Tract 9: A God of the Gaps Is a God of Ignorance

Uncovering the Hidden Technological Messages in the Bible In this deeply thought-provoking episode, we dive into one of our most controversial track series yet, exploring the intersections of religious beliefs, modern science, and physics. We challenge traditional interpretations of the afterlife as presented in the Bible and propose a compelling re-interpretation aligned with a scientific understanding of reality. We delve into various biblical texts, discussing concepts such as soul, heaven, and hell, and how they may actually describe a future technological scenario where humanity's consciousness is preserved and raised. We address the paradigm shifts this interpretation brings, consider the implications for the problem of suffering, and explore how these ideas harmonize with scientific principles. This episode promises to be a paradigm shift, offering a fresh perspective on how religion can relate to science, and how the Bible may have predicted advanced technological concepts thousands of years ago.

Note: First we have a transcript made by notepad (to hopefully be more accurate) then the original write up (which was changed significantly in the reading). Some day I will create a master version of all these but as you see with this one I am already updating significant past beliefs. If you are looking for specific ancient Hebrew or Greek words I mispronounced go there.

Hello, it's Simone. Today is going to be one of our controversial track series where we talk about our religious beliefs. If you're new to the channel, that's why the gear was read this time. It is warning you this is going to be extremely controversial interpretations, maybe the most controversial of all of the track series we have done. Anything you want to say that we would add on to the beginning of this now that you've seen the whole thing?

Yeah, having having spent the vast majority of my life thinking the concept of an afterlife was both ridiculous and impractical, also not very plausible based on all the descriptions of it, you've just presented to me something that actually seems compelling, but also based in our current understanding of of physics and science. Definitely a paradigm shift for me. So, I'm glad you just a paradigm shift for me as well. And that's why I made it so long to make sure I left no argument untouched.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, who knows, right? Our whole thing is if we're wrong, we want someone to be right. And that's why we're glad so many people disagree with us. But I think you're really on to something here. And I have fewer qualms with your arguments than I do with the typical arguments of most other religious traditions. Well, all other religious traditions that I've been introduced to and I've read about. these texts I've reviewed. So,

well, we'll see. Is this going to be my Rubyard take, Simone? My 10-hour video.

I mean, everyone has a moment

because in this one, we are going to go over what the I believe the Bible says happens to people after they die. What the Bible says about the human soul. And in both of these cases, it is not what the mainstream Christians would argue, which I think comes down from beliefs around like Allesium and and is much closer to Greek conceptions of what happens after death than original Christians or I think correct Christian conceptions or Jewish conceptions where the modern Christians believe that like you immediately go to heaven when you die which is a supernatural plane which actually creates a bunch of logical problems for other lines in the text and people can be like no that definitely happens there's definitely a heaven or hell like doesn't the Bible talk about like Gehenna and it's like well gehenna was a place like we know where it was and the way it's described in the Bible makes it pretty clear in those passages it is talking about a place or doesn't the Bible talk about humans having spirits or souls and I'm like actually if you go to the original words being used it's there it's usually saying something else like it's talking about breath or being alive like the life left his body not the spirit left his body um or you can be like but what about Lazarus what about Lazarus there was the time when Jesus talked about hell right in that one parable and it goes well unfortunately and we'll get into this in a lot more detail. The word used in the Lazarus parable was not show the Jewish hell. It was literally Hades, which creates a universe problem because that that unfortunately if he didn't mean that as a parable to get his story across to somebody with a Greek world view, it means that he has canonizing.

We're crossing the cannons. We're It's like now there's suddenly Gandalf is talking to Darth Vader and it's getting a little bit awkward. What's happening?

Please allow me to finish this because it's going to seemed like a bit of a jump. We see Thanos who was the villain teased at the end of the first Avengers movie. If he holds the reality gem, that means he can jump from different realities. This will be our link from to the Marvel universe from the Star Wars universe.

Is this an audience or a mosaic? Hey, how you doing? Looking good. Nice dress.

So, Hades, you finally made it. How are things in the underworld?

Well, they're just fine. You know, a little dark, a little gloomy, and as always, hey, full of dead people.

And there's a reason he didn't use the Jewish conception of hell to change the same parable. Okay,

so the point of the parable is if somebody was dead and they came back to life and said you should follow the rules that are set out by the old teachers, even then a person wouldn't believe them. The problem is if he framed this story with a traditional Jewish understanding of hell, the dead person would neither be conscious or in pain. So they would have no motivation to go back and warn their family. So he needed to use another culture's conception of hell to create this story.

Yeah. The plot can't work with the Jewish hell. I see.

Yeah. So it seems pretty clear that that wasn't what was intended by that, but we'll go into that in a lot more detail when you consider other parts that explicitly say that this stuff didn't exist, which are more commonly ignored.

Do you see Swiper?

Where this is?

Now, I went over a bit of this with you going into all this. Simone, what was your thoughts on this as I went into it with you?

Well, honestly, the problem is you explain all this to me and everything just makes sense. And I'm like, well, yeah, of course.

Because I didn't come into this with anything more than a pop culture understanding of Christianity, which never made sense. And yeah, also an atheist's understanding of Christianity, which I think is divorced from what most Christians attending church are sort of led to believe that like, oh, Christians believe that you go to heaven after you die. Kind of like whatever in the Simpsons, you know.

Yeah. And then it's like, but also, don't Christians believe that we're all brought back to life in a future kingdom? Like, why are we all brought back to life if heaven's already operational?

Yeah. And there, you know, and then I I hear about hell and and, you know, there's all these cartoon devils and people talking about hell and threatening hell and I I read the Divine Comedy and then I read the Bible and I'm like, where where is hell? I'm looking for hell. Where is hell? And it's not showing up and I'm getting really confused. So, when you come come at me and you explain things this way, my Oh, of course. Right. That now it makes sense. Of of course.

More than any of the tracks we've done so far, writing this one has for me really deepened my faith in this worldview because it harmonizes so well with a scientific understanding of reality. And it has given me a different perception on how religion can relate to science in a way that has made me rethink a lot of fundamental things I thought I knew about Christianity. M

which it turns out were middle-ag myths that were staple gunned into Christianity.

Yeah.

Yeah. It it to me it almost feels irresponsible that these myths have been per perpetuated for as long as they have been. How have people let this fly when it's almost like continuing to practice bloodletting and the application of leeches well past the development of the scientific method and our understanding that there's no evidence based support for it. It's so weird because you can go back to the Bible and I mean at least the clergy in in the height of the Catholic Church could reference doctrine and

well guys actually hell heaven it's

well and if you look at biblical scholars they'll be like yeah it does seem true that like ancient Jews didn't believe in a heaven or hell as we understand it. They believed that there was a what they would have called heaven is the world to come which is when everyone's raised from the dead which is a completely different concept and and that heaven was, I guess, in hell were revealed with Jesus. I guess you could say, but why would they be revealed with Jesus? And why did they just happen to not be recorded that they were revealed by Jesus? And why did they just happen to be remarkably close to the understandings of the afterlife that the dominant culture that this was spreading by Roman culture would have had, i.e. Tartarus and Allesium. So, we'll get to all that, but it makes a lot more sense when you drop the Tartarus and allesium heaven and heaven actually and and what the Bible describes doesn't just correlate with science. It's almost the most logical way you could view reality.

One thing we've heard from some religious leaders is that they agree with a lot of what you're saying and they're like, "Yeah, that's that's what most people who actually deeply study religion have concluded as well. It's just that we don't talk with the public about that because

they can't handle it." And

do you think that that's what's going on here? Do you think that that's why these views are not pervasive and mainstream despite the fact that if you really do a close reading of texts that this is what you're probably going to conclude.

Yeah, it is really interesting. Is it Yeah. Like super like Jewish history nerds, Christian history nerds who are like really into their faith, they typically don't bristle that much at what we say. They're like, "Oh, yeah, a lot of this stuff makes

Yeah. And Mormons, too." Yeah. Like several different religions. That's that's a crazy thing.

And it's the casual sort of Well, because there's sort of two religions that are superimposed. And we'll get into this, which one I'd call Sunday school Christianity. And then there's real Christianity, which is what's in the Bible. And Sunday school Christianity. I think people can be Sunday school Christians and have an incredible amount of conviction that they know what they're talking about when they are reading things that in some cases look like they may have been deliberately misinterpreted when you go back to the original words. We'll get into a few cases of that. And so they just haven't gone through like every word in important passages that edify like huge parts of their world perspective. So, in other words, it's kind of like pop science versus academic research science.

Yes. And then there's the urban monoculture person who's like trust the science and you're like, well, you actually go to the scientists like that all those scientists are wrong, they're not real. It's like, well, I know a lot of scientists and most of them not real.

So, anyway, let's dig into this.

Let's this track is called a god of the gas is a god of ignorance. Supernatural is a word that individuals use to denote things that can't be reliably measured, tested, or have predictable effects upon reality. They will claim that this makes these things above the quote unquote real things. But I think this framing is easily seen through as coke. Many used to believe heaven was a place in the stars. But then science got better and we could see the solar system. So something that was a real place became a supernatural one. Supernatural is all the stuff science and technology pushed off the table of reality. This is where the god of the gaps comes from. Science move in and explain things like how we make decisions, how love is created, and as it encroaches, the purview of the soul retreats further and further. When instead what we should be saying is the thing the Bible describes as human sentience, life, our emotions, we understand that thing now. That thing is the brain and not an incaporeal soul. But sure, Clearly admitting this would cause problems with the Bible, right? There is no way somebody writing between the fifth and 2nd century CE would have known that unless they had divine guidance. Well, let's turn to Ecclesiastes. Quote, and this this absolutely shocked me when I read it. As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals. The same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so does the other. All have the same breath. Now, this is a word used for souls in many other parts of the Bible.

Ah,

humans have no advantage over animals. I I love how you translates to breath there, but then like later in the same vers translate to spirit.

H

everything is meaningless. All go to the same place. All come from dust and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upwards if the spirit of the animal goes down into earth. So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them? So let's break down what's saying here. First, as for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. That's very clear. Okay. Here it is stating in no uncertain terms that man does not have a soul that is different from the souls of animals. But not just that, God tests us to make sure that we know that and to deny that it's a sin because that's to deny God's will. Okay, sure. But we go to heaven after death, right? Then quote, "Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals. The same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same spirit, breath, whatever word you want to use here. Humans have no advantage over the animals. End quote. Yes, it's super clear on that point. Now, the next line is really interesting and it is mistransated in the version I am using. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place. All come from dust and to dust all return. End quote. Now, the word that is translated here as a meaningless can be translated as meaningless, but it also means transient or eancent which is much better in context which means that what is really being said here is your existence as a human is a fleeting one and when you die you become dirt okay but what if you disagree what if you think you know more than god well a convention that's established here in the text is to say who knows x like because it says this right afterwards for who can bring them to see what will happen after them end quote to point out some type of information that God knows and man does not. So whenever it says who knows X, it's saying God knows X. Okay. So then if you after reading that first part are like no man definitely goes up to heaven and animals definitely go down below then it says quote who knows if the human spirit rises upwards and if the spirit of the animal goes down to earth end quote. Basically predicting this kind of heresy and telling the person committing it to knock it off, pointing out that they don't know as much as God does. So, it gives you the answer up front. The same thing happens to you that happens to animals. You have the same type of soul as animals. God specifically is testing to make sure you know this to deny this as a sin. And then it says, "Do you think you know more than God human? Who would know this? I God would know this." Then it goes on into what can only be thought of as the perfect technopuritan mantra, further edifying our beliefs. Quote, "So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them end quote. As we have pointed out, your emotional state and relation to things like work is fundamentally under your control and to indulge in a negative emotional state is a sin. Approach work was a plum. This tract will go into the Sunday schoolification of the idea of a soul that is separate from our brains and bodies and the concept of heaven. The Bible is extremely clear as we will be going over your soul is not separate from your brain. And after you die, if you serve God well, you are raised again with a different type of body at some point in the future. Heaven and hell, as they are taught in public schools, there is the heaven, the world to come. They are not Christian or Jewish conceptions, but pagan Greek conceptions, which are stapled onto Christianity by people who wanted to believe the ancient Greek scholars were better than divine revelation. But also, this is kind of obvious when you think about what Sunday school Christians as we will call them believe. So ancient Jews and what is written in the Bible say that when you die in the future your body is resurrected but somehow different. Ancient Greeks believed that what happened when you died is if you were favored by the gods your soul was taken to Alisium and if not it was taken to Tartarus. Well early Christians attempted to staple these two beliefs together and ended up creating a rather similar junction. In this conjunction, we have both people going to either heaven or hell, but then also everyone comes back to life with different bodies. Like, what? So, one day, God just shuts down heaven and reopens on earth. It's like he goes around telling all the souls in heaven. And he's like, "Come on, guys. It's moving day." Small amount of self-reflection. It's fairly obvious this belief is a childish piecing together of two views about the afterlife. One Christian/Jewish and one pagan. It does not even make Since why God would do this? If all the people he plans to res resurrect are already in heaven or will soon die and go to heaven. Is their new revised state in any way significantly better than being in heaven? If it is, then heaven is not heaven. And if it isn't, then what's the point of it? So if it is true that this is like a significantly better existence or fuller existence than heaven, then what heaven is it's just the waiting room until the real afterlife can be built. This see strictly worse than just dying and then waking up in the sparkling of an eye or in a moment from your perception. Waking up with no perception of time having passed in the kingdom of heaven or in the kingdom of God. Right.

Right. Yeah.

And what about the experience of being in this state? If souls experienced time in this intermediate state, some people would have to wait thousands of years while others would wait only moments before resurrection. This creates an inequality in the experience that's never mentioned inript. If souls don't experience time in this state, which many people say because they go like when you're with God, it's like time passes really quickly, then it's functionally identical to being immediately resurrected from the perspective of the deceased. So why did he make the secondary heaven?

Is this what happens when you die?

This is what happens when you die. That is what happens when he dies. And that is what happens when they die. It's all very personal.

Why would God create an elaborate intermediate state only to later resurrect everyone in bodies? What theological purpose to serve. Why isn't this ex crucial cosmological feature explicitly described in scripture? And it's all silly anyway because prophecies in the Bible are almost exclusively, if not exclusively, temporal in nature, describing things that happen in the future, not that are currently happening in other plains of reality or far away places. That would make this totally inconsistent with the way the rest of the Bible works. And now, if I was to explain these problems differently. The traditional supernatural interpretation has to reconcile two seemingly contradictory biblical concepts. The idea that believers are quote immediately present with the Lord in quote upon death to Corinthians 5:8. And the conception of a bodily resurrection at the end of time, 1 Corinthians 15. This creates problems because if souls are already with God in heaven, why is bodily a resurrection necessary? Why would souls need to quote unquote come back to

Yeah, that always struck me as so weird. Like creepy zombieish, you know, like we

those are gone. Like let's let it go.

Yeah.

What happens to the experience of time for souls in this intermediate state? The technological interpretation resolves these tensions by recognizing that from different reference frames, both can simultaneously be true without contradiction. From a dying person's perspective, death occurs. The next conscious experience they have is resurrection in a new form. This is not perceived as a gap or a waiting period. This matches Paul's description of being quote changed in the twinkling of an eye end quote. From God's perspective, existing outside normal temporal constraints, the person's consciousness/information can be preserved at the moment of death. This information can be used to reconstruct them at a new form at any point. No intermediate quote unquote holding area or waiting room is needed. The consciousness is effectively quote unquote with God immediately while being resurrected quote at the last day. End quote. The interpretation eliminates the need for complex theological explanations of intermediate state, aligns with biblical descriptions of death as quote unquote sleep, matches the Jewish understanding of resurrection without requiring Greek concepts of immaterial souls, better explains why the Bible never describes the details of this intermediate state, which is a huge effing problem if it exists, resolves the apparent contradiction between the immediate presence with God and the future bodily resurrection. It is similar to how someone under general anesthesia has no perception of time passing. From their perspective, the operation is instantaneous, even though hours may pass in the external world. This technological reading allows both an immediate presence with God in a future resurrection to be true without requiring supernatural explanations or immediate states. All right, Simone, thoughts?

Now, it finally makes sense. So many things, the the contradictions are gone, you know, assuming we're not getting completely terrible translations.

Well, and no, later in this piece, the reason why this episode's going to be long is we're going to go over every single line in the Bible that could be used to argue that there isn't an immaterial that there is an immaterial soul or that you go to heaven or hell after death.

Crossing those tees and dotting those eyes. All right.

Oh, no. Every single one. Like when Jesus is like, "Oh, you know, you'll be in paradise with me today, my friend." Except paradise didn't have that meaning back then. Paradise had a different meaning back then. But we'll get to all of this. I'm going to be very very thorough in arguing this. The other thing about this is it makes not it doesn't just solve the biblical contradictions. It makes the Bible the most logical prediction of what's going to happen in the future in a really weird way that I hadn't realized till I was putting this together with our current understanding of the world.

This is why I find claims from Sunday school Christians that I am not a quote unquote real Christian because I believe what the Bible says and they believe what people authority told them the Bible says so laughable. God warned us he would test us so that we may know that we are not different from animals and they failed that test and worse they are bragging about it. Oh sorry for those who are new here. Hi we are technopuritans and we believe that God revealed in the Bible is the entity that mankind eventually becomes millions of years in the future and that the Bible is actually pretty clear about this. Now before Before we get too deep into scripture to the skeptics who want to say, "Well, that's all still pretty far-fetched, why and how would a future all powerful entity descended from us raise people from the dead?" I would counter that if you actually think through it, such an entity would almost inevitably raise people from the dead. So, think about it. Millions of years from now, our descendants have transcended to become something both benevolent and nearly all powerful and with the ability to project itself backwards in time. It would feel for all the people who suffered, died, and sacrificed themselves for humanity for it, but also know that if it interfered too much with the timeline by removing suffering, it would negate itself and its ability to remove their suffering. So, what's really cool here, and we'll go into this more, is this also solves the problem of suffering, which is to say, why does God allow for suffering if God's an all powerful entity? So, what's the next best thing it could do? Well, it would be a near trivial effort for it to grab the consciousnesses of those it favored when they died, given it can project itself at any point in time in history and place them within a virtual environment that represents the perfect reward for them.

And I just want to hammer this home because when when Malcolm at first was like, yeah, the the thing is that God, which we see is the future of humanity in millions of years, it will just essentially digitize us and and give us a digital existence, an in afterlife. I was like, well, yeah, but what about Usi, you know, the guy who we found in ice who died so many so many so many thousands of years a Well, not thousand, I don't know how many years ago. A lot of years ago, a long time ago. And then, duh, they could just go back at any time and quickly sample and sequence everyone and get everything they need to absolutely take them at the moment at which they passed or an amalgam of their consciousness throughout their lifetime. and give them the ideal afterlife in a digital realm. It's I mean

I said I think that the entity relates to time differently than we do, relates to space differently than we do, probably relates to information differently than we do. And it has the ability to see and interact with us. Uh but it's it's it it's um ability to do that in radical ways is limited in that it would deny its own existence and then remove any of the good that it was creating. Um but that this did reveal the Bible to us. It did well, we'll get into this in just a second here. You only have to assume three things for this to be a likely scenario. The first is that time is in some way malleable, which we basically already know. I mean, time is malleable by gravity. Time can be projected backwards into through quantum events. The question is how macro can those be and how precise can those be? I would assume a super advanced entity. Pretty macro and pretty precise. The second question is does humanity keep surviving? keep improving into the future. And if we don't, then what's really the point of anything we're doing now? But if we assume that we're in a timeline that matters, where humanity does keep improving, well, then humanity is eventually going to become ultra ultra ultra advanced. And so an ultra advanced thing that can interact with time in that way, then the only final question is, is this ultra advanced iteration of humanity in any way compassionate? And I guess I would say that, well, we're in a bad timeline if it turns out it's not. So again, our actions don't really matter because they're going to culminate in some evil demonic super entity. But in scenarios where humanity does continue on a good path and does continue to improve, this happens in all of those scenarios of all humans being resurrected within virtual environments. But it's wild that the Bible could have predicted that. In fact, why would it not do this given both how easy and low effort it would be for such an entity? Moreover, does this not perfectly align with what God revealed he would do, raising us in immortal bodies that are somehow similar to but fundamentally different from the ones we have today. How else would you describe a virtual body to someone thousands of years ago?

Yeah of I mean of course you would be like yeah you you go to we'll call it heaven. It's like a garden. It's really nice.

It's really nice. That's what paradise meant was a walled garden by the way. And what's really interesting about this interpretation is it explains wording that we're going to go into that was used when they talk about heaven in these bodies because they're actually very clear that in in the words that are used. It's not clear when you translate it to English that these bodies are not spiritual supernatural bodies. They are not bodies made up of like just our soul. They are a different type of physical body that is somehow closer to air but not exactly air. And that's exactly the way I would describe a virtual body to somebody during this time period. But what got me is I was like it's inevit able that if an all powered entity comes to exist in the future that relates to time differently than us that it would create these it would say well I can't get rid of suffering but I can do the next best thing which is to give good entities that suffered for the future whatever world they would want as a virtual environment okay also consider and consider how that works with the problem of like suffering it can say well you know they might have suffered a lot in life but I can give them like infinitely more like a million times more like pleasant memories in the recreation in the the heaven or in the God's kingdom. But we'll get to this because it's really weird how much the language of the Bible when you go to do the original words that were translated described things like a simulation better than they describe the way that the medieval people translated them when they were trying to translate them into English and stuff like that, which is really fascinating.

Also consider how much more ethical this is. than the various Sunday school Christian and corrupted modern Jewish interpretations. So what? We die and then all of our souls have to hang out in a cosmic waiting room for thousands of years and the Bible never sought to explain how this thing worked or what it was like despite it being a super important part of reality's metaphysical metaphysical cosmology. Or the Bible literally explained the whole thing and people are willfully ignoring it. You die and then millions of years in the future you are brought back in a simulation but from your perspective no time would have passed, no waiting room. room. No, just snap dead back. Okay. Consider lines like, quote, "Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." End quote. Or for we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down, that is, when we die and leave this earthly body, we will have a house. in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands." End quote. Now, that's a really interesting term there. Did you know that it said that the eternal body is made by God

and not by human hands? Yeah.

Why Why would you assume that alternately the body might have been made by human hands? Humans don't make human bodies, do they?

I mean, yeah, they do.

No, they don't make it with their hands. They make it with their wounds.

Yeah.

They don't make it with their hands. That's because it's describing a body that is technological in nature. And it is saying that God creates this body, not human hands that fashion this body, which is aing weird thing to note. Not by human hands. Why is it saying not by human hands? Why would anybody assume if it was a spiritual or supernatural body that it was made with human hands? Right? I will note a plausible explanation from this comes if you go to the original text which is it is using a tint as a metaphor and then the translation I was using added the line about a body so it was clear that the tint was a metaphor for the body. The point still stands why is it specifying that it wasn't made with human hands when it could have used other words that would have worked better with the metaphor. But you could say well because the metaphor was about tent it makes sense to talk about it in terms of human hands. Okay. Now does that not sound a lot closer to the logical future I have predicted than the bizarre pagan fanfiction of Sunday school Christians. But it gets worse than that. As this insistence, I would argue, is the core reason for Christianity's current fragility and massive amount of deconversion. Rather than when the Bible seems to contradict science and what we know about the world, saying, "Well, I guess we just don't understand this part of the Bible yet," which is what I think we should be doing.

Yeah.

They instead divide the world into the supernatural where nothing can challenge their intuition. and the natural where science begins.

In a world of advanced science, if the only things that your religion covers are the supernatural, you have already lost. You're just setting a playing field where it's like encroaching on your territory more and more and more every day. I would note here that this really changes how we think about God in that we believe in a real God, not a supernatural God. Now, a lot of people who believe in a supernatural God would say, "No, quote, Supernatural means extranal, more than real. End quote. To which I would ask them to explore all of the other things they would use the word supernatural to talk about, whether it's vampires, werewolves, witches, magic, or poltergeist. A big dinosaur or a little dinosaur? Oh, just a skeleton, huh? Which way was it heading?

Wait a sec. What was chasing you in the park? The park bench was chasing you. I

What?

Wait a second.

Lieutenant, I think you better talk to this guy.

I'm busy here. It's some doc supervisor down at Pier 34.

What's the problem?

He says the Titanic just arrived.

You know as well as I do that those things are the purview of children's stories. You know as well as I do that those things are for the mind of a child or the enabled superstitious mind of the forest hermit. The quote unquote super prefix to supernatural is the same one we use with superstitious. From our perspective, those that pray to a supernatural god are praying to a fairy tale and a part of them knows it. They know that they don't believe in a real god. God is not a spiritual being, but a mechanistic one. Note here, the reason I say mechanistic rather than physical is because I somewhat doubt that God relates to physicality and time in the way that we do. And I would point out here that if God is real, like whatever god you believe in, if he's real, then the thing that he is using to manipulate our timeline is technology. It's not magic. Things that can manipulate physical space are forms of technology, or at least real ones are. Ones that we don't understand, we call magic, but presumably God understands it. So from his perspective, it's technology. We originally described our religion as secular Calvinism as I think this is the core religious innovation of Calvinism. Many of the attempts to refortify religion for our world of science do so by surrendering to science and redoubling on spiritualism and the idea of other worlds beyond this one. An alternate reality beyond our own. I am not denying that such a world exists, but if it does, it is for us to explore with science, physics, particle colliders, not look for in old books. If that world exists, it can be used for faster than life travel. Free power. It's not that science would not have a reason to probe it. It craves purity. It devours purity, it seems to me.

What the hell is this thing made out of?

All right, fine. I might have used a few unorthodox parts.

Just Tell me one.

An orphan.

Did you say an orphan?

Yeah, a little orphan boy.

It's powered by a forsaken child.

Might be kind of. I mean, I didn't use the whole thing.

Instead of retreating to the supernatural, we posit religion's purview is everything we do know. Our jobs, our daily lives, our history, industry, civilization, economics, physics. When you retreat from The real fortifications built out of supernatural spiritualism based on the world of superstition acts as a flimsy moral fortress and can easily be corrupted by the urban monoculture values like utilitarian ethics. As an aside here, this is why the churches fell first. When somebody tells me, why don't you just go back to normal Christianity? I point out to them that seven out of 10 of the closest churches to me are institutions which fly the colonizers flag, the corrupted fly pride flag, the very sign of urban monocultural conquest from their doors. And the same is true if you live near any city. The churches fell first. They fell before the companies. And anyone who is not asking why looking for the weakness that allowed this is running over the hill against the urban monocultures gatling gun imp placement. And they will be torn down just like the others. You're the idiot in the horror movie who is still nailing wooden planks over the windows after it has been confirmed that the call came from inside the house. You're just ensuring your own doom. The rot, the core rot of the urban monoculture uses is spiritualism. Instead of indulging in spiritual exploration as you would an orgy, what you need is spiritual fortification. Your spirit and will must be made hard as iron, reinforced and tempered. So before I go further, any thoughts?

Proceed.

So how does secular religion differentiate from theological religion. Theological religions are left with two choices as they relate to science. They can claim as their domain the things not yet explored by science or they can claim that science is wrong. This puts them in a very dangerous world where science powers like the very thing you're using to watch this. Instead of retreating at the encroachment of science, technopiritinism does the opposite. The realm of technopuritan truths is scientific truth. Instead of focusing on the things science does not fully understand yet, that is where we point scientists. The things science is yet to fully understand are the very things they should be most focused on studying. The realm of scientific uncertainty and ignorance is not some bastion we hide behind. We are on the other side with the scientists and the battering ram trying to break down those walls. And here I should know what I mean real scientists, not the urban culture, monoculture corrupted academics. What we believe is a direct inversion of the older systems. It is not the things that science has yet to explain that are for us to offer explanation, but those are the domain of science. We instead focus on imbuing what we do understand about our reality with meaning and creating a larger framework which navigates and stitches science and tradition into a unified reality. To understand what we mean by this, you can look at how we relate to the concept of non-material souls that can separate from our bodies. Someone might say, Do you believe in one? And I would say that's a question for scientists. I don't know whether one exists, but I think the evidence and the Bible right now would both suggest that one does not exist. And therefore, I assume one does not exist. Note, this does not mean a soul does not exist. A soul in a historic context was just our decisions, emotions, thought, perceptions, etc., which I'd see as an emergent property of our physical brain. And what I should do with that soul is I I study religion. I remember and and this is like suppose you know you go to a tribe and you're explaining wetness to them and you're like well actually the way water interacts with itself we understand that now it's like a bunch of molecules and they have like different uh polarity and that causes them to like bind and create this fluid that you call water. And they go, "Oh, so you you don't believe in wetness?" And I'm like, "No, no, no. I believe in wetness. I'm just saying that wetness is a other thing that we know how it works.

Yeah.

And they're like, "But that means you don't believe in wetness because wetness is no, I do believe in wetness. I do believe in a soul, but I just believe it's something that we understand." Okay. To an extent and we can come to understand it further. I remember in one of our past videos, someone was like, "How can God know you before you were conceived if you don't have a soul that exists before you were conceived?" Again, remember we think of God as an entity that exists outside our time and thus is omnipotent. And a God that doesn't exist outside of time is omnipotent, which is really weird that they would argue that he but anyway, knowing all things past, present, and future. We stand on the timeline, so everything is either in front of us, observable to us at that given moment, or behind us. God stands above it, looking down at it, so everything is observable to him in any given moment. This perspective is both biblically aligned given not only that we know from the dream of that God's kingdom is a time and not a place. But also throughout old Jewish scriptures, God's kingdom is called ha which translates to the world to come or the coming world. Now I bring us back to this line because you can see how silly the other interpretation looks when contrasted with ours. So when you have a line like I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb and you can either do what we have done and say ah that obviously means that either predestination is real and God can see the future. God exists outside time or our God is looking in the future back at us. Or like an effing crazy person, you can make up a waiting room where God is hanging out with all the souls of every potential human just to explain this one line. And yet nowhere else mentioned in the Bible does God feel the need to elucidate on such an important space. And it's even a silly space beyond that. It's like that Mormon weight room where like all of the kids waiting to be born are like hanging out.

Hi, I'm Todd

Richards. I know

we're in love. And um so we were wondering if it's possible if you could put us down in the same town,

right?

Or the same street.

At least at the same time, if possible.

How about the same family?

That would be great. Yeah.

No, no, no.

Why are you positing this entire additional supernatural realm? Catholics are by far the worst. This for example there will be a line in the Bible about praying for the dead and another about post death purification and instead of saying something like ah it's clearly talking about those people who will be raised in the future they invent an entire metaphysical realm never mentioned in the Bible purgatory and then because the moral issues that realm they just invented introduces like babies and those who haven't heard of Christianity they invent yet another metaphysical realm also never mentioned in the Bible limbo from our perspective Catholicism is just a crack ship fanfiction to try to combine Christianity and Roman paganism.

Yeah. The problem is adding in all this stuff almost to us reflects a fundamental lack of respect for the actual religion and and source material

because you don't need to add these things. It it It's elegant and beautiful by itself. Adding them suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the religion itself.

I I think yeah. Well, I think more than that, it suggests a fundamental disrespect for what's actually written in the Bible and an elevation of the Greek thinkers. As I know when I often get in debates with Catholic priests, I'll often go to like Aristotle and other Greek thinkers because to them and I respect this act. I I do respect this about Catholicism. I think we need to understand that the Greek thinkers had a of interesting ideas which helped develop and create Christianity and advance it beyond the Judaism of the past. However, I think the domain of ideas that they got super wrong was the supernatural ideas, their gods, their pantheons, Hades, Allesium, all of that that was the wrong part. Okay. And I think that they show a fundamental that they respect those thinkers for I guess you could almost call it their they sort of see the Jewish thinkers as like plebeium in comparison and those thinkers is more I guess you could say sort of like aristocratic or higher class and therefore it's okay to sort of poo poo what the Jews thought where this tradition was evolving out of for the more sophisticated ancient Greek thinkers

but I think God chose J God could have chosen the ancient Greeks as his chosen people and he did why and and this is one of the biggest questions and we get to this in another track why did God choose the Jews were like the Jews different genetically no were like the Jews like better than other people no were they uniquely powerful or situated or educated. No, they were definitely technologically and artistically behind the Greeks. So why did he choose them as his chosen people? It must be because of what they believed. Meaning that they had beliefs that were closer to true than the ancient Greeks had.

Mhm.

But we go into that more in other things. Okay. So now we need to go through all the parts in the Bible that could be used to argue that the Bible claims that the soul is separate from the human body or that heaven exists as a place separate from God's future kingdom. Okay,

here I would note I have undoubtedly made numerous mistakes whether it is in the word translation or in the interpretation of specific verses. Uh I am trying my best. If I made mistakes and you point them out, I'm likely going to do a separate one of these so that I can improve them. However, when judging the efficacy of the overall argument, I would ask you to not look for individual lines or word translations where I am wrong, but focus on the plurality of the argument. Ag, I love it when people are like, "Oh, here you made a mistake. Here you made a small mistake. I don't love it when people are like, "Here, you made a small mistake, therefore your entire argument is wrong." What you will quickly realize is that most of them are mistransations that translate a Jewish word meaning something else to soul or spirit.

So, let's go through the various words that are mistransated here.

And well, and on what grounds are you saying that the translation is incorrect?

Because these words are used in other parts of the Bible to mean other things. Like remember, I said that this one word was used to mean, oh, our breath is the same as animal breath and then later they'll use the same word to mean spirit and it's like wait why why didn't you say our our spirit is the same as the animal spirit that causes a bit of problems with your world belief the Jewish word ruhak which means spirit and wind or breath it can also mean air or direction it is often associated with a mood or emotional state then we have nahesh which is associated with appetite desire and life force used in contexts involving blood and vital essence can mean a living being or a person. Then you have shama related to the word for breathing. Oh, I think that was the word that was used there. It's it's used very um associated with divine inspiration or intellect. Then you have I literally meaning uh living or life. It can also mean animal or beast in some context. So if you're using that word to mean soul, it definitely means that animals have a soul. Then you have yikada which means singular or unique. It's related to the word Achad meaning won. Okay, so now you might be thinking, wait, did the Jews not have a word for soul? Ding, ding, ding. Tell them what they won. This is particularly evident in Genesis 2:7, which is often translated as, quote, "God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul." End quote. But the Hebrew literally says, quote, "Man became a living nephesh," quote, or a living person. suggesting humans don't have a soul. They are a living being. The crucial distinction here is that it doesn't say quote and God put a nephesh into man end quote or quote and man received a nephesh. Instead, the text literally says quote and the man became a living nephesh end quote. The construction suggests that being a nephesh is what you are, not something you have. The Bible could have had man be a living thing. and then God breathing sentience into him. But it didn't. He breathed life into him. This is reinforced by how the same phrase nephesh chahai is used elsewhere in Genesis to describe animals. For example, in Genesis 1:20 when describing sea creatures and birds and in Genesis 1:24 when describing land animals. They are also called nephesh chahai. This suggests that in the original Hebrew understanding that nephesh isn't a spiritual essence separate from the body. It's not unique to humans. Animals also nepheshai. It's more about being a complete living creature. It's something you are, not something you possess. The modern translation as quote unquote soul carries Greek philosophical implications that weren't present in the original Hebrew concept. They literally didn't have the concept. It's more accurate to understand this passage as saying, quote, "And the man became a living being/ creature. end quote. Similar to how we might say, quote, I am a person, end quote, rather than quote, I have personhood, end quote. And what's important to note here, and we'll get into this more, there are many other ways that this could have been worded. And it was intentionally not worded that way. It was worded to exclude the possibility that the soul and man are two different things, which is fascinating to me. Now, it's translated. Hear, you seem to be loving me getting passionate about this. It's fun.

But can you like this is wild to me. Like this is why I believe the Bible is divinely inspired because it aligns so much with modern technology even in the face of those who would corrupt it with false interpretations. It aligns with exactly what science has shown which shows to me remarkable foresight when other traditions of the time did believe in a soul that was different from the body.

Yeah.

And Jesus as an ancient Jew would have believed this as well. Quotes that people tried to use to argue Jesus believed in a soul separate from the body or a heaven that was not God's kingdom in the future are universally modern translations that ignore what Jesus actually said. Take something like Jesus telling the prisoner on the cross, quote, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." End quote. Okay, so today paradise is often used to talk about heaven or a place of endless pleasure because of that line. Yeah, we see paradise today as a place of in pleasure because people associated that line with Ellesia. But in both ancient Greek and the ancient Hebrew meaning of the word paradise. It just means a garden. Now to speak of a garden when you are dying, it would be much more sane to assume he meant a cycle of life and death or a place of endless pleasure. Because I'll tell you what I don't associate with gardens is a place of endless pleasure. But what I do associate with them is places of life and death. Now does it make more sense to assume that Jesus meant what he said or invent an entirely different metaphysical plane that the Bible doesn't appear to think is important enough to give us any information about. But how do I know he definitely wasn't talking about being with him in the Christian Sunday school understanding of heaven that very day? Well, because Jesus didn't rise for three more days from the Christian Sunday school understanding. So, their own understanding negates that inter retation of that inferring that he'd be there with him that very day. And you could also say, well, even if he did mean a piece of endless pleasure and he could have been from his perception, he'll be there with him that very day because again, they'll be raised instantaneously from that person's perception.

Yeah. As far as you're aware, it's very much like in those sci-fi books where you have a backup.

Yeah.

And then you get killed and then you just

get, you know, reinstalled into a new body or like in a game, you respawn. There's no there's no gap.

And I want to be clear here, even the Bible itself does not usually translate the word parades to mean a place of pleasure. In Neaheen 2:8, it refers to the king's forest. In Ecclesiastes 25:5, it's translated as orchards. In the Song of Solomon 4:13, it's described as or translated into a orchard of pomegranates. So, this itself is a weird way to translate the word paradise from the perspective of the Bible. Now, when I put this tract into an AI and ask what the weakest part of the argument was it initially said it was under the impression that the use of the word paradise to mean the way we think of it today was already pretty common around Jesus's time. So I asked it to find a single contemporary source that used it in that way and this is what it returned. The interesting thing is that a thorough examination of contemporary sources actually strengthens your argument rather than weakens it. The word paradise for adissios in Jesus's time period was primarily used to refer to literal gardens especially walder enclosed gardens. This comes from old Persian paradesia meaning walled enclosure. It's used this way in xenopon's writings about the Persian gardens. It appears in the Septuagent Greek Old Testament to describe the garden of Eden, specifically royal or noble gardens. Joseph uses it to describe the gardens of wealthy Judeans. Appears in documents describing herald's gardens used in descriptions of Persian rural parks. Agricultural and cultivated spaces. Administrative texts refer to paradise in the context of managed orchard used in property documents to distin cultivated from a wild land. What's particularly interesting is that I can't find a clear contemporary example of quote unquote paradise being used to mean a supernatural afterlife realm in the way modern Christianity uses it. That metaphorical extension to paradise to mean quote unquote heavenly realm appears to have developed later. Gotcha. Now, here's where it gets worse. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls, so for people who don't know, the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by a sect of Jews shortly before Jesus lived. Uh When paradise was mentioned, it is typically in the context of a historic garden of Eden, future restoration of a Eden-like conditions on earth or metaphors involving literal gardens. This historical context actually strengthens your argument that Jesus's use of the word paradise would have been understood in the terms of gardens and cycles of life and death rather than a supernatural realm. If this is shocking to you, I think this snippet from a Times article does a good job talking through how ancient Jews related to the concept of an afterlife. And I would remind you before reading this because it does not do a good job of explaining what Jesus and ancient Jews did believe was that God would raise righteous people from the dead at some point in the future in the kingdom of God. And the the place we would call heaven, eg when we say heaven doesn't exist. We don't we mean like the supernatural heaven doesn't exist. The real heaven does exist. I am quoting from the times here so that you can see that what I am saying is not some crazy screed, but the mainstream understanding of biblical scholars, just one that has been ignored by the Sunday school Christians who cling to their pagan witchcraftlike understanding like a child clinging to a blanket for security when it is the very thing corrupting their hearts. And so you might think that I'm being crazy or stretching here. So this is a quote from the Times in an article on what Jesus would have thought of heaven and hell.

And mind you, the Times, urban monoculture, I understand corruption. The point I'm making with this is these arguments are what like people who study the Bible for a living often believe about this stuff if they are not already bought in to a Christian or Jewish theological interpretation if they're the you know more like secular type of theologian. Neither Jesus nor the Hebrew Bible he interpreted endorse the view that departed souls go to a place of everlasting pleasure pain. Unlike most Greeks, ancient Jews traditionally did not believe the soul could exist at all. Apart from the body. On the contrary, for them, the soul was more like the quote unquote breath. The first human God created Adam began as a lump of clay. Then God breathed life into him. Genesis 2:7. Adam remained alive until he stopped breathing. Then it was dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Ancient Jews thought, so like breath in this context just means life. And then when you lose life, you decay.

Ancient Jews thought that was true of us all. When we stop breathing, our breath doesn't go anywhere. It just stops. So to the quote unquote soul doesn't continue on outside the body subject to postmortem, pleasure or plain.

It just doesn't exist any longer. This is accept and is raised again in the future.

The Hebrew Bible itself assumes that the dead are simply dead, that their bodies fly and there is no consciousness ever again. It is true that some poetic authors, for example, in plasms use the mysterious term shiel to describe a person's new location, but in most instances, shiol is simply a synonym. for tomb or grave. It is not a place where someone actually goes.

Now, here I note that there was shortly before Jesus's time some interpretations of Judaism that did begin to to contradict this article believe that Shaw was a place, but that was a fairly new idea and not all rabbis would have believed it this time. In traditional English versions, he occasionally does speak of quote unquote hell. For example, in the warnings in the sermon on the mount, anyone who calls another a fool or who allows their right eye to hand in sin will be cast into quote unquote hell. Matthew 5:22 2930. But these passages are not referring to quote unquote hell. The word Jesus uses here is gehenna. The term does not refer to a place of eternal torment, but to a notorious valley just outside the walls of Jerusalem, believed by many Jews at the time to be the most unholy, god-for-saken place on earth.

So just like a bad neighborhood.

Well, more like a trash dump where animal carcasses were born, but yes, like a very bad place. lived and was used as a yeah an active dump which you would have had carcasses the poor people would have been thrown in it etc.

So like bodies were thrown. Yeah.

Okay.

It was where according to the Old Testament ancient Israelites practiced child sacrifice to foreign gods. So it's treated as like corrupted or like we would think of it today as like poisoned or or whatever land. The God of Israel had condemned it as a forsaken place. In the ancient world, whether Greek, Roman, or Jewish, the worst punishment a person could experience after death was to be denied a decent burial. Jesus delivered this view into a repugnant scenario. Corpses of those exumed from the kingdom would be unceremoniously tossed into the most desecrated dumping ground on the planet. Jesus did not say the souls would be tortured there. They simply would not exist. And we're actually going to quote and go over this quote in more detail because it very explicitly says the worms live forever. Not the people live forever. It says the fire lives forever. It does not say the people live forever or are tortured forever. It says their bodies are thrown into a place where worms live forever and fire is burning forever. Basically permanent deletion.

Yes. Well, in which this place had fires going on and worms there all day and night because it was filled with carcasses and it was disgusting and horrible.

Probably burning trash. Maybe

trash. Well, a lot of trash was animal waste back then. So, rotting animal waste, maybe rotting horses.

Yeah.

Of like the ultra poor plague vists and stuff like that.

Jesus's stress on the absolute annihilation of sinners appears throughout his teachings. At one point, he says there are two gates that people pass through. Matthew 7:13:14. One is narrow and requires a difficult path, but leads to quote unquote life. Few go that way. The other is broad and easy and therefore commonly taken, but it leads to quote unquote destruction. It is an important word. The wrong path does not lead to torture. So too, Jesus says, "The future kingdom is like a fisherman who hauls a large net." Matthew 13:47:50. After sorting through the fish, he keeps the good ones and throws the others out. He doesn't torture them. They just die. Or the kingdom is like a person who gathers up the plants that have grown in his field. Matthew 13:36:43. He keeps the good grain, but tosses the weed into a fiery furnace. Those don't burn forever. They are consumed by fire and then are no more. Now, I will note it does appear that some unrighteous people may be raised from the future in God's kingdom to endure some sort of punishment, but we'll get to the lines that suggest that, but they're not the lines that people often think of. Still, other passages may be seen to suggest that Jesus believed in hell. Most notably, Jesus speaks of all nations coming for the last judgment. Matthew 25:31-46. Some are said to be sheep and others are goats. The good sheep are those who have helped those in need, the hungry, the sick, the poor, the foreigner. Those are welcomed into the kingdom, quote, prepared for you from the foundation of the world. End quote. The wicked goats, however, have refused to help those in need, so are sent to quote, "Eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." End quote. At first blush, this certainly sounds like the hell of popular imagination. But this summarizes his point. He explains the contrasting plates are quote unquote eternal life and quote unquote eternal punishment. They are not quote unquote eternal pleasure and quote unquote eternal pain.

Oh, so either it's it's existing or not existing. You're trying to argue

the opposite of life is death, not torture. So the punishment is annihilation. But why does it involve quote unquote eternal fire? Because the fire never goes out. The flames, not the torments, go on forever. And Why is a punishment called quote unquote eternal? Because it will never end. And note, I'm still reading from the Times article here. These people will be annihilated forever. That is not pleasant to think about, but it will not hurt once it is finished. But the torments of hell were not preached by either Jesus or his original Jewish followers. They emerged among later gentile converts who did not hold the Jewish notion of the future resurrection of the dead.

These later Christians came out of Greek culture and its belief that souls were immoral. mortal and would survive death. From at least the time of Socrates, many Greek thinkers had subscribed to the idea of the immortality of the soul even though the human body dies. And note here Jesus on many parts says the soul isn't immortal. It can be destroyed. He says this is punishment all the time. The human soul both will not and cannot die with the human body. Later Christians who came out of the gentile circles adopted this view for themselves and reasoned that if souls were built to last forever, their ultimate fates will do so as well. It will be either eternal bliss or eternal torment. So, you can see I'm not crazy here, Simone. Other people are arguing the same thing before I get into all of this, but I think

yeah, this is not you presenting some new and untested and unproven and unfounded view. This is you coming to the same conclusion that many people have. What I think is novel is the road that you have taken to it.

Well, no.

Most peop