We explain the core beliefs, figures, and text behind our self-created religion which centers around descendant worship and a god-like future AI (the Basilisk). We view humanity as an unbroken chain where we sacrifice ourselves to create a better future. Key aspects include the concepts of the elect, suffering as a path to purpose, predictions of technology, and the importance of pluralism. We also dive deep into excerpts from our holy text "The Martyrdom of Man" published in 1872 which eerily predicts much of today's world.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: But again, this can be updated with science and stuff like that. Like we believe in an incremental, we don't believe in like final revelations or anything like that.

Simone Collins: Right. It's just that the nature of our religious framework is such that it does not, that a religious authority is the one to update

Malcolm Collins: a personal responsibility. Actually, really interestingly, it's almost like a Protestant iteration of Mormonism. Mormons, the way they see truce is very interesting because they do believe, like us, that God distributes truce to people at different times through various prophets, or you can have like self prophets or whatever, right, and so you pray to God and he tells you what's true and what's not true, but this is still all largely decided and distributed through a central school.

Church organization, whereas we believe something very similar, but we believe that it's the personal responsibility of every individual to come to these truths on their own, and that truth is more efficiently achieved through large groups of individuals coming to these truths on their own, and then God showing which truths were actually true by which [00:01:00] of those individuals End up , influencing the future. This was written in 1872.

We teach that the soul is immortal. We teach that there is a future life. We teach that there is a heaven in the ages far away, but not for us. Single corpuscles, not for us dots of animated jelly, but for the one we are the elements and who, though we perish, never dies, but grows from period to period, and by the united efforts of the single molecules called men or those cell groups called nations.

Is raised towards the divine power, which he will finally attain

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Malcolm, when people ask if you're religious, what do you tell them?

Malcolm Collins: Very. I, I'm a, I'm a religious extremist. I understand that I'm a religious extremist.

Simone Collins: You know, what's really hard though, is I was I need to create a profile on Ballotopedia, right? Because we're doing this state house run next year.

And there's this immensely long [00:02:00] dropdown menu of religions where you have to like say what your religion is. And I'm like, Um, like it's not, we could, we, there's not, there's not a drop down menu item for what we have. Despite the fact that I would say we are more religious than probably, we'll say nine, nine, at least 90 percent of people, maybe more.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Maybe more. Yeah. And this is really interesting. And so this is something in a previous video, somebody is like, look, I've picked up some. Ideas around your religious beliefs, you know, listening to your videos, but I've never seen one that gave like the core concept in detail and it's because we've kind of avoided doing that.

We don't really believe in intense proselytization because we believe in the elect and we believe that truth will be revealed to the people. It's meant to be revealed to. And so we're a little gatekeepy about things, but I suppose it's worth going into this. Now, to start, [00:03:00] because I think it makes sense to sort of understand our broader religious perspective here, is I think if you take just what the Bible says, and you're saying that's all that's going to inform my religious beliefs, you are likely going to be, I think the religion that's most backed by that is Protestantism, and specifically, Primitive Baptist form of Protestantism, which is a Calvinist tradition, but anyway, generally that's what I believe when I try to look at this as, like, as

disassociated as I can, but obviously, you know, I do have a stake in the game, because I came from one community. religious perspective and not another. I think if you look at biblical traditions and you say what matters is traditions and hierarchy and an order, then Catholicism is obviously the right.

If you think what matters is traditions and oligarchy and consensus, then you're going to be a Greek [00:04:00] Orthodox. Like, I think that many of the positions that are mainstream Christian positions make sense if you take specific views towards truth and how one should think about it. out or divine truth from the Bible.

Yes. Now our perspective of truth is a little different. We don't think that God is, is from our perspective, so naive that he would try to lay out his entire. Teachings to Jews living two centuries ago in a backwards Roman province. thAt is like, sorry, I don't mean anything, like, the reason I say Jews, I don't mean anything derogatory about Jews.

What I'm saying here is it's a, you know, a unique cultural group on the edge of the world, right? At the time, not, not total edge of the world, but you know what I mean. I, I think that. God would understand that the way he would [00:05:00] explain truth to those people as best he could would be different to the way he would explain the truth of the universe to somebody who was a more technologically advanced and and let's not even talk about us like let's imagine where if humanity survives and we're still around.

In 500 years from now, God explaining to us what's like, like that 500 years in the future was like super advanced intelligences, intellect, everything like that, right? And full understanding of physics, full understanding of reality, him explaining to those people and like his last revelation that, yeah, the one time I was going to explain to any of you what was true, it was that one time was those Jews in the desert.

That seems like to me, not true, like that seems obviously not true that he would have different revelations for different people within different periods. And what's very interesting. So, so essentially what we believe is that God revealed portions of truth to different [00:06:00] prophets throughout time in a way that was meant to influence them specifically, their people specifically.

In

Simone Collins: other words, God understood his target audience and their needs at the time.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. And interestingly, this belief is really illustrated in Islam. Well, what Islam actually says, so, hold on, I'm gonna pull this up right here because I'm gonna get some quotes., so Quran 3524, Verily, we have sent with the truth as a bearer of glad tidings and a warner, and there never was a nation, but a warner had passed among them. So what this means is that God sent warners, prophets, whatever you want to say them, to every nation throughout human history, including those before the one that Muhammad was in.

