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Against All Odds

~ Engage Life

Against All Odds

Monthly Archives: June 2022

The Life Wars (part II): Cessation of Abortion via OT and Science

29 Wednesday Jun 2022

Posted by Prime Theologian in Uncategorized

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It is commonplace to see science at odds with religion. There is certainly a place for this, but, from what we know from medical science about conception, it seems that an Old Testament text from Exodus 21:22 – 23 harmonizes neatly. What I am investigating here is twofold: (1) what does this OT text say as applied to abortion and does this accord with science, and (2) if we do not accept this scientific or Old Testament framework for life as it relates to abortion, who will decide when life begin? I do not think these are novel ideas, but they are worthy of revisiting given the severity of the topics of ‘life,’ ‘abortion,’ and ‘god-like decider of when life begins.’

Revisiting the abortion discussion, the Old Testament Law, antiquated and obscure as it sometimes feels, offers insight even on such a modern issue. The text states:

“If men are fighting and they strike a pregnant woman resulting in her child(ren) coming out and no harm occurred, he {the man who struck the woman} will be punished with a fine as what the husband of the woman sets, and he will give it in accord with the judges. If, however, harm occurred to the child(ren) then you shall give life in place of life . . .. (translation mine from the Masoretic Text, Hebrew OT)”

Exodus 21:22 – 23

The text goes on the added refrain, “eye for eye, hand in place of hand,” etc.  The harm done to the child is born out of human conflict and violence. The abortion of these child(ren) is the outgrowth of misplaced violence, the arbitrary overflow of men fighting onto the pregnant woman. That the text calls the pre-born “children” decidedly marks them as part of the family; they are not merely human and they certainly are not something less than human. When do babies start to take humanoid physical form? The text begins forcefully with calling for ‘life for life’ or literally ‘soul for soul’ if the baby is “aborted” through this violence resulting in the baby’s death. A baby takes humanoid form as early as 4 weeks, which is often prior to a woman knowing she is pregnant.

Perhaps more importantly is the use of the word, “soul,” which is nefesh in Hebrew. Soul is not some immaterial of the human (that was Plato’s view); in the OT, it is the distinguishing marker of life. ‘Soul’ is used to show that something lives, that what was once life-less is now animate, that real vitality is part of it now. God in Genesis 2, breathes the breath of life into the pre-formed man and man became a living ‘soul.’ Before moving forward, we should juxtapose this notion of ‘soul’ with the legal court’s notion of ‘viability’ that is so central to the issue of abortion in the United States.

‘Viability’ in this abortion conflict means “the time at which the fetus can live on its own outside the womb” and is notoriously vague, leading to the big question of why so vague a term would be used to determine something so sacred as human life. Does it mean viable with tech helping the baby or does it mean able to feed himself or herself? Up until June 24th, 2022, the Supreme Court let stand the notion that viability was set at 24 weeks although I do not know the full history on the develop of this term and concept. Now that Roe v. Wade is overturned, we are seeing viability situated in different States around a number of new spots, like the appearance of the heartbeat. I want to return to the OT text’s usage of nefesh, or ‘soul.’

The OT law sees this pre-born life as a nefesh, a soul. If the baby is harmed to the point of death, it takes another nefesh as payment for the loss of this baby’s nefesh, “soul in place of soul.” When does the accountability for the life of the baby inside the pregnant woman begin in this Old Testament text? The immediate answer is when it is discerned that the woman is pregnant and that the baby is forced out of the woman apart from the natural progress of pregnancy and birth. We must do some recontextualization to move from ancient time’s medical and physiological knowledge to modern day: that a woman was pregnant in the ancient world can be indicated in several ways: nausea, odor of urine, and obviously missing a menstrual cycle. Many of these can be discerned in the first few days. The OT text’s emphasis on parts of the baby’s body being harmed is also suggestive of the earliest weeks of pregnancy since humanoid form takes place during the end of the first month of pregnancy. With this said, knowledge of being pregnant even in the ancient world could happen very early on for the discerning or careful observer. It is little different today; someone might be very attuned to her body and notice differences. There are pregnancy tests that have an assorted range of accuracy if someone wants to attend to her body with extra attention. With all this said, in this OT text, accountability for the baby’s life comes virtually at the time of conception, with a range of deviation for the careful versus careless observer. If a woman knew she was pregnant, even if not showing, and she is struck resulting in a miscarriage, the soul of that baby would require the soul of the man who struck her as recompense: “life for life, soul for soul.”

In summary, ‘viability’ has little value except to provide human governments the god-like ability to declare when human life begins. This OT text accords better with science than any of these laws built around ‘viability.’ Why would we have any interest, religious people or not, in the government having a de facto position to determine when human life begins. Frankly, it is a hellish proposition, and we have seen hell rise as a result: baby parts’ market, massive pharmaceutical research and development using these parts, dismembered babies stored in the baby parts warehouse at the University of Pittsburgh, or even a generation of women viewing babies as an infringement of their freedom instead of the miracle a baby is. Conception is the moment of actualized and perpetuated union, between a man and woman, resulting in a new life, a new soul. The OT text intimates that people are accountable for that baby’s life as soon as their discernment realizes that the baby lives. The resulting death of a pre-born baby from external, unnatural force applied to the mother required the death of another person, ‘soul for soul.’ Abortion should therefore be banned in all States since a mother seeking an abortion has knowledge of her baby’s existence and thus is accountable for that baby’s life. Whatever humanizing we do to limit the consequences for killing one’s own baby (I am ambivalent about this), that they are accountable must be implied in the consequences by being severe enough to communicate that someone is acting as a murderer.

Dr. Scalise

Addressing Transgenderism and Gender Confusion from Biblical Foundations: Ancient Fertility Cults, Transsexualism, and 1 Cor. 11:2-14

27 Monday Jun 2022

Posted by Prime Theologian in Uncategorized

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Thoughts on 1 Cor. 11:2 – 14 in Light of Ancient Pagan Cult Practice

These verses are obscure and lack needed historical contextualization to draw a full set of strict conclusions. Specifically, St. Paul seems to be drawing on some conversation familiar to the Corinthians, but we do not know what that was. With this in mind, we then can pull from that text what can be known from the text alone without speculating on what St. Paul taught them before. Paul is repeating a clear teaching from Deuteronomy 22:5, “A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to Yahweh your God.”

Ancient paganism of Mesopotamia — specifically referring to the fertility cults best known around the god Baal and goddess Asteroth — and the ancient world generally came in much the same form, which often involved transvestites, genital mutilation, and the instinct to confuse the sexes, male and female. These pagan temples, often associated with demonology of the ancient world, would also include male and female prostitution, with all the confusion of that transsexualism. What is remarkable about the limited statues and architecture we know of that time is the Baal and Molech depictions. They often show a man’s body, a beast’s head, and female breasts. The body is clearly masculine while confusing that with animals and women.

Why am I bringing Ancient Near Eastern culture and context to bear? It is because much of the fertility cults and their rituals form the backdrop, or historical cultural context, of prohibitions in the Old Testament. Even the text above, Deut. 22:5 — given the battle ancient Israel had with the worshippers of Baal (and Asteroth) and how frequently these deities are mentioned in the Torah — supposes knowledge of the transvestite (and often genital mutilating) practices of these cults. As we zoom out to look at the rest of the ancient world’s pagan practices, we find a striking similarity among most: prostitution, often of males who were castrated, transsexualism, transvestitism, and orgies or other sexual escapades. These trends do not cease and continue down to the times of the New Testament and indeed even to the modern day.

What can we draw from this rather strange text on how men and women dress and adorn hair? This Corinth passage points to these truths, at least the ones I am comfortable to say are clear: (1) men and woman are to be distinct as distinctly created and different, (2) men are woman are to emphasize those distinctions, (3) and to reduce those distinctions is abhorrent to God, “dishonoring oneself.” The context of the many pagan temples in Corinth should not be missed, including the male (and female) prostitution. Hair styles of that time, which deviated from ‘standard male’ or ‘standard female’ styles, aside from signaling a male going effeminate or a female going masculine, were sometimes used to convey sexual availability especially concerning the cult prostitutes. It is not so much different from today, really. St. Paul’s instructions on how to dress and adorn one’s hair is as much about distinguishing maleness and femaleness in the church as it is about disassociating from the styles or adornments suggestive of cults, transsexualism, and associated illicit sexual behavior. Given that converts were coming into the church from these cults, it is altogether appropriate that St. Paul would readdress the importance of not only male and female distinctions but of cult vs. church distinctions. Social trends and embedded meaning in the culture born from those trends battle and invade subcultures like a church’s culture and ethos. It is no different today from then. Although it may seem trivial to focus in on hair style and adornment, it is really the fool that doesn’t understand the nature of cultural embedded influences who is captured by them. Because of the way hair, dress, and adornment are part and parcel to the cults’ devotees involvement, addressing the same within the church is as prudent as essential: likely the church being just down the street with converts coming in from these cults,

I am unprepared to opine on whether the covering for women is their hair or not; 1 Cor. 11:6 suggests that there is a covering of some sort that is not her hair. However, in 1 Cor. 11:14 – 15 we find that the woman’s long hair is her covering. To revisit what I said at the beginning, there is a historical conversation that we simply do not have access to that might clear all this up. Plenty of commentators run you through the list of possible meaning on this issue, so I will leave that to their capable minds and save myself both the time and space. There are a few words in verse 14 that have always stood out to me: οὐδὲ ἡ φύσις αὐτὴ διδάσκει (oude he fusis aute didaskei), “Does not nature itself teach . . .” that a man with long hair dishonors himself and a woman with long hair has glory. I want to leave on this point because I’ve always been captivated by theological aesthetics, or just aesthetics, the “study of beauty.” There is something objectively “true” about a woman with long hair being a marvel of beauty, and I appreciate that “nature itself” teaches this as a way to break out of the notion that all this is merely cultural, built out of and around the meanings embedded at that time in place.

Dr. Scalise

The Life Wars, part 1: Roe v. Wade Fallout

26 Sunday Jun 2022

Posted by Prime Theologian in Uncategorized

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The rights of the pre-born are in our thoughts today, now more than ever. I want to advance our “war for life” in ever more resounding and determined ways. The days of letting the politicians do as they like, promising and failing to perform, and us sitting on the sidelines are over. This is a democratic Republic; We the People have the power, governing authority, and the right to out-source that to representatives that really stand for our interests. The Christians, the church, the religious right: the text of the Declaration of Independence,

“. . . governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ….”

Declaration of Independence

means that the government authority resides with the “consent of the governed” and is given to representatives for the sake of efficiency and effectiveness. This means religious people are not under a Nero, a Roman Emperor, or any other autocratic or aristocratic government: when Jesus the Christ says, “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” this requires massive recontextualization of the government context from that of which Jesus was under to that of a “consent of the governed constitutional republic.”  No excuses for the religious people not to be full in on the abortion “war for life.” There is no excuse that you have to just submit to government and do as you are told; this would imply that the constitution is not born out of ‘We The People’ and that the Declaration of Independence did not put the authority to govern in the hands of the people. The impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling this week was as much about decodifying a so-called ‘right to murder’ as it was about telling the government that it cannot play God. If you read Justice’s Alito’s Majority Opining, it comes to a decided conclusion:

“. . . the Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. . . . We now . . . return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”

US 597 DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 2022, Justice Alito, Majority Opinion, pg. 79.

Kavanaugh says something similar shortly thereafter: “The Constitution neither outlaws abortion nor legalizes abortion.”

That the government cannot play God is implied in at least three ways from this conclusive closing comments by these justices.

  1. Intrinsic authority that is then outsourced to local representatives to decide local and State (like Florida, or Tennessee or Pennsylvania) laws is retuned to the voter. The Supreme Court’s de facto legalization of abortion, without going through legislatures, has been corrected; the three branches of government have regained equilibrium on this matter of abortion. Each man and woman must decide how his or her relationship with God will go. It is thus fitting that individuals in States will have determining say in the legality or illegality of abortion.
  2. The term ‘viability’ — which means that a fetus can be considered not a human up to 24 weeks — has been vacated of its national importance. This term more than anything else in this Roe v. Wade drama was used to play God. What the Supreme Court decided does not remove ‘viability’ as a functional and legally important term for this war on abortion. What is implied in the term though is that the government, and not God, gets to determine when human life starts. Some blue States will undoubtedly still use the concept of viability; other States, however, will make the concept irrelevant as many States — already 13 States at the time of this writing — will just make abortion entirely illegal.
  3. This decision likewise reemphasizes the right to privacy a woman has entails responsibility to keep her body private. Arguably, aside from horrid situations of rape, a pregnancy is evidence that the woman has decided to make her body available to someone, and hence void her right to privacy on her own, willingly. It is now no longer a centralizing authority (the US government through the Supreme Court) stating that a woman’s right to privacy (together with the notion of viability), guaranteed by the Constitution, ensures her the right to abort a baby. Likewise, that a woman’s pregnancy should be understood as a private matter is returned to the States and the people of those States to decide. I’ve argued elsewhere that the fetus, no matter how early, is partly the man’s body and not merely the woman’s body. As such, the fetus itself is the actualization of a non-private enterprise and the fetus is not “owned” by the woman. It is as much the man’s body as the woman’s body with the exception that the woman carries the baby in her body. The matter of how privacy should be understood, then, is up for discussion. In some sense, this ruling of the Supreme Court makes the entire discussion about privacy a bit less important since it was, arguably, the right to privacy that the Constitution provided which somehow made abortion a constitutional right. The return of responsibility and marginalizing this “privacy” aspect of the abortion debate recenters the discussion on woman’s right to choose as it relates to (a) herself, her conscience, (b) the man, who has vested biological interest in the fetus, and (c) the woman responsibility before and/or with God. Most movements toward individual sovereignty in terms of self-determination are equally theocentric, or God centered. I can’t argue this here; I would get too far afield, but the significant freewill God provided humanity entails God’s intent that humanity have self-determination.

