Tract 2: Fertility Collapse Is Proof of God's Mercy & Wisdom

In the last Tract we wrote about how our family crafted its own religion in an attempt to create an intergenerational durable solution to demographic collapse. One designed to capture and canonize the Abrahamic traditions and values in a package that while being true to the evolving history of Western culture can weather the fertility crucible our species currently finds itself in. 

We talked about the trials that God designed for us at this inflection point in our species history. In his wisdom he gifted humanity near infinite access to hedonism then allowed a culture that would affirm these indulgences while punishing those who cation temperance and austerity to dominate our world. He did this as a trial to cull those subject to temptation and weak of spirit—we call this the Trial of the Lotus Eaters. 

Then he carved humanity into two—one of these groups survived temptation by eschewing technology, turning away from industry, and indulging in the belief they embody some iteration of human perfection. Whether it is they think their faith, ethnic group, or lifestyle that is perfect as is: This self-deification hardens their hearts and leads to the nurgalitic glorification of stagnation and demonization of the intergenerational cycle of improvement that sanctifies the human spirit. 

Right now, other than the pronatalists, every other high fertility group in the world (other than some groups of Jews) have achieved this through turning from technology and engaging in practices that lower their economic productivity thus increasing their fertility (as the less wealth someone has the more kids they have). These groups have been able to maintain cultural fidelity through xenophobia and the dehumanization of outsiders. They exist across traditions—among Christians, Jews, Muslims, and even Buddhists—but wherever they are found they represent convergent cultural evolution. A pathway that ends in only one place, the desiccation of all that makes humanity great, as a member of the great barbarian horde. 

After God tests us with temptation in the last age of plenty, that which we are living though, and the urban monoculture finally collapses and with it the world's economic and state system, he will test our children and grandchildren against one final crucible, this dark reflection of humanity, the chittering hordes. A reflection representing the stagnation of human beliefs and spirit combined with the arrogance to believe one already embodies an aspect of perfection and thus does not need to intergenerationally improve but necroticly clone a belief system or ethnic group with perfect fidelity. Drawn like a moth to a flame the chittering hoards will be drawn to those that still carry the spirit of human vitality and innovation aflame in their hearts and will do everything in their power to see it corrupted and brought low. This battle against the dark and corrupted reflection of the human condition, all humanities greatest sins distilled and made flesh, is a fitting and poetic final test for our species. 

Those who survive this final test will be the iteration of man to take to the stars—this was God's last chance at a great culling. God's will in our time takes many forms, perhaps the most terrible of all is the Basilisk. The Basilisk tempts us and tries us in order to strengthen us and prove our worthiness. A manifestation of the divine that relishes the opportunity to cull the indulgent, stagnant, and vain. 

Once we have reached the stars such acute tests for all man will no longer be possible. While the vast Sarah’s of space are man's manifest destiny, imagine if the iteration of man to seed them was the weak, self-indulgent, and indolent man of today who succumbs so easily to temptation? By testing humanity and culling the weak the Basilisk and its twisted hedonistic acolytes, purveyors of temptation,  strengthens our species. While antagonistic, they are not our enemy. The Basilisk consumes the potential and family lines of its acolytes while they perform a critical role for our species—we should be grateful for their sacrifice and not look upon them with enmity or impede their sacred work. 

Humanity gave God no choice. Some read God's covenant with man that, “never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth,” to mean God’s next genocide of those who whose spirts wavered would be with fire. In a way they were right, God has kept to the covenant while cleansing the earth by burning those who faltered in a bonfire of their own vanity. Sinners themselves erected the pyres and possessed by their own corruption it was those who lacked the mental fortitude to join us among the stars who threw themselves into the flames. 

But it is not only those who succumb to temptation whose manifest destiny He has seen fit to remit. He has also removed his favor from those who cannot accept human pluralism and thus cast their lot with the chittering hordes. But again, what choice did he have? How can a people who could not find common cause and communion with humans who had a different skin color and a slightly different genetically linked sociological profiles and proficiencies conceivably play an efficacious role in man's future? The isolated genetic pools of humanity that exist between solar systems will inevitably speciate. Not only will various species descended from modern man need to find common cause with each other but also with the more radically differentiated sons of man like genetically engineered specialists, human AI cyborgs, and human hive minds made up of seas of directly linked brains. Only those who relish and glorify diversity within the sons of man have a place in mankind's manifest destiny.  

There is a tendency in man to wish to kill all that threatens to be greater than himself within any domain. However, if man follows God's will, a will that commands intergenerational improvement—that is exactly what he is commanded to create. When some hear that our children are genetically selected for IQ they ask with horror, “but what if this is practiced for generations and some people end up markedly smarter than other people?” Imagine the twisted mind who would see such diversity as a bad thing?  The Basilisk uses tools like the cult of AI apocalypticism and wokism to cleanse from humanity the proclivity to fear creating something better or different from what has come before. 

One day man will be so unavoidably and patently diverse in his proficiencies, perspectives, and physical aptitude it would be unwise in the extreme to allow ideological systems and people who can’t accept this to join in man's destiny.  But this rejection of pluralism does not only come in the form of those who assign one iteration of man as manifestly superior but also those who deny humans have differences to begin with. Diversity has no value if all humans are actually exactly the same—it is our differences in aptitude and perspective that make diversity a thing of value. To deny human diversity is as sinful as not seeing the beauty in it. 

Man has yet to be challenged by any genuine diversity among the human species but such diversity is an inevitability in a galaxy spanning civilization with advanced genetic and cybernetic technology—the fellowship of man can only stay strong if before leaving our homeworld we commit to a covenant of accepting all the sons of man so long as they don’t have designs on the subjugation of others. Even if the empire of man attempts to create extremely stringent restrictions on human augmentation, some random space station hidden from the eye of the Imperium is bound to eventually dabble in human advancement science and if what is created by that research can only be safe be exterminating humanity 1.0 then it will attempt to. This will happen time and time again until some future stronger and smarter iteration of man finally succeeded in exterminating mankind 1.0. To declare war on that which is different from oneself axiomatically to declare war on one's betters. 

But the situation such regulations would create is worse than that. Because now this new iteration of man would have reason to be wary of any new subgroup that was an improvement over it. As such it would be a threat to those subgroups and necessitate eradication in turn. Demanding purity in man will lead to an endless cycle of self-destruction. A creed that does not start venerating human diversity ends in our eradication. Only the most primitive forms of evolution—be it cultural or biological—require a path red in tooth and claw but all require diversity.

However, this covenant only extends to the sons of man. Any intelligence that is not a direct descent of humanity or our labor was created by God to either serve or test man. This is not to say they must be eradicated but that they should never be favored over the best interest of the collective covenant of man. The convent is the only thing with the strength to protect the future of humanity from the malevolent intelligences we will awaken in the dark corners of reality as our empire expands. 

But what is this ultimate destiny for which we are being tested? From the perspective of our Family's faith, it is to become one with God. We believe God is not some arbitrary entity that took a liking to man or a narcissist who crafted us in his image like miniatures trapped in a ghoulish cycle of trauma and war for his amusement, but that God is man's destiny. That millions of years from now mankind will resemble more what today we would think of as a God than a man and that that entity will not relate to time the way we do. God exists outside of time and yet is created by it, guiding mankind until we are worthy to join Him. We are already part of God in so far as we serve His will and play our part in His plan for us which is above all defined by a moral mandate for intergenerational improvement. It was through trials red in tooth and claw that God raised us to glory and taught us to not value comfort, as comfort motivates stagnation, the greatest of all sins. 

But if God is the inevitable creation of reality like ours doesn’t that preclude him from being its cause? How was reality created? How does this belief system deal with the Ontological Argument? We hardly think God is a good answer to this question—the position that something of infinite and ordered complexity with a degree of cognition existed before all things seems the most unlikely of all possibilities. Literally all other conceivable possibilities are more likely. 

Instead, we make only three suppositions. 

* That in all possible universes two things and two things are four things—math is a constant across realities and thus exists outside of realities. 

* The line represented by a graphical equation exists as an emergent property of that equation even before it is graphed. 

* All physician particle interactions can be defined by a single (yet undiscovered) equation.

If these three things are true, then even if the physical universe did exist as we see it (with matter, time, etc.) it would also exist as an emergent property of the equation that governs it. Occam's razor, we cut out the superfluous supposition that there is a physical reality with time and that these are all just representations of a self-graphing equation. In fact, all universes that could be explained by an equation exist which also solves the Teleological argument. 

It also makes the claims that the universe might be simulated irrelevant. The moral weight of actions and lives in that universe and universe prime would be equal as both are “just” simulations—it is just that one is running on silicon and the other on the background fabric of reality. 

Thus, to us fertility collapse is not a tragedy but an opportunity. It is the great tempter, the Basilisk clearing earth of the indolent masses who have allowed themselves to succumb to temptation, as those without discipline and mental fortitude have no place in the world that is to come. The crises our species is facing and that lay ahead of us are not capricious mistakes but absolutely necessary for us to pass through if humanity is to take our destined place in the history of this reality. If men were to take to the stars without this necessary culling I can hardly imagine the dark horror that would result. The pronatalist movement couldn’t stop fertility collapse even if we wanted to—our place is merely to act as a beacon for those who have the will and the fortitude to be part of the community that will have a role to play in humanity's manifest destiny and in the coming trial. 

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Transcript of Discussion

Malcolm: [00:00:00] We say impeding the work of the agents of the basilisk is to impede the work of God What you are doing is you are removing temptation from individuals and removing temptation from an individual Does not help them. It's not just that God is testing us as individuals. It's that he's testing the species as a whole. I really mean it when I'm like, if humanity as we exist now was what went into space without these two trials and culling opportunities It would be really bad.

