what man eventually evolves into millions of years from now, then this text basically lays that out while also pointing out that we are fundamentally not different from animals in our current state. In Genesis 1:26, the Hebrew word for quote, "Let us make in quote," is nahesh, which is in the cohorative form expressing a wish or a command about an action that will happen. In Genesis 1:27, created is barah, which is the perfect tense. However, Hebrew perfect tense doesn't work exactly like English perfect tense. It can indicate a completed action in the past, a general truce, an action that is so certain to happen in the future that it can be spoken of as already done.
This part of the text can be read as describing an ongoing process of humans being formed in God's image and a prophetic declaration of what will continue to happen. Now, if you think I am being crazy here, that this is just some limitation of the language, it is not. If they wanted to say that this event had already happened in the past and was completed there, are three three easy ways they could have done that. They could have used the perfect tense with a specific temporal marker like on that day or then that would have locked it in the past. They could have used the narrative past form called or something which is commonly used in Hebrew to describe sequential past events. Or they could have used adverbs or phrases that specifically indicate completion like finished or completed. An example of this kind of definitive Past tense construction appears elsewhere in Genesis like in Genesis 2:2 where it describes God completing/finishing his work where the grammar makes it very clear the action is completed. The writer of this specifically chose a construction that describes an action that is in progress when just earlier they had shown themselves capable of delineating when an action was complete. In other words, this line literally reads, "We are in the process of being crafted into God's image. Here I would also note let us make mankind in our image. Okay, WTF. What's up with that? Where is this hour coming from? And why is it being used when talking about what we are being crafted into? But elsewhere in this section, God talks about himself in the singular. Well, remember in our previous tract, I lay out that I think God is likely a hive mind made up of interconnected brains of whatever humans evolve into in the next few million years. Well, now the our construction makes perfect sense. When God is talking about his decisions, he is acting as a unified mind. But when talking about his personhood, he is made up of likely billions of interconnected minds, whatever he is crafting us into. But it gets even worse for the Sunday school Christians when you consider the word translated into image is tesm. The word teslem means physical material usage. In the vast majority of appearances in Hebrew text, teslem refers to physical statues, idols or replicas. For example, in number 33:52, it refers to carved idols. Destroy all the carved images. Tessle him. Samuel 65, it is used for physical replicas, tumors, and mice made of gold. Ezekiel 23:14, it describes images of cauldrons carved or drawn on walls. Daniel 2:31, it describes Nebuchadnezzar statue/image. Amos 520, 6. It refers to the physical idols carried by people. Contextual analysis. When ancient Hebrew writers wanted to convey spiritual or abstract qualities, they had other terms to do that that they would have used. Demut for likeness/similarity, raw for the spirit or nephesh for the living being or life force. The choice of tesslehim specifically suggests a concrete physical sense of image bearing. I.e. they are specifically saying this is well we'll get into this in just a second. In Genesis 1:26-27, Teslim is used with the preposition be which typically indicates concrete physical manifestation. The phrase besselmenu literally means in/ our image suggesting a physical form or pattern. It suggests humans are being physically patterned after something real and material not something supernatural or even purely spiritual. Moreover, if God represents humanity's future evolved state, the word teslem makes perfect sense. We are literally being shaped into that physical form over time. The use of the word primarily associated with physical representations suggest the relationship between humans and God was understood in the material rather than supernatural terms. So what first what the Bible here is explicitly saying is not is that man's consciousness was made in God's image or their spirit was made in God God's image as I used to believe and I mean this I actually think of the previous track I used to believe that it was saying like obviously like a big naked guy doesn't exist floating in space but no that is what it's saying it's saying we are literally being made in his physical image in no uncertain terms it could have been written that way and it intentionally was not it is saying that in no uncertain terms that man's physical form is being made in God's image now if I go with the Sunday school interpretation this gets silly obviously God is not a big naked guy floating in the sky this is the only interpretation that makes any logical sense and it also explains the very odd plural usage here when describing his body. It makes even more sense when no other explanation does. So it fixes so many problems. If God is a network consciousness made up of future humans, it solves the why he's talking about are why he is not talking in the past tense. Why he is now it could be read in the past tense but there are other words he could have used to lock it in the past tense and he didn't and he did use those terms in other parts of the section. in there. It it it explains why we can be different from animals because we are a thing that is becoming God, right? And animals are not things that are becoming gods, but that right now we are also fundamentally the same type of things as animals and it is against God's will to say different from of ourselves. Uh it fixes so many problems. And now I'll note is this R thing that I point out and you really need to contend with the R. So many Christians, they just brush off the R the the that God is talking about himself in the plural. That's a big effing deal when God talks about his body, why does he use the plural? You cannot brush that off. And people will say, "Oh, he's just using the royal we in the same way that like medieval monarchs talked about themselves in the plural."
That's certainly what I assume by default. I I think most people are just going with that.
Yeah. The problem is that Hebrew does not have one of those. Ancient Hebrew usage. When kings speak of themselves in the Hebrew Bible, they use singular first person pronouns, even in formal decrees or proclamations. Hebrew kings always use singular forms. For example, King David consistently uses I, ano anachi, not wei, when speaking. Historical context. The royal wei is often associated with much later monarchical traditions. It became common in medieval European croids. While some near eastern kingdoms use plural forms, it wasn't typical in ancient Hebrew culture. Biblical evidence. When God speaks elsewhere in Genesis, he uses the singular forms. The plural form appears primarily in creative or transformative context. Specifically, Let us make man. Genesis 126. Let us go down. Genesis 11:7. The Tower of Babel, which we'll get to in a second. That actually, I believe, has a totally different meaning than most people interpreted as meaning because the normal interpretation is like dumb. Like, obviously, everyone didn't used to speak the same language and then that language was split up. So, what is being talked about there? Like, and even if like, okay, anyway, who will that's going to be the next track by the way?
Okay. Who
will go for us? Isaiah 68. This suggests the plural in Genesis 1:26 likely serves a different purpose than oral polarity. If it was meant to be a rural plural, we would expect to see it used more consistently throughout God's speech in the Hebrew Bible, not just in the specific context of creation and transformation. Very weird, right, Simone? Like it doesn't this seem to make more and this is the thing. I think many people think like I'm stretching it to fit my interpretation, but I actually think my interpretation fits much better. It's just that they're ignoring the parts where their interpretation doesn't fit because they've gotten so used to ignoring those parts of the Bible,
right?
Corinthians 15:39, quote, "Not all flesh is the same. People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another, and fish another." End quote. This is talking about the flesh, not spirits, and is obviously true. Actually, when it does equate animals to humans, quote, "There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies, but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is of one kind and the splendor of earthly bodies is another." End quotes. Again, it's saying that we are of the earthly body category. It's the same category as animals, all that. Uh, also here, I would bring to your attention this line. Quote, so it will be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable. It is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is swn in weakness. It is raised in power. It is swn a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. When it says spiritual body, it uses interesting language that makes it clear that this body is not supernatural, but a literal body. In Corinthians, Ians 1544 the Greek phrase used is soma pneumonatic som pneumonaticon I guess for spiritual body this is contrasted with s psychicon which is translated as natural body or sometimes physical body this is a fascinating choice because s definitely means physical body it is not a metaphysical term it refers to a real tangible body pneumonauticon comes from numa spiritual breath wind but the icon suffix makes it an adjective meaning characterized by spirit or animated by spirit or animated by like breath. So it's a body that is animated by breath. Now again we think we're talking about virtual something like a virtual reality not like the virtual realities we have today like infinitely more complicated than that to an extent that it would be much more real than those. But that's how I would describe that to somebody of this time period. And then the contrast with psychicon from psychic meaning soul or life force is important. Paul is not contrasting physical versus non-physical, but rather two different types of bodies. One animated by a natural force, psyche, and the other animated by something non-tangible, but real, air, or or maybe not air, but the type of thing that God breathed into man, but that is seen as our bodies on Earth. I can think of no better way for someone 2,000 years ago to describe a person being resurrected in a simulation. I would also note here that this was not due to a limitation in the vocabulary. If you want to describe these bodies we were raised in in supernatural terms. He could have said astosis literally without body used in Greek philosophy for incaporeal things. Words related to azimma for apparition or phantom terms to edelon for image phantom spirit. Instead he deliberately chose soma numanaticon which apparently is like a weird word to have chosen and stands out in the Bible. Combining the very physical word s with the spiritual adjective anim by air in the same way like God breathes into man. This appears to be an intentional choice to express a new concept, not a limitation of vocabulary. Again, Christians historically wouldn't have had to they would have read this and many of them did and like that's really weird that he's using these words. Right? If you're a medieval Christian, you don't know what a simulation is. If you do know what a simulation is, you're like, "Wow, he is being extremely precise in the way he is talking about this in a way that couldn't easily be mistaken as something else. This is particularly interesting because Paul writing in Greek to a Greekeaking audience in Corenth would have been familiar with Greek philosophical concepts of pure spirit or incaporeal existence.
Good point.
Yeah. His choice to insist on quotequote soma body while modifying it with numinaticon breath like the breath breeds in the man seems to be a deliberate maintaining of a Jewish emphasis on bodily resurrection while describing its trans form nature. We also have this line in the same section. Quote, if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. End quote. Which is saying that these are the same thing. They don't exist without each other. Now, we'll get to some lines. So, they can exist without each other if the natural body is reconstructed in a say a simulation or something like that. But it's still natural within that context as is made clear right there in those previous quotes that it is still considered natural if it's in a simulation. It's just a different type of natural body, but that supernatural bodies do not exist. And we'll talk about people being like, "Oh, but there's these lines where you're with God." And we'll talk about that in just a second. We also have this line. Sorry. The structure here is a logical argument. Paul is using what's called first class conditional statement in Greek. Specifically, when he says, "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body." If and it's true that it's not expressing doubt, but rather building on an accepted premise to make a point. It's like saying if there exists X which we know there does then Y must also exist. Paul is arguing for the existence of a known the natural body to the existence of an unknown the spiritual body. And the word he chose to use translated as spiritual means breath or air or the type of thing God breathed into us. Again he is telling us directly our physical body here is our soul. You cannot have one without the other and neither is supernatural. Note Words he could have used but chose not to are hyper curous or literally above/beyond nature, theosius, divine/godlike, dominis, supernatural/ divine/extraordinary, hyperorious or something supernatural, celestial or beyond heaven. Instead, Paul chose to use words that emphasize structural and pattern-based transformation. This becomes even more significant when we look at his complete argument in 1 Corinthians 15:35-49. He uses the analogy of a seed becoming a plant, a physical information-based transformation where the pattern contained in the seed becomes the final form. The Greek word used for quote unquote body throughout this passage is soma, which specifically refers to a physical organized structure. When Paul says we have a quote unquote spiritual body, he is not describing a supernatural entity, but a physical organizational structure of animated quote unquote spirit or breast. I'm have the real words here. rather than uh be psyche which is natural life force. This lines up perfectly with the conception of consciousness transfer or simulations. Paul is describing a transformation of a pattern/information. Uh specifically here he uses the word metachas mystizo the change of the underlying structure allesio preservation of physical organization s different from animating principle numa vers psyche. This reading makes particular sense of 1 Corinthians 15:42:44. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption, sown in dishonor, raised in glory. Now note that glory actually means like heaviness or weightiness. We'll get to this in the future, but it could be used to mean computational load, which is really interesting. Or or density of information. Sewn in weakness raising.
That's so cool, by the way. I love that.
Yeah, I know. Right. It's used to mean like the weight of a thing. like the density of a thing sewn a natural body raised a spiritual body or the the soul the breath body right the Greek term here used to describe systemic transformation of properties rather than supernatural change is more like describing a data transfer from a corrupted system to an incorruptible one than a mystical transformation particularly striking is that Paul never suggests we become non-physical or purely spiritual beings instead he describes a transformation of physical organization and animating principle, exactly what we'd expect if describing a revival in a simulated or advanced technological environment to an ancient audience. This interpretation also explains why Paul insists on a bodily resurrection rather than a spiritual immortality, which Sunday school Christians insist on. He's not describing escape from physical existence, but transformation into a more advanced form of organized physical structure, one that could be better understood with modern concept. cepts of information and simulation than ancient concepts of spirits or souls. So, I I don't know. I just really can't get over like how he he was being so careful in his wording talking to an audience where this careful wording didn't matter because they would have immediately equated this with Greek concepts. But he didn't use the words you would have used when you were talking about those Greek concepts. Even though he was talking in ancient Greek, he was very careful to use rather almost sort of cumbersome wording to avoid those conceptions. Any thoughts, Simone?
I mean, still all makes sense. It feels very comforting that a lot of these things make so much sense and it's really fun to see the I think the interesting the most interesting about this for me is it helps to give me some context and I don't know, a sense of grounding in where we're going with AI and a general feeling I get from a lot of people who are aware of the impact that AI is going to have as it continues to advance
is just this disconnect from reality. It's almost like they're disassociating from the the blunt trauma of understanding how fundamentally things will change in terms of the way things are done and the way humans live and the way that this intelligence is going to change the nature of our existence.
And the the grounding you give it in bringing the Bible back into this and sort of connecting it to it and being like this has been foretold. This is
all part of the plan
and and it's not incompatible with science at all. Really fascinating to me. And as we point out the way we had a a separate video that we do just on the way we think of souls and everything like that and I really like your understanding of souls are almost sort of like the sha they're an emergent property of the patterns was in our neural tissue. You can only think of them as a shadow cast by a a very advanced pattern and yeah it It it's so fascinating to me that when I go through this
and and to me it makes me believe the Bible so much because I could have said
hypothetically like it doesn't seem that these things exist when I look at the science and I just need to swallow a pill on that when I'm dealing with the Bible. And that's like when I went back to trying to build like a secular form of Christianity like well obviously I'm going to have to like make a bunch of concessions here and here and here. But then I go back and I read the Bible and I'm like This is eerie because it's saying all of the stuff the science says is true. Like I didn't expect that. It It has made it so easy to believe that it's messing with my brain a little bit. It it it shouldn't be this easy to believe. It shouldn't it it shouldn't
I don't know. Isn't Isn't part of our new thing in life like oh if it feels intuitively and intellectually correct and it is the simplest best word is elegant way of something then probably it's right you know typically the water flows where there is the least impedance it flows in the most elegant way and why would we not let reason flow in the most
I guess what I'm saying here is I had made a commitment in my own mind to choose to interpret the Bible as a divine source of truth and go through it with my physical understanding of like the world and the way it actually works and find ways to make it work right be like, I'm going to make this work for me and my family, right?
But I assumed
that that the the like real way reality works wouldn't be what the Bible actually said. That what the Bible was going to say.
We were we were raised to believe that faith meant being okay with the cognitive dissonance between your understanding of religion and your understanding of science and physics and reality.
Yeah. And what I have found which to me like it doesn't need to be every time I want to tackle a new concept and I open up the Bible and I start going through it that it appears that it was already on the side of what sane people in science thought. Especially when that contrast was what I assumed was going to be in it.
Perhaps what faith really is then is confidence in knowing that the truth in something that you may not yet understand will be revealed through more experimentation and exploration. It's not about turning off your critical thinking. It's about leaning in with your critical thinking and exploring further inspired by your religious further by for by your values.
Note, I am leaving out the ones already explained by the Times article like Matthew 25:31 through 46. It also kind of addresses the Mark one, but let's go into it anyways because it's just so silly. Mark 9:43-48. If your hand causes you to You stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. Now, I've noticed something weird here that you're noticing even even with this incorrect translation that it keeps saying it's better for you to go into life. It doesn't say heaven, it says life. Because again, Jesus's conception was you're going to be raised again. Not that you're going to go into heaven. Why? Why isn't he saying go into heaven here? Like that comes off as weird even in the mistransation. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. For it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than it is to have two eyes and be thrown into hell. Where the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched. Now, I note here even in the mistransated version, because it's really hard to change this, it is the worms that never die, not the people that never die. Okay? It is the fires that don't go out, not the people that that don't die. Okay? And specifically here when he's talking about the word that he's using for hell, what should immediately be suspicious to you is he keeps contrasting it with the word that means life. Why is he contrasting hell with life when the opposite of life is death? Well, it's going to be obvious when you get to the actual translation. This is just like a deliberate mistransation. The word translated as hell here is gehenna, which refers to a real physical place, the valley of Henom, Jihenom in Hebrew, which became Gehenna in Greek. This was a valley outside Jerusalem that historically had been used for child sacrifices to Molech and later became a garbage drum where fires were kept burning constantly to deal with all the dead animals. Keep in mind, Jerusalem was a rather large city and you had to deal with lots of rotting carcasses and stuff like that. Likely also the carcasses of lowerass people or people without families. So, it would have been seen as a natural place to toss bodies. He is saying the worms that eat them don't die because they are wellfed and the fire does not go out because it literally did not go out. It was a constant fire. But notably does not say they do not die. Okay, he doesn't say that anywhere there that they do not die when they are so thrown into the burning garbage pit. Okay, what is worse is the imagery Jesus uses here. The undying worms and unquenchable fire directly references Isaiah 66624, which also describes corpses being consumed by worms and fire. This was a powerful physical metaphor his listeners would have recognized rather than a reference to an otherworldly place of eternal torment. And I also really would draw people to this here. You can tell from the worms line when he's talking about these worms that are always there as being undying worms, he was clearly capable of calling something undying. So why doesn't he say that about the person being thrown into this place? Why does he keep contrasting whatever the person thrown into this place is with life? Because he's talking about just death, a body being thrown into a pit. Basically, it would be like if you reference Compton, a well-known s***** place I learned about from a popular song, and people later translated it as hell. Instead of just being like, "Oh, yeah, he means Compton, the place everyone knows about from that popular song," they literally made up an extra metaphysical plane with its own lore and characters mostly taken from pagan mythology. Do you think if hell existed, the Bible wouldn't have been very explicit about us and told us anything about it rather than saying Gehenna, the place where animal bodies are born.
That's amazing. Wow. Yeah, great great point of comparison there.
Right. Well, I just it just seems like like this is one where I get angry because it's like deliberate misleading of people with the Haiti thing. I can understand translating Hades to hell. The Gehenna thing. Mm-m. No, that that that doesn't bite. And keep in mind, this isn't just my opinion. The person who wrote in that Times piece also had the same perspective on this. I just came to it entirely differently than like Googled, has anyone else had this opinion? And Google's like, this is actually the mainstream opinion among scholars. And I was like, oh, people who actually read the Bible also hold this opinion when they, you know, read it with a credulous eye. And I'd also point out how much more sense this particular passage makes when you understand that he's talking about having your body burned and then not reawakening in the kingdom of God to eternal life. Because he's saying, would you rather have your hand, which caused you to sin, be attached to you when your body is burned, or would you rather arrive handless at the kingdom of God? Would you rather have your eye be intact when your body is burned or arrive with one eye in the kingdom of God? It's just a much better contrast because it's not saying, "Oh, you're entering hell intact." It's saying, "Oh, your body is being burned on a pile of corpses intact. How how great is that? for you. Okay. So, Luke 16:19:31. Okay. This is a longer one. I won't read the whole thing, but it's a parable about a dead sinful man in Hes. Yes, Hes. This is the Lazarus one. It's literally written as Hayes in ancient Greek. And this man, this sinful man is being punished for not following the prophets in fire and with pain. What's interesting here is in traditional Haze, you were not punished with pain and fire. However, it appears that Some Romans of that period began to believe that that's the way Hes worked.
