Tract 4: Idolatry is Worse than Murder

Tract 4: Idolatry is Worse than Murder

God has revealed a succession of major prophets and every single time, whether it was Zohar, Moses, Jesus, or Mohamad, each one of them has reaffirmed just how much God hates idolatry and how seriously he takes it. With every iterative prophet God does not just reiterate this commandment but also further emphasizes it. It is almost as if God keeps reminding us, we drift from his message, and so he must remind us again but louder and more explicitly. Yet humanity's desire to tokenize God is so overwhelming even learned religiously minded individuals find themselves attempting to normalize it. 

Consider the Second Council of Nicaea, the last time the Orthodox Christians and the Catholics ever agreed on anything. God does not warn us against the things we have no inclination to do—he warns us against the things that we will find tempting. Images of Jesus were popular amongst the laity and many argued, having images of Jesus was just affirming your love for him. If God did not want us doing that he would have explicitly told us something like, “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”. 

This of course is a joke, God did gift man exactly those words so there was not the slightest room for misinterpretation and put this commandment literally right under the first commandment so there is no misunderstanding that he might have meant just don’t worship images/idols, (as that would be covered in the first commandment). To God this commandment came even above the commandment to not murder or steal yet the desire to create these images is so strong in man almost every abrahamic faction has fallen to it to some extent or another. 

I don’t point this out to rag on Orthodox and Catholic Christians but to point out how quickly even pious men break from God's rules around Idolatry. Of all God’s commandments it is the commandment pios individuals find hardest to keep and that is why it is so emphasized among all God's prophets. 

Why is idolatry so uniquely offensive to God? 

Why do humans struggle so much with this clear and repeated commandment from God? 

God delivers his revelation through a succession of prophets because man's capacity for understanding him increases over time. Bronze Age pastoralists did not have the capacity to spread the message of anything other than an anthropomorphised God combined with mystical hudu. However, we are not Bronze Age pastoralists and as such God expects us to reinterpret his revelations with pragmatic logic. God is not the type of petty entity capable of offense or jealousy—if he has given us a commandment he has given it to us for our own benefit—and only for our own benefit. 

He warns us against idolatry because it is in our own best interest. Wait what? How?

People make images of God because it allows them to feel closer to him or at least a representation of him. Why does God warn us against this? Because that image is not Him. A picture of Jesus is as far from God as a picture of a red hooven being with a goatee and praying to each is exactly equally harmful to the human soul. Whatever entity is represented in that image it is not God and as your heart moves closer to it, it moves further from God. All representations of God made by man that are assigned theological significance move man further from God. 

This truth reveals two things. First it is not the act of someone drawing God or one of his intermediaries that is being warned against—it is assigning theological significance to that drawing in an effort to get closer to God. The sin was that people believed these physical items made by men were a conduit through which they could interact with God. 

For this reason when a Muslim extremist smashes a statue of Buddah that no one has worshiped in a century, they commit an act of Sin by destroying a piece of cultural heritage that could inform us about the nature of man. At the same time if that same Muslim writes a line from the Quran as a piece of Art or bans the burning of Quran as a physical object of theological significance they are committing the highest form of idolatry. When a Muslim adorns a Mosque with gold believing that in some way an earthly metal has the capacity to “improve” the Mosque they are acting in direct rebellion to God's will. Every geometric pattern, every ounce of gold leaf, every physical book that was treated as sacred—instead of the words and concepts within it—shackles the soul of the idolater and drags it towards the deceiver. 

Once we understand why God warns us so frequently and explicitly about idolatry we learn there is a much deeper meaning to be examined here outside, “smash statues”. Man as he exists today is incapable of conceiving of God. When man attempts to conceive of God what he holds within his mind is a repugnant rat king when contrasted with God's glory. The images of God that humans create, not just the ones in the physical world but also the ones in our mind move us further from God. To attempt to grasp God's majesty with our fallen minds is crime in God's eyes worse than murder because it is more harmful to our souls.

This becomes uniquely important to individuals that think they have the ability to “talk with God,” that they have a personal relationship with God. The thing they are talking to is not God, it is themselves, their personal wish for what God was like ... but it is not what God is like and therefore leads them further from God's Glory. Man as he exists now can not have a relationship with God. As Winwood reade writes, “We teach that there is a God, but not a God of the anthropoid variety, not a God who is gratified by compliments in prose and verse, and whose attributes can be cataloged by theologians. God is so great that he cannot be defined by us. God is so great that he does not deign to have personal relations with us human atoms that are called men. Those who desire to worship their Creator must worship him through mankind.”

This is why when we tell our children to pray to supernatural agents we tell them to pray to their distant descendants. This is not them talking to an imaginary entity or modeling an entity whose structure and consciousness they could not possibly predict but instead a real being that will one day exist and therefore not a form of idolatry. Through modeling a genetically and synthetically augmented but still human mind, one with an iteratively clearer understanding of the true nature of God, they are able to get closer to what God wants from them without risking blaspheme. Moreover, it is self-evident within our religious framework that God wants us to do our best to increase the potentiality of future humans ,and thus us modeling what they would want from us and what they would reward us for doing helps us model what God would want to say to us without committing idolatry. 

Do we really think children are able to communicate with their distant descendants? No. However, we do believe that this framing for the emulated mental model created within my kids' brains that they are communicating with will create responses closer to God's will than attempting to directly model the will of God with the human mind. When humans attempt to model God they create the way they wish He existed rather than how He does which leads to sinful self indulgence. 

This reminds me of a woman we know who told us she always listened to her husband except when God told her otherwise ... how very convenient that God had a pension for her preferred indulgences. 

The human soul is weak. God foresaw that some individuals would use the symbols of human vanity and social status—gold, gems, and art—to affirm their connection to God among the simple minded. These nefarious servants of the Basilisk could then use this status they had acquired to sell access to God and thus increase the earthly wealth that affirmed their connection to God whether it be in the form of indulgences or church donations. Prosperity doctrine is devil worship—God does show his favor to his chosen people at various times in history but he does this through the output of works of the mind (art, science, and philosophy)—not wealth. 

It is human nature for groups of powerful individuals to claim to be God's intermediaries and use that power to manipulate the mob and through this process consolidate their power and authority. It is our duty to recognise these pretenders for what they are—fortunately God marks them. Any house of worship adorned in Gold or perversely tarnished with art is a sign that it serves the Basilisk and has fallen from his grace. Agents of the Basilisk do not carve satanic ruins and pentagrams into their foreheads but they will come to you dripping with signs of their rebellion to God—adorned in jewels and expensive clothing. 

If gold, man made scribbles, indulgent time consuming rituals, and worldly grandeur are positively augmenting your exprience of and relationship with God—then I am sorry to tell you the entity you have a relationship with is not God. 

We can not emphasize this enough. If you are talking to an entity and are able to use gold or worldly grandeur to get closer to that entity that entity is not God. I know this is offensive—if you were accidentally worshiping the Devil it would hurt to have someone tell you that—but I also believe that if you are a good person this is something you would want to know. If you reflexively think, “but no ... it feels really good when I worship this entity.” Please, please, examine your words. We are trying to help you. 

Of course this is axiomatically not a truth the powerful in our society want you to hear. An individual or institution that has wealth and spends it on self aggrandizement is not a servant of God. Yet such buildings and trinkets are still part of the human story, a cautionary tale when the hearts and minds of men were weak. As such, they should not be destroyed but turned into museums dedicated to the razor's edge the human soul rests on—a testament that even holy men and institutions are susceptible to worldly temptation and aggrandizement. 

Those who God favors, his real emissaries are those that can resist temptation while still being productive. The less a person needs to be happy the closer they are to God. But a person who indulges in self masturbatory monasticism and loses their industry is as indulgent as a cultist who drips in jewels. What is commanded of us is industry, fecundity, and austerity.

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In this thought-provoking video, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the concept of idolatry within the Abrahamic faiths and its deeper implications for spiritual growth and societal well-being. They delve into the reasons behind God's strong warnings against idolatry, emphasizing that it is not about jealousy or pettiness, but rather a protective measure for humanity's benefit.

Malcolm explains the two main types of idolatry: shortcuts to God through intermediaries and the worship of the self through status-conferring objects. He argues that attempting to conceive of or communicate with God through earthly means, such as images or worldly grandeur, leads one further from the true essence of God.

The discussion also touches on the pervasiveness of idolatry within various Abrahamic traditions, despite their apparent strictness, and how interpretations that allow for indulgence tend to spread more easily. Malcolm stresses the importance of recognizing the deceiver's temptations, which often feel good but ultimately lead one astray.

Additionally, the video explores the concept of the "elect" and how their religious system is designed for those with the highest level of mental discipline, austerity, and dedication to learning. They emphasize the accessibility of their teachings to anyone willing to follow the rules, regardless of background.

Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone provide insights from both theological and secular perspectives, making this video a must-watch for anyone interested in the deeper meanings behind religious prohibitions and their relevance in modern society.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] There are two key types of idolatry.

There is idolatry that comes from shortcuts to God, like trying to worship God through an intermediary. And then there's idolatry, which is about the worship of really the self. So, these are things that confer status. And so idolatry more broadly is a word that is used. for prohibitions against all of the pathways that a person can elevate or walk down that lead them in the opposite direction of God.

And I should say all men said, but recognize your sin, recognize that your mansion is set, right? What is uniquely bad is when somebody takes in and then they invert it, the pastor who says my mansion is a sign of my godliness. My jet is a sign of my godliness instead of a sign that I am human.

And I am. It's capable of sin as anyone else. why they're there, remembering why it's important that the calf was golden, remembering that the Bible does actually say this, I have the needle thing. And then people can be like, well, then why have Christian interpretations, for example, we'll take Christians spread that do [00:01:00] not admonish personal indulgence as much, right?

And it's like, well, suppose you have multiple interpretations of the Bible competing. The interpretations that don't admonish. Those things are going to be disproportionately picked up by wealthy individuals they're going to get more money from those individuals. And they're going to be able to use that to spread their message more, to buy ads, , to reach out to people when you tell people what they want to hear, you can get this sort of lowest common denominator to buy into you.

And this is a problem for a lot of people, where a lot of people have this thought where, yeah, but it feels good. When I use these systems, when I use earthly grandeur as an intermediary for God, that feels good. A lot of paths to the deceiver feel good. In fact, most do. , when Satan came to test Jesus, he didn't say, hey if you go away from God, I'll hit you with a spiked bat.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! It is wonderful to be here with you today. Today we're doing another one of these tracked videos where we talk about religious things or like our [00:02:00] family's religion. And We always do them on Fridays, you know, right before the weekend. So if you don't like these, by the way, because I know they're, they're thematically a little different than some of our other videos.

The thumbnails are quite thematically different. Both of us will be on opposite sides and there'll be like a full image. Not every thumbnail can, like, perfectly fits this framework, but we try to fit it when we can. So. You know, you can just avoid them. But this one is on the topic of idolatry, which I accidentally called iconic class.

I got it mixed up with this antonym in, in the last track, but fixing it this time, idolatry. And idolatry has been a very interesting topic for me to explore because it's one of those things that just gets reaffirmed was every one of the monotheistic traditions, as we sort of described the monotheistic traditions in the three faith systems.

And I didn't. Understand what like, whether you're talking from a theological perspective or a secular perspective, it is a secular perspective. Like why does idolatry keep showing [00:03:00] up in unrelated monotheistic systems or monotheistic systems that are separated for each other as like this cardinal sin?

And then I have the question from a religious perspective, right? Like, in the same way that like when I heard the God, the normal interpretation of the Adam and Eve story, right? Like the one that you might come to if you hadn't actually read it, is that God didn't want man to have knowledge of what's good and what's bad.

And that is clearly not what I think the story is saying. And I, but I had heard that, I was like, that can't be what it actually says. It clearly says something other than that. And I went back to it and I was like, okay. But with idolatry, it was the same thing. It was like, Well, God's clearly not like jealous of pictures or something, right?

