Peter Thiel's Religion | Hacker News Reader

Peter Thiel's Religion

perell.com

22 pointsenigmatic029 comments

> Linear conceptions of time, and especially the idea of progress, emerged with Christianity.

It's not necessarily true of Judaism, though it seems the author might see Judaism as subsumed by Christianity. More importantly, this was not true of Zoroastrianism, which AFAIU predates Judaism (as distinct from its regional roots).

Simply because of the immense diversity of religion, I would hesitate to pick any religion as being the first at anything. But Zoroastrianism was a significant influence across a huge geographic region. Its creation goes back further than recorded in history, but as records emerge we see its pre-existing influence across civilizations, from the Mediterranean to the Indus Valley.

Not quite related, but I recently discovered that it's possible that Plato's archetype of the Philosopher King may have reflected the Greek mythos about Zoroastrianism. As evidenced by Aristotle's references, some Greeks seemed to believe that Zoroastrian priests' knowledge of astrology/astronomy (i.e. something approximating early concepts of nature and science, w/ all the dualities that implies) was applied in their role as political leaders; IOW, that Zoroastrian priests used a science of natural law to govern society.

More mainstream reference: The Three Kings (aka Three Wise Men, Three Magi) in the Christian narrative were Zoroastrian priests, their astronomical knowledge providing them the ability to identify not only the fact of but also the meaning of the celestial signal--the birth of the Christ figure.

FWIW, 'time' isn't circular in Hinduism either, at least not in the way the article makes it out to be. The physical universe has a cycle of creation & destruction, but each cycle is distinct from the other. The general beats of each cycle are largely the same, but the souls move through them in linear fashion. An analogy might be made with a theatrical production: each night set pieces & backgrounds go through a fixed order, and the cast moves through the set according to the script, but the actors in the cast can change over time. In schools of thought such as Saiva Siddhanta, the manifest universe is created with the express objective of providing a platform for souls to move through and work out their issues before achieving enlightenment. Souls that achieve enlightenment don't return to the material world (with some caveats), with the universe resetting on a regular basis for the rest of the souls to have another go at it.

Some schools of thought in Hinduism (Vashishta Advaita, Dwaita (?), Gaudiya) envision a multiverse that resets, but time still moves only in one direction.

Interesting read. One small observation,

> The Book of Revelation paints two outcomes for the future of humanity: catastrophic apocalypse or a new heaven and a new earth

I think Revelations is describing one big event only. It starts with descriptions of what the world will look like before the end (with beasts and the worshiping of the beasts etc), it goes on to describe how Jesus comes down and initiates what is basically the end of all civilizations on Earth, and then on top of those ashes, "New Jerusalem" comes down for all of the ones who survived the final judgement.

I don't think Thiel could save anyone from this, or at least it would not be your normal interpretation of the Bible. The final judgement is inevitable.

I always wonder about rich people who think themselves Christians. Or other Christians who look up to them. Jesus directly states that rich people don't go to heaven when asked.

No, Jesus didn’t. Jesus did, however, use a rhetorical device to emphasize that the rich could become worthy of heaven only by humbling themselves.

Correct. There's one Sunday devoted to the readings about Jesus's statement that getting to heaven is like passing through the "eye of the needle", a very narrow gate to a city. The standard interpretation is that to pass through the eye of the needle, you need to remove all of your belongings. In other words, you can't take it with you.

It is fairly common for preachers to say that money is not the problem -- it's what you do with the money.

This stuff varies quite a bit by denomination and just tradition honestly.

I mean you also have mainstream preachers telling you that if your faith is strong enough god will reward you with riches, which has been considered a heresy for at least a thousand years.

So I don't know they should be but preachers may not universally be the experts on this unfortunately.

The eye of the needle thing does not represent his entire full viewpoint on wealth right? It comes up quite a few times. Regardless of how you interpret the camel bit, there are other moments where he clearly tells the wealthy to give it all away.

Yeah I am an atheist these days but at the same time life is complex and I guess in some ways I am not not a christian.

I have no respect for wealthy christians! At all! Yer boy Jesus was extremely extremely clear about what is expected of you on this front. He was ambiguous and contradictory on some things but not this one.

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