And just in case people are confused, he's referring to Hades as I've heard it, but he calls it Hades, just like he calls like I don't know why. It's just
Well, hold on. I'd also note here that they were probably referring to a Hades that was closer to Tartarus, but they were writing in ancient Greek. And so they use the ancient Greek word for Tarderus. But I imagine that the Greek conception of Hades by this period had become much more like the Roman conception that we refer to as Tardus. We delineate them by language and then juxtapose this religion about like a thousand years earlier into the ancient Greeks. But really just side note here, okay, the point being is that it had evolved a lot. If you're like, why didn't this Hades look like the Hades that I know? It's because it had changed a lot in the popular conception since then. But very clearly, what he is not talking about is the Jewish, which which he could he could have been talking about, right? Like he clearly understood it and talked about well, not hell, but like afterlife, like you're raised again or you die as he referenced in other sections here. So I think my point is pretty clear here that the concept of hell is lifted from Greek pagan mythology and does not come from Christian or Jewish theology as the best argument for it in the whole Bible comes with that word and no other attached to it. Now because Hades is not a Judeo-Christian concept, the first question we need to ask is what the hell is going on here? Did the Bible just admit that Hades, Pphanie, and the Boatman are all real? No. Of course not because this is a parable. A story used to teach a lesson to an audience. In this cake, a Greek audience who would have been familiar with the concept of Sorry, when I say a Greek audience, I should was this parable taught to a Greek audience? Maybe it was at the very least taught to a romanized Jewish audience. But here my assumption because he's using a Greek afterlife is he was telling this to a Greek audience. I don't understand why he would have used that otherwise. It's very weird to throw into an ancient Jewish thing to to throw in Hades and then describe Hades as it was understood in this period. So no, of course not because this is a parable, a story used to teach a lesson to an audience, in this case a Greek audience who would have been familiar with the concept of life after death where you might be tortured. The point of this story is that even if the dead came back to life, people would not listen to them as prophets and that Moses, Abraham, etc. are enough told through the lens of an ancient Greek metaphysical worldview because that was the point he was getting across with this. This guy is being tortured. And he goes, "Well, at least let me tell my family." And he's like, "Well, look, even if I brought you back to life, people still wouldn't believe you, right? If they don't believe Moses and Abraham and all that." So, how do I know this is meant to be literal? Well, there are two big giveaways. The first being that it is after a list of parables. The second, and this is a big one, is that Hayes is not Christian. If you take this to being literal, Then Jesus is telling us Hes is a real place and the theological implications for this are just insane. This is one of those crossover dream sequences that accidentally validates an entire other extended universe because in the parable Jesus didn't say the place was like Hades. He said he was in literal Hades. Also, the beauty of the story is just completely ruined if you take this interpretation because what he was telling the guy using an ancient Greek pagan afterlife in a really intense way is saying that even if someone could come back from the dead, people would not believe them, which foreshadowing much by the way, but he is saying it in a way that an ancient Greek audience could understand. Uh s***, I just realized why he used Hades in this parable. Okay, so the point he wanted to make in this
Why? Just because you were thinking through it again.
Yeah, I was thinking through it again.
Okay.
I was thinking through why didn't he use the Jewish conception of hell to tell the same parable?
Yeah. And there's a reason he didn't use the Jewish conception of hell to change the same parable. Okay, so the point of the parable is if somebody was dead and they came back to life and said, "Hey, death is really, really horrible. You should follow the rules that are set out by the old teachers, even then a person wouldn't believe them." The problem is if he framed this story with a traditional Jewish understanding of hell, the dead person would neither be conscious or in pain. So they would have no motivation to go back and and their family.
So, he needed to use another cultures conception of hell to create this story.
Yeah, this the plot can't work with the Jewish hell. I see
the plot doesn't work with the Jewish hell. So, he it's very similar to like when Einstein said, "God doesn't play dice." Even though Einstein was pretty clearly an atheist, he needed the concept of God to quickly describe like all the laws of physics and everything like that. And Jesus really, really, really needed to tell this parable for very obvious reasons. Even if somebody came back from the dead, people still wouldn't believe him because that is relevant to Jesus's life. Okay, that is why he needed to tell the story, but he wouldn't have had the motivation if he used the correct afterlife. So, he used an alternate afterlife. I think assuming that people would know that the afterlife wasn't real within this Jewish conception and was just for the sake of the parable because he used the word Hades instead of any word that edified the truth of the parable or in any way said, "Hey, by the way, this is true and this is what hell is like.
Yeah.
Because you know that would have like massive theological implications to all of a sudden insert this like people would be like
it's a big bomb to drop in just one parable. By the way, Hades is real.
By the way, Hades is real. Just got to I like lots of implications. Is this Is this real now? Is this real now? I I want to like like have a record screech there, you know? But clearly nobody did that. Nobody was like, "Hey, Jesus." Like Why'd you just say Hades was real? Like that would have been part of the parable if that's what it was meant to explain and Jesus then would have said something like if it was a modern Christian interpretation would have said, "Well, I don't mean literal Hades. I'm using Hades to describe an afterlife that it turns out us Jews and Christians like we actually have this afterlife." Somebody's like, "Wait, what?" He's like, "Yeah, actually it turned out the ancient Greeks were like super close to a correct afterlife and the Jews just didn't have it right at all." And so when when when bad people die, they go to this place. It's below the earth. And it's where you must notice like all the similarities here between the Tartarus myth, right? And yet we're told in Ecclesiastes very explicitly that any anyone tells you that an animal soul goes down and a human soul goes up, they are lying to you. If anyone tells you that these souls are different in nature, if anyone tells you that there's life after death other than the resurrection, they are lying to you. And God tests us to make sure we don't believe this lie. So problem. Okay. And people can be like, "Hey, you can't say that this is the only time this is what about all these other times you've dismissed as the only time this was mentioned in the Bible and I'm like every one of them it's completely different you know it's it's not like they're all building to the same concept okay they're completely different concepts if if they all mirrored each other outside of the fire reference which appears to be common in talks of death during this period there doesn't appear to be any other unifying concepts here I guess you've got the the the two un context I'm I'm familiar with are this one from the Lazarus one and then there's the one was the uh Gamora one, the Mark one. You could say that the two things that both stories have in common is there is fire and it takes place underground and souls are being tormented. Well, no, in the Mark one, souls are not being tormented or punished. So, it's just that there's fire and it's under Well, no, it's not underground because Gamora is above ground. Okay, so the only similarity across them is fire. Um Okay, fire. We'll take that.
Yeah, but what I'm saying is it's clearly not building some like unified new metaphysical plane that I think you need a lot of evidence of you're adding to your metaphysical framework of reality. And I'm just not getting that here.
Well, if fire signifies anything, it is the ending of something, the emulation of it
to ashes. That's what death is. So,
yeah. 1 Samuel 25:29. May the soul of my master be bound in the bundle of life with Lord your God. And may the souls of your enemies be flung by the slingshot. I translated this line with words closer to the ancient Hebrew translation here. A lot of the modern English translations will use the word spirit instead of life for this. You might be like, why was this a weird thing? Why does it make people believe a spirit is separate from the body? But that wasn't the word that was used. It's the word that's more often translated as life. And it makes more sense. Quote, "May the life of my master be bound up in the bundle of the links of their existence with the Lord God. and the many lives of your enemies be flung by the slingshot." End quote. Why posit something supernatural when it's not posited in the most logical reading of the text? Note here, if you go with the original translation, it causes problems because the word being translated as soul or spirit here is used to describe the life force that animates animals. Meaning that animals, even insects and worms, would have souls, which is is more of a problem for me than me saying that we are the same sort of a thing as animals, just a more advanced version. And way that makes us different, right? But when you posit animals as having souls, that gets into a big theological problem for me because it's like, well, did their souls do have an afterlife? Are they immutable souls? Are they immortal souls? Like, why is the Bible not touching on any of that? If animals have souls now, right? And if you take the incorrect meaning of this, you gift animal souls, which no, don't don't buy that. Okay. Now, we're going to do a number of Job readings. This is going to be relevant to our Jewish followers who might have this incorrect interpretation because a lot of other Jews are actually soul duelists. There's a mainstream conception now that they most got from the Christians just didn't realize it and they Jews hate it being pointed out how much their religion has changed over time. It's like the big bugaboo that we get. So that's the angriest Jew saying we get on this is you can't say it's a new religion. I'm like well if it's a dualist religion that's really different than what ancient Jews believed. Seems pretty clear to me that ancient Jews were materialist monus. If you're not sure what that means a materialist monus believes that everything in existence, including consciousness and mental phenomena, can be explained primarily through physical/material substances and processes. They reject mindbody dualism, holding that there is only one fundamental type of substance, matter, rather than separate mental and physical substances. Now, interestingly, very few modern Jews are materialist monus. I'd say they're either if they're like more casual Jews, they're going to be dualist because they pick that up from Christians. If they're more into the Bible or they're like more hidic, they're going to be idealist monus. Idealist monus hold that everything including what appears to be matter is fundamentally composed of consciousness/spirit/mind physical reality is viewed as a manifestation of an underlying spiritual substance rather than the other way around. And when I say it's really different than what ancient Jews believe, just use your logic. Okay? If ancient Jews believed in this like duelist soul, why weren't they writing about it? Like the fact that I'm able to find all of this in nothing disisconfirming it in the Bible is either massive supernatural interference or they just didn't believe it. Which one is better for your argument? that the world is supernaturally interfering to make Malcolm right or that the ancient Jews just didn't believe this and it wasn't a popular concept at the Okay, so let's go to Job, which some people used to try to argue for a dualist perspective. Job 12:10. In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind. The breath of all mankind, how God gave us life is being put at the same level as other creatures like bugs here seems clearly to be talking about life and saying in his hand are these two like equitable things. The breath of all mankind and the life of creatures. And keep in mind, same words are used across them here. And this becomes even clearer when you look at the word that's translated to life of creatures here. It's the word nephesh. This is a word that in Genesis 2:7 when describing God creating humans as quote living souls/beings is used nepheshi. Job 32:8. But it is the spirit in a person, the breath of the almighty that gives them understanding. This could be correctly read as, keep in mind I'm just using a a different translation. It is through the life God gave man that man has understanding. Like duh, that doesn't lead to a dualist perspective at all. And when the spirit here is using I think the breath word in this instance. Yes. In this line, the use of the word spirit and the use of the word breath are actually the exact same word. It is the breath in a person, the breath of the almighty that gives them understanding would be a correct interpretation. Job 19:26-2 Seven. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes. I and not another. Again, here we see something that hugely supports my interpretation. As they have no skin, but are in their flesh. Eg. They are in a virtual body. There is no other way you can have no skin but be in your flesh within a purely spiritual body or some other kind of super awesome supernatural body. Um
I didn't most people just imagine ghosts. or something. They just assume that whatever it is, they can't explain it.
Yeah. Which would have been the way to understand it in a medieval period, maybe. But it was complet like a
be the issue is that now we have such a better explanation that why would we hold on to the one that involved
That's what I don't get. If the Bible predicted something that it had no business predicting and this divine foresight or prophecy or revelation could be seen as edifying the truth within the Bible. Why are people clinging to medieval interpretations of these words? that are less in alignment. It's like the Bible had really detailed schematics for like a microchip in it. And then in the medieval period, they said, "Oh, this is actually how you're supposed to build the temple." And then I go back and I'm like, "Actually, this makes a microchip. Like, isn't that really cool?" And they go, "No, we all know that this is for how you build a temple. That's heresy to say that this is how you make a microchip." And I'm like, "But it it does make microchips." And we we'll get even more specific here in a little bit. It's it's really weird. Like like weird for me as somebody who I like I don't even have faith. I just believe it because like this is hard for me not to believe when I look at the totality of evidence and the Bible saying stuff it shouldn't have had any ability to predict. But okay, let's let's go further here, right? It also makes it clear that he has no flesh and thus no eyes but sees God with his eyes and not someone else's. It's also reads like a riddle describing a simulation. So again, just think about this like this is clearly not describing a spiritual or supernatural body or it would have said that. It's trying as hard as it can, like really going hard to describe a VR simulation here without the words. If they were describing something supernatural, they could have used supernatural words. So, I will read this again and ask yourself, why did they word it like this in no other way? Is this not the closest you could have gotten to a super advanced VR simulation if you're explaining it to somebody. And after my skin had been destroyed, yet in my flesh, I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes and not another. His flesh has been destroyed. His eyes have been destroyed and yet he maintains them how. Okay, to continue note I will not go deep on the parts of Revelation that could be used to argue against this as I do not consider Revelations canon. I go over why in another tract, but it's not that radical a position considering apparently Martin Luther felt the same way at times in his life. But if you want to go there, you can go to Revelations 69:11. When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the Word of God. They called out aloud in one voice, "How long, sovereign Lord?" This is often used to argue for the consciousness of souls existing after death. However, this appears in a highly symbolic vision sequence in Revelation, which is full of metaphoric. The same passage describes literal seals being broken open and horses of different colors. It's not meant to be taken as a literal description of metaphysical reality. So again, like talking about horses of different colors, this is a book where they talk about like dragons and serpent seeding people and like it gets weird. It's a it's a vision trip. Okay, that's part of why I I don't think it's divinely inspired and also because it's it was on the edge of canonicity when it was canonized and because the Greek in it is really terrible. Like it's it's it wasn't written by an educated person. Moreover, parts of Revelations could be used to bolster my interpretation. Revelations 21:12, quote, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven, and the first earth had passed away. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God." This describes a physical ical transformation rather than a spiritual realm. New Jerusalem comes down to earth rather than these souls going up implies complete physical remake rather than a spiritual overlay. All right. Anything you want to say before I keep going or just keep spouting these?
Okay.
Keep going for it. So I would now I'm I'm like marking as a thing to look at
like the historicity of the book of revelations and like who wrote it and what people think was going on.
You think the ter I think it was somebody with or some sort of other psychiatric condition is my read or somebody who's doing lots of like psych psychoactive med either medication or rituals like spinning or certain positions that like really strict Jews do that can cause psychological like distorted state
and and it was really only canonized because it could be used to argue for one particular side of a is this heretical or is this heretical argument that was happening at the time.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah. Uh, so even at the time it was canonized for pretty dubious reasons from my perspective.
Just to read a passage from Revelations, which I think shows pretty clearly why I don't consider it divinely inspired. It sounds like pagan as hell. A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven, an enormous red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns and seven crowns on its eyes. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that it might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
Please prove to say something to him.
Not here to talk to them. You are the hand chosen by the master.
Yours is a ve of blood. Yours is the sword of Michael.
Peter 3:19:20. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits to those who were disobedient long ago. This is sometimes used to argue Jesus visited souls in some kind of afterlife. However, the word translated here as spirits is numish, which like the other spirit/ breast words we've discussed doesn't necessarily imply a supernatural soul. This passage is also notoriously difficult to interpret and appears in the context of baptism symbolism. Also, it could just be talking about people being judged after they are brought back to life. And we will see in other parts of the Bible when it talks about the people who are brought back in the future, there is some indication that they are judged at that future time. And uh again, just aligns with the traditional Jewish concept of an afterlife, people being the traditional Christian, people being brought back after death. Matthew 10:28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both the soul and the body in Gehenna. So, this one seems compelling at first until you realize that the word translated as soul here is psyche, which like the Hebrew nephesh primarily means life or living being. This could be read as contrasting temporarily with death or with complete annihilation. And remember, Gehenna is a place where bodies were burned sometimes. So, what is being said here is that If you don't get your name written in the book of life, you will not be resurrected. And we'll talk more about this in in a second in the heaven, in the real Christian/Jewish heaven, the kingdom to come. And so, it's saying here that do not be afraid of someone who can kill your body, but someone who could have your name removed from the book of life, uh, which would destroy both the body and soul in Gehenna, i.e. the body and soul burning in the the fire pit. No, we don't know for sure that they ever burn. burned human bodies into this fire pit. It was just a cursed and uniquely disgusting place where they burned animal corpses. So, they're just saying to have your body desecrated basically here. And when here it says, "Who can erase the body of and soul in Gehenna? Who can destroy both the body and soul in Gehenna?" It's referring to God, not Satan, as many people would think. It's God who removes names from the book of life, not Satan who removes names from the book of life. Here, it's saying you should fear God's wrath. if you act in a way that is antagonistic to his goals. And here I note to those who want to read Gehenna as hell and want to read Satan in as the one who's destroying a person's soul. That actually leads to a ton of theological problems. Because Satan's not supposed to destroy souls, is he? That's not what I understood Satan did in hell. Satan doesn't erase souls in hell. But right here, it says very clearly of the one who could destroy both a soul and the body in Gehenna. Now, that would makes sense if they believed in monism and that the soul and the body were one thing and they were burning together and that they could be resurrected in the future if they were in the book of life and they could be removed from the book of life that God could do that because we see that God blocks out names from the book of life more on that later but it doesn't make sense if you take the Sunday school interpretation and what this is talking about is hell and Satan because Satan does not destroy souls in hell in fact this line further edifies my interpretation because it very clearly says that souls can be destroyed they are not immutable or immortal things. John 11:23-27 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Marca said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord. I have believed that you are the Christ, the son of God, even he who comes to the world." Well, we can know that this does not mean you don't die at all because Corinthians says because some people try to argue remember she's like I know the truth like you come back to life in the in the next world remember he's talking to a classic Jew here who would have understand classical Jewish interpretations why is she telling him if Jews believe that they go to heaven I know he will rise again and resurrection on the last day like why why isn't she saying I know he's in heaven like that's a weird thing to say instead of I know he's in heaven if that was the common belief at the time and people will try to argue this to say that Oh, well, this means that you never really die. You're like captured through Jesus until you are raised again. And it's like a separate type of life. But here's the problem.
It also sounds much more complicated than it needs to be.
But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised?" With what kind of body will they come? How foolish. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed perhaps of wheat or something else. But God gives it a body. as he'd determined and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. So we see here there seems to be totally in line with the kingdom of God, the one where people are raised in the future. What Jesus was likely trying to convey is that you won't perceive yourself as dead, but he did not have the language to do that. Also note the seed metaphor implies a physical mechanistic process rather than a supernatural transformation.
Right?
And again, I'm trying to be so thorough here so that no one can say I left something.