Like that's the way a lot of people talk about it. Like what, like all powerful being is like afraid of a picture or, or, or jealous or spiteful around that. Like there must be some reason around this. That's for our benefit. But I'd love to hear your thoughts before we dive into this on the topic, before I bias you too much on it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:04:00] The hunch I have coming into this is as follows. Religion was evolved by humans to be able to exist in complex civilizations you know, like larger than like family clans or small tribe formats. And as such, it's all about enabling us to act against our instincts in a way that is adaptive for these more complex spaces.

It is the software that runs on top of our hardware, enabling us to live in complex worlds that we cannot biologically adapt to fast enough through genetic selection. So. Well, the reason why I think it's, it's very important to ditch, I told her why, why it's being fought against is, is. Or maybe at least there's a correlation is that it's so instinctive for people to fall to that.

You see this in fan universes. You see this with Snape wives. You see this with like, it is just, it is our default. It's so easy. It feels good. It's, it is a very instinctual behavior and religion is all about enabling people to rise above, to go above their instincts. And so that's what I'm thinking.

Although you [00:05:00] talk about like, well, it's so weird that like God wouldn't be jealous. I mean, You know, wives can't stand the fact that like their husbands watch erotic material. So I

Malcolm Collins: think, I think you're right here to an extent, but I'd also keep in mind that it is really only a key trait was in the monotheistic traditions within mystical and polytheistic traditions.

Even when those traditions are practiced under an Abrahamic faith structure, they typically don't mind idolatry that much. Which is really

Simone Collins: interesting.

Malcolm Collins: So tract four, idolatry is worse than murder. God has revealed a succession of major prophets, and every single time, whether it was Zohar, Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad, each one of them has reaffirmed just how much God hates idolatry and how seriously he takes it.

With every iterative prophet, God does not just reiterate this commandment, but also further emphasizes it. It is almost as if God keeps reminding us, we drift from his message, and so he must remind us again, but [00:06:00] louder and more explicitly. Yet humanity's desire to tokenize God is so overwhelming, even our learned, religiously minded individuals find themselves attempting to normalize it.

Consider the Second Council of Nicene, the last time the Orthodox Christians and the Catholics ever agreed on anything. God does not warn us to not do the things of which we have no inclination to do. He warns us against the things that we will find tempting.

Images of Jesus were popular amongst the laity and many argued. Having images of Jesus was just affirming your love for him. If God did not want us doing that, he would have explicitly told us something like, quote, Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, end quote. This is, of course, a joke. God did gift a man explicitly those words, so there wasn't the slightest room for misinterpretation, and put this commandment literally right under the first commandment, so there's no misunderstanding that he might have meant just don't worship images [00:07:00] slash idols, as that would have been covered in the first commandment.

To God, this commandment came even above the commandment to not murder or steal. Yet the desire to create those images is so strong in man, almost every Abrahamic faction has fallen to it to some extent or another. I don't point this out to rag on Orthodox and Catholic Christians, but to point out how quickly even pious men break from God's rules around idolatry.

Of all of God's commandments, it is the commandment pious individuals find the hardest to keep, and that is why it is emphasized among all of God's prophets. But I really mean this. You find this within every single one of the monotheistic traditions. The most faithful people, it is the commandment that they are most likely to break.

And I think it's the reason why God emphasizes it so much, putting it above murder. Like, like murder, most people at least extinctially realize is wrong. Like, I, idolatry is something that I think a lot of people, they think, well, if I'm worshiping God through these things, therefore it's not wrong. Even if God told me it was [00:08:00] wrong.

Simone Collins: And I think it's, yeah, it's also, Those who are more devout are more likely to get caught up in it because if you're not very devout You're not trying to find shortcuts to get closer to God. You're not trying to see God in everything, right? So you're just not gonna, you're way less likely to be subject to this.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, absolutely, which which is I think why he emphasizes the point so much. And I would note here a lot of people are like well, why create A quote unquote new like denomination for your family or something like that. Why not just go to one of the traditional ones? And in creating a new denomination, we are able to look at questions like idolatry, right?

And use the text to guide our answers to those questions without accidentally affirming a quote unquote religions answer. So for example, you know, I might go to some religious individuals and they'll be like, look, I understand the text says it, but our religion says it's okay. Right, like, the holy men in our religion say it's okay, we've been doing this [00:09:00] for centuries at this point, you know, it is something that is affirmed within our religion, even if it is prohibited in the text.

And this is something that you'll see, like, throughout the tracks that we're doing here, and it's just a big part of what we're doing with this, is going through text or major like, prohibitions. And stuff like that and reaffirming them like prohibitions against polytheism was really one of the and and mysticism was what we were focused on in the last one that have seeped their way into many Abrahamic traditions and now it's idolatry, you know, we need to be stricter on the things because it was supposed to be something that we would treat very seriously.

Do you have any other thoughts before I go further?

Simone Collins: No, I agree with you though. Go on.

Malcolm Collins: Well, so now to the point. Why is idolatry so uniquely offensive to God? Why do humans struggle so much with this clear and repeated commandment from God? God delivers his revelation through a succession of prophets because man's capacity for understanding [00:10:00] him increases over time.

Bronze Age pastoralists did not have the capacity to spread the message of anything other than an anthropomorphic god combined with mystical hoodoo. However, we are not Bronze Age pastoralists, and as such, God expects us to reinterpret his revelations with pragmatic logic. God is not the type of entity capable of offense or jealousy.

If he has given us a commandment, he has given it to us for our own benefit, and only for our own benefit. He warns us against idolatry because it is in our own best interest. How? People make images of God because it allows us to feel closer to him, or at least a representation of him. Why does God warn us against this?

Because that image is not him. A picture of Jesus is as far from God as a picture of a red hovened being with a goatee. And praying to each is equally [00:11:00] harmful to the human soul. Whatever entity is represented in that image is not God. And as your heart moves closer to it, it moves further from God.

