Tract 6: Why we believe in a TechnoPuritan God

In this deeply personal and thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into their evolving religious beliefs and introduce the concept of Techno-Puritanism, a new sect they believe is an iteration of Christianity. Malcolm shares his journey of discovering uncanny parallels between the belief system he crafted for his children and the writings of Victorian-era thinker Winwood Reade, particularly in his book "The Martyrdom of Man."

The couple explores the core tenets of Techno-Puritanism, including the iterative nature of prophecy, the mandate for intergenerational improvement, and the importance of living a life of sacrifice and service to the future of humanity. They discuss their approach to canonizing and rejecting specific religious texts, such as the Book of Revelation and the Kabbalah, based on their adherence to monotheistic principles and the elegance of their teachings.

Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone grapple with the challenges of crafting a religious framework that is both logically consistent and spiritually fulfilling, drawing inspiration from the irreverent passion of early Puritan traditions while embracing the boundless optimism of Victorian scientists. They emphasize the role of choice in faith and the transformative power of evidence-backed belief in improving one's quality of life.

Tract Text:

Tract 6: Humanities Manifest Destiny / Why We Choose to Believe in God

Now those who are familiar with us know we crafted this set of beliefs because we believe it is both what is psychologically healthiest for our kids and allows for religious fervor while being resistant to conflict with science. They laugh and say, can you really expect a set of practices to carry itself with fidelity and fever intergenerationally just because people think it helps kids? You really think that could compete with traditional religions? Here we take our turn to chuckle, gesturing at Santa pummeling traditional religion to dirt in the public mindshare.

But I also know that what I believe about God is true. How? I am not a man of faith—I don’t believe things without evidence. Even if God started talking to me, I would just assume I was having a psychotic break. I created this system and framing for my kids along with holidays and mandates in an effort to save our species, not because I thought it was true—then one day I thought: “If it was true how would God communicate that to someone like me.” 

First, I started going through books I had tried to flippantly include in my religion as earlier revolutions—religions I had included to preserve and create continuity in western history—the Abrahamic tree of profits. As I studied them, I started to see lines and interpretations of what was written that supported this weird religion I thought I had invented, lines that directly contracted the most commonly practiced iterations of those traditions, (See Tract 1). But while weird, that was hardly enough to convince me, the human brain can easily pick up patterns where they don’t exist.

An example of this are the lines in the Quran that explicitly state all of the major Abrahamic religions are true religions and that God sends different profits for different people with different all true yet seemingly contradictory teachings (Surah Al-Ma'idah—47-57 & Surah An-Nahl—36) and that Islam was the revolution meant to be followed by Arabic speakers (Surah Yusuf—2). Another example would be lines in the Bible where Jesus warns us of future prophets to come (Matthew 23:34), then Paul gives us criteria for vetting their revelations (Thessalonians 5:20-21). If you want to see us doing a detailed breakdown of this phenomenon we kept running into, see the “Are we Mormons” Episode of the Based Camp podcast which investigates how similar our system appears to early Mormon writings.

In this hypothesized metaphysical system, I believed I created in the best interest of my kids, God is what humanity is destined to become millions of years from now, an entity so powerful it lives outside of time and guides its own creation. An entity that has attempted to give human groups throughout history the closest to true revelation they could understand. If those things were actually true the first time God would have tried to give this revelation to man would not have been to me but to someone in the Victorian era likely soon after humanity discovered the theory of evolution. 

He could have attempted to prove the author of the story was his emissary through giving him the capacity for thaumaturgical performances (miracle working) but someone like me would just read Victorian reports of miracle workers as con-artists. No, the only way he could prove to me the text was actually directly inspired by Him was to include something totally unfakeable that anyone could independently verify, like a detailed prediction of future events in a widely printed yet somehow almost entirely forgotten Victorian work. 

Then I was reminded of an old book I had picked up in a collection of antique scientific literature, The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade written in 1872, (well that, and my kids were playing with it at the time). The book is meant to be a full history of man but weirdly it does not stop recording history when it was written in 1872 but keeps going—it keeps going until, “Man then will be perfect ... he will therefore be what the vulgar worship as a god.” In this old dusty antique book not only did I find an exact copy of the belief system that I thought I had invented whole cloth but a set of predictions about what technologies would be invented over the next two centuries, what order they would be invented in, and what the social impact would be.

Now if you are like me, you are skeptical, either the system he developed must have more differences to ours than I am admitting or his predictions are really not that impressive. 