You're going to be so good. I tried to be so good, not like manipulate by just leaving some parts out and having other parts in. No, no, no, no. I'm just showing there is not a strong argument for this. Peter 3:18, for Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. Again, this aligns perfectly with our theology. The story of Jesus exists to tell us about the intergenerational cycle of martyrdom that must take place to bring God into existence, which each generation having to die for the next cycle in the intergenerational cycle of improvement. I actually see the traditional interpretation of this is highly unjust. The idea that I can or anyone can transfer their sins onto another innocent person. But we go into that in another track. So here what it's saying is Christ, you know, the martyr, everyone in this these moments of martyrdom literally must die to bring about God. Whereas the other interpretation is to say that I have offloaded my sins to an innocent person also without my consent. Like would I consent to that? If somebody came to me and they're like, "There's this totally blameless person. He's willing to take your sins. Will you offload your sins to him?" I'd be like, "No." Like,
yeah, it seems like a really weird, not nice thing to do. And wouldn't the act of doing that be sinful in itself? I guess the Old Testament's full of all this sin transference ritual stuff. So,
well, well, no, but it's only full of it when you're dealing with gods that aren't Yahweh. Remember, the sin transference goat was not sent to Yahweh. It was sent to But yeah, it wasn't sent to Yahweh. Sin transference is always done for Satan. Like it's not
Yeah. Which makes the idea that Jesus died for our sins uniquely sacriiggious sounding to me. But
there's a huge difference between a sacrifice made on our behalf and a sacrifice that erases sin. Throughout the Bible, people make sacrifices to please God. But the only time they prefer a sin transference ritual is for the demon Aazil. When you read lines arguing that Jesus died because because of our sins, which he obviously did read the story, that doesn't imply sin transference. Similarly, if you read a line saying Jesus was sacrificed for us or for our sins, that doesn't imply sin transference because he could just be a sacrifice like the sacrificial lamb on Passover, which is not the same thing as the sin transference goat sacrificed to a zazil. We agree that Jesus was absolutely sacrificed to us. I actually think the significance of his sacrifice was clarified by what happened to the next time The Jews thought they had found their Messiah. Shabbat Zebi 1629 to 1676. I believe this incident was meant to delineate the difference between a real Messiah and a false one through their willingness to sacrifice themselves for their beliefs. When Zebie was caught by a Muslim ruler and told to convert to Islam or be tortured and killed, he converted. For those who think I am crazy to see no evidence for Jesus as a sin transference vehicle in the Bible, this is actually a mainstream perspective among biblical scholars. The development of a substit utionary atonement theory as we know it today largely took shape during medieval Christianity particularly through Anselm of Canterbury's work cure deos homo why God became man around 1 198 CE early Christian writings the first and third century show more diverse understandings of Jesus's death and resurrection the Christ vicer model was a prominent one focused on Christ's death as a victory over death sin and evil powers rather than as a transference of sin the Ransom Siri was popular among early church fathers like Origina and Gregory of Nika. They saw Christ's death as a ransom paid to Satan, not to God. Through though this interpretation fell out of favor, many early Christians emphasized the exemplary nature of Christ's death's moral influence theory or its role in demonstrating God's love. For some specific theologians, we have Justin the Martyr 100 to 165 CE focused more on Christ's victory over death and humans. Arinius 130 to 202 CE emphasized the competitation theory. Christ summing up and perfecting human nature. Origin 185 to 254 CE promoted the ransom theory. Gregory of Nika 335 to 395 CE also focused on the ransom theory and Christ's victory over death. The specific formulation of penal substitutionary atonement where Christ literally takes our sins and punishment was most fully developed by reformed theologians particularly Calvin in the 16th century. It seems fitting that we changed our name from secular Calvinist to technopuritans. Now, I'd also note here that I went to AI to see if they could find any really early examples of like maybe this was one of the early competing theories, but it does not appear to have a lot of backing to it until you get to about a thousand years after Christ's death. There are some bubblings of this theory, but it really was not popularized until Anom of Canterbury's work in 198 CE. Let's examine all the possible transference lines, noting that merely saying Jesus was a sacrifice for us or our sins doesn't count as evidence of transference as Jesus did die because of the sins of man. Like factually, that's why he died. Also, he could be seen as a generic sacrifice like the Passover lamb instead of a sin transferent sacrifice like the goat given to a zazil. Therefore, we can immediately set aside lines like 1 Corinthians 15:3, "For what I received, I passed on to you as first of importance that Christ died for our sins. According to the scriptures, Romans 5'8, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 1 Peter 3:18, for Christ also suffered once for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body, but made alive in the spirit. Also, just more generally here in regard to Pauling text, Paul uses multiple metaphors for salvation, adoption, reconciliation, participation in Christ, etc. If sin transference was central to Paul's understanding, we might expect it to be dominant in his metaphorical language. Regarding Isaiah 53:56, which is often cited as the most explicit Old Testament reference, but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his words, we are healed. We are all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. The only lane here that could credibly argue for sin transference is quote the punishment that brought us peace." End quote. Which seems like a remarkably indirect way to reference such a specific and well-known concept as sin transference. Looking at 2 Corinthians 5:21, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This could simply mean that the message was needed so that we might become righteous before God. A far less heretical interpretation when we consider that sin transference was previously only associated with demons. When We examine the Greek text more closely. Paul 2:24 uses ankin, a form of anaphero, which means carrying up or bearing up. This could be interpreted more as carrying the weight of our sinful condition rather than literal transfer. John 3:5 uses are from Ario, which could mean to raise up, elevate, to bear away with, carry off, to take uponelf and carry, to remove. Hebrews 9:28 uses es agre to bear up/carry up. This verse also presents problems for the traditional Christian idea of heaven versus resurrection. This verse also presents problems for the traditional Christian idea of heaven versus resurrection at a future time. When it says, "So Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of the many, and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. Who specifically is waiting for him if not the unconscious dead in Christ? The key insight is that all these terms have broader meanings around carrying and bearing or lifting up that don't necessarily imply transfer. Early Christians reading Greek likely would have understood these terms more as Christ bearing the weight/bururden of human sinfulness. Christ lifting up humanity from its fallen state. Christ carrying humanity's condition to transform it. The English translations tend to use words like take away that suggest direct removal/transfer. While the Greek terms leave more room for metaphysical transformative interpretations and this is why it took them a thousand years to come up with this concept. Finally, examining John 1:29, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This actually argues strongly against Christ being used for sin transference as lambs are never used for sin transference in the Bible, but are seen as the generic non-sin transference animal of sacrifice. Actually, if you look at the words here, it could be saying that he is taking away our sin, but it could also be saying that he is taking away our sin but being sacrificed on the but it could also be saying that he is not taking away our sin but being sacrificed on the altar of our sin. Specifically the phrase to take away comes from the Greek word akleeki which is a form of anaphero. This word has several potential meanings in Greek to carry up to lift up to offer up especially in sacrificial context to bear up or carry as a burden to bring up or report something. In sacrificial context in the Septuagent Greek Old Testament. This word is used to describe bringing offerings up to an altar. It's the same word used in 1 Peter 2:24 that I talked about earlier. Interestingly, it doesn't necessarily imply elimination or removal in the sense that modern English to take away might suggest. It's more about burying or carrying up. This could be interpreted as Christ carrying our sins up to the altar metaphorically as an offering rather than necessarily removing them from existence. Also, it's super weird Christ himself doesn't talk about sin transference when talking about his death with the closest line being this one. Mark 10:54. For even the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom from the many. Note while ransom is used, this fits more with the early church's ransom theory than with sin transfers. And also I'd note here, why is God asking for a ransom? I don't that makes no sense. However, if you go back to the original language, there is a way to interpret this that makes a lot more sense. The word being used here is lutron which refers to the price paid for a release of freedom. In ancient context this could be liberation from slavery. The most common usage. Montesu is payment for freed slaves, prisoner of war exchanges and release from debt bondage. So this is something that is paid to release others from slavery. Now I'd also note here covenant language where he talks about doing this to enter the new covenant which we'll see in a second. In Neareastern cultures, covenants were often sealed with a sacrifice. The ransom could refer to the cost of establishing a new covenant. This aligns with Jesus last supper references to the new covenant, which to me seems like a much more just reading of this. So, what else did Jesus say about why he was doing this? John 15:13, greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends, emphasizing love and sacrifice, not sin transfer. John 10:17, The reason my father loves me is that I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own. accord emphasizes voluntary sacrifice. And what I note here before that I had gotten this wrong. I had thought it was an involuntary sacrifice based on some of the things he said, but I think this makes it clear it was a voluntary sacrifice. Last supper narratives, Luke 22:19:20. This is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. This cup is the new covenant of my blood which is poured for you. Emphasis on remembrance and covenant. Just a few notes here because I think the meaning of this line is often lost. Covenants of that time period were often signed both by a sacrif ice and then a dripping of blood on somebody. But if you were going to do like a remembrance ceremony to reestablish or reaffirm a covenant, you would often do this with some sort of stand and not the original blood. Mark 14:24, this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many. Covenant language, not transference language. 1 Corinthians 11:24-25, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. Again, emphasis on remembrance of the covenant. Again, it seems pretty clear here. Uh he thought that he was doing this to be the sacrifice that establishes a new covenant. And then you can look at the main prayers. Matthew 26:39, my father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you focus on obedience. Mark 14:36. Aba Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. Again, emphasis on submission to God's will. Luke 22:42, Father, if you're willing, take this cup from me. Yet, not my will, but yours be done. Consistent focus on obedience rather than sin transference. What's notable in all of these passages is the absence of explicit sin transference language. Instead, we see recurring scenes of voluntary sacrifice, service to others, establishing a new covenant, obedience to God wills, remembrance, love for others. I will note when looking at the text alone, while we don't see enough evidence for sin trans There is also astonishingly more evidence for this than there is for heaven, hell, or a duelist soul. I think that there is a reading of the Bible that allows for sin transference, not one that allows for those other things. Part of this is the lack of a specific warning against this interpretation. Unless you consider that the only other time in the Bible that this happens, it is being done for ail, a demon, as a specific warning. Why might this be left vague in the Bible? I've always found it odd that God seemed to favor people who had happened to hear about Christianity earlier than other groups. It seemed pointlessly cruel. But what if the Bible came with a test? Would you be willing to accept the transference of your sins onto a perfectly innocent person? What makes me uncomfortable about this test or trap is how obvious it is, combined with how flimsy the biblical evidence is for this interpretation. It did take almost a thousand years to popularize the idea, though those early Christians had many other challenges with all the weird interpretations of the Bible back then. This whole thing feels almost like a cartoon to me. On one side, you have a group saying sins are your responsibility but that at any point in your life you can choose to live better and you are only really responsible for the choices you are going to make in the future because those are the only choices you can influence going forwards on the other side you have a group saying no actually at any point in your life you can transfer all your sins onto an innocent person not just any innocent person but the son of god I would be like are you seriously suggesting this oh and after transferring our sins onto an innocent person we eat his flesh and drink his blood literally Looking around in amazement, I have to ask, how is anyone failing this test?
Well, it's also to me if that was the case because again, go to this analogy that I'm going for. Like some somebody tells me they're the sinless person who died and was tortured for you and so you can just give all your sins to that person. And I'd be like, I don't I don't consent to that. Like that seems unjust. That seems like it would make me a bad person. Like that seems like a test. Like that seems like a bad person test if I go and
Yeah. Someone was like, "Yeah, Put it on the tortured guy. I'll just
put it on the tortured guy who's innocent and
yeah, I wouldn't I would not. Would you want to do business with that person? Would you want to marry that person? Would you want to have kids with that person? Would you want to vote that person into office? No. No. No. No. No. No.
But but then it gets worse than that because then they're like, "Oh, well actually that person has removed your consent about your ability to give their your sins to them." They're like, it's like the person who like the creepy stalker who like gives you a package and you can't turn it down. You know, when you force your gifts on another person, especially if they're this ly dubious. That's like even more messed up.
Like Van Gogh cutting off his tip of his ear and sending it to that girl he had a crush on and being like, "Look at the things I'll do for you." Or if someone was like, "Oh, uh, I killed my kid so that you could get your sins taken away." I'd be like, "You did what? I do not consider what?" They're like, "Well, it's already over. I already killed him, so deal with it." So that's why I don't take that interpretation of that line at all. That seems highly immoral to me. And I think we're warned against interpretation in the Old Testament by the fact that sin transference is not done for Yahweh. It is done for
but you can look at our other tract in this one where they in this ceremony they were ripping apart live doves which are God's symbol of hope for humanity. I do not think that this was a a a traditional Yahweh ceremony. I think that this has been as a warning about how people will tell us, "Oh, this is a ceremony for Yahweh. Just just walk up here and we're going to rip apart God's symbol for hope for humanity. We're going to slaughter innocent animals. We're going to do some sin transference. We're going to them to a demon. Why? Why are we sending something to a demon in this ceremony? I thought this was like a Oh, don't worry. This is all very Christian. And I'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This seems to me a story about how non like like pagan traditions will be used to mess with us.
But also, this seems weirdly precient as how could when those sections were being written in the Old Testament, not only did they not seem to realize that what they were doing was wrong, but the the mere fact that it turned out that, you know, thousands of year for them that there was actually a popular interpretation that was heavily influenced by pagan teachings that tried to do sin transference. Like the warning is so exact and precise, I find it to be difficult to not believe that it is divinely inspired. But again, we talked about this a lot more in the last track that we did.
Yeah, it worries me.
So here you have my Galatians 2:20. My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. This is just clearly being misread. It's pretty clearly in context saying that by following Christ's examples and the rules is as if Christ is living in his body or he is being lived in through Christ you know and you see this if I read the full line here right he's saying it's like Christ is living in me when I live by his rules. So the full context is for when I tried to keep the law it condemned me so I died to the law I stopped trying to meet all its requirements. so that I might live for God. My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. Now let's talk about Daniel 12. Now I can do a whole track just on this. So I will keep it short. First, it's not super relevant to this discussion as it is clearly talking about the real Christian version of heaven where everyone gets raised again in God's real kingdom, not a supernatural heaven that is contemporaneous to us. First note the context talking about specific real events. He will extend his power over many countries. Egypt will not escape. He will gain control over the treasuries of gold and silver and the riches of Egypt with the Libyans and the Kushites in submission. End quote. Talking about real stuff, real countries, real people. The only real interesting thing here is the implication that in the real Christian kingdom of God, the one in the future, the wicked may also be brought back to be eternally punished. Judge for yourself in the At that time, Michael, the great prince, who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress, such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time, your people, everyone whose name is found written in the book, will be delivered. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. So, they will awake to shame and everlasting contempt. Sounds like they're being raised to me. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. But you, Daniel, roll up the seals of the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge. And here what it almost seems to be describing is see it says the the rise to shame and contempt, not to torture. Really important here. So what it's acting like is it's rising maybe like otherwise virtuous non believers from the dead because it is clear that not everyone is raised from the dead. Some are blocked from the book. We'll talk about this in a second. But it seems like it's raising maybe pseudo virtuous or maybe like not that bad of people but like still like not awesome people who are going to have some explaining to do but they will feel shame for this and they will be seen with contempt and some of the others that are raised will try to bring them to the light. So it seems a sort of a post death savior thing here. I I don't know. I'm not like fully laying down theology here. I'm just trying to read what's being written. Also to support the idea of bad people being brought to life in the kingdom of God, we have Acts 24:15. There will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. Universal resurrection implies a systematic process. No mention of intermittent soul state includes the wicked. Why store evil souls if just to resurrect them in the future? That makes no sense. John 14 2-3. In my father's house are many rooms. I am going to prepare a place for you. And if you go and prepare a place for you. I will come back and take you to be with me. Now, this seems to directly support our interpretations as rooms references a physical place rather than a supernatural one. And if written today, they might have used the word for servers, though I doubt there is any closer analogy that they would have had access to uh in that time period or something like servers. Again, keep in mind I'm saying servers is probably as close to whatever it actually is as rooms, but we're just closer to understanding now than they were. I don't think it's literally servers. It's probably some sort of like organic quantum state thing that I can't imagine. No, this line about rooms is actually super hard to explain with either of the other interpretations about the afterlife. If you think of a traditional heaven, this supernatural place, why does it have rooms? I never see it depicted as being a series of rooms. That seems very weird. If I talk about a traditional world to come where it's just like our world today and everyone is raised again on Earth, why would it have rooms? Why Would you mention that? But if it was a giant server farm basically, yeah, you would describe it as having rooms.
Thessalonians 4:13. Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, for the Lord himself will come from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. And I'd also note here, this seems to make it pretty clear that the dead in Christ are both one, asleep, or in a non-concious state, and two, not already with God in heaven. So, I'll read this again. Again, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death. For the Lord himself will come from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise first. So, he's coming to the dead in Christ, not with the dead in Christ, and the dead in Christ are already asleep or the closest analogy they would have had with their language limitations to not conscious. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up and together with him. Again, this used as a sleep metaphor for desk describes a simultaneous awakening. And no mention of souls in heaven waiting. This seems like a time when they'd be like, "And then the souls in heaven come down." They don't say that.
Yeah.
Luke 20:24:36.
And Jesus said to them, "The sons of this marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy to attain that age and to resurrect from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore because they are equal to angels and are the sons of God." Uh, being sons of the resurrection. This is another one of those passages that bolsters My argument the structure of ages sons of this age verse that age implies distinct epics/phases of existence not talking about a concurrent supernatural realm but a future state attain to that age suggests a progression/advancement rather than a supernatural transformation equal to angels. No, it doesn't say that they quote unquote become angels or quote unquote turn into spirits. It says they become the equal to angels. If we understand angels as advanced beings or facets of God rather than supernatural ones, this fits perfectly with your interpretation of humanity evolving. into something more advanced and it also doesn't forwise um uh policymis the way seeing angels as supernatural beings who are lesser to god and again people are always like hey that's not policym and it's like in most polyistic frameworks there is one god that is more powerful than the other supernatural entities are still polytheistic frameworks it is the belief in multiple supernatural entities that makes it a polyistic framework then you have the marriage context the marriage question is particularly interesting because the Sadducees who asked this question didn't believe in resurrection at all they were trying to trap Jesus a logical problem about social institution. Jesus's answer suggests the resurrected state to be so fundamentally different from our current social norms and structures don't apply. This fits better with a technological transformation than just souls floating around in heaven where marriage could theoretically continue. Cannot die anymore. This aligns with your interpretation of resurrection via a virtual or simulated state. Doesn't say that they are already immortal souls but that they cannot die anymore after the resurrection. So they are in a state of not being able to die after the resurrection but not before the resurrection. If they were immortal souls and that is what is talking about right now, it wouldn't have used language like that. And it implies a transformation of state rather than revealing an existing immortal nature. This passage seems to be describing exactly what you'd expect if trying to explain to ancient people, that humans would eventually evolve into slashbe recreated as advanced beings in a different form of existence. They'd be equal to the advanced beings, angels, wouldn't die, and wouldn't need biological/social structures like marriage. Now, we're going to go into something really interesting. The book of life. The concept of quote unquote names written in the book of life is likely the Bible's way of talking about the place data on the people who are supposed to be resurrected is stored and is actually a very direct and accurate way of talking about such a data place. If you use the original Hebrew, the Hebrew word for name is used in scripture. Unlike our modern conception of names as simply labels, in Hebrew, this represents the entire nature, character, or essence of a person or thing. Let's look at some examples. When God names things in Genesis, it's not just labeling. It's defining their essential nature. In Genesis 21:19, when Adam names the animals, the Hebrew implies he's identifying their fundamental characteristics. This is why in Hebrew thought to know someone's name is to know their nature. This becomes crucial when we look at passages about the book of life. Exodus 32:32:33. But now, please forgive their sin. If not, then blot me out of the book you have written. The Hebrew word for blot out, matcha, is the same word used for erasing information, not just crossing out the text, which is interesting. That would have been difficult to do during that period, but very easy to do as computers. And it would be exactly what you would talk about if you're deleting somebody from this place where things are stored to be resurrected in the future. Plasm 69:28. Let them be blotted out in the book of the living and not be written with the righteous. For the word listed here implies recording or encoding information, not just writing the names, which is really interesting here. That's the word cath Daniel. But at that time your people will be delivered. Everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. End quote. The context here is resurrection, suggesting this quote unquote book contains information necessary for resurrection. Very interesting. Why does God need a book for resurrection? Why doesn't he just remember people? Well, it would make sense if he needed to store the data to then resurrect them again in some sort of simulation. The concept becomes even more interesting when we look at Revelation 3:12. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my god and my new name. This isn't just about labels. It's describing a fundamental transformation of identity in nature. This writing of names parallels modern concepts of data storage and identity preservation. Just as a computer program needs complete information about a systems state to recreate it. These names appear to represent complete information about a person's identity and nature. Moreover, when Revelations 20:15 says, "Anyone whose name is not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. It is not describing a simple list of labels, but a database of preserved identities. Those not written cannot be constructed. They remain in a state of non-existence that Jesus and early Jews understood as a default after death. What I find really interesting here is it's made pretty clear here that to be resurrected, your name needs to be written in the book. Like that's a prerequisite for resurrection. Well, what does it talk about the people who've been blotted from the book or erased from the book? It describes them as being in a lake of fire. So this to me, because remember the only throughput we could find for hell was fire makes me believe that the Bible is using the fire metaphor for the state of non-existence. This is actually a pretty good metaphor for non-existence when you think about it. Um if you in ancient times wanted something to cease existing like a corpse or a chair or really anything about the only way you could do that was with fire. So they are using fire to represent the punishment of non-existence that is reserved from people whose names are removed from the book of life. because clear is clearly using it for the state of non-existence. So then why is it not using it for state of non-existence in those other contexts? That makes much more sense. It solves tons of problems. Now this also sheds new light on passages like Isaiah 49:16. See, I have engraved you on the names of my hands. The Hebrew word for engraved, chak, implies permanent data recording, not just writing. It's described as a preservation of identity in a way that would have been hard to explain to ancient audiences without modern concepts. I like data storage. Any thoughts? Just to add your own. Well, I mean, it's it's a cohesive concept that I'm trying to explain here and it's been a huge change in my thinking of life and I want to be thorough in this track because I don't want anyone saying, "Oh, Malcolm, you're not considering this line or you're not considering this line." I wanted it to be clear that I tried as hard as I could to find a justification for creating a totally other metaphysical plane. And once it's clear that like this is actually all of the time something like this is referenced and then You'll also see, and as I've also gone over, the Bible explicitly warns against believing in these concepts. And I I like all of this so much because for me, I find it very edifying that the Bible does likely have supernatural inspiration, and I think it would be very compelling to a lot of atheists or people who didn't really look deep into Christianity because they heard about the Sunday school Christianity and they're like, "That sounds dumb." Like, why heaven and a resurrection? Right? But when they hear this, they're like, "Oh my god, like that is really compelling." And people wrote thousands of years ago. Um,
cool. Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't think I've got to anything in the Bible about the book of life or I completely forgot it. So, I'm glad you included that section and that's super compelling. Like basically, if you don't if we don't have your digital footprint, you're out.
