Peter Thiel is Bankrupt! (Theologically)

Dan McClellan You have a lot of folks who are like, "Ah, the Jesus fish is just a sideways vulva with a tail."

Dan Beecher With a tail.

Dan McClellan Sure. With a tail, yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so this is all about worship of the divine feminine and that holy vulva.

Dan Beecher With her tail.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan You're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Dan Beecher We're going after a billionaire tonight. I'm stoked.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Nice. Nothing bad can happen to you if you take down a billionaire on your show, right?

Dan McClellan Does this- Not in this economy, no. With a man in the White House? No, don't think so.

Dan Beecher So, okay, the first thing we're doing, we're going to start off with a twisted scripture, and we're going to go after Peter Thiel.

Dan McClellan Ooh.

Dan Beecher And that's pretty exciting. That's going to be a lot of fun. I don't think he's going to use his kingmaker status on us anytime soon.

Dan McClellan And then- Well, I don't think that was in the cards to begin with, but yes.

Dan Beecher What- How dare you? How dare you? I think I had a shot. I think I had a...

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher And then we're going to do a taking issue about a little bit of symbolism, a little bit of a star.

Dan McClellan The Magen David, yes. The Star of David, and a rather ridiculous conspiracy theory that I've been seeing popping up around social media of late.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan So, yes.

Dan Beecher All right. So let's just dive in with some twisted scripture. And as we said, this isn't one scripture that's being twisted.

Dan McClellan I feel like- It's basically all scripture is being twisted.

Dan Beecher Oh, yes.

Dan McClellan But there are a couple that have been called out- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher specifically.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Peter Thiel, if you don't know, is a billionaire. He's one of the co-founders of PayPal. There's a very, very dorky picture of him and a pre-all of the surgeries Elon Musk floating around that you probably should look up because, woof- ... how did we give those two so much power?

Dan McClellan But- Mm ...

Dan Beecher they have a lot of it. And Thiel has become a very prominent voice in Christian circles. And he's started an organization called Acts 17, which Acts, in this it's an acronym, or a backronym is what they call it for- Mm ... because he took the thing and then went backwards with it. Oh, I have it here somewhere.

Dan McClellan I don't know what it is.

Dan Beecher It stands for Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society. And I went and read the entire chapter of Acts 17 to see what they're on about, or if it's- Yeah ... if it illuminates sort of what their mission is really. Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan I don't know. Do- Not a lot there?

Dan Beecher No. It's basically Paul bouncing around from city to city. He starts out in Thessalonica.

Dan McClellan Yeah, the uproar at Thessalonica. I've been to Thessaloniki.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Lovely area, lovely port- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher city. It's one of the bigger cities of Greece now, isn't it?

Dan McClellan It is.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And they've got the ruins. They've got some of that going on, too.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan I was surprised to see around the corner from my hotel a TGI Fridays- Sure ... when I visited there. Went in- ... there was a European League basketball game on TV.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And yeah, it was a surreal experience.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan But yeah, lovely area. Love Thessaloniki, love Greece. But yeah, there's the uproar, Paul and Silas passing through. They're going to Berea.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Ooh, man. And then Paul gets to Athens.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And there's all the what have you- All the what have you ...

Dan Beecher Berea and then...

Dan McClellan Yeah. That's where he's quoting some Greek poets, "Since we are God's offspring," all that kind of stuff.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah, it doesn't seem to be a mission statement- No ... is I think what you were wondering.

Dan Beecher It does point at a little bit of end times stuff, and we're going to get to Peter Thiel and his eschatology. But it doesn't really... It has some of that, "Gods aren't made of gold or- Yeah ... silver or stone" stuff. And it's got some stuff that feels like worry, repent- Yeah ... type stuff.

Dan McClellan But- Well, here are a couple of passages. I'll read these real quick, and let me know if... If we're looking at Thiel and what he's doing through the lens of Acts 17, what is this saying?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan I'm in verse 18, "Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, 'What does this pretentious babbler want to say?'" "Others said, 'He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign deities.' This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus." That's Mars Hill.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan That's the stone outcropping that is just west of ... the Acropolis Okay and asked him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means." So I wonder if the idea is that they're the proclaimers of this new philosophy that everybody wants to know about.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's basically this- We're at a loss here ...

Dan Beecher he's like, "Hey, let me tell you about Jesus."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And that's kind of it.

Dan McClellan But we do have an actual manifesto on the website for the Acts 17 Collective.

Dan Beecher Yes, that's true.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and I'll just read the beginning of this just so we can see how this casts any illumination on what this chapter has to do with anything at all. "A manifesto for the curious, the creators, and the culture shapers. As humans, we are all made to worship, and we'll worship something if we don't worship God."

Dan Beecher Not true, but- I hate that so much. I hear that- Yeah.

Dan McClellan "Everybody worships something."

Dan Beecher No As an atheist out in the world, I won't say prominent, but as one that is- ... a public atheist- Public atheist.

Dan McClellan Okay ...

Dan Beecher I get that all the time.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "Well, what do you worship then?"

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Well, nothing? Am I allowed to just- Yeah. I don't think I worship anything.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I'm just out here living a life. I don't know what you're talking about.

Dan McClellan And if you've decided you want everyone to be worshiping something, and then you just redefine worship so that- Right ... it becomes something that everyone does- Right ... you're kind of giving away the store there.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So he continues, "What are you putting your faith in? What are you worshiping? I don't know about y'all, but we put our faith in blast hard cheese." That is a deep cut. Not too deep a cut. That's one of the most popular Mystery Science Theater 3000 compilations out there. "In a world where we're always building startups, audiences, reputations, it's easy to forget to ask what we're building toward. Fame, power, money, success, these things promise fulfillment, but often leave us wanting more. We believe there's something deeper worth exploring. Not just for your work, but for your soul. Not just for Sundays, but for your every day. Not just to fill you, but for you to find wholeness."

Dan Beecher Great.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher All of that is fine and platitudalistic.

Dan McClellan Platitudinous.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan To the max.

Dan Beecher Platitudy. It's a platypus, is what it is.

Dan McClellan Perry the Platypus?

Dan Beecher But the thing about it is that underneath that, and one of the things that they're really going after is trying to capture people in Silicon Valley- Yes ... which is notoriously, or at least has a reputation for being a little hostile to faith.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But they seem to be making good ground, and sort of leading the charge, one of the banner bearers or perhaps the prophet of this movement is Peter Thiel. So let's talk a bit about him and sort of what he has been saying because he can be very tight-lipped. He plays his cards pretty close to the chest, but he's starting- Ah ... to sort of come out of his shell. This is the guy, by the way, that we have to thank for J.D.

Dan McClellan Vance.

Dan Beecher He backed J.D. Vance when- Yeah ... for no good reason. What is Vance doing that this guy's, other than...

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher There are pieces that are missing. Let's just put it that way.

Dan McClellan So I'm just perusing his Wikipedia entry- Mm ... which is voluminous. I just read this, just stopped on a sentence. "Thiel confirmed that he had funded Hulk Hogan."

Dan Beecher What does that mean?

Dan McClellan Okay. "Gawker had previously outed Thiel as gay, and then when the Bollea v. Gawker lawsuit ended up with Gawker losing the case, Thiel confirmed that he had funded Hulk Hogan." So it's talking about all his- Oh, right ... his right-wing and conservative libertarian investments.

Dan Beecher Right. Yeah, this is one of those guys who talks about free speech all the time, but then as is this case here, to get revenge on a publication that outed him as gay, he funded a lawsuit that Hulk Hogan could not himself have come close to affording- ... and just- Yeah ... beat the smack out of this group.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher All right. Let's get to Thiel's apocalypse.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Because he has started to talk about, and here's the thing, I don't doubt the sincerity of his belief.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We're not in the business at the Data Over Dogma podcast of casting judgment on the sincerity of anybody's religious beliefs.

Dan Beecher No, that is true. So what he has been talking about is he's been talking about the Antichrist- Yes ... or an Antichrist, an entity that is Antichrist, and he's not particularly clear on what or who that might be.

Dan McClellan He's doing a four-part lecture series on the Antichrist, and from what I have heard, nobody is quite sure what he's talking about yet.

Dan Beecher Yes. Yeah, it seems like it might be the one world government might be the Antichrist- Yeah ... or whatever. He definitely believes that a one world government is a bad thing, and it's coming.

