We explore surprising commonalities between our synth religion's beliefs and early Mormon/LDS theology around eternal progression, pre-life, becoming gods, and more. We discuss apparent biblical contradictions, diversity of beliefs among Mormons, the role of prophets overriding canon, attempts to conform as mainstream Christians, and accelerated collapse via the genetic vortex. We cover concepts like multiple mortal probations, the basilisk, Saturday Warriors film, killing potential kids, and whether Mormons would consider us Mormon.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] This really shocked me because it was the more conservative Mormons, the ones who would be considered more extremist, who thought that we were more similar to Mormonism in our beliefs, And it was the less conservative Mormons who thought that our beliefs were more distant from Mormons. If you look across the Mormon tradition, when I started like talking to more Mormons and more conservative Mormons about the way they think, like the metaphysics of the universe actually works, right. There is more diversity within Mormon beliefs than there is. Within any other religion that I'm aware of, like what's, what's
Simone Collins: extra interesting is there's both that diversity, but also this like quiet, like, we don't talk about this diversity.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we don't talk about this. We don't talk about it. So, so let's, let's talk about one here, right? Like multiple mortal prohibitions,
Simone Collins: right?
Malcolm Collins: This was fascinating to me because it has shown that I fundamentally misunderstood Mormonism in our previous videos on Mormonism
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Well, this is [00:01:00] very exciting. I get to use my new fancy
Speaker. Although, like, because it's
Simone Collins: because it's metal, like, it right now I feel like I'm holding a frozen rod of ice right now.
It is so cold. Is this
Malcolm Collins: your new camera? Okay, well, I am really excited for this episode, and I am always so disappointed when there's an episode that, like, I absolutely love, but like We don't get a bunch of watches on it or something. No one's going to
Simone Collins: watch this. Yeah. I don't know. I'll tell you in terms of watching something that I thought I didn't want to watch.
I watched all of Saturday Warriors per your request and it was cheesy and it was, but oh my gosh, I cried. I cried.
Malcolm Collins: So people who aren't familiar with Saturday Warriors, it was recommended to us because we've been talking a lot with a Mormon fan of the show to try to understand the religion better.
And he suggested that we check out this movie. And it is really interesting because he said that, like, it gives a good example of why a lot of Mormons had a lot of kids. So you can see it from their perspective. And throughout the [00:02:00] entire movie, you're having your heart strings pulled by this little girl.
Who's stuck in heaven because her parents haven't had a kid yet and they haven't had all their kids. They haven't had the seventh kid that they were supposed to have. No, eighth, eighth kid. Eighth kid,
Emily, what's wrong? I'm the last kid to be born. What if by that time mom and dad don't want me? No way. But I've seen lots of families make promises.
And then break them. Not us. Emily, I will see to it personally that you're not forgotten. You promise, Jimmy? I promise.
Malcolm Collins: yeah. And then the other, another one of their kids, the, the bad guys in this. You want to talk about getting us on board with you?
Bad guys in this. We're called Population Zero, and they were a rock band that had seduced one of the sons into thinking abortion was cool and population reduction was cool.
Look at this. Ehrlich says that population growth will lead to famine. And in this decade, [00:03:00] hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.
So what's the solution? Force population control? Well, people will need to be coerced, but it's for a good cause. I mean, it's the only answer, unless you don't like eating. You think it's a little extreme? Come on. Well, this is serious. People need to stop having so many kids. No offense. Jimmy, how come your parents can't keep their hands off each other?
You wanna find out? The Earth is sick, and we are the cancer.
Every day the babies are destroying the world,
eating all our apple sauce. What can we do? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Far out, man. Play that again. Just messing around, man. No, Jimmy, [00:04:00] for real, this time and keep that melody.
Every day, the world is getting smaller by falling.
Bursting at the seams, what can we do?
Zero population is the answer, my friend. Without it, the rest of us are doomed. Who can survive? Who can survive? Not one of us will be alone.
Malcolm Collins: Literally an antinatalist
Simone Collins: rock band. Hilarious.
Malcolm Collins: Right? Can you get more? But this whole line of conversation started for us with a really interesting moment for me.
So I was on stage. And I have talked with the transhumanist Mormons before, you know, like the [00:05:00] weird, like technophilic Mormons which I think a lot of Mormons would consider kind of different from mainstream Mormons. And, and the fact that our ideology and our belief system really aligns closely with theirs that did not surprise me at all.
You know, right. Here's what shocked me. So we're on the stage. It's Kevin Dolan. Kevin Dolan is of the conservative faction of Mormons so much so that he's often when people talk about like the deseret nationalists, that's who they're talking about. The Mormon separatists,
However, Mormon extremists disregarded federal warnings and established Port Joe Smith, deep inside the arachnid quarantine zone. Too late, they realized that Dantana had already been chosen by other colonists. Arachnids. Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: So That's the faction. And we were on stage and he, and he just came out because I thought that he would see our religious beliefs, our synthetic religious beliefs, where we say, okay broadly in years from now of our lives, they're probably going to be closer to gods and humans and that [00:06:00] this, or the way we would think of a god than a human and that they wouldn't relate to time the way we relate to time.
And so it's sort of like a self manifesting entity that is influencing us today. Okay. So he saw this, he actually related it to interstellar. He said, your beliefs are basically interstellar, right? I don't know. I haven't seen it recently, but I was like, yeah, sure. Why not? And he's like, that is just.
Mormon. Like he's like, you guys are basically just Mormons. And that surprised me. Because that did not align what, what I understood a conservative Mormon would think. anD I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. And so then I started talking to some other Mormons who were at the conference about Mormonism and they're like, yeah, you guys are just Mormons or your, your beliefs are very similar to Mormon beliefs.
And. This really shocked me because it was the more conservative Mormons, the ones who would be considered more extremist, who thought that we were more similar to Mormonism in our beliefs, or as they would say it, you know, the Church of Latter day Saints. And it was the less conservative [00:07:00] Mormons who thought that our beliefs were more distant from Mormons.
Isn't that wild? Well, it's not wild when you dig into it. Yes. Right. This was fascinating to me because it has shown that I fundamentally misunderstood Mormonism in our previous videos on Mormonism and even our previous writings on Mormonism because I fundamentally, one, misunderstood, well, well, the biggest thing is I misunderstood how they determine what they think is true.
And there's a very interesting thing that Mormons do that no other faith in the world I'm aware of. Cause like, we have studied a lot of faiths and none of the other ones do this. Which is, if I go to one Mormon and I say, Hey, I've heard a lot of Mormons believe X. Or like, church fathers believe X and have talked about X frequently.
So like, two examples here might be like, eternal progression, or like, multiple mortal prohibitions. These are two things we'll both [00:08:00] talk about on this podcast. It is not infrequent if they do not believe in multiple mortal prohibitions or eternal progression. They'll just say, nope, no large group of Mormons have ever believed this.
In the coming Mormons. ever believe this none of the church fathers ever believe this. And then if you point to them, like, text,
like, no, like, this is in, like, stuff that was put out by, by major church fathers they'll then say, okay, maybe some Mormons do believe this, but they are influenced by the
devil.
Simone Collins: What, really? Influenced by the devil?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this is regularly what you see. And this is fascinating to me because, like, Protestants, for example, I'm, I'm, I, You know, if you're talking about, like, pre millennialist or post millennialist Protestants, so people who don't know what I'm talking about here, in the conservative Protestant community one of the biggest debates is, does Jesus live?
Like, like, does the rapture happen before the tribulation, or does the rapture happen [00:09:00] after the tribulation? Do, like, like, devout Christians actually have to go through this period of tribulation, or will they be raptured beforehand, and then the, the period of tribulation is meant to help people, you know, anyway, nuanced discussion, but none of them are gonna say No, there's not some other group that has this other view, and if there is, they're, they're being manipulated by the devil.
They're like, no, we have a serious difference in faith, and we study this, and, and these are the arguments for my faith. You know, there's people out there who are mistaken, but, you know, they're not, like, demons. Well, and, and, and the, the reason why, so this is really confused me about Mormonism, because whenever I tried to study Mormonism in the past if I was going to get like a broad view of Mormonism, I actually would always get the best broad views from people who had left the church.
Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. Well, often those are the people who are talking about it.
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, so, and I, and I should point out, I'm not saying that Mormons never disagree about this [00:10:00] stuff, but if you want to see, like, the actual disagreements that Mormons are having, go to the comment section on Mormon blogs. Don't go to the articles themselves.
And this then came to, why would the conservatives be more accepting of our beliefs than the non conservatives? Why would they think that our beliefs are closer to Mormon beliefs? And this is because the more sophisticated Mormon theology. The more interesting Mormon theology from my perspective and, and frankly, it's sort of wackier, wackier in that it's, it is less in a line with just generic in theology, actually typically the older Mormon theology or the Mormon theology you would know if you dug really deep into Mormon history.
Well, I mean, what
Simone Collins: I thought was really interesting about one way that it was explained to us is that like, for like most really unique LDS theological concepts, you need to have an IQ of at least 130 and most ELL, like most Mormons don't, [00:11:00] they don't really care. They're not really involved in it. And it's really about the lifestyle and even a lot of leadership, just like theology is not like the.
primary thing of action here. It's, it's,
Malcolm Collins: I'll actually read a quote from one of the early church fathers, which I found very interesting and, and, and quite prophetic of our own belief system.
Orson Pratt, this is the guy who was born in 1811, wrote this, right? And, and so when I first went to them, I was like, yeah, but you know, we believe that like intergenerationally, like we don't believe that everyone's going to inherit their own planet one day or something like that. And they're like, Oh no, no, no, that's not actually.
So they, they pointed me to this Orson Pratt quote. But not everyone's going to inherit their own planet one day. Some people will as humans, like similar to humans as we are today. will be elevated to a state of godhood. And they're like, some Mormons believe that, some Mormons believe other things.