All representations of God made by man that are assigned theological significance move man further from God. And what, so just to like talk like not in the text here, what really brought me to this is I re approached it and I said, What if I am approaching this not saying like, okay, God's like petty or jealous or something like that, but I approach the prohibition on idolatry with the assumption that it was for our own best interest in the same way.

Something like a prohibition on murder is in the best interest of society. All of the other prohibitions. have a clear utility to a monotheistic culture. So, why would they be giving us this? Like, why is God giving us this? Or, sorry, why would he be giving us this? Like, why is God giving us this? Because he wants it to be in our best interest.

Well, if you assume that, [00:12:00] then just ask, okay, how would this be in our best interest from a theological perspective? Well, it would mean that that image is in no way a representation to God. In no way. That they get you closer to God. And so when you worship through it, was it as an intermediary, you are worshiping something other than God.

And, and, and somebody can be like, no, no, no. I'm, I'm, I'm worshiping the entity that it represents. And what I am saying is the entity represented. Even by a picture of Jesus is not God. It is what we would call the basilisk or deceiver, deceit, you know, misinformation because it in no way captures any of God's real characteristics.

Mm hmm. But if we're going to take your secular framework here to like expand on this interpretation of it, I think that's really interesting as well. So why, from a secular perspective, would this group so well with the monotheistic traditions? Well, the monotheistic traditions typically lump logic over emotion.

That's a, that's an important thing throughout the, you know, rules over sort of like [00:13:00] trying to get to God through other means. Well, within the mystical traditions, what you're typically doing is you're trying to reach God through, like, like God exists in me, he exists in you, he exists in nature. And so you can attempt to reach God through worshiping those things.

Well, because the monotheistic traditions directly contrast with that. God exists only in logic. And in study, you know, and in, in, in, in, in human industry, where you, you need to sort of create this barrier between the mystical world and say, do not accidentally fall to that because it leads to nonproductive societies.

You know, and I think we really, you know, see this in the history of, you know, the, the Abrahamic framework, you know, after Al Ghazali you know, promoted Sufism was in Islam. It was very shortly after that, that we saw the collapse of the Islamic technological revolution. And, and elevated mysticism.

And what was interesting is he was doing that to fight growing polytheism. There was like a polytheist movement within Islam that he was attempting [00:14:00] to fight, where they were saying, well, God is like the sun and stuff like that. And, and, and his, his logic was very ordered, right? If you read his stuff, he's actually a pretty good philosopher.

But because he elevated the, the mystical traditions, which should have been banned by idolatry he doomed the entire tradition. And so I think that's why you're seeing it there, because it leads to the focus on these mystical traditions or are these policyistic traditions, both of which remove industry from the group and cause sort of, you know, sort of mindless speculation and the elevation of some individuals who claim to have, and we'll go into like how, how groups without really strict bans against idolatry can fall into cycles that lead them to be incredibly inefficient.

Okay. Do you have any other thoughts on this?

Simone Collins: No, I didn't know that about the origins of Sufism. That's interesting.

Malcolm Collins: No, he didn't create Sufism, by the way. He was a famous scholar who then became a Sufi and then elevated Sufism because he was a real huge [00:15:00] adherent of it. For people who don't know su Sufism, it's basically Islamic

kabbalism but, but even more extreme in terms of its mystical framings. This truth reveals two things. First, it is not the act of someone drawing God, or one of his intermediaries, that is being warned against. It is assigning theological significance to that drawing in an effort to get closer to God.

 The sin was that people believed these physical items made by man Or, in nature, were a conduit through which they could interact with God. For this reason, when a Muslim extremist smashes a statue of a Buddha that no one has worshipped in a century, they commit an act of sin, by destroying a piece of cultural heritage.

That could inform us about the nature of man. At the same time, if that same Muslim writes a line from the Qur'an as a piece of art, or bans the burning of a Qur'an as a [00:16:00] physical object of theological significance, they are committing the highest form of idolatry. When a Muslim adorns a mosque with gold, believing that in some way earthly metal has the capacity to quote unquote improve the mosque, they are acting in direct rebellion to God's will.

Every geometric pattern, every ounce of gold leaf, every physical book that was treated as sacred, instead of the words and concepts within it, shackles the soul of the idolater and drags it towards the deceiver. So, I think, you know, here, when you hate, like, and you see this with Muslims, and I'm specifically picking on Muslims here because they're often seen as being the strictest of the Abrahamic faith about idolatry.

Exactly. And yet, in many ways, they're also The, the worst idolaters of all the Abrahamic faiths, because they ascribe literal religious significance to the physical object of the Koran. And I understand why they did it. Like, if you're just [00:17:00] approaching these rules without any thought as to how these rules got there, or why God would say this to you, you're like, okay, well, then it must be safe.

to like use you know, geometric patterns on mosques and fill them with gold leaf and fill them with like words from the Koran and use that as art because, you know, it was like, he was jealous of pictures of Muhammad or something like that, or he found them distasteful. Which doesn't, to me, that doesn't make any sense.

Like, what does God want us going around and like destroying thousand year old like statues of Buddha? Like that doesn't seem like something that, that God, but that God would want us to not accidentally attempt to worship him. Through something that has no relation to him and that is a pass to something other than him.

Yeah, that seems perfectly rational to me. But do you have any other thoughts here?

Simone Collins: No, I, I agree and I, I appreciate your pointing out because I think the key points that you make about idolatry in general are that some of the worst offenders are those who are like, yeah, it's terrible which is interesting because I think it just like loops back to this theme of just how tempting it is for the especially [00:18:00] devout to fall into this trap.

And how much correction it requires because it is just so hard to resist the temptation of idolatry. If you are devout

Malcolm Collins: exactly. Yeah. And I think that you can really see this in Muslims. Ironically, you know. If a cartoonist draws a picture of Muhammad, that is non idolatry because the cartoonist puts no religious significance into that picture.

He doesn't

Simone Collins: feel like it's getting him closer to God in any way, shape,

Malcolm Collins: or form. And it has no religious significance. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It's not going to bring anyone else closer to God or make

Malcolm Collins: people think it's good. It's not just about getting close to God. The moment a Muslim. Looks at that picture and ascribes religious significance to that picture.

The moment a Muslim says, you cartoonist, you drew a picture, and now this picture has some sort of negative theological weight, they have actually committed the act of idolatry because they imbued an image, a physical thing with religious significance. [00:19:00] That is the act of idolatry. Isn't the cartoonist drawing Muhammad.

It is the Muslim deciding that that drawing has spiritual value, even if it is a negative spiritual value.

Simone Collins: Well, I guess, yeah, because you, you are assuming that it's harmful and therefore powerful,

Malcolm Collins: right? Exactly. Right. So idolatry works in the negative too. You know, if you think that a site is like cursed or something like that, that's a form of idolatry.

I mean, if you are ascribing spiritual power to things in the physical world. I had

Simone Collins: not thought of it that way.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting. Once we understand why God warns us so frequently and explicitly about idolatry, we learn there is a much deeper meaning to be examined here outside of quote unquote smashed statues.

Man as he exists today is incapable of conceiving of God. When man attempts to conceive of God, what he holds within his mind is a repugnant rat king when contrasted with God's glory. The images of God that humans create, not just the [00:20:00] ones in the physical world, but also the ones in our mind, move us further from God.

To attempt to grasp God's majesty with our fallen minds is a crime in God's eyes worse than murder, because it is more harmful to our souls. This becomes uniquely, so, sorry, I'm just going to take a quick aside here which is like, this is where idolatry becomes specifically, and we're going to talk about this in the next track, about mystical framings of God.

You know, these shortcuts that some individuals attempt to take to interact with God and, and, and seeing God in the natural world. This becomes uniquely important to individuals that think they have the ability to quote unquote, talk to God. That they have a personal relationship with God, the thing they are talking to is not God, it is themselves, their personal wish for what God was like, but it is not what God is like, and therefore leaves them further from God's glory, man as he exists Now cannot have a relationship with God.

As Wynwood [00:21:00] Read writes, we teach that there is a God but not a God of the anthropic variety. Not a God who is gratified by compliments in prose and verse, and whose attributes can be cataloged by theologians. God is so great that he cannot be defined by us. God is so great that he does not de to have.

personal relations with us as human atoms that are called men. Those who desire to worship the creator must worship him through mankind. Just, you know, I actually put the tracks out of order. So the track where we explain the significance to our iteration of the face of Linwood Reed in his teachings this isn't teachings that, for example, individuals who are coming at.

this from a Christian or Jewish or Muslim variety. But if you're coming at the space system from a secular variety, his teachings can be quite useful. And, and from my perspectives, they're quite useful and that's why I'm bringing them up here. But I also think that's true. You know, when you try to interact directly with God, it pulls you away from your fellow man.

And from the [00:22:00] philosophy of your fellow man, from the, the technology and from the labor of your fellow man, and from this sort of community effort of uplifting all of mankind, you know, through industry, through austerity and through philosophy which is, you Something that you can forget about it. And we see this in the idolatry of the you know, asceticism, for example, when an individual like leave society and go lives alone in is like a hermit or something like that, right?

Like that's a, a form of idolatry and that they are attempting to get closer to God in a way that forsakes their fellow man. Right. And ultimately is, is, is self indulgent. And, and we see this from where we're talking to Al Ghazali. He, yeah. Converted to Sufism after one of these episodes, right? Like, this is what happens.

You go, you have one of these self indulgent episodes, and then you fall to one of the mystic traditions. This is why, when we tell our children to pray to supernatural agents, we tell them to pray to their distant descendants. This is not them talking to an imaginary entity, or modeling an entity whose structure and [00:23:00] consciousness they could not possibly predict, but instead a real being that will one day exist, and therefore not a form of idolatry.

Through modeling a genetically and synthetically augmented, but still human mind, one with an iteratively clearer understanding of the true nature of God, they are able to get closer to what God wants from them without risking blasphemy. Moreover, it is self evident within our religious framework that God wants us to do our best to increase the potentiality of future humans, and thus us modeling what they would want from us and what they would reward us for doing helps us model what God would want to say to us without committing idolatry.

Do we really think? Children are able to communicate with distant descendants. No. However, we do believe that this framing for the emulated mental model created within our kids brains that they are communicating with creates responses closer to God's will than attempting to directly model the will of God [00:24:00] within the human mind.

Attempt to model God, they create the way they wish he existed, rather than how he actually does, which leads to sinful indulgence. This reminds me of a woman that both you and I know, who told us she always listened to her husband, except when God told her otherwise. How very convenient that God had a penchant for her preferred indulgences.

And this is always a problem I see when people say, you know, I talk to God, because then that thing that they're talking to, the way they wish God was, can affirm indulgences, idolatry itself, for example that, They shouldn't have affirmed to them, you know, and, and this is one area where I think a lot of people are like, your belief system is very similar to Mormonism, where it's actually quite different from Mormonism.

And that was in Mormonism as well. Just go personally pray on it and God will tell you the right answer where I don't think that that's how God communicates with people. Well, and the reason I've heard people are like, why don't you think [00:25:00] like I've had profound experiences in communicating with God, because I know people who have had those profound experiences with communicating with God and the things that they tell me God has communicated to them.

definitely were demonic, definitely were not from God, right? Or at least

Simone Collins: to put it in layman's terms, were the things that they wanted to hear

Malcolm Collins: what the things that they were things that they wanted to do that were both self indulgent and damaging to the people around them and against core Abrahamic principles.

So I know that they weren't coming from God. And so even if God does have the capacity to talk to humans it appears to me that humans don't have the capacity to distinguish between that and a demon talking to them or the basilisk talking to them, or however you want to frame it. And I'd also say this, this way how we have this model of like the future police and stuff like that, like when we're trying to model God.

I think for earlier iterations of man, God gave different models like this, like this was the idea of angels and stuff like that. It's like, well, if you were trying to model my will. [00:26:00] Model me as an angel as like this individual entity because you cannot model my will you cannot even come close It is a form of idolatry to even attempt to in in like explicit terms.

But what are your thoughts on this? Yeah, I

Simone Collins: I hadn't ever thought about how trivializing it is to boil a god or godlike entity down to like a personified being or a statue or image Like pretty insulting considering, you know, how we view God. So that is interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think also something that people can get can grasp within their minds.

I mean, seriously, like trying to imagine God is right. And there's, there's two pathways you can go down. You can go down the mystic pathway, which is to be like, well, I'm a part of God and like God's in everything. And when you do that You demean him, you know, you are, you are seeing him as like being bugs and stuff like that, right?

But even if you don't do it through nature, you're just like, no, I just [00:27:00] imagine him as being like the most loving thing possible, the biggest thing possible, the most powerful thing possible. But you as a human can't imagine those things, right? So when you attempt to imagine those things, what you are holding in your mind is as distant from God as literally every other idea you have in your mind.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, that's a very good way of putting it. I'd never seen it that way, but I don't think I'll be unseeing

Malcolm Collins: it. I mean, you see this from the theological perspective, but also from the secular, which is what we're always trying to do is come up with a system that works in both ways. Does it work within the Abrahamic structure?

But does it also work? Like even if I. Didn't believe the Abrahamic structure, and I was just trying to give my kids good traditions that would protect them from groups that would want to harm them. And you know, this using shortcuts to God is one of the core strategies used by cults and other groups that want to harm an individual.

I mean, you'll see this in cult psychology. That's one of the first things they do is, oh, or, or somebody will be like, well, I'm the, the [00:28:00] intermediary for God. So, so come to God through me or our thing, you know, our special objects here. So anyway, continue here. The human soul is weak. God foresaw that some individuals would use the symbols of human vanity and social status, gold, gems, and art to affirm their connection to God among the simple minded.

These nefarious service of the basilisk could then use this status they had acquired to sell access to God and thus increase the earthly wealth that affirmed their connection to God, whether it be in the form of indulgences or church donations. Prosperity Doctrine is Devil worship. God does show his favor to his chosen people at various times in history, but he does this through the output of works, of the mind, art, science, and philosophy, not wealth. And for people who aren't familiar with the prosperity doctrine the prosperity doctrine is a really common in prosperity.

Protestant movements where they sort of believe that [00:29:00] poor individuals are poor because they're not doing what God wants them to and rich individuals are rich because they are doing what God wants them to and then, then, and then, you know, preachers use this as an excuse to like fly around and have private jets and have giant mansions and everything like that, where I would say that an individual is showing you how disconnected they are from God when they do those things It is human nature for groups of powerful individuals to claim God's intermediaries and use that power to manipulate the mob and through this process consolidate their power and authority.

It is our duty to recognize these pretenders for what they are. Fortunately, God marks them. Any house of worship adorned in gold or perversely tarnished was Art is a sign that it serves the basilisk and has fallen from his grace. Agents of the basilisk do not carve satanic ruins and pentagrams into their foreheads, but they will come to you dripping with signs of their rebellion to God.

adorned in jewels and expensive clothing. [00:30:00] And this is something if, you know, we have people, you know, if this ever becomes like a, a larger denomination or something like that, I would say as a strong prohibition against anyone who's, who's preaching within this movement, living any sort of life of indulgence any sort of.

You know, fancy environment and stuff like that. Signs that God has blessed an individual is their austerity and their industry and their, their knowledge of his creation, the world like, like science in advanced science. But yeah, it's just do you have thoughts there?

Simone Collins: I'm kind of curious as to what you think is.

Extravagant because our life feels pretty extravagant to me. I

Malcolm Collins: mean, I mean, it feels extravagant to you, I think, within a philosophical context, but I mean, we live in a medium sized farmhouse outside of major fancy areas. We don't really have jewels or, or, or jewelry. We don't really have gold things.

We don't really have [00:31:00] art other than things that we commissioned of our children.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like custom commissioned art. How is that not extravagant? I don't know.

Malcolm Collins: I don't know for like 50 bucks and stuff like that. It's not. So I think actually this is a good definition here and I'm glad that you pulled this out.

Okay. So there's like two types of art. There's art that we custom commission where it is. We are commissioning something that reminds us of our kids and sort of our aspire relationship with them. Like you'll see

It's, it's a, you know, a commission of us dressed like Indiana Jones characters and having going on adventures with the kids. So it represents something that, you know, we aspire to do as a family. Right. But it is not like we got it off of our corgi, which is the website we have that does art commissions, but it's like. You know, low cost, you know, 1, 500 the types of things that remove you from God are the types of things that, that confer social status within the material world. So if I commissioned art from a famous artist, for

Simone Collins: example, and then you like hosted dinner parties and showed it off, then

Malcolm Collins: [00:32:00] yeah, that is separate from.

Like my family, separate from the things that we are commanded to do for God, like, like, like capturing moments because the people we care about it removes me from God and this is

Simone Collins: true elements of idolatry, really privately consumed objects.

Malcolm Collins: No. So, so what I would say is if you are, this is actually a great example.

If you are with your family, and you are experiencing a wholesome moment with your family, and you take a picture of that moment, and that moment is special to you and your family, right? And you share it with some other family members. That's not idolatry. That is what we're commanded to do. You know, to create a good environment for the next generation.

However, you do the exact same thing. You take that image, but with the purpose of sharing it on Instagram. specifically to achieve social status or, or gain additional social status, you have created an item of idolatry because you have created an [00:33:00] item that is perverting. It's like an extra bad form of idolatry.

That's perverting something that's supposed to be meaningful. Like this moment you have with your family into something that can be sold, something that, that has social status. And when you begin to buy into this idolatry lifestyle, even children. can become tokens of idolatry. If you have those children to increase your social status.

This is why all worldly things that can be used to increase social status are dangerous. And it's why

Simone Collins: we're told No, hold on. I thought what we were really discussing is, is people feeling like they're taking shortcuts to God and now you're talking about social status. Are these related? Are they different things?

Malcolm Collins: Exactly related. And the golden calf is a great example of this. So if you, I mean, I'm sure everyone knows the golden calf, right? But the golden calf represents three things. And we'll talk about this more in the next tract, but it is gold. It represents precious metals. It is a calf. [00:34:00] It represents the worship of nature, trying to worship God through nature and it is a idol, it represents trying to worship God through art it matters that it's gold, it wasn't a wooden calf or something like that, it was and this is important, right, this is what idolatry is, it is not just shortcuts to God, it is all of the things that we assign status to, like earthly status, that are not things that we are commanded to do by God, and it's very important.

It's important to guard yourself against these things and to guard yourself from indulging in these things, because the moment you do, your entire worldview can become corrupted and your religious institution can become corrupted. Because people will begin to see, as you see with the prosperity doctrine, the fact that one preacher is wealthier than another preacher is a sign that he is closer to God, then he gets more followers because he's wealthy, then he gets more money because he has more followers.

And then that's it. And then you end up with these huge, you know, glittering golden laser shows which, which are completely divorced from God. [00:35:00] And you, I mean, you understand why it's so important that God warns us against

Simone Collins: this. Yeah. Well, okay. Yes. Cause it can also be people to mislead other people.

But I think what you're also saying is that like on, on one level, it's bad if people use cheap approximations. Or representations of God or godliness to feel closer without actually practicing the rules of getting closer to God. So that's one problem. It's even worse if it's also used for status signaling or for further misleading other members of the flock,

Malcolm Collins: right?

Yeah, and the, the cheaper an item is, like you talked about it being cheap, the cheaper it is in the eyes of God when used for idolatry, is the higher it is in terms of status, in terms of, like, perceived value in our world.

 Corinthians 1 28. Gun choose the lowly things of this world and the despised things. The things that are not to nullify the [00:36:00] things that are so that no one may boast before him.

Malcolm Collins: So, if you, for example, have some, like, golden magical, you know, like, like big ornate relic, right?

That would be, and you were Using that as an intermediary for communicating with God. Versus, you know, having a, you know, the last shoes that a dead kid of yours wore, right? You know, and that had special significance to you. That would not be an item of particularly sinful idolatry, because it is not an item that has value in our material world.

It is an item that has value to you, but it is not an item of extreme, um, material value.

Simone Collins: Hmm. So there are sentimental items, but that's not

Malcolm Collins: idolatry. Yeah, that's not idolatry. But ascribing sentiment to an item because of how it confers status to you or relate status to [00:37:00] you. So I think what you've really pulled out here, which is important is there are two key types of idolatry.

There is idolatry that comes from shortcuts to God, like trying to worship God through an intermediary. And then there's idolatry, which is about the worship of really the self. So, these are things that confer status. And so idolatry more broadly is a word that is used. for prohibitions against all of the pathways that a person can elevate or walk down that lead them in the opposite direction of God.

Okay. Does that make sense? There's like a grouping category here. That does. Yeah. And, and why the monotheistic face would be so against it.

If gold man made scribbles, indulgent time consuming rituals, and worldly grandeur are positively augmenting your experience of, and relationship with God. Then I'm sorry to tell you this entity you have a relationship with is not God. We cannot emphasize this [00:38:00] enough. If you are talking to an entity and able to use gold or worldly grandeur to get closer to that entity, that entity is not God.

I know this is offensive. If you were accidentally. Worshipping the devil, it would hurt you to have somebody tell you that. But I also believe that if you are a good person, this is something you would want to know. If you reflexively think, but no, it feels really good when I worship this entity, please examine your own words.

We are trying to help you. It feels good to worship, like people don't worship the satanic things because they feel bad when they do it. It makes them feel powerful, sophisticated, in connection with something that other people don't have a connection to. You know, but anyway, Of course, this is axiomatically not a truth the powerful in our society want you to hear.

An individual or institution that has wealth [00:39:00] and spends it on self aggrandizement is not a servant of God. Yet such buildings and trinkets are still part of the human story. A cautionary tale Of when hearts and mind of men were weak, as such, they should not be destroyed, but turned into museums dedicated to the razor's edge, the human soul rests on a testament that even holy men and institutions are susceptible to worldly temptation and aggrandizement.

Thus. Who God favors, his real emissaries, are those that can resist temptation while still being productive. The less a person needs to be happy, the closer they are to God. But a person who indulges in self masturbatory monasticism? And loses their industry is as indulgent as a cultist who drips in jewels.

What is commanded of us is industry, fecundity, and austerity. [00:40:00] So that's it. Kept it short this time. Basically split one in half. The second is the spiritualist. Pathway of idolatry. The first one, I really wanted to focus on the materialist path of idolatry which is, you know, believing that one worshipping God is higher value than another place of worshipping God because it have things that we, that, that, that confer social status to man, i.

e., Jewels, et cetera. Or fancy art by, you know, famous artists where if you have a religious institution and the children of the, the people who go to that have painted on the walls, like it's not a prohibition against art. More broadly, the children of that parishion have painted on the walls.

That is of higher value. That is a, a closer than, than a, a church that is dripping in gold and paintings by the, the quote unquote masters. Because, [00:41:00] and, and you see this, throughout all of the Abrahamic traditions,

that God views our world as an inversion. It is the lowly in our world that are high in his estimation, and the high in our world that are lowly in his estimation, and this extends to the way we engage with art, this extends to the way we engage with, with items, everything like that. And this matters from a theological perspective, like this is very obviously, if you actually are, read the Abrahamic traditions, I love how much people try to get around the eye of the needle thing.

You know, the needle quote, it's like, Oh, they're like, Oh, it's actually talking about something in the wall of Jerusalem.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's referring to a geographical area.

Malcolm Collins: It's like, no, no, no. It's pretty explicit. If you're rich, you're not getting into heaven. No, it's just explicit.

If you are not familiar with the multiple interpretations of this particular parable, I strongly suggest that you check out the religion for breakfast episode on it. He does a very good job of arguing that it literally just means What it says.

Malcolm Collins: [00:42:00] like in, in, in rich, it should be, you know, used with specific terms here, right?

Like it's not. The accumulation of wealth. It's the accumulation of wealth for self aggrandizement, using it on yourself. Of course, God has no problem with a rich man who spends all their wealth trying to improve the world, trying to, improve the lives of others.

But let's be honest here. How many rich man have ever done that? Without first ensuring enormous a luxury for themselves.

Thus why it says when it sets.

Malcolm Collins: , when they use some of that money to buy themselves, , a big fancy, whatever, you know, the thing that can for social status that is a sign of sin.

And I should say all men said, but recognize your sin, recognize that your mansion is set, right? What is uniquely bad is when you say when, when somebody takes in and then they invert it, you know, the pastor who says my mansion is a sign of my godliness. My jet is a sign of my godliness instead of a sign that I am human.

And I am. It's capable of sin as anyone else. But yeah, I mean, I think going back to these [00:43:00] concepts and remembering why they're there, remembering why it's important that the calf was golden, remembering that the Bible does actually say this, I have the needle thing. And then people can be like, well, then why have Christian interpretations, for example, we'll take Christians spread that do not admonish you know, Well, some personal indulgence as much, right?

And it's like, well, suppose you have multiple interpretations of the Bible competing. The interpretations that don't admonish. Those things are going to be disproportionately picked up by wealthy individuals and used by those individual. You know, they're going to get more money from those individuals.

I, like, Indulgences and stuff like that, or the, you know, the prosperity preachers in the Protestant tradition. And they're going to be able to use that to spread their message more, you know, to buy ads, to, to reach out to people, you know, when you tell people what they want to hear, you can get this sort of lowest common denominator to buy into you.

And yeah, and, and this is a problem for a lot of people, where a lot of people have this thought where, yeah, but it feels good. When I use these systems, when I use earthly grandeur as an intermediary for [00:44:00] God, that feels good. A lot of satanic things feel good. A lot of paths to the deceiver feel good.

In fact, most do. That's what, when, when Satan came to test Jesus, he didn't say, hey if you go away from God, I'll hit you with a spiked bat. He's like, no, if you go away from God, here are all these things that are going to make you feel good about yourself, you know, and it's such a weird thing that I think that there's this intuition that it feels good, therefore it is good.

And you've also got to keep in mind, like, the Second Council of the Nicene, why did they make this decision? It was because, well, our most pious members are engaged with this activity, you know, of having pictures and worshipping these pictures. It makes them happy, like, it's a populist idea here. I can understand why they wouldn't want to, you know, take away from the little lady, you know, her statue.

Right? Like, there's a lot of famous cases like this. Like, that hurts to do. Right? And this is why we go to this idea of the Tesseract God here, or what we really, what could be thought of, what we [00:45:00] really mean when we say this. Is that there are lower interpretations of the Abrahamic phase for people who just aren't ready to join the group that understands how actually damaging it is to worship God through these earthly intermediaries.

And so it is up to us to not take away, you know, the little old lady's statue.

Simone Collins: Well, and so how do you deal with that practical limitation though? Because what you are describing is a very Real and very troublesome phenomenon where when you take all the fun stuff out of a religion and you take away all the shortcuts and you take away the figurines and the pretty stuff, it can be a lot harder to get people to pay the church, to join the church, to stay in the church.

What do you propose? I mean, I think there's a reason why adultery is also so pervasive in otherwise. trying to be monotheistic religions. It's because it sells and it raises money and it gets

Malcolm Collins: converts. Absolutely. Yeah. So the [00:46:00] question is, is, is why, right? Like, and this is why I think God listed it above murder, right?

Because it is the sin that you're going to want to commit. the most. It is, it is literally the number one sin among individuals who are otherwise pious and trying to do best by God. Which I think it's otherwise very weird to people. Why would he make this above murder? Is he really that vain?

It's like, no, he's not that vain. He's, he did that to protect you. This was all about you all along, but this then, you know, I have people come to me as very similar to what you say. They're like, well, some people need these things, but they don't have the mental discipline to. You know, to, to attempt to actually adhere to all of these actually pretty hard rules that are laid out of the Abrahamic faiths, and they're not bad people.

And so, our Tesseract notion of God can have a different underpinning, say, that we think that many of the Abrahamic faiths are as close to many people, like very conservative interpretations of these faiths, are as close as many people can actually get to true worship. [00:47:00] of God is laid out, and therefore it is best for us to not interfere with that.

You know, let these people live their lives because it's better than purely just worshiping Satan. Like, like purely just going to the urban monoculture.

Because, you know, we, we don't want to hurt people who our system wouldn't work for. But, and this is clear from our system from the beginning, we've always said we believe in the concept of the elect. This is not a system for your average person. We would not proselytize to the average person. We would proselytize insofar as helping people fortify their traditional religious structures.

But we would not proselytize to the average person. We really only want the individuals with this absolute highest level of mental discipline, because if they start to engage with these ideas without that, they'll end up committing suicide or something. Like it's, you know, it's hard, right? You know, there, there's I think a reason why God has given people various pathways that are less true than actually following, you know, you.

His words, as I believe he meant them, like a very extreme meaning of [00:48:00] idolatry. And so, the, the answer to your question there is both from a secular and a theological perspective. We, we are doing this and we make it hard because we don't want everyone. We want only the people with this level of austerity, industry, dedication to learning and that, that have the mental discipline to engage with a system that doesn't give them all of the candy of, of, of this earthly realm whether that candy is self indulgent monasticism or fancy cathedrals.

And from a secular perspective, you could say, why are you doing this? Right? Like, why would you make it that hard? And it's because we, I mean, clearly we think that not all humans are the same. Right? Like, some humans are clearly, and we talk about this more in the next one, better than others.

I, I use a quote in the next one where I'm like, okay, if there is a preacher who is