Dan McClellan And I first heard about this, I was telling you before we hit record, I started getting a flood of requests to respond to this interview that he did when I was in Italy with my family and was like, "I can't do this right now, man. I don't know what this dude is talking about, but I can't do this." And it was an interview where he's talking about transhumanism and- Yeah ... and then goes into Antichrist stuff, and he appealed to a scripture. This is what stuck out for me. He said that the Antichrist's slogan will be peace and safety.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And I was like, "That is nowhere in the Bible, but I need to stop and look this up, and what on earth is he talking about?" And he's talking about 1 Thessalonians 5, I think 5:3. And to begin, the word Antichrist occurs, I think, four total times in all of the Bible, four or five total times in all of the Bible, all of them in 1 John or 2 John.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan And they are used to describe anyone who is opposed to Christ.

Dan Beecher To Jesus, yeah.

Dan McClellan It is mainly an adjective. That person is Antichrist or- Right ... anti-Christian. There's one use that could suggest that it is referring to a specific individual- Okay ... or certain individuals. However, that use suggests that they're already there. They have arrived- Right ... when the text was written that is now in the New Testament. So it's not something that is off in the future, but what people have done, and because of the presupposition of univocality, they're like, "Well, this must be talked about elsewhere. Let's go into Revelation. Let's look for the big baddie, and we're going to say that's the Antichrist."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "Let's go into Paul. Let's look at the man of lawlessness. We're going to say that's the Antichrist." And so you basically cobble together from the scattered Lego pieces from these different, I don't know what they call them, engineers, different sets, and you're going to try to cobble together this picture of what this entity is going to be. And so he appeals to 1 Thessalonians 5:3, and it's talking about, "Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say, 'There is peace and security,' then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So it seems that he is interpreting this prophecy about the second coming that says it will happen when they say there is peace and security, which basically the rhetorical point there is when they least expect it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That's when the Son of Man's going to be like, "Boo, got you."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That's when all this is going to go down. And now we've taken that and tergiversated it, and you've heard me use a lot of $2 words on this show. This is a $15 word, tergiversate.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I was going to be very impressed if that's an actual word.

Dan McClellan It is an actual word, and the only reason I know this word and use this word is because I learned it on my mission in Spanish.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And came back, and I was like, "There's this word. Does it exist in English?" And I looked it up, and I was like, "Sweet, it exists in English. I'm using it." But anyway, it basically means to twist something into something else to serve your own purposes.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan To misrepresent. Because in no sense whatsoever is this saying the slogan of the Antichrist- Right ... is peace and security. But it sounds like he's trying to say, "Hey, anybody who's telling you we're going to fix the world's problems, or at least we're going to try to fix the world's problems, we're going to come together and find a solution to all these social ills," he's wagging his finger saying that's the Antichrist.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Or at least that's some kind of precursor or catalyst for the Antichrist. In other words, he's saying, "Don't do that. Don't try to fix the world's problems. Don't try to unify this whole..." You mentioned the one world government.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It sounds like one of those idiotic conspiracy theories. The globalists are- Right.

Dan Beecher Yeah ...

Dan McClellan are coming. But that was the only scripture I heard in the little bit of that interview that people kept tagging me in.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I was like, "Well, this is already way off the rails."

Dan Beecher Yeah. So- And it gets- ...

Dan McClellan and it's only got worse ...

Dan Beecher it gets more off the rails the further he goes. And the thing that gets really weird and that I have, believe me, I've tried to parse this out. I believe that this is just a cognitive dissonance that lives in his brain. I believe that he has just made peace with something that directly contradicts himself, which is that he talks about how this one world government is coming. They're talking about peace and safety, so we should be worried about that, and he's worried about state control and regulation and all this stuff. He's worried about a totalitarian regime. But yet, one of the main points that he makes with these as his data points is we should not regulate AI, biotech. Technology should not be regulated because it's what's going to save us.

Dan McClellan Yeah. What I do shouldn't be regulated.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's only what everybody else does- And it becomes- ... that should be regulated.

Dan Beecher It becomes clear why his theology is like this when you look at his investment portfolio, which includes just lists of defense contracting. He's the founder of Palantir, which is a- ... battlefield intel data Mm-hmm aggregator sort of thing. But he's also heavily invested in a company called Anduril Industries, which is drones and AI border defense towers that will just- So it's Skynet ...

Dan McClellan Skynet. He's starting Skynet.

Dan Beecher He is Skynet.

Dan McClellan He's starting it.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's so crazy. He's invested in a bunch of different startups for cybersecurity and various- Yeah.

Dan McClellan Like- Cyberdyne Systems is where it's going to go next, and then it'll go to Skynet.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And all of these are tools that he will sell to governments- Yes ... that are already funded by governments. So how is this going to prevent the thing that he's scared of, the thing that he is talking about? It's literally what is going to obviously bring about the apocalypse that he's worried about.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We're on the sci-fi thing. You spend so much time worrying about if you could, you didn't bother to think about if you should.

Dan Beecher That's right. To- He is going to make dinosaurs ...

Dan McClellan to badly quote Goldblum.

Dan Beecher Yes. He's going to make dinosaurs.

Dan McClellan I just- Well, I don't know where his transhumanism is going to take him.

Dan Beecher Yeah, right?

Dan McClellan Because that's certainly not off the table.

Dan Beecher Right. He's going to try and get his own consciousness implanted into a T-Rex or something. It's just such a weird theology. The other biblical reference that I've seen him make that I think is also telling about him- Uh-huh ... and who he is, and I think the story that we're getting to is the fact that, like everybody, he hasn't taken the Bible and then built the theology that he sees the Bible telling him to build. Uh-huh. He has taken his life- Uh-huh ... and then taken scriptures and built a theology around what he likes and what's important to him- Yeah ... and what serves his interests, and then proclaimed that as the theology, as what's- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan true.

Dan Beecher So the thing that I was getting to is he was talking about the Ten Commandments.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah.

Dan Beecher And he talked about how the most important ones are the first one and the last one, and the first one is you have to believe in God, and the last one is don't covet.

Dan McClellan And- ...

Dan Beecher immediately I thought, a billionaire telling me not to covet- Yeah.

Dan McClellan We're just going to look in the law ...

Dan Beecher rings a little hollow.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It just rings a bit like, "Just stop wanting all my stuff."

Dan McClellan Yeah. It doesn't say anything about greed.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's just about wanting other people's stuff.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Right. If you want more of your own stuff- ... and to multiply your own stuff, that's fine.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And if it requires taking it from others, as long as you're doing it your way.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think that's such an interesting attempt to just take the law and just say, "Well, we just want the bookends. We don't need the books." But it does suggest, and this is how religion works, that he's just being guided by his intuitions, which are all about self-preservation- Yeah ... and about increasing one's own standing- Yeah ... and one's own access to power and resources. So he's basically like, "Ooh, this is a..." And intuitively, probably not consciously, hopefully not consciously, but intuitively his subconscious is going, "This is a nice little instrument for us to play with, for us to advance our own interests and structure power and values." And I think it's odd, I'm looking at the manifesto for the Act 17 Collective- Mm-hmm ... and there's a section that says What We Offer. It says, "We host speaker events where real conversations happen, where tech founders, producers, designers, and creatives talk candidly about how faith and work collide, where Jesus is at the center, not as an obligation, but as an invitation."

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan And I am made of questions.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan How does this- I just like- It's kind of like I'm thinking of, what was the comedy show? Was it called Silicon Valley?

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan I'm thinking of that, but they're sprinkling in some Jesus.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Let's just give this just a Jesus-y vibe, but everything else stays the same.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Their whole thing is how do we invite tech bros into Christianity but without making them question the morality of any of the things that they're doing?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Because obviously you're going to lose them- Yeah ... if you make them question the moral, because there are serious ethical and moral questions to 90% of what Silicon Valley is producing right now.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And no one wants to ask those questions. The reason that Thiel is fighting against any kind of regulation is because he doesn't want any of these ethical and moral questions to get in the way of him just- Making gobs of money.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Palantir sounds like an apocalyptic- That is Skynet. It's like we're going to create this thing that just collects all the data on everybody.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it's like the moral problems with that, the ethical issues with that. But if you're just like, "Hey, all that matters is you believe and you don't come after my stuff."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan If that's your theology, then the ethical dilemmas just disappear like- Right ... a fart in the wind. We don't care about anything.

Dan Beecher And if the Satan-led bad guys are coming, you got to have some drones to kill them. You know what I mean? Just get some AI drones. Arming AI is what's happening right now.

Dan McClellan It is.

Dan Beecher Is what's next, and oh, Daddy, that is some- Yeah. That is some bad ideas.

Dan McClellan You and I both know how bad AI is at the most basic of commands.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And we had the episode that we did with April Ogeoi asking about her book, "Star Spangled Jesus."

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan So we plugged that into ChatGPT over and over and over and over again, and it could not understand that this book was written by a woman- Yeah ... one, and kept hallucinating all these different authors.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So Thiel's doing these, I think it's a four-part Antichrist lectures- Yeah ... out in San Francisco, and I have somebody on the inside, somebody who- Oh, yeah ... signed up for them. And after the first one, we talked, and they were like, "Yeah, I don't know what it was about." It was unclear what the thesis statement was. But they told me that there was only one scripture that was even mentioned in the whole first lecture. He evidently brought up Daniel 12:4.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Which says, and this is our trustee NRSVUE, "But you, Daniel, keep the words secret and the book sealed until the time of the end. Many shall be running back and forth, and evil shall increase." Now, that's not what he read in the thing.

Dan Beecher That's the NRSVUE.

Dan McClellan Okay. What he read in the thing was the King James version, and I just want to read the end of it. "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." So this is what Thiel evidently quoted in some part of this first lecture. And the idea seemed to be that this is some kind of prophecy about the end times.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan And he seemed to be appealing to this scripture to suggest that in the end times, knowledge is going to increase. And obviously, as someone who is interested in AI and transhumanism and in all this kind of stuff, he wants to suggest that he's a part of contributing to knowledge increasing, and that this is maybe a sign- Yeah ... that the end times are upon us. But when my friend told me that that was the scripture, the only thing from the Bible that Thiel mentioned, I went and looked it up because I remember thinking, it strikes me that there's something weird about this verse.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And when I read it from the NRSVUE, it ended with "And evil shall increase."

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan And that's because the King James version says, "Knowledge shall be increased." And the Hebrew there, if we look in the Masoretic Text, the traditional authoritative manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, the last word is "hadat," which would mean the knowledge.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan However, this word in the Aramaic square script is sometimes indistinguishable from the word "hara," which would be the evil.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan And when we look at the ancient Greek translation of this passage, that's exactly what it says. And unrighteousness or evil wickedness will increase.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so I find it odd that, well, one, obviously Thiel is not aware that the King James version might not be the best translation of this.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But is also unaware that the prophecy to which he is appealing might say the exact opposite- Right ... of what he is leveraging it to say- Yeah ... regarding what's going on today. But also might be a little prophetic in and of itself, given what we've talked about regarding the ethical, the moral- Right ... quandaries, risks, problems, a quagmire of things like unrestricted AI and Palantir and getting all this information under the internet.

Dan Beecher Yeah, and gathering intel on all of us and all of this sort of thing.

Dan McClellan And making it available to the highest bidder or to- Yeah ... somebody like Donald Trump, who can't even read the word acetaminophen- Right ...

Dan Beecher without just- He got there eventually.

Dan McClellan But he had to comment on what a bizarre word this was.

Dan Beecher Yeah. He's the kind of person where if he said, "It's a banana, what can it cost?

Dan McClellan $10?"

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan I would not bat an eye.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan That wouldn't surprise me at all, that he couldn't read acetaminophen. But if he has access to this, holy cow.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That is dangerous. That is phenomenally dangerous.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's weird that Thiel can't see that all the... Look, everything that I read about apocalyptic bad guys in the Bible, and like you point out- The Bible doesn't connect Antichrist and the beast and the this and the that. These are all different entities or different stories or whatever.

Dan McClellan Different characters and different people's narratives.

Dan Beecher Right. But let's just say for the sake of argument that they're the same or whatever.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher How Thiel doesn't see that it's him, that he's on the bad guy side of this thing- Yeah ... I mean, look, we're all the heroes of our own story, so that's just how that's going to work. But if you're going to invoke the Bible, if you're going to say that these decisions, these ideas are based on your love of your Christian faith, and if your manifesto of your organization is going to talk about centering Jesus, then don't we have to talk about no man can serve two masters, the parable of the rich fool- Yeah ... the rich young ruler- Yeah ... camel through the eye of a needle. This man has the kind of wealth that no one could've imagined- Yeah ... in any other time in history.

Dan McClellan It ought to be the Acts 4 collective.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan What's Acts 4? Or the Acts 4 co-op. In Acts 4, it said, "All who believed in Jesus came together. They were united. There was no poor among them-" Oh, right ... because whatever they had, they sold- Right ... so that they could distribute the money, each according to their need.

Dan Beecher Right. So, if you're talking about the- Yeah, if you're going to call yourself a collective, for crying out loud, what are you doing?

Dan McClellan Yeah. Be a collective. Everybody want to be a collective until it's time to be a collective.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then it's like, "No, but we mean authoritarianism is where we're coming from."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "We want to rule the world with an iron fist."

Dan Beecher Right. And we think giving away all of our stuff is a bummer.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher No- So- ...

Dan McClellan we don't want to do that.

Dan Beecher If there's anything that Jesus had to say about money, over and over and over, repeated in all of the gospels, everywhere you look, Matthew 19, Mark 10, Luke 18- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan all of these- Luke 12 ...

Dan Beecher are just so many scriptures where Jesus, in the red letter scriptures says, the only way to get into heaven is for you to sell your stuff and give it away to the poor.

Dan McClellan Yeah. This is something that Luke, who is the author... Well, whoever was the author of Luke is most likely the author of Acts.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Repeatedly. You have the story of the rich young ruler- Right ... where Jesus says, "You still got one thing left to do. Sell all that you have, give the money to the poor." And he goes away upset because he was very wealthy.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then Jesus says, "Yeah, look how hard it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven." And people are like, "Ah, that's a one-off. That was just personal counsel between Jesus and this kid."

Dan Beecher He looked at that one guy and he was like- Yeah ... "I don't like the cut of his jib."

Dan McClellan But then we talked about Luke chapter 12- Yeah ... where the guy says, "Tell my brother to divvy up the inheritance to me." And Jesus concludes his parable of the rich fool by saying, "Sell your possessions."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan To his disciples, his followers, everybody there- Yeah ... he's like, "Sell all your possessions, give the money to the poor, and then we have-" Don't build that bigger barn.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Don't you do it.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Because your life will be required of you, sucker- Yeah ... or fool. And then the same author is the one who talks about how in Acts they all lived communally.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Maybe not communism, but communalism at the very least- Right ... selling everything that they had, and we have the poor couple that was like, "Eh, we're not going to sell everything. We're not going to give all our money and-" We're not going to sell everything.

Dan Beecher I'm going to keep a little bit.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then Peter was the one who got to say, "Your life is required of you."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And God, in whatever way befitted the circumstance, God decided to off them.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And Peter, it was such a cold line when Peter was like, "The feet of the people who've carried off your husband's corpse are at the door for you."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That is cold-blooded.

Dan Beecher Hey, they're back.

Dan McClellan Yeah, they're back, and guess what?

Dan Beecher You're going to die. It's your time.

Dan McClellan Yeah, that's pretty cold-blooded.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But the message is pretty consistent. Yeah, this obscene wealth is not a good thing.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan And I think Thiel is a good illustration of the rationalizing and the cognitive dissonance and the inestimable harm that can befall the world because of that kind of wealth being concentrated in the hands of one individual- Yeah ... or one collective, so-called.

Dan Beecher Oh, gosh.

Dan McClellan Oh, man.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, I think we've pounded on poor Peter for long enough.

Dan McClellan Rhetorically speaking.

Dan Beecher Rhetorically speaking.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher I don't know what I'd do if I were actually in his presence. Probably just sell out completely and let him- Pete. I would come back on this show in a heartbeat and just recant- I've got an opportunity for you, Peter ... recant everything that I've said for the right price. Call me, Peter Thiel. I know you can get my number.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Let's move on then to Taking Issue. And what we're taking issue with is a star.

Dan McClellan So this is an idiotic and an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that I've seen, I don't know how many times on social media, and I've made a handful of videos over the years about this, but there are some folks out there who like to suggest that the Star of David-- Well, first off, the Star of David is not in the Bible.

Dan Beecher Right. This is the six-pointed star that is- Yes ... sort of the de facto symbol of Judaism and of the State of Israel in general.

Dan McClellan On the Israeli flag.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan An upward pointed triangle over a downward pointed triangle, or under- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher creating a six-pointed star. Or they could be pointed sort of diagonally, too.

Dan McClellan Diagonally?

Dan Beecher Yeah. These are equilateral triangles. They point in three directions.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So just have fun with that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And so- Take that for what it's worth.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's a hexagram.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, we have hexagrams and pentagrams and all manner of gram- Mm-hmm ...

Dan Beecher that are- Your various grams.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That are used as geographic. Geographic, oh my gosh. What's the word?

Dan Beecher Geometric.

Dan McClellan Geometric designs that are used in architecture and iconography and stuff like that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We can find this in India going back to 1000 BCE.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Like all over the world. The hexagram is just, people make hexagrams.

Dan Beecher Okay?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's a pretty simple but fun-to-look-at image.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And we see it on, there's a hexagram on the cover, the front of the Leningrad Codex- Mm ... which is the Masoretic Text, the oldest complete edition of the Hebrew Bible, dates to about 1008 CE. There's a hexagram on the cover of that.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan If you go visit Capernaum, and now's don't go.

Dan Beecher It's the wrong time.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Not time to be over there for touristy purposes. In Capernaum, they have some of the old stone lintels from the, not the thing you make soup with, but the- ... architectural feature.

Dan Beecher Yes. The over-the-door- Yeah ... bit of stone or whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And they have these from a synagogue that's from the third or fourth century CE from Capernaum.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And they have, you can see a hexagram carved into that, and then a pentagram right next to it.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So anyway, because it really didn't become associated formally with Judaism until the 19th century.

Dan Beecher Oh, really?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan You see it being used starting in the 14th century as something that's not just a fun design, but something that is symbolic of Judaism.

Dan Beecher It's the 19th- That they're identifying with themselves in some way.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan 19th century is when it becomes associated more saliently with Zionism. But there's a theory that it was borrowed from an occult symbol.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan An occult symbol that's mentioned in the Bible.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Dun, dun, dun.

Dan Beecher That's exciting.

Dan McClellan Yes. They say it is the star of Remphan.

Dan Beecher Now- Which I went to a Ren fair. Wait, no?

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan What is- You went to Burning Man.

Dan Beecher That's true.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher I'm pretty sure they think that that's Remphan. I'm pretty sure. They would definitely associate it, yeah.

Dan McClellan Don't put any stars up at Burning Man- ... because they're going to get you.

Dan Beecher They'll only tell you you're worshiping Remphan. So what is Remphan? What is that? What is a Remphan?

Dan McClellan We don't know for sure, but it is probably some kind of deity associated with Saturn.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Now, Remphan occurs only once in the New Testament. It's in Acts chapter 7 verse 43, and this is where Stephen, he's about to be martyred, but he is lecturing the folks on the history. Gives a real brief history of Israel and Judaism, and quotes a passage from Amos. Amos 5:26, and we'll get to Amos, but in Acts 7:43, Stephen says, "No, you took along the tent of Moloch and the star of your god Remphan-" "... the images that you made to worship."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So Stephen is upset about this, but he's quoting a Greek translation of Amos 5:26.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Now, when we go back into Amos 5:26, here's what it says in the Hebrew: "You shall take up Sikkuth your king, and Kiwan your star god, your images which you made for yourself."

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan A little different. Doesn't sound quite the same.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We got a few things going on here. Sikkuth is being misunderstood as having something to do with the Greek word skene, which is like a tent.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So it is being misunderstood as a reference to a tent. So in Acts, it says, "You took along the tent of Moloch." In the Hebrew we have Sikkuth, your king, and the word melekh, king, is being misunderstood by the Greek translators as Moloch.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Which a lot of people think is this god of child sacrifice.

Dan Beecher Oh my God, you hear that all the time.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher In some evangelical TikTok, somebody will be like- Yes ... "They're worshipers of Moloch."

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Again, as an atheist, I'm a Moloch worshiper somehow.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Cats and dogs living together.

Dan Beecher Mass hysteria.

Dan McClellan Yes. But there was never any deity named Moloch that was worshiped in the ancient world. We've done I think we've done an episode on this. Haven't we done an episode on this?

Dan Beecher We've mentioned it.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher I don't know if we've done a whole episode of it.