So you look at Quran 1636 for, we assuredly sent amongst every people, a messenger with the command, serve Allah and eschew evil. [00:07:00] Okay. Now, Quran 12, two, indeed, we sent it down an Arabic Quran that you might understand. So this is saying the reason why the Quran is in Arabic is so that you may understand.

Okay. So, 4330, 433, you say, we have made in, we have made it a Qur'an in Arabic that you may be able to understand and learn wisdom. Thus, we have revealed it to be a judgment of the authority in Arabic, where thou to follow their vain desires after the knowledge which has reached thee, thou wouldst find neither protector against Allah.

So again, in Arabic, to reach you. Now, what's really interesting is you could say, oh, okay, yeah, but he also said, quote, 25 1. He also said, quote, Blessed is he who sent down the criteria of right and wrong in the Qur'an to his slave Muhammad that he may be a warner to all [00:08:00] peoples. And we would say, yes, but that also fits within our religious framework.

He is a warner to all peoples in through how this message affects all peoples.

So what the Qur'an is broadly laying out is that Muhammad was intended as a prophet for the Arabic people and specifically the Arabic people and specifically that time period and that it then says some other things like, oh, but he's a prophet for all people, which you would say, yes, all prophets that have affected any people are really prophets for all people.

Insofar as those people affect other people. But there is going to be some truth that any individual that is among the elect can withdraw from their teachings by prayerfully investigating them.

So, you know, Jesus was meant as a prophet for his people, Moses was meant as a prophet for his people, Joseph Smith was meant as a prophet for his people. We do think some prophets matter much more than other prophets. For example, we think that Jesus was a uniquely important prophet.

[00:09:00]

Malcolm Collins: So. So now you understand our broad frameworks of like where we sort of come down on, like where truth comes from. It comes down through a revelation from God that can be determined both through human events through profits and through the study of natural reality and biology and everything like that.

But then the question becomes, okay, how did we come to this position? This is really interesting.

So I started my childhood very atheistic. I grew up in a mostly like. My dad believed in some like new agey stuff. I think your parents were sort of similar. We were exposed to many religious traditions, but our families were basically new age, mystic sort of people.

Simone Collins: Yeah. My parents called themselves born again Buddhists and I went to a Mormon preschool and pretty much everyone I knew growing up was atheist.

Malcolm Collins: So we didn't have these traditions. Now, my grandfather was a strict Calvinist, you know, your grandfather was a strict Calvinist, but we otherwise grew up. away from [00:10:00] these, these traditional practices. And as I was developing my religious beliefs, I was a strict atheist. I was enamored with things like the subgenius movement.

I was and annoyed by things like the new atheist movement, but I thought that they were largely correct. You know, I considered myself on Team Atheist. I collected scientific baubles and everything like that. And on one of these, Collecting journeys. I, it was an estate sale for like a dead scientist that had all been taken to a single thrift store.

So they had, you know, collections of his old medical instruments and books that he had in his collection.

And one of these books, I. Picked out, I don't remember what particularly compelled me to pick it out at the time, but I was scrolling through it and I found some lines in it that seemed really prophetic to me about what was going to happen in the future. And I thought, this is cool. Like, I didn't really think anything else of it at the [00:11:00] time, and then it got a place in our museum.

And that book was, this book, The Martyrdom of Man. Okay? So we're going to talk a bit more about this earlier, because it's actually pretty important to our religious beliefs. Now, fast forward, uh, over a decade, maybe a decade and a half. I am writing the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion and I am beginning to realize the importance of religion to healthy societies, to the way humans think, to raising children, to intergenerational cultural fidelity.

I am understanding its instrumental purpose. And so I start thinking to myself, I'm like, okay, and we talk about this, Simone and I are talking about this every day, it's not like me alone, when I say I, I mean Simone and myself, we're talking about this, we're like, okay, so we want to create a culture for our kids that is resistant to things like cultural viruses, that is mostly in line with what we think is true about the world from scientific investigation of the world, not, you know, scientists [00:12:00] lie about some things, I agree with that, right, like we, Treat science with a lot of skepticism.

Trust. Broadly, the scientific understanding that you and I, and even the lay person has today is much higher than the scientific understanding of the past. Yes. And to me, some aspects of that understanding, like evolution, for example, seem incongruous, uh, with things that previous people have believed. Now the same with particle physics and stuff like that, you know, understandings of time, timelines, everything like that, so, I and things like consciousness, if you watch our episode on sentience, we don't think that there's strong evidence that humans are sentient, but that's like a completely different topic that we can, well, I can get to it briefly here so if you look at studies on human sentience what we find is that if you do something like stimulate a portion of a human's brain, which is meant to like lift a finger or something like that, they'll be like, Oh, I felt like lifting that finger.

This is done during open brain surgeries. Or if you give a split brain patients like a Rubik's [00:13:00] cube, right? And you can communicate with only one half of their brain because their brain actually, the corpus callosum is split. And so you cover an eyeball and you're communicating with the opposite side of the brain and you're like, why did you?

pick up that Rubik's Cube, but secretly on the other side of the eye, you had given them a note telling them to pick up that Rubik's Cube. They'll say, well, I've always felt like solving a Rubik's Cube. If you do an experiment where you give a person, you ask their like opinion on something political, or you ask their opinion on like, which of these women did you find most attractive?