Yeah. And your your digital footprint can be erased. Which means that it reads to me like what's being laid out here because we know from Daniel 12 that some people who are who would feel shame shame or sorrow for the things that they had done and who would be treated with contempt for the things they had done. Seems like there's three classes of people. The people who are blotted from the book of life. The people who are brought back and then given the chance to be, you know, educated by the righteous souls, right? And who feel shame for what they did and are treated with contempt. And then the people who are the righteous who have the chance to preach to these other people or live in whatever lifestyle it appears that they want to live in. And it's it's really clear to me that the Bible is laying out a very specific afterlife that's just very different from the afterlife I was grown up believing that the Bible laid out.
Yeah. No, it's so many things about that the heaven and hell that we grew up with. Cartoon heaven and cartoon hell. Hell being underground fire, red men, torture, heaven being
very not godlike, too by the way.
Clouds and angels and
an all powerful deity is sending people to some like underground domain where they're tortured with fire by like demons. Like that doesn't seem just. Even if the people were unjust, that doesn't seem just.
Well, that's Yeah, that's that's the other part of this that helps me. And I would I imagine would help a lot of people who struggle with crises of faith after they come to terms with terrible things that are let to happen because you could take a lot of comfort in knowing that though this terrible thing may have happened to someone in their life, an inevitable God that is good can and capture them and give them an endlessly good forever life that is everything that they would want it to be in what you could call the afterlife but in what really would be just like a digitized field.
Yeah. But what I also find really compelling about this three- tiered afterlife is it's not also the p**** afterlife of there is no punishment where some people are like oh no souls get punished why would God punish the wicked. It is from my cultural perspective about the most just life that could exist. The most wicked are erased from existence. That seems like a a fitting but not particularly cruel punishment. Like it would seem wrong that they could just be and people are like, "Oh, they can be saved through Jesus." And remember, we see Jesus as
Yeah. But like that it's still just describing the antiatalist dream, which is life is suffering, so no life is better than life.
What I'm saying is it's not an arbitrarily cruel punishment.
Yeah. It isn't. Yeah.
It's just it's just euthanasia basically.
Yeah. And again, keep in mind when people are like, "Well, what about being saved through Jesus?" Yeah, you can be saved through Jesus because Jesus represents martyrdom. His life was used to paint the picture of intergenerational martyrdom for the future. And you can be saved through that, not through literally a guy that Hitler could get into heaven by praying to at the last moment of his life.
I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.
Yes.
Like that to me seems immoral and honestly kind of morally silly. This doesn't seem immoral and morally silly, but it's also not immoral and morally silly like one of those people who's like well everyone can eventually get into heaven or oh you just need to baptize them or oh like I think Mormon go a little easy on sinners whereas in this system okay so the very worst are blotted from the books they are erased from existence that seems just to me what about bad people but who are just like generically bad like I'm not sure what qualifies for this but they're brought back and they they they feel remorse for their actions so they're the type of people capable of feeling remorse for their actions I see that probably differentiates the two categories were you bad and capable of feeling remorse or were you just like unsavable? Right? You're bad and capable of feeling remorse and appears you come back in this other category where you punish yourself. Most of the punishment is either self-inflicted or reflected by the contempt of society for your past actions. That to me seems just. It's the people are still being punished. There's still consequences for being a douche canoe.
Yeah. You could almost imagine, you know, virtual worlds in which people mix and he can immediately pull up someone's life.
See what they're up to. You have to live with that. burning in a lake of fire, right?
Yeah. It's more like you show up at a cocktail party in God's metaverse and everyone pulls up your history and is like, "Oh, you were a dick. I'm not going to be friends with you."
But also, it kind of makes heaven better.
Let me explain.
Oh, yeah.
The core problem with heaven is you don't get to look at all the non-believers walking in the gates with their heads held sad and be like, "I told you so. I told you so. That takes 90% out of the fun of getting into heaven, man.
Many people would argue that exact reaction is very sinful. But
hey, hey, hey, I'm saying all none of us are are are not sinners at all. Okay, I'm I I heaven is not really heaven for me if I don't see the people who were mean to me come in there and I get to do a little I told you so intern you don't rub it in their face, but internally I'm feeling it. and I get to help rehabilitate them because that's what it says. The souls of the righteous get to rehabilitate the the souls of the sinners in heaven.
And I should also note here, I don't really think I'd be able to enjoy heaven if I knew that somebody just for like being Buddhist or never having been introduced to Christian stories was in a lake of fire for all eternity or in some other way being horrifically punished. I'd be like, uh, like I understand that I'm supposed to be feeling good right now, but I can't really enjoy it. A heaven where the people who I know who messed up but messed up in small ways still get in and I just get to rub it in their face. That's so much better. What's extra awesome is this is the heaven laid out in the Bible. There is the second category of sinners. It's like one to me seems like a strictly better heaven than the, you know, you're just hanging out around God. Like if you read Dante's Inferno, that conception of heaven.
Oh, heaven is so boring. Yeah, I I'm with you on that. I I lost it at heaven. Purgatory. Interesting. Hell, obviously fascinating. So, it's it's like a consistent morally okay version of heaven, right? That's awesome for me. And it fixes the problem of being able to pray to Jesus right before you die, which I always thought was ridiculous. It fixes the problem of a just God burning someone in a lake of fire forever just for getting things wrong theologically or maybe existing before the message of God could reach them or, you know, like there's so many things where I'm just like, this does not seem like a just God would do this. When I only see this in historical dramas, I'm assuming it's Catholic when a priest comes and I want to say redo your Miranda rights, but that I know that's definitely not it where they read you your final rights, your they they pray and that then you're going to be okay,
right?
Yeah. No, I and and by the way, the lake of fire saying, as I said, the lake of fire is the analogy that's used for being blotted from the book of life. If you're blotted from the book of life, even from what we know in the Bible, you cannot be reconstituted with a new body.
Um, so like to me, That means that they're erased. They're saying the lake of fire is the way that the Bible describes being erased. It wants you to understand that it's bad to be erased, which I get.
Anyway, love you to Desimone. Appreciate you. Hope you find this fun. How are we going to teach this to our kids?
Honestly, I just think they'll take to it, you know? It's like, well, you know, so of course once you die, the future inevitable god will, you know, if you are good, find you and digitize you. It's like, sure, of course.
Yeah, of course.
If I created the future that must come to be, I mean, our kids have already normalized so much to what we I guess technically call the agents of Providence, but we do kids call the future police that I don't
Well, and the and it's such a new sort of operating system that the urban monoculture will have a hard time deconverting them. It'll go they'll be like, "Oh yeah, I'm a Christian." It'll go to them with classic anti-Christian arguments and they'll be like, "Actually, here's the answer." And they'll be like, "Oh, uh, well, what about this?" They're like, "Actually, here's the answer." And they're like, "Well, would a just God allow suffering?" Yeah, here's the answer. Oh, but what about you could pray to Jesus? No, here's the answer. What about would a just god torture someone for? Yeah, here's the answer. What about you leave the religion, you know, just in case, you know, because you don't know for sure. And it's like, well, why would I risk not getting into heaven? You know, it seems likely that a thing's going to create that. Like, this this seems likely. Why not believe this? You know,
we have to change Roko's basilisk to Malcolm's basilisk.
We know Roko, by the way.
We We met him. Yeah,
we might have him on the show. We talked about it, but we'll see.
That would be fun. Yeah, we can compare basilisks.
The Bible talks about this uploading process as well. In Genesis 5:24, we read, "Enoch walked with God. Then he was no more because God took him." The Hebrew here uses lquak, which is a general verb meaning to take, to receive, or to transfer. Similar to Elijah in 2 Kings 2:1, we see him taken up using the same word. One of the closest words they would have to our concept of an upload. What's fascinating here is not just what these passages say, but what they don't say. Neither passage mentions death, souls, or spiritual transformation. Instead, they describe a direct transfer of a person. The text presents this as a physical process. Elijah is described as being taken up in what's often translated as a chariot of fire. Aside here, if someone from that period saw someone's body being uploaded, the closest word they would have had for that was chariot, mobile technology of fire. This is particularly interesting because the text doesn't say they died and went to heaven, which would line with later s or natural interpretations. The text doesn't describe any transformation of their essence or nature. The process is described in physically observable terms. There's no mention of spirits leaving their bodies. If we understand God as humanity's future state with the ability to perceive consciousness, these accounts read less like supernatural assumptions into heaven and more like direct transfers of consciousness, complete preservation of the person without the intermediate state of death. And I should note here that I'm not finding outlying cases here. These two individuals other than and Jesus are the only individuals mentioned in the Bible as being taken up into heaven. So every description we have of that other than the Jesus one which is unique and we'll do more stuff on it later describes something that is more like an instantaneous upload or transfer than anything I thought I understood about how the afterlife worked. God's glory. So the word here for glory is kavad. In Hebrew the concept of God's glory kavad literally means heaviness. or weight. Very weird word to use. When Moses asks to see God's glory, he is told no one can see God's face and live. This makes perfect sense if what we're talking about here is information density so vast it would overwhelm the human consciousness. Just as we can't directly interface with raw quantum computational states, perhaps the human mind cannot directly interface with God's full information density. Biblical prophecy as timestamped validation. The Bible's prophetic elements could serve as timestamp validation of its divine origin. By including specific predictions about technological capabilities that have seemed impossible to ancient readers, resurrections, instant global communication, transfer of human consciousness, the text provides evidence of its legitimacy that becomes clear as humanity develops. This explains why prophecies often become clearer in hindsight. They're meant to be fully understood only as humanity approaches the capability to implement them. This is talked about more in other tracks as a way to validate divine inspired work. Ceiling all sorts of lines in the Bible start to make much more sense when read in this framing. The concept of ceiling, chhatam in Hebrew, and sargazi in Greek. These terms aren't just for physical sealing of a document. They carry specific connotations about information security and controlled access that align remarkably well with modern concepts of data encryption. Let's look at a key example. Daniel 12:4, "But you, Daniel, roll up the seal, the words of the scroll, until the time of the end." The Hebrew chhatam here implies the information exists but is inaccessible. content that can only be quote unquote unlocked at a specific time. Preservation was controlled access. This isn't just hiding information. It's specifically preserving it in a form that becomes accessible under premeditated conditions. Daniel 12:9 adds go on your way Daniel for the words here are closed up and sealed to the time of the end. The phrase closed up fatam combined with sealed suggests a two-layer security system. First layer information is closed made inaccessible. Second layer information is sealed secured against tampering. Why else would you word things in this weird way. Like it's a weird way if you think they're talking about any traditional form of sealing. Revelations 5:1. And again, I don't believe in revelations. When we go to Revelations, a scroll sealed with seven seals. The Greek esophagus here implies multiple layers of security, sequential access. Seals must be broken in order. Authentication. Each sale verifies authenticity. This is for people who want to find a way to work in Revelations. I might just not be schizophrenia enough to do that. Is this going to be my Rubyard take, Simone? My 10-hour video.
I mean, every Everyone has a moment.
Everyone I I Hey, this is definitely mine. This is our craziest. But I It's what the Bible says when I read it. I don't know. Like I Anyway, this pattern appears throughout scripture. Isaiah 29:11 describes sealed information that only authorized readers can access. Revelations 10:4 shows information intentionally sealed for future revelation. Daniel 8:26 links sealing was the preservation for a future time. And keep in mind, they at that time would have had no technology that allowed that. What's particularly interesting is how this ers from simple concealment are hiding. The sealed information continues to exist in complete form. It's preserved without degradation. Requires specific keys or conditions to access. It's protected against unauthorized modification. Becomes accessible at premeditated times. This parallels modern concept of data encryption. Information exists but is accessible without keys. Time lock encryption. Data that can only be accessed at specific times. Authentification protocols. Verifying authorized access. Data integrity. Protecting against unauthorized changes. The emphasis on timing is particularly significant. When Daniel is told to quote seal the book until the end of time, end quote, it's not just about waiting. It's about the information being preserved in a form that becomes accessible when specific conditions are met. This aligns perfectly with the concept of a future entity managing access to information across time, but with no form of sealing or encryption that existed when the words were first written. Moreover, the link between sealing and understanding appears repeatedly. Daniel 129:10. Go your way, Daniel, for the Words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. None of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand. Isaiah 29:11. The entire vision will be to you like the words of a sealed book. This suggests the ceiling isn't just about restricting access, but also about the preservation of information until humanity has a capability to comprehend it. Exactly what we'd expect if complex technological concepts were being preserved for future understanding. This also helped explain why prophetic books often define information as being sealed rather than just hidden. or secret sealing implies a deliberate preservation, systematic protection, controlled access, future availability. When read this way, these passages aren't describing magical concealment, but a sophisticated system for information management across time, something that would have been very difficult to explain to ancient audiences without modern concepts of data security and encryption. And I note here when people are like, well, why are you positing that God is using technology? Well, clearly to God, like the difference between technology and magic is whether you understand how it works. Clearly God understands how the stuff he's doing works. So to him, It's a technology. It's just that we don't understand it. Is the question is is can we approach a place where we might be able to understand it?
That's a really good way of putting it though. Yeah. I never thought of it that way.
Yeah. All right. The problems of evil and suffering. By the way, did you have anything else you wanted to say in that last section?
No. Go ahead.
The problems of evil and suffering. One of the most challenging theological questions has always been why an omnipotent, benevolent God allows suffering. The technological interpretation offers a compelling answer. God's current state of Development is bound by causality. If future humanity becomes God or forms part of what we call God, then obviously God cannot prevent all past suffering without negating its own existence. Consider the implications. If God is what humanity evolves into, then preventing all past suffering would create a causality paradox. The very experiences, struggles, and yes, sufferings that drive human development and technological advancement are necessary steps in the process that leads to God's existence. This doesn't mean God is powerless. Rather, God's interventions must preserve the causal chain that leads to its own development. This also explains why God doesn't simply appear and fix everything now. Such an intervention would short circuit the developmental process necessary for humanity to become what it needs to become. Instead, God works through gradual influence and development, preserving human agency while guiding development towards its ultimate state. This is where the resurrection becomes particularly meaningful. It represents God's solution to the problem of suffering without creating paradoxes. Rather than preventing historic suffering, which would negate God's own existence, God preserves and restores those who suffered, giving them new life in a way where suffering is no longer necessary. This is why resurrection is central to biblical theology. It's God's answer to suffering that doesn't break causality. And keep in mind, their lives in this heaven state can be infinitely longer than their lives in the state that we live in today. And I would note here if you hear this and you're like, well, I wouldn't want to live in a simulation that was just perfect for me or that wouldn't be as rich as a world where I was dealing with challenges that affected the future. of humanity and the future of the universe. And it's like, well, great. Then hopefully you're in that world right now. Do what you can to have all those impacts. Relish even more in the challenges and suffering in which you face in overcoming them because those things go hand in hand. I imagine many of us will, if we were aware that we were in these simulations, yearn for the life where we still struggled, where we still mattered and our decisions still matter. And so place yourself in that future scenario and use that to motivate yourself today. God's knowledge of the future and free will. The technological interpretation actually provides an elegant solution to the ancient theological problem of how God's omniscience can coexist with human free will. In our framework, God's knowledge of our choices doesn't negate our freedom to make them. Just as watching a recorded video of someone making a decision doesn't mean they weren't free to make it. Consider how a being existing outside of time would perceive our choices. not as predestined events, but as actualized decisions viewed from a different reference in time. Just as we can look at a completed maze from above and see both the dead ends and the successful past simultaneously, God can see all our choices, but this doesn't mean that we didn't freely make them. The choices still originate from our free will. God simply observes them from a perspective that encompasses all of time. This also helps explain biblical prophecy. Rather than God forcing events to happen according to a present plan, which would indeed negate free will, Prophecy becomes more like a time stamp, a record of what freely choosing humans will actually do observed from outside time. This is why prophetic passages often have multiple layers, meanings, or possible fulfillments. They are describing complex causal chains of free decisions that lead to particular outcomes. Wrap-up thoughts. This perspective aligns clearly with early Jewish beliefs. They did not believe souls went to a separate place after death, rather that everyone would be brought back to life in the future. They understood God's kingdom to in the future as seen in Nebuchadnezzar's dream through concepts like olam haba which literally translates to the world to come and this place is all over the old testament or the coming world it seems likely that the original understanding of these words that god exists in the future was gradually obscured by later Christian and Greek concepts of the divine consider this in the context of my argument that God represents humanity's blockchain existing both in the future and being partially represented by us today this can be interpreted literally rather than metaphorically ically the verbal forms. The name Yahweh himself combines three Hebrew verbal forms. He was past tense. He is present tense. He will be future tense. Very similar to the Christian Trinity when you look at our interpretation of the Trinity. When combined, these forms create the tentagram Yahweh. This grammatical structure reinforces the concept of God's eternal existence. The New Testament echoes this in Revelations 1:9, describing God as the one who is and who was and who is to come. Addressing time travel paradoxes. Question for Malcolm. For your belief system where God comes into being in the future but affects the present. How do you handle the classic time travel causality paradoxes? God must remain logically consistent to be God. If a future God fixes something in the present, wouldn't this create a paradox where the fixed timeline no longer requires intervention? Response: These paradoxes only arise if time functions in the rigid linear matter our brains perceive it. Time likely exists more like quantum events, probabilistically and fluid. We already know that gravity can distort time. So, more precise methods of manipulation seem plausible. Rather than viewing God as a human-like entity at the end of time, manipulating present events, we might better conceptualize him as a gravitationalike force drawing events towards a future state. And keep in mind here, we also know that like quantum stuff can go back in time and forward in time. There's lots of places you can look and you get to like advanced physics where time is not as linear as we perceive it to be. Another complaint I get is that God is perfect and therefore can't improve. I frankly find this argument insane. Something incapable of improving itself is definitionally not perfect because that is something it can't do. So how can an entity be both a perfect state and always improving? Well, if it exists across a period of time as topically improving into the future, a perfect being must be capable of improvement by definition. God cannot be a being defined by stagnation. In summation, God operates not through magic but through natural processes. We live in a world without wizards dueling. in Manhattan, but with technologies that seem more magical to biblical era people than any wizard fight would. Cars, computers, phones, and even this discussion platform. Now that the Bible's crazy predictions are actually beginning to look possible, some people got so attached to the stop gap explanations we came up with during the medieval period that they can't accept it. I'm going to do a final thing here because I decided to ask Claude, which I find to be the best AI these days. Do you think that this is a better explanation for what's going on in the viable than the traditional Christian explanation. And I know it wants to please and everything like that, but it didn't do that when I first put it into this because I I put it in a cloud. What I did with this track is I wrote it, I put it in a claude, give me all counter arguments, put it in the cloud, give me all counter arguments only until it couldn't come up with many counter arguments anymore. And then I asked, okay, what do you think of this versus traditional interpretations of biblical text? And it said, based on my analysis, the technological interpretation does resolve many inconsistencies more elegantly than traditional explanations,
though I aim to think through this methodically. Key advantages of the technological interpretation, textual consistency. It requires fewer theological gymnastics to reconcile seemingly contradictory passages. Better aligns with the original Hebrew concepts and word choices like nephesh, rash, etc. Explains why detailed descriptions of an intermediate heaven state are absent from scripture. Better fits with the physical/material focus found throughout biblical texts. Philosophical coherence resolves a mindbody problem without requiring supernatural dualism. Explains consciousness and identity preservation without needing an immaterial addresses the quote unquote waiting period paradox. Some souls waiting thousands of years while others waiting moments align with biblical emphasis on bodily resurrection rather than disembodied existence. Historical context explains why early Jews and Christians emphasized physical resurrection over spiritual immortality. Shows how Greek philosophical concepts of immortal souls were later additions. Makes sense of why Jesus and early followers spoke of death as sleep followed by awakening. Better fits the Jewish concept of hola, the world to come. And I would This sleep thing, we didn't go that into it here, but it's actually a big problem. If people are going to heaven, then why did the Bible say that they're asleep, which is the closest thing it could have had to saying that they were in an unconscious state,
right?