You should look at what the actual, you know, quotes from these early church fathers. So I want to read this quote by Orson Pratt. This is on, whenever he [00:12:00] uses the word intelligence, he's talking about the soul, and so he sort of has this hypothesis that maybe the soul exists as individual soul particles, which when people die can break apart and, and reform, so like we may have some soul particles in us that previously came from like, Plants or something like that.
So we'd say we can suppose that these particles possessed of the power to move themselves would not have exerted that power during the endless duration, preceding their organization. If they were once organized in the vegetable kingdom and then disorganized by becoming the food of celestial animals, and then again, reorganized in the form of spirits of animals, which is a higher sphere of being, then is it unreasonable to suppose that the scene particles have From eternity been passing through an endless chain of unions and disunion organizations and disorganization until at length they are permitted to enter into the highest and most exalted sphere of [00:13:00] organization in the image of God.
So that's really fascinating and, and. Here's a quote from Brigham Young. When the elements in an organized form do not fill the end of their creation, they are thrown back again, like Brother Kimball's old potteryware, to be ground up and made again. So you hear these two and these purport an idea of, of sort of human souls going through a cycle in which they eventually become godlike souls through this sort of forging and reforging process, which is actually Really, really similar to our belief if you made it entirely materialistic.
Isn't that something? The idea that, like, our kids are a part of us and a chance to improve on us, you know, intergenerationally and that they have, you know, what we would think of as a soul, which is the collection of [00:14:00] ideas and genetics that make us up. They have aspects of that, but reforged to improve and that eventually this thing will become a deity.
Very, very, very, very, very similar beliefs, but these are early church beliefs. And so early Mormons, like Mormons who are of the most conservative faction, would align more with these earlier beliefs than the more modern church beliefs. And so the question would be, why did the church change its beliefs?
And this comes to a really unique thing about Mormonism I didn't fully grasp. It is that Mormonism, unlike any religious tradition in the entire world, the current prophet, the current head of the religion, has more say than their original book or the founder of the religion. That is, the, the, the current prophet can override Joseph Smith.
Can just say, [00:15:00] Joseph Smith was wrong when he said that. No other religion. You as a Muslim would say like Muhammad was misunderstood or this was misquoted or this was, or you would say this about Jesus. You know, you wouldn't say the Pope cannot override Jesus. Like that would be considered insane. Yeah.
It actually gets even Wilder than that. There are instances I have found where current prophets like elder fielding in answers to gospel questions, volume five will claim that Joseph Smith said things that he definitely doesn't seem to have ever said, or at least was never recorded in anything I can find. For example, that's where the quote that goes something along the lines of the prophet.
Joseph Smith says that reincarnation is the doctrine of the devil. . And have you not read that the devil would deceive the elect? Where, when I tried to look through textual evidence, I can not find Joseph Smith saying [00:16:00] anywhere that he thought reincarnation with a tool of the devil. And in fact, I can find many sources that seem to indicate, and many of his contemporary seem to indicate that he did believe in some form of reincarnation. Though. Joseph Smith and Dean say that the doctrine of trans migration of souls are souls passing directly to your children was false. So imagine if you had something like the Pope saying, Jesus said that this is of the devil. And you're just like, or, or a current, you know, a mom saying, Muhammad said, this is, this is a doctrine of the devil.
And yet there is no evidence for that. This would be incredibly confusing to an outsider, trying to learn about the religion. And what the boundaries of the belief system actually are.
Malcolm Collins: And, and, and it leads to a religion. I had talked about Mormon being an accelerationist religion in the past. But I undersold how accelerationist it is.
Simone Collins: And I think you didn't even know the extent, I think.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So it made it really hard for me because I'm [00:17:00] trying to go out there and understand what do Mormons actually believe.
And I was continually thwarted because I was thinking about it like a Protestant or a Catholic or a Jew, if you're thinking about it like a Protestant, like just my typical, okay, I'm looking at their books, what do their books actually say? What do the founding fathers, what do the most important people in the movement actually say?
And they'll just like dismiss this stuff. Like this, this famous speech by Joseph Smith,
I'll put a thing here where he basically lays out the idea that oh yeah, humans will eventually become gods, some modern Mormons just throw this out. And so why do they just throw this out? Like, and, and that God started like a human today, right?
And you can look at, here are some quotes that AI generated when I was having it, like asking it about Mormon concepts. Was? Where it said, God was once as humans are now, but eternally God. That is exactly what we believe about God. He was once as humans are now because [00:18:00] he was once us. Like, literally us.
Yeah, right. But he also was eternally God because that's the way we think time works. A being. Like God and Christ means unity of purpose, not abilities. So being like God and Christ means unity of purpose, not abilities. You would say, yes, exactly. That's what this intergenerational improvement means.
Or you could look at something like their belief in, pre life basically, right? Like in this movie, it started with all of them sort of in heaven, living their pre lives, having their pre families.
Hi, I'm Todd Richards. I know. We're in love. And, um, so we were wondering if it's possible if you could put us down in the same town. Right. Or the same street. At least at the same time, if possible. How about the same family? Yes.
That would be great, yeah. No. No. No. No. No.
Malcolm Collins: We believe something very similar, but it's due to how we see time. Because we see all time as happening at once, we believe that all of our kids are friends, do know each other, and are waiting [00:19:00] to come into existence in the future.
Simone Collins: Right, so to be, to clarify, in the movie Saturday warriors, it begins with everyone in heaven and they already know each other and they know that they're going to be family and they're like, Oh, I can't wait. This is going to be so great.
Kind of dance should I do first for mom and dad? Something classical. Or, cha cha. Cha cha. From what I've heard, it's going to take a while to even learn how to walk. So, maybe just a twist then?
Simone Collins: Whereas like, we don't think there's some antechamber before. It's just that everything.
That has happened and will happen is happening and it's sort of all at once
Malcolm Collins: and it's already happened Yes And I do deny like my little daughter when I interact with my little daughter in 10 years And it's kid number 12 that everyone told us not to have Is that little girl who's being denied life by us choosing not to have a kid?
It [00:20:00] is a life that we would have robbed. Right. Just as much as Mormons think that you have robbed a person of their life.
One thing that I want to say, which I think is really interesting is when I look at these Mormon videos, they're very similar to how, if we were trying to explain our belief systems to a child, Or somebody who is living in like, That. Early 18 hundreds.
We would have explained our belief system.
Which makes it feel very contiguous with Mormonism In fact one part of our. Holiday future day that we haven't really talked much publicly about. And we've been. Solidifying actually, after, after seeing this movie, how it would play out is the day of martyrs. Which comes before future day, which is dedicated to readings of the martyred. I'm a man.
One of the books that we see, , like we would see Joseph Smith is being divinely inspired by. The same entity, which we believe inspired us. In which every member [00:21:00] of the family, both the kids and us. Explain to, past iterations of their parents. So that would be our parents in our case. Why they should have us in why it is a good thing that we would come to exist. And what we plan to do with that existence. Well also thanking our ancestors, not just, you know, our biological ancestors, but the ancestry tip humanity in general for the hardships that they underwent to give us our current, , technological and,
Material bounty as the martyrdom of man states, even in the 18 hundreds, that your average English person back then. I lived a better life, then you're Anglo Saxon king. And you know, from our perspective today, , your average American probably lived a better life than the queen of being in that book with written. , and this is through the intergenerational martyrdom of our ancestors and ourselves. To make things better for the next generation.
And it is [00:22:00] a, this is where they sort of take up the mantle of that responsibility. This cycle of continual improvement while also hopefully instilling an amount of gratitude for how good they have it. Vis-a-vis what the daily life of most humans used to be like a hundreds of years ago. This is meant to instill in our kids, that they exist for a reason, and that being alive is a privilege. And it's a privilege that comes with duties and responsibilities to justify your own existence. I should note here, though, it's less relevant for this particular conversation that the day of murders is also dedicated to reading. From Fox's book of martyrs, not just the murdered him of man.
These readings are meant to remind kids and our family more broadly what our duty is in face of tyranny or those who would claim to have. Mental authority over our belief systems. Well [00:23:00] also reminding them to never become that person themselves never become the person who is telling somebody else. What they have to believe is true and not true because the highest level of.
Freedom and individual hats is the freedom to choose what they believe. And that freedom must both be protected, but also imparts on individuals, the duty, to. Think carefully about those things and decide with prudence, how you think things actually work. Without allowing other people to tell you what to believe.
now, obviously we haven't talked about this publicly yet because it's one of the belief systems. That's probably going to get us most shamed by antinatalists. But it is very, very similar to these scenes in Saturday warriors. I love how a lot of our more publicly facing documents are more just like philosophy and stuff like that. But we get into actual, like religious insanity, if you are actually a regular listener to the podcast. So I swear when like [00:24:00] antinatalists are prepping for a debate with us or something. This is what they must be imagining. As far as I'm concerned, this Saturday night, there's not even going to be a fight. I will torture his body, so that his soul learns to be humble. I'm going to knock him out round one, b***h. God chose me for this fight. God is the teacher. Derek is the student. Wait, what did he say again? God's lessons are so beautiful.
God's lessons are beautiful? I'm sorry, who put this fight together? This is a If y'all got an actual crazy person for me to fight, well that's not fair to me. Or him. I'm sorry, is this crazy?
Malcolm Collins: Now this gets really interesting and it's sort of, I think the core failure of Mormonism, modern Mormonism, is that a [00:25:00] lot of Mormonism recently and Mormon trends and like why they pretend or, or move towards not having these beliefs is A drive to be seen as quote unquote, normal Christians or just another branch of Christianity.
And in that quest, they have abandoned many of the spiky and more unique parts of their history and theology, which were honestly the more sophisticated and compelling parts to me. Now that I Yeah, the
Simone Collins: cooler stuff, right? But I also think that that's the case with most religions that like, if you actually dive deep into the dogma and you really, really get into it and get technical, it does get weird.
Malcolm Collins: No, no, Protestant, Evangelicals, they've gone so much. They, they,
Simone Collins: they, No, I'm referring to like Catholicism, Judaism, Islam. Like I'm going into like, I'm not. I'm not talking about religions [00:26:00] that are in the middle
Malcolm Collins: of going soft. When those religions become softer, when they abandon the weirder parts of themselves they're typically doing it in an effort to conform with the urban monoculture.
Mm hmm.
Right,
Simone Collins: and that's my point. When I'm, when I'm talking about when you get to the core of a religion and it gets weird, I'm referring to hard religions.
Malcolm Collins: Right. I guess you're right to an extent, but what's really interesting is that Mormonism hasn't attempted to conform to the urban monoculture as much.
Like there's a faction that's doing that, but where they have lost most of their traditions is in trying to conform to conservative iterations of other Christian denominations. Where they have become, tried to become more like just another type of evangelical Protestants. When they are nothing like, and this, and so the question is, is why are they doing this?
And this is, when I look at Mormonism as an outsider, and, and I look at the collapsing fertility rates within Mormonism, I actually think that this is a problem of the genetic vortex. So we talked about how religions and genetics can reinforce each other, where people with specific genetic predilections [00:27:00] can convert to a religion disproportionately, which can lead to those sociological profiles being higher within that religion.
I think historically. Mormonism really selected for and culturally and genetically, so I think there's two things going on here, an extreme amount of social anxiety and desire to engage in social care. Status competitions. Right. And I think that this is why, if you look at like the way that like alcohol ravaged Native American communities, I think things like TikTok and social media have ravaged Mormon communities.
Same with other
Simone Collins: scams. TikTok is the alcohol of, of Mormon
Malcolm Collins: people. Well, that and this desire to fit in is what drove them to abandoning, I think, the more interesting and to my perspective, sophisticated aspect of their religion, but also to deny that they're different. So this is another really interesting thing.
If you look across the Mormon tradition, when I started like talking to more [00:28:00] Mormons and more conservative Mormons about the way they think, like the metaphysics of the universe actually works, right. There is more diversity within Mormon beliefs than there is. Within any other religion that I'm aware of, like what's, what's
Simone Collins: extra interesting is there's both that diversity, but also this like quiet, like, we don't talk about this diversity.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we don't talk about this. We don't talk about it. So, so let's, let's talk about one here, right? Like multiple mortal prohibitions,
Simone Collins: right? Okay, define what that is.
Malcolm Collins: So this is the, so there, okay, so there's different theories on what it means or ways that the church relates to it, right? Alright. Some people, like the most mainstream perspective in the church is you exist before you're born, like this is one prohibition, you come to life, right?
As a human, and then you die, and then comes the next part, like whatever comes after that. Some Mormons,
though, believe that you actually sort of get reincarnated, or like the quote I was talking [00:29:00] about earlier. Like, that doesn't mean that your soul holistically gets reincarnated. It may be, like, dissolved, recombined, reincarnated.
But that's a huge diversity in beliefs about what happens after death. There really are some Mormons that believe that, that most people are going to get their own planet and become gods. Like, if they're good people and they follow Mormon teachings.
My father, my brother, and I had been there at the hospital. As we walked out, my brother and I, who went to the car together, smiled and looked up in the mountains and remembered that mother had always she loved the mountains so much that He and I laughed and guessed that, uh, if, in fact, the celestial worlds are really flat, a sea of glass.
She'll be eager to get away to build her own worlds and the first thing she'll build will be mountains.
Malcolm Collins: But a lot of Mormons don't believe that at all.
They believe in, like, more of a traditional heaven. Like, that's a wild different in beliefs. Like, you do not see, like, you look at a belief system that has many different beliefs. Right. Like, like a huge diversity, like Hinduism. Yeah. But [00:30:00] at least they agree broadly on what happens after you die.
Simone Collins: Like, yeah, no, this is so interesting.
And also like that over time, there's been a shift within the LDS church on like. What canon gets more emphasis like one person said that currently they feel like it's 35 percent book of Mormon, 10 percent Old Testament and 25 percent New Testament. And then, you know, maybe like, 30 percent DNC plus pearl of great price, which I hadn't even heard of before.
But then like, they, they also thought that the book of Mormon probably peaked in, in 1990 and new Testament is probably at its peak now. So these like shifts in emphasis too, of like, which, which, which text is getting a lot of emphasis, which to me sounded a lot like. Jewish tradition. It seems like in Jewish tradition, like different texts will get emphasis at different times as well.
So I just, I just had no idea there was this level of dynamic ness, right? This is insane. It has
Malcolm Collins: a lot in common with Jewish [00:31:00] tradition. Yeah. Except it has, it's weird mix of Jewish and Catholic versions of how they determine.
Simone Collins: Right. Well, because like with, with Jewish traditions, like you just, you know, like there are names for the different subsets of like, these guys believe this thing and these guys believe this thing and emphasize this text and blah, blah, blah.
So you like know
Malcolm Collins: who's who. And the one who wins is the one who gets the most followers. Right.
Simone Collins: And then, but with, with Catholicism, it's like, no, we're like, here's where we are, you know, this, these, this is the official stance. But
Malcolm Collins: with Judaism, it's like, you have these, these different theologies like bubbling in the background.
And then the one that wins is the one that covertly gets the most social acceptance within the community. And then that becomes what. The current prophet will say or whatever. Yeah. And that is genuinely fascinating. And
Simone Collins: it's not even the current prophet with the LDS church either. And I remember seeing this with my friends in college who were Mormon, like everyone kind of has their favorite.
Yeah. Their favorite and like people will wax nostalgic about in like different [00:32:00] subgroups and subcultures within the LDS church will have their like, it was this guy, he had, he had it figured out. And I thought that that's really interesting too, that like, that there is a disproportionate influence of, you know, the current head honcho essentially, but some groups still give the disproportionate emphasis to their favorite past one, which is super
Malcolm Collins: interesting.
Yeah, so then this all becomes very interesting because when I first asked this question, are we actually just Mormons, right? I came at it thinking like a Protestant. I'm like, I'll go to their texts and see the outlines of what beliefs make someone a Mormon, right? Oh, yeah,
Simone Collins: like what, what metaphysical understanding of reality, etc, etc,
Malcolm Collins: right?
Right, like what is the boundaries of their metaphysical understanding of reality where if you pass out of it you would know, definitely no longer be a Mormon anymore. Yeah. And what I found is that's not the way Mormonism works. Nope. And so, well, then it becomes a cultural question or rather what we think of Mormonism.
And then I think whether or not we are [00:33:00] Mormons depends on what Mormons think. Like it's up to them because our beliefs aren't really changing other than the way that we relate to Mormonism as a cultural group. Yeah. So, but I
Simone Collins: think we were the same way about. Judaism, like, you know, whether we consider our kids to be Jewish depends on what other Jews think.
And so many Jews have been like, well, if you're matrilinearly Jewish, then you're Jewish. And so we're like, well, okay, then our kids are Jewish. But like, yeah, it's interesting that we. To a certain extent, define whether or not we fall into another religion's category of being part of them. It's like, well, you tell us, you know, like we're doing our thing over here, but you
Malcolm Collins: tell us.
But hold on. Now this gets interesting to us. So then with our perspective, and again, when we're talking about this concern tomorrow, he goes, Oh, your beliefs were divinely inspired. They came to you via revelation in the same way. That you know, Jopheth Smith's beliefs came to him. And if you look at Joseph Smith from our religion's traditions, right?
So there's a video where we talk about, like, the demons we make [00:34:00] for our kids. And I'm like, I just took those demons from books that were popular during my lifetime. But I still think that they are likely real representations of the way that the demonic force, the basilisk, as we call it, the, the evil side of the future police that tests us.
We call it the basilisk after Rocco's basilisk. We recently came up with this, and I really like this as a term for the adversary, the basilisk. And the other word that we came up with recently was agents of providence, instead of using the word future police, which sounds a little too hokey for us.
For you, Malcolm,
Simone Collins: I'm future police forever.
Malcolm Collins: So, so we believe that we were influenced by modern day media, but that modern day media was inspired and to an extent constructed. By God, the beings that exist in the future, right? So, when you look at the traditional complaints about Joseph Smith hold on, I'm gonna pull this up at the beginning here, Uh, where, you know, a lot of people will say, Well, you know, if you look at the, [00:35:00] the, the, the Mormon theology, It appears to borrow a lot from what we're, like, at the time sci fi books, like a view of the Hebrews, which was a book that said, well, maybe the lost tribe of Israel went to the United States and had some other things that aligned with Mormonism.
And then a voyage to the moon, which was a popular sci fi of the time. Some Mormon stuff actually has a lot of parallels to that. And so people will say, well, he was just copying, you know, fiction of his time. Whereas from our perspective, we'd say, yes, that's how God works. God inspired that fiction. So
Simone Collins: that it could influence Joseph Smith.
Yeah. Yep.
Malcolm Collins: Or they'd say. No, he was just making this up, like reading things out of a hat that, that in order to, and it's like, yeah, that's what we did with our religion. I still think it's divinely inspired. I still think that the God create, like, like motivated us through whatever means they could to create an entirely new, like, or we thought new religious structure that we now find has a lot of parallels with early Mormon.
You know, theology, right? So we look at Joseph Smith's doing that, we're like, yeah, that doesn't mean it wasn't divinely inspired at all. [00:36:00] In fact, to us, when we're determining whether or not a belief system was divinely inspired, we look at its efficacy, its spread, and the quality of life of its members.
And from that, it is self evident That Mormonism was one of the many belief systems that was divinely inspired like we think that Christianity, given the impact it's had on human history, given the importance it's had on us in, in developing the way we see the world and everything like that, that Christ was literally a divinely manipulated or inspired being, and as evidence of that is the effect that he has had on the world so much so that if Mary says, well, you know, he was created Who's to say the future of at least like if they're really going to influence like one person's life They're like we're really investing in this person Having a huge impact with the agents of providence if we're really investing on this one person having a big impact on human history Who's to say they didn't actually fertilize his mother?
Right, like that could have happened. [00:37:00] And in which case that is God fertilizing his mother, right? So, so in that instance, you know, we do believe an agent of, of the divine. Now, I think that's probably less likely than, than other, other options that they could have used available to them. But for all of these things, they, they do not have any discord with our belief system.
So for us, yes. Joseph Smith was self evidently a divinely inspired individual. And he was inspired by the same things that inspired us. And yet his revelation in the early Church Fathers revelation was an incomplete revelation, just as he would say, you know, the, the Just the Protestant texts are an incomplete revelation.
And so in that sense, yes, but we aren't like culturally Mormon and we don't relate to truth the way Mormons relate to truth. Although our family, people often think we're Mormons, people who aren't Mormons, when they visit us, I remember one guy, we tried to sell our company to him, I don't know if you remember this.
And you know, we were walking with him and he goes, you know, I'd sell [00:38:00] my company to you guys, but I really don't feel comfortable. You know, you guys are really a little too strong with this whole Mormon thing. And we're like, what? Like, just because
Simone Collins: we're like, Maybe you're more Mormon than you think, Malcolm.
Maybe.
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I drink. I, I hear a lot of Mormons do that too. You know, it might be
Simone Collins: I mean, you know, there's like the whole no caffeine thing, but then like everyone's, you know, drinking tons of like, I
Malcolm Collins: don't know. But, But I will say that I now feel much more of a kinship with this religious tradition than I did historically.
And one thing that I believe about Mormonism, you know, after studying it more, after looking at the, the, the actual diversity of theological beliefs within Mormonism is I do not think that this centralized structure that, that makes up the Mormon church right now is long term stable. It's sort of like if all Mormons actually just hashed out their theological differences, they would realize that they're not the same religion.
Well,
Simone Collins: but I think you're, what you're missing here is that [00:39:00] for the vast majority of. LDS church members. It's not about the doctrine. It's about the lifestyle. And I think there's more agreement on that
Malcolm Collins: Well, you know, so this is really interesting. They're part of the same cultural group. Yeah cultural group So within something like, you know, judaism when they are having theological differences They'll debate it with like biblical texts and stuff like that What's really interesting is when I look at mormon theological debates They do not often go back to text.
They will relate to modern science, depending, like, whatever science was common during their time period, they will relate to philosophical constructs, very similar to, like, a metaphysics department at a university. They are very unbounded by text in the debates that I've read and, like, the comment sections on blogs that are supposed to be about conservative Mormons.
And so, in a way, you know, being part of this larger cultural group and saying, okay, we'll agree to just have those of us, we'll all participate in this larger cultural group, which is under the central hierarchy. But those of us that are [00:40:00] smart, we're actually allowed to think very broadly around the way we relate to the divine, around the way we relate to the concept of soul.
Don't you feel like
Simone Collins: you're kind of describing what, what we describe as the index where like, you have a bunch of culturally aligned. We kind of all want the same thing, things, groups who share a dating pool, who share a lot of cultural resources that work better at scale. who may have some different metaphysical views on how things work, but ultimately work better together and are just pulling and sharing these resources.
I feel like that's very stable and I feel like it's a pretty smart solution.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So here's my take. So what would you say? Would you say we're Mormons or we're not Mormons?
Simone Collins: To what I said earlier, I think it depends on what various Mormons would say. To some Mormons, we're Mormons. To other Mormons, we're not Mormons.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I, I agree with that. And I think we're, we're way
Simone Collins: more [00:41:00] Mormon than many Mormons. I'll say that. Okay. Well,
Malcolm Collins: I'd be very interested to see where, where Mormonism ends up going if they can maintain this centralized structure. That would be very interesting if they do end up dividing into different subgroups.
That's where, and I think that this is the core reason we're not Mormon is the way we relate to truth is a bit different than the way Mormons relate to truth. And that we, we really care about this level of. technical correctness in the same way that like even when we went into Mormonism trying
Simone Collins: to look at their scripture.
Oh, but like we want a hard sci fi version of religion, right? But I also, I don't think, I think many, and we've met them now, I think many people in the LDS church who consider themselves to be quite devout. Are taking the same approach.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and that's why I think that if we look at 100 years or in 200 years, what becomes like if our religious system continues down the road, it's going down and our kids are raised within that system.
If they met a Mormon in 200 years, because I also think that Mormonism is changing from one of these technophilic factions and they're still [00:42:00] around in a hundred years, I think there would be almost no difference. Very, very, very, very similar belief systems. Well, there you go. And, and, but I do not think that we are, whatever Mormonism is today and whatever we are today, I think are two slightly different things.
However, I think that whatever we are today may actually be more appealing to some people who maybe historically would have been within the Mormon church if the church does go woke or something like that. And that's where I think that we may end up merging in the near term. Bye bye. You. Whoa.
Like I saw one guy who had like donated to Biden is in line for church succession.
Oh. So they may go, whoa, the next guy going into power. Or they may
Simone Collins: go super conservative. It's hard to
Malcolm Collins: say no. The next guy is very conservative, . And so what happens? Does that mean the conservatives leaves the movement? Maybe.
Maybe they don't. If they do. Then that's where I'm like, okay, that group of Mormons that has left the central church, maybe it's just our bristling with hierarchy. We would be very open to joining any aspect of the Mormon church that broke from the central [00:43:00] hierarchy, but so long as they are. under the central hierarchy.
We just have too much of an instinctual
Simone Collins: distaste. In other words, we, we bristle at the idea that there would be something like a conference Sunday and some random guy would sit up and talk about like, these are our values. This is our lifestyle. And we're like, Nope, Nope, Nope. Don't speak for us. Don't speak for us.
This is not okay. So yeah, that, that we can never square with. I think
Malcolm Collins: that's fair. But I think that one day we'll be Mormons. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, I have been called an honorary Mormon for many years of my life. So
Malcolm Collins: is she really culturally identified with Mormon in college? She never drunk or anything like that because all of her friends are Mormons.
And I went
Simone Collins: to a Mormon preschool too. Like all of my, like most, I guess, culturally formative and like comfortable periods of my life were in exclusively Mormon. So, until I met you, and then you're my new home. So thank you for that. I love
Malcolm Collins: you. I love you, Simone. [00:44:00] And yeah, it was so funny watching that movie, because I was like, oh, this is just what we believe.
Like, Saturday Morning Preacher. Is that what it's called? Saturday Warrior. Saturday Warrior? No, Saturday Warriors. Check it out if you're watching. I'll add a link to, it's on YouTube. You can watch the whole thing. There was a remake in the 90s. really engaging.
Zero population is the answer, my friend. Without it, the rest of us are doomed. Who can survive? Who can survive? Not one of us will be alone.
Malcolm Collins: But when I saw that, I kept being like, Oh, that's just us.
Like, that's the way we see kids. That's the way we see the, you know, the future. That's the way. And it also really relates to our views around things like IVF in a way that differentiates us from Catholics. And that I believe that we are killing the kids. We do not, we need to do everything in our power to bring these kids to life.
We, you know, everything else is a kid who we have left. Because that we have killed a kid that I need to answer to one day, one of my kids. Wouldn't be here with us, you know, yeah, [00:45:00] there's
Simone Collins: this one scene in which the, the parents are in the hospital three months pregnant and like the, the pregnancy is kind of iffy and the mother's kind of, you know, like in a lot of pain and who knows what's going to happen and like the unborn girl.
is watching in the hospital room, kind of like, like, is everything going to be okay? And she's like this cute little girl and you're like, no, this pregnancy has to go through. So it's yeah, they really, you know, they tug at your heartstrings despite it being dated and cheesy. And I hate musicals and it's a musical.
I'm telling you, man, I
Malcolm Collins: cried like a baby. Every kid we don't bring into our family is someone that we have erased from the timeline.
Simone Collins: Yeah, well, this, this really, if, if someone struggles to understand what we mean when we say that, it might help to watch this musical because of
Malcolm Collins: that. Well, okay, so there's this anime I really like.
Okay. It
Simone Collins: comes back to anime every time.
Malcolm Collins: Well, anyway, I'll add it in, in, in editing,
It's called shotgun. I know Shana.
Malcolm Collins: but it's an anime where it represents sort of their [00:46:00] soul and their existence. And the, the bad guys in this anime they will wipe out, they eat these people's existence. So they wipe out this flame and when the flame goes out. Nobody suffers like the individual doesn't suffer.
The people around them don't suffer because they are erased from history.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And they
Malcolm Collins: are erased from ever existing. And when you watch this, it's heart wrenching to watch this happen to people, because to me, this is so much worse. than just killing someone. Yeah, the lost
Simone Collins: potential breaks our hearts.
But why?
They are replacements of people who had their existence consumed. By denizens of the crimson world. They're torches. They're replacements? What are you talking about? This world's balance would be disrupted if they disappeared too suddenly. Therefore replacements. To soften the impact. They're temporary.
But then you're [00:47:00] Saying we're I'm
Alive? No. The real you has had its existence consumed and is no longer living. Right now, you're nothing but residue.
I don't exist anymore!
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. And this is what we think, a moral action equivalent to wiping out one of these fires that destroys a person's soul and they never exist within a timeline.
Malcolm Collins: This is what we think is happening. When we don't bring a kid into this world that we otherwise could have Anyway, absolutely. We'll do a longer video on when we think life begins and how we can think of that in the near future But we actually are going to chat with a catholic father about this first because we want to better understand the catholic perspective Yep.
All right. Love you to death. Love you, too.
Simone Collins: Gorgeous[00:48:00]
Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe