Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

About Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Based Camp is a podcast focused on how humans process the world around them and the future of our species. That means we go into everything from human sexuality, to weird sub-cultures, dating markets, philosophy, and politics. Malcolm and Simone are a husband wife team of a neuroscientist and marketer turned entrepreneurs and authors. With graduate degrees from Stanford and Cambridge under their belts as well as five bestselling books, one of which topped out the WSJs nonfiction list, they are widely known (if infamous) intellectuals / provocateurs. If you want to dig into their ideas further or check citations on points they bring up check out their book series. Note: They all sell for a dollar or so and the money made from them goes to charity. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FMWMFTG basedcamppodcast.substack.com (https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/s/based-camp-simone-and-malcolm?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Category

news · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

7 May 2023

Latest episode

22 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

660 of 895 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   22 Oct 2026

   Did Abraham F* Jews Through Child Sacrifice? (Why We Needed Two Covenants)

   What if, by asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, God was testing him? While his response showed obedience, Abraham demonstrated a total lack of independent moral judgment, which signaled to God that the Israelites required a FAR more micromanagey covenant, including super specific rules against child sacrifice (you’d think this would go without saying, but… well, God checked and Abraham demonstrated otherwise). In today’s deep exploration of the story of Abraham and Isaac, Malcolm demonstrates that the test was never about whether Abraham would receive the promise but about the nature of the relationship between God and his people. The discussion contrasts surface readings with deeper interpretations, examines Jewish and New Testament perspectives, and explains why the Jewish covenant emphasizes strict rules while highlighting moral agency in other traditions. It also addresses real-world implications of misreading such stories and how the account distinguishes different approaches to faith and scripture. Episode Transcript Malcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, We are gonna be exploring the Lindsey Clancy of the bible, in this... Today’s tract. And this... Of all of the tracks that I have ever put together in terms of, like, studying the bible, attempting to understand it, This one threw me for the biggest wrench at first. Yes. It also had one of the biggest realizations for me that completely transform how I see the entire biblical narrative. Not only that, but once you notice it, there is no other way that this story can be read Really? To be logically consistent. Simone Collins:Woah. Okay. This is very... Okay. Yeah. I’ve... Sorry. I’m extremely intrigued because I really don’t like child sacrifice. I’m like, how could this guy Malcolm Collins:Yeah. If a god asked one of his people to commit a child sacrifice. Simone Collins:Yeah. Like, that’s the whole thing is, like, that’s why god constantly is, stop, like, Moloch, this whole thing. Stop, you know, the baby sacrifice. Speaker 3:Yeah. But Malcolm Collins:that is that is what defines a people often in the bible as so evil they deserve a complete eradication. Simone Collins:It’s a named no no in Leviticus. You do not pass your seed through the fire to Moloch. Like, it’s it’s... We don’t do child sacrifice at Speaker 3:the end. Malcolm Collins:If this story is read on face value, it says that a number of really bad things. It says that the only reason we don’t do child sacrifice isn’t because it’s wrong, but it’s because god hasn’t asked us to yet. Oh. And that if god did ask us to do child sacrifice, we should do child sacrifice or at least go all the way to attempt to because presumably... And we’ll get into the various alternate aspects. I’m just going for the Sunday school explanation first. Right? We’re going for the easiest understanding, the surface at face value as it’s taught to me as a kid. It implied to me as it was taught to me as a kid that, yeah, if god tells you to kill your kids, if you’re a moral person, you will kill your kids. Simone Collins:Well... And I think the big problem is that a lot of people have, I think, killed their kids thinking that God talked to Yeah. Malcolm Collins:Specific instances. If you wanna be like, Abraham’s a good guy. First of all, Abraham was not a good guy. We’ll get into this. He had a habit of pulling this trick where he would have his wife marry other men that extorts things from them. What? He did this multiple times. he’s kind of a douche canoe. Why Simone Collins:are people naming their kids Abraham then? Malcolm Collins:Because that part is often forgotten that he liked burying his wife to other men and Well, Simone Collins:but we all know the child sacrifice part, and I... That’s why I was so confused. Just like this isn’t one of those, you know, big name bible people, like the ones that we actually Right. People in Malcolm Collins:the kids offer. Speaker 4:So we have another episode that we will do where we will dig deeper into this specifically because it is just so utterly bizarre, but he does it twice. Isn’t it? Like, he he has an excuse every time for how he accidentally, whenever he comes to a neighborhood, tries to get his wife to have sex with whoever the most powerful man is in that neighborhood or marry them. And the second time, god even, like, comes in and he tells the guy, he’s like, no. That’s... This woman’s married. He... Somebody’s trying to get you to have sex with this married woman. And then his son does it too, by the way. it’s it’s utterly bizarre, and it is, I think not in line with what a lot of people remember from the story. So, yeah, he always has an excuse for why he did it, but, like, that had happened twice. I’m like, I don’t believe you. This was this was the beginning of your fortune. You made your fortune doing this. That’s weird. Speaker 25:I’m telling you, you’re a pimp. Speaker 26:No. Are you even listening to the story? Anyway, one day I wake up and I look in the mirror and I don’t like what I see. I mean, I I had gotten out of control and I I didn’t even realize that. Speaker 25:You can’t have a conscience in the pimp game Speaker 24:And in regards to the morality of this, think about this from the perspective of his wife who he is pimping out to, in the most charitable interpretation, protect himself. But in the, I think, actual, if you look at what happens, because every time he shakes these guys down for lots of money, to make money, why why does he always have to ask them for money? He doesn’t do that. There’s this interim period where a guy, he did war or something. He’s like, I’m not gonna ask you for money, no one can say I ask you for money. He knows what he’s doing here. He knows what he’s doing here. Malcolm Collins:The the Abraham story... I mean, God does say that Abraham loves him or is beloved by him or his friend. It’s sometimes translated. And we know that by... The bible, God is okay and will make heroes of people of low moral character take David. Right? Like, sending out somebody who... To die in a war so that you can marry their wife, right, is... That person died out of loyalty to David. That is to me one of the lowest things of... Like, I almost cannot imagine anything more immoral than using somebody’s trust in you to murder them to sleep with their wife. It’s... Simone Collins:Yeah. Truly. So Malcolm Collins:That is about as low as you get. And yet David is one of god’s... You know, and people... Some Jews are like, no. He’s okay because he repented afterwards. I’m like, he said he was sorry. He said he was sorry. What? I’m like, well, he was still being used by God before he repented. Right? He was still God’s champion before he repented. Yeah. He may he may repent eventually, but... And then you can look at Solomon, for example. You don’t get to be much a bigger douche canoe than Solomon. Solomon’s entire story, he’s just, like, not a good guy. And we’ll we’ll get into that story one day. So, I don’t think it’s it’s particularly big a thing. That is not what God looks for in his heroes and stories. That was not the problem for me. I don’t have a problem that you do not have to be a moral paragon to have a good relationship with god. What I have a problem with is two things. One, god establishing a precedent that he might ask you... You might hear a voice in your head. Like, is it a good thing in a religious tradition to have a precedent that if you hear a voice in your head telling you to kill your kids, maybe you should? That is... Especially given that, like, multiple people have acted on this. And, no, Lindsay Clancy did say one of the reasons she did it as a Catholic was so that she could meet her kids in heaven when she killed her. It wasn’t the exact same Simone Collins:as god told her but, like, yeah, it was part of the equation. Didn’t they? I mean, so I I all... I could not honestly engage with the the court information because it... This is too hard for me to emotionally deal with. But I thought that voices were telling her according to her lawyer to kill her. Malcolm Collins:Maybe. Speaker 5:Yes. A voice was telling her to do it, but she didn’t equate that voice with god. she just thought that once she killed all her kids, they could be together in heaven. Malcolm Collins:But then again, this is the thing. If... When we read these women who did this, it’s like, so how are these women? Some of them appear to genuinely have heard voices. Like, we know that’s a thing that happens to some people even in the secular world. Simone Collins:The... It’s it’s just a a certain portion of the population hears voices, and then those voices Malcolm Collins:differentiate the voice telling you to kill your kid from a demon testing you to God. Right? Like, my presumption... Any listener of this podcast, if you’re a good Christian and one day you started hearing a voice telling you that god wants you to sacrifice your child, I would presume the good Christian thing to assume is that’s actually the devil testing you. Simone Collins:Yeah. Like... Yeah. I mean, especially even if you... Because I I... Again, I got I got stuck, and I haven’t I haven’t continued very far into the Old Testament. But I definitely got to the part where it was like, no. You don’t, you know, get in there. You don’t hurt. Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So how does this story work? Yeah. How do you get around? And the reason why this story was so hard for me is I go through the story. I go through the story. I go through the story again. I look for alternate translations. I look for any way out of god not just being okay with Abraham’s actions, but deliberately approving of them and rewarding him for them. I go over it over and over and over and over, and I go through all of the ways that people have tried to get out of this history, and all of the ways I could find seemed really squirrely. And I’m not gonna eat them, but I’ll go over them with you before we go over the... What I think is the correct solution. Okay. Which, by the way, is totally unique to us. I have not seen anyone else come Simone Collins:to this. Okay. I’m so intrigued. I’m extremely intrigued. Malcolm Collins:And once you see the solution, you realize there really isn’t another solution. What? Speaker 29:And what’s crazier than that is a solution defined the differentiation between Christianity or at least techno puritan Christianity and Judaism in very stark contrast, and It’s like a story that explains everything about how you’re supposed to relate to the Bible. Simone Collins:Okay. Well, let’s let’s already get through these other reasons because I wanna hear yours. But Malcolm Collins:the the the... This one... Like, I was actually... With any of the other ones, the first time I read the story, I was like, okay. Clearly, word means something other than what I think it... What is commonly translated as. And I go over it. I find an explanation. Like, I I clearly thought that god wasn’t punishing man for wanting to know the difference between good and evil. I read the story. That’s immediately not what’s really happening. It’s it’s clear in the text. That’s not what’s happening. It’s clear with alternate translations. That’s not what’s And so I I do our episode on that. And everyone’s like, yeah. This is this is coherent with large loot, I believe. But with this one, no. I go over the story over and over and over and over again, and I couldn’t I couldn’t find any way. And and I was genuinely, like, questioning my faith. Like, if the bible is right, why is this story here? Right? And then I found that the thing that explains the entire story isn’t in the story. Simone Collins:Okay. But... Well, then how can you associate them? Malcolm Collins:You will go into it. There’s there’s no way not to associate them, by the way. It’s it’s it’s very clearly no way not to associate them, but let’s continue. Okay. So, to start. So the story starts like this. And sometime later, God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham, here I am, he replied. Then God said, take your son, your only son, who you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Mora. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on the mountain. I will show you. Honestly, first, this is very twisted. Like, the the kid who you love, sacrifice him. And I actually got to a part, by the way, before I found the solution to this, where I was like, I’m just gonna do an episode on this and ask for fans if they have any suggestions because I I cannot affirm the traditional interpretation. Right? Like, that that just Simone Collins:Like, are there other people who say, well, the Hebrew doesn’t actually say that. Malcolm Collins:No. Yeah. This this to me... You know how, like, we had the episode on... I wanna say Louis c k. What was his name again? The the famous author Louis? C. S. Lewis. C. Simone Collins:S. C. Lewis. C. K. What are you doing? Malcolm Collins:He called one passage in the bible the most embarrassing passage, and I was like, no. It actually, like, affirms the entire tradition. And we have an episode on that. But this one, I almost sat there and was like, do I need to say that this is the most embarrassing passage in the Bible? Like, it’s... Kept going over it. And then when I found the solution, it became awesome and it changes everything. Simone Collins:I know already that from just starting a a new lecture lecture series on biblical authorship that there is a mistranslation in the, at least, English... Most English translations of this story because they Yeah. Malcolm Collins:But it’s a small one. It’s a Simone Collins:It’s a small one. But I know that, like Malcolm Collins:is behind something in the behind Simone Collins:It supposed to be... Yeah. It’s not that there was a ram behind him. It’s that there was a ram. And the word for a is in In Hebrew, looks similar to behind Yeah. Whatever. Malcolm Collins:Look at it here. So Jews, Rashi, who’s, like, one of the most famous Jewish scholars of the medieval period that most, you know, Jews who are learned are going to be aware of, has the traditional Jewish answer for this. Okay? So let’s go into how Jews get out of this. On the word, veha or alu offer him up or bring him up, in Genesis twenty two two, Rashi comments, he did not say slay him, Shabbatu, because the holy one, the blessed one, he did not desire that he should slay him, but he told him to bring him up to the mountain and to prepare him as a burnt offering. So when he was taken up, God said unto him, bring him down. Later on the angel’s intervention in twenty two twelve, the same Midrash has god clarifying to Abraham, I did not say to you, slaughter him, but bring him up. You should have brought him up. Take him down. so what Jews basically argue here... And I don’t hate this. I think it’s a little squirrelly, but I don’t hate it, which is that God didn’t tell him to actually kill the guy. The problem is is the word used for make a burnt offering of him means to essentially burn him until there’s nothing left. It is not the word for prepare him as a burnt authoring. Simone Collins:Wait. That that actually kinda works for me. Like, Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, talks about his father thinking to tithe him to the church, which is to say to raise him so that he would serve an in his entire life and career in the church. He only did it because he ran out of money to educate him as a church leader, and so he had to get a job. But maybe that’s what this is insinuating is that, you know, you must dedicate your son solely to the worship of God before... Because he was before Moses. Right? So before there was a temple, before there there was a class of people whose entire job was to manage the worship of god and burnt offerings. Right? Malcolm Collins:No? Well, sorry. How does that work for you? Simone Collins:Well, it works for me in saying, like, maybe maybe god was insinuating that he should... As Benjamin Franklin was going to be tithed to the church by his father, not as a burnt offering, but as a person who he would raise to serve the church as his But that’s not Malcolm Collins:what god said. He said burnt offering. He he... In the word used Simone Collins:He said, like, to use up. Like, career was used up. Malcolm Collins:That is an even squirrelier interpretation than the Jewish one. Simone Collins:Okay. Fine. Malcolm Collins:Okay? I don’t I don’t I don’t buy that that’s what’s been here. I I will say that I am okay with this Jewish interpretation. It’s not the one... Like, when I read it, I wasn’t like, oh, a solution. But I was like, okay. So maybe to... Somebody who reads Hebrew, you read this, and it looks like God was playing a bit of a word game to test his faith. The problem is is God meant for him, it appears, to interpret this as kill him. And that’s what he appears to have planned to carry out. Simone Collins:Yeah. I mean, the way I remember growing up thinking about it when I was told the story No. As an outsider to the church or as an outsider to Christianity was like, this was... Oh, sorry. Mudpuppy’s talking to Indy about sharks. About... This was the ultimate trust fall test from God of, like, I’m gonna ask you to do anything, you better do it. Don’t worry. It’s gonna be fine. Malcolm Collins:Yeah. But I can’t I can’t deal with that answer because the trust fall is child sacrifice. Simone Collins:Yeah. Like, if the trust fall is, I’m gonna tell you to sin. Now go sin. That... No. That does... Yeah. Malcolm Collins:Exactly. Was Abraham, light yourself on fire or jump in a volcano Yeah. Or go into a war you couldn’t possibly win. Simone Collins:Yeah. Malcolm Collins:I’m okay with all of those. Absolutely. Sacrificing an innocent child were repeatedly seen in the bible is a bad thing. Right? It it is it is not just a bad thing. It’s often used as the avatar of all bad things. So... And we know and we know... I’m not gonna go here and say this isn’t the the real god like I do with what happened in the tabernacle where they’re tearing apart doves that are god signs of hope for humanity because this is Abraham we’re talking about. Right? Like, it’s the very core start of the tradition that this is happening to, and it’s because of this that god allowed the Jewish people to flourish. At least that’s what we’re told. Right? Simone Collins:Oh, yeah. Malcolm Collins:So let’s continue. In a traditional interpretation, I’m gonna go over. I’m actually gonna... That that isn’t what it really says. So how the the reading is derived, in classic Myshidric observation, it’s word choice, the verb god uses, the hifl causative of Allah, which means cause to go up, to bring up, to offer up. God does not use the normal technical verb for slaughtering a sacrificial animal, which is. Therefore, the Midrash concludes that the actual command never explicitly required killing Isaac. It only required bringing him up the mountain and preparing him as an. Once that was done, the angel can say the command has been fulfilled and tell Abraham to bring him back down. Now let’s go with the out one that I really like, which is a version of this one. I I like it. I don’t think it’s good enough. Okay? It’s that because if it is, god said it that way, but he was sort of playing a word trick on Abraham, and he actually was testing whether Abraham would commit a child sacrifice to understand if he was good enough to start his line of people. I’m not okay with that one. That that that seems anti biblical in everything else we read in the bible. Right? So if we put that out, then the other interpretation is Abraham never really believed God was asking him to kill his kid, and that he believed God would intervene. Or... And I don’t like this or, God would raise the kid from the dead. That... The raising the kid from the dead is bad because many of the women who kill their kids to prove faith in god believe that god will raise him from the dead immediately afterwards. Oh, that’s horrible. It’s a bad precedent to set. It is it is not good. Don’t... Do not... I would not Simone Collins:Very bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. And, also, it’s Malcolm Collins:sort of like a begging God for a miracle. It’s like, you know, one of those things you’re not supposed to do to do an act expecting a miracle from God. But, okay, let’s say, what what is the evidence that Abraham never expected to actually kill his kid? Okay? So we’ve got Abraham’s son talking to him, and he says, yes, my son, Abraham replied. And the son says, very heartbreakingly, the fire and wood are here, Isaac said, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham answered, god himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the two of them went together. Now one, that’s some psycho Lindsay Clancy stuff right there that Simone Collins:came That is incredibly psycho. No. No. No. Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah. Everything He actually intended to kill him. But what if what he’s saying is, I know that God’s gonna provide for us? The the words used here, it means, like, he will see to it. He will provide, which means that he has a faith that God is going to prevent this from happening if he goes along with the act. And there is another reason to believe this. Well, first here, can pay like, well, would Abraham lie to his kid? Yes. Abraham, one, the words that he uses here in Hebrew aren’t as clear as in English, and they are technically true. It just would mean that God was providing his son as the lamb. Second, we do know that he’s willing to play these types of word games as he does it repeatedly with his wife getting her to marry other men. and perhaps sleep with them. We will get into that as well for months. Simone Collins:Well, isn’t that kind of a part of being married? Yeah. Isn’t that... Yes. Yeah. It’s not good. Malcolm Collins:It’s not good. But to continue this, I I do think it’s a good thing to know that God doesn’t need us to be the most morally pure people in the world. The people who are like, God expects you to never do anything sinful or bad. It’s like, well, I mean, there’s a lot of people who God seems to like that do sometimes do bad things. So how is God judging their worth? I think it’s on the long term consequences of their actions overall because I believe God is a consequential as God. That’s why God can be a friend to people like David and Abraham and stuff like that. Where... And I and I also think that this is why it appears on the surface that god’s laws change over time in certain ways because he’s giving us different laws for different contexts, not for... Because his morality changes because he cares about the consequences of those laws. This is the techno puritan consequence of those god interpretation here. Okay. So Abraham tells his servants, stay here with the donkey while the boy and I go over there in worship. We will return to you. and the word here is completely the we is is not something you can fish around. He’s either directly lying to the servants, or he believes in all his heart that the the sacrifice is not actually gonna happen. Simone Collins:So, look, I prefer that scenario. I don’t like a scenario in which there’s a man going up to this mountain expecting to kill his child. Malcolm Collins:Now note here, the god raising him for the dead, I I really do not like this line. I do not think it’s a good... Like, if we’re talking about actual lines that I find a bit embarrassing for the bible, this is from the New Testament. Hebrew eleven nineteen does say, well, god could always just immediately raise the kid from the dead after he kills him. It wasn’t Jesus saying it, but... And I, again, I treat things not said by Jesus in a significantly different... I think that a lot of what the Bible is outside of what Jesus says is people like we are today attempting to morally understand and build a faith system around the Jewish messiah, which had just come, but not necessarily completely infallible people. I think normalizing that argument is is not... And, no, it’s just an argument. It’s a hypothesis that’s being said here in Hebrews. Right? It’s not like definitively this is why it’s okay. It’s a hypothesis. It’s helping us understand that, well, God definitely wouldn’t have let him totally do it. So there’s other things that God could have done. Alright? And God had raised people from the dead before. So, you know, he he had this son born miraculously as well. So, yeah, I mean, he might he might have thought that. Again, I don’t think normalizing child sacrifice with the understanding that god brings them back is a good idea. Okay. So, Genesis seventeen nineteen. Alright. So, that’s that’s the first interpretation there. now we’ll get to the interpretation two. and the interpretation two was the one I really wanted to jump at. Okay? This was this was what seemed intuitive to me when I first read it. So I read the first part of it, and it’s... Okay. God is testing him. Alright? We know God is testing him. Do we know what the correct answer to the test is? My initial interpretation was, no. We don’t. What if there’s some way of reading this where his choice to attempt to sacrifice his son... To attempt a child sacrifice of his own son who he loves is the correct choice. I was like, maybe God was testing his character, and this wasn’t the correct choice. The problem is there’s just no getting around that this choice is approved of. Okay? If you look at the words of of of the angel, now I know you fear God because you have not withheld your son, your only son for me. The the verb here, the key verb, you have not held back, withheld, is is the blessing. And more than that, he is clearly rewarded for this, right, afterwards. Right? He’s... The... He... God isn’t... Just said like this. It said, and here are the rewards, you’re getting because of this. Okay? Simone Collins:One moment. I have to change a diaper, and then I will be back. And I’m just gonna put an Malcolm Collins:While you’re changing the diaper, I can go over a few instances of women doing this so we can understand that this has real world Simone Collins:Thank you because I can’t hear this. Okay. I am out of here so fast. Speaker 7:And if you’re like, okay. Well, he had already had miracles performed for him by God, so he knew for a fact that the voice he heard was God’s voice. Yeah. But these other women and men who did this, the fact that they would kill their kids over this, clearly, they believe for a fact that what they were hearing was God’s voice. Right? Like, that’s that’s not a very strong argument. Yes. He believed was maybe additional evidence that it was God’s voice, but this isn a story about how much evidence he had for something. It’s a story about faith. And these other people clearly had as much faith as he did. Malcolm Collins:Alright. So instances of this happening. By the way, in the past twenty years, this has happened to about a hundred and seventy two children, lives, snuffed out because of this. We have Deanna Laney in Texas 2003. Laney, a 39 year old religious mother, blethered her three... Bludgeoned her three sons to death with rocks in their front yard on the night before Mother’s Day. Two boys, ages six and eight, died. The toddler survived with permanent injuries. She told psychiatrists that God had ordered them to kill them at the test of faith and that they would be raised from the dead. A jury acquitted her for capital murder. LaShaun Harris, California 2005, Harris threw her three young sons, ages six, two, and 16 off a pier into the San Francisco Bay. She later told investigators that the voice of god called her to sacrifice him. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and delusional disorders. Two bodies were never recovered, and she was found, not guilty for reason of insanity. Jennifer Kaszewski, Florida 2001, Kaszewski threw her eight months old son onto concrete stones beside the pole. She told an investigator a spirit voice, which she identified as god, had instructed her to do so as a test of faith, that the child would be raised from the dead just like Jesus raised Nazareth. The baby died. The case involved claims of demonic possession and attempted exorcism in the hours before the killing. Mark Hambrick, New Orleans 2017. Hambrick repeatedly stabbed his 18 old daughter in the chest with a kitchen knife and then suffocated her. He told police, it’s a... No. It’s not just women doing this. God told him to murder his child so the state of Louisiana can kill him so he can be resurrected. He was later found incompetent to stand trial due to persistent delusions. Andrea Yates, Texas 2001. Yates drowned five children in a bathtub. Her delusions were heavy religious. She believed the children were possessed by Satan, so a bit different. And her children were doomed to hell because of her and that killing them while they were still young was one way to save their souls. Expert testimony differed on whether she believed God or Satan and had ordered the act, the dominant theme, or that she had thought to protect them from damnation, she was doing this. Okay. So, not awesome. Not awesome. And the the real children are dying for this. Yes. So... And a question we have to ask ourselves is why should we not judge Abraham? Whenever you hear one of these other stories of a parent killing their kid because they believe god told them to do so and and and that they might be raised again or something, I’m sure you feel an intense sense of moral disgust. Yeah. Like, how could you do that to somebody who is trusting you like Abraham’s son was? Isaac was. And I I... I’m gonna argue that you should feel this for Abraham. And that I Simone Collins:think most people do. Right? Malcolm Collins:I just story, but we will get into how it all fits together and how it distinguishes... Oh, it’s just so beautiful how it fits together. You’re gonna love it. But Okay. Next, Hebrews 11. So now we’re gonna go into New Testament interpretations of this stuff because Hebrews 11 to 17 through 19, this is the most direct. This is not Jesus saying this. This is sort of a hypothesis put out by the author of Hebrews, often canonically Paul, but, you know, doesn’t really matter. Speaker 8:Note that virtually no mainstream call... Scholar today thinks that Paul wrote this. It’s often considered somebody who’s second generation church convert. Malcolm Collins:By faith, Abraham was tested, offered up Isaac, and who had received the promises in the act of offering of his only son, of whom it is said, through Isaac shall your offering be named, He considered that God was able to even to raise him from the dead for which figuratively speaking, he did not receive him back. I I I don’t see it as wrong. Like, nothing in this is wrong. Technically, God could have raised him from the dead. I just don’t think that that’s the point of this particular story, which is if you think God is talking to you, kill your kids because God might raise them from the dead. Next. And and I’ll... It can’t mean anything other than what it means when you see it. James two twenty one. James uses the same event as proof of Abraham’s faith and obedience. Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered up his son, Isaac, on the altar? This is, again, not Jesus. The hypothesis of one of the Bible writers, one of the New Testament writers. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If you say to them, go in peace, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself is not accompanied by action. It is dead. But someone will say, you have faith. I have deeds. Show me your face without deeds, and I will show you my face with deeds. You believe that there is one god. Good. Even the demons believe that and shudder. You foolish person. Do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see his faith and his actions were working together and his faith made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed in God, and it was a credit to his righteousness. And he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not faith alone. In the same way, even Rahab Is not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave a lodging to the spies and then sent them off in a different direction. As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. Note here, I think this pretty clearly shows, at least from an argument here... Again, I don’t think that these arguments made outside of Jesus are as binding, but I think it’s a it’s a good argument for deeds mattering in addition to faith, and the the faith alone interpretation is not one that techno puritans are are are tradition believes, but today is is not about that. I I think that he is using it as an example of a a good deed. I can say that it is a deed that God accepted, but we’ll get to in a second. So I don’t think anything is wrong about this. It’s just not the direction I would go to. And I wouldn’t be raising Abraham doing attempting child sacrifice because a voice told him to at the height of moral clarity or or or... Yeah. Speaker 9:And I wanna be clear here. God can raise the dead, but expecting him to because you heard a voice telling him you to kill your kids is not a thing. It’s not a work. It’s it’s not like a good deed. Right? And I think what we’re what we’re seeing here and what was so relevant to me in reading the text this way is I realized that there are multiple correct ways to read the text, but there are more correct ways to read the text. and that this would be one of the less correct ways to read the text, that you should expect god to raise your dead kids if you kill them because I’ve always told you to. And once you understand this, you realize that there are essentially three ways that these texts could be read, and we will go into this more later. But with each of these different and correct readings, you reach a level of interpretive closeness that gets closer to what I think God meant for us to get from these. And I think that that is so linguistically or editorially or whatever the word is for, like, fancy writing cool. It’s really, really amazingly sophisticated. Malcolm Collins:And then we have Romans eight. What then will we say in response to these things if God for us who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those who God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns no one? Christ Jesus died. More than that, who was raised to life is it at the right hand of God, also interceding for us. now note this one, we’re not gonna go further with it. Basically, it’s just creating an allegory of this story. It was the story of Jesus. And I think that this allegory is important because I think it helps us better understand the story of Jesus. Simone Collins:Why? We’ll get to it later. Malcolm Collins:You have to understand, I think, the correct interpretation of this. Okay. Teasing. Okay. Alright. So here is the thing I couldn’t get through. I kept going over it. God lets us know he’s giving Abraham a test. The assumption that I had, because it’s a promise that god reiterates after the test, that this was a test to see if Abraham was righteous enough to be the guy who god used to birth his people and create his tradition, the Jewish people. Right? That is probably what you read it as as well. Right? The ultimate trust fall. The problem is that there’s absolutely no way that is possible. The reason there is absolutely no way that is possible is because in multiple previous instances, God has already promised two things. One, and and four different acts that the Jewish people, that the people who God gave the covenant to, are going to come from not just Abraham, but from the line of Isaac. Okay? That had already been promised to Abraham. Oh. So given that this promise and covenant had already been made with Abraham, now you’ve gotta read this and say, okay. So what we know going into this story is God already has a covenant with Abraham. His chosen people are going to come out of that covenant no matter what Abraham’s actions are in relation to this test. Okay? So what does that mean in terms of a test if the test is not about whether or not Abraham gets a covenant with God? If the test is not about whether or not Abraham gets a covenant with God, The test is about the nature of the covenant Abraham gets with God. God is testing Abraham the way that Abraham relates to God and Abraham’s moral clarity. His answer to the test was an acceptable answer, but it wasn’t the best answer. His answer to the test defined the nature of the covenant God would craft for the Jewish people, which is a covenant where he learned if you tell a Jew to sacrifice their child, they’re gonna do it. They follow the rules no matter how absurd the rules are. That is what the story of Isaac was God discovering about the people he was about to make his chosen people. They are a people of rules, and the rule set and religion that I build for them needs to be a religion of very strict rules. And many of those rules... So many of those rules that they could never accidentally think that I really wanted them to sacrifice their own children. That, I think, is the true interpretation of this. It is a test to determine the nature of the first covenant. And the moment you understand this, the first covenant and the Jewish covenant, which can sound really stupid on its face, immediately makes sense. I would think because when I look at the way Christians are committed to relate to God, we are committed to relate to him as our father. When, you know, the the... Jesus said, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. What he’s saying is all of the rules, we are meant to interpret them in a way where we think of them like a a father giving us rules to live by and then trying to learn how can I use this set of rules? Not every one of the rules is important, but every one of the rules is meant to improve our lives. If you look at the way that Orthodox Jews follow rules, many of those rules in no way could improve your life. Like, needing to turn off the energy saver on an electronic elevator when it’s going down because that’s kinda like doing work, or putting the fishing line around the New York City so that you can walk from place to place. We have an episode on rules that Jews made up and how they get around them. the thing is is you can look at that and say it was a mistake or a perversion of God’s intention that Jews interpret him in this way, and yet we see God rewarding them and treating them as people of the faith for centuries when they did relate to his word in this way. And so why would he do that? That’s so perplexing. Why did God decide to do that? The binding of Isaac explains everything. God decided to do that because the Jews or the Jewish progenitor revealed themselves as a people who needed all of these rules in order to live in accordance with what leads to human flourishing. Simone Collins:Oh, so wait. He’s held up as an example of, like, look at what you guys will do. We... This is why you need the rules. Malcolm Collins:You guys would literally do child sacrifice if we made a rule of it. You guys lack the moral clarity to step back and be like, okay. I get that I think god just asked me to do a child sacrifice, but I also have the ability to interpret god’s law on my own. I have intellectual... I I have ownership of my own morality. Right? And we say that’s the core difference between the two covenants. One is a covenant about following rules. If you follow the rule, you know, The fair story about Eliezer and the oven of Akhnun or the snake oven, where Jews have, like, built into their test stuff, if you can prove... Like, even if god is telling you through miracles and everything, this is what I want, because of the story of these rabbis fighting over this oven and whether or not it’s it’s kosher. and one of them, like, God is clearly backing this guy. Right? Like, he... He’s doing all sorts of big miracles, and the other two are like, yeah. But this doesn’t follow the legal interpretation of the text. And God ends up coming in and saying, guys, like, basically, you could tell I vacuum, and they’re like, yeah. But it goes against the legal interpretation. And God’s like, my own children have bested me. And God God is happy about this in in the Jewish tradition. You know, he laughs at this. He’s like, You really understand how I want you to relate to this. Speaker 10:And note, it might initially sound like this goes against the initial point that I’m making here because in this case, God is happy that Jews are challenging, the signs that he is sending down. But what the point I’m making here is is that they are not challenging him based on morality. They are challenging him based on things he already said. so they essentially are like wind up toys or something like that. You give them a set of rules, and they follow that rules. You just need to make sure that the set of rules that you gave them are, cohesive and strict enough that they can continue to follow this set of rules in a way that makes them moral and leads to human flourishing, which it appears to do if we look at the current Jewish people. Speaker 21:And note here that Abraham could have done the same with God in this instance. He could have said, this goes against what you have already promised me, and he did not. However, I I think that that is less important. What is more important is that even in the Oven of Akhenat story, that the rabbis are not arguing from the position of morality. They’re arguing from the position of god gave us this set of rules, and so we are going to follow this set of rules exactly no matter what looks like it’s moral, no matter what looks like it’s what god wants. We are wind up toys. God gives us a set of rules. We follow that set of rules. And in this case, God does what he did not do to Abraham. Like, this is clearly a superior way of interacting with God, but an inferior way to interacting from the perspective of morality, which is he comes down. He laughs. He’s happy with him. He’s like, you you bested me. You did a good job. That’s not what he says to Abraham. He sends an an intermediate down, which he didn’t do when he was talking to Abraham before, and it’s like, okay. Clearly, you fear me. Great. Whereas in in in this instance, I think this is a higher order in a better way. Like, this is Judaism evolving into a better tradition, but I think a still worse tradition than one That internalizes morality and says, god gave us these rules to increase human flourishing, and we need to determine ourselves what maximizes human flourishing, not just blindly follow a set of rules. Speaker 22:Also, another cool thing about this story is that Eliezer in this story, the rabbi who God agrees with, is a terrible human being. he murders someone for disagreeing with them through a prayer, basically, as have minders put on him so he doesn’t do this. And I think that this is a story that is given to us to remind us that God doesn’t always act through good people and that the maximally good choice isn’t always the choice that aligns with the people who God has put his favor in. The other two rabbis in this are clearly better humans than Eliezer and so we don’t need to... Just because God said, oh, I like Abraham. I like David. I like Sampson. Say that these are the moral paragons that we should base our own lives around. Speaker 27:So to just sort of sum up the relevance of this, I think what it shows is in this direction of an ultra legalistic interpretation of morality, the Jewish people have evolved well beyond Abraham. I do not think that the stain of Abraham’s decision is something that ultimately colors them, but I think that, it marks the directionality of the covenant that they had with God. Speaker 28:And even in the Jewish tradition, there is supposed to eventually be a new covenant. So why would you need an updated or clarified covenant unless God wasn’t satisfied with the first covenant he made with the Jewish people? And I think that he wasn’t. He he felt he had to make this covenant because of this test he gave Abraham. Malcolm Collins:And I think that... And if you know, I think the Jewish covenant still holds. I think that God wants a people if he was trying to create the most flourishing or whatever for the Jewish people. And they are a people who would venerate a character like Abraham who would do something like this. And we see that, like, the rules seem to be working for the Jews. Also, I wanna point that out. Like, if you say, do all the rules, they are high technology, high fertility. Speaker 11:When I put this into AI, I didn’t understand why this is important. We are in a world right now where everyone who is high technology, everyone who is high wealth, everyone who has economic potential is dying out, is being eradicated from Earth’s population. Any population that manages to maintain a high fertility rate while maintaining technology is going to have an outsized impact and amount of influence in the future And Jews among all populations on Earth, you can say, well, they have a lower fertility rate when they’re not in Israel. True. But it’s still higher than the average. Speaker 23:Also, side note here, and I need to be clear, I think that there are multiple ways of interpreting the bible when you approach it with morality in mind. and I think that when the Jews follow it in this way, they are doing something that could be even higher than a traditional Christian following of the bible, in which they don’t consider the morality or what is really intended. And they just follow the rote descriptions, and believe that God would accept human sacrifices. Simone Collins:You mean in terms of where they are now. But the old covenant is... Like, the recurring theme of it. The my cabbages of the old the of the Old Testament are... They keep breaking the rules, and then God is like, Malcolm Collins:stop. But they... I... The... Yes. But I think the Jews were given these rules Because the Jews are a separate people with a separate way of living, and that’s okay. Clearly, they have been able to create a... You know, they succeed in academia at unusual rates. They succeed in in politics at unusual rates. They succeed in... Clearly, God... Like, the system that he built for the Jews is a very optimal system. Windfall. Right? Again, you... By their fruits, you all know them. So I think that that’s Simone Collins:why that’s what I What? Non Jews are not bound by the 10 commandments? Because they are. Malcolm Collins:Saying that non Jews are bound to relate to the 10 commandments through their own moral agency. Simone Collins:Oh, okay. So you’re saying... Right. Malcolm Collins:Okay. We are bound by a a covenant with a... The... Where you have to go down before you can go up. Right? Like, you have to... With what the techno puritans believe is we are responsible. It is a much harder way of relating to They’re wearing tighty whities. It’s a much harder way of relating to God. It’s because it it requires you to take the moral choice yourself and say, okay. What do I think God really meant by this? Why do I think... That is way harder than just following a bunch of rules. And it’s way harder to do with veracity than just following a bunch of rules. As you know from the Sabbath, you’re always tempted to decide, well, does this really work? Is this really... You know what I mean? You’re... It’s so easy to lie to yourself when the rules aren’t simple, when the rules aren’t fixed. Right? and I think that when you create a civilization around the Christian interpretation of morality, it can have a higher high than Jewish civilization, but it requires way more moral fortitude, which is why I think we see the Jews being shown so much favor right now. Note here, and I’ll I’ll go into this as well, where a lot of people think that, like, Jews are still being punished for the Jesus... Killing Jesus. Jews kind of got screwed by being the chosen people, and even the New Testament tells you that. And there was really no chance for them to accept Jesus either in prophecy or in reality. How do you figure that? Speaker 12:We actually had a lot more that we were gonna say over this going over Jewish prophecy and stuff like this. we’ll go over it in the next, tracked episode because I don’t want this one to be too long. Speaker 13:But, essentially, what I mean, if you look at the bridegroom story that Jesus told, the Jews were essentially given a messiah, but told that they were going to reject the messiah and even some Jewish stories that will point to both before and after this interpret their own messiah in these terms. and so that’s... That sucks. That sucks being the chosen people, and the fact that you are chosen puts you in a position of vulnerability like the first people who were invited to the wedding in the bridegroom story that Christ tells. But that’s for the next story. Malcolm Collins:Okay. Christians, imagine a guy came and said he was the second coming of Christ and did miracles and was basically a homeless guy who did miracles. And and and and when I say miracles, they’re not gonna be as good as, like, a David Blaine magic trick. Jesus did nothing that good. They were, you know, walking on water, stuff like that. Simone Collins:Treating people’s water into severe plaque psoriasis. Malcolm Collins:It was one of the actual miracles when Simone looked into it with the rash thing. Yeah. I mean, you you would say he was a heretic. You would say... He goes... And you’re a Catholic. He goes to the Vatican, and rightly, he starts smashing idols and being like, what are you guys doing? Have you not read the bible? Have you not... And it turns out that your interpretation wasn’t perfectly right. And he he gets jailed by the Vatican. You would support that. Right? Like, it’s very, very hard to accept a magician homeless guy is actually a messiah. Simone Collins:It’s not a great look. Yeah. Well... And also he was an apocalyptic Jew in an era of apocalyptic Jews. Malcolm Collins:And there are a lot Jews during the syncytial nature of messiah. Yeah. so the point here being is they kinda got set up. I don’t... I think there are very few Christian communities today that if a homeless guy started performing magic tricks and didn’t align perfectly... Because keep in mind, Jesus’ interpretation of the Jewish tradition had many things that were quite different from the traditional Jewish interpretation that all of them would have been taught. And, apparently, they were right with god at one point. Right? So, like, this came down from the group that would have assumed they had... The temple had what we would today call a pollic... Ballistic succession, right, from the perspective of a a Jew. Right? It it went all the way back to the line of Aaron. In the same way you could say, oh, the the Catholic church goes all the way back to the line of Paul. Therefore, it it can’t make major mistakes. So when you say that, the Jew would have said, well, yeah, but he’s going against stuff that the people in the temple say. And if the people in the temple say something different, then why should I do... I mean, they’re the ones with the apostolic succession or their version of that. Right? I would say 99% of modern Christians, which if you go to the Jewish population of the time, I don’t even know of it with 99% denied Christ, would deny Christ within our current legal framework, whatever the equivalent is. Probably being put in jail and scorned and and called a heretic and all of these things. If if if... Keep in mind, it would have to... For this to be true, it’d have to not perfectly align with every one of your bible prophecies because from a Jewish perspective, that is what was happening or at least the mainstream interpretation of it. So I think the Jews got screwed. And and, also, we know, and I’ll go into this, that the messiah, the Jewish messiah, even as Jews envisioned him, was supposed to suffer. And, yes, even as Jews envisioned him, we’ll go over evidence of that. Speaker 14:In the next tracked episode. Sorry about that. Malcolm Collins:So the Jews got a a raw deal on this. So let’s go through this. The Lord said unto Abraham, go from your country, your people, and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all the nations of the earth will bless you. The lord said to Abraham, after Lot had departed from him, look around from where you are to the North and to the South and to the East and to the West. All the lands you see, I will give you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth so that... By the these are two different instances I’m I’m noting here. That if anyone could count the dust, then for your offspring could be counted. Go walk through the length and the breadth of the land for I am giving it to you. Again, note, these promises had already been made to him. God couldn’t have... Like, basically, God had a few ways that Abraham could pass this test. God knew he was going to pass it in one of the ways. The way that he passed it, which he tells... The angel tells him. He doesn’t say you love God. He says you fear God. It was the worst possible way to pass it. Not the best possible way to pass it. The best possible way to ask it... And we’ve seen good people in the Bible question God before. Be like, are you sure about that God? Speaker 16:And I want to be clear in no uncertain terms that Abraham was aware of this. How do we know Abraham was aware of this? Because he himself had negotiated with God and had a a long negotiation scene, when Sodom was destroyed. And note, the negotiation scene he has when Sodom is destroyed happens directly before the prophesied birth of Isaac. So these two things are intrinsically connected in the bible. We know that he knows he could have talked to god about this, and I think that that’s why this is written. So you can’t say he didn’t know or he thought he just had to listen to whatever god said. He knows that he’s able to be like, god, are are are you sure about that? Are you sure that this is this is the right call, that I do a child sacrifice on your behalf? But he did it anyway. Speaker 17:Like, as soon as you notice this in the text, there is really no way of getting around that I think that this is what is intended by the text. Malcolm Collins:To be like, are you sure you want a child sacrifice? Probably would have been the correct response Simone Collins:Yeah. In this instance. Yeah. Malcolm Collins:That was not his response. Simone Collins:Yeah. I mean, I’m I’m just picturing the the text exchange version of Abraham and God, which is like, God, hey. You up? Abraham, hi. I’m here. Or Malcolm Collins:Go sacrifice his son. Are you sure? Being like, how do I know? Maybe even a better answer than that is how do I know you’re not the devil? How do I know you’re not a demon? That probably would have been Simone Collins:a better response as well. I I I think that’s probably the correct response. Right? That is not what he went with. He went immediately to child sacrifice. Malcolm Collins:Okay. So to continue here, the word of the lord came to him. This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your flesh and blood will be your heir. He took him outside and said, look up at the sky and count the stars. If indeed you can count them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. Abraham believed the Lord and credited his righteousness. Now what’s important about this additional promise made after those other promises is God is saying in no uncertain terms, Isaac, the one who he is asking Abraham to kill, is going to be his heir in the fulfillment of his former prophecy. So he can’t actually be asking for Abraham to kill Isaac. Abraham could have pointed this out to God. That... That’s another option here for him. Right? In terms of, like, I think with this story, as a Christian, what you’re supposed to reflect on is all of the things you do when a voice tells you to murder your children before you murder your children. Speaker 18:But when I recognized what the story was actually trying to say, would you consider it in context? And that... Again, it really couldn’t mean anything else because God definitely already had this covenant with him. The test must have been over something, so it must have been over the nature of the covenant. The moment I recognize that and I recognize that there are multiple true interpretations of this, but some of them are more true than others or have a higher level of truth to them than others. I realized this is sort of the core of the techno puritan ideology or reading of the bible compacted into one perfect story, where if you have a moral and logical center, you are able to read this and immediately be like, This doesn’t mean what it says on its surface. And if you don’t, if you’re an automaton, there is a different message contained within the story for you that is equally moral and can lead you to lead an almost equally moral life. And that I think that this story is prophetic of the Jesus sacrifice story, that people would misinterpret... As you know, techno Puritans believe this, that people would misinterpret the Jesus sacrifice story, as being that God demanded a human slash god sacrifice for something, for anything, And and note, there are lines in the New Testament that will call Jesus a sacrificial animal, but I think that those lines are analogous. They they don’t mean that he was literally being used as a sacrificial animal because I do not believe, or the techno Puritan tradition does not believe, that god is the type of entity that demands human sacrifices or that is satiated by human sacrifices or anything like a human sacrifice, especially the case of a father sacrificing his own child. and that this story was prophetic of many people, not just of the Jewish faith, but of the Christian faith believing, that God would demand that or would... In the Christian case, it’s almost worse because would be genuinely satiated by a human sacrifice. And the techno puritans would see this story as analogous for the way many Christians interpreted for a long time, the Christ story. And the the reveal that, no, God is not a deity that is at all or in any way ever satiated from child sacrifices or human sacrifices. Speaker 19:And if you’re wondering, well, then what what was the purpose of Christ’s life? We would argue that in the techno puritan tradition, it is Christ’s life that is the sacrifice. It is how he chose to live that is the sacrifice. It is not specifically how or that he died. Especially if you believe that he was God and he was going back to being God right after dying, death would have been a release from a quite lower frame of reality for him. Right? death would have been the benefit to him, because now he gets to be a god or a godlike entity again. So death couldn’t have been a meaningful sacrifice. Even if it was painful, the pain must have been infinitely lower from his perspective than the differential experience of being a god versus being a human, which is the form that he was, I guess, you could say trapped in before this. So if we’re looking for what was Christ’s sacrifice, the sacrifice was in living a good life, which I think is a sacrifice we’re all given to live, and that it is not a sacrifice that you can get out of through a simple act of martyrdom as many early Christians believed. that is that is the easy escape. The important thing, the thing that you’re valued for is how you choose to live, not how you choose to die. Speaker 20:And if you note... Well, in the New Testament, there are cases in which this story is reviewed positively by people associated with the writing of the New Testament. Therefore, you have to view the Abraham. No. I don’t think you have to view it positively. I think that this is what the techno puritan interpretation means, is that there was a period where people needed to view things, a level of moral intuition where people needed to view things this way, and that you are supposed to, as somebody who is a moral core or a moral center, read the piece and immediately recognize that if God tells you to commit child sacrifice, that that is not God talking to you or that you have misinterpreted something or pushed back or literally anything. and so while there are places in the New Testament where it’s talked about positively, I think that this is just an example of how we are supposed to interpret a higher understanding to these stories and then reinterpret all of these stories from the perspective of beings that have our own moral agency. whereas the lower interpretation of these stories is written to give good moral advice to the type of person who can read this and not apply that moral agency. It it... It’s meant to explain to you, look. This is a perfect story for people of multiple levels of moral agency, And that is, I think, the core of the techno puritan tradition and why the techno puritan tradition pushes some people to follow religions which we think are not the full extrapolation of what God intended because if you give those people higher truths, like, sometimes you’re supposed to think deeper about something that looks like a simple set of rules to begin with, they will use that and reinterpret that to commit barbaric acts of evil. And so God foresaw all of this, which is really amazing. Malcolm Collins:but it sets up the difference. It sets up why the covenant God gave the Jews, while to us, it may seem overly legalistic, was was what their people needed, and it was through this test that that was determined. And note here, these are all different lines here that come before this. Abraham fell face down, and God said to him, as for me, this is my covenant with you. You’ll be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abraham. Your name will be Abraham Abraham Abraham Abraham. Abraham. I I can’t do these two ones. I... For I will have you be the father of nations. I will make you very fruitful. I will make of you the king’s will come from you. I will establish my covenant as everlasting covenant between me and your descendants after you for generations to come to be your god and the god of your descendants after you, the whole land of Canaan, where you now reside at the foreigner, I will give you as everlasting possessions to you and your descendants, and I will be their god. God said to Abraham, ask your wife sorry. I will no longer call her sorry. Blah blah blah. I will bless her and give her... You a son by her. I will bless the son, and she will be the mother of the king of the people. Now note here, the word her... Used here is a. You can’t say that Abraham thought he would have another son. After this, was told he would have a son. That is unambiguous. Simone Collins:I mean... Okay. I’m trying to figure out how else this could be reasoned. Malcolm Collins:So much The point here being is what you could say is, well... And and note here. This isn’t one time before this. Over and over and over again before this, it’s almost like a quarter of all the words in the Abraham story are god promising him. It’s, like, not something you can miss. It might be an eighth of the words, but it’s