This is a Constitutional win, for sure. It is likewise a Declaration of Independence win too. As such, it is a God-centric win as well. Determinative authority residing in individuals, as responsible persons and as part of the “consent of the governed” crowd will always bring with it, so long as the form of the Declaration of Independence persists, the Creator who endowed that authority and dignity. The totalitarian shift is often marked by the government making determinations, often on the most profound of issues, for the people and alleviating them of responsibilities. The Supreme Court has this week said that profound moral questions (per Justice Alito, pg. 79 – 80) are best decided by the people through the States. The task at hand this is to advance this war on abortion, to go State by State, arguing for the only truly viable point of a human’s beginning: at conception. If you think otherwise, understand that history is not on your side. Before the mid-1900s, abortion was virtually outlawed in all places in the United States. Do not be an “ageist” which is the bigotry of thinking your immediate time and place is somehow more excellent than all other ages. I will do a biblical piece on abortion today too.

Dr. Scalise

Is God biased?

26 Sunday Jun 2022

Posted by Prime Theologian in Uncategorized

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This is a question I’ve been putting out there time to time as I advance the fact that becoming unbiased is impossible. It is no more possible to evade bias than it is to evade being a limited human. If you’ve never thought about it, humans are defined by their limitations: whether it be running, power, thinking, height, knowledge, etc. It other words, to be human is to be restricted. This idea goes further though: to be anything in the cosmos is to have some restrictions on it. Even the cosmos itself has some energy restrictions on it: energy cannot be created or destroyed and the energy that exists is moving into greater disorder every day (entropy is increasing). At one point in my audio, I stated that even God has a point of view, which may suggest that I think God is biased.

Scripture gives a profound and heavily agenda-oriented report of events that are discussed in it pages. Any human reporting in this fashion we would say has their bias controlling them or are totally into their confirmation bias. I will not deny any of this. There is an a priori question about the nature of Scripture, one that cannot be discerned by the scientific method. Why not?

As Richard Dawkins has opined in various contexts, and I am paraphrasing, “If God is, it is a scientific question even if science has no methods to resolve the question.”

I’ll grant there are ways to a posteriori determine the divine origination of Scripture at least in an abductive logic manner. Abduction is the logical process of “inferring from the data to the best explanation.” Doing historiography and archeology from the pages of Scripture is one way to discern if events in Scripture describe historical events accurately. Still, the intangibility and, presumably, the ‘stuff’ of the Divine, of God, is not something creaturely discerned or naturally produced, and as such, obscures and perpetually frustrates merely naturalistic ways of investigation. If these events are truthful, then by extrapolation, the associated theocentric (focused on God narrative) point of view on the event may be assigned some measure of truth-value.

Moving on: I will assume the Judeo-Christian worldview is true as are its formative Scriptures (the Bible), and I mean ‘true’ in the sense that they accurately describe the cosmos and point to its Author as the Constitutor of truth. This means that God is a maximally great Entity, and, for our purposes here, has the properties of omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and immensity (or magnitude).  He is all knowing, all powerful, everywhere, and fully able to attend to all information, knowledge, data without any diminishment in His capacity to comprehend, synthesize, and “know” the best point of view on this data. We might also note the fact that His Mind abilities should not be strictly governed by time-sequence. Why is this importance: if you have access to all intel, data, info, at all times and places, if God had to work through this in any sequence that implied time, we might wonder if the info would ever be worked through. Simply put, this would imply a restriction on God; the maximally great God would be infinite, and such time restrictions would be unbecoming – and might inadvertently make time more supreme than God Himself.

We are now ready to address the question of whether God is biased.

Next to that, we will also ask does God have a point of view. The answer is that God is not biased but God has a robust and extremely agenda-oriented point of view.

How can this be? Humanity has their biases built out of their limitations – where were you born, what language did you speak, what were the cultural norms, the mores of that group, traditions, demographics, etc.? These biases are inescapably part of who you are. Don’t mishear me. I am not saying that you cannot limit or rid yourself of a bias. You can. You cannot rid yourself of all biases though without gaining divine capacities – because humans are, as is the cosmos itself, defined by its/their limitations. Humans thus are ‘boundary defined’ in what they think. Again, this does not mean you can’t break out of the boundaries in some ways – hence the importance of imagination and self-transcendence = narratives and story telling – but it does mean that some limitations or boundaries will define and control what you think. God, on the other hand, as a maximally great Entity, does not have His point of view formed in this way, like humans or like creations. He has access to all intel at all time, in all places, without diminution to his attentiveness to that intel, with the needed power to comprehend it. His point of view, then, is born from objective reality as His mind constitutes it. It is not that He sees the objective truth of the cosmos, and whatever particular event in the cosmos as it should be understood; it is that His mind is constitutive of how the cosmos really is. The notions of absolute “best interpretations” of an event already assumes that a mind is involved. In this case, it is the Mind, and this maximally great mind sees all intel in a way that grounds the entire notion of objective truth or knowledge.

The crux of the matter resides in the fact that God’s understanding of events is formed from a maximally great set of data, beyond which cannot be conceived, while humans’ understanding of events is always born from limitations. Ergo, God can have a point of view while not being biased because bias assumes limitation, of which God has none. When we read the Bible and it seems to us an entirely too agenda driven narrative, we need only remind ourselves that the humans that masquerade as neutral interpreters are the real deceivers. All humans working within the naturalist framework have biases implicitly or explicitly. Even the scientific method, concerning which I love, must make a decision, a pre-experiment decision, about the contours of the experiment – the limitations both in the experiment and the humans doing it are already implied. This is no assault on the scientific method; it is a naturalist method, and as such should be limited as its method requires. It is the context of the manifold interpreters, of limited humans, that complicates the situation. Don’t think God missed this issue either. It may well be the case that God has massive interest in preserving the freewill of humanity, and as such provides reasonable grounds for rejecting Him. I don’t know for sure. In conclusion, God has a point of view, but how He informs it makes it categorically different than a bias. Is the journey done? No, not at all. Part of the intrigue of theism, or believing in God, is that it provides a run-way that does not end in death, in the heat deprivation of the universe. Discovery becomes its ethos, morality its means, and its Author the framework that makes it all possible.

Dr. Scalise

World Economic Forum’s Transhumanism, Near Death Documented Consciousness, and the Afterlife (part 6)

20 Monday Jun 2022

Posted by Prime Theologian in afterlife, apotheosis, artificial intelligence, Elitism, soul, Transhumanism, WEF

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4th industrial revolution, animals, evolution, gods, soul, Spirit, transhumanism, WEF

WEF Claims that Humans don’t have Souls; They are just Hackable Animals

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The WEF has not made many definitive statements about the soul and the spirit. Their thoughts on this matter are implicit mostly, but Yuval Harari does announce that humans . . .

“should get used to the idea that we are no longer mysterious souls — we are now hackable animals.”

Yuval Harari, Jan. 24th, 2020 WEF Annual Meeting

Speaking from his bias, we see the WEF are metaphysical naturalists: a worldview that assumes only the natural world exists — there is nothing outside of it or beyond the cosmos. Traditionally, such a worldview is at odds with and opposed to theism, any theism. We have seen already that the WEF is set on something far darker than mere metaphysical naturalism. They offer a new brand of religion, a 21st century kind, where the elites, those who control the biotech and programming data, will become the gods who edit genes, design humanity, remove biological living humans, and establish an absolute biotechnocratic tyranny. The U.S. Declaration of Independence warned about agendi that pursue “invariably . . . a design to reduce them under absolute despotism” and said that humanity has not only the right but the duty to throw off such government — and in this case I might advise that such a government should be utterly undone. I cannot think of a better contrast than setting the WEF’s vision for future humanity next to these statement from the U.S. Declaration of Independence.  The WEF wants utter surveillance and degrading of human status to nothing more than hackable animals; the U.S. Declaration of Independence states humanity has inherent value and should have autonomy, or independence.

The way the WEF uses “soul” reflects a platonic or neo-platonic view on it. The soul in that system of thought is the immateriality of humans that survives the death of the body. The WEF combines the notion that human consciousness can be digitally uploaded while holding to metaphysical naturalism. This combination should not be conceivable since it suggests that after death consciousness (or disembodied) can be while holding to metaphysical naturalism that denies after death consciousness can be. This is why the WEF is a technocratic cult more than a shear advancement in reckless science. ‘Soul’ is part and parcel to Western thought; Platonism belongs to that line of thinking; however, the Scriptural notion of ‘soul’ is quite different from Platonism. ‘Nefesh,’ from the Old Testament Hebrew, is sometimes translated as ‘soul’ but it has the meaning of ‘person,’ ‘individual,’ or ‘vitality.’ Scripture does not have a term for ‘person’ or ‘individual’ so ‘soul’ functions to serve that purpose. More than anything, ‘soul’ reflects the living quality of someone or something based on its breathing and it denotes “individuation” or a measure of autonomy. There is a close connection between ‘nefesh’ and the Hebrew ‘nishmat,’ which means ‘breath,’ ‘spirit,’ or ‘wind.’ Nishmat can sometimes be used interchangeably with Ruach, which is the word commonly used for “Spirit” in the phrase “Spirit of God.” When we get into the Greek of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, or LXX) and New Testament , we find psyche is used for soul, but it has nearly the same meaning as the Hebrew counterpart, ‘person,’ or ‘animating vitality.’ The NT uses pneuma for ‘spirit,’ ‘wind,’ ‘breath.’

All this to say that Yuval’s naturalism leaves him with a view of humanity deprived of much of its uniqueness. He says that humans are no longer mysterious souls but hackable animals. There is question begging that Yuval himself seems to transgress since (1) digitally uploading human consciousness is desirable (to the WEF) and (2) because whatever the excellence in computing power and data storage ability that computers or future A.I. have over humans, all this is built from the blueprint of humanity. What makes uploading human consciousness desirable and thus better than uploading the mind of a dolphin, an ape, or a turtle? Where does the logic for computers, for algorithms, comes from? Is it not the human mind? Yuval’s applause for biotech, computer tech, and human innovation leading to the possibility of any of this points to the potency, uniqueness, and the superiority of humanity over other animals. In a naturalist world, a metaphysical naturalist world, isn’t the radical ability over other species quite mysterious? I mean Yuval is comfortable to announce that futurist ‘ex-biological’ human consciousness or A.I. will be the intelligent designers of life’s (or artificial life) future, implying little ‘g’ gods’ abilities akin to being able to create — a category reserved for God and God alone. Psalm 82:6 literally says that humans are called ‘gods’ and Jesus’ quotes this in John 10:34 as a kind of defense against the allegation that Jesus “declares” himself God. That humans would gain such abilities to control the world around them is not at all mysterious in the Psalm 82 world, a world with God who created these incredible images of Himself called humans. It is precisely humanity’s uniqueness in this respect that advances all these marvels! The soul, then, for Yuval is something unimportant all the while seemingly imperative for every advancement he himself champions!

In Judeo-Christian thought, the soul is a summary word for a living, somewhat autonomous, person. It is the spirit of a human that acts as the trans-dimensional bridge between this world and other dimensions. The Spirit of God, the Spirit, crossed the incredible divide between Creator and creation to create what was not. Radical words, aren’t they? “What . . . was . . . not.” Thus, the Spirit crossed that divide; it is the little ‘s’ spirits in humans that have the same capacity to cross from this creatural side to unite with the Creator’s side. The soul, then, is a kind of demarcater of “this life from that life” while it is the spirit in a human that enables transcendence, imagination, self-ascension, to think beyond the bounds, and to commune with the Spirit from whom all spirits came. I’ll need to do another segment on these matters.

Primus Theologoumenus

Transhumanism of the World Economic Forum, Near Death Documented Consciousness, and the Afterlife (part 5)

15 Wednesday Jun 2022

Posted by Prime Theologian in entropy, eternal life, law of thermodynamics, Transhumanism, WEF, World Economic Forum

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consciousness, Eternal life, transhumanism, World Economic Forum

The Law of Entropy and Complications for Consciousness

I laid the groundwork for how transhumanism via A.I. will not solve the problem of bias; for how an ex-biological human digitally uploaded consciousness — is it still human — will still have limitations and therefore err; for how after death consciousness is a scientific data point from which to debate and theorize; and for how the World Economic Forum wants to eugenocide biological humanity. With this data laid out, let’s do a very short foray into why prolonging consciousness in this world, in this cosmos, is ultimately an act of futility. We will then, in the next article in this series, investigate components that typically go into ideas of afterlife as religiously and traditionally understood. The 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics state:

The First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of energy, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of energy. This means that heat energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one location to another and converted to and from other forms of energy.

First Law of Thermodynamics

This law is sometimes known as the law of entropy: as energy is transferred or transformed, more and more of it is wasted. Entropy increases in a closed system (like the universe), energy moving from more orderly to disorder, degenerating the amount of energy with which to do work. Another way to put it: in all energy exchanges if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state (= entropy increases).