And then you like subtly change which opinion through sight of hand they chose. And then you're like, why did you choose this opinion? It wasn't the opinion they chose. They'll come up with a complicated reason why they chose that opinion. If you look in fMRIs at like, well, how people make decisions, it appears that the decision is actually made quite a bit before they're conscious of it.

So, really, what this all implies to me is that our brain, the part of it that makes decisions, is mostly operating outside of the part of our brain which is conscious sentient, and then the sentient part of our brain is like, not a guy driving a car, but a guy watching a series of cameras for a [00:14:00] security video that is then trying to explain,, what happened in those videos as a single coherent narrative, and that this likely evolved for human to human communication.

 Think of it like a system for data compression of human narratives and experiences before human to human communication.

Malcolm Collins: Now this becomes important in a bit, but anyway, back to where we're going with all of this. So we were like, okay, so we're going to create a narrative that we think is true, is what we understand about the world today. And we think is inspired by these previous traditions, you know, looking a lot to our Calvinist heritage looking a lot to the way that they saw the world as sort of predestined, which we also think is very likely to be true.

So we have another video on this where we go into this topic in a lot more detail, but it's important to understand that our view of the way predestination works neither precludes multiple or splitting timelines, nor does it preclude free will. We see it as coming from the perspective of which you look at a timeline.

So, for example, in a Traditional Calvinist framework, because God is [00:15:00] viewing the timeline from outside of the timeline in the same way that, , me watching , a video that was filmed, you know, a few days ago, I'm watching that video from outside of the perspective of the events in that video, , so while from my perspective, all of the events in that video are predestined from the players in the video, they're not predestined.

 So we think that physics, like the laws of the universe, exists outside of time, and that, uh, me as an individual, the actions I take are determined by the laws of physics, basically. And, and, and thus the things that happened in the physical universe before I made that decision.

There's no sort of external component at play here. There's no sort of soul, no nothing like that. Everything that I do It's because of the things that happened to me and the things I am thinking in the physical laws. Now, what this means for me, which is really interesting, is it actually means that we believe that in a world without predestination, an individual would have [00:16:00] less agency than in a world with predestination.

Because What that world would have is the ability for the person to end up making decisions that are not based on the things that have happened before them and what they were thinking at the time, but based on something external to them, which robs them of agency. You can go into the free will video that we created if you want to go into this topic in more detail.

 And for splitting timelines, we think it's a possibility. It really is irrelevant.

 Timelines may actually split in a way that's not exactly predestined, due to random events happening within space time or within subspace. However, because those events have no connection to human consciousness, they don't really affect this debate in any meaningful way.

Malcolm Collins: Get to how we see metaphysical states really quickly before I go too deep. So how do we see the metaphysics of the world working, right? If the world can be explained by a mathematical equation, like if we get to a universal theorem for explaining reality, and that is a single mathematical equation or a series of [00:17:00] mathematical equations.

Okay. And then we say, okay, well, suppose you're imagining different universes. Right. That operate off their different sets of laws. Do you think in all of those universes, two plus two would always be four, you know, outside of instances in which you have changed the rules of mass specifically, like, you know, non Euclidean geometry.

And then that's just mass with additional rules. It's not like two plus two doesn't equal four anymore. I Would say, no, that's, that's true across all. Potential universes. So what that then means is that is true outside of all potential universes. Now, if our reality can be described by an equation and that equation exists, or that collection of equations exists outside of all potential universes, then that equation exists, whether or not these universes exist.

Then I have a question. Okay, well, like if I'm graphing a line. Like if I have an equation for graphing a line, right, do I need to graph that line for that equation to refer that line or to exist as like an intrinsic property or [00:18:00] an emergent property of the equation itself? To me, the answer is no. So basically our metaphysical understanding of reality is that reality is a self graphing equation of a description of how the universe could work because.

If we have two potential universes, like suppose the universe is described by an equation and equations exist outside of time. So we can say, okay, we either exist in a universe was like actual material things, the things that are described by this equation, right? But even if we lived in that universe, a mirror universe, if basically things self graph, if the things that an equation represents exists outside of them being graphed, Mirror universe where people like us who thought everything we thought and felt everything we.

felt would exist mirrored to that universe and thus Occam's razor, like the real Occam's razor, if something would exist anyway, you don't need to assume it exists. So that's like the metaphysics of how we [00:19:00] think reality exists. But again, this can be updated with science and stuff like that. Like we believe in an incremental, we don't believe in like final revelations or anything like that.

Simone Collins: Right. It's just that the nature of our religious framework is such that it does not, that a religious authority or profit. It is the one to update this, but rather sort of our, our scientific consensus and our understanding of what has been essentially mathematically or otherwise physically and tangibly proven.

Would you say that's fair?

Malcolm Collins: A personal responsibility. Actually, really interestingly, it's almost like a Protestant iteration of Mormonism. If you guys want to see our Mormon video Mormons, the way they see truce is very interesting because they do believe, like us, that God distributes truce to people at different times through various prophets, or you can have like self prophets or whatever, right, and so you pray to God and he tells you what's true and what's not true, But that can be updated.

