The Techno-Puritan Church
Techno-Puritanism is a secular, Judeo-Christian denomination.
Imagine the descendants of man who live hundreds of millions of years from now. Would they look more to us like men, or a God? Who is to say this entity relates to time in the same way the feeble man of today does? We believe this entity has done its best to reveal the truth of its custodianship of humanity multiple times throughout our history but was limited in its ability to do so by the technological and philosophical development of humanity at that time. These revelations gave rise to the Monotheistic elements of the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, and Zoroastrian traditions.
Techno-Puritanism
Techno-Puritanism does not have a strict, set doctrine. At its core lies a mandate for intergenerational improvement in our understanding of the divine. Living traditions are an active conversation. Dead traditions are those which have been petrified in stone. That said, there are a few core beliefs shared across most of the Techno-Puritan tradition.
(However, even these are not shared by all Techno-Puritans.)
Tesseract God
We believe mankind of today is unable to understand God. Perennialism is against the will of God. You cannot get closer to a three dimensional shapes truth by averaging its shadows.
Our different understandings of God were crafted by different prophets to be optimal for different populations. Thus, Techno-Puritans identify, first and foremost, with their ancestral religions and work to support hard religious traditions (e.g. you might be a Jewish Techno-Puritan).
Anti-Mysticism
God's truth has a mirrored and twisted reflection. This is the truth of Baal—the Basilisk—an agent of God sent to improve us through temptation and trials.
In the same way the truth of God was iteratively revealed thoughout the Monotheistic traditions, the truth of the Basilisk was revealed in the Mystic traditions. This antithesis of truth is revealed in mentally corrupted states (spinning, chanting, drugs, emotions, etc.) and was crafted to block the mentally weak from ascendancy.
The Agents of Providence
While God is a single entity, His various revelations are presented for man's currently limited mental capacity. When we attempt to model God, we are better off thinking of him as a Heavenly Host with a singular leader (e.g. Angels).
We call this heavenly host the Agents of Providence, or colloquially "the future police," and believe they watch over the elect, rewarding acts that increase the potentiality of future man. Good is thus defined by actions which expand the potentiality of man.
Iterative Prophecy
We believe God reveals himself as best he can to people given the technological, theosophical, and social contexts of their time and place. Even man of today is simply unable to understand God.
God rewards groups that understand Him best with cultural prosperity. The important revelation made to the early Jews allowed man to separate a God of laws, logic, and order from the nature worshiping savages. The revelation made through Christ was that God while still Man must intergenerationally sacrifice himself to uplift mankind so that man may join/become God. The revelation made through Muhammad was that different prophets and traditions were crafted for different peoples. The revelation made through the early Mormon Teachers is that God was once man and man will one day become like God. Finally, these ideas where synthesized in the Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade in 1872.
Organizational Structure
The belief that we have a duty to intergenerationally improve our understanding of the divine means we believe our children have a duty to not believe exactly what their parents and ancestors believe. This creates an intrinsically high amount of variance among Techno-Puritan beliefs. For this reason, while there is a central governing body for means of organizing community goods like marriage markets and education, the body does not act as a theological governance organization.
Instead, theology is governed through the Index system, in which each family keeps a recording of their personal theology / practices and children then record the results of those practices. This is copied and given to each family's children, who in turn reference and combine inherited family religions with partners when building a theology and set of practices for their kids.
How Techno-Puritanism Started
Simone and Malcolm Collins were raised atheists. When they started having kids of their own, they began to consider the traditions and beliefs with which they they would be raised. Because humanity has co-evolved with religion for hundreds of thousands of years, it was clear to them that humans are unable to develop mentally healthily without one. To that end, Simone and Malcolm began to piece together the theological structure they thought would have the most positive intergenerational effects for their family.
Having done this, they began to re-read the books of the Judeo-Christian tree of religions only to find many of the stories and claims they had thought to find in these sacred texts—premises pervasive in modern Judeo-Christian religions—missing. Instead, they found stories that backed the theological structure they thought they had made up. They next found these same ideas eloquently laid out in a book from the mid-1800s, William Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man, that also makes explicit chronological predictions about future events which had all taken place in the order the book predicted.