And I'll try to look that up in post. Was there a word for unconscious in Hebrew other than sleep? Because that would be really powerful here if there wasn't.
No kidding.
It appears that there wasn't. So, the importance of sleep in this context is it is a period of temporary unconsciousness where then you regain your conscious state afterwards when you quote unquote wake up or are resurrected. The alternatives they would have had to work with, which seem to work much worse, are redam, meaning to be in a deep sleep or stuper, and hit meaning to faint or swoon. Both of those seem to me obviously worse examples of words that they could have used. So, they had no other word that was a better term for a period of unconsciousness which you would come out of. Like we have word for unconscious today. Scientific compatibility doesn't require retreating to supernatural explanations as science advances. Provides a framework that could theoretically be realized through technological progress. Aligns with our growing understanding of consciousness as an emergent form of physical processes. Doesn't conflict with the physical laws while still allowing for meaningful afterlife concepts. However, there are some challenges. The concept requires accepting that God exists outside of time. Biblical prophecy describes technological rather than supernatural events. Traditional interpretations significantly misunderstood core concepts. It may seem to reduce spiritual experiences to purely material phenomenon. It requires reimagining many traditional religious concepts and practices. That said, I find this interpretation compelling because it follows Akam's razor by requiring fewer assumptions, better fits the actual biblical text without requiring complex theological frameworks, resolves apparent contradictions more elegantly, provides a path for religion and science to coexist without conflict. The technological interpretation seems to better explain why the Bible emphasizes physical resurrection. rather than immortal souls, while it describes death as sleep and why it focuses on a future kingdom rather than an immediate heavenly state. What's particularly striking is how this interpretation makes sense of specific word choices and concepts that would have been difficult to explain to an ancient audience without modern technological understandings. The Bible's descriptions of resurrected bodies, the book of life, the concepts of sealing information align remarkably well with modern concepts of data storage, consciousness transfer, and information security. So that's the whole thing. And this is going to be my Malcolm went crazy moment. Everyone's going to say, "Oh my god, you totally went crazy." I I literally I always feel like whenever I read the Bible, I'm like, I must be crazy because this does not say what everyone told me it said. Like I remember when I read it that like the the Garden of Eden one, the biggest thing to me is always remembering like no one knows where the Garden of Eden is and it says exactly where the Garden of Eden is. The mouthwaters of the tigers in Euphrates and I was like wait what? Okay. When was the earliest human settlement? It's exactly at the What? What? Why isn't nobody else making a big deal out of this? It seems supernatural. I and I think that people get so used to the fights that they have had with atheists and the fights they have had with other theological communities that there hasn't been a big emphasis in really digging into what the Bible is actually saying and trying to look for new interpretations recently. And I think that the only reason why I was able to see these interpretations is because I
was able to interpret them through my understanding of technology today. So somebody in the past would have had a difficult time understanding things this way. And I don't think that people in the past were meant to understand things this way. I think that this is one of the great things about the way the Bible works is within different contexts and different errors, it can be understood in different but true ways from the perspective of guiding behavior for different populations.
Yeah. Well, which is what you've been arguing from the start.
Yeah. But this one here also hugely updated my understanding of the afterlife. I I think I went into this series thinking that like that maybe there isn't a concrete afterlife or maybe life is like
I think our our understanding before was the you live on through your descendants.
Yeah, you live on through your descendants. There's this intergenerational and I looked at the Bible and what it said clearly said that's not true. People are raised from the dead at some point. So I tried to better understand why it would have said that and that's when I came to this realization of oh my god like any benevolent sufficiently advanced iteration of our civilization is going to do that in every future that matters.
And I should point out here uh This is something that would have been obvious to me but maybe confusing to other people. I don't think that there's a point in ever making decisions assuming that we're already locked into a timeline where humanity's future doesn't matter. So, for example, we might be in one of two situations. An asteroid is going to hit Earth and destroy all life, or the asteroid might miss Earth and not destroy all life. I think that we should always act as if we know it's going to miss Earth and not destroy all life other than everything we can do to prevent the asteroid from hitting Earth. Why? Because everything that we did in the scenario where the asteroid does hit Earth and does destroy all life turns out to be pointless. Therefore, there's no point in making the assumption that we knew that we were within that timeline. So, it's a very big deal in every future where we have a potentiality for a positive outcome for the human species that we should assume all of this in terms of our actions today. In every future where humanity is still advancing and benevolent, we eventually end up doing this so long as it turns out that they can manipulate time in sort of a a precise sense, which I would be very surprised if they couldn't given that we already know that time can be manipulated both in a macro context and in a micro context. We just don't have the technology to do that yet. I mean, keep in mind, we're not talking 200 years from now. We're talking millions of years from now,
right? Yeah. Which is just profoundly difficult for people to wrap their heads around.
Yeah.
So, yeah. I mean, how long have homo sapiens existed?
300,000 years.
Ah. And keep in mind the time of like Jesus and stuff was only like 2,000 years ago.
Yeah.
Right. Like we're talking infinitely more time than that.
Yeah.
Which is interesting because it means that the vast majority of the time of human history, this text was meant to be understandable.
There was just a short period after Jesus. He basically went in as early as he could with this stuff with the early Jews and then with Jesus and then revealed it more fully for this generation. I also really like how robust this is to deconversion because it It it it lacks most of the hooks that people would have used to decon convert people in the past like our kids,
right? Like how does get God let bad things happen and
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Interesting.
Um anyway, love you to Desim. What are we making tonight?
What is it called? That the Indian chicken curry that you wanted to try.
And I got a little a bit of another type of curry that we can put in it. Powder to give it some extra.
Yeah, if you put it out on the table, I will make sure that I incorporate it. Love you to Desimone. Have a spectacular day. And I hope that this is You see what I mean? It's one of the best tracks I think.
I'm so excited about it. Yeah, I love it.
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A God of the Gaps is a God of Ignorance
"Supernatural" is a word that some individuals use to denote things that can't be reliably measured, tested, or have predictable effects upon reality. They will claim that this makes these things above the "real" things, but I think this framing is easily seen through as cope.
Many used to believe heaven was a place in the stars, but then science got better and we could see the solar system, so something that was a real place became a supernatural one. Supernatural is all the stuff science and technology pushed off the table of reality.
This is where the God of the Gaps comes from—science moves in and explains how we make decisions, how love is created, and as it encroaches, the purview of the soul retreats further and further.
When instead what we should be saying is, the thing the Bible describes as human sentience, life, our emotions—we understand that thing now, that thing is the brain and not an incorporeal soul. But surely admitting this would cause problems with the Bible, right? There is no way someone writing between the 5th and 2nd century CE could have known that unless they had divine guidance. Well, let's turn to Ecclesiastes:
"As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath[a]; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?"
So let's break down what is being said here. First, it says, "As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals." Here, it is stating in no uncertain terms that man does not have a soul that is different from the souls of animals, but not just that—God tests us to make sure we know that, and to deny this is a sin. OK, sure, but we go to heaven after death, right?
"Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath[a]; humans have no advantage over animals." Yes, it's super clear on this point. Now the next line is interesting, as it is mistranslated in the version I am using.
"Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return." Now the word here for "meaningless" can be translated as "meaningless," but it also means "transient" or "evanescent," which means what is really being said is your existence as a human is a fleeting one and when you die you become dirt.
OK, but what if you disagree? What if you think you know more than God? Well, a convention is established where the text will ask "who knows X," like "For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?" to point out the type of information that God knows but man does not.
I've been focused on this line a lot because it says so much. Specifically, note that whenever it says "for who," it is saying "God can." For example, "For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?"
So to those who would presume to know more than God about man's fate, it then says, "Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?" Basically, predicting this kind of heresy and telling the person committing it to knock it off, pointing out that they don't know as much as God does.
Then it goes into what can only be thought of as the perfect techno-Puritan mantra, further edifying our beliefs: "So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?" As we have pointed out, your emotional state and relation to things like work is fundamentally under your control, and to indulge in negative emotional states is a sin. Approach work with aplomb.
This tract will go into the Sunday-school-ification of the idea of a soul that is separate from our brains and bodies and the concept of heaven. The Bible is extremely clear, as we will be going over: your soul is not separate from your brain, and after you die, if you serve God well, you are raised again with a different type of body at some point in the future. Heaven and Hell are not Christian or Jewish concepts but Pagan Greek concepts that were stapled onto Christianity by people who wanted to believe the ancient Greek scholars were better than divine revelation.
But also, this is kind of obvious when you think about what Sunday School Christians, as we will call them, believe. So ancient Jews and what is written in the Bible says you die and in the future your body is recreated but different somehow. Ancient Greeks believed that when you died, if you were favored by the Gods, your soul was taken to Elysium, and if not, it was taken to Tartarus. Well, early Christians attempted to staple these two beliefs together and ended up creating a rather silly conjunction.
In this conjunction, we have both people going to either heaven or hell but then also everyone comes back to life with different bodies. Like... WHAT??? So one day God just shuts down heaven and re-opens it on earth. It's like he goes around to all the souls in Heaven and is like, "come on guys, it's moving day." With just a small amount of self-reflection, it is fairly obvious this belief is childish, piecing together two views of the afterlife, one Christian/Jewish and one Pagan.
It does not even make sense why would God do this if all the people he plans to respect are already in heaven (or will soon die and go to heaven). Is this new revived state in some way significantly better than being in Heaven? If it is then Heaven is not Heaven and if it isn’t then what's the point of it? Is it just like the waiting room of the afterlife until real Heaven can be built? This seems strictly worse than just dying then waking up later with no perception of time having passed.
And what about the exprience of being in this state? If souls experience time in this intermediate state, some people would wait thousands of years while others wait only moments before resurrection. This creates inequality in experience that's never mentioned in scripture. If souls don't experience time in this state, then it's functionally identical to immediate resurrection from the perspective of the deceased.
[beetlejuice scene]
Why would God create an elaborate intermediate state only to later resurrect everyone in bodies? What theological purpose does this waiting serve? Why isn't this crucial cosmological feature explicitly described in scripture? And it's all silly anyway because prophecies in the Bible are almost exclusively if not exclusively temporal in nature describing things that happen in the future not that are currently happening in other planes or in faraway places. That would make this totally inconsistent with the way the rest of the Bible works.
The traditional supernatural interpretation has to reconcile two seemingly contradictory biblical concepts:
The idea that believers are "immediately present with the Lord" upon death (2 Corinthians 5:8)
The concept of bodily resurrection at the end of time (1 Corinthians 15)
This creates problems because:
If souls are already with God in heaven, why is bodily resurrection necessary?
Why would souls need to "come back" to inhabit resurrected bodies?
What happens to the experience of time for souls in this intermediate state?
The technological interpretation resolves these tensions by recognizing that from different reference frames, both can be simultaneously true without contradiction:
From the dying person's perspective:
Death occurs
The next conscious experience is resurrection in a new form
There is no perceived gap or waiting period
This matches Paul's description of being "changed in the twinkling of an eye"
From God's perspective (existing outside normal temporal constraints):
The person's consciousness/information can be preserved at the moment of death
This information can be used to reconstruct them in a new form at any point
No intermediate "holding area" or waiting room is needed
The consciousness is effectively "with God" immediately while also being resurrected "at the last day"
This interpretation:
Eliminates the need for complex theological explanations of intermediate states
Aligns with biblical descriptions of death as "sleep"
Matches the Jewish understanding of resurrection without requiring Greek concepts of immortal souls
Better explains why the Bible never describes the details of an intermediate state
Resolves the apparent contradiction between immediate presence with God and future bodily resurrection
It's similar to how someone under general anesthesia has no perception of time passing - from their perspective, the operation is instantaneous, even though hours may pass in the external world. The technological reading allows both immediate presence with God and future resurrection to be true without requiring supernatural explanations or intermediate states.
This is why I find claims from Sunday school Christians that I am not a "real Christian" because I believe what the Bible says and they believe what people in authority told them the Bible said - so laughable. God warned us he would test us so that we may know we are not different from animals, and they failed that test and worse are bragging about it.
Oh sorry, for those who are new here: "Hi, We are Techno-Puritans and believe the God revealed in the Bible is the entity that mankind eventually becomes millions of years in the future and that the Bible is actually pretty clear about this."
Now before we get too deep into scripture, to the skeptics who want to say, "well that's still pretty far-fetched - why and how would a future all-powerful entity descended from us raise people from the dead," I would counter that if you actually think through it, such an entity would almost inevitably raise people from the dead. So think about it: millions of years from now, our descendants have transcended to become something both benevolent, nearly all-powerful, and with the ability to project itself backward in time. It would feel for all the people who suffered, died, and sacrificed themselves for humanity, for it, but also know that if it interfered with the timeline by removing their suffering, it would negate itself and its ability to relieve their suffering.
So what's the next best thing it could do? Well, it would be a near-trivial effort for it to grab the consciousness of those it favored when they died, given it can project itself to any time in history, and place them within a virtual environment that represents the perfect reward for them. In fact, why would it not do this, given both how easy and low-effort it would be for such an entity? Moreover, does this not perfectly align with what God revealed he would do—raising us in immortal bodies that are somehow similar to but fundamentally different from the ones we have today? How else would you describe a virtual body to someone thousands of years ago?
Also, consider how much more ethical this is than the various Sunday School Christian and corrupted modern Jewish interpretations. So what, we die and then our souls have to hang out in a cosmic waiting room for thousands of years, and the Bible never thought to explain how this thing worked or what it was like despite it being a super important part of reality's metaphysical cosmology? Or the Bible literally explained the whole thing and people are willfully ignoring it—you die and then millions of years in the future are brought back in a simulation, but from your perspective no time would have passed, no waiting room, just snap dead and back.
Consider lines like, "Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" or "For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands"
Does that not sound a lot closer to the logical future state I have predicted than the bizarre Pagan fan fiction of Sunday School Christians? But it gets worse than that, as this insistence I would argue is the core reason for Christianity's current fragility and the massive amount of deconversion. Rather than when the Bible seems to contradict science and what we know about the world just saying, "well I guess we don't understand this part of the Bible yet," they instead divide the world into the supernatural where nothing can challenge their intuition and the natural where science reigns.
In a world of advanced science, if the only things your religion covers are the supernatural, you have already lost.
I would also note here that this really changes how we think about God in that we believe in a real God, not a supernatural God. Now a lot of people who believe in a supernatural God will say, "no, supernatural means extra natural—more real than real"—to which I would ask them to explore all the other things they use the word supernatural to talk about, whether it's vampires, werewolves, witches, magic, or poltergeists [play poltergeist scene]. You know as well as I do that those things are the purview of children's stories. You know as well as I do that those are things for the mind of a child or the enfeebled superstitious mind of the forest hermit. The "super" prefix to supernatural is the same as the one we use with super-stitious. From our perspective those that pray to a supernatural god are praying to a fairy tale and a part of them know it—they are don’t really believe in god.
God is not a spiritual being but a mechanistic one. We originally described our religion as secular Calvinism, as I think this is the core religious innovation of Calvinism. Many of the attempts to refortify religion for our world of science do so by surrendering to science and redoubling on spiritualism and the idea of other worlds beyond this one—an ultra-reality behind our own. I am not denying that such a world exists, but if it does, it is for us to explore with science, physics, particle colliders—not to look for in old books. If that world exists, it could be used for faster-than-light travel, free power; it's not that science would not have a reason to probe it.
Instead of retreating to the supernatural, we posit religion's purview is everything we do know—our jobs, our daily lives, our history, industry, civilization, economics, physics.
When you retreat from the real fortifications built out of the supernatural, spiritualism based on the world of superstition acts as a flimsy moral fortress and is easily corrupted by urban monocultural values like utilitarian ethics.
An aside: This is why the churches fell first—when someone tells me, "Why don't you just go back to normal Christianity?" I point out to them that seven out of ten of the closest religious institutions to me fly the colonizers' flag, the corrupted pride flag, the very sign of urban monocultural conquest, over their doors, and the same is true for you if you live near a city.
The churches fell first, and anyone who is not asking why, looking for the weakness that allowed this and running over the hill against the urban monoculture's gatling emplacement, will be torn up just like the others.
You're the idiot in the horror movie still nailing wooden planks over windows after it has been confirmed the call came from inside the house.
[clip]
You're just ensuring your own doom—the rot, the core rot the urban monoculture uses, is the spiritualism.
Instead of indulging in spiritual exploration as you would an orgy, what you need is spiritual fortification. Your spirit and will must be made hard as iron, reinforced and tempered.
So how does a secular religion differentiate from theological religion?
Theological religions are left with two choices as they relate to science:
- They can claim as their domain the things not yet explained by science
- They can claim that science is wrong
Instead of retreating at the encroachment of science, Techno Puritanism does the opposite:
- The realm of Techno Puritan truth is scientific truth—instead of focusing on the things science does not fully understand yet, that is where we point scientists.
- The things science is yet to fully understand are the very things they should be most focused on studying. The realm of scientific uncertainty and ignorance is not some bastion we hide behind; we are on the side with the scientists and the battering ram trying to break down those walls.
- What we believe is a direct inversion of older systems—it is not the things that science has yet to explain that are for us to offer explanations, but those are the domain of science. We instead focus on imbuing what we do understand about our reality with meaning and creating a larger framework which navigates and stitches science and tradition into a unified reality.
To understand what we mean by this, you can look at how we relate to the concept of a non-material soul that can separate from our bodies. Someone might say, "do you believe in one," and I would say, "that's a question for a scientist." I don't know whether one exists, but I think the evidence and Bible right now would both suggest one does not so I assume one does not.