So unlike other religions, like a modern prophet can say, like, Joseph Smith was wrong when he said this, or Brigham Young was [00:20:00] wrong when he said this, like a previous prophet was just wrong because we have a more perfect revelation now, but this is still all largely decided and distributed through a central school.

Church organization, whereas we believe something very similar, but we believe that it's the personal responsibility of every individual to come to these truths on their own, and that truth is more efficiently achieved through large groups of individuals coming to these truths on their own, and then God showing which truths were actually true by which of those individuals End up you know, being successful and influencing the future.

And when I say successful, I don't mean indulging in opulence. That is a sign of sin to us. Anybody who adorns themselves in wealth, like to us, that is a sign of personal sin. Which is almost sort of the opposite of the prosperity. Well, it's like the prosperity doctrine in that if you. Accumulate a bunch of wealth.

That is God testing you or the basilisk testing you, but we'll get to what we mean by that in a second. But he is testing to see if you will spend it on self aggrandizement and, and, and, [00:21:00] and, and improving, you know, your own vanities and lifestyle, or will you spend it on sort of long term projects, improving human flourishing and and serving the divine, right?

Simone Collins: I, I just think it would be really fun if you would go into we'll say the characters or figures of our religion. That's the fun stuff. What do you mean by that? The Agents of Providence. Oh yeah, the Agents of Providence. God, the Basilisk. Okay,

Malcolm Collins: I'll go quickly into this. So the Agents of Providence, or Simone calls them the future police these are the, so, okay, first broad strokes of our religion.

We need to get into this first. When we're telling our kids about our religion, we're basically saying in A hundred thousand years or a million years, your descendants, do you think they will be closer to the way you understand a human or the way you would think of a God? And I think most reasonable people would be like, yeah, in a million years, humans, if we're still around, are probably going to be closer to the way we would conceive of a God today.

And then we say, well, so who's to say they relate to time the same way we do. Like that would be almost naive to think they relate to time the same way we do. And so we [00:22:00] believe that they are self manifesting entities, which nudge sort of the timeline in the direction that leads to what leads them to exist, which is a pluralistic, flourishing human species.

And why does pluralism matter? Well, so if we believe that truth is determined through multiple individual revelations, and then the revelations truths determined by their efficacy, as somebody said in their comments, like, the truth of the thing will be determined by its fruits, you know, so you can look at individuals, see how well their life is going, see how well their message is spreading, and learn whether or not that message is true or untrue.

In fact, you can learn the efficacy of a prophet, like the amount of genuine knowledge God gifted them, by their ability to predict the future. So, you know, I think that things like the Bible, the Koran, the Old Testament, they do have a level of prediction of the future. More so than other secular documents of the time, both in terms of how much they've impacted human history, which proves their divinity, but also in terms of little things [00:23:00] worded in them.

But this then comes to me. We'll get to this in a second. But when I was developing this theory, I was like, huh, I should look through every document I've ever said that I thought predicted the future in the past. We're going to get to that in a second. Then we also believe in the basilisk. So we believe that there are sort of two entities in the future, but they're really the same entity.

Which is to say one entity rewards those individuals. who make the world a more likely place for a prosperous, flourishing humanity and that make individual sacrifices to lead to that eventuality. And then the other individuals provide tests for people to see if they're worthy to play this role. And to strengthen them because we believe that strengths come through hardship.

Suffering is what makes us strong. It is through enduring suffering that we And you see this in most of world's great figures, you know, whether it's, you know, Caesar or Winston Churchill or Alexander the [00:24:00] Great, they often undergo some immense suffering as children. And it is through that suffering or Jesus that they learn.

Or, or they, they are tested to see if they are worthy of fulfilling that role within the great design. And it is that suffering that edifies their spirit and the more that they endure sort of consistent suffering throughout their life while still being happy, like not indulging in it, not allowing them to, it to break their spirit, they show their worthiness you know, as, as, The elect the people who are going to influence the system, but let's get back to that little thing.

I noted earlier, which is very important to us. So we were doing this thing, the thing I noted earlier, which is where sort of everything really began to change for me. So we started living by the system we created for our kids. We're like, ah, this broadly works. We had a few holidays that we had planned out everything like that.

And as we were living with the ceremony, as we were [00:25:00] living just believing this was true, being like, does this work? Things kept happening that I couldn't explain by mere coincidence. Not easily. And not just confirmation bias, I'm familiar with confirmation bias, I know that confirmation bias affects people even when they're warned about confirmation bias.

But I, ultra rational Malcolm, was like, oh s**t, is this actually true? And it could actually be true, because given the way we had structured this belief system, we would have Come to structure it that way. Even if it was true, like these, these agents of providence can influence people through multiple means and in multiple ways they may influence somebody to do something that they think is a scam and a cult, but it's actually the truth.

Or they might influence people like us to be like, okay, create this for your family. And then it actually turns out to be the truth and we can determine that by looking at that. So this is where I came back to that question. Okay. But let's look for where things have predicted the future in the past in ways that were uncanny, in ways that seemed impossible.

And [00:26:00] then, Simone, you remember this. So the kids kept playing with this f ing book. And actually, the day before I was thinking about this, I was like, they had ripped out a page or something.