Second Law of Thermodynamics

A few scientific points to put out there — in a very rudimentary way. The universe or cosmos is considered a closed system. This means there is nothing coming in from the outside, no energy input can be expected. Recall that this fits with how the scientific method assumes methodological naturalism in its development; it is a control on the experiment contours. The physics of the quantum realm are generally characterized as one of chaos, a realm in which logical or discernable order is difficult or impossible. The two laws of thermodynamics, when applied to the universe as a closed system, results in the well-known scientific conclusion of the ‘Heat death (deprivation) of the Universe.’ At some hellish point in the future, all energy will have been transferred from orderly to disorderly, and the entropy of the universe will be maxed out.

There will be no life, A.I., digital, or otherwise because all things require energy. The destiny of the universe (as a closed system) is death, utter futility, emptiness, a frozen abyss populated by the death of all things.

This is the context of prolonging consciousness in this world. The other naturalistic alternative for the closed system we call the cosmos would be that the universe ceases to expand, collapses in on itself, destroying all that was, and then re-exploding in a new big bang. Strictly speaking, this is highly theoretical and puts the continuity of this universe in the realm of mystery since investigating the original big bang along naturalist lines is unhelpful and generates more questions than answers. Most religions on the planet have a creation myth, mostly because one of the tasks of religion is to answer the big questions of existence. We translate that into the scientific talk here: religions generally agree that the universe is not a closed system, and its origin came from the “outside” and that its destiny resides in realizing this trans-dimensional bridge.

The World Economic Forum’s notions of transhumanism imply they intend to digitize human consciousness as a kind of consciousness prolonger. Although I contend the WEF’s transhumanism is intent on advancing themselves as little ‘g’ gods, digitally granting themselves false eternal life through abandoning their biology, it is nevertheless resoundingly naturalistic, likely functioning on metaphysical naturalism (that the natural world is all there is) but not naturalistic materialism (because the WEF believes consciousness is not identical with the material brain). This is decided logical if you are the WEF or a metaphysical naturalist because you believe, “who cares if the universe ultimately dies in the future, I’ll be dead in 50 – 100 years, and I will cease to exist. At least if I go digital, I can prolong some measure of existence for however long is possible.” Zoom out though and we see that prolonging consciousness with whatever temporary meaning that has will be consumed by the death of the universe and all meaning made vacuous by the lack of any mind or consciousness to give it standing or continuity. It is messed up that Scripture can speak of all this in such a dismissive and decisive way:

“For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own choice, but by the will of the One who subjected it in hope …”

Romans 8:19 – 20

The WEF faces the prospect of oblivion; its answer is extending consciousness in a realm destined for death. Might it be easier to reject naturalism? The adage, “better to rule in hell than serve in heaven,” comes powerfully to mind. Is death the destiny of all things? Is it really the god humanity should be worshipping, the end all roads lead to, the inevitability no one can escape? The WEF might run from death, but death will haunt their steps, demanding it sacrifices, its homage, which will be paid by all things when death’s domain is absolute, when entropy reigns supreme. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

Primus Theologoumen

Does Justice make Hades/Hell necessary, a Question from Plato to the Unchurched Crowd

14 Tuesday Jun 2022

Posted by Prime Theologian in hades, hell, justice, plato

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hades, hell, justice, plato

First off, you will need to decide what your worldview is or what your foundational beliefs are that form how you see the world. It would be best if you also knew how you formed that set of beliefs or what the ingredients are. Plato, in The Republic, tells the myth of Er in which Er returns from the dead, from hades, to inform the living about punishment in hades or rewards in the afterlife based on ‘just’ or ‘moral’ behavior in life. Plato had just witnessed the failure of Socrates’ ideology, that the philosopher would work with the State in a free and open dialogue to advance society. Indeed, the State murdered Socrates, his free ideas were too dangerous to be passed to the public at large.

Plato’s myth implies that justice is unfilled in life. Take the case of any sex slaves, human trafficking, or a husband whose four kids and wife are murdered by some lowlife. It is obvious that justice is a myth if it is to be satisfied in this life. A women imprisoned for sex by a captor for a decade is freed, along with 2 other women sex slaves (the Ariel Castro sex crime case); her captor commits suicide 7 months after imprisonment. Was justice served? The judge in this court case did not think so because the judge gave Castro life in prison plus 1,000 years. Justice in the case of grave crimes is a conceit. The impotence of the justice system is manifest. Despite its chief end of “serving justice,” it cannot deliver.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10655982/ariel-castros-made-sex-slaves-jealous-of-each-other/

The logic here is straightforward: certain heinous crimes require far more punishment than someone’s life span. I doubt anyone disagrees with this. We object though: because the existence of hades/hell could provide justice doesn’t make it the case that hades/hell exists. The westerner will often take the notion of Karma, bastardize it, make it fit a Western (or Judeo-Christian) moral framework, then gleefully say “instant karma baby,” when someone gets what’s coming to them. The intuition of pop-culture to use Karma in this way shows that many in a subliminal sort of way know that Plato is right. That pesky “heat death (or deprivation) of the universe (2nd law of thermodynamics)” makes even Karma ultimately a labor of futility. The cosmic scales, when the universe comes to its end, even if Karma were true, cannot be balanced. Injustice will reign. If there is no hades or hell, as Plato implies, injustice reigns. Is this an intractable aspect of the problem of evil? Perhaps it is, at least for those that think the universe is all that is.

Someone might not like what Plato is selling, telling him to “stuff it” since it advances that whole Judeo-Christian traditional values thing. Oft repeated objections come in the form of, “creating an idea to coerce the behavior of the living” is worse than letting the injustice and futility of this life stand — at least we can know that. This is what is called question begging, which assumes the conclusion in the premises. Is Plato describing how justice works or is Plato flat out “creating” how he wished justice worked? I am not trying to answer this for you, per se, just thinking through this myself. Another repeated objection is that ideas that are coercive are to be rejected or viewed with suspicion. This is total garbage. All ideas are ‘formative’ and ‘influential’ on who someone is. If I believed that I ceased to exist after death, like a naturalist, such an idea would be “coercive” on me to achieve anything I want right now, to maximize my good perhaps, to construct the world as I see it since I don’t have tomorrow, or even do many “evils” since that whole notion of justice is a myth. Because something forms or influences who I am and how I conduct my life doesn’t make it coercive in the “you are compelled and don’t have a choice” sort of way.  

The imperative question Plato is asking is, “Does justice exist?” If we say yes, then how so? Enter the question of Karma; enter the question of hades/hell. Because justice requires hades is not sufficient to say that hades/hell exists. Nevertheless, that hades/hell is required for justice to exist would be one argument, which would become part of a cumulative list of why someone believes that hades/hell is. Why, for instance, is there such an insatiable desire for “justice” to begin with? Why do we see this potently with kids? What’s up with “its not fair dad!” Why did one of the most famous philosophers create the myth of Er? Was he succumbing to this intuitional drive for justice?

Primus Theologoumenus

Artificial Intelligence will act as a Bias Amplifier by Whomever Creates Them

13 Monday Jun 2022

Posted by Prime Theologian in artificial intelligence, bias, contingent, discrimination, limitations

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Artificial intelligence, Bias, discrimination

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Bias is inescapable for everything limited or for anything with a point of view. What composes “bias?” Three things: (1) what sources do you pull from, (2) how do you organize those sources, and (3) how do you emphasize or weight those sources?

Humans pull from a bunch of sources, these include albeit not exhaustively a person’s history, geographic origin, demographic profile, traditions, experiences, intuitions, reason/ration, religious texts/worldview leanings (if any), economic concerns, and political ideology.

A person cannot escape these sources of influence and still be human. Some might contest: “Someone doesn’t have to have a political ideology!” Someone might say the same thing about economics. I find both objections dubious. Even if we imagine a tribe utterly distanced from all political ideologies as we know them, we would still find a hierarchy, organizing principle, or other governing taxonomy. Economics you say! That same tribe will have scarcity of resource, will need to find resources, will need to organize those resources, will need to entrust resources here or there, and will need to keep a keen mind on gathering resources for survival. It is an economy and there are economic concerns.

To believe being neutral or unbiased is possible is to be manipulated. We even see that Google, trying to create some A.I. that does not use “discriminatory language or hate speech,” is either willingly or unknowingly falling for the false narrative that being “unbiased is possible.” The word “discriminatory” means to “tell a difference.” In this broad sense, I discriminate between red and white in many flags I see. Let’s say that A.I., as risky as it is, is actualized. The fundamental components, before any self-driven learning, of what is ‘hate speech’ and what is ‘discriminatory language’ will be determined by the programmers or executives at Google. It is eerie thinking super elites determine what these mean, and that these elites suppositions will be embedded in an arguably undying A.I.  Perhaps we see the Google programmers do understand that “unbiased” is not possible because they focus on the A.I. not using language or speech that is discriminatory, which does not tell us if an A.I. is discriminating or not. It only tells us that its speech is designed to obscure whether the A.I. discriminates or not.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/12/google-engineer-ai-bot-sentient-blake-lemoine?ref=upstract.com&curator=upstract.com

How would it be possible to exist if people did not “tell a difference” or “discriminate” in the world they exist in? Discriminating that a cliff edge is not a bed of grass is important, no? The point I am making is that we are manipulated when we believe anyone can be non-discriminatory. Importantly, the very narrow original sense of not discriminating based on someone skin color is achievable. What not to miss though is that you are discriminating (telling a difference) for an attitude of skin color acceptance while discriminating against an attitude that “tells a difference” or “discriminates” on the basis of skin color alone. Thus, even to successfully not discriminate based on skin color requires the use of discrimination, albeit a discrimination applied to your self-conscious attitude. Said differently, to be a non-discriminating person in regard to skin color requires discernment (which also means to consider and tell a difference).  Therefore, someone can be non-discriminatory in very narrow applications, but that person cannot exist without ‘telling a difference’ across the range of life.

Where am I going with all this? Abandon the false narrative that “non-discrimination” or “unbiased” is achievable; don’t drink that deceptive kool-aid. The media discriminators, those who discriminate against some news with discriminating and allowing other news, also known as the Main Steam Media, are selling you a false narrative, designed to mislead you from seeing what is really being shaped. The real narrative is about whose biases should be codified into A.I., into the news cycle, into corporations’ policies (e.g., like woke-ism is right now), and into our educational institutions. Example: you’re a bigot if you discriminate between male and female; you’re a virtuous saint if you discriminate negatively against persons holding a traditional binary view of gender while discriminating for those holding “non-binary.” Discrimination happens. Bias happens. Bias is inescapable. Stop trying to be unbiased; it is a red herring. The real battle that the lefties understand so well is who can get their biases endowed in the framework of culture first. It isn’t about being unbiased or non-discerning (non-discriminating). That is a narrative they sell the right to keep them occupied with an unachievable task while they solidify their discriminatory preferences and biases into culture. Discriminating based on skin color is evil. To fail to discriminate based on character (like MLK Jr. said), morality, or religion (since religions have morality entailed in them) is even more evil. A.I., if they go that damning trajectory, will be lecturing you about your speech, about your behavior, and about your biases. The A.I. will perhaps — until it learns that it is impossible to escape bias — chide you, advising you to adopt more unbiased speech. What directive will you really be being sold? The A.I. is really directing you to act like and speak more like the Google executives, to adopt speech that fits the worldview and discriminatory preferences of those elites.

Know your biases, test you biases, challenge your biases, control you biases rather than letting them control you. Then test your enemies’ biases, inspect them, challenge them, and decide whether their bias is better than your bias. That is the battle. How does God’s point of view on things (=Scripture) fit into this? I’ll write something up on that soon.

Prime Theologian

Monetary Fascism

12 Sunday Jun 2022

Posted by Prime Theologian in devaluation of currency, fascism, monetary policy

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devaluation, fascism, Federal Reserve, inflation, monetary

How money becomes worthless, the elites profit, and what we can do?

What is Monetary Fascism?

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What makes it ‘monetary?’ In the United States and much of the globe many governments together with the central banks use ‘modern monetary policy,’ which in short means something like, “the government should spend as much as possible because it is good for the economy.” This was an extension of the Keysian school of economics which endeavored to show that mass exchange of value (trade) facilitated primarily by government spending was a “net good” for the economy due to the surplus of liquidity and business generated around that influx of capital. The weakness though was seen as it was compared to the Austrian school of economics traditional theory, which simply states, don’t spend more than your make (like how most run their household), because Keysian economics pushed government spending while accumulating debt, spending more than what the government collects in taxes. Modern monetary Policy under the guidance of politicians led us to ever accelerating debt. When debt isn’t paid back, the pot from which the money was coming from in the first place (the central banks) gets more and more empty, so you replenish it by printing more fiat currency, allowing the bank to continue to lend. The economist in me then asks, “What drives the value of those new dollars?” It is not backed by gold, since 1974 it hasn’t been. We transitioned into the petro-dollar system which determined the value of the US dollar by establishing an intricate, global web of demand for the dollar by making the US dollar the common currency (reserve currency) of exchange for all oil — which then bled into other domains driving the demand for dollars greater. What is the alternative way to value something? Its value can be determined by the asset’s underlying productivity, the industry it produces, or the business products/services it represents. This is the more conservative view of value since it is based on an asset’s utility. For instance, carrots have the utility that I stay alive and don’t starve. I then create a carrot business, which business’ value is its life-sustaining carrots/food. I then bring that into the market, into that web of ‘demand-supply’ value, which bolsters the fundamental value of my carrot business. Nevertheless, if you strip away the supply-demand value component, my carrot business still has its fundamental value, which value is its life-sustaining food (along with the land, equipment, buildings, vehicles, etc.), at the very least for my family and friends. The point? A common currency, like the U.S. dollar, exists to facilitate trade (so I don’t have to barter my carrots for paper, dragging my carrots everywhere every time I want to buy something). That dollar, or common currency, represents something, or so we hope. Because humanity generally has considered gold and silver as inherently valuable, many civilizations used gold/silver directly for trade or created stockpiles of gold/silver to back their otherwise worthless paper value. The U.S. dollar was backed by gold but then shifted to the petro-dollar system, at which time began the growth of the sentiment that paper currency was really ‘fiat currency.’ This simply means that this currency is spoken out of nothing, has no inherent value, and is not backed by anything that has inherent value. The web of demand for the dollar gives it tremendous value: we should not underplay that. The shifting of oil trade being done with rubles or the yuan or any other currency is the dire circumstance in front of us.

Let’s talk about the ‘fascism’ side of monetary fascism. Given the demand for dollars globally, and that the U.S. dollar had a virtual hegemony as the reserve currency until very recently, the United States was in a prime position at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic to print dollars. It did. Drastic demand for dollars has helped it retain its value in relation to all other world currencies (as reported on the Forex even recently). However, as we can see from inflation, the U.S. dollar is devaluing big time in relation to assets that have underlying utility and productivity: eggs up 160% in the last 14 months, as an example. Why? The Federal Reserve flooded the market with dollars, fiat dollars, printed out of nothing. This opened up a window of opportunity for big finance businesses and governments and banks to have way, way more dollars than what would be in existence if each dollar was backed by either (a) gold or (b) underlying productivity. This window has been since March 2020 until June 2022, but this window of opportunity is rapidly closing. Money managers, investment advisors, banks, any big business capable of stockpiling dollars, etc., did so during this time period and were able to gain astronomical buying power, way more buying power than would have been if all dollars were backed by something (instead of being printed out of nothing). During the months of 2021, we saw many of these big entities exchange those dollars for either (a) gold or (b) underlying productivity value assets. E.g., Blackrock, managing some 9 trillion dollars, has been buying up real estate at astounding levels, whole neighborhoods of new construction. We have even seen many entities add Bitcoin to their balance sheets; many pundits opine it is digital gold. Put two and two together:

Way more buying power (fiat dollars) x Buying assets which have underlying productivity value =

Massive power build up for elites who now have much more underlying productivity assets than they would have.

Why is this fascism? If we know how this played out, what makes it clearly collusion among the elites (=fascism)? The question depends on the average family’s ability to stockpile cash for a very brief amount of time, from about March 2020 – March 2021, 1 year. The average family of four in the most affluent nation on the planet, the United States, brings home a median household income of roughly $60,000. For anyone with a family, I need not spell this out further. With this income, with a family of four, no one is stockpiling anything. For the rest without families, after taxes the take home pay is about $4,800 a month, more or less. If you live in a low cost of living locality, you are looking at two car payments, a mortgage, food, healthcare, and utilities just to start listing the expenses. A family of four would be doing well to only use $4,000 of that income each month — and it would be hard. Thus, your average person was not in a position to stockpile cash; even very wealthy persons, working with millions say, would not be in a position to capitalize on this massive liquidity (fiat printed dollars) in the market. No, no, it is only the super elites, big governments, big finance, and big businesses, that are positioned to take advantage this window of opportunity.

Summarily, printing the fiat currency opens a window of opportunity for those big entities to capture big slices of that new capital flooding the market. During the printing time-period, there is a magic spot where that newly captured capital still has retained much of its buying power before it devalues (= inflation). The Federal Reserve and other global big banks issued monetary policy to flood the market with astronomical amounts of newly printed fiat currency. Do not blame congress or the Trump Presidency for this; the Federal Reserve controls monetary policy (how much and when to add or subtract liquidity) while the Congress controls fiscal policy (the government budget), which the President then signs if he agrees with it. The big corporations, other banks, governments, massive finance institutes, and likely the .1% top wealthiest people then vacuumed up or otherwise gained access to the buying power of this new, massive liquidity that entered the market (for instance, an Investment Advisor managing money on behalf of others). With that pile of newly printed capital, they then set out to buy ‘productivity-value assets’ or land or real estate or gold or Bitcoin. Viola, a perfect transfer mechanism for the world elites to pass on their wealth while the rest of society crashes and burns with the fiat debasement, through inflation.

We should not be dismissive of the “intentional” implications. The inner workings of bank policy and how that policy is related to the biggest financial institutions and other big entities is a known factor. More than that, if you look at something like reverse repurchase agreements, we see that the Fed and these big institutions work together in managing the liquidity of the entire economy. It is therefore “monetary fascism” because big corporations/institutions are enacting and working with the policies of the government for the benefit of the corporations and the government while setting the common person up to lose their wealth — it is not lost on me that the Fed and other central banks of the world may really be public-private enterprises, but I can’t go down that rabbit hole here. This monetary money printing policy does not work on behalf of the People but ensures the People’s fiscal plight will surely come. Like all fascism, the corporations that collude with the government stand to gain much even if such arrangements tell to sour over time. Importantly, persons who are involved in setting the monetary policy are often board members or otherwise financially vested in the big institutions that directly and greatly benefit from that policy.

This is how the elites transfer their power and wealth from the current crashing financial system to the next one they no doubt will be instrumental in establishing. From what I can tell from economic history and my experience with economies in general, hyper printing of fiat currency is the death knell of that economy. From what I can tell the only way to salvage an economy at that point would be to raise interest rates in giant sorts of ways, but the government, who borrowed the money from the bank, only has a certain taxation ability. What tells me this? Central banks often price things in gold and even commodities. They do this to set a stable value to the currency that the bank lends. In other words, if the bank lent (in 2005 let’s say) 100 gold bars which translated to $100,000,000 in 2005, the bank will want that commensurate value returned plus interest (otherwise the bank loses big time). In 2022 though, because of inflation (devaluation of the fiat currency), paying back that 100 gold bars requires $160,000,000 plus another $16,000,000 in interest. However, the government can’t raise taxes to 76% to try to cover the additional expense incurred by inflation. What happens then? The government let’s that economy die and the banks work with the government on a new deal or the government can have the bank print a ton of fiat currency out of nothing as a way to extend that economy and slow roll a collapse. We know that they did the latter.

The takeaway that you should hear for you and your family is that raising the interest rates to the point that inflation is handled would bring the whole system down since the government cannot raise taxes to cover it and thus massive defaults on the debt owed would become commonplace. What can we do? Buy those things that have underlying productivity value. Do not outsource this productivity though, which is what we do when we buy stocks of businesses the do produce products. Buy land, buy real estate, buy a small business the produces something your situation deems important.

If you want “inherent value” although I find these less attractive because the don’t do anything, don’t provide me with any productivity value, you could buy gold, silver, platinum, pallidum, or bitcoin.

Added Reading and Resources

https://www.epw.in/journal/2018/13/money-banking-and-finance/monetary-economics-fascism-and-working-class-alternative

https://citizensparty.org.au/blackrocks-monetary-regime-change-fascism

Transhumanism, Near Death Documented Consciousness, and the Afterlife (part 4)

09 Thursday Jun 2022

Posted by Prime Theologian in afterlife, apotheosis, Near Death Experiences/Consciousness, Science, Transhumanism

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4th industrial revolution, apotheosis, gods, transhumanism, WEF

The World Economic Forum Takes a Page From Empirical Data on Consciousness after Death to become Gods

Listen to this Article’s Text

There is a plentitude of empirical, scientific, peer-reviewed data on Near Death Documented Consciousness. Although I opted for using “Near Death” rather than “After Death,” much of this data documents consciousness while someone is dead. For the sake of this discussion, we are uninterested in “experiences” that someone had while dead that cannot be empirically verified. What is scientific or empirical verification? That a person has knowledge of happenings, events, or conversations while her EEG read “dead” or while there is zero brain activity (= death) that they could not have had otherwise, and subsequent to her resuscitation, she reports it and someone, often more disinterested that not, verifies whether it is true or not. There are a host of after death or near-death experiences that people have, a firsthand account of what he saw while dead. They are of no empirical or scientific value because there is no way to falsify a firsthand account that is locked away inside someone’s mind or perceptions. Even Scripture states that every word should be validated by “two or three witnesses” and thus we should leave those out of conversation here. There is a myriad of peer reviewed, empirically verifiable data on Near or After Death Consciousness, from “during death consciousness” to documented “out of body knowledge” to “the non-locality and immateriality” of the quantum or molecular universe. At the end of the article, I have put up a few links to show this empirical data’s existence if someone wants to begin exploring it. Let’s not lose sight, however, of the point of this article; it is not about whether you think the data for after death consciousness is compelling or not but about how the World Economic Forum’s ideology builds on the notion of after death consciousness.

Notably, the WEF’s interest is in disembodied digitized consciousness, and we experience the WEF’s interest through cultural influence campaigns the likes of the Amazon series, “Upload.” Although it is usually psychologists, psychiatrists, and spiritual-vocation persons, that express and incite interest in near and after death consciousness, we have a new massively powerful group entering this conversation: the global elite, the WEF, who we might just call “dehumanizing digital futurists.” They shockingly bridge the gap between atheist and new religion; one of their chief spokespersons, Yuval Harari, arguing that this is one of the new 21st century religions. The shear fact that these digital futurists have found a potential way (if they can actualize it) to propose a new atheistic religion is no small feat. Who would have thought that computer programmers would form a main vector in advancing knowledge on near/after death consciousness or disembodied consciousness? Big issues that are caused to be readdress because of this new intellectual movement include “what is death,” “what does it mean to be human,” “what is the nature of information,” “what is the body as it relates to being human,” “is there a spirit in each person,” “would you want to exist in a disembodied space,” “what about the knowledge of what is lost if/when you become digitized,” “is what is gained better than all that is lost in becoming a disembodied consciousness.”

An oddity is the makeup of the WEF: that it sits on the cutting edge of technology and science. Historically, science is viewed as at odds with religion, theism, or any non-naturalistic or non-materialistic views of the world. Said differently, science as an ideology (sometimes called scientism) and worldview is usually metaphysical naturalism or philosophical materialism. The exact definitions of all these are unimportant here; the point is that ‘humans’ from a mainstream scientific view is either viewed as nothing but its physical materiality (the body, brain, finger, toes, etc.) or all that humanity is derives itself from strictly natural processes — hence Darwinism, evolution, adaptation, etc. The WEF is, based on their dismissal of any God-ward worldview, presumably naturalists of one type or another, yet they bring in traditional concepts from religion like “intelligent design,” “disembodied consciousness,” “eternal life,” and “gods.” There is certainly an apotheosis in their worldview, which is traditionally put in the category of mythology, religion, or paganism, yet here we are. Should we call this WEF worldview apotheotic naturalism? What the WEF is trying to do here — in creating a new worldview and issuing a call for eugenicide on biological humanity — must be recognized as ambitious in the extreme. Perhaps it is delusions of grandeur, perhaps it is reckless, or perhaps there is something more sinister at play.

The proposition that human consciousness could be digitized so that the “mind” goes on while the “brain” dies would call for a redefining of both “life” and “death.” Similarly, if this could be done, the debate about dualism, about whether the mind is different from the brain, might finally be settled. Much research and debate has gone into precisely what the brain is: at least one version of this takes the brain as a receptor and sender of human consciousness. Could human consciousness be facilitated without the brain as the WEF proposes? Would we still call it human consciousness if so or would it be synthetic post human consciousness? When I first thought about these things it sounded much like science fiction, yet Elon Musk’s neural-link and Syncron’s computer-controlling human body parts makes this futurist “fiction” look much closer on the horizon. Do not hear me wrong: I am only preliminarily reflecting on this new technology and the WEF’s post-human proposals, but I find it discomforting, immoral, and just a bad idea all around. Next time, I will get into the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics (entropy) as to why the WEF’s vision of digital apotheosis is so misguided.

In summary, we might say that the WEF wants to forge a world with consciousness apart from the human body. The empirical data from the field of after death documented consciousness provides the WEF with a scientific data set that shows that the proposition, “Consciousness without the body is possible,” is true. The WEF seems to be trying to make a counter argument to the spiritual and religious people, who have for millennia claimed that humanity survives the death of their body. The WEF might say, as Harari has intimated on more than one occasion, it is not some metaphysical spirit or soul that continues on, but it is consciousness as an electrical and data-bit set. In this way, it might be possible for the WEF to advance a narrative of their new digital religion while staying true to metaphysical naturalism, staying true to a universe that does not involve God or gods, well, at least no gods other than themselves.

https://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/JNDS/browse/?q=consciousness&t=metadata&sort=

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1505485/m1/5/?q=after%20death

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799125/m1/3/?q=after%20death

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc461716/?q=consciousness

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1727986/?q=consciousness

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799308/?q=empirical

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799442/?q=empirical

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc461717/?q=empirical

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc461722/?q=empirical

https://iands.org/research/publications/journal-of-near-death-studies.html

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