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I've included sections for whatever takes your fancy. Sorry it's long, but it's cool. With the rising popularity of Jordan Peterson and his attempt to translate the Bible outside of metaphor and into the realm of psychology and philosophy and whatnot, I thought I'd show you a bit of what I know. Should be a good read. I'll unpack just TWO WORDS for you: WHY DOES THE BIBLE COMMAND US TO 'FEAR GOD'? Because God represents truth. Period. Whether you believe in God or not, look at it that way. If God is what's true, he's what's real (truth irrespective of our limited understanding). That doesn't mean he's everything good and bad or nice or frightening. It only means that he's everything that is. Your interpretation of what is doesn't matter. He's only everything that has happened to you and will happen to you. There isn't any moral content there though, since it's not a matter of what ought to happen or shouldn't happen. It's what did and what does. So do you fear the truth? Yes, you do. Why? Because you're inherently self-righteous. There is some belief you have that creates a foundation for yourself that isn't true. In fact, all beliefs are like that. Everything you believe about yourself is a lie in some fashion. You don't quite understand what you are or who you are. You have labels for things, but delve into your understanding of those labels and you'll find some gap in your understanding. So you fear God in that he threatens to reveal the untruth, the lies you have about yourself or the biases you have or whatever. But at the same time, the truth is not a malevolent threat. It merely exists. It's just an 'is' and you're afraid of it. So then, if the truth isn't malevolent, how is it benevolent? Because it's knowing the truth that best assists you in literally everything. No matter how awful reality has become, it's understanding that reality that best equips you for it. So yeah, what's real can be awful and devastating and all sorts of bad, but it's only understanding it that will help you overcome it. Not knowing why it's happening will lead to ruin. Deceiving yourself into believing it's something other than it is will lead to ruin. So indeed, you have a fearful relationship to the truth. But you also have an adoring one, a loving one, a thankful one, an honorable one and a respectful one. Even regarding the worst thing that happens to you, it's only the truth that will allow you to overcome it. The truth of the origin of your depression. The truth of of WMDs in Iraq. The truth of which way to escape a burning building. It. Does. Not. Matter. The truth is always honest with us by definition. It's our relationship to truth that creates all these different feelings towards it. The reason 'fear' was chosen as the ultimate phrasing for this relationship is because it allows for all the others, but also puts us in our place with regard to truth. We have to submit to it. We're nothing in comparison to it. We owe it our survival. We owe it everything. It's not terrifying in the sense that it will harm us. It's terrifying in the scope of it's power. It's the sort of terror or awe that's inspired by a power beyond comprehension. And yes, we naturally fear that. Something beyond comprehension MEANS we can't ever understand it and thus the truth CANNOT prevail us - totally. So the truth - the ULTIMATE TRUTH i.e. God, is inherently terrifying to us. But he's no threat. Like the universe or reality itself, contemplated in all it's majesty - if we could, would drive us insane. Yet, comprehending it is exactly what we must do to survive. The reason Peterson talks of self-knowledge and death as the same thing, is because he's talking about shedding the ego such that we're able to better understand reality without bias. Christians phrase this as 'receiving God'. So as I see it, it's 'receiving truth'. Of course, there is no better way to receive the truth then when you eliminate your biases, your self-righteousness. But since the self is based on these biases, you have to 'die' in order to better receive truth. You have to give up the old biases, the old self-righteousness, and be REBORN as someone more humble. Someone less self-righteous and so more willing to understand truth. Hence the DEATH AND REBIRTH of Jesus as man's salvation. This is impossible to do since we've all some self-righteousness by design. Descartes proved that. (Cogito ergo sum). So instead, this 'new life' is one of introspection and vigilance against the self - the ego. So now whenever you're keen to believe something or impose something as true, essentially to assume or presume something, you stop yourself. Yes, you're always going to have the tendency to assume things and you're always going to have old assumptions you didn't purge. But so long as you remain vigilant you can take on less new assumptions and remove more old assumptions and so move closer to truth. And that ladies and gentlemen, is the EXACT same relationship we have toward truth when engaging the scientific method. We're agnostic about everything 'real' and the entire exercise is trying to prove ourselves wrong. It's trying to prove where we've got the model wrong - which is true by definition, rather than trying to prove ourselves right. The current model is always wrong. It's not 'incomplete' until you find where it was wrong. Where Newtonian Physics didn't work anymore or whatever. Then you hopefully fill in that gap (General Relativity in this case), and then you proceed to find where relativity is wrong and then determine the model to be incomplete once more. See, any belief you have is wrong. It's incomplete - always. You have to challenge that belief to discern so in the first place, and then take on a more true perspective should you discern how it was WRONG. Then you do it again and again. It's the death and rebirth cycle of Jesus. Over and over and yes, like the bible says, it moves you closer to God i.e. truth. And people still don't understand why science erupted from Christian Europe. Good Lord. And remember, that's TWO WORDS. HOW TO READ THE BIBLE AS AN ATHEIST: If you want to do this yourself: God is reality. Jesus is self (self-righteousness i.e. YOUR truth). Holy Spirit is the process of attribution (philosophical individuation). This probably doesn't make sense so: God is Conclusion. (Objective) - Rock Jesus is Hypothesis. (Subjective) - Paper Holy Spirit is Experimentation. (Predictive) - Scissors You can actually read the bible under this pretense. Read it as though the Holy Trinity represents the steps in the scientific method or the 3 states of knowledge you may possess. No matter what you pick, their relationship takes on a 'rock-paper-scissors' dynamic. Rock is what's real. Paper is what's believed about what's real. Scissors is the means of reconciling that belief with reality. Maybe even 'Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis', if you'd like. So long as the relationships the triad have to each other are the same, it's actually the same thing you're thinking about and referencing: the operation of thought itself. Blows your mind. 'Rock' is immutable and permanent (truth), but we're ignorant of it. (God, The Objective) 'Paper' is mutable and constantly being replaced (belief), but it is believed due to lack of alternatives. (Jesus, The Subjective) 'Scissors' is always a methodology (action), but it determines more of 'Rock' and so alters 'Paper'. (Holy Spirit, The Predictive) Finally, the whole damn thing follows the model of 'cause-effect-outcome' or 'cause-effect-purpose'. The reason outcome and purpose are necessary to this is that the 'outcome' or 'purpose' is a change in the state of reality itself. An effect doesn't exist merely on it's own but is a change in reality itself since it changes the entire universe. We don't like to think this way, but it does. This effect changes the state of the universe such that a repetition of that effect or indeed the cause of it, will actually be ever so slightly different. Think gravity, quantum threads, that sort of stuff. This theory was always embedded in our understanding of cause and effect since the 'bounds' of any subsystem of cause and effect (a thing) aren't real. As such, they alter the substrate in which such effects may occur again. So the 'outcome' of any cause and effect system alters the next iteration of 'cause' (Know more of God). In understanding the nature of that alteration, it brings with it a better understanding of the universe as you know it (Rebirth of Jesus). So you know more of the next cause and more of the prior one, since you know more of how the universe reacts to them. This is where everything becomes wonderfully and necessarily teleological as a matter of mind, though not necessarily of reality. Where attributions of purpose become necessary to any means of understanding and as a matter more of utility than truth. It's what allows for the progressive, growing nature of understanding (Holy Spirit leading to God). Really neat. GOD IS THE ULTIMATE MEME And yeah, such that each of these different things have been created in the search for truth or to catalogue it, that they've managed to assist humanity in survival i.e. interacting with reality in knowledge of what 'works', they've proven their utility and, dare I say, truth. But it's the truth in their relationship that matters. God ain't real. Nor Jesus or the Holy Spirit or, depending on who you talk to, objective reality and all that. But this single triad and the relationship it has within itself crops up everywhere that people have tried to determine what was true....and managed to find SUCCESS in it. Basically, since reality didn't kill them and so their ideas with them, there was truth-content in what they believed. They operated FUNCTIONALLY with reality. They PREDICTED truth. Understand of course that 'God' was never originally written this way. Rather, we was edited into existence. What worked was kept. What didn't was scrapped. Whichever Christian survived, physically and socially, passed on his 'wisdom of God'. Those that didn't perished and so didn't pass their untruth on. So what the Christian represents is a modern-day 'social-species' with all prior iterations representing a social FOSSIL RECORD. Get it? Memes evolve with genes according to reality and according to their purpose: survival. Hence the bible, by virtue of it's longevity, is packed full of truth regard the nature of physical reality but more importantly: social and psychological reality. Though it's all masked in metaphor - nearly a different language. Anyway, this is how you read the bible as an atheist in an effort to become a cultural Christian. TRANSLATING THE BIBLE INTO A RATIONAL LANGUAGE I haven't decoded it, but I do know how to a good degree. I just need hands. I've done Genesis up to Adam's exile. Figure at this point I should start showing people. Peterson is being quite helpful, but the lens of a personality psychologist, while creating a far clearer image, is narrow in its scope. So he's very right about very little, which he admits to. Particularity is never a bad thing, but it's like understanding quantum physics without knowing anything about antibiotics - as a species. You can focus into an ever-greater understanding of just one thing, but in that way it becomes less and less integral to the whole. Better to use your knowledge of atomic structure to examine living tissue and so find and attack the bacteria we're so weak to. Something very little but also very true has great potential in other matters, but you have to know how to apply it there. So philosophy, in particular philosophical individuation (the nature of attribution and distinction) and ontology, could yield it. Stef could do it - I think. Imagine the prestige, to indulge in self for a moment. It wouldn't be a selfish pursuit either. You'd be able to link purpose with Christians of all sorts and unite libertarians across the religious spectrum. Even better, you'd also provide an ultimate arbiter, an ultimate standard that the more rebellious libertarians would be forced to yield to as a matter of logic and principle. You know, 'Unite the Right'. I'm not speaking crap either. This is how to do it. You reveal to these different 'sects' the nature of their belief and with that the congruity between them that they can't see. Their division is an illusion. It's been a matter of mind and not action/purpose for generations. They are divided only in motivation/intention. They will yield the same outcome together, but differ in their interpretation of it. So they infight based on false pretenses. But if you reveal to them that both of their interpretations are a skewed vision of the same thing, you can generate cooperation. Neither is likely to forsake their own interpretation, but they will come to see their interpretation in their 'rivals'. As it stands, I've found the congruity between Christians, atheists, scientists, libertarians, and MGTOW with a few hints unexplored in MRAs, 'centrists', classical liberals, ethno-nationalists, and I think a few others. It's always there, this triad - at least on the 'Right' or rather the 'Not-Insane' wing of politics. So anything but the Far-Left and hey! Wouldn't you know it? We're united on that front. Well gee-whiz. It's like we might just be standing for the same thing and not just AGAINST the same thing. I'm excitedly rambling. I do that. Oh yeah, I'd love to talk to Stef about this but he monologues about his own position (admit it, but it's good for the show) and this would most certainly be a teacher-student exchange that I'm not sure either of us wants to enter into. It would interrupt his flow and is, I think, something difficult to explain over Skype. Lucky for me, I'm local. I could actually meet in person too. Would love to. Imagine that? It would be nice if you guys read this and critiqued it. Though truly, take the triad to heart and start reading the bible or listening to Jordan Peterson's work on Genesis. Watch it sync up with Peterson. It would be uncanny were it not for the nature of memes I just talked about. Though again, tip of the iceberg. So such that anyone cares well, spread this around I guess. Hope it helps, if you're interested in this sort of thing.

There's a fun thought experiment in store for you, and in the end I demonstrate how 'atheist' and 'MGTOW' are the same thing, which is pretty cool. But it's less to do with that example. Sorta jumping the gun but whatever. I'm starting a project I suppose you can help with or appreciate. Basically, I believe that where there is some content of truth within any perspective that's logically consistent. Yet, that truth isn't a matter of conclusion but one of relationship. So let's try a thought experiment! I'll show what I mean through numbers. Ex: I ask 3 people to solve for 'x'. The Christian says the answer is 3. The MGTOW says the answer is 5. The Conservative says the answer is 11. These numbers only represent some conclusion they've crafted in response to 'x' (some problem). Then they argue and carry on as they do. But then you ask this: Solve for 'y'. The Christian says the answer is 3.6. The MGTOW says the answer is 6. The Conservative says the answer is 13.2. Then you keep doing this over and over again. You can also do this merely by studying their content, of course. Now, all their conclusions are different. But you're not interested in their conclusions. Instead, you're interested in how their conclusions relate to each other. You want to see how x relates to y, how one conclusion they have relates to another. From there, you're trying to establish a trend. You're trying to see if irrespective of their conclusions, the way they relate to each other is the same. Think of it like a different language. The term 'fear' is different in a host of languages and you wouldn't understand them. But should you inquire their term for spiders, anxiety, terror, etc., you'd be able to establish how each term relates to the others and so finally understand their language. Takes a long time granted, but it's how you do it. Learn the word. Learn its relation. Learn the language. Yet what's more, if we delve into our own understanding of terms in our own language. We come to find out that we understand these terms through relation as well. Think about it. Not only is every word, every abstraction reliant on others to understand it, to frame it within reality. But without those others things existing, you wouldn't be able to define the term let alone even create the abstraction. It's like the physical law(?)of how everything that exists is an effect and produces an effect. So everything that exists does so by virtue of interaction. Be that with something else or time or whatever. It's a neat ontological idea and one that's been plenty explored - true too, I think. What that means is that everything that exists, or rather everything we recognize as existing, does so in our minds by virtue of relationship. It's not an 'is', it doesn't 'just exist'. There needs to be a how, a constitution of some sort. Science bears this out and might even be a product of our minds more than anything. See, every time we find a gap in a cause and effect system, we create something to be responsible for it. Then we try to demonstrate its existence in some fashion. If successful, we try to find a gap in this new cause and effect system, the next thing to be responsible for it, and so create something there and so on and so forth. Truly, those things, those particles for the most part, are placeholders. It's freaky, but they might not actually exist. They've all been the product of attempting to understand a relationship. We say that a proton effects an atom in this way which effects a molecule in this way which effects a larger molecule this way and so on until, I dunno, you form an apple. But we know in reality that where we started, the proton (or whatever the smallest particle we identify) is what the whole thing is supposedly made of. There is no 'atom'. It's a grouping of protons(in this example). Just like there is no 'forest', there's only a bunch of trees. So really, what we're doing when we create all these other particles from proton to apple, is we're creating intermediaries to better understand the relationship protons have to apples. We look at it like a step-by-step process, but we've actually no reason to. Nothing happens 'first' in this system, since it's only one relationship in reality: proton to apple and even then, it's we who are calling this set of protons an apple in the first place. The only truth we've actually discerned from this is the nature of the relationship itself. It's component parts are intermediaries only for our own understanding. It's seen as step 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., but there aren't any steps. Or if you want, there's only one. One that we separate into different steps because we can't understand it any other way: proton->apple. Again a freaky thought, yet our language works this way. What 'humility' (or any word) is, is a product only of all its relationships to its component parts as well as its outcome in reality i.e. how you understand it. So not only do you need the existence of these other concepts, these other words to define and so understand 'humility', but you need an entire network of other words all linked together in some fashion. You need a 'language Matrix', a universe. This operational network, this modeling of reality would thus be a product not of individuals, of certain intrinsic beings, but one of relationship. The words would only be like nodes in a computer chip(protons, molecules, etc.). They only SEND the SIGNAL along. They only TRANSLATE the RELATIONSHIP along. It's WHERE that signal is sent that determines the function and so purpose of the node. Imagine being inside a hollow white sphere dotted with little black circles on the inside surface. When you 'select' a circle it shows all its connections to the others using, I dunno, lasers. All of them are connected yet all of them are different. That's how I envision it. So yeah, entertain the thought. How you understand something isn't due to some intrinsic, innate, 'entirely distinct from everything else' quality, no. You understand it in how it has an 'entirely distinct from everything else' relationship to well, everything else you know ON THE WHOLE. No matter what it is it hits all the nodes, but travels along them in a different path. For example, the node for 'war' isn't connected to 'good' unless routed first through 'soldier' and then 'defense' or whatever. And yes, the relationship of even those nodes are created in the same fashion, having their own unique connections to other nodes and so on. The beauty is that their inter-connectivity is technically all the same giant Matrix, but starting at a different node yields a different perspective of this connectivity. So no matter what, your mind never links 'war' with 'good' directly, or whatever the nature of this would actually be. (It's a thought experiment after all). So on the whole, this is your model of reality. This set of relationships is your 'truth'. So in this thought experiment, the nodes themselves, the words are irrelevant. They're all equally 'words' or 'beliefs' or 'positions' or 'WHATs' without distinction. What distinguishes them is 'HOW'. It's their interconnections that determines their uniqueness. Now if that were true, then what someone says is true or believes is true isn't actually relevant to what's true or even, believe it or not, their own understanding. The node doesn't matter. What matters is its relationship to the other nodes. So consider another person's connected nodes. They may have two nodes connected that you don't. So to you, they might seem like entirely unrelated phenomena. But if their understanding of something shares the same relationship you have regarding something else, if they have the same inter-connectivity but starting at a different node, then suffice it to say you believe the same thing, but only in a different language. Get it? So if their node for 'war' is linked nearly identically to everything your node for 'pragmatism' is connected to, then it's entirely likely that your understanding of 'pragmatism' is actually their understanding of 'war'. Sounds like a neat if probably impossible idea, but that's what I'm looking for. I'm finding it too, BTW. Remember those numbers? x = 3, 5, 11 y = 3.6, 6, 13.2 Well, 'y' is a product of this equation: y = (x/5)+x This is what I keep finding. So long as these groups are attempting to discern truth, they're forced to do so with regard to a certain matter and within a certain perspective since well, everyone has their biases. But wherever they deem to find it, it starts