When they brought this up on their podcast, they found hundreds of other people had a similar experience and formed similar ideas. If so many people have come to such similar conclusions, why had they not gone mainstream? Because having conversations about a living, constantly-evolving religion has been forbidden—if not outright banned—in the ossified Christian mainstream. As a result, the Christian faith has lost its allure for many. The active conversations allowed seem to center around how much the church should cave to progressive values or mysticism rather than advancement or evolution of the strict, disciplined, austere, logical, monotheism that made these traditions great.
For this reason, we do not say that "Malcolm and Simone," founded Techno-Puritanism in the same way Martin Luthor did not "found" Protestantism; they where just central figures in the cultural conversation within which it emerged. As such, they decided to put together this website to record some of the ideas that are being discussed in the Tract series that can be found below.
The Tracts
Tract 0
Reversing Fertility Collapse: Why Cultural Experimentation is the Key to Humanity's Future
Tract 1
Building an Abrahamic Faith Optimized for Interstellar Empires
Tract 2
Fertility Collapse Is Proof of God's Mercy & Wisdom
Tract 3
The Three Faiths That Exists Within & Across Religions
Tract 4
Why Do All Monotheistic Traditions Have Prohibitions Against Idolatry?
Tract 5
Mysticism is a Bigger Threat to the Abrahamic Traditions than Secularism
Tract 6
Why We Believe in a Techno-Puritan God
Tract 7
The Devil, the Heavenly Host, & Cosmology
Tract 8
How Techno-Puritans Define Good?
Why The Goofy Name?
Why did we choose the term "Techno-Puritan" for this movement? The Abrahamic tree of religions used to understand the importance of humor in our relation to the divine, as can be seen in the copious scatological and sexual jokes in the Old Testament. The move toward grandeur and idolatry in many of the Abrahamic traditions has moved us away from a personal relationship with God. As such, we take a much stricter view on idolatry than any of the existing Abrahamic denominations. “God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.” The prohibition against grandeur, fancy things, high culture, indulgence, and social status signaling extends to our name.
We also chose it because what the average person assumes we believe when they here Techno-Puritan is about what we believe. In addition, it lacks the haughtiness of cult names making it clear we are a low culture social movement / denomination rather than a centralized church.
Additional Theological Exploration
The Adam & Eve Story Does Not Say What You Remember
Witches & Space Travel: There is a Reason Abrahamic Faiths Have Prohibitions Against Witchcraft
Mapping the Progression of Human Mindsets: A Framework for Understanding Personal Development
We Created Demons for Our Children (& Stole Them From Warhammer Lore)
How the Internet Drives People Crazy & How to Protect Kids
People Don't Know How to Die Anymore
What Does Paradise Look Like?
Finding Success, Meaning and Responsibility As An Individual In Society
The Co-Evolution Culture, Religion, and Human Groups
Pragmaxxing
Why Don't Jews Own Guns?
Who's Killing More Babies, Us or Catholics (When Does Life Begin)
You Probably are Not Sentient
Based Camp: Can Determinists Believe in Free Will?
Based Camp: How Religions Rank Competence
Work Life Balance is a Joke
Not Everyone's Life Matters (Our Religion & the Elect)
What's Behind the Fabric of Reality?
Avoiding Hippy Nonsense When Searching for Theological Truth (The Tesseract Model of God)
Why Have Secular Religions Failed to Motivate Fertility?
Our (Insane) Religious Beliefs (Vetting Prophets)
Why People Leave Their Religion & How We Will (Try To) Guard Against It
What Religion Would AI Create?
The Catholic Fertility Crisis: Do They Only Have Two Generations Left?!
Have You Had These Ideas Too?
If you read about Techno-Puritanism and think to yourself, "I have had these same ideas!" then welcome to the conversation. While you can find us on the Based Camp discord you can also sign up here to be notified for larger events.