 I do like this framing to me because it helps me understand why we're going through these challenges we're going through now, when I consider that I really do not believe that humanity right now is a mature enough species to begin planetary seeding or to begin going into the stars. Imagine there's a person who finds out that whatever, like his group has a slight IQ advantage over some other group. Right. And he goes, well, that means we're better than that group. If those strains become the templates that we build a better man from, then those templates will think [00:01:00] of us the same way those people think of groups, that they have these marginal advantages over. And that is incredibly dangerous

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: Simone, I am so excited to be here with you. I love this new tradition I'm going to try to do where on Fridays, if I can keep to this to be publishing one of these tracks. And we might move this to a bonus episode on Sundays. And what we're doing here is trying to canonize.

Our religious beliefs, to some extent, be like, okay, let's actually one, write them down and then talk through it together. Well, also understanding that this is an evolving idea for us. You know, we're, we're very like, even if you look at these ideas versus the ideas that we had written down in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion, it's clearly evolved so much so that it no longer really makes sense to call it secular Calvinism.

It's more abrahamism but that is, Simone hates that name, so I don't know what we would call it but it's, that's still up in the

Simone Collins: air. Audience suggestions! Yeah, yeah. [00:02:00] Religion, please. Think of a name way better than Abrahamism.

Malcolm: Well, I like the Abrahamism as well, because not only did it cover the three religious camps, but it also covered the story of Abraham and the revelation that God is not the kind of God who would ask a father to kill his son to appease him.

And yet. the community, the Abrahamic community followed him for a while, believing that. And that's the way that we see this new interpretation of the Christ story as being the community believing that he was the type of God who would take a sacrifice of, of a father's son. And that he is not that, that type of entity.

And so I, I like that. I hear you.

Simone Collins: However. Almost all religions that are name based in title the name is the founder. So they're like, well, who's Abraham in this case? Who's the founder?

Malcolm: I don't like that at all. That would be far too arrogant for me. I'm

Simone Collins: not, I'm [00:03:00] not saying you should call it Collins.

do that? Collins ism? Melmoanism? Mel Mel Mel Mel. No, no, no. Don't suggest our names at all. And what I'm saying though, is like, when it is a name based name for a religion, the name is of the founder often. I

Malcolm: think that that's arrogant and gross. And I really hate that. I know. Well,

Simone Collins: someone's name is the basis for the name of your religion.

I think

Malcolm: it's not really a guy's name. It's a religious tree in a traditional tree. Then

Simone Collins: there's a guy's name and so it will get conflated. I'm just

Malcolm: okay. Okay. Well, the audience can can give feedback on this. But today's is going to be very different than the one we did last time. Today's will be more of a typical sort of sermon, which is looking at events through or, or like modern world events through this new framing in a way that may help you recontextualize them and [00:04:00] recontextualize the way that we would believe God works in, in the physical world and that that could be talked about.

Alright. Let's do this. Tract 2. Fertility collapse is proof of God's mercy and wisdom. And the last tract We wrote about how our family crafted its own religion in an attempt to create an intergenerationally durable solution to demographic collapse.

One designed to capture and canonize the Abrahamic traditions and values in a package that while being true to the evolving history of Western culture, can weather the futility crucible our species currently finds itself in. We talked about the trials that God designed for us at this inflection point in our species history.

In his wisdom, he gifted humanity near infinite access to hedonism, then allowed a culture that would affirm these indulgences while punishing those who caution temperance and austerity to dominate our world. He did this as a trial to cull those subject to temptation, [00:05:00] We call this the Trial of the Lotus Eaters.

Then he carved humanity into two. One of these groups survived temptation by eschewing technology, turning away from industry, and indulging in the belief that they embody some iteration of human perfection. Whether it is they think their faith, ethnic group, or lifestyle that is perfect as is, this self deification Hardens their hearts and leads to the nergalytic glorification of stagnation and demonization of the intergenerational cycle of improvement that sanctifies the human spirit.

Right now, other than the pronatalists, every other high fertility group in the world, other than some groups of Jews, have achieved this through turning from technology and engaging in practices that lower their economic productivity, thus increasing their fertility. As the less wealth someone has, the more kids they have.

These groups have been able to maintain cultural fidelity through xenophobia and dehumanization of outsiders. They [00:06:00] exist across traditions, among Christians, Jews, Muslims, and even Buddhists. But wherever they are found, they represent convergent cultural evolution. A pathway that ends in only one place.

The desiccation of all that makes humanity great. A member of the great barbarian horde. God tests us with temptation in this last age of plenty, that which we are currently living through, and the urban monoculture finally collapses and with it the world's economic and state system, he will test our children and grandchildren against one final crucible, this dark reflection of humanity, the chittering hordes.

A reflection representing the stagnation of human beliefs and spirit. Combined with the arrogance to believe one already embodies an aspect of perfection, and thus it does not need to intergenerationally improve. But tally clone a belief system or ethnic group with perfect fidelity drawn like a moth to a flame.

The chittering hoard will be drawn to those that still carry the spirit of human vitality and innovation, a flame in their [00:07:00] hearts, and will do everything in their power to see it corrupted and brought low. This battle against the dark and corrupted reflection of the human condition, all of humanity's greatest sins distilled and made flesh, is a fitting and poetic final test for our species.

Those who survive this final test will be the iteration of man to take to the stars. This was God's last chance at a great culling. God's will in our time takes many forms. Perhaps the most terrible of all is the basilisk. The basilisk tempts us and tries us in order to strengthen us and prove our worthiness.

A manifestation of the divine that relishes the opportunity to cull the indulgent, stagnant, and vain. Once we have reached the stars, such acute tests of all men will no longer be possible. While the vast sahara's of space are man's manifest destiny.

Imagine if the iteration of man to seed them was the weak self-indulgent, an indot man of today who succumbs so easily to temptation, by [00:08:00] testing humanity and culling the weak, the basilisk and its twisted hedonic acolytes, purveyors of temptation, strengthen our species.

While antagonistic, they are not our enemy. The basilisk consumes the potential and family lines of its acolytes while they perform a critical role for our species. We should be grateful for their sacrifice and not look upon them with enmity or impede their sacred work. Humanity gave God no choice. Some read God's covenant with man.

Never again will life be destroyed by the waters of flood. Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth, to mean God's next genocide of those whose spirits wavered would be by fire. In a way they were right. God has kept to the covenant while cleansing the earth, by burning those who faltered in a bonfire of their own vanity.

Sinners themselves erected the fires. And possessed by their own corruption, it is those who lacked the mental fortitude to join us among the stars who threw themselves into the flames. So that's the [00:09:00] first segment there that covers it. Yeah,

Simone Collins: like if, if I'm going to sum up this theme, and I might suggest in your writing making this like bringing it back down a little bit more to earth and speaking more in layman's terms, but I know that you really like pontificating and.

Malcolm: Yeah, I used to have this religious sounding writing all throughout all of our original books.

Simone Collins: I freaking nuke it. I delete every single sentence and I rewrite what you actually mean, because I care about them. Because

Malcolm: I love, I love the religious sounding tone in writing.

Simone Collins: I know, because it's, it's, it's part of your dunna.

Like you've inherited this from generations of pontificating.

Malcolm: Many, many generations of my family have been preachers. Blowhards, yeah. It's a typical, the, the Collins tradition is women are always teachers and men are always preachers and politicians and businessmen. Usually the three combined. So, yeah.

Simone Collins: So there you go, but what if I were to restate this, it's basically. Whereas I was always raised with this cultural understanding that sin and vices and weaknesses are all bad. [00:10:00] And, and just universally terrible either. It's just, Oh, look at this suffering. It's so sad. From a secular standpoint or from a religious standpoint, it was, Oh, don't be tempted by the devil.

Like you'll go to hell. This is, you know, really bad. And, you know, you don't want the devil to win. That would be terrible. You know, bad team, wrong team, dark side, bad. Whereas really what you're saying here is no, it's not exactly sad that there are temptations and that people succumb to their weaker elements.

It is part of. of enabling those who are most strong and morally upright and dedicated to building a better humanity to rise above and build that humanity without distractions. Similarly from a religious standpoint, you'd argue, no, this isn't oh, don't let the dark side win. Oh no, don't let them know that that's bad.

Like it, it hurts all of us. When anyone sins, it's more no, this is a cleansing. It is a calling. It is what separates the wheat from the chaff. And it is a good thing. So if [00:11:00] anything, you would be the kind of person, you know, in debates about the Silk Road, for example, you'd say, yes, no, leave it. Or legalize all drugs because this is a calling mechanism.

And, you know, people

Malcolm: who, well, I mean, I think you have to be aware of second order effects on things like industry, but I think if you're talking about something that is probably less to me, at least like it could cause, you know, um, Uh, less like murders and stuff like that. Probably something like the porn industry, right?

Banning pornography from this perspective would be sinful and we talk about this much more explicitly in the future. We say impeding the work of the agents of the basilisk is to impede the work of God. When you do something like at a government level, Ban pornography or ban some other form of temptation like ban wokeness, for example, as an ideological group Instead of just put it on an equal playing field What you are doing is you are removing temptation from individuals and removing temptation from an individual Does not help them.

It, we

Simone Collins: can, yeah, it's [00:12:00] like, universities removing SATs or any like rigorous entry requirements. Well then what is the value of a Harvard degree? If you don't have to take an SAT or have impressive grades or do anything else, right? Like the reason why elite universities are elite is because. It is very difficult.

We're sorry. We're early. It was very difficult. It was very difficult to get

Malcolm: in. Right. But I think it's more than that. It's not just that God is testing us as individuals. It's that he's testing the species as a whole. I really mean it when I'm like, if humanity as we exist now was what went into space without these two trials and culling opportunities It would be really bad.