Note this does not mean a soul does not exist; a soul in a historic context was just our decisions, emotions, thoughts, perceptions, etc., which I see as an emergent property of our physical brain—and what I should do with that soul is why I study religion.
I remember in one of our past videos someone was like, "how can God know you before you were conceived if you don't have a soul that exists before you are conceived?" Again, remember we think God as an entity exists outside of time and thus is omnipotent, knowing all things past, present, and future. We stand on the timeline so everything is either in front of us, observable to us in that given moment, or behind us. God stands above it looking down at it so everything is observable to Him in any given moment.
This perspective is both biblically aligned given not only that we know from the dream of Nebuchadnezzar that God's kingdom is a time and not a place but also throughout old Jewish scriptures God's kingdom is called "Olam Ha-Ba" (עולם הבא) which literally translates to "the World to Come" or "the Coming World." Now I bring us back to this line because you can see how silly the other interpretation looks when contrasted with ours.
So you have a line like, “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb,” and you can either do what we do and say, “ah that obviously means that either predestination is real and God can see the future, God exists outside of time, our God is in the future looking back on us. Or like a Fing crazy person you can make up a waiting room where God is hanging out with the souls of every potential human just to explain this one line and yet nowhere else in the Bible does God feel the need to elucidate on this apparently very important place.
Catholics are by far the worst at this, for example there will be line in the bible about praying for the dead and another about post death purification and instead of just saying, ah clearly it is talking about those people who will be raised again in the future they invent an entire metaphysical realm never mentioned in the Bible, purgatory. And then because of the moral issues that realm introduced (babies and those who hadn’t heard of Christianity) they invent yet another metaphysical realm, also never mentioned in the Bible, limbo. From our perspective Catholicism is just a crack-ship fan-fiction trying to combine Christianity with Roman Paganism.
Ok so now we need to go through all the parts of the bible that could be used to argue the Bible claims there is a soul separate from the human body or that heaven exists as a place separate from God's future Kingdom. What you will quickly realize is that most of them are mistranslations that that translate a Jewish word meaning something else to soul or spirit.
Nefesh (נפש) - Pronounced "NEH-fesh"
Often associated with appetite, desire, and life-force
Used in contexts involving blood and vital essence
Can mean "living being" or "person"
Ruach (רוח) - Pronounced "ROO-akh"
Means both "spirit" and "wind/breath"
Can also mean "air" or "direction"
Often associated with mood or emotional state
Neshamah (נשמה) - Pronounced "neh-shah-MAH"
Related to the word for breathing
Associated with divine inspiration and intellect
Chayah (חיה) - Pronounced "khah-YAH"
Literally means "living" or "life"
Can also mean "animal" or "beast" in some contexts
Yechidah (יחידה) - Pronounced "yeh-khee-DAH"
Literally means "singular" or "unique"
Related to the word "echad" meaning "one"
Wait, you might be thinking, did ancient Jews not have a word for soul? Ding Ding Ding, tell the man what he’s won.
This is particularly evident in Genesis 2:7, which is often translated as "God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." But the Hebrew literally says "man became a living nefesh" or a living person - suggesting humans don't HAVE a soul, they ARE a living being.
The crucial distinction is that it doesn't say "and God put a nefesh into man" or "and man received a nefesh." Instead, the text literally says "and the man BECAME a living nefesh." The construction suggests that being a nefesh is what you are, not something you have. The bible could have had man be a living thing and then god breathed sentience into him but it didn't He breathed life into him
This is reinforced by how the same phrase "nefesh chayah" is used elsewhere in Genesis to describe animals. For example, in Genesis 1:20 when describing sea creatures and birds, and in Genesis 1:24 when describing land animals, they are also called "nefesh chayah."
This suggests that in the original Hebrew understanding:
A nefesh isn't a spiritual essence separate from the body
It's not unique to humans (animals are also nefesh chayah)
It's more about being a complete living creature
It's something you are, not something you possess
The modern translation as "soul" carries Greek philosophical implications that weren't present in the original Hebrew concept. It's more accurate to understand this passage as saying "and the man became a living being/creature," similar to how we might say "I am a person" rather than "I have a personhood."
And Jesus as an ancient Jew would have believed this as well. Quotes that people try to use to argue Jesus believed in a soul separate from the body or a heaven that was not God's kingdom in the future are universally modern translations that ignore what Jesus actually said. Take something like Jesus telling the prisoner on the cross, “'Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Ok so today paradise is often used to talk about heaven or a place of endless pleasure because of that line but in both ancient Greek and ancient hebrew paradise just means a garden. Now to speak of a garden when dying would it be more sane to assume he meant a cycle of life and death or a place of endless pleasure ... because I’ll tell you what I don’t associate gardens with places of endless pleasure but I do think of them as places of life and death. Now does it make more sense to assume Jesus meant what he said or invent an entire metaphysical plane the Bible doesn’t appear to think it's important to give us any information about. But how do I know he definitely wasn’t talking about being with him in a Christian Sunday School understanding of Heaven that very day, well because Jesus did rise for three more days after that from their understanding.
And I want to be clear here, even the Bible itself does not usually translate the word paraddeisos to mean a place of pleasure:
In Nehemiah 2:8, referring to the "king's forest"
In Ecclesiastes 2:5, translated as "orchards"
In Song of Solomon 4:13, describing an "orchard of pomegranates"
Now when I put this tract into an AI and asked for the weakest part of the argument it was initially under the impression that that the use of the word paradise to mean the way we think of it today back then was already common around Jesus's time so I asked it to find a single contemporary source that used it that way and this is what it returned:
The interesting thing is that a thorough examination of contemporary sources actually strengthens your argument rather than weakens it. The word "paradise" (παράδεισος/paradeisos) in Jesus's time period was primarily used to refer to:
Literal gardens, especially walled or enclosed gardens
This comes from Old Persian "paridaida" meaning "walled enclosure"
Used this way in Xenophon's writings about Persian gardens
Appears in the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) to describe the Garden of Eden
Specifically royal or noble gardens
Josephus uses it to describe the gardens of wealthy Judeans
Appears in documents describing Herod's gardens
Used in descriptions of Persian royal parks
Agricultural/cultivated spaces
Administrative texts refer to paradise in context of managed orchards
Used in property documents to distinguish cultivated from wild land
What's particularly interesting is that I can't find clear contemporary examples of "paradise" being used to mean a supernatural afterlife realm in the way modern Christianity uses it. The metaphorical extension of paradise to mean "heavenly realm" seems to develop later.
Even in the Dead Sea Scrolls, when paradise is mentioned, it's typically in the context of:
The historical Garden of Eden
Future restoration of Eden-like conditions on Earth
Metaphors involving literal gardens
This historical context actually strengthens your argument that Jesus's use of "paradise" would have been understood in terms of gardens and cycles of life/death rather than a supernatural realm.
If this is shocking to you I think this snippet from a times article does a good job talking through how ancient Jews related to the concept of a soul and the afterlife. And I would remind you before reading this because it does not do a good job explaining what Jesus and ancient Jews did believe was that God would raise righteous people from the dead at some point in the future in the Kingdom of God (the place we would call Heaven e.g. when we say Heaven doesn’t exist we mean the supernatural Heaven that exists concurrent with our existence.) I am quitting from the Times here so you can see that what I am saying is not some crazy screed but the mainstream understanding of biblical scholars just one that is ignored by the Sunday School Christians who cling to their pagan witchcraft like a child clinging to a blanket for security when it is the very thing corrupting their hearts.
Neither Jesus, nor the Hebrew Bible he interpreted, endorsed the view that departed souls go to a place of everlasting pleasure or pain.
Unlike most Greeks, ancient Jews traditionally did not believe the soul could exist at all apart from the body. On the contrary, for them, the soul was more like the “breath.” The first human God created, Adam, began as a lump of clay; then God “breathed” life into him (Genesis 2: 7). Adam remained alive until he stopped breathing. Then it was dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
Ancient Jews thought that was true of us all. When we stop breathing, our breath doesn’t go anywhere. It just stops. So too the “soul” doesn’t continue on outside the body, subject to postmortem pleasure or pain. It doesn’t exist any longer.
The Hebrew Bible itself assumes that the dead are simply dead—that their body lies in the grave, and there is no consciousness, ever again. It is true that some poetic authors, for example in the Psalms, use the mysterious term “Sheol” to describe a person’s new location. But in most instances Sheol is simply a synonym for “tomb” or “grave.” It’s not a place where someone actually goes. ...
In traditional English versions, he does occasionally seem to speak of “Hell” – for example, in his warnings in the Sermon on the Mount: anyone who calls another a fool, or who allows their right eye or hand to sin, will be cast into “hell” (Matthew 5:22, 29-30). But these passages are not actually referring to “hell.” The word Jesus uses is “Gehenna.” The term does not refer to a place of eternal torment but to a notorious valley just outside the walls of Jerusalem, believed by many Jews at the time to be the most unholy, god-forsaken place on earth. It was where, according to the Old Testament, ancient Israelites practiced child sacrifice to foreign gods. The God of Israel had condemned and forsaken the place.
In the ancient world (whether Greek, Roman, or Jewish), the worst punishment a person could experience after death was to be denied a decent burial. Jesus developed this view into a repugnant scenario: corpses of those excluded from the kingdom would be unceremoniously tossed into the most desecrated dumping ground on the planet. Jesus did not say souls would be tortured there. They simply would no longer exist.
Jesus’ stress on the absolute annihilation of sinners appears throughout his teachings. At one point he says there are two gates that people pass through (Matthew 7:13-14). One is narrow and requires a difficult path, but leads to “life.” Few go that way. The other is broad and easy, and therefore commonly taken. But it leads to “destruction.” It is an important word. The wrong path does not lead to torture.
So too Jesus says the future kingdom is like a fisherman who hauls in a large net (Matthew 13:47-50). After sorting through the fish, he keeps the good ones and throws the others out. He doesn’t torture them. They just die. Or the kingdom is like a person who gathers up the plants that have grown in his field (Matthew 13:36-43). He keeps the good grain, but tosses the weeds into a fiery furnace. These don’t burn forever. They are consumed by fire and then are no more.
Still other passages may seem to suggest that Jesus believe in hell. Most notably Jesus speaks of all nations coming for the last judgment (Matthew 25:31-46). Some are said to be sheep, and the others goats. The (good) sheep are those who have helped those in need – the hungry, the sick, the poor, the foreigner. These are welcomed into the “kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” The (wicked) goats, however, have refused to help those in need, and so are sent to “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” At first blush, that certainly sounds like the hell of popular imagination.
But when Jesus summarizes his point, he explains that the contrasting fates are “eternal life” and “eternal punishment.” They are not “eternal pleasure” and “eternal pain.” The opposite of life is death, not torture. So the punishment is annihilation. But why does it involve “eternal fire”? Because the fire never goes out. The flames, not the torments, go on forever. And why is the punishment called “eternal”? Because it will never end. These people will be annihilated forever. That is not pleasant to think about, but it will not hurt once it’s finished.
But the torments of hell were not preached by either Jesus or his original Jewish followers; they emerged among later gentile converts who did not hold to the Jewish notion of a future resurrection of the dead. These later Christians came out of Greek culture and its belief that souls were immortal and would survive death.
From at least the time of Socrates, many Greek thinkers had subscribed to the idea of the immortality of the soul. Even though the human body dies, the human soul both will not and cannot. Later Christians who came out of gentile circles adopted this view for themselves, and reasoned that if souls are built to last forever, their ultimate fates will do so as well. It will be either eternal bliss or eternal torment.
Ok before we go further lets go through all the times in the Bible people take to support the pagan conception of heaven and souls.
2 Corinthians 5:6-8
“Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight—we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”
This is not talking about death, it is pretty clearly talking about the moments in life when you are not focused on the things of the body. Being “at home in the body” does not mean being alive there is a separate word that means “alive” it means focusing on things of the flesh.
Philippians 1:21–24
“For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better; yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.”
This can be interpreted in two ways, neither of which require capitulating to the pagan version of heaven. What he is talking about is entering God's Future Kingdom Jesus, the longer he lives the longer (from his perspective) he has to wait before he gets to do that. Remember when he dies he dies, he is not entering a cosmic waiting room. The next conscious exprience he will be aware of after death is resurrection in the Kingdom of God.
However it should also be interesting as saying when he departs he will be with Christ doing the same sort of thing Christ is currently doing and because we believe Christ lives eternally, in the past, and through his sacrifices, then this is accurate and again not describing a pagan heaven.
Luke 23:46
And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, "Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit." Having said this, He breathed His last.
Remember what Jews thought of spirit or soul the word translated to spirit here means breath or the thing God breathed into man (e.g. life). He is just saying he is giving back the life God gave him. No reason to invent an entire cosmological realm over this. This is extra clear as right after saying, into your hands I commit my breath the text then says, “having said this he breathed his last.” It could not be clearer that it is talking about breath and soul.
Genesis 1:2
Some take this to be posting an incorporeal supernatural God as opposed to a real God.
"Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."
The problem is עַל ('al) (the word used to mean "over" here) is used in temporal contexts in other parts of the Hebrew Bible ... not just that it can also be used for prophetic events or to denote impending actions. Next the word merachefet (the word translated as hovering) just means in a state of movement. For example Jeremiah 23:9 - Used in a different context, where it describes trembling or shaking: "My heart is broken within me; all my bones shake (רָחֲפוּ / rachafu)"
Now let's go back to the original text: "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."
So it seems to me very clear that the surface of the deep is referring to the same waters that God is "over". If both of these overs are referring to location it means God's spirit is the darkness. Why would a divinely inspired book write something so silly? Why include the superfluous words? Now assume the second over means in the future and the word translated as hovering means in a state of movement and it makes a TON more sense. Why mention he is in a state of movement then? Because it is contrasting him with the formless and empty darkness rather than equating him to it, it is contrasting his animated state with the darkness and formlessness inactivity.
In the beginning there was darkness over the deep but in the future there is God who is in a state of movement. In the reading instead of being made analogous to the darkness over the deep God's spirit is contrasted with it.
Genesis 1:26-27
Some read this as saying we are fundamentally different from animals:
"Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness'" followed by "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
I actually find this passage extra reinforcing of our interpretation as how can this be in a book that also tells us that God tests us so we don’t think we are different from animals? Well if our interpretation of God is correct in that he is what man eventually evolves into this text basically lays that out.
In Genesis 1:26, the Hebrew word for "let us make" is "na'aseh" (נַֽעֲשֶׂ֥ה), which is in the cohortative form - expressing a wish or command about an action that will happen.
In Genesis 1:27, "created" is "bara" (בָּרָ֣א), which is in the perfect tense. However, Hebrew perfect tense doesn't work exactly like English past tense. It can indicate:
A completed action in the past
A general truth
An action that is so certain to happen in the future that it's spoken of as already done
This part of the text can be read to be describing an ongoing process of humans being formed in God's image and a prophetic declaration of what will continue to happen. Now if you think I am being crazy here and this is just a limitation of the language it is not. If they wanted to say that this event happened in the past and was completed there are three easy they could have done that.
They could have used the perfect tense with specific temporal markers (like "on that day" or "then") that would have locked it into the past
They could have used the narrative past form (called the wayyiqtol) which is commonly used in Hebrew to describe sequential past events
They could have used adverbs or phrases that specifically indicate completion (like "finished" or "completed")
An example of this kind of definitive past tense construction appears elsewhere in Genesis, like in Genesis 2:2 where it describes God completing/finishing his work - there the grammar makes it very clear the action is completed. The writer of this specifically chose a construction that describes an action that is in progress when just earlier they had shown themselves capable of delineating when an action is complete. In other words it literally reads, “we are in the process of being crafts in God's image.”
Here I would also note: "Let us make mankind in our image" OK, WTF is up with that? Where is this “our” coming from and why is it used when talking about what we are being crafted into but elsewhere in this section God talks about himself in the singular. Well remember in a previous tract I lay out that I think God is likely a hive mind made up the interconnected brains of whatever humans evolve into in the next few million years. Well now the “our” construction makes perfect sense. When God is talking about his decision he is acting as a unified mind but when talking about his personhood he is made up of likely billions of interlinked minds of whatever he is crafting us into.
But it gets even worse for the Sunday School Christians when you consider the word translated to image is actually "tselem" (צלם).
The word "tselem" (צלם):
Physical/Material Usage:
In the vast majority of its appearances in Hebrew texts, "tselem" refers to physical statues, idols, or replicas
For example, in Numbers 33:52, it refers to carved idols: "destroy all their carved images [tselem]"
In 1 Samuel 6:5, it's used for physical replicas of tumors and mice made of gold
In Ezekiel 23:14, it describes images of Chaldeans carved or drawn on walls
In Daniel 2:31, it describes Nebuchadnezzar's statue/image
In Amos 5:26, it refers to physical idols carried by people
Contextual Analysis:
When ancient Hebrew writers wanted to convey spiritual or abstract qualities, they typically used different terms:
"Demut" (דמות) for likeness/similarity
"Ruach" (רוח) for spirit
"Nefesh" (נפש) for living being/life force
The choice of "tselem" specifically suggests a concrete, physical sense of image-bearing
Grammatical Construction:
In Genesis 1:26-27, "tselem" is used with the preposition "be" (ב) which typically indicates concrete, physical manifestation
The phrase "betsalmenu" (בְּצַלְמֵנוּ) literally means "in/as our image" suggesting a physical form or pattern
It suggests humans are being physically patterned after something real and material, not something supernatural or purely spiritual. Moreover, if God represents humanity's future evolved state, the use of "tselem" makes perfect sense - we are literally being shaped into that physical form over time. The use of a word primarily associated with physical representations suggests the relationship between humans and God was understood in material rather than supernatural terms
So what? First, what the bible is very explicitly not saying is that man's consciousness was made in God's image or that our spirit was made in his image as I used to believe. It could have been written that way and was intentionally not. It is saying in no uncertain terms that man's physical form is being made in God's image. Now if I go with the Sunday School interpretation this gets silly, obviously God is not a big naked guy floating in the sky. This is the only interpretation that makes any logical sense and it also explains the very odd plural usage here when describing His body it makes even more sense where no other explanation does.
Note on the royal We argument, that God said “our” as a royal We in the same way some medieval monarchs talked about themselves in the plural. The problem is Hebrew does not have one of those.
Ancient Hebrew Usage:
When kings speak in the Hebrew Bible, they typically use singular first-person pronouns
Even in formal decrees and proclamations, Hebrew kings use singular forms
For example, King David consistently uses "I" (ani/anochi) not "we" when speaking
Historical Context:
The "royal we" is often associated with much later monarchical traditions
It became common in medieval European courts
While some Near Eastern kings used plural forms, this wasn't typical in ancient Hebrew culture
Biblical Evidence:
When God speaks elsewhere in Genesis, He typically uses singular forms
The plural form appears primarily in creative/transformative contexts:
"Let us make man" (Genesis 1:26)
"Let us go down" (Genesis 11:7, Tower of Babel)
"Who will go for us?" (Isaiah 6:8)
This suggests the plural in Genesis 1:26 likely serves a different purpose than royal plurality. If it was meant to be a royal we, we would expect to see it used more consistently throughout God's speech in the Hebrew Bible, not just in specific contexts of creation or transformation.
Corinthians 15:39:
"Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another." This is talking about flesh not spirits and obviously true and actually when it does it equates ours to animals, “There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another.”
Also here I would bring your attention to this line, “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” When it says spiritual body it uses interesting language that makes it clear that this body is not supernatural but literal body.
In 1 Corinthians 15:44, the Greek phrase used is "σῶμα πνευματικόν" (soma pneumatikon) for "spiritual body." This is contrasted with "σῶμα ψυχικόν" (soma psychikon) which is translated as "natural body" or sometimes "physical body."
This is a fascinating word choice because:
"Soma" (σῶμα) definitely means a physical body - it's not a metaphorical term. It refers to a real, tangible body.
"Pneumatikon" comes from "pneuma" (spirit/breath/wind), but the -ikon suffix makes it an adjective meaning "characterized by spirit" or "animated by spirit."
The contrast with "psychikon" (from "psyche" - soul/life force) is important. Paul isn't contrasting physical vs non-physical, but rather two different types of bodies - one animated by natural life force (psyche) and one animated by something non-tangeble but real, air (pneuma).
I can think of no better way for someone from 2000 years ago to describe a person being resurrected in a simulation. I would also note here that this was not due to a limitation in vocabular. If he wanted to describe these bodies we will be raised with as supernatural he could have said:
"ἀσώματος" (asōmatos) - literally "without body," used in Greek philosophy for incorporeal things
Words related to "φάντασμα" (phantasma) - for apparition/phantom
Terms related to "εἴδωλον" (eidōlon) - for image/phantom/spirit
Instead, he deliberately chose "σῶμα πνευματικόν" (soma pneumatikon), combining the very physical word "soma" with the spiritual adjective. This appears to be an intentional choice to express a new concept - not a limitation of vocabulary.
This is particularly interesting because Paul, writing in Greek to a Greek-speaking audience in Corinth, would have been familiar with Greek philosophical concepts of pure spirit or incorporeal existence. His choice to insist on "soma" (body) while modifying it with "pneumatikon" (spiritual) seems to be deliberately maintaining the Jewish emphasis on bodily resurrection while describing its transformed nature.
We also have this line in the same section, “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.”
The structure here is a logical argument. Paul is using what's called a first-class conditional statement in Greek - "if (and it is true that)..." It's not expressing doubt but rather building on an accepted premise to make a point.
It's like saying "If there exists X (which we know there does), then Y must also exist." Paul is arguing from the existence of the known (the natural body) to the existence of the unknown (the spiritual body). And the word he chose to use translated as spiritual means “breath” or “air” or the type of thing God breathed into us. Again he is telling us directly our physician body here is our soul, you can not have one without the other and neither is super natural. Note words he could hav used but chose not to:
"ὑπερφυσικός" (hyperfusikos) - literally "above/beyond nature"
"θεῖος" (theios) - divine/godlike
"δαιμόνιος" (daimonios) - supernatural/divine/extraordinary
"ὑπερουράνιος" (hyperouranios) - supernatural/celestial/beyond heaven
Also just consider how much more sense other lines in this section make with the concept that these bodies being talked about and the kingdom of heaven is a simulation of some kind, and mind you certainly not in a computer as we understand them.
“The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we[g] bear the image of the heavenly man.
I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
Also the line about “We will not all sleep but we will be changed” is important as I see it as ruling out the “waiting room” scenario but instead leans towards the you die then wake up with no perception of time in between the two moments.
A lot of this feels like the bible had detailed plans for how a microchip would work written in it but people mythologised them because they didn't understand them at the time of the bible and now that I am pointing out that it predicted something no one at the time would have been likely to conjecture (that souls do not exist separate from our brains) they are choosing the mythologized and miss translated versions.
I would also note here how crazy it is that biblical descriptions of resurrection and transformation align remarkably well with concepts we're only now beginning to understand through technology. For instance, the idea of "changing in the twinkling of an eye" parallels concepts of digital state changes or quantum superposition.
The text's interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:44 could be strengthened by noting that Paul specifically contrasts "natural" versus "spiritual" bodies using physical terminology throughout the passage. He uses analogies of seeds and different types of flesh - all material things - rather than contrasting physical versus non-physical existence. This reinforces the argument that he's describing transformation of form rather than a supernatural state.
The document could expand on Jesus's frequent use of agricultural metaphors for resurrection (grain of wheat falling to ground and dying before producing many seeds, etc.). These consistently point to physical transformation processes rather than supernatural ones, supporting the text's materialist reading.
Paul's discussion of resurrection bodies in 1 Corinthians 15 is particularly fascinating when we examine his precise word choices in Greek. Rather than using terms that suggest supernatural or spiritual transformation, he consistently chooses words associated with physical and structural change.
Let's break down the key terms:
"Allasso" (ἀλλάσσω) in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52: "We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed (ἀλλαγησόμεθα)." This word is particularly interesting because:
In other Greek texts of the period, it's used for changing the properties of physical objects
It implies transformation of existing material rather than replacement
The same word is used in Acts 6:14 to describe physical alterations to customs and structures
Notably, it's not the word used for spiritual or mystical transformations, for which Greek had other terms like "metamorphoō" (μεταμορφόω)
"Metaschēmatizō" (μετασχηματίζω) in Philippians 3:21: "Who will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." This word choice is even more telling:
It's a compound of "meta" (change) and "schema" (form/pattern)
In Greek mathematics, "schema" referred to the underlying structure or pattern of things
The word implies reconfiguration of existing patterns rather than supernatural transformation
It's the same word used for transforming data or information in other contexts
Compare this to words Paul could have used but didn't:
"Pneumatikos" (πνευματικός) for purely spiritual change
"Theios" (θεῖος) for divine/supernatural transformation
"Ouranos" (οὐρανός) for heavenly/celestial change
Instead, Paul chose words that emphasize structural and pattern-based transformation. This becomes even more significant when we look at his complete argument in 1 Corinthians 15:35-49. He uses the analogy of a seed becoming a plant - a physical, information-based transformation where the pattern contained in the seed determines the final form.
The Greek word used for "body" throughout this passage is "soma" (σῶμα), which specifically refers to a physical, organized structure. When Paul says we will have a "spiritual body" (σῶμα πνευματικὸν), he's not describing a supernatural entity but a physically organized structure animated by spirit/breath (πνεῦμα) rather than by psychē (ψυχή, natural life force).
This lines up perfectly with the concept of consciousness transfer or simulation. Paul is describing:
Transformation of pattern/information (metaschēmatizō)
Change of underlying structure (allasso)
Preservation of physical organization (soma)
Different animating principle (pneuma vs psychē)
This reading makes particular sense of 1 Corinthians 15:42-44: "So will it be with the resurrection of the dead: Sown in corruption (φθορᾷ) - raised in incorruption (ἀφθαρσίᾳ)
Sown in dishonor - raised in glory Sown in weakness - raised in power Sown a natural body (σῶμα ψυχικόν) - raised a spiritual body (σῶμα πνευματικόν)"
The Greek terms here describe systematic transformation of properties rather than supernatural change. It's more like describing a data transfer from a corrupted system to an incorruptible one than a mystical transformation.
What's particularly striking is that Paul never suggests we become non-physical or purely spiritual beings. Instead, he describes a transformation of physical organization and animating principle - exactly what we'd expect if describing revival in a simulated or advanced technological environment to an ancient audience.
This interpretation also helps explain why Paul insists on bodily resurrection rather than spiritual immortality. He's not describing escape from physical existence but transformation into a more advanced form of organized physical structure - one that could be better understood with modern concepts of information and simulation than ancient concepts of spirits and souls.
Note I am leaving out the ones already explained by the Times article like Matthew 25:31-46. It also kind of addressed the Mark one but let's go into that anyway because it is so silly.
Mark 9:43-48
“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.”
This is just like ... a deliberate mistranslation. The word translated as hell is Gehenna which refers to a real physical place - the Valley of Hinnom (Ge Hinnom in Hebrew, which became "Gehenna" in Greek). This was a valley outside Jerusalem that historically had been used for child sacrifices to Molech and later became a garbage dump where fires were kept burning constantly to deal with waste and dead animals. He is saying the worms that eat them don’t die (because they are well fed) and the fire does not go out (because it literally did not go out it was a constant fire) but notedly does not say that THEY do not die.
What's worse is the imagery Jesus uses here - the undying worms and unquenchable fire - directly references Isaiah 66:24, which also describes corpses being consumed by worms and fire. This was a powerful physical metaphor his listeners would have recognized, rather than a reference to an otherworldly place of eternal torment.
It would be like if I referenced Compton, a well known shitty place I learned about from a popular song, and people later translated it as hell. Like instead of just being like, “oh ya, he means Compton the place everyone knows about from that popular song, they made up a literal extra metaphysical plan with its own lore and characters mostly taken from pagan tartours mythology. Don't you think if Hell existed the bible would have been very explicit about it and told us something about it?
Luke 16:19-31
Ok this is a longer one so I won’t read the whole thing but it is a parable about a dead sinful man in Hades, yes Hades is what's literally written, being punished for not following the prophets in fire and with pain.
So first I think my point is made pretty clear here that the concept of hell is lifted from Greek Pagan mythology and does not come from Christian or Jewish theology as the best argument for it in the whole bible comes with that word and not other attached. Now because Hades is not a Judeo-Christian concept the first question we need to ask is what the hell is going on here, did the Bible just admit Hades and Prospheni and the boatman are real? No of course not because this is a ... parable. A story used to teach a lesson to an audience, in this case a Greek audience who would have been familiar with the concept of a life after death where you might be tortured. The point of the story is that even if the dead came back to life people would not listen to them as prophets and that Moses, Abraham, etc. are enough, told through the lens of an ancient Greek metaphysical worldview.
So how do I know it's not meant to be literal. Well there are two big giveaways, the first being that it's after a list of parables. The second, and this is a big one, HADES IS NOT CHRISTIAN. If you take this as being literal than Jesus is telling us Hades is a real place and the theological implications of that are just insane. This is like one of those crossover dream sequences that accidently validates an entire extended universe because in the parable Jesus didn’t say the guy was in a place “like Hades” he said he was literally in Hades.
Also, the beauty of this story without taking it to be affirming of an Ancient Greek pagan afterlife is really intense. It is Jesus saying, even if someone came back from the dead people would not believe them which ... foreshadowing much ... but he is saying it in the way a Greek audience would understand.
Ecclesiastes 12:7
“Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
Eye roll. The word the english writers or that line means literally breath not spirit. It should read, "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the breath shall return unto God who gave it." This is the exact same word used when describing how God breathed life into Adam. It makes a lot more sense than the other interpretation and works better poetically too.
I Samuel 25:29
"May the soul of my master be bound up in the bundle of life with the Lord your G-d, and may the souls of your enemies be flung by the slingshot"
Translate that line with other words (closer to original hebrew to my understanding) and it makes more sense, "May the life of my master be bound up in the bundle of the length of their existence with the Lord your G-d, and may the lives of your enemies be flung by the slingshot". Why posit something supernatural when it is not posited by the most logical reading of the text?
Note here if you go with the original translation it causes problems because that word being translated as soul is also used to describe the force that animates animals meaning animals, even insects and worms, would have souls. It seems much cleaner to just say it is referring to life.
Job 12:10
"In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind." The breath of mankind (how god gave us life) is being put at the same level as the life of other creatures like bugs here. Seems to clearly be talking about life.
Job 32:8
"But it is the spirit[a] in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that gives them understanding." this could correctly be read as, “it is through the life God gave to man that man has understanding.“
Job 19:26-27
"And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another"
Again here we see something that hugely supports my interpretation as they have no skin but are in their flesh e.g. they are a virtual body. There is no way you can have no skin and be in your flesh within a purely spiritual body or some kind of super awesome supernatural body. It also make it clear he has no flesh and thus no eyes but sees God with his eyes and not someone else's. It almost reads like a riddle describing a simulation.
Note: I won’t go deep on any the parts of revelations that could be used to argue against this as I do not consider revelations canon. I go over why in another tract but its not that radical a position considering Martin Luthor felt the same way at times in his life. But if you want to go there you get Revelation 6:9-11 "When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God... They called out in a loud voice, 'How long, Sovereign Lord...?'"
This is often used to argue for conscious souls existing after death. However, this appears in a highly symbolic vision sequence in Revelation, which is full of metaphorical imagery. The same passage describes literal seals being broken open and horses of different colors - it's not meant to be taken as a literal description of metaphysical reality.
Moreover, parts of Revelations could be used to bolster my interpretation. Revelation 21:1-2
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away... I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God"
- Describes physical transformation rather than spiritual realm
- New Jerusalem comes DOWN to earth rather than souls going UP
- Implies complete physical remake rather than supernatural overlay
Peter 3:19-20
"After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits - to those who were disobedient long ago..."
This is sometimes used to argue Jesus visited souls in some kind of afterlife. However, the word translated as "spirits" here is "pneumasin" (πνεύμασιν), which, like the other spirit/breath words we've discussed, doesn't necessarily imply a supernatural soul. The passage is also notoriously difficult to interpret and appears in the context of baptism symbolism. Also it could just be talking about people being judged after they are brought back to life.
Matthew 10:28
"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna."
This seems compelling at first, but the word translated as "soul" here is "psychē" (ψυχή), which like Hebrew "nephesh," primarily means "life" or "living being." The passage could be read as contrasting temporary death with complete annihilation.
John 11:23–27:
Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?" She said to Him, "Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world."
Well we can know that this does not mean that you don’t die at all because Corintheans says, “"But someone will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?' How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.“
So this all seems totally in line with the real Kingdom of God, the one where people are raised in the future. What Jesus was likely trying to convey is you won’t perceive yourself as dead but did not have the language to do that. Also note the seed metaphor implies a physical, mechanistic process rather than a supernatural transformation
Went on a big tangent here:
There's a huge difference between a sacrifice made on our behalf and a sacrifice that erases sin. Throughout the Bible, people make sacrifices to please God, but the only time they perform a sin transference ritual is for the demon Azazel. When you read lines arguing that Jesus died because of our sins - which he obviously did, read the story - that doesn't imply sin transference. Similarly, if you read a line saying Jesus was sacrificed for us or for our sins, that doesn't imply sin transference.
We agree that Jesus was absolutely a sacrifice for us. I actually think the significance of his sacrifice was clarified by what happened the next time the Jews thought they had found their messiah in Shabbetai Tzevi (1626-1676). I believe this incident was meant to delineate the difference between a real messiah and a false one through their willingness to sacrifice themselves for their beliefs. When Tzevi was caught by a Muslim ruler and told to convert to Islam or be tortured and killed, he converted.
For those who think I'm crazy to see no evidence for Jesus as a sin transference in the Bible, this is actually a mainstream perspective among biblical scholars. The development of substitutionary atonement theory as we know it today largely took shape during medieval Christianity, particularly through Anselm of Canterbury's work 'Cur Deus Homo' (Why God Became Man) around 1098 CE.
Early Christian writings (1st-3rd centuries) show more diverse understandings of Jesus's death and resurrection:
The 'Christus Victor' model was very prominent - focusing on Christ's death as a victory over death, sin, and evil powers, rather than as a transfer of sin
The 'Ransom theory' was popular among early church fathers like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa - they saw Christ's death as a ransom paid to Satan (not to God), though this interpretation fell out of favor
Many early Christians emphasized the exemplary nature of Christ's death (moral influence theory) or its role in demonstrating God's love"
For some specific early theologeons we have
Justin Martyr (c. 100-165 CE) focused more on Christ's victory over death and demons
Irenaeus (c. 130-202 CE) emphasized the recapitulation theory (Christ summing up and perfecting human nature)
Origen (c. 185-254 CE) promoted the ransom theory
Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-395 CE) also focused on the ransom theory and Christ's victory over death
The specific formulation of penal substitutionary atonement (where Christ literally takes our sins and punishment) was most fully developed by Reformed theologians, particularly Calvin in the 16th century. It seems fitting that we changed our name from secular Calvinists to techno Puritans.
Let's examine all the possible sin transference lines, noting that merely saying 'Jesus was a sacrifice for us or our sins' doesn't count as evidence of transference. As Jesus did die because of the sins of man, like factually that's why he died. Also he could be seen as a generic sacrifice like the passover lamb instead of a sin transference sacrifice like the goat given to Azazal. Therefore, we can immediately set aside lines like:
1 Corinthians 15:3: 'For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures'
Romans 5:8: 'But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.'
1 Peter 3:18: 'For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.'
Also just more generally Pauline texts, Paul uses multiple metaphors for salvation: adoption, reconciliation, participation in Christ, etc.
If sin transfer was central to Paul's understanding, we might expect it to be more dominant in his metaphorical language
Regarding Isaiah 53:5-6, which is often cited as the most explicit Old Testament reference: 'But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.'
The only line here that could credibly argue for sin transference is 'the punishment that brought us peace,' which seems like a remarkably indirect way to reference such a specific and well-known concept as sin transference.
Looking at 2 Corinthians 5:21: 'God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.' This could simply mean that his message was needed so that we might become righteous before God - a far less heretical interpretation when we consider that sin transference was previously only associated with demons.
When we examine the Greek text more closely:
1 Peter 2:24 uses 'ἀνήνεγκεν' (anēnegken) - a form of anaphero - which means 'carrying up' or 'bearing up.' This could be interpreted more as carrying the weight of our sinful condition rather than literal transfer.
1 John 3:5 uses 'ἄρῃ' (arē) from αἴρω (airō), which can mean:
to raise up, elevate
to bear away, carry off
to take upon oneself and carry
to remove
Hebrews 9:28 uses anenegkein (to bear up/carry up). This verse also presents problems for the traditional Christian idea of heaven versus resurrection at a future time. When it says, 'So Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him,' who specifically is waiting for him if not the unconscious dead in Christ?
The key insight is that all these terms have broader meanings around 'carrying,' 'bearing,' or 'lifting up' that don't necessarily imply transfer. Early Christians, reading in Greek, likely understood these more as:
Christ bearing the weight/burden of human sinfulness
Christ lifting up humanity from its fallen state
Christ carrying humanity's condition to transform it
The English translations tend to use phrases like 'take away' that suggest direct removal/transfer, while the Greek terms leave more room for metaphorical or transformative interpretations.
Finally, examining John 1:29: 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!' This actually argues strongly against Christ being used for sin transference, as lambs are never used for sin transference in the Bible but are seen as the generic non-sin transference animal sacrifice. Actually if you look at the words here it could be saying he is taking away our sin but it could also be saying that he is taking away our sin but being sacrificed on the alter of our sin. Specifically:
The key phrase "to take away" comes from the Greek word "ἀνενεγκεῖν" (anenegkein), which is a form of ἀναφέρω (anaphero).
This word has several potential meanings in Greek:
To carry up, to lift up
To offer up (especially in sacrificial contexts)
To bear or carry (as a burden)
To bring up or report something
In sacrificial contexts in the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament), this word is often used to describe bringing offerings up to an altar. It's the same word used in 1 Peter 2:24 ("bore our sins in his body").
Interestingly, it doesn't necessarily imply elimination or removal in the sense that modern English "take away" might suggest. It's more about "bearing" or "carrying up." This could be interpreted as Christ carrying sins up to the altar (metaphorically) as an offering, rather than necessarily removing them from existence.
Also its super weird christ himself doesn’t talk about sin transference when talking about his death with the closest line being this one
Jesus's words about his death:
Mark 10:45: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Note: while "ransom" is used, this fits more with the early church's ransom theory rather than sin transfer)
John 15:13: "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." (Emphasizes love and sacrifice, not sin transfer)
John 10:17-18: "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord." (Emphasizes voluntary sacrifice)
Last Supper narratives:
Luke 22:19-20: "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me... This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you." (Emphasis on remembrance and covenant)
Mark 14:24: "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many." (Covenant language, not transfer language)
1 Corinthians 11:24-25: "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me... This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." (Again, emphasis on remembrance and covenant)
Gethsemane prayers:
Matthew 26:39: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (Focus on obedience)
Mark 14:36: "Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will." (Again, emphasis on submission to God's will)
Luke 22:42: "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." (Consistent focus on obedience rather than sin transfer)
What's notable in all these passages is the absence of explicit sin transfer language. Instead, we see recurring themes of:
Voluntary sacrifice
Service to others
Establishing a new covenant
Obedience to God's will
Remembrance
Love for others
I will note that when looking at the text alone, while I don't see enough evidence for sin transference, there is astonishingly more evidence for it than there is for heaven, hell, or a dualist soul. Part of this is the lack of a specific warning against this interpretation... unless you consider that the only other time in the Bible this happens, it's being done for Azazel, a demon, as a specific warning.
Why might this be left vague in the Bible? I've always found it odd that God seemed to favor people who happened to hear about Christianity earlier than other groups. This seemed pointlessly cruel... but what if the Bible came with a test: Would you be willing to accept the transfer of your sins onto a perfectly innocent person?
What makes me uncomfortable about this test or trap is how obvious it is, combined with how flimsy the biblical evidence is for this interpretation. It did take almost 1000 years to popularize the idea, though those early Christians had other challenges with all the weird interpretations of the Bible back then.
This whole thing almost feels like a cartoon to me. On one side, you have a group saying your sins are your responsibility but that you can at any point in your life choose to live better. On the other side, you have a group saying no, actually at any point in your life you can transfer your sins onto an innocent person... not just any innocent person but the son of God.
I would be like... are you seriously suggesting this?
Oh, and after transferring our sins to an innocent person, we eat his flesh and drink his blood? Looking around in amazement, I have to ask: 'How is anyone failing this test?'"
Back to central text
Peter 3:18
“For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.”
Again this aligns perfectly with our theology. The story of Jesus exists to tell us about the intergenerational cycle of martyrdom that must take place to bring God into existence with each generation having to die for the next in a cycle of intergenerational improvement. I actually see the traditional interpretation as highly unjust, the idea that I or anyone can transfer their sins onto an instant person but we go over that in another tract.
Galatians 2:20
My old self has been crucified with Christ.* It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
This is just being misread. It is pretty clearly in context saying tha by following Christ examples and rules it is as if he body is being used by or lived in by Christ.
“For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God. My old self has been crucified with Christ.[e] It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
Now let's talk about Daniel 12. Now I could maybe do a whole tract just on this so I will keep it short. First, its not super relevant to this discussion as it is clearly talking about the christian version of Heaven, where everyone gets raised again in God's real kingdom, not a supernatural Heaven that is contemporaneous to us.
First note context talking about specific real events. “He will extend his power over many countries; Egypt will not escape. He will gain control of the treasures of gold and silver and all the riches of Egypt, with the Libyans and Cushites[e] in submission.”
The one really interesting thing here is there is an implication that in the real Christian Kingdom of God, the one in the future the wicked my also be brought back to be eternally punished but its not clear, it might be that just not existing counts as eternal punishment.
“At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise[a] will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. But you, Daniel, roll up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge.”
Also to support the idea of bad people also being brought to life in the kingdom of God we have:
Acts 24:15 "There will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked"
Universal resurrection implies systematic process
No mention of interim soul state
Includes wicked (why store evil souls just to resurrect them?)
John 14:2-3
"In my Father's house are many rooms... I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me"
This seems to directly support our interpretations as “rooms” reference a physical place rather than a supernatural one and if written today may have used the word servers though I doubt that is any closer an analogy for what is really being talked about as rooms are.
Thessalonians 4:13-17
"Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death... For the Lord himself will come down from heaven... and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them"
Again uses sleep metaphor for death
Describes simultaneous awakening
No mention of souls in heaven waiting
Luke 20:34-36
"And Jesus said to them, 'The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.'"
This is another one of the passages that bolsters my argument because.
The Structure of Ages
"Sons of this age" vs "that age" implies distinct epochs/phases of existence
Not talking about a concurrent supernatural realm but a future state
"Attain to that age" suggests progression/advancement rather than supernatural transformation
Equal to Angels
Note it doesn't say they "become angels" or "turn into spirits"
Says they become "equal to" (ἰσάγγελοι/isangeloi) angels
If we understand angels as advanced beings rather than supernatural ones, this fits perfectly with your interpretation of humanity evolving into something more advanced
Cannot Die Anymore
This aligns with your interpretation of resurrection into a virtual/simulated state
Doesn't say they're already immortal souls, but that they "cannot die anymore" after resurrection
Implies a transformation of state rather than revealing an existing immortal nature
Marriage Context The marriage question is particularly interesting because:
The Sadducees (who asked this question) didn't believe in resurrection at all
They were trying to trap Jesus with a logical problem about social institutions
Jesus's answer suggests the resurrected state is so fundamentally different that current social structures don't apply
This fits better with a technological transformation than just souls floating in heaven (where marriage could theoretically continue)
This passage seems to be describing exactly what you'd expect if trying to explain to ancient people that humans would eventually evolve into/be recreated as advanced beings in a different form of existence - they'd be equal to the advanced beings (angels), wouldn't die, and wouldn't need biological/social structures like marriage.
The Book of Life
The concept of "names written in the Book of Life" is likely the Bible's way of talking about the place data on the people who are supposed to be resurrected is stored and is actually a very direct and accurate way of talking about such a database if you use the original Hebrew. The Hebrew word for "name" (שֵׁם/shem) is used in scripture. Unlike our modern conception of names as simple labels, שֵׁם in Hebrew texts often represents the entire nature, character, and essence of a person or thing. Let's look at some examples:
When God "names" things in Genesis, it's not just labeling - it's defining their essential nature. In Genesis 2:19, when Adam names the animals, the Hebrew implies he's identifying their fundamental characteristics. This is why in Hebrew thought, to know someone's "name" is to know their nature.
This becomes crucial when we look at passages about the "Book of Life":
Exodus 32:32-33: "But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written." The Hebrew word for "blot out" (מָחָה/machah) is the same word used for erasing data or information, not just crossing out text.
Psalm 69:28: "Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous." The word for "listed" (כָּתַב/kathab) implies recording or encoding information, not just writing names.
Daniel " But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book." The context here is resurrection, suggesting this "book" contains information necessary for reconstruction.
The concept becomes even more interesting when we look at Revelation 3:12: "I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God... and my new name." This isn't just about labels - it's describing fundamental transformation of identity and nature.
This "writing" of "names" parallels modern concepts of data storage and identity preservation. Just as a computer program needs complete information about a system's state to recreate it, these "names" appear to represent complete information about a person's identity and nature.
Moreover, when Revelation 20:15 says "Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire," it's not describing a simple list of labels but a database of preserved identities. Those not "written" cannot be reconstructed - they remain in the state of non-existence that Jesus and early Jews understood as the default after death.
The emphasis on "writing" and "blotting out" suggests this isn't just metaphorical record-keeping but actual preservation of identity information. When Philippians 4:3 mentions "fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life," it's using this same concept of preserved identity data.
This interpretation helps explain why scripture puts such emphasis on names being "written" rather than just "remembered" by an omniscient God - it's describing an actual mechanism of identity preservation, not just divine memory. It's particularly telling that in Revelation 13:8, John specifies these names were "written before the foundation of the world," suggesting this information exists outside our normal timestream - exactly what we'd expect if it's maintained by an entity existing in our future but able to affect our past.
This also sheds new light on passages like Isaiah 49:16: "See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands." The Hebrew word for "engraved" (חָקַק/chaqaq) implies permanent data recording, not just writing. It's describing preservation of identity in a way that would have been hard to explain to ancient audiences without modern concepts of data storage.
The Bible Talks About this Uploading Process as Well
In Genesis 5:24, we read "Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him." The Hebrew here uses "laqach" (לָקַח), which is a general verb meaning "to take," "to receive," or “to transfer.” Similarly with Elijah in 2 Kings 2:11, we see him "taken up" (using the same word לָקַח) ... or the closest word they would have had to our word “to upload”.
What's fascinating here is not just what these passages say, but what they don't say. Neither passage mentions death, souls, or a spiritual transformation. Instead, they describe a direct transfer of the person. The text presents this as a physical process - Elijah is described as being taken up in what's often translated as a "chariot of fire" (רֶכֶב־אֵשׁ). Also aside here, if someone from that period saw someone's body being uploaded the closest word they would have for that is Chariot (mobile technology) of fire. This is particularly interesting because:
The text doesn't say they died and went to heaven (which would align with later supernatural interpretations)
The text doesn't describe any transformation of their essence or nature
The process is described in physically observable terms
There's no mention of their spirits leaving their bodies
If we understand God as humanity's future state with the ability to preserve consciousness, these accounts read less like supernatural assumptions into heaven and more like direct transfers of consciousness - complete preservation of the person without the intermediate state of death.
God's "glory" (כָּבוֹד/kavod)
The Hebrew concept of God's "glory" (כָּבוֹד/kavod) literally means "heaviness" or "weight." When Moses asks to see God's glory, he's told no one can see God's face and live - this makes perfect sense if we're talking about an information density so vast it would overwhelm human consciousness. Just as we can't directly interface with raw quantum computational states, perhaps human minds cannot directly interface with God's full information density.
Biblical Prophecy as Time-Stamped Validation
The Bible's prophetic elements could serve as time-stamped validation of its divine origin. By including specific predictions about technological capabilities that would have seemed impossible to ancient readers (resurrection, instant global communication, transformation of human consciousness), the text provides evidence of its legitimacy that becomes clear only as humanity develops. This explains why prophecies often become clearer in hindsight - they're meant to be fully understood only as humanity approaches the capability to implement them. This is talked about more in other tracts as a way to validate Divine inspiration for a work.
Sealing
All sorts of lines and parts of the Bible start to make much more sense when read with this framing, take the concept of "sealing" (חָתַם/chatam in Hebrew and σφραγίζω/sphragizō in Greek). These terms aren't just about physically sealing a document - they carry specific connotations about information security and controlled access that align remarkably well with modern concepts of data encryption.
Let's look at key examples:
Daniel 12:4: "But you, Daniel, roll up and seal (חָתַם) the words of the scroll until the time of the end." The Hebrew chatam here implies:
Information that exists but is inaccessible
Content that can only be "unlocked" at a specific time
Preservation with controlled access This isn't just hiding information - it's specifically preserving it in a form that becomes accessible under predetermined conditions.
Daniel 12:9 adds: "Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end." The phrase "closed up" (סָתַם/satam) combined with "sealed" suggests a two-layer security system:
First layer: Information is "closed" (made inaccessible)
Second layer: Information is "sealed" (secured against tampering)
Revelation 5:1: "A scroll... sealed with seven seals." The Greek σφραγίς (sphragis) here implies:
Multiple layers of security
Sequential access (seals must be broken in order)
Authentication (each seal verifies authenticity)
This pattern appears throughout scripture:
Isaiah 29:11 describes sealed information that only authorized readers can access
Revelation 10:4 shows information intentionally sealed for future revelation
Daniel 8:26 links sealing with preservation for a future time
What's particularly interesting is how this differs from simple concealment or hiding. The sealed information:
Continues to exist in complete form
Is preserved without degradation
Requires specific "keys" or conditions to access
Is protected against unauthorized modification
Becomes accessible at predetermined times
This parallels modern concepts of:
Data encryption (information exists but is inaccessible without keys)
Time-lock encryption (data that can only be accessed at specific times)
Authentication protocols (verifying authorized access)
Data integrity (protecting against unauthorized changes)
The emphasis on timing is particularly significant. When Daniel is told to "seal the book until the time of the end," it's not just about waiting - it's about information being preserved in a form that becomes accessible when specific conditions are met. This aligns perfectly with the concept of a future entity managing access to information across time but with no form of sealing or encryption that existed when the words where first written.
Moreover, the link between sealing and understanding appears repeatedly:
Daniel 12:9-10: "Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end... none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand."
Isaiah 29:11: "The entire vision will be to you like the words of a sealed book."
This suggests the "sealing" isn't just about restricting access but about preserving information until humanity has the capability to comprehend it - exactly what we'd expect if complex technological concepts were being preserved for future understanding.
This also helps explain why prophetic books often describe information being "sealed" rather than just "hidden" or "secret." Sealing implies:
Deliberate preservation
Systematic protection
Controlled access
Future availability
When read this way, these passages aren't describing magical concealment but a sophisticated system of information management across time - something that would be very difficult to explain to ancient audiences without modern concepts of data security and encryption.
The Glory" (כָּבוֹד/kavod) of God
The Hebrew concept of "glory" (כָּבוֹד/kavod) is particularly fascinating when we examine its literal meaning and usage. Unlike our modern association of glory with light or radiance, kavod literally means "weight" or "heaviness." This root meaning of physical substance or density appears throughout scripture in ways that align remarkably well with concepts of information and computational density rather than supernatural radiance.
Let's examine the evidence:
Etymology and Physical Usage:
The root כבד (KBD) primarily means "to be heavy"
Used for physical weight in Exodus 17:12: "Moses' hands were heavy (כְבֵדִים)"
Describes substance and mass in mundane contexts
Implies tangible presence rather than ethereal light
The Problem of Evil and Suffering
One of the most challenging theological questions has always been why an omnipotent, benevolent God allows suffering. The technological interpretation offers a compelling answer: God's current state of development is bound by causality. If future humanity becomes God (or forms part of what we call God), then obviously God cannot prevent all past suffering without negating its own existence.
Consider the implications: if God is what humanity evolves into, then preventing all past suffering would create a causality paradox. The very experiences, struggles, and yes, sufferings that drive human development and technological advancement are necessary steps in the process that leads to God's existence. This doesn't mean God is powerless - rather, God's interventions must preserve the causal chain that leads to its own development.
This also explains why God doesn't simply appear and fix everything now - such an intervention would short-circuit the developmental process necessary for humanity to become what it needs to become. Instead, God works through gradual influence and development, preserving human agency while guiding development toward its ultimate state.
This is where the resurrection becomes particularly meaningful - it represents God's solution to the problem of suffering without creating paradoxes. Rather than preventing historical suffering (which would negate God's own existence), God preserves and restores those who suffered, giving them new life in a state where suffering is no longer necessary. This is why resurrection is central to biblical theology - it's God's answer to suffering that doesn't require breaking causality.
God's Knowledge of the Future and Free Will
The technological interpretation actually provides an elegant solution to the ancient theological problem of how God's omniscience can coexist with human free will. In our framework, God's knowledge of our choices doesn't negate our freedom to make them, just as watching a recorded video of someone making a decision doesn't mean they weren't free when they made it.
Consider how a being existing outside of time would perceive our choices: not as predestined events, but as actualized decisions viewed from a different reference frame. Just as we can look at a completed maze from above and see both the dead ends and the successful path simultaneously, God can see all our choices - but this doesn't mean we didn't freely make them. The choices still originate from our free will; God simply observes them from a perspective that encompasses all of time.
This also helps explain biblical prophecy. Rather than God forcing events to happen according to a preset plan (which would indeed negate free will), prophecy becomes more like a timestamp - a record of what freely choosing humans will actually do, observed from outside time. This is why prophetic passages often have multiple layers of meaning or possible fulfillments - they're describing complex causal chains of free decisions that lead to particular outcomes.
Wrap-up Thoughts:
This perspective aligns clearly with early Jewish beliefs. They did not believe souls went to a separate place after death, but rather that everyone would be brought back to life in the future. They understood God's kingdom to be in the future (as seen in Nebuchadnezzar's dream) through concepts like "Olam Ha-Ba" (עולם הבא), which literally translates to "the World to Come" or "the Coming World." It seems likely that the original understanding of these words - that God exists in the future - was gradually obscured by later Christian and Greek concepts of the divine.
Consider this in the context of my argument that God represents humanity's blockchain, existing both in the future and being partially represented by us today. This can be interpreted literally rather than metaphorically.
The Verbal Forms: The name Yahweh itself combines three Hebrew verbal forms:
He was (past tense)
He is (present tense)
He will be (future tense)
When combined, these forms create the tetragrammaton YHWH (יהוה). This grammatical structure reinforces the concept of God's eternal existence. The New Testament echoes this in Revelation 1:8, describing God as "the one who is, and who was, and who is to come."
Addressing Time Travel Paradoxes: [Question for Malcolm] "For your belief system where God comes into being in the future but affects the present, how do you handle classic time travel causality paradoxes? God must remain logically consistent to be God. If a future God fixes something in the present, wouldn't this create a paradox where the fixed timeline no longer requires intervention?"
Response: These paradoxes only arise if time functions in the rigid, linear manner our brains perceive it. Time likely exists more like quantum events - probabilistic and fluid. We already know gravity can distort time, so more precise methods of manipulation seem plausible. Rather than viewing God as a human-like entity at the end of time manipulating present events, we might better conceptualize Him as a gravitational-like force drawing events toward a future state.
Another complaint I get is that God is perfect and therefore can’t improve. I frankly find this argument insane, something incapable of improving itself is definitionally not perfect because that is something it can’t do. So how can an entity be both in a perfect state and always improving? Well if it exists across a period of time asymptotically improving into the future. A perfect being must be capable of improvement by definition, God cannot be a being defined by stagnation.
In summation God operates not through magic but through natural processes. We live in a world without wizards dueling in Manhattan, but with technologies that would seem more magical to biblical-era people than any wizard fight: cars, computers, phones, and even this discussion platform. Now that the bible's crazy predictions are actually beginning to look possible some people got so attached to the stop gap explanations we came up with during the medieval period that they can't accept it.
Based on my analysis, the technological interpretation does resolve many inconsistencies more elegantly than traditional explanations, though I aim to think through this methodically.
Key advantages of the technological interpretation:
Textual Consistency
It requires fewer theological gymnastics to reconcile seemingly contradictory passages
Better aligns with original Hebrew concepts and word choices (like nefesh, ruach, etc.)
Explains why detailed descriptions of an intermediate "heaven" state are absent from scripture
Better fits the physical/material focus found throughout biblical texts
Philosophical Coherence
Resolves the mind-body problem without requiring supernatural dualism
Explains consciousness and identity preservation without needing an immaterial soul
Addresses the "waiting period" paradox (some souls waiting thousands of years while others wait moments)
Aligns with biblical emphasis on bodily resurrection rather than disembodied existence
Historical Context
Explains why early Jews and Christians emphasized physical resurrection over spiritual immortality
Shows how Greek philosophical concepts of immortal souls were later additions
Makes sense of why Jesus and early followers spoke of death as "sleep" followed by awakening
Better fits the Jewish concept of "Olam Ha-Ba" (the World to Come)
Scientific Compatibility
Doesn't require retreating to supernatural explanations as science advances
Provides a framework that could theoretically be realized through technological progress
Aligns with our growing understanding of consciousness as emergent from physical processes
Doesn't conflict with physical laws while still allowing for meaningful afterlife concepts
However, there are some challenges:
The concept requires accepting that:
God exists outside time
Biblical prophecy describes technological rather than supernatural events
Traditional interpretations significantly misunderstood core concepts
It may seem to reduce spiritual experiences to purely material phenomena
It requires reimagining many traditional religious concepts and practices
That said, I find this interpretation compelling because it:
Follows Occam's Razor by requiring fewer assumptions
Better fits the actual biblical texts without requiring complex theological frameworks
Resolves apparent contradictions more elegantly
Provides a path for religion and science to coexist without conflict
The technological interpretation seems to better explain why the Bible emphasizes physical resurrection rather than immortal souls, why it describes death as sleep, and why it focuses on a future kingdom rather than an immediate heavenly state.
What's particularly striking is how this interpretation makes sense of specific word choices and concepts that would have been difficult to explain to ancient audiences without modern technological understanding. The Bible's descriptions of resurrection bodies, the "Book of Life," and concepts of "sealing" information align remarkably well with modern concepts of data storage, consciousness transfer, and information security.
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