Peter Thiel Is Bankrupt!  ## Metadata - Author: [[Data Over Dogma]] - Full Title: Peter Thiel Is Bankrupt! - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/6bba674d-60bf-48e0-8e7f-77b475ce4fad ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Faith Framed To Serve Tech Interests** - Peter Thiel founded ACT 17 to engage tech elites with Christianity while avoiding ethical scrutiny of tech practices. - Dan McClellan and Dan Beecher argue the movement reframes faith to protect investor interests rather than challenge them. Transcript: 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. And that's pretty exciting. That's, that's going to be a lot of fun. I don't think he's going to make us, he's, I don't think he's going to use his kingmaker status on us anytime soon. And then I don't think that was in the cards to begin with, but how dare you? How dare you? I think I had a shot. I think I had no. And then we're going to look... We're going to do a taking issue about a little bit of symbolism, a little bit of a star. Dan McClellan The McGinn David, yes, the star of David. And a rather ridiculous conspiracy theory that I've been seeing popping up around social media of late. So, yes. All right. Dan Beecher 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 is being twisted. But there are a couple that have been called out specifically. Yeah. Peter Thiel, if you don't know, is a billionaire. Dan Beecher 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 They Have a lot of it. And Teal has become a very prominent voice in Christian circles. ([Time 0:02:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/85e934cb-ed40-4855-992e-e322eba396e9)) - **Selective Scripture To Support Apocalypse** - Thiel links modern tech trends to apocalyptic warnings but selectively cites scripture to support his view. - Hosts show his use of 1 Thessalonians 5:3 misrepresents the text to claim the Antichrist's slogan is "peace and safety." Transcript: Dan Beecher Yes. Because he has been starting, he has started to talk about, and here's the thing, I don't doubt the sincerity of his belief. Dan McClellan Yeah. That's not, we're not in the business of 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 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-part lecture series on the Antichrist, and from what I have heard, nobody is quite sure what he's talking about. Yeah. Dan Beecher Yeah, it seems like it might be the one-world government might be the Antichrist or whatever. He definitely believes that a one-world government is a bad thing, and it's coming. Dan McClellan And I, like 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 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. Yes. 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 that 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 the Bible, all of them in 1 John or 2 John. Oh, okay. And they are used to describe anyone who is opposed to Christ. It is mainly an adjective. That person is anti-Christ or anti-Christian. There's one use that could suggest that it is referring to a specific individual okay but or 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. 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. 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. That's when the son of man is going to be like, boo, gotcha. 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. 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. Oh. 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. Right. To misrepresent. Because in no sense whatsoever is this saying the slogan of the Antichrist 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, 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. You mentioned the one world government. It sounds like one of those idiotic conspiracy theories. The globalists are coming. But that was the only scripture I heard in the little bit of that interview that people kept tagging me in. And I was like, well, this is already way off the rails. ([Time 0:12:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fdc3e7f8-fcf9-4b07-b08d-06d93157f694)) - **Investment Theology Contradiction** - Thiel opposes regulation yet invests heavily in surveillance and defense technologies, creating a theological and practical contradiction. - The hosts argue this cognitive dissonance reveals self-serving theology protecting his investments. Transcript: Dan McClellan What I do shouldn't be regulated. It's only what everybody else does And it becomes 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, uh, of, you know, defense contracting. Uh, he, he, he's the founder of Palantir, which is a battlefield Intel data aggregator sort of thing. But he's also heavily invested in a company called Anduril Industries, which is drones and AI tower. AI like border defense towers that will just... Dan McClellan So it's He's starting Skynet. He is Skynet. Dan Beecher Yeah. Like it's so crazy. He's invested in a bunch of different startups for cybersecurity and various. Dan McClellan Cyberdyne systems is where it's going to go next. And then it'll go to Skynet. Yeah. Dan Beecher And yet he's, and all of these are tools that he will sell to governments that are already funded by governments. And so, like, how is this going to prevent the thing that he's scared of? ([Time 0:19:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3507488b-4937-4d56-b4e5-c8250e4ea2f0)) - **Scrutinize Scripture For Self-Interest** - Question religious claims that align conveniently with a person's self-interest, especially around wealth and power. - Scrutinize scripture use when leaders cherry-pick passages that justify retaining wealth or influence. Transcript: Dan Beecher So the thing that I was getting to is he was talking about the Ten Commandments. 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. And like immediately I thought, you know, a billionaire telling me not to covet. Dan McClellan Yeah. Yeah. Let's just, we're going to book in the law. Yeah. Yeah. Dan Beecher It just rings a bit like, just don't, don't stop wanting all my stuff. Dan McClellan Yeah. It doesn't say anything about greed. It's just about wanting other people's stuff. Yeah. If you want more of your own stuff and to multiply your own stuff, that's fine. Yeah. And if it requires taking it from others, as long as you're doing it your way. Yeah. Think that's such an interesting attempt to just kind of 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 and about increasing one's own standing and One's own 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. ([Time 0:26:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8450e6e3-8192-4347-aed9-ba48aa9dead8)) - **Translation Changes The Prophecy** - Daniel 12:4's translation varies: KJV reads "knowledge shall be increased" while better texts read "evil shall increase." - Hosts highlight Thiel's reliance on a preferred translation that suits his techno-eschatology and ignore alternate readings. Transcript: Dan McClellan Many shall be running back and forth, and evil shall increase. Now, that's not what he read in the thing. That's the NRSVUE. 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 Teal 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. And he seemed to be appealing to the 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 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 Teal mentioned, I went and looked it up, because I remember thinking, it strikes me that there's Something weird about this verse. And when I read it from the NRSVUE, it ended with, an evil shall increase. 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. Okay. However, this word in the Aramaic square script is sometimes indistinguishable from the word hara, which would be the evil. 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. ([Time 0:32:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/97e1fbb4-6bb7-4b5b-8506-cc66e5ff5fc3)) - **Star Of David Is A Recent Symbol** - The Star of David is not biblical and only became a central Jewish symbol in the 19th century alongside Zionism. - Historic uses of hexagrams predate Jewish symbolism and appear worldwide with diverse meanings. Transcript: Dan Beecher 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 sort of the de facto symbol of Judaism and of the state of Israel in general. Dan McClellan On the Israeli flag, an upward-pointed triangle over a downward-pointed triangle or under. Yeah. Or they could be pointed sort of diagonally, too. Dan Beecher Diagonally? Yeah. These are equilateral triangles. They point in three directions. So just have fun with that. Take that for what it's worth. Yeah. Dan McClellan It's a hexagram. Yeah. So we have hexagrams and pentagrams and all manner of gram. You have various grams. Yeah. That are used as geographic. Geographic. Oh, my gosh. What's the word? Geometric. Geometric designs that are used in architecture and iconography and stuff like that. Like we can find this in India going back to like 1000 BCE, like all over the world. Dan Beecher The hexagram is just, you know, people make hexagrams. Yeah. It's a pretty simple but fun to look at image. Yeah. Dan McClellan And, you know, we see it on, there's a hexagram on the cover, the front of the Leningrad Codex, 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. If you go visit Capernaum, and now's don't go. It's the wrong time. Yeah, not time to be over there for touristy purposes. But in Capernaum, they have some of the old stone lentils from the—not the thing you make soup with, but the architectural feature. Dan Beecher The over-the bit of stone or whatever. Dan McClellan Yeah, and they have these from a synagogue that's from like the third or fourth century CE from Capernaum. And they have, you can see a hexagram carved into that and then a pentagram right next to it. So anyway, because it really didn't become associated like formally with Judaism until like the 19th century. Dan Beecher Oh, really? Dan McClellan Yeah. Like you see it being used starting in like the 14th century as something that's not just a fun design, but something that is symbolic of Judaism. Dan Beecher That they're identifying with themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Dan McClellan 19th century is when it becomes associated more saliently with Zionism. ([Time 0:43:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c65c9143-2197-4eb3-bccc-4abb527e59bc)) - **Conspiracy From Mistranslation, Not Evidence** - 'Remphan' in Acts likely reflects mistranslations of older names tied to Saturn, not a direct link to the modern hexagram. - Conspiracy claims tying the Star of David to Remphan/Moloch misuse textual variants and ignore linguistic shifts. Transcript: Dan McClellan And this is where Stephen is. He's about to be martyred, but he is lecturing the folks on the history. Gives like 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. So Stephen is upset about this, but he's quoting a Greek translation Amos 5.26. Now, when we go back into Amos 5.26, here's what it says in the Hebrew. You shall take up Sikut, your king, and Kiwan, your star god, your images which you made for yourself. A little different. Doesn't sound quite the same. We've got a few things going on here. Sicut is being misunderstood as having something to do with the Greek word skeene, which is like a tent. Okay. So it is being misunderstood as a reference to a tent so in acts it says you took along the tent of moloch uh in the hebrew we have sikun your king and the word melek king is being misunderstood By the greek translators as moloch which a lot of people which a lot of is this god of child sacrifice. Dan Beecher Oh my god. You hear that all the time in some evangelical TikTok. Somebody will be like, they're worshipers of Moloch. Right. You know, I'm, again, as an atheist, I'm a Moloch worshiper somehow. Yeah, yeah. Cats and dogs living together. Mass hysteria. Dan McClellan Yes. But there was never any deity named Moloch that was worshipped in the ancient world. We've done, I think we've done an episode on this. Haven't we done an episode on this? We've mentioned it. I don't know if we've done a whole episode of it. 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 yeah and so they thought it was the name of some deity so The the deity moloch never existed um not in the sense that there were other deities running around but this one was a fake one right but in the sense i was gonna say from my perspective None of the deities existed but i get what you're saying, yes. Yes. And then we have Kiwan, or Ki-yun in the Hebrew, is probably a Hebrew transliteration of an Akkadian deity named Kiwan, which is probably a deity associated with Saturn. Your image is yada, yada, yada. In in short uh the this name kiwan has been replaced with this other name rem fan 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 but okay because it mentions a star and because the star of David is a manner of star. ([Time 0:47:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a52388c0-ab6c-461e-81ad-04780d22947b)) - **Occult Use Doesn't Equal Jewish Origin** - 19th-century occult literature reused hexagrams as talismans, which conspiracy theorists retroject into Jewish history. - Hosts show this modern occult use doesn't imply Jewish adoption derived from occult Saturn cults. Transcript: Dan McClellan And it's called the Talisman of Saturn. And he says, it is a preservative against danger of death through apoplexy, cancer, decaying of the bones, consumption, dropsy, paralysis, physis, P-H physis, against the danger Of being buried alive while in a state of coma. You know, the universal anxiety. Yeah. 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. 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. Yes, of course it does. ([Time 0:53:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9a542169-0da8-4dd8-a412-686cd656a74a)) - **Don't Conflate Shared Symbols** - Treat symbols as culturally contingent and avoid assuming a single hidden meaning across contexts. - Reject claims that shared geometric shapes prove sinister continuity between unrelated groups. Transcript: Dan McClellan Yeah like they mean what people use them to mean and and that's one of the foundations of conspiracy theories is this symbol that we think means one thing way over here must mean that same Dan Beecher Thing way over there 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 like yes it doesn't Mean that they were for those for low those many centuries you know anti-semitic and yes uh and and interested in the the promotion of the aryan race or something Yes. Dan McClellan Not fascists. Dan Beecher Right. Although Aryan, the word Aryan does come from sort of India. Now, oh, now I'm in a really weird place. Okay. Okay. Now I've got a conspiracy theory. I'm working on it. Dan McClellan I'll come back to you all with it. Keep your hand on the rope. Don't get too, there's another shape. There's some conspiracy theories associated with this. Do you know what a mandorla is i think you're heard that word wrong mandala no mandorlean no um mandorlean no a mandorla is an almond shape so if you take two circles and you move them so That you have kind of two semicircles that connect and create an almond shape, that is a mandorla. And that has been a very common geometric, not geographic, geometric design throughout history around the world. Sure. But in some places it has been used as symbolic of a vulva. Right. And so you have a lot of folks who are like, ah, the Jesus fish is just a sideways vulva with a tail. With a tail. Sure, sure. And so this is all about worship of the divine feminine. And that holy moment. With her tail. Yeah. But yeah, you get this all the time where people are like, don't you see the connection? It's like, well, I see that one group is using a symbol one way and another group is using a symbol another way. And you want to insist that you're in charge of what those symbols are allowed to mean. Right. Um, and it just doesn't work like that. ([Time 0:56:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/459f3cc8-69a2-4093-972d-b263a1e9ee93))