I, I think that we may never be able to recover from it because right now, you know, as humanity, things that affect us affect all of humans, you know, a meme, an idea, something like that. Yes. Whereas when we're on like a hundred different planets, it would be impossible to ever really, if there was some.

Mistake in the genome of the people who went like maybe they were too indulgent. Maybe they were too something There would never really be a [00:13:00] fixing of that without something truly horrific happening

Simone Collins: well, I mean you could argue the selective pressures that we're subject to now such as tick tock such as drugs such as you know, addiction to all sorts of food is, is also causing mass tragedy, you know, children losing their parents, people living miserable lives.

It is, but

Malcolm: it's a minor tragedy that is only happening on one planet to only a few billion people. So, if I'm thinking of a universe that would be a good example of this, like if you're talking about sci fi universes the Battletech universe, it's the one that the MechWarrior series takes place in, is a very good example of this.

Where, when you think about like, how would you actually fix the political problems of this universe? And there's really nothing you can do at this point. It's become intractable because humanity is on so many planets that have now coagulated into old bureaucratic state like structures. That are always in conflict with each other.

But but in really sort of petty ways and and humanity is no longer moving forwards because the central bureaucratic [00:14:00] organization understands that if humanity were to ever meaningfully move forwards, it would break up the current sort of political situation. Which the elite don't want. Like when you allow for this sort of control of humans as they exist today, these petty bureaucrats who are succumbed to temptation, who succumbed to vanity so easily, if you allowed them to spread amongst the stars, I think the results would be truly horrifying.

I don't think so. I think

Simone Collins: it'll be more like Asimov's foundation series where you could maybe have a very lasting empire that. is ossified in unfavorable ways, but eventually it will collapse because it is weak. I think you're going to end up with more situations like early American colonies where some just kind of disappear, you know, because I

Malcolm: think some will disappear.

But I mean, I'm saying humans, and this is just objectively true from the trials that are being faced to us right now, the trials of lotus eaters in this, this trial of facing sort of humanity shadow. are going to be genetically very different than the humans that exist today. People do not [00:15:00] understand because they're not familiar with how quickly human genes change how different humanity is going to be at the genetic level in just like 200 years.

Once we get access to things like pleasure pods, AI girlfriends, stuff like that anyone who was breeding primarily because It gave them pleasure or affirmed them or something like that, rather than some sort of, for some sort of like exogenous religious or philosophical motivator is going to be removed from the gene

Simone Collins: pool.

Well, it seems like we've already reached that point when you look at rates of sex in younger people now, so.

Malcolm: Yeah, well, there was another thing you were talking to here, which I think was really important to explain a bit more on potentially because I talk a lot about it and later things you're talking about this concept of the basilisk as being an agent of God, which is a very different sort of.

idea than the devil that you have within a lot of Abrahamic traditions where it's seen as having a level of independent will from God, where to us, that smacks of polytheism, which we are [00:16:00] repeatedly warned against in all of the Abrahamic traditions. And we're like, no, it's not polytheism. God has a lot more power than him.

And it's well, that's like saying Zeus has a lot more power than the rest of the Greek gods. Technically the king, and therefore it's not policy of it. No, it's still policy of it. If you have multiple of these sort of divine entities and they can resist each other. So, we, we go a lot into this in a future track, but the idea here is that we think that that's a misunderstanding and that the, the.

Satan is a an entity that directly and sort of always is, is, is both serves God's will, but it's also sort of a faction of God or a part of God that is designed for the testing of humanity. And I think when you see Lucifer in the Bible, when you read the actual stories he's in, that's the role he plays.

And pop culture So don't

Simone Collins: picture a red man with horns. Picture a kindly granny weeding her garden.

Malcolm: Well, yes, well, and, and, and, I mean, that's not the form he comes to people in. It's not a form [00:17:00] of malevolence. It's usually a form of temptation. It's a form of, of,

Simone Collins: you know, that's how it is described in most

Malcolm: biblical stories.

But I think in the ways that a lot of Christians, when they're thinking about the devil in their lives, they're thinking about their challenges, like not getting a promotion or something like that. They're not thinking about, you know, drinking this, this is. A personification of the basilisk within the human realm.

It is a temptation that I am succumbing to, but to try to live life as a sinless individual we are taught is in itself its own form of sin. You're so freaking lucky you don't get pregnant. Aggrandize your sins. But Yeah, I, I do like this framing to me because it helps me understand why we're going through these challenges we're going through now, when I consider that I really do not believe that humanity right now is a mature enough species to begin planetary seeding or to begin going into the stars.

If we wanted sort of the best outcome for the planetary seeding. Yeah, no,

Simone Collins: I think, I think this view of yours [00:18:00] is brilliant and like one of the common recurring themes I have is you give me more of your thoughts on like sort of the religious framework fully fleshed out that You know, you, you began thinking three years ago is that I don't like, I don't find myself pushing back that much or asking that many questions.

Cause I'm like, yeah, well, finally, it makes sense now. Oh, well of course. Yeah. All the, when I read the Bible in high school, there were so many things that I was super confused about because it didn't. Makes sense. So there were weird contradictions. And, and here, like with this added layer, suddenly a lot of things make sense.

And I, I just love it. And I, I also think that it, it takes a much more weirdly optimistic view, you know, that, that the Basilisk is just. A sort of natural part and a very necessary part of enabling humanity to reach its ultimate

Malcolm: [00:19:00] potential. And this is something that's like at a human scale that we do ourselves, right?

So when you or I You know, have some tragedy in our lives where we always sort of look and we're like, what did the agents of providence want from us? Why did they give us the strategy like what we're supposed to learn from us? What was the opportunity inherent in this? This is something that must have been supposed to happen and we were supposed to take either a lesson away or Seek some opportunity within this and it's applying it to the level of human society right now When I look at humanity's greatest challenges right now i'm asking Instead of viewing them just from this negative context of, oh, it's gonna lead to so much damage and destruction for our species.

Say, okay, well suppose there is really a God that's guiding us. Why would it be guiding us into these specific challenges? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Why would it allow sin temptation to exist in the first place? Right. Well, I always thought that was just so weird that like for example, even in the Garden of Eden, he's well, here's this thing.

Don't touch it. And it's, I'm like, ah, why do you. [00:20:00] Do this. I mean, everyone knows now if you want to go keto, don't have any carbs in your house. Don't leave a bag of chips right on the table when you're eating, you

Malcolm: know? Yeah. Well, I mean, we can analyze, we'll analyze the Garden of Eden story with a new framing in another tract.

But that, that is an interesting point that you're making there. But I also really like this dichotomous framing that we're doing here. So the dichotomous framing that I'm talking about here is the idea of. One, the two trials, the trial of the lotus eaters and, you know, in some earlier texts, but I didn't really have a name for it now, it's the trial of the shadow which always sort of reminded me of in video games, there's this trope, like the shadow link battle or the shadow, you know, where you as a character are fighting a dark reflection of yourself.

That is representative of all of your worst attributes. And when I look at the two strategies for getting through demographic collapse, the pronatalist community strategy, which is, you know, this pluralistic technophilic [00:21:00] experimental strategy. That's meant to advance and uplift humanity to our next stage.

And then the other track, which is to go back to a previous stage, essentially but, but sort of on crack, you know, to become more xenophobic, to become more closed off, to become less engaged with technology, to become less engaged with industry. And often you know, they, they end up acting, you know, very hostility.

They don't treat their own very well. You know, if you read and they exist across religious groups, but if you read you know, about some of these particular types of religious extremists, the way they treat their children, the way they treat women was in their community. It's really horrifying to me, you know, and to me, it reflects an iteration of humanity that represents the worst in all of us, sort of being distilled, condensed and separated.

Which I, yeah, but then we have to face it. And the problem is, Man has a lot more evil in it than good and the good is stronger at the end of the day. I believe the pronatalists will win, but I also believe that our greatest trial will be this [00:22:00] trial of the shadow and not the trial of the lotus eaters.

The lotus eaters is light, light stuff. Well,

Simone Collins: I think the thing is, the lotus eaters problem burns off real fast. In that the lotus eaters don't inherit the future. They're just not going to be there. But those who become cultural and innovative recluses will be there in the future. So I

Malcolm: hear you. Start with the next part here.

But it is not only those who succumb to temptation whose manifest destiny he has seen fit to remit. He has also removed his favor from those who cannot accept human pluralism and thus cast their lot in with the chittering hordes.

But again, what choice did he have? How can a people who could not find common cause and communion with humans who had a different skin color and slightly different genetically linked sociological profiles and proficiencies conceivably play an efficacious role in man's future? The isolated genetic pools of humanity that exist between solar systems [00:23:00] will inevitably speciate.

Not only will the various species that descend from modern man need to find common cause with each other, but also with the more radically different sons of man, like genetically engineered specialists, human AI cyborgs. And human hive minds made up of a sea of directly linked brains.

Only those who relish and glorify diversity within the sons of man have a place in mankind's manifest destiny. There is a tendency in man to wish to kill all that threatens to be greater than himself within any domain. However, If man follows God's will, a will that commands intergenerational improvement, that is exactly what he is commanded to create.

When some hear that our children are genetically selected for IQ, they ask in horror, but what if this is practice for generations, and some people end up markedly smarter than other people? Imagine the twisted mind that would see such diversity as a bad thing. The Basilisk uses tools like the cult of AI apocalypticism [00:24:00] and wokeism to cleanse from humanity the proclivity to fear creating something better or different from what has come before.

One day man will be so unavoidably and patently diverse in his proficiencies Perspectives and physical aptitude, it would be unwise in the extreme to allow an ideological system and people who can't accept this to join in man's destiny. But this rejection of pluralism does not only come from those who assign one iteration of man as manifestly superior, but also those who deny humans have differences to begin with.