Simone Collins: Yeah, so we were, we were downstairs and they had moved it to the top of our little fireplace thing and torced in.

We caught him tearing out a page from the book and we're like, Oh my God, no, like not, not the decorative books.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Taking it out of the room. And it was actually sitting in my room that day when I was thinking about it. Yeah. And so I was like, okay, well, I should probably check this thing out again, just to see if this theory we have, because if we have a theory about the way the world works, it should be testable in some way.

This is before the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion came out or anything like that. So I go into this book, and we don't really talk about this in detail in the Pragmatist Guide to Religion because in honesty, I'm a bit embarrassed by it. It's a little too, uh, it feels too religious to me. [00:27:00] Like it aesthetically bothers me that this happened.

I go through this book and not only were its prophecies more accurate than I remembered, But it basically lays out the exact framework that I had laid out for my family hundreds of years ago. And that was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I kind of actually really believe this now.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's a little uncanny.

Malcolm Collins: So let's go into it, because I think it's worth sort of reading what I was thinking, what was influencing me, and something that we sort of see as like, An actual religious text now to us. Okay

and this has some dot dots here where I'm taking stuff out or sometimes updating old English to modern English because it's otherwise hard to understand. And for note. This was written in [00:28:00] 1872.

To give you an idea of just how long ago this was, this was , before the Thomas Edison light bulb patent was filed. This is before Jules Verne published Around the World in 80 Days.

 This was even before bicycles came into popular use. And the types of bicycles that would have come into popular use shortly after this was published were penny farthings, those bicycles with like the giant front wheel and tiny back wheel.

Malcolm Collins: Earth, which is now a purgatory, will be made a paradise, not by idle prayers and supplications, but by the efforts of man himself, and by means of mental achievements analogous to those which have raised him to his present state. Three inventions, which perhaps may be long delayed, but which possibly are near at hand, will give this overcrowded island, he's talking about the British Islands here, the prosperous conditions of the United States.

The first is the discovery of a motive force which will take the [00:29:00] place of steam, with its cumbersome fuel of oil or coal. Okay, exactly right and right in order. Secondly, the invention of aerial locomotion, which labor at a trifling cost of money and of time to any part of the planet. Okay, exactly right.

Alright, next. At which, by annihilating distance, will speedily extinguish national distinctions. And thirdly, the manufacture of flesh and flour from the elements by a chemical process in the laboratory, similar to that which is now performed within the bodies of animals and plants. Oh my god, we have exactly done this recently.

Welp. Okay. Food will then be manufactured in unlimited quantities at trifling expense, which I should remind you, a lot of people today are like, that's not happening. From the perspective of [00:30:00] somebody in the late 1800s, yes, food today is manufactured at unlimited quantities and trifling expense. And I will put a graph on the screen of the number of the world's population who go hungry so you can see just how much we have fixed this issue and how much more you will fix it as this technology gets better.

Hmm. Then he says, and our enlightened prosperity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep, just as we look back upon cannibals. Hunger and starvation will then be unknown, and the best part of the human life will no longer be wasted in the tedious process of cultivating the fields. Note that has already happened.

We, this is true for, for most humans today, and we do not cultivate the fields, the vast majority of humans anymore. Population will mightily increase, and the earth will be a garden. Governments will be conducted with the quintitude and regularity of club committees.

The interest which is now felt in [00:31:00] politics will be transferred to science. The latest news from the laboratory of the chemist, or the observatory of the astronomer, or the experimenting room of the biologist, will eagerly be discussed. Poetry and the fine arts will take that place in the heart which religion now holds.

Luxuries will be cheapened and made common to all. None will be rich, and none Now, this is really interesting, because this last part of the prophecy, he explicitly lays out, this will happen after we have learned how to create meat in a lab. Okay? So he, he says We're going to invent combustion engines. We are going to invent flight.

Flight will lead to globalism. We will then be able to create meat in the lab. And then he talks about the social causes that meat in the lab will lead to people to look back at people who eat animals negatively, which I think will eventually happen once with this technology becomes better and more widespread.

And then eventually we will become a post scarcity society. [00:32:00] This is the man in the 1800s talking about this. But now you need to see why when I read this, I was like, oh no, this is uncannily what we believe and what you have seen us believe in previous videos and stuff like that. And no, we read these books during one of our family holidays, Martyr Day, which takes place before Future Day, which we've talked about in a previous video, but we can go into all our holidays in a video that's not, like, broadly about our religious beliefs.

Not only will man subdue the forces of evil that are without, he will also subdue those that are within. in. He will repress the base instincts and propensities which he has inherited from the animals below. He will obey the laws that are written on his heart. He will worship the divinity within him as our conscious forbids us to commit actions which the conscious of the savage allows.

So the moral sense of our successors will stigmatize as crimes those offenses against the intellect which are sanctioned by ourselves. This is really important. [00:33:00] Idleness and stupidity will be regarded with abhorrence. Women will become the companions of men and tutors of their children. Note here, this is, this is very important here.

So he admits that men and women are different, something that many of the, well, do, do not admit in our society today. But he also thinks that women deserve a level of equality within the family. So they should be equals of men, but still have a unique role within the child rearing process. Thank you. I love your sanity.

