In this video, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deeper into their religious views after their recent episode on the nature of truth and prophecy. They explain the concept of "the elect" - the idea that not all people are equally important in God's design.

They discuss the criteria for being among the elect, like having an impact on history according to your own intentions that aligns with the "Agents of Providence." They use examples like Hitler and Trump to illustrate this idea.

Simone highlights the virtues and downsides of believing in limited atonement. A benefit is less desire to forcibly convert people, but the arrogance of assuming others don't matter.

They talk about the importance of constantly questioning your own self-righteousness and searching for meaning when bad things happen to sharpen yourself. Overall, an introspective discussion on the role of predetermination and free will in their theological framework.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Prophets are individuals like Jesus or something like that who received special revelation and their revelation is made apparent to us both through their predictive capacity of future events and. through the spread and efficacy of their message and improving an individual's quality of life. The elect are different from profits. The elect are individuals who have a plan for their lives. Like, this is what I plan to do to have this outcome on the world population. This plan needs to, one, have been accurately executed. So they do need to have the impact that they had planned on having, and two, be in line with the will of the Agents of Providence so it basically means that they are using you as a vessel to bring about the future that must come to pass

 from The Martyrdom of Man, persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience, But the conscience itself will be defective to [00:01:00] cultivate the intellect is there for a religious duty.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today.

We recently released an episode on our religious beliefs that primarily ended up focusing on the concept of where we think like truth comes from, like how you can determine if an individual. is a prophet and how you can determine if an individual is being, and the will of God, like how do you determine what the will of God is?

And it went into, and in our case, what we think God is, just so people are broadly aware. is we think that God is our distant, distant, distant descendants, humanity's distant descendants, that in a million years, if humans are still around, whatever we have become in that time is closer to what today we would conceive of a God than what we today would conceive of as a human and that they don't relate to time in the way we relate to time.

So it's sort of [00:02:00] this self manifesting entity that reveals aspects of itself to People, throughout the civilization, our civilization's development, however when it's explaining itself to earlier iterations of people with less technology and less philosophical sophistication, it had to use simpler explanations.

But, we left that video with a cliffhanger, which was The concept of the elect, and it's something that we can dig into a lot on this video because it's a pretty important concept to our religious framework, and the gist of it is that not everyone's life matters equally. God does not care about everyone equally.

The, the agents of providence, we would call them, do not, not everyone is equally important in their design. And some people are holistically unimportant in their design. Do you want to go over your thoughts on this, Simone?

Simone Collins: Yeah well, I would say, like, [00:03:00] there's a, a larger Like, I guess, bifurcation of religious and metaphysical philosophies that, that all every, everyone has to make a call on this and each is kind of an a*****e for different reasons.

And I just want to like, make that clear. So there's, there's one group. That believes in limited atonement, which is really what we're describing here that like some people are saved or some people are important and others aren't and and and not all people are equal and that's not necessarily something that we're happy about.

It's just what we think to be true. And the, the. Upsides to this view, or I would say the virtues of this view, the nice things are that you're not going to see a lot of forcible conversions with these religions. And we're not the only ones who hold this view. There are lots of people who also Calvinists hold this view.

Jewish people hold this view, lots of groups. Right. And so they're, they're like, you know what? It's not our job to convert everyone. We cannot save everyone. That's not possible. So they're just, they're a lot less coercive. They're a lot less domineering because it's just not practical. But then on the, like on the downside or the [00:04:00] vice end, the, you know, they're just also like, ah, those people are lost or going to hell or unimportant or whatever, right?

Like they're somehow lesser or. You know, not saved or whatever. And that's, that kind of sucks because I mean, in a like very PC, everyone's happy world, everyone goes to heaven, everything's good. It's, it's great. Then there are religions and cultural views that believe that everyone can be saved. Obviously the virtue there is that everyone can go to heaven.

Everyone can be saved. Everyone can matter. The downside there is that there is then a. Genuine philosophical like values aligned imperative to convert people and to enforce

Malcolm Collins: your, your cultural beliefs on other people. So if you believe that certain continue,

Simone Collins: this means then that if you have like two groups that hold this view, like, Catholics and Muslims, for example both kind of, I think, interesting, correctly hold this view.

Not all

Malcolm Collins: Catholics and all Muslims

Simone Collins: hold this view, . Some do, right? Like, or like really heavy proselytizing ones. [00:05:00] Both are believable. The other group is going to go to hell if they don't convert to the correct religious view and the correct practices. So it is their imperative to through force or through convincing.

The convincing part is a nice way to do it. The force ways, the not nice way to do it. They have to switch everyone over. You kind of see I would say a secular. A secular version of this can be seen with antinatalism. Mm, yeah. That there are coercive antinatalists who would just like to forcibly sterilize or like literally kill everyone without their consent.

And then there's the antinatalists like Lawrence Anton and, and his, his cohort who we, we've spoken with and met with a person who would. who never want to coerce anyone, who only want to convince people. They both have the same end. There should be no humans anymore, and ideally no animals either. No sentient life.

However, they have very different approaches. So we're not saying that like I think

Malcolm Collins: you've drunk the Kool Aid a little here. I think that these groups historically typically don't try to [00:06:00] conver coerce people when they're in the minority. But when they gain control of governments, they almost always attempt to coerce people.

Well, but what we can

Simone Collins: say though, is that like the They're trying to do the right thing. They're trying

Malcolm Collins: to do the right thing, but they, they don't, they're not just trying to do the right thing. If they have control of a governing system, they have a moral mandate often to use that governing system to coerce people to follow their rights.

Because

Simone Collins: otherwise, you know that you can save someone and you're letting them go to hell. You're letting them suffer. You're letting their lives have no meaning. And that is truly evil by their framework. So again, like each one has their benefits and downsides. Now we, we, we are of the other group that's, we're just like, I'm sorry, I can't save you, you're not going to matter.

Which is kind of an a*****e move and kind of not, cause we're not going to force anyone to do

Malcolm Collins: anything. So appears condescending from the perspective of an outsider, but generally if you're. You know, abutting another cultural group, you would prefer that they had this view than that they don't, because they're going to be a much more [00:07:00] symbiotic cultural group to their neighbors and much less dominating.

And, and so, and the antinatalists are almost certainly the most dangerous of these groups right now and definitely a quickly growing movement, faster growing than the pronatalist movement, if you look at, you know, their subreddits, like the ethylism subreddit and stuff like that, that want to destroy all life on the planet.

So. Really, we gotta talk about that. But, but, but, now let's get back to what we think. Like, what do we mean when we say that there is an elect group and an unelect group? So, We define elect in a number of different ways. Like there's a number of qualifying criteria to be among the elect, right? And it does not necessarily mean that you are a prophet.

Prophets are individuals like Jesus or something like that who received special revelation and their revelation is made apparent to us both through their predictive capacity of future events that other people didn't predict. And. through the spread and efficacy of their [00:08:00] message and improving an individual's quality of life.

So that's the, that's, that's how you determine profits. The elect are different from profits. The elect are individuals who have a plan for their lives. Like, this is what I plan to do to have this outcome on the world population. This plan needs to, one, have been accurately executed. So they do need to have the impact that they had planned on having, and two, be in line with the will of the Agents of Providence God's will, you could say, right?

Alright, so, these, these future entities will, the, the future that they're trying to bring about, so it basically means that they are using you as a vessel to bring about the future that must come to pass. Now, this gets more interesting, because what this means, is it means, even if I end up having a big impact on history.

If it wasn't the impact that I intended to have, then I am not a tool of the Agents of Providence. I am more [00:09:00] just like a tool that was used to carry out wider events in the world, potentially on their behalf. But it wasn't what I wanted to have happen. An example here could be someone like Hitler.

Like, things definitely didn't turn out the way that he wanted to, and yet it would be crazy to say that he's not one of the most influential people in world history, and will not be remembered as, as, as one of the most important in terms of how he changed the path of history. Right, like a

Simone Collins: pivoted around him.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. But, but this actually comes to another thing that it means to be among the elect because there are various degrees of the elect, right? And this is the impact that you have needs to be a differential impact. That means if you do what somebody else would have done had you not existed this earlier in my career, I had this managerial position open up at Google and I was, I had an offer from them and I was waiting and waiting, waiting, and they had accepted me, but they hadn't employed me to a department.

And I ended up at one point having to choose. [00:10:00] Do I go work for this VC firm in Korea with a young firm? Or do I end up going to Google? And I asked my wife about this and she goes, Malcolm, if you don't take that job at Google, they will replace you with somebody equally competent as you, and you will have no real power to change the direction of the company or the direction of your product.

So even

Simone Collins: if you did get in there and even if you did make heterodox views, you wouldn't be able to get them through given the way that their decision making worked at the level that you've been hired.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so this, you know, like if you're a politician and you're just surfing a sentimental wave, you are very unlikely to be among the elect.

You need to be surfing a wave that you created and had you not been here, somebody else wouldn't have created. So this is an example of like, if Hitler hadn't done what he did, I think it's pretty unlikely anyone else would have done something that insane. Yeah, well,

Simone Collins: I, here's a, another, like, in terms of modern examples, and this is really more relevant to an American audience, but there's a United States senator named John Fetterman who it's not exactly in our political camp, but he [00:11:00] shows signs of what we would say is someone who's elect.

Why? Because recently he's done a lot of things that run counter to his party's view. He's not towing the line. He's doing stuff that's getting him in trouble with his party. It's going to make his life harder as a politician, but he is standing for his principles. So he represents someone who, to us, is showing signs.

Oh, for example, like, he, he refused in, in pro Israel protest slash parade to support Palestine slash Hamas.

I do believe it's important that we call it what it was, you know, they systematically used rape as a part of their war and they terrorized and brutalized Israeli women and especially young girls and raped them.

And then after that, they actually would shoot them in the back of their head. And I have a 12 year old daughter. And those are the kinds of victims, you know, here in October 7th. And we gotta call it out, and we have to acknowledge that. And if, why you wouldn't want to protest that versus attacking a Jewish restaurant, it's part of the [00:12:00] point that I made on Twitter.

But I also believe that Israel has the right and they actually should destroy Hamas because Hamas is an anathema to peace and a true two state solution.

Simone Collins: There's, there's been some other things he's done where he like really is just standing for what he believes in a way that hurts him and runs counter to his party. I think that's interesting.

But that ends up

Malcolm Collins: destroying his career, then he's not among the elect. I think a better

Simone Collins: example of what politicians are. But it has gotten him a lot of attention. So maybe, like, maybe it will. So it's hard to say. And here's the other thing, is when you go back and you look at other people who hold similar views of, like, the elect and not the elect Puritans in the early colonies, there are these hilarious diaries that for example, are covered in Albion's seed, which of course we're obsessed with as a book where like people are, you know, one day they're so sure in their journal, like I'm definitely among the elect, like this is.

This is a great, I'm, I'm going to be mean equal. I'm like the next day, I'm like, I'm the most wretched person ever. So like, no one knows, even at your dying moment, you have no idea if you're among the elect or not. You don't know if you're like a [00:13:00] sap or like the real deal. And we cannot know when judging other people, whether they're elect.

And that's another like sort of tenant of, of Calvinism. It's not like, you know, you, you can't assume that someone who's lived the most wretched, terrible life, worst criminal ever, they could still be among the elect. We are, it is, it is basically up to God to decide, God chooses. The, in our case, you

Malcolm Collins: don't know within your own lifetime because you don't know the impact of the things that you did.

And so to give an example of a better politician that I was mentioning earlier would be Trump. The, the wave of political sentiment that Trump caused, I mean, he basically caused a total political realignment in our country. That almost certainly would not have happened had he not run now. We don't know if that alignment was of the will of the future police or if he was just sort of an NPC setting things up for somebody else.

And this is another thing, right? So we did to, to Simone's point, right? So then there's this different. Which is just being a good person and living a good life. And what this [00:14:00] means is that you have lived in accordance with your conscience. And that conscience is a well informed conscience. And you attempted, as best you could, to make a important impact that led to humanity becoming A diverse and flourishing, you know, interstellar human empire one day, right?

And you may be wrong about this. You know, there's a quote here that is from Wynwood Reads, The Martyrdom of Man, a book that I quoted a lot in Simone. Does not like me quoting too much, so I'll keep it short. Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience, But the conscience itself will be defective to cultivate the intellect is there for a religious duty.

 But yeah and I think that that's really true. You can live in accordance with your conscience. But if that conscience is not a trained conscience, it is very easy to live a bad life. And a life that ends up Civilization in a direction that was counter to [00:15:00] your goals.

And this is another thing about this concept of the elect that really, you know, comes from what someone is saying is we cannot judge. We can judge people. You know, hundreds of years ago, if they were likely among the elect or not among the elect but we cannot judge people in our current time, our peers very accurately if they are among the elect or not among the elect and we

Simone Collins: certainly can't determine for ourselves and I think there are a lot of people out there who are so sure that they're on the righteous path.

One thing that I like about this limited atonement and you know, whether you're elected or not, you'll never know is that it really forces self scrutiny. And it forces like a huge amount of like self consciousness and self doubt, which I think is ultimately extremely helpful. You have to constantly sharpen yourself.

You have to constantly hold yourself accountable. And when you don't know, I don't know, I think, I feel like it's a better tool for that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Another thing I'd point out here is that the agents of Providence [00:16:00] they will sometimes use people, even to have a big impact on history that are either meant to signal something to the elect, or that are meant to strengthen the elect.

So, many times when it feels like, Something evil has happened in the world. You know, I'm thinking potentially recent events. These events were not an accident by the agents of Providence. These events were meant to sharpen a certain other group or guide a certain other group away from tragedy. And I think that this is a really interesting thing and it really helps in my daily life because if I am among the elect what this means.

Is that when something bad happens to me, when I think something bad has happened to me, I should investigate that thing for what I was meant to learn from it or where it was meant to steer me or what it was meant to teach me. Nothing bad really ever happens to someone among the elect everything that happens to them.

[00:17:00] was meant to guide them towards a specific pathway. And if you are trying to determine if you are among the elect or not among the elect, that is the one source that you can use for evidence, which is when bad things happen to you, they are a sign that you are supposed to learn something from those things.

And you can begin to draw. information from them. And this can happen to a person much further in their life. Like, being an elect isn't something that's just like, always obvious to a person. It may be that like, just everything is going wrong in a person's life, and then one day, they're like, Oh, I needed all that to happen to me so I could do this thing now that I know is the righteous thing to do.

Simone Collins: Right, so an interpretation not to make if a bad thing happens to you is, Oh, so I must be doing the wrong thing. That's not at all what we're saying. Often things that you think are bad happen and ultimately are One of the best things that could ever happen to you. Like we thought it was devastating at first when we discovered that I was like basically [00:18:00] infertile and we can't have kids naturally because that was like a huge blow to us, but then we realized given the size of the family that we want to have, we would not have been able to have that size of a family.

Realistically speaking, if we conceive naturally so it was, it was in the end for, for the best, but we, we would never, I think, have had the mental fortitude or strength to choose to do that because it is so expensive and, you know, pretty difficult to go through IVF. So, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: you know, this is, this is absolutely true.

And it is. And, and, and this in terms of just, like, mental health is also really, like, people might think it's really bad. Like, you're always questioning the things in your life, you're always questioning whether or not you're among the elect.

Simone Collins: The belief that you are righteous is one of the most dangerous beliefs imaginable because it can lead people to commit atrocities with no introspection. And it's, it's incredibly important to constantly question whether [00:19:00] you are doing the right thing.

And I think people who believe that they're righteous are among the most dangerous people because they're not going to question what they're doing.

Malcolm Collins: Right. I think that you're absolutely right about this. I, I think that Constantly questioning whether or not you are actually on the right side of history is important. And so many people just don't do that.

And to look for signs as to whether or not you are on the right side of history or not, and be willing to change your path.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, as you, as you begin in, in the pragmatist guide to life, you have a whole chapter that is titled, I think it. would you be, would you have been a Nazi? And it was those people who didn't question, who just kind of went along with things, who assumed that of course they were doing the right thing, who allow those atrocities to happen.

And it can be incredibly hard to question, especially when you might be questioning behavior that differs from what mainstream society is doing. But still, I think that, yeah, I guess that's another, that's another virtue in the basket of the limited atonement camp that I, I [00:20:00] do quite like. So, that's nice.

Malcolm Collins: This is another thing that's, that's really, I mean, so, I mean, I'd say if, if we're wording the elect in a different words, that I love a quote from the, you know, the movie we use all the time in this, is being among the elect means that you have the courage to make the safety and prosperity of the human race, your personal responsibility.

A citizen has the courage to make the safety of the human race their personal responsibility.

Malcolm Collins: Starship

Simone Collins: Troopers, boys and girls. Yeah. I'm doing

Malcolm Collins: my part. I'm doing my part.

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

Malcolm Collins: So, another thing that, and I, I do have to amend something I said here before where I was like, you can't tell who's among the elect and who's not within your own lifetime. You can't tell among the people who are [00:21:00] trying you, you can definitely, so I can never say this person's definitely among the elect.

Mm-Hmm. is pretty there. There is a very large group of humans on the planet that I can tell are definitely not among the elect. Oh. Pretty much anyone who's living for personal vanity, anyone who hasn't really thought about why they're doing what they're doing and is just going with societal trends.

Anyone who you know, if, if somebody walks out there and they're dripping in jewelry and they're, you know, striving to be accepted by the public they are. I almost, I don't, Nope,

Simone Collins: nope. I disagree. All right. First off, and this is also something that like people way more thoughtful about this have thought about who, who pioneered like the points of, of Calvinism.

And part of this, the, the, one of the key points is you cannot know, and also people who you think lived a deplorable lives that were not to your view in alignment with the important values can still be among the elect. I would argue, for example there are people in your life who lived lives extremely not value aligned with yours, who nevertheless [00:22:00] shaped you into the person that you became.

And part of what they did care about was in making you a great person and making your brother a great person. And they succeeded in this in spades. Both of you are incredible people who I think are definitely working to create a humanity in which a future in which humanity flourishes. So, I would argue that these people who you would probably, per that definition that you just gave, you know, hedonic, dripping in expensive jewelry, really focused on having a good time.

Like, they still matter a great deal because they also cared about producing great sons, and they did.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay, I'll give you that. That's actually a, a strong argument there. I was thinking more of the guys who blow all their money on, like, e thoughts and stuff like that. And like, who just, you know, hang out on the internet trying to do nothing with their lives.

But I

Simone Collins: think they're trying to do nothing. And they, again, like you never know when they might be saved and you never know if all of that nonsense has [00:23:00] taught them, has given them, you know, invaluable tools in, you know, helping them ultimately do what it is they need to do. So again, I say we are not there to judge.

We, we do not know. And you know, in the end, we, we shouldn't fully discount anyone because anyone could end up mattering a lot. And a lot of people who we think are going to matter could end up completely flubbing it,

Malcolm Collins: including ourselves, including ourselves. Yeah. Well, I love this, this conversation, Simone I love you, Malcolm.

Absolutely spectacular. And I mean, we, we are continuing to. Gain more of a platform. Hopefully we can nudge society in a, in a positive direction. Hopefully

Simone Collins: we're not among the

Malcolm Collins: right now we've been flirting on and off with the 10, 000 consecutive view hours in the last 28 days. We just passed it again.

So, 10, 000 hours of this channel have been watched in the last 28 days, which is pretty

Simone Collins: cool. Yes. Thank you. You're watching. We're flattered. Incredibly. Seriously. All right.

Malcolm Collins: Love you, Simone. And [00:24:00] have a spectacular day. You

Simone Collins: too.

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