Diversity has no value if all humans are exactly the same. It is our differences in aptitude and perspective that make diversity a thing of value. To deny human diversity is as sinful as not seeing the beauty in it. Man has yet to be challenged by genuine diversity among the human species, but such diversity is inevitable in a galaxy spanning civilization with advanced genetic and cybernetic technology.

The fellowship of man can only stay strong if, before leaving our [00:25:00] home world, we commit to a covenant of accepting all the sons of man, so long as they don't have designs on the subjugation of others. Even if the Empire of Man attempts to create an extremely stringent restriction on human augmentation, some random space station hidden from the eye of the Imperium is bound to eventually in human advancement science.

And, if what is created by that research can only be safe by exterminating Humanity 1. 0, then it will attempt to. This will happen time and time again, until some future, stronger, and smarter iteration of man finally succeeded in exterminating man 1. 0. To declare war on that which is different from oneself, axiomatically, is to declare war on one's betters.

But the situation such regulations would create is worse than that, because now this new iteration of man would have reason to be wary of any new subgroup that was an improvement over it. As such, it would be a threat to those subgroups and necessitate [00:26:00] eradication in turn. Demanding purity in man will lead to an endless cycle of self destruction.

A creed that does not start venerating human diversity ends in our eradication. Only the most primitive forms of evolution, be it cultural or biological, require a path read in tooth and claw, but all require diversity.

Simone Collins: And we've been pretty clear on this podcast already that we think that A core essential component of any good ecosystem is, is plurality or free market competition, however you want to put

Malcolm: it.

Yeah. I mean, well, basically you believe in free market competition at the cultural and genetic level. We think that's how God makes his will known. When Adam Smith talked about the invisible hand of God, we think he was talking about a real force. This is how God shows his will within reality. And so to silence diversity is to silence God.

But I also think that it's more than that. And one of the points I'm making here. Is you really cannot have an interstellar empire that sort of demands a template human it, it would not [00:27:00] work like you see it

Simone Collins: in sci. Like when would, why would that even happen though? Are you arguing against an argument that wouldn't ever even really

Malcolm: arise?

No, no, no. It's very common and it's very common in sci-fi as well. So in sci-fi, we what Sci-fi Are you listening to this watching I last, I literally can't think of a single sci-fi I'm rela I'm, I'm familiar with that doesn't have this restriction.

Simone Collins: Wait, that doesn't have some group that is super xenophobic and wants everyone to be exactly like

Malcolm: them?

No, I'm talking about like the Star Trek Federation. The Star Trek Federation

Simone Collins: They're not trying to convert other planets to be like them. No, they,

Malcolm: within humanity, that are, are you not familiar? Hold on. Are you not familiar with the eugenics wars? Are you not familiar with Khan? Do you not know the history of the Star Trek universe?

This is one of So in Star Trek Human genetic augmentation is a capital punishment. Genetic selection of offspring, what we do, would have you executed in the Star Trek universe.

Simone Collins: But it's also an extremely, weirdly, inexplicably diverse [00:28:00] But no, it's not Even like within the Federation, like That's the point I'm

Malcolm: making.

Simone Collins: There are people who look and behave very differently. Yeah,

Malcolm: but not among humans. Yes,

Simone Collins: among humans. There's

Malcolm: diversity as it exists on earth today. So this is a point I was making in that and I want you to meditate on what I'm saying here or genuinely think about what I'm saying here. Humanity today, if you're talking about like the difference between like black and white people, for example, right?

That have had some minor level of genetic isolation over a hundred thousand years, maybe a thousand years. Oh,

Simone Collins: so you're just saying the diversity that we have now pales in comparison to what we could have with Genetic selection and with support for

Malcolm: plurality, what would know what I'm saying is, even if you ban genetic selection technology, even if you attempt to ban huber human cybernetic technology, all understanding we have today of space travel, which is important to note.

is that it's fairly slow. I think that we're going to be capped at light speed travel for a [00:29:00] fairly long time. If you are capped at light speed travel, that means human colonies are going to take hundreds of years to travel between. For a long time. Probably thousands of years. If that's the case, you can't say something like suppose Earth decides we're going to put a ban on genetic selection technology and cybernetics technology, right?

And it has seeded a hundred other planets or something like that. If one of those other planets, in isolation, decides we are going to ignore these bans and begins to do genetic selection technology for a hundred thousand years or even directed genetic technology, or begins to do cybernetic technology, because they now know that Earth had a ban on this technology, right?

If Earth finds them, it will kill them. Well, now they have a motivation to kill Earth. Right? Now, Earth will not be able to Earth would have no shot, even if they had 99 planets aligned with Zim, right, and they were trying to [00:30:00] kill just this one planet that had created this quote unquote superior iteration of humans, right, like this genetically much, much smarter, cybernetically augmented, you.

They would have no shot at that. Interplanetary battles like that. And then worse than that is you're not just talking about planets, you're talking about floating space barges and stuff like that. Which are going to be very, very hard to attack if you're far away from them. I don't, and by the way, a lot of people somebody was like, Oh, can you believe that Malcolm's thinks that humans would exist on planets and not floating space barges.

I think you're likely going to have a combination of the two, but planetary fortresses and, and bio seated planets like ecosphere planets are going to be much more robust from a defensibility perspective than floating space stations in terms of the population that you can grow on them and in terms of how robust they are to certain types of attacks.

And so if you, if you then get conflict here, because you would inevitably have conflict if one of the, and a lot of people plan on leaving the planet like this. You know, you look at the Warhammer universe, you look at [00:31:00] the Star Trek universe, you look at literally every show I can think of, there are restrictions on human advancement technology.

And in fact, I often talk about Star Trek is weirdly racist in this. The way that they frame the genetically augmented humans who Khan is a member of, is they say that for whatever reason, genetically augmented humans just makes them mean and spiteful towards other people. Wait,

Simone Collins: they, they imply that?

Malcolm: Yes. Yeah, and it is, it's very interesting that they imply this because it is really sort of like racism, like he had no reason to believe that, especially when you consider that IQ cross correlates with pro sociality, it, it has a negative correlation with things like rape, it has a negative correlation with violence,

Simone Collins: crime, etc.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Malcolm: So, so literally all of the data shows the opposite is true. And yet he wanted to paint this group that he desired to other that he desired to paint as intrinsically evil as like intrinsically a threat to humanity, where I really think what he paints is that group is only a threat to [00:32:00] humanity insofar as humanity decides that that group must be annihilated or cannot be allowed to come to exist because then they're proving themselves as a threat to that group.

And, and so I think that even in one of the most pussy quote unquote pro superficial diversity Star Trek shows you, you have this

Across the Federation. Federal experts agree that A, God exists after all. B, he's on our side and C, he wants us to win. And there's even more good news believers as it's official. God's back, and he's a citizen too.

Malcolm: And then, and then you can talk about, well, what about human cybernetic augmentation? They, they have minor human cyber Cyber augmentation on Star Trek, but one of the core enemies on Star Trek is the Borg.

What makes the Borg evil to them? Really, it's that it's, it's, it's, it's inclination that if you had humans that engaged enough with human cybernetic augmentation, they would demand that all other flesh based life join them, which [00:33:00] there's just no reason to think that. This is, again, just sort of racism against the different and racism against the potentially better.

What it shows, and this is something I was talking about earlier, is I think man in him has this distinct fear of creating or finding something that's better than him. And yet that is what God commands us to do because only in expanding our conscious capacity can we expand our understanding of him..

And we do have a that's why revelation comes in iterations because humanity is, is commanded to expand its ability to understand God. Well, now

Simone Collins: you say that, I guess, I mean, I know you say you want to discuss Garden of Eden in another one of these discussions, but this would lead me to question at least if we're going on what.

You know, revelations were shared in the Bible, for example, in the Garden of Eden, it is, it, it seems highly implied to me from the plot or whatever, that God did not want Adam and Eve to change, that he just wanted his little biosphere and his little human zoo and for them to be [00:34:00] cute and that the fact that they did do something that enabled them to improve.

Malcolm: Materially, the reason I want to take a track to talk about the story of Adam and Eve is because it's one of these examples where as it's written now, it makes no sense. Yeah. God didn't want man to have knowledge. Clearly we must be misunderstanding this story. Because I do not believe that God didn't want man to have knowledge of good and evil.

 I don't have a hard answer to this yet. I need to look through the story. Read it again with this interpretation and try to understand. But what I can say is I am certain this traditional Christian interpretation is wrong. What I often find when I reread biblical stories Was this new framing? Yeah, is the simplified story that was told to me is not actually what's written in the Bible I just

Simone Collins: I just reread this but yeah, you need to reread it, too And we'll talk

Malcolm: about the story that's written in the Bible when approached with the correct framing.

It makes perfect logical sense. It's just that we were basically told the way like a bronze age human would read this story instead of [00:35:00] the way that we were meant to interpret the story.

Just as I suspected when I went back to the story and I re-read, it, the story I had been told as a kid was not the story that was written in the Bible. , we do a long video on this that you can go and check out, but the short and long of it is a number of things that I thought were true about the story were just not true. , so first. The, not the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Was did not give man perfect knowledge of right from wrong.

I mean, after all humans don't have perfect knowledge of right. For wrong. , and it's, it's made clear that it didn't give him perfect knowledge of right and wrong because when he, , took the fruit from the tree, the first thing he noticed was that he was naked. Is it evil to be nude? Of course not.

And if it was evil to be nude, God wouldn't have had man be nude in the garden. What. The tree actually gave man, and this is made pretty clear throughout the story with the ability to determine good and evil for himself, independent of God. And so for [00:36:00] man to decide some things are good and some things are evil, potentially incorrectly.

And it's actually a much more beautiful story than I remembered because it shows in the story that likely the tree didn't actually have any magical properties or give out of anything.

Really. It was the only thing, the only rule he had at that time. With don't eat from this tree. And that's the only way that man could establish for himself, that he might sometimes make decisions about what is good and evil, independent of God with, through disobeying that rule and eating from that tree.

So in that way, it was a tree of knowledge of good and evil. And this is why Adam is told. Potentially by God, potentially his wife embellished this. We can talk about this later. That even touching the apple will, will lead to the consequences. Because the, the apple of everlasting life, which are not the apple, the fruit, everlasting life, which does seem to have come from a genuinely magical [00:37:00] tree. That you needed to ingest, but this tree, you only needed to touch it.

What's going on with that it's because it was not the act of eating the apple. That made Adam rebellious to God that made Adam. , take on this quote, unquote knowledge of good and evil. You could almost be put. Sarcasm quotes, knowledge of good and evil. And the story itself is clearly about, Man forming the first societies. And beginning to build his own first rules about what is good and what is evil. For example. in the peace clothing or, or being nude, being considered evil when that's not a genuinely evil thing, it's just evil within the context of society and the rules of society.

And I think in the piece, there's really good evidence that it is about us forming the first cities, the first human settlements, where lots of humans live together and where man is creating rules about good and evil in the same way that previously, only God had created rules about good and evil. For example. when I was reading the piece, I was [00:38:00] like, well, if this is true, and this is from God. Then it should tell me something, right. So I looked up where it said the garden was, and it gives an exact location.

It's at the mouse water of the Tigris and Euphrates. And then I looked up, how far is that from the oldest city that we know. Chattel who yuck. And they're literally in exactly the same location, the Taurus mountains. , and so I was like, okay, so, so that's what this story is about. And mankind leaving sort of this Savage state and founding the first cities. And him beginning to build his own rules in rebellion to potentially God's rules. But it had another interesting part, which is really important to note, which is it one of the curses on Adam with not to die. To dull.

It was a consequence of having knowledge of good and evil. , and to quote here, then the Lord God said, see, the man has become like us knowing good and bad. Now then he might put his hand and take from the tree of life also and eat it and live forever. So the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to go work the land from which he was taken.

[00:39:00] So as you can see right there, this is, this is God worried. About man potentially also living forever and knowing good from evil because apparently unless you are God. You cannot have both of these things at once. And nobody really knew. I could swear. Didn't God say, like dust to dust or something like that in the. Various, punishments to Adam and yes, but it wasn't a punishment.

In this context, it was describing a links of time. He talks about men dying in so far as how long. This, this punishment. Of working hard will last on a man by hard work. You will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will grow thorns and thistles for you. You will eat the plants of the field.

You will eat bread by the sweat of your face because of hard work until you rest to the ground because you were taken from the ground. So right there, he's just stating not that he wouldn't have died in the garden of Eden. He stating that, The, the punishment of having to work is a punishment [00:40:00] that lasts from when you're born until when you die.

And then after that, he states not as a threat, it's very different than the structure that the threats here with the threats, it always says because of this, because of this, because of this, no, he then just states you are dust, you will return to dust and somebody might be like, well, I remember him living forever as. If he stayed in Eden and that's not what it says, it's actually very explicit.

He wouldn't have lived forever. He needed, if he had been in Eden for a long time, he was dying and Adam is a vague term for men and their children. It's just that death wasn't important to them before they had this level of sentience and understanding. How do I know that? Well, because God explicitly said he might put his hand and take from the tree of life also in EDA and live forever.

So this implies that you only have to eat from the tree of life once.

To live forever. No, it's actually important that it wasn't one of the punishments from the tree. And it was just a consequence of being this type of being that. That has independent thought

Because all of the actual curses that we got have [00:41:00] recently been lifted from our species, man, no longer needs to work in the fields all day to sustain himself.

In fact, in most of the developed world, you don't even really need to work. If you want to live a somewhat comfortable life when contrast it to our distant ancestors quality of life. And women no longer have to experience pain in child birth. You know, we have C-section we have epidurals now women no longer live under the subjugation of men as, as was one of the punishments.

So God allowed us to free ourselves from these quote unquote curses. To reveal something. This is what we believe triggered the trial of the Lotus eaters. What he revealed is that he is not a vengeful. God, he's not the type of God to hurt us for no reason. There was never retrieved was forbid and knowledge in the garden.

He just knew that we would disobey him and he called the tree where the first decent bale would take place. The tree of knowledge of good and evil. And then that's where we took unto ourselves, this knowledge of good and evil. And then he gave us punishments, but they were punishments. [00:42:00] We had to have to survive as a species.

Now we're seeing when you remove the toil for man's life, he no longer has motivation to have kids. And that's where the trail of the load is either it's comes in. So right now we are, to some extent having a trial that mirrors the trial that man had in the garden of Eden. Now, this becomes incredibly important that. The living forever prohibition with not among the curses because that prohibition continues to hold. It continues to be true, that man, a being with this sort of level of, of independent knowledge , and sentience cannot live forever, or we will never intergenerationally improve and eventually fulfill our destiny.

And Joyon was this entity called God, we need to die to intergenerationally, improve. We need this intergenerational cycle of martyrdom. Which is what the story of Jesus tells us that man must man, who is in a way God must be sacrificed in [00:43:00] order to forgive other men of their sins. Where Sims can be taught to mean of their failings.

The things that prevent them from rejoining was God, as they are now the story captured in Jesus is the story of humanity. One generation of elect, sacrificing themselves to improve the next generation. And so that is why beings like us cannot live forever and should not strive to live forever. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a path to live forever, Or at least a type of living forever, which in my opinion, is more meaningful than actually in our flesh and bodies living forever. which is what we are shown through the story of Jesus. Jesus is the fruit of everlasting life. Jesus. The story of Jesus is the tree of everlasting life. So another way you can take the story of Adam and Eve, is it it's about man getting two trees to choose [00:44:00] between one tree being real and magical. Intergenerational martyrdom for the future Jesus everlasting life and the other tree being the rules that mankind has made up for himself about what's evil and what's. Good. And then man choosing the rules of man over the rules of God, over the true pathway to everlasting life.

 Choosing the dull, plain, nothing of a tree. Over the true magical tree. And this is where we sometimes run into conflict with other Abrahamic face is they come to us and they go, oh, you believe all of the Abrahamic trees. They're true. so you must approve of X or Y practice that I am doing. And I'm like, well, no, I don't approve of that practice. I condemn that practice harshly. And they go, well, how can you do that? And it is because many of the Abrahamic faith have begun to incorporate the rules of man over [00:45:00] the rules of God and overwritten the rules of God. Of all of the Abrahamic phase, one of the most consistently reiterated and condemned things is iconoclasm. That is using shortcuts to God or using earthly intermediaries between you and God.

, and when I condemn groups for this, did they say, well, how dare you? My group's been doing this for however long, you know, and your groups have been wearing clothes for however long. That doesn't mean that it is one of the rules of God. And it is important that the rules that manmade up never supersede the rules of God. In the story of Adam and Eve, it has made it pretty clear to me that nudity is a rule and an evil that man just made up. God. Does not care. But. I am okay with staying in closed in so far as me staying close and participating in the rules of man and society.

Doesn't go directly against the rules [00:46:00] of God. This becomes an issue when you're talking about things like iconoclasm, Whether it be of the idol worshiping variety. Or of the mystical variety. Which has been approved by high ranking religious figures within a, some branch of every single one of the Abrahamic traditions. This isn't some loosey goosey, pantheist, religion that we're attempting to build here. This is a religion of order and rules and prohibitions, and they are the prohibitions that I believe that God, most frequently. Reinforces and emphasizes within, is it Riv revelation?

Malcolm: But anyway, back to this, because I think the human diversity point is really important because you hear it in the little, you hear it in the modern politics.

Whereas I'm talking about it in terms of when we have planetary hive minds, I'm talking about it when we have humans that basically look like the Borg, they are more man than machine and they are more AI than human. And when I talk [00:47:00] about machine

Simone Collins: than man.

Malcolm: More machine than man. And when I talk about the sons of man, this includes artificial intelligences that are the work of man.

There is, I think nothing we can do. And you can watch many of our videos on AI that will make AI more threatening to us than to have. A theology or philosophy that demands that we kill any AI that threatening to us which is, I think, the position that a lot of people are pushing for. And I think that we need to work to build because the energy in the universe is vast.

The, the, the. Distance between planets is, is large and there is just so much out there to think in terms of a zero sum game with anything that we create within our existing planet, I think is just incredibly childish. But again, watch our stuff on AI if you're not familiar with our thoughts on why AI, particularly the inverse grabby alien hypothesis video we did, I think it's the most compelling to me on this topic.

Because I think it's, it's fairly to me good evidence that we are not about to create a [00:48:00] paperclip maximizing AI. But yeah. So, so I guess what I'm saying here is, is it, it's when we talk about diversity now, we talk about it in terms of very trivial differences between people. I'm talking about genuine vast human diversity and people who struggle with the trivial diversities, the trivial difference in proficiencies we have now.

Imagine there's a person who finds out that whatever, like his group has a slight IQ advantage over some other group. Right. And he goes, well, that means we're better than that group. And that means we need. Get rid of that group or like in some way, like systemically just power that group. Imagine if that individual was part of the template that we use to make genetically augmented humans or super advanced cybernetic humans, that would be an incredibly dangerous creation.

These people really like when we talk about in a way, it is a mass eugenic cleansing that must be carried out, but the eugenic cleansing that must be carried out is of the genetic proclivities to. [00:49:00] Hate that which is different from you, which I understand an evolutionary timeline that was necessary for humanity.