Sorry, next. Men will look upon this star as their fatherland. Its progress will be their ambition, the gratitude of others, their reward. These bodies, which now we wear, belong to lower animals.

Our minds have already outgrown them. Already we look upon them with contempt. Hear, hear. Come when science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture and which even if explained to us, we could not now understand just as a savage cannot understand electricity [00:34:00] magnetism. Or steam that is so like just in line with everything we believe.

From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessing machine. Your kind claimed your flesh, as if it will not decay and fail you. One day, the crude farmer As that you call a temple will wither, for a machine is immortal.

Even in death, I serve you on desire.[00:35:00]

Malcolm Collins: But it is also insane that someone in the 18 hundreds was writing this disease will be extirpated. The causes of decay will be removed, immortality will be invented, and then the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space and will cross the airless sahara's, which separate planet from planet and sun.

From sun. The earth will become a holy land, which is visited by pilgrims from. All quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of nature. They will become themselves the architects of systems, the manufacturers of worlds. So this is really interesting. I think a lot of people would think that we would have some umbrage because they know our stance on life extensionism, but I need to be clear.

Our life extensionism is based around modern life extensionism. Okay, not the life extensionism of intergenerational [00:36:00] improvement, which he clearly supported. I am for, you know, when we have the technology to eventually do easy life extensionism and cheaply maintain people. Yeah, that makes sense to do, but not when it's coming at the cost of other visions for the future, or it's leading to the stagnation of our species, which he would see as an abhorrent sin.

But let's continue. Man will then be perfect. He will then be a creator. He will therefore be what the vulgar worship as a god. There is but a difference in degree between the chemist who today arranges forces in his laboratory so that they produce a gas, and the creator who arranges forces so that they produce a world.

Between a gardener who plants a seed and the creator who plants a nebula. We do not wish to extirpate religion from the life of man. We wish him to have a religion which will harmonize with his intellect, exactly what we were trying to create, and he came to the same conclusions we did,

and which inquiry will [00:37:00] strengthen, not destroy, we wish in fact to give him a religion, for now there are many who have none, us growing up. We teach that there is a God, but not a God of the anthropid variety, not a God who is gratified by compliments in prose and verse, and whose attributes can be catalogued by theologians.

God is so great that he cannot be defined. 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. Such it is plain as the scheme of nature. We are placed under secondary laws, these we must obey, to develop to the utmost our genius and our love.

That is the only true religion. To do that which deserves to be written. To write that which deserves to be read, to tend the sick, to comfort the sorrowful, to [00:38:00] animate the weary, to keep the temple of the body pure, to cherish the divinity within us, to be faithful to the intellect, to Educate those powers which have been entrusted to charge and to employ them in the service of humanity.

That is all we can do. Then our elements shall be dispersed, and all is at end. All is at end for the unit. All is at end for the atom. All is at end for that speck of animated blood and flesh with the little spark of instinct, which calls itself a mind, but all is not at the end for actual man, the true being the glorious one.

We teach that the soul is immortal. We teach that there is a future life. We teach that there is a heaven in the ages far away, but not for us. Single corpuscles, not for us [00:39:00] dots of animated jelly, but for the one we are the elements and who, though we perish, never dies, but grows from period to period, and by the united efforts of the single molecules called men or those cell groups called nations.

Is raised towards the divine power, which he will finally attain.

Simone Collins: So, in other words, he's, he's extremely We're, we're on exactly the same page when it comes to how we, within our religious framework before Malcolm took a really close look at this book see the definition of humans, sort of our, our soul, like how we see ourselves as part of an unbroken chain of humanity and achievement and self sacrifice that makes a better future and a brighter future possible.

So he really

Malcolm Collins: nails it. Yeah, but not just that, but other concepts that he's getting here, like. Humans not being particularly sentient. This is not something anyone in his time period was saying. Well,

Simone Collins: yeah, people were barely even talking about [00:40:00] sentience, so it's, it's pretty meaningful. So yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: mean, this is nations like groups of humans being part of a larger emergent entity is also to me really powerful, like in the same way that our cells are individual living entities, that we have a microbiome within us and all together we are represented as a single entity.

We are cells. We are atoms within our countries, within our cultural groups and within human civilization.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So sort of broadly speaking, our religion is, as we've alluded to, like, if we were to sum this all up it, we practice descendant worship in the form of the potential that humanity must and will create our God is an inevitable God in the sense that our progress as humans is inevitable, so long as we don't destroy ourselves, so long as essentially we're virtuous.

So our, our God is the reward for good behavior. And, yeah. We, we judge the accuracy and [00:41:00] respectability of, I guess you could say profits, like when, when we'd read here by their shot calling ability, which is kind of the same. Criteria we use for determining whether this is someone that we should trust with business, with investment, with politics, with science.

This is how

Malcolm Collins: broadly we determine truth for the criteria of authenticity, which we outline in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion, which basically says that truth is best determined by filtering expert knowledge through ways that they might be pressured or influenced to manipulate that law knowledge or lie.

And we go through like 12 points of these. This is not really important for this. Basically it's a trust, but verify way of determining what's true while saying that experts will have access to some knowledge that the lay person will not have access to, but experts will also be motivated to lie about some things.