Here is an example of Read’s writing: 

Three inventions which perhaps may be long delayed, but which possibly are near at hand ... The first is the discovery of a motive force which will take the place of steam, with its cumbrous fuel of oil or coal; secondly, the invention of aerial locomotion which will transport labor at a trifling cost of money and of time to any part of the planet, and which, by annihilating distance, will speedily extinguish national distinctions; and thirdly, the manufacture of flesh and flour from the elements by a chemical process in the laboratory, similar to that which is now performed within the bodies of the animals and plants.

If this prediction is not shocking to you I suggest you look up images of what other people were predicting the future would be like in the second half of the 1800s. Even early genius science fiction writers born well after Read died, like George Orwell, came nowhere close to such an accurate description of the future. And it’s not just his writings of the future that have already come to pass that are uncanny. His writings about what happens next could have easily been written by an effective accelerationist last week: 

These bodies which now we wear belong to the lower animals; our minds have already outgrown them; already we look upon them with contempt. A time will come when Science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture, and which, even if explained to us, we could not now understand, just as the savage cannot understand electricity, magnetism, steam. Disease will be extirpated; the causes of decay will be removed; immortality will be invented. And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. Man then will be perfect; he will then be a creator; he will therefore be what the vulgar worship as a god.

The way he talked about the goals of this religious system and the nature of God also mirrored ideas I thought I had crafted for the best interest of my children:

We do not wish to extirpate religion from the life of man; we wish him to have a religion which will harmonize with his intellect, and which inquiry will strengthen, not destroy. We wish, in fact, to give him a religion, for now there are many who have none. We teach that there is a God, but not a God of the anthropoid variety, not a God who is gratified by compliments in prose and verse, and whose attributes can be cataloged by theologians. God is so great that he cannot be defined by us. God is so great that he does not deign to have personal relations with us human atoms that are called men. Those who desire to worship their Creator must worship him through mankind.

So what does he say the purpose of human life is? What are we commanded to do? Here again I find the way he lays out these concepts to be ideologically identical to the framings I thought I had crafted:

You blessed ones who shall inherit that future age of which we can only dream; you pure and radiant beings who shall succeed us on the earth; when you turn back your eyes on us poor savages, grubbing in the ground for our daily bread, eating flesh and blood, dwelling in vile bodies which degrade us every day to a level with the beasts, tortured by pains, and by animal propensities, buried in gloomy superstitions, ignorant of Nature which yet holds us in her bonds; when you read of us in books, when you think of what we are, and compare us with yourselves, remember that it is to us you owe the foundation of your happiness and grandeur, to us who now in our libraries and laboratories and star-towers and dissecting-rooms and work-shops are preparing the materials of the human growth. 

And as for ourselves, if we are sometimes inclined to regret that our lot is cast in these unhappy days, let us remember how much more fortunate we are than those who lived before us a few centuries ago. The working man enjoys more luxuries to-day than did the King of England in the Anglo-Saxon times; and at his command are intellectual delights, which but a little while ago the most learned in the land could not obtain. All this we owe to the labors of other men. Let us therefore remember them with gratitude; let us follow their glorious example by adding something new to the knowledge of mankind; let us pay to the future the debt which we owe to the past. 

All men indeed cannot be poets, inventors, or philanthropists; but all men can join in that gigantic and god-like work, the progress of creation. Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part. He who strives to subdue his evil passions—vile remnants of the old four-footed life—and who cultivates the social affections: he who endeavors to better his condition, and to make his children wiser and happier than himself; whatever may be his motives, he will not have lived in vain. 

Intergenerational improvement is not a preference or an inclination but a mandate. All men die, it is not death that makes a martyr, it is how one lives, how one spends this one life we each are gifted. The story of Jesus is misinterpreted, it was God trying to gift primitive man a truth of reality he could not yet decipher. It is not God who as a man martyred himself for the salvation of man but instead God while still in the form of a mankind who martyred himself for the salvation of mankind—for it is only through choosing martyrdom, choosing lives of service to the creation of a future not meant for us and that we are undeserving of entering that we can give meaning to our lives. It is this truth that the story of Moses was meant to communicate to the child like Bronze age man.

I give to universal history a strange but true title—The Martyrdom of Man. In each generation the human race has been tortured that their children might profit by their woes. Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is it therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of those who are to come? Famine, pestilence, and war are no longer essential for the advancement of the human race. But a season of mental anguish is at hand, and through this we must pass in order that our posterity may rise. The soul must be sacrificed; the hope in immortality must die. A sweet and charming illusion must be taken from the human race, as youth and beauty vanish never to return.