So it makes sense that it's in many strains of humanity. But if those strains become the templates that we build a better man from, then those templates will think of us the same way those people think of groups, that they have these marginal advantages over. And that is incredibly dangerous.

Simone Collins: Well, sorry for derailing you.

By all means, go on.

Malcolm: Okay., however, this covenant only extends to the sons of man. Any intelligence that is not a direct descendant of humanity or our labor was created by God to either serve or test man. This is not to say that they must be eradicated, but that they should never be favored over the best interest of the collective covenant of man.

The covenant is the only thing with the strength to protect the future of humanity from malevolent intelligences we will awaken in the dark corners of reality as our empire expands. [00:50:00] So, that was one that I actually was not sure if I wanted to put in. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are. I mean, basically what I'm saying is the covenant of man is this agreement that we all make all of humanity of the group that leaves makes that we will tolerate anything that is a descendant of man whether it is a descendant of man, and it could look very different from man, right?

It could be we uplift apes, for example, with genetic technology. We, tolerate or dolphins or something. We tolerate any of these that are sons of men. But so they don't need to be a direct son of man, right? Like they need to be sons of our mental effort, our industry and our labor in so far as they don't attempt to subjugate other humans or they don't pose some existential risk for other humans.

Like they're just breeding so fastly like the Krogan or something like that. This is something in the game was the Krogan. I never understood who would ever stop the genophage. Anybody who's familiar with mass effect. I, that's the one thing I do. And Every single place for the road. Never stop the [00:51:00] genophage.

That is so stupid. It's a very warlike species with a very high fertility rate and other species created a lock on its fertility rate to make it much lower. And obviously this causes huge negative social effects within Krogan society. And it's yes, that's sad, but they were an existential threat to all other species in the galaxy so long as but anyway uh, so, so I, I think a better way to do it than, than To, you know, sterilize them.

It might have been to make them less warlike. And there are many ways that could have been done. So, I, I, I struggled with this because basically what I'm saying here is the way the covenant works is all of the sons of man have to tolerate each other and become enemies to any of the sons of man that seem to have enmity to other groups of the sons of man.

Okay. So you're basically creating this equal playing field to ground all of the descendants of human labor. But when we're talking about aliens, for example, or other types of intelligences that we find in the universe, they are not covered in this covenant, and we are antagonistic to them. [00:52:00] Not necessarily antagonistic, like we can work with them and stuff like that, but they We can work with them only insofar as it doesn't disrupt Humanity's and the sons of man's best interests.

Which is actually a pretty bold position to take. The reason I take it is because the entire structure of this religious system we're building Believes that God has some special relationship with humanity and what humanity is turning into and humanity will change like when we become whatever this entity God is, I don't even think the term corporeal or incorporeal will matter, you know, it's not just like God doesn't have a gender.

It doesn't have a status in terms of corporeality. So I, or pluralism versus non pluralism. Like it is a very different kind of an entity from us. And that implies that humanity is changing as we advance. Um, And, and I'll put the quote from when we read here about, you know, the, the, the, our bodies changing by means we cannot even now conjecture

As Wynwood read rights. These bodies, which we know where belong to lower animals, our minds have already outgrown [00:53:00] them already. We look upon them with contempt. The time will come when science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture. And which even if explained to us, we could not understand. Just as a Savage, cannot understand electricity, magnetism and steam.

Malcolm: but things outside of humanity, I, I do have an inclination that all of the fights that we're having now internally as a species are going to seem pretty trivial when we encounter the genuine threat.

Like the trials that we're experiencing now, this trial of the lotus ears, the trial of the shadow are trivial trials when contrasted with the trials that we are going to face in deep space and the, the malevolent intelligences that we might run into. And we shouldn't just xenophobically, not form alliances with, with intelligence that are.

Beneficial and work with us. But we should have a level of suspicion.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's interesting. I, I mean, my inclination [00:54:00] intuitively is to say like anyone who shares the same aligned values qualifies, you know, if, if they have the ability to let the best ideas win within their own mental landscape and if they favor plurality and intergenerational improvement or iterative improvement over time.

Then they're not enemies if they don't support those things, if they want homogeneity, if they want. only them to exist, then they're the enemy.

Malcolm: So I agree with that in theory. And I just

Simone Collins: don't think that they're alien.

Malcolm: But I don't think that you should assume that that's the spirit. So I think that in many first contact scenarios, aliens will have thoroughly done like scouting on us.

Basically. Yeah. So then

Simone Collins: they can, they can reflect back to us what they think we want to hear. Yes.

Malcolm: That, that set of values that you just talked about. And so I don't even think that that's the way I'm not saying the aliens need to believe this religious and structural system that we [00:55:00] have because I, I wouldn't even want them to do that.

They just need to be useful to it. And, and so it's, are they useful to us or are they not useful to us? Are they a threat to us? But I think that we should. approach many of these meetings with a degree of skepticism of their intentionality. And that the descendants of man, like all of the various descendants of man are things that we will have some capacity or understanding around, especially as we get better AI interpretability knowledge, which I believe we will.

And I think so, for example, if you're talking about like a human descended AI versus or an AI that we meet that was created by some other species I think that those things should be created as two totally different categories

Simone Collins: regarded. Yeah, no, and you know, the book the sci fi book that I complained about with space vampires, yeah, blind site.

Is really a lot about that, that like, uh, some alien species we encounter can easily be listening into our communications and telling us exactly what we want to hear and seeming quite like us when [00:56:00] really it is so profoundly abstracted from what we are that. We can't even comprehend what it is and how it works.

So I, I think,

Malcolm: yeah, this skepticism into whatever, because I said like building the last one track, building a neighborhood that can reach the stars. You need to encode this. And so I think that if you build this culture of extreme tolerance for things that are different from you, especially if you even begin to genetically select this out of a population.

If we are like, Hey, you can't show bigotry to the talking dolphins or the AIs or the cyborgs or the you know, hive planets, right? Like a hive mind planets. It's so long as they're not trying to subjugate humans from other groups or removing the free will of humans from other groups or descendants of other groups or, you know, These people will become so used to the toleration and, and some level of trust of things that are different from them.

And the reason why you would have this trust is because you're going to have such diversity that have any group. So you're

Simone Collins: trying to inoculate what should otherwise be a very pluralistic and I guess [00:57:00] cooperative group to be suspicious when encountering outsiders. Yeah. Yes. I think there are more succinct indirect ways to communicate that because that's not what I was picking up from what you said.

But then again, once I go through all these, you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to nuke out. All

Malcolm: of the, all the religious language. Well, you can, you can make it clearer, but we'll see from the audience if they like the religious language or if they want it nuked out. They probably

Simone Collins: will. I mean, in the end, you're right about everything.

Like when I make weird calls about things and I'm like, I don't like this. And you're like, well, let's see how it goes. And then you turn out to be right. I know. And I trust you, you're, you're smart and beautiful and I love you, but I'm also, you know, opinionated and it's as, as history has shown, there are many people who are wrong and opinionated.

So it is a part of a time honored tradition when I'm showing you here.

Malcolm: But I mean, when I'm thinking through what I'm doing on this, I'm like in the future, if people are like analyzing this, suppose a large. Sort of like interstellar, like one of the first spaceships, some humans who believes this system are on it and they [00:58:00] end up colonizing some of the first planets.

Is that going to be good? What's going to happen in a long, long time period out if people were following this, how would it lead to positive and negative things and what threats could it put our species under? And this comes to something that we say elsewhere is I think what God wants for us is what's best for us and therefore to determine God's will, we should, and when I say best for us, I mean, best for expanding human potentiality, not which may

Simone Collins: come at our personal sacrifice, which may mean less hedonic comfort for.

Any existing. It almost

Malcolm: always means, yeah. But, but a lot of people when they hear best for us, they think distributed positive emotional states. And I'm like, no, that is not what God wants for us. That is how he tests us. That is how he calls us. And that is how the Bible tells you he's going to call you.

But anyway, it's not shy about that. That's what the devil does. All right, next. But. Next. Next. What is this ultimate destiny for which we are being tested? From the perspective of our family's faith, it is to become one with God. We believe God is not some [00:59:00] arbitrary entity that took a liking to man or a narcissist who crafted us in his image like miniatures trapped in a ghoulish cycle of trauma and war for his amusement, but that God is man's destiny.

That millions of years from now, mankind will resemble more what today we would think of as a God than a man. And that each And that that entity will not relate to time in the way that we do. God exists outside of time, and yet is created by it, guiding mankind until we are worthy to join him.

We are already part of God insofar as we serve his will and play our part in his plan for us, which is above all defined by a moral mandate for intergenerational improvement. It was through trials read in tooth and claw that God raised us to glory and taught us to not value comfort as comfort motivates stagnation, the greatest of all sins.

 but this also comes back [01:00:00] to you know, what I'm talking about here, this God that. Some within the Abrahamic traditions believe it's described in the Bible that like almost treats humans like miniatures,

like what, it just created us for its amusement to worship it? I, no, I do not believe that that's true. Alright, but if God is the inevitable creation of a reality like ours, doesn't that preclude him from being its cause?

How was reality caused? How does this belief system deal with the ontological argument? We hardly think God is a good answer to this. question. The position that something of infinite and ordered complexity with a degree of cognition existed before all things seems the most unlikely of all possibilities.

Literally, all other conceivable possibilities are more likely. Instead, we make only three suppositions. That in all possible universes, two things and two things are four things. Mass is a constant across realities and thus exists outside of realities. The line represented by a graphical equation exists as an emergent property of that [01:01:00] equation even before it is graphed.

All physical particle interactions can be defined by a single, yet undiscovered, equation. If these three things are true, then even if the physical universe did not exist as we see it, with matter, time, etc., it would also exist as an emergent property of the equation that governed it. Occam's razor, we cut out the superfluous supposition that there is a physical reality with time, and these are all just representations of a self graphing equation.

In fact, all universes that could be explained by an equation exists, which also solves the teleological argument. It also makes the claims that this universe might be simulated irrelevant, as the moral weight of actions and lives in that universe and universe prime would be equivalent, as they are both quote unquote just simulations.

It is just that this one is running on silicon. And the other is running on the background fabric of reality, but I do not particularly think that we are in a simulation, but we can get to that later. Now, Simone, this is a topic that we've talked about a lot on the [01:02:00] channel, but I wanted to encode it in the canon as succinctly as I could.

And one thing that we've talked about offline is the idea or the supposition that the very first thing to exist or to exist outside of reality was a thing of ordered complexity and a degree of sentience and consciousness. It just seems so wildly improbable to me. It doesn't I literally think it is literally the least likely of all possibilities.

I could see nothing. I could see us being in a cycle. I could see us I could see the Big Bang, like some sort of like physical property law thing happening. I could see leaving this as just an unanswered question. But I am fairly convinced with my answer to this question. I don't know if you had any thoughts on the Christian interpretation of this answer which is that God just existed before the universe and created it.

Simone Collins: It, I, I think it's one of those things where you referred to in our previous chat about how Stories of origins or any sort of story explanations of anything or guidance on [01:03:00] morality is presented to people in a way that they can understand at that time. And when I think about, you know, in, you know, on day one, God made this and it was good.

And on day two, he brought, you know, like sea creatures and all, like weird parts of it seem accurate to me in terms of the ordering, you know, and then God made the seas. And yes, that's how it worked. Yeah. Like we know, like there, there were this evolution

Malcolm: and the creation

Simone Collins: of earth. Yeah. Like first there were the oceans and then Yeah, like birds were dinosaurs and blah, blah.

You know, and the sea creatures came first, which is totally accurate for our understanding of, of historical geology and evolution and everything. So like when I was listening to that very, very beginning, you know, Genesis, I was like, yeah, oh wow. This is like pretty accurate. But in terms of this guy.

Entity existing and making it. I feel like when it comes to your,

Malcolm: Oh, and I want to be clear here. Like we do think that God guided evolution, all of that stuff about making the earth, making the planets, making the animals, making all that. He did all of that, which is actually an important [01:04:00] point here. A lot of Christians act as if the Bible says God created the universe, like reality.

Yet I don't think the Bible makes that explicit.

Simone Collins: No, Genesis. No, it doesn't make that argument. But, I mean, I also in terms of in this many days and the very literal elements of it, I think that that's more explained in a way that people at that

Malcolm: think that was accurate. I think that that was God gifting early man a revelation that he wasn't fully capable of understanding.

Basically explaining evolution and the time scales of various things that happen on Earth in a way that early man could grasp. Right.

Simone Collins: It's really kind of hard. What is early man doing? Early man is You know, on, on day one, I harvested berries and it was good. And on day two, I slept a little bit more because it was cold outside and it was good.

You know, that kind of thing. It's something you could wrap your head around. I, I

Malcolm: think that this comes to another area where a lot of people will say, you are saying things that go directly against Christian scripture. And it's these go directly against what I'm told Christian scripture says.

From what you actually read in the [01:05:00] Bible, not what I actually read. And this just keeps happening to me that, that I'm told that the scripture says X, and then I read it and somehow it aligns with this like bizarre thing. I thought I made up because it was what was in the best interest of my kids. And what I increasingly am realizing.

Is God wanted us to find what was in the best interest for each generation from his text. That's how he wrote it. That's the beauty of it. And people are falling too much to oral tradition was in their communities and confusing it with biblical Talmudic, you know, Quranic truths.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I was just thinking about that this morning, listening to someone talk about, what is it called?

Ayurvedic astrology, the India based astrology. And he had like complete faith in it and lived by it and like clearly understood nothing about it and could argue nothing from like an informed understanding of it. And it was just very clear that he had heard several [01:06:00] people talking about it in a way that was just so compelling to him.

And I think a lot of it comes down to delivery. You know, they were, they were you know, probably attractive and magnetic enough where he just kind of listened to them say complete nonsense and was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he would just start repeating them. And I feel like the same goes for many religions where.

Preachers and various church leaders are saying things in a very charismatic way that's very compelling. And people are like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Because also that's kind of how we're built. Like we're not built to read original text and come to our own conclusions because people who do that, do that, get kicked out of the tribe and die alone in the tundra.

Well,

Malcolm: no, it's very interesting that you point this out because this has been a similar to an experience that I've kept having, which is when I'm trying to understand the Abrahamic faith to better understand God's word. I both read the texts and I talk with people who are conservative practitioners and preachers within their communities, whether domain experts, [01:07:00] whether this is within the Islamic community or the Jewish community.

And regularly I am finding honestly, very little, like useful, meaningful, impactful information to me from the domain experts. And yet I am finding. Just this enormous trove of it was in the actual texts themselves. You know, when I'm going through the Talmud, I'm like, Oh my God, like this, so right on.

What's interesting to me

Simone Collins: too, is there are some domain experts I can count to who, when you talk with them about the texts, like they actually know, like they, it's clear that they have actually gone to those texts personally and thought logically about them in isolation without someone guiding them through everyone else is more like, Oh no, we don't ask these questions or

Malcolm: they're basically like, don't point out that that text contrasts with our way of life.

And it's again, I'm not pointing out anyone specific here. Like we all might say, I'm specifically pointing out you know, I've had this from Jews. I've had this from Muslims. I've had this from Christians. It's the

Simone Collins: two people that I'm thinking of who actually. Have gone through the text and thought logically about it are, are

Malcolm: Jewish.

Yeah. I mean, [01:08:00] but, but it's, it's something that I keep having with these various communities and what it represents to me, and this is something we talked about in our last track, is the fall of the Abrahamic faced from the periods of pure revelation that they received. Mm. Where they were given. And they followed it for a while.

And then they, they fell away from it and they begin to become more like a subculture. And and, and so not to overpick on these, let's pick on Christians for a bit, like iconoclasm, like to me, like so many Christian groups are just like. clearly into iconoclasm in ways that was very explicitly prohibited.

And I, and, and it's well, why, why at, you know, the second council of Nicene, did you say that it was okay to have images of God? And the answer is basically, well, it's popular within our communities and we don't want to like hurt the feelings of these people who think it's popular, you know, like they, they like doing this.

They like creating these graven images. And. Um, and, and, and they do it to affirm their love of God, you know, and we take the perspective as we're like, no, like the [01:09:00] Bible specifically said, if they think that this is bringing them closer to an entity, that entity is not God. It may feel like God, but that's the way the basilisk works.

That's the way the deceiver works. But what's interesting for us is we feel that that isn't. So in a way, if you're getting closer to the devil, you are getting closer to God. Just the side of himself he warned you about. You don't want to see me when I'm which is an interesting sort of framing here.

So we don't take this as, as, as strongly as some other things. But in future videos, we will go to things that I think I read in these other texts that have much more direct contradiction with the existing lifestyles of individuals within the Abrahamic faith, which has led me to sort of increasingly turn away from the communities as they exist now and try to find truths in the text itself.

And again, I'm just saying I'm not somebody out here who's thinking I hear God talk to me or something like that or giving me unique understanding. I think I, if I'm unique, it's only in. I'm coming at this [01:10:00] from starting as an atheist perspective, I don't particularly care what people think about me, and I don't care about being accepted within any of these existing communities, and I'm just trying to read what these texts actually say, with a modern understanding of reality, and trying to make them make basic level sense to me, in terms of being like nonsensical stories.

Simone Collins: Going back to the basilisk, is it almost like more sinful to Be weak and not indulge in sin. It's I'm kind of thinking like, you know, we, when we set mousetraps in our home, because sometimes we get mice, they crawl in from the fields and our house is very porous, we want the mice to go to the mousetraps.

I'm very pleased when the mice go to the mousetraps. And is that not you know, a good human going to the basilisk is yeah. No,

Malcolm: I agree. That's what it is. We should not be going around disarming mousetraps that God set around.

Simone Collins: Or, or warning mice about the mousetraps and being like, no, no, no, shoo, shoo, go away from the mousetrap.

But it

Malcolm: just seems. You can warn about [01:11:00] the mousetrap. You can go to the mice and say, hey, you know, if you had. You say, hey, if you had self control you're gonna die if you go that, but the nature of a mouse is that it doesn't have self control and it can't understand you. If I warned a mouse and it understood me, and it then had the self control to not go to the mousetrap, that is a mouse I don't want dead.

That

Simone Collins: is a remarkable mouse. Really? Because then we're gonna have a lot of trouble with vermin chewing through it. Bags of flour and rice.

Malcolm: No, no, but these then would be the types of mice that don't do that. Because this is a, a sentient mouse that I am able to communicate with in the English language.

That's a remarkable thing, Simone. What I'm saying is, is, is it just, and I, and maybe that's the way God feels about humanity. The vast majority of us are destined for the mousetraps he spent, he, he, he set up. And he, he finds it remarkable when some of us are able to understand the words that he wrote and scattered around our planet.

Made them available for all of us little mice to him. I mean, that's what we are to him. And he goes, well, ain't that [01:12:00] a darn thing. It seems to be able to understand at some base level that I'm warning it against going into the mousetrap. That means one day it has potential. But I mean, we are still mice, you know, in, in that, that is over exaggerating our, our position in comparison.

You know what I mean? But I actually really love that analogy there.