Dan McClellan All right. Well, in short, this is just a word that referred to a specific type of sacrifice, and the Greek translators didn't know that word.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so they thought it was the name of some deity.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, the deity Moloch never existed. Not in the sense that there were other deities running around, but this one was a fake one.

Dan Beecher Right. But in the sense that nobody ever worshipped- I was going to say, from my perspective, none of the deities existed. But I get what you're saying.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And then we have Kaiwan or Chiun in the Hebrew, is probably a Hebrew transliteration of an Akkadian deity named Kaiwan- Okay ... which is probably a deity associated with Saturn. Your image is yada, yada, yada. But in short, this name Kaiwan has been replaced with this other name Remphan, which is probably either an Egyptian or a Greco-Roman deity, minor deity, JV deity, who probably had something to do with the planet Saturn.

Dan Beecher But- Okay ...

Dan McClellan because it mentions a star, and because the Star of David is a manner of star- It is...

Dan Beecher So, sure ...

Dan McClellan the conspiracy theorists just go, and here I'm thinking of the court scene from "My Cousin Vinny."

Dan Beecher Identical.

Dan McClellan They're just arbitrarily- Right ... imagining, well, this must be the same star.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because how many stars you got out there? Not as that old fool said, billions and billions- Right ... and billions. No, there's only one. So, this star of Remphan has to be the Star of David. So, there's a conspiracy theory out there that... And because we've also got the mistranslation Moloch, Remphan and Moloch- Yeah ... also must be identical.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, obviously the worship of Remphan must also involve child sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. All of the goodies.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, it's an antisemitic conspiracy theory that suggests basically that Jewish folks in the 19th century, and you know precisely the family that they think started it all, the Rothschilds.

Dan Beecher Sure, yeah.

Dan McClellan That they consciously, intentionally, were like, "Let's take this occult star- Hmm ... that commemorates our worship of Remphan, and let's make that the official symbol of Zionism and of Judaism." And then it gets even worse because we have a hexagram and a pentagram that are found in some literature from the 19th century.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan There was a book called "The History and Practice of Magic" by a French author, who went by a pseudonym, Paul Christian.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And he's talking basically about all this symbolism that he's found in these grimoires and all this kind of stuff.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And he draws a picture of a medallion that on one side it has a hexagram with a bull's head in the center of it, and then on the other side it has a pentagram. And it's called the Talisman of Saturn.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And he says, "It is a preservative against danger of death through apoplexy, cancer, decaying of the bones, consumption, dropsy, paralysis, pthisis," P-H-T-H-I-S-I-S, "pthisis- ... against the danger of being buried alive while in a state of coma."

Dan Beecher Ah.

Dan McClellan The universal anxiety.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "Against the danger of violent death through secret plotting, poison, or ambush. This talisman preserves women from the mortal perils which accompany or sometimes follow childbirth. If in time of war, the leader of an army hides the talisman of Saturn in a place which is in danger of falling into the enemy's hands, that enemy will be unable to cross the limits set up by the presence of the talisman, and will then retreat, either discouraged or overcome by a resolute counterattack."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, the conspiracy theorists will suggest that this talisman that is invented in the 1850s by Paul Christian, goes all the way back to the ancient world.

Dan Beecher Yes, of course it does.

Dan McClellan And so all Jewish uses of this symbol are derivative of its use as a symbol of Saturn and the gods Remphan and Moloch.

Dan Beecher It's always been very funny to me, to coin a phrase, in the symbology. In the look when- I'm a symbologist. When one looks at symbols. When you take something as simple as a six-pointed star or a five-pointed star, if you want to talk about Satanism or whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Throughout the centuries, throughout the millennia, lots of people are going to have used a very simple symbol like that for various different reasons.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Right. And the fact that if, for instance, a group of people who are naughty start using a six-pointed star as their symbol too, that's not a reflection on another group of people that are just using it for their symbol. You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Yeah. They don't have inherent meaning.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan Just like all words.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan They mean what people use them to mean, and that's one of the foundations of conspiracy theories.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Is this symbol that we think means one thing way over here, must mean that same thing way over there.

Dan Beecher Right. The fact that Hitler started using a swastika doesn't affect what it meant for centuries before to the Hindu people- Yes ... who used a swastika.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher It doesn't mean that they were, for those many centuries, anti-Semitic and- Yes ... and interested in the promotion of the Aryan race or something.