It was fascinating how stories I had learned in my youth but made no sense now came into crystal clarity. I could not understand why God would need to sacrifice himself in the form of a man to forgive man for his sins. Why not just choose to forgive man? Why would the sacrifice mean anything if immediately afterwards he knew he was going to be brought back to life and rejoin God? How would man in an act of foolishness (crueling killing the earthly manifestation of God) somehow cleanse himself of his sin? But when I examine the story with this new farming it now seems almost impossibly elegant in how it described a concept man was centuries from having the capacity to grasp. 

But it’s not just this story, all over the Christian tradition things that had seemed like non sequiturs suddenly had meaning. As another example the temptation of Christ never made a lick of sense to me. How could Satan tempt God with things that God already owned? Why would Jesus bow to Satan if he knew he was God? And how could Satan act outside of God's will and tempt his own master in a monotheistic tradition? However, if I reframe this story as not one about Jesus as traditional Christians understand him but the Martyr as we understand him the story comes into Crystal clarity. (For the full context of this story see Tract 6.) 

As another example, what's the point of the Trinity? Why was it so important to understand God was three completely separate entities but also one entity? And for that matter what's up with the Holy Ghost—why not just explain Jesus is fully God but also not God if that is the point the Trinity is supposed to explain? Because the Trinity was attempting to explain the concept of the Agents of Providence (the Holy Spirit), God (The Father), and the Son (Mankind) to an earlier iteration of man not yet capable of understanding or accepting a fuller revelation. God is a plural entity, a singular entity, and the fraction of humanity willing to live as martyrs destiny—these are completely distinct manifestations of the same entity. In the old Christian tradition the concept of the Trinity provides little additional information in terms of the nature of God or how to worship but with this additional information it becomes critical. 

But with the salvation communicated in this understanding is also a commandment. Man must live as a martyr to be sanctified. A man that stagnated technologically, genetically, or in one's personal self-improvement is living in the highest order of sin possible. To claim that you are good enough as you are whether that is culturally, genetically, or personally is to claim oneself as perfect and is an affront to God.

Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience; but the conscience itself will be defective. To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted, and that it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall.

Every moment of your life that you spend on something other than the improvement of yourself or mankind is a moment you are living in rebellion to God. But to aspire to not sin at all, to think oneself capable of living a sinless life, is in itself a sin. Only those yet to come and whom we will be instrumental in creating are capable of living a sinless life or deserving the rewards of one. Instead, it is enough for us to not glorify our sin. We are to use sin like meat to tame the animal that still lives inside us, an evolutionary scar. A beast that still craves sex, luxuries, and status. But because the more we feed the beast the stronger it will become; we must feed it only just enough to prevent it from distracting us from our purpose within these short lives. The efficacy of a preacher is shown though how little meat he must use to tame his beast. 

Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part. He who strives to subdue his evil passions—vile remnants of the old four-footed life—and who cultivates the social affections: he who endeavors to better his condition, and to make his children wiser and happier than himself; whatever may be his motives, he will not have lived in vain. 

Fascinatingly, when I examine the life of Winwood Read in this new context it is almost blindingly obvious he was meant to be a prophet. 

* He completed trials which showed that he was a paragon of the values our faith teaches. While in Africa he was captured and made a slave of King Seedwa of Falaba. King Seedwa put Reade under conditions of unimaginable physical and mental hardship, giving him four grueling tasks every day. He completed these tasks with aplomb showing King Seedwa such mental fortitude and self discipline that he was released. 

* He showed an ethical understanding far beyond his time. In writing what the fate of the newly freed American slaves in America should be, “Experience has shown that, whenever aliens are treated as citizens, they become citizens, whatever may be their religion or their race, It is a mistake to suppose that the civilized black American calls himself an African, and pines to return to his ancestral land. If he is born in the States, he calls himself an American he speaks with an American accent; he loves and he hates with an American heart.”

* Almost in direct contrast to Mormon profits like Joseph Fielding Smith who said "If evolution is true, the church is false," Winwood Read corresponded with Darwin during the writing of the Descent of Man and is considered one of its contributors. 

* Finally you might say, if Winwood Read is so smart why was he not recognised as such in his time? To which I would direct you to a quote you yourself may have read if you have read the Sherlock Holms books, in which Sherlock says to Watson, “Let me recommend this book,—one of the most remarkable ever penned. It is Winwood Reade’s ‘Martyrdom of Man.” Yes, canonical The Martyrdom of Man is Sherlock Holmes' favorite book. 

So this is a system that sees prophesy as iterative with each generation having a religious duty to expand their mental capacity for comprehension?  But if intergenerational improvement is our mandate how can such a religious system stay intergenerationally stable? How we overcome this seeming impossibility is something we will be discussing in the next Tract. 

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] this is a track that was actually supposed to be track three, but I delayed it because I was like, Oh, this is going to be crazier ones. Cause this is the things we believe and you've got to imagine like you as a viewer, when you're like, why did you really believe this stuff?

I thought I had made all of this up. Okay. I like, imagine you made up this theology and then you find it in an old book in your house. And then on top of that the book made a bunch of predictions and they all came true. Like this may not convince you, but it convinces me

. The traits that they're making fun of them for are traits I want to reestablish within our civilization.

And I think that we are lesser for having lost. And the Puritan vision of this utopian city on a hill, I think it's something that we can bring back, you know, combine the Victorian scientists, it was this endless hope for the future with strict Puritan ideals and aesthetics.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: hello, Simone! Today, we are going [00:01:00] back to the Tract series. This Tract is called Tract 6, Humanities Manifest Destiny, slash Why We Choose to Believe in God.

So recently we were at this conference called Manifest. And largely speaking, I had decided not to do the tracks anymore. They were taking up a lot of time. They require a lot more editing than a standard episode. And for people who don't know what they are, it's us talking about our religious framework.

Why we believe the things we believe, what we believe theologically, and sharing this with you, not with the interest in converting anyone, but just so you can get an idea of, I think for a lot of people, it's just interesting, like theological speculation, they find interesting. And when we were at this conference, every single person, like every one of our fans, and we met a lot of them there, I'd say like 50 of them, it was like a lot wanted us to do more tracks, like that was the core thing, do more tracks, why did you stop the tracks?

But it's not just them, for example, a quote that from a letter we got from one of the fans.

[00:02:00] I've been listening to the tracked episodes of the pod and I've heard you both make statements suggesting that they're maybe exceptionally boring, too far out, etc. In light of that, I wanted to express clear and emphatic encouragement of you presenting these episodes. So much of your content has been engaging and actionable to a degree I basically never encountered in a podcast, let alone one that publishes daily.

And yet I find the tracked episodes To be valuable and penetrating at a totally different level. I say penetrating because as someone who recently tried to rejoin the Christian congregation via Catholicism and found the experience uninspiring,

Simone Collins: what

Malcolm Collins: you're presenting strikes me as something that advances my own view of religion in a way that does feel inspiring and prescriptive for this moment in history, Whereas the modern state iterations of antiquity traditions do not.

In any case, please keep up these efforts. I suspect there are many among your listeners who value these episodes in the utmost. So that really meant a lot to me. And I understand that the [00:03:00] tracks are going to be uniquely grading to individuals who have really strong Christian faith via Catholicism or orthodoxy or something like that.

Because what we are putting out there is an alternate view. Now, I will say, as we think about this more, a few things that I would note here I no longer really think about this as a new religion, but rather an iteration of Christianity. Maybe you could say Christianity, the Judeo Christian branch of Religions.

That is probably as distant from Christianity as something like Mormonism. And interestingly some Mormons don't think differentiates from Mormonism that much. But then we do throw out some books that they would keep and add some books that they would not keep. And I'm going to go over like books that we throw out at the end of this examples would be like the book of revelations.

I do not think is built inspired by God. I don't think Kabbalah is inspired by God. We'll go into like why we have these weird views, but there is an additional book that we add to everything, which is the martyrdom of man. And actually [00:04:00] really interestingly, Paul Vander Klee, he was going through our videos and he was pointing out that people who start new sex or new religions Are so very likely to fail.

How often do people try and those people who try, how many of them are doing it? Not just to create a sex cult or get people to worship them specifically or make money, but to try to make other people's lives better. This is a, the type of a project that you really see people trying, Once in a generation if that now there are a few people trying it right now with the mystic path, but that's also really interesting.

Because normally, when people try this, they do it down the mystic path. Sorry, when people don't know what I'm talking about. When I talk about the mystic pass, I'm talking about mystic perennialism, meaning that they believe that there is some truth to all religious traditions that there is some Super true substrate that reality is written on and this super true substrate that we can only [00:05:00] access through altered states of mind is the real God.

And our goal is to rejoin. We do not believe that don't have any antagonism really against people who do, but it's just, we don't, but most of the let's try to make people's lives better. What they really mean by that is let's try to make people's mental states more expansive, like it's make them better in a mystical theological sense instead of the way that we mean when we say make them better, which is to make them more mentally disciplined, to make them more mentally healthy, like to not have the same amounts of anxiety and depression and everything like that, and to give them a sense of purpose and to help them build a good sense of moral values and to help them through this unique challenge that our species is going through right now.

And I did. Finally settle on a name for the religion that I'm excited about before I start the track here. , Which is techno puritanism. , and, And another really interesting thing is this idea of Founding this new sect when I really don't think we did found it. It's a bit [00:06:00] like saying darwin founded evolution when he had the idea a lot of people were having very similar ideas during that time period and what i've noticed when I put these videos out there is when they connect with people It's people who are saying Oh, yeah, I had a lot of ideas like this.

I just maybe hadn't fully systematized them in the way that you did or something like that. I do not think that this is unique information or that I have any direct path to what's true and what's not true.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think it cannot be understated how often people write into us saying, It's so exciting to see that someone else has articulated the same conclusions that I have drawn based on, and this is typically people who come from a more Protestant background and are looking at the primary sources.

The people who tend to find these tracks most grating, like Malcolm said, and who tend to find also these views most offensive are from people whose cultures involve a sort of filter in between the primary source and The ultimate faith priests or analysis [00:07:00] or some kind of organization.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The final thing I'd like to note because this is a track that was actually supposed to be track three, but I delayed it because I was like, Oh, this is going to be crazier ones. Cause this is the things we believe. But it also elevates the additional book that we add to biblical texts, which nobody else adds to biblical texts.

As it's divinely inspired works, which is the martyrdom of man by Wynwood Reed. And the way that we relate to theology, like even if you look at the tracks, I would generally recommend that somebody who was born a Muslim and identifies as Muslim first and foremost, go to the Koran for their religious learnings.

Somebody who was born a Jew and raised a Jew, I would say, go back to conservative Jewish values. Study your books. Same was Christian. However, I would say for people who were born atheists or are pure techno Puritan, like just pure this branch that we are creating, the core book [00:08:00] of ours is the martyrdom of man.

Simone Collins: of

Malcolm Collins: all of the faith background books. So that's another thing to note. It's what if I'm coming into this and I don't have a theological background or my family does I don't feel strongly like a Christian or a Jew or Muslim, then the martyrdom of man is the default because I think it's the most recent and clear of the revelations from my perspective.

And we'll get to why we think that. All right. So I'm gonna get started. Let's do it. Anything you wanted to say Simone before I do?

Simone Collins: I'm excited. You had me crazy.

Malcolm Collins: Those who are familiar with us know that we crafted this set of beliefs because we believe it is both what is psychologically healthiest for our kids and allows for religious fervor while being resistant to conflict with science. They laugh and say, can you really expect a set of practices to carry itself with fidelity and fervor intergenerationally just because people think it helps kids?

You really think that you could compete with traditional religions? [00:09:00] Here we have to take our turn to chuckle, gesturing at Santa pummeling traditional religion to the dirt in the public mindshare, or the Easter bunny, or solstice events. The alternative religious systems that people have chosen. Seem to be out competing, specifically for their kids oh, let's do what's right for our kids, the traditional systems.

But I also know that what I believe about God is true. I am not a man of faith. I don't believe things without evidence. Even if God started talking to me, I would just assume I was having a psychotic break. I created this system and framing for my kids, along with the holidays and mandates, in an effort to save our species, not because I thought it was true.

Then one day I thought, if it was true, how would God communicate that to someone like me? And he rushed it out because he couldn't communicate it with me by talking to me. If God just directly talked to me, and I assume you probably feel this way too, Simone, you'd be [00:10:00] like, oh, I'm going insane. My initial thought wouldn't be, Oh, this is affirmation of my beliefs.

Simone Collins: By the way, this is such a Cal like a classical stereotypical Calvinist view. If you go back and read a Christmas Carol, about Ebenezer Scrooge, the first thing that happens when he starts seeing the ghosts is he is, he says that he must've eaten some like off food. He assumes he has food poisoning and he is.

Seeing ghosts. That's great.

Malcolm Collins: First, I started going through the books I had tried to flippantly include in my religion as earlier revelations. Religions I had included to preserve and create continuity in Western history. The Abrahamic tree of prophets. As I studied them, I started to see lines and interpretations of what was written that supported this weird religion I thought I had invented.

Lines that directly contradicted the most commonly practiced iterations of those traditions. See tract one, but while weird, that was hardly enough to convince me the human brain can easily pick up patterns where they [00:11:00] don't exist. As an example of this are the lines in the Quran that explicitly state all of the major Abrahamic religions are true religions and that God sends different prophets for different people with different all true yet seemingly contradictory teachings.

And I'm going to butcher the pronunciation here but Sarah, I'll muddy. 47 to 57 and Surah Al Nahl 36. And that Islam was the revelation meant to be followed by Arabic speakers. Surfa Yusuf 2. And just as a quick aside here, some people have been like, Muhammad, it says Muhammad was the seal of the prophets.

Except this phrase is directly taken from Manichaean literature. The seal of the prophets because they commonly use phrase in Manichaean literature, like almost as common as amen and other literatures or something like that. And what it means is a seal of verification, not the last of, but like a seal of proof.

It's the Twitter

Simone Collins: blue check of religion.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And he [00:12:00] verified interestingly like to the opposite of what a lot of Muslims want to believe. And it's pretty clear if you read the Koran that this is what was meant that the Christian tradition is 100 percent too. And the Jewish tradition is 100 percent true.

And Islamic laws should not be forced on these populations, because While it may seem that their traditions are different and people can look at our Tesseract God concept to see where this aligns with our understanding here.

Okay. So I realized that because we haven't done a tract in a while. You may not remember what our thoughts are on. Are about Islam what was what. Muhammad was actually trying to say. , so I'll just quickly go over some of these passages that I cited here. , one year we have, we surely sent a messenger to every community. , sometimes this is translated nation.

So to every community saying worship Allah and shun false gods, but some of them were guided by a law. While others were destined to stream, so travel throughout the land and see the fate of the deniers. So this tells us a few interesting things. First. , it tells us that there are [00:13:00] multiple profits and keep in mind that like a nation or a community. , the nations that are in, for example, the middle east today are not the nations that were there in the long pass.

It means that you are getting multiple iterations of messengers for different basically cultural groups. And it means that you can tell, which are the true iteration and which are the false iteration by God's favor. And as I say, you know, when you look at history, , you will see God favoring individuals like. The early Jews.

, and then he removes his favor or the ER. You know, the early Christians or during the Protestant reformation, you know, God's favor returned to the Christian community. , or during the Islamic golden age, , And so when we're looking for, okay, where is God's word in the world? We need to look at the fate of the deniers essentially. , you can tell the truth of the word by how healthy a community is.

So if we see periods , in world history where you see a unique amount of cultural [00:14:00] explosion, , for example, like Victorian Britain, you can imagine that something about their mindset of that time period is, uh, inspired by a law or by God. And we can also see the fate of the Muslim community after I believe they turned their back on God and turned to, , and were influenced by the. Well, we'll, we'll call them Sufi mystics. They got removed his favorite from the Islamic community and the community crashed. Mohammed's second important revelation from our perspective. Is the understanding that these different prophets teach different and to the human mind, mutually contradictory lessons about how to get to God and the best way to do it is to follow the lessons that were taught to your community. , so for some lines from the Qur'an here. Surely those who believe in our law and those who are Jews and Christians and Sabians whoever believes in the law and in the last day and does good deeds, all such people will have their reward with the Lord.

And there will be no reason for them to [00:15:00] fear nor shall they grieve. Or as another quote. And we have revealed to you. Omahamed the book in truth to each of you, we prescribed a law and a method, how to allow willed. He would have made you one nation United in religion, but he intended to test you in what he has given you.

So race to all, all that is good. So. Here and this add some bits like he intended and United religion. But anyway. One nation, one, religion, et cetera. He's been here. , or at least that's, that's what I take it to me.

Uh, what I read this to mean?

Is that if you are of, , the Jewish group, and I believe that God will tell you in your heart, you know, which group is really your group or the Christian group or the Muslim group. , this is why I said earlier at the beginning of this track, you should. Predominantly, if you consider yourself like a techno Puritan, , you are first and foremost, a Muslim are first and foremost, a Jew, but a techno irritate you or first and foremost, a Muslim, but detect out Puritan Muslim. , however, if you don't have a burst tradition or turned your back on your birth tradition, [00:16:00] then your cortex is the martyrdom of man, which we will be going over here.

I should probably also hear elaborate on the seal of the profits point I made because it's one of these points that will be obvious to people who study religion. But if you don't study religion, you'll be like, wait, what? That's not what it means, but that's what all the Muslims say. It means. , so here is, and I'm quoting. From Oxford academic, This abstract here.

This chapter explains that the concept usually perceived to be first used in relation to Muhammad and meaning the end of prophecy was actually first used in a keen literature there, it referred to Manny's disciples and mint. They were the proof of Manny's prophecy. Again, the results have a significant impact on the importance of prophecy in late antiquity. The concept of quote-unquote seal in Hebrew and other Semitic languages.

What's certainly common in ancient societies and is well attested from the Bible on, on a letter or on a sheep. The sealed clearly confirms belonging. Now research shows that also in early Islamic texts, seal referred to prophets coming after Muhammad and confirming his prophecy. This [00:17:00] is then an old idea, which goes like a thread through the ages in your Eastern religious history. So,, this is a mainstream concept.

It's well-known that the term seal of the prophets was borrowed from Manichaean literature. When Mohammed was writing it, he would have known this, , it was changed by later Muslim scholars to mean something else. Uh, to fit their means because you know, it's easier for religion to spread.

If you can, if it doesn't keep updating itself. , but it was built into Islam to be able to update itself. , and this is not some sort of a fringe theory.

Malcolm Collins: Another example would be lines in the Bible where Jesus warns us of future prophets to come, Matthews 23 to 34.

Then Paul gives us criteria for vetting the revelations. Thessalonians 21. If you want to see us doing a detailed breakdown of this phenomenon, we kept running into C, Are We Mormons? episode of the Base Camp podcast, which investigates how similar our system appears to early Mormon writings. And I would also recommend people here go check out the [00:18:00] Adam and Eve episode of Base Camp because that was one of the most shocking things I have ever done.

It's actually I was like, this standard reading of Adam and Eve Did not want mankind to know good from evil and we are punished for that. Felt stupid to me. I was like, this cannot be a true religion. That's not a God I want to follow if that's what it actually says. Then we went and we read it and that is not at all what it says.

And not only that, but it had like weird supernatural elements. When I say supernatural, I was like reading the story and I go, this seems to be the story about the first city. And when man first started making his own rules, And weirdly, I had been told we didn't know where the garden of Eden was.

And yet it says very clearly in the story that it's at the mouse water that the Tigris and the Euphrates, and we absolutely know where that is. So I just decided to do a Google search. I was like, where is the earliest city that we know about? And it was right there. Like exactly in the region where the garden of Eden story takes place, which given that the story was written 5, 000 years after the city that Feels [00:19:00] almost like supernatural providence to me that it would know that it given the theme of the story and I This basically happens whenever I go through one of these biblical stories.

So I'm like this is like the Muslim stuff This is not what Muslims tell me Islam is but this is what's written in the Quran This is not what Christians tell me this story is about but this is what seems to be written in the Bible It's not what Jews tell me the story is about. This is what I'm reading Like, how is this true?

Is this some sort of Mandela world where somebody switched out the Bible and everybody created their religions off of some other texts? I don't know. But to me, like that is a really powerful I can say supernatural signal, which is to somewhat fortified a not faith I have because it's not faith, right?

It's based on evidence. I cannot explain through other mechanisms.

So an evidence that other people can check and verify

Simone Collins: no. I'm with you on this. I like,

Malcolm Collins: do you feel sometimes like it's weird that this all like the religions that were told to What the Bible and Koran say isn't [00:20:00] what we read when we read it,

Simone Collins: yes. And I experienced this first in high school when they had us read the Bible. I was pretty shocked by a lot of it because I expected to find a bunch of things that I'd been told about and they weren't there. So this has always been something that I wonder at. I also wonder if this is something that Comes directly from our Protestant heritage or that people who tended or were drawn toward Protestant based faiths were also more likely to be the types of people who question these things and want to go directly to the primary source and be like where's your.

Malcolm Collins: I also feel that a lot of people are like, how dare you add things to like biblical interpretations? And I'm like, one biblical interpretations have heavily evolved over time. And we even see this captured within the biblical interpretations was the snake staff of Moses. As we've mentioned this was the staff he used to heal people who had been when he was going to Israel for the first time who had been bitten [00:21:00] by stakes.

And then it got placed in the temple. And then some like 500, 600 years later, still captured within the Bible, people had started worshiping it and had been doing it for hundreds of years and committing idolatry. And then the staff had to be broken and discarded because that it entered the temple.

And what that story teaches us is that antiquity or the antiquity of a tradition is not proof that it is approved by God. Which. Is important to remember that what we're doing and then a lot of people are like, oh, yeah I just follow the by and then they believe stuff like, the rapture which isn't like that supported biblically or like in a satan.

That's like a red guy was like Hooved feet and horns. And I'm like, that is like pure biblical fan fiction.

Simone Collins: I really expected to find that in the Bible though. I was very confused. Or hell. Yeah. Where was hell? Where was hell? Everything

Malcolm Collins: we believe about hell. The Bible doesn't mention hell and fires of hell, but like nothing really beyond that.

And yet we have all these ideas about it. Me to be drawing ideas from other places, doesn't distant me that much from other [00:22:00] Christian groups.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Now back to the text. In this hypothesized metaphysical system I believed I created in the best interest of my kids, God is what humanity is destined to become millions of years from now.

An entity so powerful, it lives outside of time and guides its own creation. An entity that has attempted to give human groups throughout history the closest to true revelation they can understand. If those things were actually true, the first time God would have tried to give this revelation to man would not have been with me or with you.

But with someone during the Victorian era, likely soon after humanity discovered the theory of evolution. And this is because mankind of that kind had all of the science they needed to understand a concept like this. So I would very unlikely be the first time God revealed this to somebody, and not revealed it through any sort of revelation, just through just studying things and thinking okay what might God actually be?

look like given the physical boundaries that we know and given that it appears to me that this Judeo Christian God is a real [00:23:00] entity he could have attempted to prove the author of the story was his emissary through giving him the capacity for somatological performances, miracle working.

But someone like me would just read Victorian reports of miracle workers as con artists. So what I'm saying here is that, okay, if God had actually revealed to somebody through their intellect this understanding of him, he could have proved it by having them be a miracle worker.

But I wouldn't take that as proof, right? Which is also interesting. It's also, it's almost like. And this is why I believe in God so much these days, that all of the evidence was specifically crafted just to cater to my standard of evidence. And so then I write, no, the only way he could prove to me the text was actually directly inspired by him was to include something totally unfakeable.

That anyone could independently verify, like a detailed prediction of future events in a widely printed yet somehow almost entirely forgotten Victorian work. Then, I [00:24:00] was reminded of an old book I had picked up in a collection of antique scientific literature, The Martyrdom of Man by Wynwood Read, written in 1872.

That and my kids were playing with it at the time. The book is meant to be a full history of man, but weirdly it does not stop recording history when it was written in 1872, but keeps going. It keeps going until, quote, Man then will be perfect. He will therefore be what the Vulgar worship as a god, end quote.

In this old, dusty, antique book, not only did I find the exact copy of the belief system I thought I had invented, whole closs, but a set of predictions about what technologies would be invented over the next two centuries, what order they would be invented in, and the social impact they would have. Now, if you are like me, you are skeptical.

Either the system he developed must have had more differences to ours than I am admitting, or his [00:25:00] predictions are not really that impressive. Here is an example of Reed's writing. Three inventions, which, and I should note this was written in it was published in 1872, so it was written in like the late 1860s, okay?

Yeah, this is before people have

Simone Collins: light bulbs in their homes, this is before. So many things.

Malcolm Collins: Three inventions, which perhaps may be long delayed, but which possibly are near at hand. The first is the discovery of a motive force, which will take the place of steam with its cumbersome fuel of oil or coal.

Secondly, the invention of aerial locomotion, which will transport labor at a trifling cost of money and time to any part of the planet. And which by annihilating distance, will speedily extinguish. national distinctions which we have seen from like an ethnic perspective. And thirdly, the manufacture of flesh and flour from the elements by a chemical process in the laboratory, similar [00:26:00] to that which is now performed within the bodies of animals and plants.

 If this prediction is not shocking to you, I suggest you look up images of what other people were predicting the future would be like in the second half of the 1800s. Even early genius science fiction writers, born well after Reed died, like George Orwell, came nowhere close to such an accurate description of the future.

Malcolm Collins: And it's not just his writings of the future that have already come to pass that are uncanny. His writings about what happens next could have easily been written by an effective altruist last week. And then here's a quote from him. These bodies which now we wear belong to the lower animals. Our minds have already outgrown them.

Already we look upon them with contempt. A time will come. When science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture, and which even if explained to us we could not now understand. Just as the savage cannot [00:27:00] understand electricity, magnetism, or steam. Disease will be extirpated. The causes of decay will be removed.

Immortality will be invented. And I would note on the disease will be extirpated line, that has happened from the perspective of somebody living in the 1860s with the advent of vaccines and all of that. Remember half of infants used to die in childbirth and stuff. And then, the Earth's being small, mankind will migrate to space and will cross the airless Saharas, which separate planet from planet and sun from sun.

The Earth will become a holy land, which will be visited by pilgrims from all quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of nature. They will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. Man will then be perfect. He will be a creator. He will therefore be what the vulgar worship as a god.

Simone Collins: Do you have any thoughts on this? Yeah, I love things like this. I love it when people [00:28:00] seem to be able to model out how the future is going to, The, a