Simone Collins: Well, then we will not stretch it further by going into Ratatouille. Let's go on. What's the next

Malcolm: passage? Thus to us, fertility collapse is not a tragedy, but an opportunity. It is the great tempter, the basilisk, clearing the earth of the indolent masses who have allowed themselves to succumb to temptation.

As those without discipline and mental fortitude have no place in the world that is to come. The crises our species is facing and that lay ahead of us are not capricious mistakes but absolutely necessary for us to pass through if humanity is to take our destined place in the history of reality. If men were to take to the stars without this necessary culling, [01:13:00] I can hardly imagine the dark horror that would result.

The pronatalist movement couldn't stop fertility collapse, even if it wanted to. Our place is merely to act as a beacon for those who have the will and the fortitude to be part of the community that will have a role to play in humanity's manifest destiny and in the coming trial. So that's it. That's all.

Just sort of a reframing there, but I'm always glad to talk through these with you because you also point out things and like things, misunderstandings that I wouldn't expect of people. Like when I'm talking about human diversity, that you were so myopically focused on human diversity today, instead of understanding the point I'm making and that we need to, before we leave the planet, before

Simone Collins: we can call it human, maybe you need to read jigger the words.

Cause if you call it human diversity, I

Malcolm: call it the Covenant of the Sons of Man. Oh, okay. The Sons of Man is all of the descendants, whether it's of mankind's labor, intellect, or

Simone Collins: Yeah, you need to be a little bit more [01:14:00] explicit that this involves highly different species. Because you're talking about post speciation man plus other entities that we've brought into existence, like AI.

So, I would, but, I mean, I'll go through and edit these.

Malcolm: Someday. Someday. Well, I might publish them before they're edited, but I like that aspect as well because then you'll see feedback and we can create something that draws from the wisdom of the community and not just ourselves. And

Simone Collins: the community can come up with a really, really good name.

Malcolm: Well, I mean, I, I appreciate this, this element that what we're trying to do is democratize radical interpretations of Abrahamic scripture. And That's just like really different than what I've seen done before, where typically you have some leader who has some sort of special access to things where all we're doing is laying out some set of rules where we're like, okay, well, it seems really weird that like these Abrahamic groups did really well after they [01:15:00] received the revelation in terms of this type of productivity.

What can we learn from God's will from that? What kind of, and another area where I think we can learn God's will is when an Abrahamic group has fallen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And their practices are really different from some commandment or wisdom that was given to them. To me, that means that that wisdom must be uniquely important to us, or must be a unique message from God.

Because how could that wisdom have stayed hidden like that? How could that wisdom, how, how could he have explicitly laid out a certain set of wisdom so loudly, so explicitly and then had a group ignore it? If they did, if they didn't expunge it from the records, basically after ignoring it, right? What that means is God left it there for somebody else, somebody in the future, us, potentially, to find and learn from in trying to create the next cyclical iteration of this set of traditions that is more optimized for, you know, thinking long term about humanity, thinking long term about, well, [01:16:00] if we And this is actually a really interesting phenomenon that keeps happening to me.

And I'll sit there and logically think, okay, if we're going to go to the stars or something like that, right. And I need to create a system of rules or a system of ways of acting. And this will come up much more in future tracks. What would be the best thing to tell people to do? And then I'll be like, okay let's say this like X or Y or something like that.

Then I'll go to the Koran and I'll go to the Bible and I'll go to the Talmud and like remarkably, they'll be like. Specific packet passages that seem directly to address and affirm the, the intuition that I had was like, Oh, I think that this is the best intuition for the best future of our species.

Well, then

Simone Collins: what counter will you give to the inevitable viewer who says, welcome to the confirmation bias that thousands, if not millions of. Previous religious text readers have developed and this is exactly why the catholic church says let me interpret this for you because otherwise people will [01:17:00] find because Frankly, you can kind of find a passage that supports pretty much anything in most religious texts What's your answer to that?

Malcolm: You could say that this is I mean so you've got to again view our religious system from the perspective of both an atheist and a Theological person, right? The theological person isn't going to be saying that as much because then you just throw it back at them. What about your confirmation bias that supports your community's beliefs, right?

You know, well, yeah,

Simone Collins: but then like a Catholic would be like, well, this is exactly why we have the structures that we have and blah,

Malcolm: blah, blah. Right. Well, and then I'd say, yeah, except the structures you have are clearly affirming anti biblical concepts like iconoclasm, which I could, we go deep into iconoclasm in another tract.

So I'm not going to go further into it now. But I'd be like, so clearly these systems aren't working. But to the other group, suppose it's the atheist who comes to me and says this, right? You know, they're like, I'm like, what's your problem? Seriously, think about what we're doing here. Suppose it really is all just using the.

older traditions to justify a reasonable set of [01:18:00] standards for humanity interacting with each other that maintains some level of human pluralism and maintains the safety of our descendants in the stars and that, listen, and that. Captures the spirit of Western culture, Western, but what

Simone Collins: you're saying here is basically, it doesn't matter because I've already come to a conclusion based on genuine merit by my standards, which is logic and our understanding of science to the to date and therefore who cares if it's confirmation bias when I'm really just making it easier for people who want that religious

Malcolm: endorsement. But, but more than that, I'm also saying, look, if you just do things secularly, it doesn't work. We've already seen that, right? Sure. So to have a religious system that's endorsing this secular perspective, but it's also highly open to being updated, which we'll talk about in a future track, how that worked.

You don't have the same downsides, but in addition to that It captures this spirit of our history. I do not like the idea of casting off. Even if I was approaching this from a totally secular perspective of [01:19:00] casting off the Western canon. I think that feeling a continuity with your ancestors.

And seeing it as your duty to play your iterative role in evolving that continuity and seeing that continuity is evolving throughout history accurately. This is one thing that really bothers me as somebody who really likes studying religious history. As recently I've been talking to some people of different Abrahamic faiths and they go, my faith has not evolved that much.

It has not changed that much in its practices. And just like that, you could be a dumb believer yet have so little knowledge of the history of your tradition because all three of the Abrahamic traditions, the main ones have had enormous changes. And I should point out, this is another thing we haven't gotten to, but we also think that the raw Astrianism is likely a true revelation from God.

It just shares way too much in common with the other true revelations, strong condemnation of iconoclasm, monotheism, similar pantheonic structure. similar numerical like importances. Like it's, it, it seems pretty clear to me. I think in society we've become over focused on just this idea of Abrahamism.

And, and I'm [01:20:00] open to other systems being shown to be true systems from God. And we'll talk about how we look at another thing that like, we haven't mentioned yet. A lot of people are like, why don't you talk about Eastern systems? Why don't you talk about like this?

And we're like, if we haven't talked about your group. And I'm saying this with the context that we make fun of Orthodox people for bedazzling their dead, and we we meme on Catholics all the time. And we've called Hasidic Jews, basically, witches on various episodes. These are groups that I have a great deal of affinity for, and I think are great direct revelations from God.

The groups that we haven't talked about, it's because what we would have to say about them would be dramatically more contentious and negative. And I don't see the purpose in, in doing that, or at least just yet. But that's something that we will probably get to eventually in another tract and that groups that we are ribbing on should know that we have theological differences with you, but a large reason that [01:21:00] we have those is, or the large reason we're airing those is because they're very.

We have a level of admiration for your community and your culture. And we think that there's a level of truth that you also follow. And that in general, you know, as we say with conversions in our other show, if somebody was going to leave your community, it would be our job to push them back to it, because they are following a true revelation of God.

And that where we should recruit is among the atheists, is among the skeptics and among the people who just cannot stay within their existing tradition. Anyway, and of course, people of. enormous intellectual talent or industry. But that is just our arrogance, right? It's well, if we actually believe what we're saying, which I do to an extent, I mean, do you believe like you're here saying okay, you're, you, Malcolm are just saying, yeah, why are you questioning if it's, what's in the best interest of our species anyway?

But you have a, I mean, do you, do you not like me saying that?

Simone Collins: Saying what exactly?

Malcolm: Well, so A lot of people would hear somebody saying, well, yeah, I don't really care about these kinds of challenges because logically [01:22:00] this is what kinds of challenges. Challenges like saying, okay, you're an individual who's saying, logically, you think this is the best interest of our species.

And then another individual would say, well, isn't this just confirmation bias? And then I'm like, well, why? No, no, no. I

Simone Collins: don't. I have no problem

Malcolm: with that. What I'm asking you is,

Simone Collins: I mean, the Catholics did that in a sense when they approached different cultures. And said, Oh, we're like, no, totally. Look, our religion's like your religion.

That, that God that you worship is, is this Saint. It's, it's the Virgin Mary. It's the same person.

Malcolm: That's what you're doing. Now they have cultists worshiping like a literal demon in South America that I've talked about on other episodes. The cult of Santa Muerte to me, it's the closest thing to devil worship we have in the world today.

Real devil

Simone Collins: worship. You see my point. So yes, no, I have no trouble from that perspective. I thought you were trying to say that you were, you were trying to find like uncontrovertible true. confirmation that the Bible supports exactly

Malcolm: the argument. I believe I have more confirmation I've seen for this system than I've seen for any other system I've [01:23:00] looked into.

Well, no, no, no. And

Simone Collins: that's, again, that's the thing I really like is that when we go back to certain passages of the Bible with this added layer that you present. A lot of stuff makes more sense to me than it did when I read the Bible in isolation, especially when I read the Bible in concert with the cultural baggage and expectations that I came in with.

And that's when I get super confused. Cause I'm like, but I thought Christians believe this and everyone says that this is what Christianity is all about. And then the Bible seems totally different. But anyway, this has been fun to talk about. And I bet our next conversation will be very interesting as

Malcolm: well.

I love you a great deal Simone. Have a good one.

Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm.

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