to create parallel relationships to other terms. Their conclusions are different yes, but their relationship to their conclusions, and its relationship to others, begins to develop an eerie congruity. So it is that their conclusions may be absolutely false, but their relationship to their conclusions and subsequent relationships therein, mirror our own within a different, supposedly unrelated subject. I take it you want an example and good, clean one. Simple: MGTOW are to women what atheists are to God. Strip away what each of those terms represent and simply look at the relationship between them. Everything the atheist says of God is true of what the MGTOW says of women. Remember, the 'nodes' don't matter. It's the relationship between the nodes that does. Atheists claim there is no 'God'. It's a product of your own desire for it and subsequent projection of meaning into it. MGTOW claim there is no 'woman'. It's a product of your own desire for it and subsequent projection of meaning into it. Atheists attempt to reconstitute 'God' as it actually exists i.e. the effect it actually produces in reality. MGTOW attempt to reconstitute 'Woman' as it actually exists i.e. the effect it actually produces in reality. 'God' doesn't exist as described, so atheists study the nature of the theist (true believer) to best determine the nature of 'God' as an abstraction. 'Woman' doesn't exist as described, so MGTOW study the nature of the gynocentrist (true believer) to best determine the nature of 'woman' as an abstraction. Atheists don't pray. MGTOW don't hope (no NAWALT). Atheists don't tithe. MGTOW don't pay. Atheists don't attend church. MGTOW don't take 'Women's Studies'. Atheists don't become priests. MGTOW don't become feminists. Atheists don't value God, seeing only the possible benefits of delusion and social cohesion. MGTOW don't value women, seeing only the possible benefits of delusion and social cohesion. Now, this isn't just some mad-lib or 'fill-in-the-blanks' sort of scenario. This matter of relationship is 1:1. In this case, both represent the loss of an abstraction, the loss of a certain connectivity of nodes, and a reconstitution as how they actually exist. But amazingly, that reconstitution is exactly the same. We would think this is impossible given the nature of these concepts. But if we remove any notion of what they're meant to represent, to see them as empty words, as mere nodes in our model of reality, they can be absolutely equal given the same array of relationship. The same relationship to the self, to the individual. And that's what's happening. This is why Jordan Peterson has paralleled very well (I've done better - maybe) the link between Genesis and consciousness. Also, the nature of God as truth, Jesus as the relationship truth has to ourselves, and with the Holy Spirit as the process of reconciling this through discernment. I've already gone into the Christian with this same tool to great effect. I linked them with scientists. Again, uncanny and offers some explanation of why Christian Europe was so instrumental to the scientific revolution. The Holy Trinity is the Scientific Method. Watch a good preacher talk about God and shift him into a scientist talking about the nature of truth. It will follow suit. I've posted something related to this in the Religion section just now, if you're interested. Anyway, yeah. Finding evidence for this is all I'm up to at the moment. Atheist and MGTOW are well-established, but I'd like to try more. I know some will see atheist and MGTOW both as a product of disillusionment and that's all they really share in common. But if you look at the relationship they have to their beliefs, how it shapes their identity, intentions, interactions, and others, the commonality continues unabated. So if you take yourself as an atheist and shift your node, shift your perspective so that 'God' lines up with 'woman', you'll at the very least be able to better understand MGTOW. Sympathize too, since as a matter of language and its relationship to themselves, they aren't technically wrong on principle. I actually encourage you to try it - if you can. Write out your relationship to 'God' then convert it to woman, following through on all the same relationships 'God' had. The impetus to MGTOW makes sense too, after that. No personal motivations or intentions are required to create it. Just lose the abstraction of 'woman'. Same goes for atheist with regard to God, obviously. There is no particular intention or motivation required. Instead, a loss of intention is. Same for MGTOW and to the same result. I guess the takeaway is that when it comes to things that aren't real, that are just ideas - especially lost ones, we can better discern our understanding of them strictly through their relationship to other ideas, not of any intrinsic quality. It also serves to simplify so many things, given one can only have so many relationships to belief anyway, if you think about it. It could probably even be charted using maths. +,-,x,/ and all that. Your model of reality converted into algebra? Complicated as all hell, but I think we could do it. Hope this was fun. PS - There's a Numberphile video on YouTube regarding Surreal Numbers. Just Google it. Watch a mad-genius create our entire collection of numbers(means more than it sounds) using only this ' : '. He's half the reason I think I'm right about this, since he's created everything using only the concept of 'greater' and 'lesser' or: 0 and 1. If I'm right about nodes, at the most basic level it is binary i.e. connected or not. There's other parallels though, obviously. The philosophical process of attribution i.e. distinction i.e. individuation, as a major one.