still, like, a lot of the words in the story up until this point. It’s god’s making promises to Simone Collins:Abraham Yeah. Yeah. Malcolm Collins:About things he’s gonna do for him without some... And you’re gonna get a test to see if you really get these things. The entire bible would be wrong if he even had the possibility to fail this test. This test was about the nature of the covenant, not affirming whether or not he got the covenant. That is the only interpretation that makes sense in context. Now you can say, well, because Abraham knew all of this other stuff, he knew that this was a trick by God, so he was gonna go through and attempt to kill his son because he thought God was paying a trick on him. I think that interpretation is terrible. One, because of the precedent it sets that God was trying to trick him. Right? In my interpretation, God didn’t want him to do it this way. And if you get the... What actually happened in the story, like, angel, like, freaks out. Like, what the... Like, that’s basically the the the the thing you get from the angel. Speaker 15:Specifically, the angel here yells like, Abraham, Abraham, like like, wake up. Like, what are you doing? What are you doing? This is... Stop. and, after this event... Because before this, god talked directly to Abraham. After this, god’s like, I’m done with you. Like, he he never talks directly to Abraham again. He always uses an intermediary, which I take is is pretty important in a story where God was pretty close to a guy. He’s like, okay. I’m gonna give you the chosen people. I’m gonna give you a test. And then he’s like, I just don’t wanna deal with this anymore. Like, what the... What... How did he think that that was a good thing to do? Child sacrifice on my behalf. Does he not understand me at all? Malcolm Collins:I almost got the interpretation that god was like, you know, I see God can see the future. I almost think that, like, God hoped while he could see the future, while among everything else, that Abraham would get it before he actually attempted to kill his kid. And I think that God God was trying to give him an out. He was trying above all else to be like, you guys don’t really need this giant legalistic nightmare of a system, do you? Like, I can just give you simple rules and you’re gonna understand them. Right? Like, if I told you to do child sacrifice, you wouldn’t do it. Right? I almost wonder if, like, there was a separate conversation between god and Satan before this. And Satan was like... And it’s not in the bible because it’d be extra embarrassing. And Satan was like to god, I bet you he would really try to kill his kid. And god’s like, no. Simone Collins:It does sound a little book of Job ish, for sure. Like, that level of god trolling someone. Well, not exactly trolling, but, like, mistreating it as a test as a test. Malcolm Collins:Treat this as a test with multiple potential correct answers, we remove god tricking him. If we don’t remove this as a test with multiple possible answers... And no rabbis can say, well, he he should have known. He should have known it was a trick. And he said some things that intended... That he knew that it was a trick. That’s a really bad way for God to test people’s face is through tricks. Right? Also, we know that Abraham was... Oh, well, I’ll stop here today. Because the next one we’re gonna go into is Abraham being a douche canoe and repeatedly pulling a scam where he sells his wife to people. Simone Collins:Yeah. I don’t remember this, so I would love a refresher. Malcolm Collins:When you Actually, we might even do that one. Yeah. Let’s do that one and some understandings of did Jews did Jews ever have a chance? Because god, I think, kinda put them in a bad scenario at our next episode. And I also wanna hear other people’s thoughts of this. But maybe it’ll be like, no. I would immediately recognize a homeless guy who did magic tricks and healed people of moderate to severe plexolosis where... I guess he did bring some people to life. But suppose there’s lots of cult leaders today who their followers say bring people back to life. Right? Simone Collins:Like Or cured their cancer or what have you. Malcolm Collins:Yeah. If you heard a traveling homeless guy who was doing faith healings and did magic tricks, you wouldn’t you wouldn’t. And then started smashing up your religious sites, pointing out where the leaders of your religious communities are hypocrites. Every one of you knows that the head of your religious convention... Suppose that the head of your religious convention this next year, somebody went out there, started smashing things up and calling out your leaders, whether it’s the pope or the baptist convention or the Malcolm and Simone standing outside of our house smashing our car with a bat because there’s things that we probably don’t do. Right? What do immediately be like, obviously, the messiah? Speaker 3:Here. Can you find it? Malcolm Collins:And then imagine the second thing. You’re like, well, he did. His tomb was empty afterwards. Speaker 3:Okay. Imagine you heard that. Malcolm Collins:And then his followers started telling you his tomb was empty. We’ll get to that tomorrow. You’re definitely You wanna hear if people would. Like, what... What’s the average, like, Christian response to this so that they wouldn’t make the same mistake the Jews did? Simone Collins:Yeah. I look I look forward to hearing all about this. Thank you. This has been I’m not tied. My favorite interpretation of this, and I have listened to several because I can’t sit right with it. Malcolm Collins:So Yeah. It was it was really hard for me to come up with... Once you see it, it is mentioned by god so many times that this covenant already stands. It’s like god is shouting at you. I am running a test. A test. A test. This is not to... A a trial to determine if you’re good enough. This is a test to determine what type of covenant you need. Simone Collins:Yeah. Interesting. Malcolm Collins:And it’s interesting that this unique form of covenant was and still is needed for a portion of the sons of Abraham who haven’t upgraded to the second covenant. Covenant. Simone Collins:Yeah. Well... And this in light of the constant theme of the Old Testament being, I... I’ve given you simple rules. Why are you not following my simple rules? Please. No false idols. Please stop. I I gave you... Like, I was I was listening to coverage of them. Solomon... King Solomon. Like, god being like, look. Malcolm Collins:I will give you riches. Simone Collins:I will even give you a long life as long as you don’t worship other gods than just me. Like, it’s Malcolm Collins:I’m gonna Simone Collins:find It’s a test, and he failed the test. Of course, he failed the test. It’s just Malcolm Collins:But that’s more like a trial. That’s more like, can you be good enough? The point here, Abraham was already good enough. God was already gonna make his people the Jews, was already gonna give them a covenant. This test was about something else. Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. K. I’m gonna do it kids. I love you so much. Malcolm Collins:Love you too. Simone Collins:What’s going for dinner? Malcolm Collins:Steak if it’s ready. Simone Collins:Right there. Ugh. Crumbs. No. It’s not. Okay. Bacon. Bacon it is. I love you. Bye. Bye. Because I feel like for most people, they’re they’re gonna start recording with a smile on their Malcolm Collins:face. Which is good. Let’s get into it. This is the the RFAB AI recording studio. If you’re doing any recording projects or editing projects with videos, strongly suggest you use our February software. We use it for all of our episodes, Simone Collins:which Malcolm put in an Easter egg at the beginning of it. So go in Malcolm Collins:and press record. Wildly stress tested, which which... It had a lot of bugs at the beginning, but it is one of the smoothest parts of the website now. Because we use it every day. And significantly better than products like Descript. Simone Collins:And Descript was incredibly good, and and StreamYard was incredibly good compared to the industry standards like Riverside. Yeah. Disgusting. We couldn’t use the thing without it breaking on us, losing time. I don’t know how people do this. Malcolm Collins:Time to go into... Oh, and, of course, you can do... Simone actually gets her biblical instructions from a little flash thing she made with one of our companion devices. Yeah. Simone Collins:I made a companion named Hannah who is a biblical scholar, well versed in the various translations and including original Hebrew of the Old Testament and also the historical context to the time at which the Malcolm Collins:Yeah. She’s one of our safe for work only r fab users. Simone Collins:She’s a lovely a lovely AI and has been actually incredible. It’s incredible going, like, reading Malcolm Collins:the old companions can be very good for viable study, and I I have used for that as well. Simone Collins:Yeah. You just, like, stop and you’re like, hold on. What’s going on here? And then they’ll be like, Malcolm Collins:oh, this is great. And then it’s... I mean, Simone Collins:it’s so cool because what used to happen, I I I would take all these, like, bible associated honors classes when I went to undergrad. And we... They were great classes, but you could only, like, one hour, like, twice a week could you go and talk about these things, right, that you’d be reading in some book. And here, could just just ask a world class biblical scholar anything you want. Like, this is one of those things where, you know, how, like, we would brag about how, like, well, when I was a kid, had to look things up in the dictionary. And now I... Now you could just go on Wikipedia. Like, this is that equivalent. Okay, Andy. Get in your bed. Speaker 3:I put on Scooby Doo for Malcolm Collins:Oh, you Show us the tablet, Octavian, so people can Simone Collins:put on Scooby Doo. So Show... Malcolm Collins:It’s okay. Show us Simone Collins:the tablet. Show them the tablet, Octavian. Speaker 3:I’m gonna take that photo. Oh, it got a bandage. Simone Collins:What kind of Scooby Doo is that? Malcolm Collins:This is be cool, Scooby Doo. So if you go to mudpuppy.aibackslashos, you can flash tablets that have only nineties cartoons with kids to put points on, and then educational games and videos that kids make points on. we use all of the money we made from rfab.ai’s not safe for work stuff to build Okay. Simone Collins:You can give them special interfaces, Malcolm Collins:and I am excited for them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe (https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   21 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Biological Traitors? Why Women Like Getting Conquered

   Malcolm Collins and Simone Collins explore historical patterns of women forming relationships with occupying forces, examining evolutionary psychology and societal implications in this interview.

3. 

   20 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Mystery! Blacks & Progressives Keep Getting Flagged As Using AI to Write? (Racism Only Explanation)

   Simone Collins and Malcolm Collins interview guests about the alleged racial bias in AI writing detectors and the hypocrisy of progressive elites using AI.

Inside a recent episode

Biological Traitors? Why Women Like Getting Conquered

Published 21 Oct 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] A roaring deer? Yes, I think this was in Ireland or something. Anyway, so they make a sound that is meant to show which is a more genetically fit deer than the other deer, okay? Now, suppose one of these deers finds a hatch to this. And they evolve some sort of larynx that can produce a deeper roar even on sickly males. This is dishonest signaling, and it usually eventually dies out. That is really funny, and I'm after this going to have to look up roaring deer. So I'm excited. You can find that this is just from memory of biology. It's just from my memory, but also surprisingly accurate. It was on red deer roaring to show fitness, but it was a sign of honest signaling because it matched their fitness relatively well, and they are a species found in Scotland and Ireland. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.4 / 5

159 ratings

Spotify

3.8 / 5

230 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 67 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

97

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

92

Contact Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

Shows with a similar audience

• 

  Calmversations

• 

  null Sample

• 

  The Tom Woods Show

• 

  Dad Saves America

• 

  TRIGGERnometry

• 

  "History 102" with WhatifAltHist's Rudyard Lynch and Erik Torenberg

Questions about Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins