Transhumanist Mormonism and its Challenges in Africa

We interview leaders of the Mormon Transhumanist movement, an association of Mormons interested in using technology to improve life. They explain core Mormon beliefs like humans can become gods, the purpose of existence is to bring about immortality/eternal life, and there are multiple heavens you go to based on your desires. We find many similarities with our ideologies and possibilities for cooperation to build intergenerational religious communities.

Lincoln: [00:00:00] The second president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association has what?

Eight children.

Malcolm Collins: Do you know if there's any second generation transhumanist Mormons yet, i. e. kids where this belief system has been successfully passed between generations?

Lincoln: All of my children are Mormon transhumanists. They're all adults.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, wow. So it's working. Okay, then the next thing I really want to talk to you about, cause I think that this is the most interesting thing about it, is the large following in Africa.

Carl Youngblood: Yeah, so that's, that's pretty recent. I was approached earlier this year by a guy in Senegal whose name is Kwasi Ngesen. And he was like, I really love what you guys are talking about. He went to our website and read some things and was really excited about it. And he said, I'd like to spread it to Africa.

And I guess he's a pretty good community builder. So, suddenly we have like, Almost 30 different groups that he has opened up in various African countries and is currently [00:01:00] Sharing some ideas with them

Would you like to know more?

Carl Youngblood: Hello

Malcolm Collins: everyone! We have a very special guest here today that I am really excited and could not be more on topic for our podcast. Or I think of more interest to a lot of our listeners who are interested in the more religious stuff. But we have with us today the Co founders of the transhumanist Mormon branch of Mormonism, or I'd say movement.

I don't like to say movement because I think it's a bit more than that. And I'd really love you guys to introduce yourself. And I'd love to start just by talking about what it is as a concept. And how you see it as contiguous with the traditional Mormon tradition.

Carl Youngblood: Awesome. I guess I'll start.

My name is Carl Youngblood. I'm the current president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. And I'm one of the co founders of the association. But, and Lincoln is as well, but there are several others, so I feel I need to give credit [00:02:00] to The whole group. There's, I think, what was it, Lincoln? Like 14 people or so who co founded the association.

And I do want to clarify that several of us are active Latter day Saints. We consider ourselves to be kind of in the mainstream church, as well. Although it's not required to be a member of The LDS church to be a member of the association. So we have Several active members. We have some who are not active in the church That's a term we use for like whether you are a practicing member.

I should say Sometimes we use this lingo inside Mormonism. That is a little bit confusing. So So yeah, there are practicing Latter day Saints in our, in our midst in the association. There are others who are not practicing and others who've never even been Latter day Saints, but just found a lot of interesting things to talk about in the group and, and kind of gravitated towards us for [00:03:00] various reasons.

And I'll let Lincoln talk a little bit more about it as well. Go ahead Lincoln.

Lincoln: Sure. Thanks, Carl. Yeah, my name's Lincoln Cannon. Like Carl said, I'm one of the co founders of the association, and I served as the association's president for 10 years from its inception until 2016. As Carl pointed out, the, you know, there isn't any necessary strong distinction between a Mormon transhumanist and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I agree. I've been mentioning that I've been figuring that out as I've been talking to more Mormons, where a lot of the beliefs that I see are very transhumanist sounding to me, so it seems like a very natural evolution. If it is such a natural evolution, why make the distinction at all?

Lincoln: Yeah, so, and a valuable part of that is that by making some things explicit.

You emphasize them, you bring them to mind, and you ensure their continuing maybe [00:04:00] virility, or even viability within the culture. And that's one of the things that we cared a lot about, is that we wanted to call attention to aspects genuine aspects of Mormon culture and theology. That we felt were very important, are very important, and that merit more attention than perhaps the average Mormon gives them.

And so, you know, by, by, by organizing a movement around this, we call attention to those things, we emphasize those things, as a consequence, we cultivate those things within the culture.

Malcolm Collins: So can you elaborate or highlight some of the things that you guys would be focusing more on in your framing than a traditional Mormon community would?

Carl Youngblood: Yeah I'll go, I'll share a few things and Lincoln can add to this I think one thing that is very important to us is this notion that there is no distinction between spirit and [00:05:00] matter in Mormon theology, so for example from a philosophical point of view the term for this would be called substance monism, but it's this idea that You know, the dualists in classical philosophy would say that there is such a thing as spirit and such a thing as matter, and they are two separate substances, and they will never meet, and typically they would say that spirit was of a higher order, it was something metaphysical and that everything physical was an approximation of a better reality that was in the, in the realm of the spirit Mormonism, Eradicates that difference and basically says that all things are spirit and all things are matter essentially like that They're all part of the same substance.

So if there is such a thing as a spiritual phenomenon that is happening Mormons Mormon theology would would say that that must be observable, comprehensible, measurable in some [00:06:00] way, or it's not real. So I'd love to,

Malcolm Collins: oh, continue. Well, really

Carl Youngblood: fast, I would just say that would mean that anything that appears to be miraculous.

Would still have some explanation, even if we don't fully understand it yet.

Malcolm Collins: So, I'm gonna, I'm gonna draw a distinction on this point. Are you describing something closer to like, an Orson Pratt perspection of spirit, where spirit can be thought of in like, spirit particles, basically, that could maybe one day be studied, but are still a distinct thing from the material.

Like like what we think of as the material human body or is it more the way Simone and I think of it? Where we think of as the spirit is more like a metaphor for just your genetics and the patterns that are existing within your brain

Lincoln: Yeah, so,

Carl Youngblood: It's interesting. It sounds like I mean, I I'm happy about the fact that you apparently researched some things.

tHere was this period of controversy where Brigham Young and Orson Pratt were arguing over [00:07:00] like what the nature of these, this spirit is, right? And I would say that without getting too dogmatic on any particular Way of conceiving it. I think we're more focused on sort of the pragmatic aspect of how spirit spiritual phenomenon may be manifest in the world.

And so, we probably gravitate more towards the approach that you and Simone are taking in this regard, but I Yeah. I have to tease that out a little more. Lincoln, is there anything you want to

Lincoln: add there? Yeah, I think that two very useful approximations of spirit in secular language would be aesthetics and information.

And so, those both harmonize well with the kind of account that you were talking about. And those accounts of spirit also work very well with Mormon scripture. Mormon scripture, Intentionally equivocates between light and spirit and truth [00:08:00] and, and as a consequence of that you read scriptures where you can understand light and spirit and truth to be interchangeable, and once you've done that, it's not a, it's not a big leap to thinking you're talking about something like information and aesthetics.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well this like our perspective on this, just in case listeners are wondering. A spirit can best be thought of as an emergent phenomenon that comes from specific types of complex patterns. So, so, what's, what is interesting about the framing that we would use for spirit, it would intrinsically mean that higher order types of spirits can come to exist. then potentially exist today through the endeavors of human work.

Which sounds somewhat similar to, I don't know, your guys beliefs on things, or?

Carl Youngblood: Yeah, I mean, what you've described really resonates strongly with me, that there are emergent properties both in the, the human body [00:09:00] itself. You think about how we evolve from lower life forms that eventually, Exhibited a sufficient degree of complexity to where emergent phenomena like the ability to think and to express yourself in words and to do amazing feats and when you look at human organizations at a, at a macroscopic level or imagine them that way.

You can, you can start to see even more interesting sociological phenomena occur, and we have as well, you know, the Christian Pauline metaphor of the body of Christ, where he described the, you know, all of the members of Christ's church as a kind of single body that if you could look at it from far away would each have appendages and Members and organs and and each person is doing something useful We may not be sure what it is like maybe i'm the spleen and no one can see what my purpose is other than to sit there and be annoying but [00:10:00] You know, there's probably some version, something that each person is contributing, hopefully, that is benefiting the whole, right?

So, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Just for listeners who may not be familiar with the concept of emergent properties, because it's something that people who talk in this space would be very familiar with you can think of it as like, You broadly understand how like H2O molecules look kind of, how they interact with each other, but that them interacting in mass leads to the concept that we know of as wetness, is you don't think that there's some extra spiritual thing that's added to the water to make the wetness appear.

You just understand that this very different phenomenon seems to emerge when these specific things are interacting in a way that individually you can understand, and you can understand why they might lead to something that at a higher order looks like wetness. But the actual moment it turns from water molecules interacting to wetness is something that our brains just are not structured to understand or to grasp.[00:11:00]

Carl Youngblood: You could almost say that like You need to have some level of abstraction to even comprehend wetness, right? It's like, if you had to think about the individual movements of every single H2O molecule, you would get lost in the shuffle, right? You wouldn't be able to, to, Observe the emergent property,

Malcolm Collins: right?

I really want to focus our talk a bit about this argument that you sent me that lincoln came up with lincoln I'd love it if you could present it I forget the name of it But it's very similar to arguments that we have laid out with like I think minor aesthetic differences That highlight the difference between our communities and I think a really fun way that people might be surprised about the things we disagree on so i'd love to hear this argument presented for our audience

Lincoln: Sure.

I think you're referring to the New God argument, right? Yes. Yeah, I can, I can give you a nutshell version of that, with the caveat that there's a great deal of potential complexity to understanding it, [00:12:00] and sometimes the nutshell version gives people just enough to misunderstand it, but I, I'm more than willing to share it anyway.

So, the, the New God argument, is an argument not to prove the existence of God, but to prove that we should trust in or have active practical faith in that which may constitute God given certain understandings of God. So there's a little bit of complexity there. It's not an argument about platonic philosophy versions of the good or of the theologies that descend from platonic philosophy.

It's, it's a much more practical argument than that. It's about an argument on behalf of trust in a God that is the kind of God that could arise within nature a natural God. And, and it begins with purely secular assumptions. And it uses those secular assumptions to reach conclusions. that sound and operate very [00:13:00] much like the conclusions of theism.

And so for theists who are not attached to anti naturalist metaphysics, this argument is quite compelling. And for people maybe who aren't even theists, but who are open minded enough to deeply consider the argument, it can be transformative of their theological identity. It was that way for me. I was an atheist for nearly a decade.

The argument begins with the assumption, the secular assumption, that humanity will become superhumanity. And it's an assumption. And we, we make this assumption and we say, Hey, this is something that we. ought to trust in for practical reasons, for pragmatic reasons. If we don't trust in this possibility, we undermine our own efforts to get there.

It also kind of entails that superhumanity has dignity, that it's something worth pursuing, something that we can pursue, something that we should pursue, something that we want to pursue. So all of those are kind of bundled together in the assumption, and we call that the [00:14:00] faith assumption the assumption that humanity will become superhumanity.

Then there are two arguments that are built on top of that assumption. One of the arguments is called the compassion argument, and the other is called the creation argument. Both of those arguments introduce two more assumptions each, and they use that first assumption, the faith assumption, to reach conclusions about the nature of superhumanity, what superhumanity is probably like.

If we make those assumptions, the compassion argument makes two assumptions. As I said, one of those assumptions is a description of the possibility space for superhumanity and the possibility space of superhumanity is a superhumanity won't happen. We will not become superhumanity. That's the first possibility, right?

We'll become extinct. We'll destroy ourselves or whatever. thE second possibility is that superhumanity will not have more decentralized power. Then humanity, maybe it will, [00:15:00] maybe we will evolve into some kind of singleton where we don't have any kind of decentralized agency. We're just all part of the Borg.

The third possibility of the possibility space is that superhumanity has more. Decentralized power than humanity. sO that's the first assumption is this describing the possibility space. The second assumption of the compassion argument is that superhumanity will have more decentralized power than humanity.

Again, this is an assumption. It might not prove true, but there's again, practical reasons why. We would probably want it to be true. Unless you are a big fan of living or you wouldn't be living anymore. Or if you're a big fan of being assimilated into the Borg, then you have reason to not want to be a part of a singleton.

So if we make that, if we make that assumption that humanity, super humanity will have more decentralized power and we maintain the faith assumption that [00:16:00] humanity will become. superhumanity, then that negates two of the three parts of the possibility space, leaving only one. And that third part of the possibility space is that humanity will have more decentralized power, or excuse me, superhumanity will have more decentralized power than humanity has.

And then we look at some of the ramifications of that. One of the ramifications of that is that decentralized power is a very predictable quality for cooperation, where there's more decentralized power, there's more cooperation. In a previous email discussion with Malcolm, Malcolm brought up the truth that this only works for in groups, those that have the power, and he's totally right.

And that's the point of the argument. The point of the argument is, is that as we decentralize power, we become predictable to those who have power. And so by decentralizing power more to more agents, we become predictable to more agents, and therefore more likely to be cooperative [00:17:00] with more agents. And then kind of the final part of the reasoning here is that decentralized power pressed to its limits requires decentralized cooperation pressed to its limits, which becomes practically indistinguishable from compassion for all practical purposes.

So superhumanity, given those assumptions, those two assumptions we made, would be more compassionate than humanity. So that's the co that's the compassion argument. Then the simulation, or excuse me, the creation argument, which depends in part on the simulation argument is very similar. First, it lays out a possibility space.

The possibility space is that A will become extinct before becoming superhumanity. That's a possibility. Or B, Superhumanity will either choose not to or not have the ability to run many emulations of its evolutionary history or see or almost certainly living in one of those emulations of The evolutionary history of superhumanity and the reasoning for this goes back to the simulation argument.

It's an argument that's most [00:18:00] well known for having been formulated by Nick Bostrom, but the arguments actually older than his formulation. He just did a very good job of expressing it. And that argument is basically that either either superhumanity will, you know, isn't will never become superhumanity or for whatever reason they won't run a simulation or if they do run a significant number of simulations of their ancestral history, then we're almost certainly living in one of those ourselves just for reasons of probabilities.

statistics. As it turns out, the simulation argument can be generalized. It doesn't depend on simulation technology. It works just as well. The math works just as reliably for any creative mechanism that we think may be feasible. Maybe it's cosmoforming, maybe it's terraforming. Maybe it's computing of some other nature than what we might think of as simulation doesn't matter the same logic, the same mathematics hold out.

And so the simulation, the creation argument, first of all, uses the faith assumption and negates one aspect of the [00:19:00] possibility space. No, we're not going to go extinct because we assumed that away. It also makes the assumption that superhumanity will have the ability and interest in running.

Emulations, whether they're simulations terraforming or what, emulations of their evolutionary history and the logical probabilistic consequence of that. We're almost certainly living in one of those emulations ourselves. So then the argument concludes by combining the conclusions of the compassion and the creation arguments and says that superhumanity probably would be more compassionate than us.

Again, this is a probabilistic argument. And from the creation argument, superhumanity probably created our world. And those two conclusions, when combined, sound very much Like, God, as understood by traditional theology, so long as you're willing to accept a natural version of God, which some people will not like on metaphysical grounds.

Carl Youngblood: A progressing God, right? [00:20:00] Who emerged from simpler forms.

Lincoln: Yeah, and fortunately for Mormon theology, that's exactly what God is in Mormon theology, right? God does not start as God in Mormon theology. God becomes God.

Simone Collins: So one thing I'm really curious about is like, I mean, the movement's been around for a while.

And, and like you say, like, it's not that distinguished from like mainstream LDS.

Malcolm Collins: But I think listeners to the show can also see why it has so many similarities to our belief system. Very, very, very many similarities. But are there any

Simone Collins: like sort of day to day or month to month or year to year differences in the lifestyle or practices of a transhumanist Mormon versus a mainstream normal?

not considering themselves transhumanist mormon.

Carl Youngblood: I guess, it, that would probably vary from individual to individual, but I certainly think that think that some of the things that are on our radar because of the particular interests of our group tend to cause certain values to bubble up. So for example, some of us are engaged in things like intermittent [00:21:00] fasting, other things around health.

We're a little more keyed into some of the new discoveries around health and longevity and trying to do our best to to improve our health a little bit and be a little more mindful of some things that maybe an average Latter day Saint Might not be as concerned about. So,

Lincoln: Yeah. So, like, basically,

Simone Collins: Would it, Would it be accurate to say, like, broader, just more technophilia in general?

Carl Youngblood: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Like, There's more tech nerds among us than probably in the average, you know, LDS.

Malcolm Collins: I'd love to get an idea. What's the fertility rate like in this community and what's the geographic distribution of the

Lincoln: community? The second president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association has what?

Eight children. Is that right? Carl? Chris? Yeah. Yeah.

Carl Youngblood: Chris, Chris is a really interesting figure. I hope he'll forgive us for [00:22:00] speaking on his behalf while he's not here. But he calls himself a liberal fundamentalist and he just kind of like jokingly about how he has certain qualities that you might think of as fundamentalist, but he's also kind of progressive in other ways.

And he often had said, he claims that like, if, if progressive people with progressive politics really cared about, Propagating their ideas and sharing them more broadly that they would have more children, right? And so I I've always thought that was kind of interesting You know, and then carly I agree

Malcolm Collins: I I hope that he keeps some aspect of the progressive Movement alive like I do not think the progressive movement is bad And one of the things that we bemoan the most on this show is that it's one of the movements That unless some people like him are able to find ways to intergenerationally preserve it That's going to most quickly go extinct Yeah, and

I

Carl Youngblood: should clarify that I think Chris is fairly nuanced in his politics, so he's [00:23:00] not your typical sort of leftist or whatever, but I think it's more just that I don't know, I often say that I think that a Christian should actually Have qualities that appear on both the right and the left and some on either side as well.

And so,

Simone Collins: well, if you're on either side, especially considering how oddly scattershot and like, in many cases, non thematic, the ideological clusterings are politically in the United States. Like there's a lot of stuff that's conservative and it's like, this doesn't, why is this a conservative thing? And vice versa.

If you show more tendency toward that than your religion, then it's just showing that you are like. basically adhering to a false god. So I think you're totally right. You need to follow your religion's principles, not those of a particular ideological team, especially considering how logically inconsistent our ideological teams are

Malcolm Collins: now.

Do you know if there's any second generation transhumanist Mormons yet, i. e. kids where this belief system has been successfully passed between generations?

Lincoln: All of my children are [00:24:00] Mormon transhumanists. They're all adults.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, wow. So it's working. Okay, then the next thing I really want to talk to you about, cause I think that this is the most interesting thing about it, is the large following in Africa.

Carl Youngblood: Yeah, so that's, that's pretty recent. Um, uh, I was approached earlier this year by a guy in Senegal whose name is Kwasi Ngesen. And he was like, I really love what you guys are talking about. He went to our website and read some things and was really excited about it. And he said, I'd like to spread it to Africa.

And I guess he's a pretty good community builder. So, suddenly we have like, Almost 30 different groups that he has opened up in various African countries and is currently Sharing some ideas with them. I would say that there it's still very nascent over there. They're still even figuring out what it is that Mormon [00:25:00] transhumanism is and asking us a lot of questions about some of our beliefs and You know, it's been interesting also to see the reception amongst Different groups where some of them like what are you talking about?

Are these guys even latter day saints? Like, you know, they're just a little bit. I'm surprised at first But I think as they learn more about it and as we've been having monthly meetups, virtual monthly meetups with them They're starting to see. Oh, yeah, you guys sound familiar, you know, the things you're saying aren't too out there for us, you know So my

Simone Collins: understanding like to an outsider just how close that is to the Matt Stone and Trey Parker Broadway play the Book of Mormon that like yeah somehow like in Africa now You have all these people who are like talking like about high tech like basically Star Wars and stuff and it's like wait what wait Wait, wait, wait, like what Matt Stone and Trey Parker need to know about

Carl Youngblood: This is different.

My emphasis is different for Africans like One of the things that I have been strongly encouraging the African chapters of our [00:26:00] association about is to gain as much education as possible. Like, that is a principle that Latter day Saints firmly believe in. It's been affirmed by several of our leaders in general conference, but it's something that is now on reach of a lot of Africans because the church just recently the, a remote education program that will hopefully extend the blessings of a strong liberal education to to the whole world.

Whereas up to now, it's been largely available to those who live near one of the actual universities of the church, but not, it's a little harder to get to in some of these developing nations, right?

Malcolm Collins: Something I wanted to pull on here and you can correct me if I'm wrong in this sort of understanding of what's going on with the African movement.

But that they are culturally a little different from the branch that's in the U. S. And that in the U. S. it seems almost sort of ancillary to the core theology of the [00:27:00] movement. The movement is slightly more progressive in its social ideology, where the African movement is more conservative in its social ideology.

Is that an accurate understanding?

Carl Youngblood: Yeah, I think that's fair. What we've observed is that certain hot button social issues like queer issues and other things like that don't rece don't have a good reception in the global south, generally speaking. And Over time, I've come to the conclusion that a few, the church generally, I mean, this isn't like, I'm not dictating what the church should do in these areas, but I, I personally feel that some of the things that the church in the developed world, some of the issues that are causing people some turmoil and challenge are like pre, like the prescription for the developed world is almost like the precise opposite of it.

of what it might be in the Global South, because, for example, if we start [00:28:00] liberating certain concepts and, and doctrines and teachings and practices to accommodate these social issues in the, in the U. S. That might alienate members in the Global South, who, where,

Lincoln: where

Carl Youngblood: these issues, where they, they have a much more conservative stance on a lot of these issues.

And right now, the church is growing tremendously in the Global South and not as quickly in in the developed world. And so I mean, in fact, you know, all everything that we've seen so far in like various surveys shows that it's actually shrinking somewhat in the developed world. And so, um, so I'm personally feeling like any church, including ours, that wants to wants to continue adapting to change as it's happening, should probably decentralize more in its governance model.

In order to allow each of these cultures to independently come to terms with and figure [00:29:00] out how to deal with certain issues not to be too crude about it, but like um, it's not uncommon to hear that for example in africa, there's still a lot of gender disparity like Like that sometimes, you know, there's some kind of chauvinism that requires women to walk behind men and to not not be treated as equals and I'm not I'm I don't personally like that that attitude I don't agree with it But I feel like a culture needs to work through those issues at their own pace and not have it imposed externally on them because they tend to rebel when you do that and I think you would have a a poorer hearing in these other countries If you came down really strongly on a certain stance on this and so it's almost better in my opinion to let individual areas, govern themselves to some degree so that they can deal with these issues in a way that is Is best suited

Lincoln: for their culture And like an [00:30:00] argument against the problem of evil.

Yes

Malcolm Collins: So also so my understanding because we talked about how many churches there were or how many like groups there were in in africa right now There's like a thousand members, thousands of members.

Carl Youngblood: I would say that right now what we've been able to see with the groups that have formed in Africa, this is chapters of our association now.

It's important to clarify that we're not a church. You know, like, we're just an association of church members and other people interested in Mormon transhumanism, but what I've seen so far is that they, some of the largest groups claim about a hundred members and, and it goes down from there, but, so, so I'd say at our most optimistic estimates, it'd maybe be like five hundred?

Africans are somewhat aware of the MTA and and, and

Malcolm Collins: coming. But so would this make the African branch of the transhumanist Mormons larger than the American branch?

Carl Youngblood: No, so the number of [00:31:00] registered members of the MTA so far is a, is just over a thousand.

Lincoln: In the United, well, in the developed world, not counting Africa.

And, and, and I mean, to clarify. That thousand number,

Carl Youngblood: that thousand count, even has some members of developed, or sorry, developing nations as well. It's just that prior to this one individual who was a good community builder, like, going gung ho about it. If our membership was just over a thousand members these members that are joining in Africa, a lot of them, it's like just logistically getting to the point where we can accept donations and help them fund their local chapters is taking a lot of time.

So we're just in the process of registering in Ghana. And from there, that will allow us to open a bank account, which allows us to receive donations from these various countries and disperse funds to each country. And the goal here is mostly just to allow [00:32:00] them to be self sufficient. We're basically letting each of them collect membership dues and then use those to hold meetups and do whatever kind of authorized activities they would have.

And so because that's only getting off the ground now and we're still in the process of registration we don't have a whole lot of like hard, fast numbers and things of, of who's who and how much, how much activity is actually occurring. So, it's somewhat preliminary right now, basically.

Simone Collins: And I like your argument about decentralization.

And I, I mean, when you look at, there, there aren't actually that many examples of. religions that have with high ish levels of fidelity and central management managed to spread a lot. But like, when you look at Catholicism, there was a lot of decentralization and there was a lot of like local customization and like adoption of local demigods and all this kind of stuff.

So totally agree with you on that. Like, and you need that innovation in a way that even you may be the like main [00:33:00] legacy primary. church governing body would integrate the stuff that does work that they might want to spread to other areas. So I, yeah, so it makes a lot of sense.

Malcolm Collins: And do you have social technologies that are unique to members of your movement, for example, any like singles wards or anything like that that are unique to the transhumanist Mormon movement or Because I mean, when we look intergenerationally, it seems like one of the hardest things that a lot of people are having trouble with right now is finding partners.

And I'm wondering, is this something that you guys do any work on or just use the existing LDS

Carl Youngblood: operations? Lincoln, do you want to take some time and talk about maybe some of this discussion of a possible transfigurist order?

Lincoln: Sure, yeah, I can talk about that. A direct answer to your question is that historically we've not done more than what the Church itself offers, which is considerable.

The Church has single orders all over the place. Yeah. But that doesn't entirely facilitate the needs of Mormon transhumanists because Mormon transhumanists do tend to have[00:34:00] some relatively unique emphases, and they look for people with whom those resonate, of course. And so that would be something that we'd like to help with.

So that brings brings us to what Carl was just mentioning. We have for a long time. Discussed organizing a more formal religious order, we call it a religious order because we want people to understand that it's not a church. It's not a competition with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints or any other Mormon church or any other church in the world for that matter, right?

What we want it to be is a minute. Is a friendship that strengthens its members in their faith, in their spirituality, in their aspirations, in their well being and, and toward what they would like to become, and does so using the principles of Mormon transhumanism in a, in a more. Strenuous way in a [00:35:00] more vigorous way in a way that holds people that a way in which we hold each other to higher standards because we want to be held to higher standards.

Malcolm Collins: So, just a question here for clarification. Would this be closer to the Catholic orders or would this be closer to something like the Freemasons? Where with the Catholic orders, it's sort of a sub branch of the Catholic Church and with the Freemasons. It's more of something that anyone can join whatever their faith is as long as they hold some, a few central tenets.

Lincoln: It would probably be more like the Freemasons particularly because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints has a very positive history with the Freemasonry. Many of its original leaders were Freemasons. There continue to be members of the Church today that are Freemasons, and the Church does not have problems with that.

So, because, because of the history of the Church in that direction, I suspect it would be a little bit more like that, although we do sometimes appeal. To the tradition within Catholicism to show how [00:36:00] It can operate very synergistically with the church itself, but that's up to the church to decide. We, we, we have, we're, we're not planning to pressure the church in any way, either its leaders or its members.

The majority of us are members of the church. We want, we want to be in good standing and we are in good standing. We don't want that to change. And so what this is, is to help people in ways that, are useful for us as Mormon transhumanists because of our unique emphases. And to what

Simone Collins: extent do you talk a lot with or interact with the, like, main body of the Church of Latter day Saints and, and Also, do they know about you?

What, do you know what they think about you? Like both like to your face and

Lincoln: not to your face? I'm very

Malcolm Collins: curious. Just as an outsider, when I have been doing a lot of research on Mormonism recently, they often come up as one of what people think of who are like Mormon theological people as one of the primary branches of Mormonism right now.

Oh, so these [00:37:00] are like other people who aren't connected to their movement. They're like, there are these four broad frameworks of Mormonism that are practiced and Mormon transhumanism is often one that comes

Lincoln: up. Anything you'd like to add to that, guys? Yeah, I mean, everybody who knows me well knows that I'm a Mormon transhumanist.

And historically, that has very rarely caused problems. There have been people that have been suspicious of that, and those tend to be other members of the church who may actually be unusually conservative, as members of the church go. Maybe a little bit more like conservative Christianity in the southeastern United States than like your average.

Mormon in Utah. Okay, the most typical response when people find out about Mormon transhumanism is kind of like a cautious interest. They're like, Oh, that's interesting. Tell me about it. Yeah. And then occasionally, more often than more often than the negative extreme is actually the positive extreme where they go, Oh, wow, that's like, I've always looked at things that way.

Maybe I'm a Mormon transhumanist. [00:38:00] Right? Yeah.

Carl Youngblood: I want to add one other thing, which is that we often find discussions of transhumanism It's self a little bit to binary for our case in the sense that like, well, for example, just the other day I was, I tried to read broadly from a lot of different religious publications and publications as well.

And in conservative religious publications. Transhumanism is regularly pilloried as a kind of freakish attempt to abandon humanity and to upload ourselves into a computer and like abandon embodiment altogether, right? I see. Yeah. Whereas most of us Think of our bodies is like really important and that any experience, any augmentation of our embodiment would need to be an improvement on what we're experiencing now, not some sort of like, the evolution into [00:39:00] something that was even worse.

Right. Yeah. And so, This idea that transhumanists wish to transcend entirely human nature is, I think, often it's often a caricature of what many more serious transhumanists I know are interested in. And, but, but, in defense of those who are using it this way, some transhumanist advocates haven't done a good job of explaining what it is that they're after.

And some of them have a very naive idea that they could simply upload themselves into a computer and it would be better. And, like, so in that sense, I think a lot of people have had these sort of naive conceptions of transhumanism that don't really do it full justice. And we find ourselves in this weird Limbo or, or, or Luminal space where it's like, or liminal, I guess is the right word, where it's like, we don't quite fit in with either the secular transhumanist crowd fully [00:40:00] or the sort of religious crowd either, and we're trying to help both sides see what they could.

How they could benefit from some dialogue, I guess. I would, I, oh,

Lincoln: continue.

Simone Collins: I have a question. I'm dying now to hear this. Because, you know, when we talk about Like, a lot, a lot of the, like, we'll say secular tech groups that we interact with. fairly closely, we found there's this growing divide on one side, there are the technophilic pronatalists and on the other side, there are the technophilic life extensionists.

And I'm hearing undertones here of interest in life extension, you know, interest in like, you know, overcoming or improving upon the human body. But you, you also pointed out that like, it seems that this, this subset of the LDS church has a. pretty good birth rate which is, is meaningful. And you know, Malcolm and I have yet actually to encounter any group that has been both pro life extension and pro having a lot of

Lincoln: kids.

Carl Youngblood: [00:41:00] Where,

Lincoln: where are you guys? Like, where are you? Like in Mormon theology, the purpose of God is to immortality and eternal life of humanity. So the purpose of God is to have children and to then exalt them, glorify them in intelligence and power and compassion and courage and creativity into Godhood and which state they live in.

in immortality with God, they become gods themselves. So in Mormon theology, both are required. One is to extend life and extend robust embodiment and intelligence. And the other is to give that gift to others and to share in friendship with them.

Carl Youngblood: So we see no conflict between those two imperatives, right?

It's like, why not pursue both?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I would love it if we could, when you guys, if you guys end up starting this order, I would love to do another episode with you guys to redraw our listeners attention to what you guys are doing. [00:42:00] Because I think that among our listener base and our fan base, you'd find a lot of people who might be outside of the Mormon tradition who could be interested in something like that.

And I think the world would be a better place for something like that. And I also think an interesting thing from our followers perspective is if they're familiar with our beliefs what they might be surprised about, or you guys might not, not see this way, but we would actually come off as a much more conservative and, and, and almost sort of ruthless iteration of your belief system.

Whereas you guys would come off as the nice cozy iteration of this belief system.

Lincoln: That would fit

Carl Youngblood: well with Mormons. Stereotypes of like being polite people, you know, the nice ones, even when you insult them or like big smile, you know, that kind of stuff. So,

Lincoln: yeah, for example,

Malcolm Collins: the debate we're having over emails, we're like, Oh yeah, we believe a lot of what you guys are saying, but not that God is a compassionate God.

We don't, we don't think he's a compassionate God at all. And we, we. We think that death is a good [00:43:00] thing, like we're anti life extension so we come across, I think it's much more Old Testimony but I love this distinction and this transformation, I think, that we're seeing and what really heartens me is that you guys do do something different than us.

One of the things that we're always pushing for is we want as many different types of intergenerational high fidelity, high fertility communities to exist because it is through our differences that we are able to see things in different ways and able to, as a society, Society come to better long-term conclusions and solution to things.

And it looks like you guys have created the seed of something that really can be one of these intergenerational movements that is going to be a world player in, you know, 500 years. And I'd, I'd find it very rich and I actually think even likely from the trends we're seeing now. That it is the African fraction that ends up being the primary faction.

And we talk about this a lot on the show [00:44:00] is that in Africa, there's a lot of cultural experimentation undergoing much more difficult cultural evolutionary pressures right now, because it's a much more difficult environment. And so we are likely to see some of the cultures that end up becoming the dominant cultures in the world.

You know, 500 years from now are going to be coming out of what right now is, is sort of a, a skunk works and trial by fire of, of many different new traditions. And it's really cool to meet people who might be playing major. Might have been major founding members of all of that.

Lincoln: Malcolm, I really like what you're saying there, and I want to point out that in Mormon eschatology, heaven is not monolithic.

In Mormon eschatology, there are heavens and worlds without end of different kinds and degrees. And not everybody is supposed to all go to the same heaven. We're supposed to go to the heaven that's consistent with our desires and our works. And so when you say that you want to live in a world where we're not all the same, but where we can kind of.

[00:45:00] feed off of each other in a virtuous cycle. That's required for Mormon theology to hold out. We very definitely wish the same.

Malcolm Collins: What's funny episode that's about to come out. It hasn't come out yet. As we talk about a concept that we've been playing with recently, which is the metaphor of a Tesseract as a, for God.

And what we're pointing out with the metaphor of a tesseract for God is a lot of people, they try to overlap traditions to get a truer idea of God. This is like if you had a cube rotating in three dimensional space and you were looking at its shadow, and you tried to overlap The, the, the parts of the shadow that were consistent to get an understanding of what the cube actually looked like because you can't understand three dimensional space.

Somebody looking at two dimensional space, you'd say, Oh, it's a sphere. That's the real shape, but you're actually wrong. You would have been better off saying it's real shape with any one of the shadow formations that it had created. And it's the same with God, where we think that [00:46:00] Following any one tradition to its fullest gets you to a closer and potentially holistically true vision of God than trying to mix and match traditions.

And it is this view that allows us to say people of like ultra Orthodox Jews have a whole and complete revelation of God to the extent that we as humans can understand God in the same way that any one three dimensional shadow of a tesseract is the whole and complete revelation of that tesseract to people who are living in a three dimensional

Lincoln: plane.

Interesting. I guess I would agree with that. And insofar as we don't suppose that it logically entails that all religious cultures or ideologies are therefore equal. I don't think that that is a necessary conclusion from that reasoning. It reminds

Carl Youngblood: me a lot of the the old parable that they always talk about, like, of how So, you know, different people are feeling parts of an elephant.

And describing what they're [00:47:00] feeling and they this analogy is often used to describe the differences that exist in religions today but if it's all right with you guys I was curious you I think you'll find that both of us and several other members of the mta are Very very polite and sort of like friendly interlocutors in the sense that we are not easily offended and so, you know, by disagreement or, or even when people try to make us mad, but like I would love to see Lincoln and Malcolm engage a little more on the topic of compassion and why Why Malcolm, you are not persuaded by Lincoln's argument from decentralization towards compassion?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so I'll give an example of the gist of the argument that I put, and then I can hear a better position of his full argument. Which is, I do agree that cooperation works when you have a community of equals [00:48:00] and no outsiders to that community, but cooperation starts to break down as a model when you have outsiders, like competing groups, or when you have members in a group that are a vastly different or asymmetric intelligence for example, a super intelligent AI among humans, or, like, Two really, two, like, you know, two humans that would be considered of like, uh, average intelligence among a community of like 20 people who have serious mental situation.

I don't know the PC way to say this. Impairment. I wouldn't want like a democracy in that. Oh, you, you naturally, the people who are of higher cognitive processing would end up influencing much more what's happening. And so I think that. When we have a world of, so that's, that's one side of the argument is I just don't think that where we're going is a world in which all groups are, are equal and, and that, that necessarily leads to cooperation in that chain.

But [00:49:00] also, I don't think when I look around the world today, that I see evidence that this world was created by A being that had compassion in the way we as humans understand compassion. I think it has a goal, and I think that goal is more important than compassion or any of the lower order things that we humans concern ourselves with because we have emotions and so we think from the perspective of an entity that has emotions.

And this often influences the way that we see things. So we come from a Calvinist tradition, and as we often mention on our podcast, we see both an indulgence in positive emotional states and negative emotional states as equally sinful. So an overindulgence in happiness or anything like that, insofar as it affects your efficacy is a sin.

And, and this is a reflection of the way that we see God, is that God is just not concerned with you know, the, the bonfire of human vanity.

Lincoln: So Malcolm, I completely agree with [00:50:00] everything you said. And I think that if you had been supposing that those were disagreements with my positions, then I didn't communicate my positions to you in a way that was understandable to you.

On the first point regarding cooperation only applying to an in group, that's exactly the point. And therefore the reason to expand that group to decentralize as a moral imperative. The greater the and decentralization is not decentralize decentralization in word because, as you pointed out, that doesn't actually work.

It has to be decentralization in actual power and therefore the necessity of not just Giving people a vote but actually enhancing their capacities. So anyway, I, I completely agree with your point on, on decentralization. You're so far as I'm concerned, you're perfectly correct. And it's perfectly consistent with the compassion argument.

The second point about the kind of world we live in. I also agree with, [00:51:00] and that is that if we define compassion in terms of suffering mitigation, then clearly God is not compassionate. This world is abundant proof to the contrary, but I don't define compassion in terms of suffering mitigation, nor do I think the scriptures.

I think the scriptures define compassion in terms of thriving optimization. And that is very often a difficult thing that's consistent with, as is pointed out by Paul in the New Testament, with suffering. In fact, according to Paul, if we want to become joint heirs in the glory of God, with Christ, then we must suffer

Malcolm Collins: with him.

Interesting. I guess my counter would be, I'd love to understand Like, the capacity, I agree, that compassion could be, like, if there was a, a deity that allowed all humans to improve themselves in at least a somewhat a parative way,

I can then see that as [00:52:00] a compassionate God from this definition from like the improvement definition. However, a lot of humans, I feel, do not get the capacity to improve themselves. They're born into situations where that was never an option for them before their lives were cruelly and painfully snuffed out.

And so I think that the way I could get to a definition of compassion here is to say that God is allowing our species to intergenerationally improve, but doesn't particularly care for any individual, which, which then, yeah, I totally agree with you if that's something that we're aligned on. Yeah. Maybe it's about

Simone Collins: a definition of compassion.

Is that what the difference is

Lincoln: here? Sorry, could you repeat what you just said there, Simone?

Simone Collins: Is this about a differing definition of compassion? Like, if compassion is about the opportunity of, like, humanity on the whole to achieve great things and become better, then we would probably agree that God is extremely compassionate and that humanity has been given ample opportunity [00:53:00] and has been able to thrive and flourish and grow.

However, on an individual level, No, and I guess we see compassion is like stopping individual suffering. So is this a definitional problem?

Lincoln: Yes, it is a definitional problem. And I almost agree with what you're saying about God being compassionate towards the species, where I'll disagree with you, and that I think is exactly right.

God is compassionate towards humanity and the potential of humanity, but where I would disagree with you is the conclusion that to speak coarsely, individuals be damned. And that is because I trust that while of necessity, God must relinquish power in order for us to have the opportunity to truly thrive.

And relinquishing power requires serious risk and requires the fallout that we see all over the world. That doesn't mean that the story must end at death. fRom a Mormon perspective, the story doesn't end there. [00:54:00] The story is one of eternal progression and individuals who may not have had a full opportunity in this life.

will from a Mormon perspective, eventually, and I don't know exactly how, but my trust is in the, and that I ought to contribute in making this the possibility that they eventually will have that opportunity to participate in the thriving according to their desires and works. Mm. Mm. Mm.

Malcolm Collins: It's interesting that for our perspective, it's not that we don't think that God doesn't care about any humans, but we believe, you know, again coming from a Calvinist tradition, in the concept of the elect, God cares about some humans, and not in, in any sort of a fair way, but many lives he just consigns to hopelessness out of capricion, I would say.

Not out of capricion. I mean, it's all calculated. It's all meant to lead to some end. But, but yeah, that's sort of our perspective on this and how we split the difference here. Or if we

Lincoln: were to

Carl Youngblood: word it differently, [00:55:00] go ahead. Simone said just recently, a day or two ago in the episode that I watched, that you really cannot judge who is elected or not.

Right. And so, so you, if you're taking that, you know, to its full extent, you're, you're basically need to interact with everyone you encounter as though they might be. Elect, right? 100%. From the perspective you guys are

Lincoln: taking here.

Simone Collins: And what this even means though, that people that were like, Oh my gosh, almost certainly they, they are elect.

They may not be, and not everyone will be. So that still means, and for us also, like, we don't have this concept of like a persistent soul. Like we sort of see ourselves as part of an unbroken chain from all of our ancestors through all of our descendants. So if, Neither mimetically nor genetically we've made any impact you know, or, or logistically we've made any impact as humans, meaning that we're not among the elect.

There will be no no conceivable version of us that [00:56:00] get to, you know, get the better roll of the dice, get the more enjoyable round, have God's grace, you know, enjoy the nice, the nice round. Whereas I think maybe the difference here is the Mormon view is that there is a persistent soul and this soul will get a good roll of the dice, like a good round at some point up ahead.

Whereas like for us, it's

Lincoln: more,

Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I don't think this is exactly their perspective. No, it's, it's, it's I think where our perspective differs from them is they actually believe everything you just said of what we believe, but we believe people meaningfully differentiate from other people when they branch from them genetically or mimetically.

So, if there is someone alive today who does not have any significant contribution to the memetic future of humanity or the genetic future of humanity, they do literally die and never exist again. Whereas I don't think that's a perspective they

Lincoln: have. No, Mormon, Mormonism is essentially pragmatically [00:57:00] universalist.

And I say it's essentially pragmatically so because there are exceptions to, to salvation in Mormonism, but they're the exceptions that don't wish salvation. There are people who don't desire it. In Mormon eschatology, everyone ultimately goes to the heaven that they desire.

Simone Collins: Yeah. If you want it, you'll get it.

Or you'll get what you want. You'll get what you're working toward. And if you're working toward It's

Carl Youngblood: possible to not desire any degree of glory whatsoever, in which case

Lincoln: Yeah, and we are called to participate in that work and that's the salient point. The salient point is not the passive Oh God will take care of things.

The salient point is God calls us all to create worlds without end in which We raise each other In the ways that we think are best if we can but in their own way if we can't like in

Carl Youngblood: other words, when God is calling thing for things to happen or when God is Doing things as [00:58:00] we describe we're describing things God is doing supposedly from your perspective and from ours We would say that none of those actions can take place unless The agents of God are actually doing that work and that would be us Because remember God, according to Mormonism, God's God's purpose is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of humanity.

And by definition in Mormonism, eternal life cannot be imposed against one's will, and no one can be forced towards it. And so, essentially, in order for God to achieve these purposes, We have to voluntarily choose to follow a certain pattern, a certain principle.

Simone Collins: And I also, I love how pluralistic that is.

You've I didn't understand this concept of sort of everyone gets the heaven they're working toward, the heaven they desire, and there is no universally similar heaven for everyone and that, you know, it's, it's going to be a very [00:59:00] different experience for different people. I love how pluralistic that is.

I've never really heard of anything like that before. I only really understand the LDS church, like culturally from having a lot of friends in it and like growing up in like a lot of the lifestyle, but not seeing any of the actual philosophy personally. So that is absolutely fascinating. And I love that.

Like pluralism within an ideology within a religion is so

Carl Youngblood: cool.

Lincoln: Yeah. You know, Mormons underappreciate it even, and we'll mischaracterize our theology and our eschatology to people outside of the church. For example. It's entirely true per Mormon scripture that Christians will go to a heaven that matches what they aspire to.

The account of what we call the terrestrial heaven in Mormon scripture is exactly what most Christians aspire to live in. And Mormon scripture says that they will go there and they will get that. And so many Mormons are [01:00:00] I'm too hesitant to fully point that out because Mormons are taught that there's a better heaven called the celestial heaven that they should want for other reasons.

And they end up making it a sticking point when it ought not to be a sticking point. What it should be is a description of, Hey, here's what a terrestrial heaven entails. Here's what a celestial heaven entails. What do you want?

Simone Collins: So it's almost like there's too much brand loyalty around one like, yeah. A better heaven.

Carl Youngblood: You know, and one other thing I would add to all this discussion of sort of pluralism is a great, interesting person to read as Immanuel Swedenborg. I don't know if you guys have been exposed to any of his writings, but he was highly influential to subsequent thinkers. He, he was I think he died sometime in the 1600s, but his he wrote very detailed views of heaven, and he essentially took Paul's metaphor of the body of Christ to [01:01:00] extreme literal degrees, and described heaven as That if you were to zoom out on heaven, you would see a perfect human.

Lincoln: Oh, oh, interesting. And what he said

Carl Youngblood: was that different members of this body, of this massive,

Lincoln: infinite, like,

Carl Youngblood: infinite community of, of exalted beings or whatever, that they gravitated towards the parts of the body, That they found most affinity with and that the affinity that

Lincoln: they held had nothing

Carl Youngblood: to do with their earthly kin so he he claimed that like people would gravitate towards the to the communities that really Resonated with them and that there were even some members of these communities Who, whose preference was not to be a part of a single community but to be a communicator between

Lincoln: communities.

Simone Collins: Right. Like you're like a total red blood cell kind of soul. So,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, exactly. Here's a question I have 'cause I actually don't know if this is an [01:02:00] area of differentiation. Is one core differentiation seems to be. The, the level of distinction you believe that the Exalted Beings, which are represented as God, have from each other, whereas we believe much more that God is an emergent property of the communication of these Exalted Beings, but is very much just one single entity.

Carl Youngblood: Yeah. So to respond to that point, I think that probably where maybe we differ a little bit is that I see godliness manifest at many different levels of emergence and not just at one, if that makes sense. I see godliness manifested in my neighbor. I see the image of Christ in my neighbor, but I also see the image of Christ in a community of beings working together harmoniously.

And maybe even in the entire world, right? And so I don't, I don't confine my [01:03:00] view of, of transcendence to one emergent level, if that makes sense.

Simone Collins: Hmm. So it's more like distributed divinity rather than there being some kind of entity that's formalized.

Carl Youngblood: like how things echo, right? Like

Lincoln: if you look

Carl Youngblood: at the way spiral galaxies You know, are mirrored in a

Lincoln: toilet flush, you know, it's like

Carl Youngblood: we have these properties in the universe that repeat themselves.

So like Fibonacci

Lincoln: divinity. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. Mormon theology. God is both one and many. In fact, there's a passage of scripture, the 93rd. Section of the Doctrine and Covenants from Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, where he says that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, which is the time that we now live in that whether there is one God or many gods.

All will be manifest and of course what he's getting at which he talks about in other discourses He gave was that there are ways of thinking about God as being just one and there are ways about [01:04:00] thinking of God as being many and that they're they're both True, there's both true there. You can approach God from either perspective.

In fact the Book of Mormon Emphasizes over and over more strongly than the Bible that God, the Father, God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one eternal God. It's like Trinitarianism on steroids, and yet Mormons will insist that we're not Trinitarians for good reason. Because that's just one account of our theology.

There's a lot more to it. And then in another book of Mormon scripture the book of Abraham Joseph Smith describes the creation, and in the creation, it's the gods. Plural who create the heavens and the earth and go through the various stages of creation that we know of from the book of genesis So there's many accounts of theology and oneness or manyness of god in mormon You know, in fact lincoln gave

Carl Youngblood: a really good talk on this these multivalent manifestations of god in our last conference and so if you guys I [01:05:00] can share you the link of that But it would be interesting if you want to explore more sort of This concept of like different ways that God may emerge and be manifest.

Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, so the question I had for you guys is as Mormon transhumanist do you believe that Christians get Christian heaven, like non Mormon Christians get Christian heaven? And what do you think is the mechanism there? Do you think it's an emulation of some sort? Do you think it's like, how does that work within the transhumanist framework?

Whereas we just think people who aren't following. Are, are not on the path of the elect get no meaningful reward, and even the elect get no meaningful reward other than their own efficacy.

Lincoln: In Mormon theology, everyone's elect. Everyone's elect, and everyone has potential and possibility. Everyone has potential to become God.

But not everybody will want to, because that entails a lot of hard things, that it's not a simplistic notion of God. And so, yes. Most, most Mormons who understand our theology will say yes, Christians will get the heaven that they're aspiring to, and the [01:06:00] mechanism is that they will make that heaven through their actions, through their relationships.

Carl Youngblood: That's what I was going to say, like, that it's just important not to think of this as some sort of like final destination that you're plopped into, but that it's more like, you know, Brigham Young actually said something really profound when he said essentially like, A lot of people ask me all the time, like, reveal to me the mysteries of the gods and where think people end up and what the heavens look like.

He says, allow me to inform you that you are in the midst of it all now, that you are in as great a kingdom as you will ever, ever inherit, unless you make it yourselves, and that you cannot even appreciate a kingdom that you have not labored to make yourselves, right? So essentially, If we were to be zapped into heaven without the operating manual of heaven, it would, it would be a hell to us, essentially.

Lincoln: So, we Very soon, at least. Yeah.

Carl Youngblood: Pretty soon, things would break down and we wouldn't know how to [01:07:00] fix them, right? So, the point is that we can only inherit the kind of glory That we have, like, personally and collectively labored to, to create and

Lincoln: establish. Collective being key here. Heaven is more than just an individual thing in Mormonism.

It's definitely a community thing. Yeah.

Carl Youngblood: Yeah, Mormonism is really interesting because it has this weird combination of, like, Fierce independence with communalism right right where it's like Mormons for example during the great depression Mormons had a really strong welfare program And within

Lincoln: the church within the church,

Carl Youngblood: right?

But it was Because the church was so strong along the Wasatch Front, it was practically the community, whether, whether you were an active member of the church or not, you were getting a sustenance from this program, right? And when even during, like, the Depression, when some research

Lincoln: was done into how to [01:08:00] deal with, Some of the challenges that various communities were

Carl Youngblood: experiencing.

Some observers were sent from Washington to Utah to try to understand what they're doing well. And yet there was also a lot of suspicion about government welfare programs that were being implemented later on. Precisely because they didn't want competition, like the Utahns, the Mormons in Utah wanted, said it's working for us, just let us do what we're doing, you know, and so I think there was some natural suspicion around something that would be administered by a governing body that did not also have all the other trappings that, and strengths of Mormonism, right, whether that suspicion was warranted or not is another question, but it's an interesting historical anecdote, right?

Right. To, to see that, that combination of self reliance, independence, and communalism at the same time. Right.

Lincoln: That is,

Simone Collins: I, I love that there, there's so many things about the LDS church that are just like, I [01:09:00] mean, what also it, it, it, it, it shows that a lot of the things that the church and the, the broader lifestyle and culture have tried and done really work because there aren't very many.

Like, we'll say new versions of Christianity that have done well and, you know, sort of been relatively new. I mean, I, the LDS Church is the only one that I know of, like,

Carl Youngblood: post.

Malcolm Collins: The Millerists, they split into a number of movements that still exist today, but Millerists? I've never heard of them. And so, so Jehovah's Witnesses are probably the biggest branch, but so are the,

Carl Youngblood: Adventists, I think, are doing.

Seventh day Adventists,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Carl Youngblood: Yeah, it is interesting, though, like, I think for every religion that succeeds, there's probably hundreds that fail, right? So, it's, it's rarer. To see the emergence of a new world religion that that has traction,

Simone Collins: right? Well, and that is influential. I've never met a seventh day adventist.

I've never met a Jehovah's Witness. And yet like all my friends in college were Mormon. I went to a Mormon preschool I've met many Mormons [01:10:00] just randomly like yeah,

Carl Youngblood: that is interesting I'd say one thing that's different between those three groups that we just mentioned is that Mormons are strongly encouraged to like be out among the world and be involved and we're also not anti tech and we're not like, cloistered that much, right?

So,

Lincoln: So I think that Did you live in the Western United States? Yeah, in California. Lots of Mormons in the Western United States.

Simone Collins: Except, except when I went to school and all my friends were Mormon, I was in D. C.

Lincoln: Yeah. So. Lots of Mormons in D. C. Yeah. Yeah, there are.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, this has been fantastic. Yes.

Lincoln: Thank you

Malcolm Collins: so much for joining the time to talk with us. I really do want to have you on again. If you end up starting this organization so that we can help you get members. Because I think it would have a lot of overlap with the things that we do. And I think it is very interesting the huge amount of overlap in our belief systems, which better helps you understand when I talk to Mormons that like your belief systems are very, very Mormon.

In fact,

Malcolm Collins: The [01:11:00] one thing that we, we often say like distinctly, I know for a fact, this is something that I disagree with Mormons on is we disagree with the idea of a central church.

And I was like, but you know, you guys also said that you thought that it might be better to have unique local central churches. So even there, we have a lot of similarities, so it's been great to have you on. And have a spectacular

Lincoln: Christmas. Yes, I can all agree. Merry Christmas to both of you. Yeah.

Thank you so

Carl Youngblood: much, guys. I love these discussions and we need a round two for compassion versus, like, austerity in Divinity, right? So, whenever you guys are ready, let's do it again. Have a good one. Okay. Thanks, guys. Bye.

 just like we said, there is a creator. No. Yep. You said it was some all powerful dude living in the clouds. Our creator's nothing like that.

It's still a creator. It's f*****g Kevin. He was doing the Lord's work. He was doing a senior project. Eh, semantics. Okay, you know what? Hey, Kevin?[01:12:00] Hey, just had some questions. Um, first, I'm actually just curious, how long did this take you? Okay, well, don't tell my mom, but I kinda procrastinated on the thing. Uh, we had the full year to work on it, but I waited until probably the last week, worked for like six days straight, got it done, and then I rested for like a full day after that.

Are you f*****g kidding me? Okay, was this, like, a team project, or? Nope. Just me. One programmer. Okay. How does this program work? Well, first it calls a function. I just called it Let There Be Light. Then you know how in iRobot, the robots must obey the three laws? Yeah. Well, this program has laws it has to follow, too.

Uh, the first four are the fundamental forces, and then there are actually six natural laws of human nature. So, ten in total. Yep, and the program must obey these laws or else it just falls apart. So, [01:13:00] you might say they're like the commandments of the program. Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what they are.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense actually. What language is this written in? C. Wow. It actually involves some others, but what's nice about this language is that it highlights any individual mistakes in red. So when I was debugging, all I had to do was part the red C code from the rest and then See what the issues were.

Mm hmm. Yeah. Then all the bugs were swept away and the good code was, you know, free to be executed. Okay, so was there like a flood that covered the entire earth and a dude who built an ark and put a bunch of animals on it? That was in another file. Doesn't count. Totally counts. Doesn't count! Different files, that's like di wait, different folders?

Yep, different folders. Different folders, that's like a different universe. Bible never says it'll happen in this universe. You make people crazy! Yeah, on my computer I have one column of final design folders that I actually send to my teacher, and then I have another column of just, like, junk folders for [01:14:00] fun stuff.

Are you trying to say it happened in a parallel universe? No, I'm just saying different folders. Okay, what happens after you die? You're removed from the active program, but all your info is still stored on an external hard drive. Wipe that smirk off You know what? No. You said you were gonna go to heaven, like above the clouds or whatever.

Not a hard drive sitting on some dude's desk. So after that I knew I needed another method of storing these files, so I started backing up the hard drive to the cloud. The cloud, yeah, exactly. Uh, what'd you get on the project? B minus. Wow, strict teacher. Yeah, for real. But I'm thankful for what I got. Oh, and speaking of that, one sec. Dear Lord, I just want to say thank you for guiding me through this project. Uh, I managed to get a B minus, which is passing Wait, are you praying?

Yeah. To who? God. You have a God? Duh. You think we just came from nothing? I don't know, maybe you're part of a simulation. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Wait, how do you know you guys have a God? [01:15:00] He talks back to us. Hey Kevin, just wanted to say good job on the senior project. Thanks, you know, I worked really hard on it.

I know you did, but maybe don't procrastinate as much next time? Yeah, definitely. Okay, wait, who is your God? You wanna see? Yeah. Hey, sending up one of my characters to you now.

And no idea what's going on, super confused, reviews, weird s**t in my life, and, well.

So, what, are you f*****g kidding me? Hi there! So what does this mean? Like, the Mormons got it right?