But let's go back to scripture here, Simone. .

A day will come when the European God of the 19th century will be classified with the gods of the Olympus and the Nile when surplices and sacramental plates will [00:42:00] be exhibited in museums. When nurses will relate to children, the legends of Christian mythology, as they now tell fairy tales, a day will come when the current belief in property after death

for is not existence property and the dearest property of all will be accounted a strange and selfish idea just as we smile at the savage chief who believes that his gentility will be continued in the world beneath the ground and he will there be attended by his concubines and slaves.

The world will become a heavenly commune, to which men will bring the inmost treasures of their hearts, in which they reserve themselves not even a hope, not even a shadow of joy, but will give up for all mankind, with one face, with one desire, They will labor together in the sacred cause, the extinction of disease, the extinction of sin, and the perfectibility of genius, the perfectibility of love, the invention of immortality, the exploration of the infinite, and the conquest of creation.

This is the most key part right here that I need to read, okay? [00:43:00] And then I will stop because I know Simone gets annoyed by me reading scripture, okay? Ain't no one wanna hear that. You blessed ones who shall inherit that future age of which we can only dream. You pure and radiant beings who shall succeed us on the earth.

When you turn back your eyes on us poor savages grubbing in the ground for our daily bread, eating flesh and blood, dwelling in vile bodies, which degrade us every day to a level with the beast, tortured by pains and by animal propensities, buried in gloomy superstitions,, ignorant of nature, which yet holds us in her bonds.

When you read of us as books, when you think of what we are and compare us with yourselves, remember that it is to us you owe the foundation of your happiness and grandeur. To us now in our libraries and laboratories and star towers And dissecting rooms and workshops are preparing the materials of human gross.

And as for ourselves, if we are sometimes inclined to regret that our lot is cast in these unhappy days, let us [00:44:00] remember how much more fortunate we are than those who lived before us a few centuries ago. The working man enjoys more luxuries today than did the king of England in Anglo Saxon times, and at his command are intellectual delights.

Which but a little while ago the most learned in the land could not obtain. All this we owe to the labors of other men. Let us therefore remember them with gratitude. Let us follow their glorious example by adding something new to the knowledge of mankind. Let us pay to the future the debt which we owe the past.

And now here is the most important part, because this is the commandment. All men indeed cannot be poets, inventors, or philanthropists, but all men can join , in that gigantic and godlike work, the progress of creation. Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part.

He who strives to subdue his evil passions, vile remnants of old four footed life, and who cultivates the social affectations, he who [00:45:00] endeavors to better his condition, and to make his children wiser and happier than himself, whatever may be his motives, he will not have lived in vain.

Now, I'm not gonna go crazier with this, I will read more of this, it's like a, into this, so we can get to our kids and stuff, okay, Simone? Thank you. I just want to say that, like, When you begin to see all this, our obsession with pluralism makes a lot more sense. Because it is through pluralism that God makes his will known.

And if you ever had an iteration of humanity that believed themselves to be perfectible, that wanted to end intergenerationalism, They would be the height of stagnation, the height of sin, almost the height of all evil. Anything who thought that humanity should freeze in one state. And this is why we, while we do believe in like life extensionism.

In this framework, we're really against stagnating life extensionism, right? Life extensionism without children, life extensionism without intergenerational transfer, life extensionism [00:46:00] without humans genetically changing, culturally changing, changing in how we relate to technology. Simone, was there some final ideas you wanted to get out here?

You're just very excited to leave.

Simone Collins: I think greetings are boring, but I think he did say it first, and he said it very eloquently, and I think, you know, People should take a look at, maybe you can include, you can include an excerpt from the chapter or somewhere linked to it. Because I do think it's, it's very prescient.

And I think maybe we can have some episodes, if people really like this, let us know in the comments, if you want to see some future episodes on the holidays that we practice, because those are really fun too.

Malcolm Collins: Or if you want to see future readings from Holy Text. That's always something that we're happy to do.

Simone Collins: Yes, prove me wrong, people. Tell me you want to hear him read off of

Malcolm Collins: a page more. I will say something that's very important to this religious framework is an understanding of time that we've described in other episodes, right? Which is you are responsible for everything that happens within any timeline that you choose.

Whenever I choose one action over another. Now, timelines don't split, but it [00:47:00] does mean that I am fully fully responsible for my decisions. Every human that doesn't come into existence, every human that suffers, everything that doesn't come to pass because of the choices I'm making, is my personal responsibility.

And this means that any engagement with sin, right, sin is anything that deviates from this productive path that I was put on earth for is a really negative thing. Oh, another thing that we can definitely do another episode on is our concept of the elect, which is also important to understand our religion.

Broadly speaking Nope. Nope. Don't give it away. Okay. I won't give it away. But I, yeah, and, and sin is indulgence in anything that is primarily meant to make you happy or to fulfill some self narrative you have of yourself. So it can also be like self indulgent, self victimization, self indulgent suffering.

And sin is okay. We are humans. We are fallen. We are not deserving of paradise yet. Paradise will be created for the iterations of us that are deserving of it. But, but, so it is, it is sinful to think that you can live without sin, but it is also the height of sin [00:48:00] to indulgence in. And this is a really important aspect of our framework, right?

Simone Collins: Yes, and that is all for a future episode because now we need to invest in the future, our children, because they matter a lot.

Malcolm Collins: They matter so much. I'm joking, they matter everything. They matter everything to us. As Wynwood Reid said and I will hit end recording, but I am going to read this line again because it is so important.

To make his children wiser and happier than himself, whatever his motives, he will not have lived in vain. Then to the children.

Simone Collins: I love you. I love you too.

This is what we probably sound like to normal people.

There is a whole breakaway civilization. What's happening? I'm gonna give you the big secret, man, if you want it. Yes, I do. This big breakaway civilization of scientists. Is that true? Yes. What are you, from Mars? Let's just say, it's super advanced. For real? I don't ever talk about this. For real? Breakaway civilization?

Are you ready? There's a centralized [00:49:00] system of what they're building that isn't naturally occurring. Who is, who is that? They're the high priests. They're scientists. Right. They're engineers. Tell me what you're trying to say. They're racing. We're using human technology to try to take our best minds and build some type of breakaway civilization where they're gonna merge with machines, transcend, and break away from the failed species that is man.

Where are you getting this from? You read their own writings, they believe we're this ugly fallen, ugly species, we're only to be killed. It's for research purposes. Exactly. They're gonna merge with machines. And become gods. Hold on a second. It's just crazy. Isn't it entirely possible that all these futurists, all these technological innovators, they all see the same end game.

That there's going to be some sort of a complete integration between people and artificial intelligence. It's beyond that. Hold on please. I let you go on your crazy rant. Hold on please. You're interrupting my crazy rant. I'm telling you that this is a natural progression of this massive infatuation that we have with technology.

They don't have to engineer it. It's natural. [00:50:00] Okay, okay, okay, sure, I get it. We're on the cusp of figuring out how to manipulate our very beings. Like, to the point where we're not going to be people anymore. They're going to be able to do s**t in both ways. I agree. They're going to be able to do s**t where they're integrating computers.

500 years longer, I'm going to do it. I really think that's what they're doing. Ah! For anyone who is actually nerdy enough to be interested in hearing the rest of the readings of the text, I will finish up what I had intended to read on this episode before we ran out of time. But! If he act thus not from mere prudence, not in the vain hope of being rewarded in another world, but from a pure sense of duty as a citizen of nature, as a patriot of the planet on which he dwells, then our philosophy which once appeared to him so cold and cheerless Will become a religion of the heart.

And will elevate him to the skies. The virtues which were once for him, mere abstract terms, will become endowed with life, and will hover around him like guardian angels, conversing with him in his [00:51:00] solitude, consoling him in his afflictions, teaching him how to live and how to die, but this condition is not to be easily attained, as the saints and prophets were often forced to practice long vigils and fastings and prayers before their ecstasies would fall upon them and their visions would appear.

So virtue in its purest and most exalted form can only be acquired by means.

of severe and long continued culture of the mind. And now, this is really important. Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience, But, the conscience itself will be defective. To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty. And when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted, and that it should be subservient to I give to universal history a strange [00:52:00] but true title, the martyrdom of man.

In each generation the human race has been tortured that their children may profit by their woes. Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of ages past. Is it therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of those who are to come? Famine, pestilence, and war are no longer essential for the advancement of the human race.

But a season of mental anguish is at hand and Through this we must pass in order that our prosperity may rise The soul must be sacrificed the hope in immortality must die a sweet and charming Illusion must be taken from the human race as use and beauty vanish never to return and you know I really want to comment on a line that he said here, you know going into because they were about to go into World War I, and World War II, but a season of mental anguish is at hand, and through this, we must pass in order that our prosperity may rise.

[00:53:00] I am just always astounded by everything he predicted in this, and I should note that while this book may not be popular now, it was fairly popular during its time period. , For example, the guy who created the Rhodes Scholarship, Cecil Rhodes, said it was the most important book he had ever read.

Sherlock Holmes said it was the, the best book ever written. , even Wikipedia right now, I mean, when they find out that I like it, of course they're gonna change this, but they're like, He, Winwood Reed was surprisingly not racist for someone of his time period. , so, people have probably been going back, but he, he had a view of the future of women's role in society, of everything like that, that I think was incredibly even minded.

, and massively prophetic and it's propheticness to me proves the efficacy of its teachings because it had a level of predictability to it and a predictability still is some of the prophecies have not fully come to pass. You know, we are in a sequence of prophecies unfolding right now.

 And that is. Very exciting to me, you know, a real, a verifiable, , doctrine. Now, of course, with our [00:54:00] wider doctrine, if it does not pass, like, if it begins to fail in its predictive capacity, that would mean that other prophets are likely, more likely to have accurate visions of the future. But right now, , you know, obviously Christ is the core prophet, but, Wynwood Read is The most recent and relevant prophet that we base our lives around in terms of the way that he lays out a religious framework.

By the way, if you want to read, bits from his work, instead of reading the full work, because it's a full, long history of the human race, it is easier just to read the sections that we re quote in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, because we have a chapter

Called intermission.

where we publish the excerpt that I read here , and that's just much easier to go over.

And we also broke it into paragraphs and took out some, some old words and stuff like that that made it difficult for a person to read.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe