Photo:Trey Stevens
If Christianity proved to be (at least in the United States) the last real obstacle to subjecting the human soul to the logic of the machine, then technocrats and pagans would have done better if they hadn't destroyed it, alternatively lured the unsuspecting Christian flock into the clutches of false prophets.
Let us take a closer look at the faces of people straight active in shaping techno-Christianism. It is most likely not an accident that these forming forces are almost exclusively people from Peter Thiel's close vicinity.
Let's start with the Stevens marriage.
Trey Stevens is Thiel's partner in the venture and co-founder of Anduril Industries, a company producing high-tech defence systems and weapons.
Trey Stevens is the grandson of a Baptist pastor from a tiny town in Ohio, and his wife Michelle grew up in a devout Catholic household in the suburbs of Philadelphia – her father restored and renovated churches. They met at Georgetown University and their religion merged. This educational institution is not only supported by the Jesuit order, but besides serves as an experimental ground for the American intelligence community.
After graduation Trey Stevens He worked for American intelligence services, where he did computer linguistics. In 2008, jako 1 of the first, received a occupation offer from Thiela, Palantir, and joined the American technological elite. In 2013, Thiel, who funded Palantir, invited him to take over as manager at his venture capital company, Founders Fund, and Stevens moved with his household to San Francisco. Stevens later helped Thiel start Anduril, a company producing, among others, autonomous drones and control systems for the Pentagon. It is worth noting that Trey Stevens was 1 of Trump's candidates for the position of Pentagon Secretary.
His wife, Michelle Stevens, founded in 2024 Non-profit organization ACTS 17 Collective. This organization, which aims to “recognise Christ in a technological environment”, organised the aforementioned, loud lectures by Thiel on Antichrist. The name ACTS 17, an acronym from “the designation of Christ in technology and society”, besides refers to the Biblical chapter describing the apostle Paul's journey through Athens and Thessaloniki to preach the Gospel to the Greeks—the “kings and queens of culture.” In another words, this is simply a mention to the preaching of the apostle Paul in Athens to the Greek elite of the time.
The inspiration for ACTS 17 was Thiel's speech at Trey Stevens' 40th birthday in 2023, in which he spoke about miracles, forgiveness and Jesus Christ. The speech was very strong – in Silicon Valley, long dominated by agnosticism, atheism and practices of the East and occultism (such as celebrated Burning Man FestivalThe public declaration of the Christian religion was considered inappropriate and even dangerous. A year later, inspired by Thiel's speech, Michelle Stevens founded the ACTS 17 collective.
At the same time, as Michelle Stevens notes, the group's mission to convert wealthy and influential people from the technology manufacture may seem to be somewhat in contradiction with Christianity. (To be honest, we're not just imagining it – we're convinced of it).
In an interview with the fresh York Times Michelle Stevens develops this thought: “We Christians are always taught to be mild, humble, marginalized... I think we realized that, at least in the case of the rich, the wealthy and the influential, we request Jesus just as much." He besides talks about the request to attract those “rulers” who do not attend the conventional church.
The organization implements events where leading figures in the technology and amusement manufacture discuss their faith. For example, Trey Stevens openly addressed the relation between Christianity and innovation in his speeches: he believes that the basic principles of venture capital investment embody "God's forgiveness." Stevens besides regularly expresses Thiel's thought to combine technology and Christianity at ACTS 17: for example, that work outside the church may besides be sacred.
Trey Stevens besides refers to the activities of Marcin Luther during the Protestant Reformation. "The roles to which we are called are not only crucial and valuable on a individual level, but besides crucial for the fulfilment of God's command that his kingdom may reign on earth as it is in heaven," Stevens said.
This refers to the "right" and "wrong" search for technological solutions. The right solutions are those that aid to make God’s Kingdom on earth by solving complex and ambitious problems. He first presented this concept in 2022 in an article written jointly with entrepreneur Mark Wagner. The article argued that Silicon Valley plunges into a “nonsensical crisis” marked by:
A) a massive infatuation with venture capital in the absence of promising ideas and projects to finance;
(b) public tweeting on X on political and social issues alternatively of real work and, in fact, retirement at the age of 35 after achieving a large start-up profit.
And if we talk about "appropriate" projects, they lead to advancement in the production, artificial intelligence and extension of human life. And, of course, in defence technologies.
In November 2024 ACTS 17 organised 2 events – in Abu Dhabi and Dubai – where Michelle Stevens gave 2 lectures. The first was how Christian religion can guide career planning, and the second is how God shapes her and her husband's views on artificial intelligence and defense. In Abu Dhabi, after the event, 1 of the participants asked Trey Stevens how he felt about “social stigmatization” related to his work in the defence technology manufacture (and Stevens is profoundly active in it).
‘We do this due to the fact that we believe it's fair and moral," said Stevens, comparing his work with the work of Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the world's first atomic bomb. Oppenheimer recalled that after the first atomic test he was reminded of the words from the Indian epic Bhagawadgita: “Now I have become death, a destroyer of the worlds.” "It was the acceptance of God's destiny to bring justice," Stevens explained, adding that he himself "does not like violence."
Stevens besides told audiences in Zoom that entrepreneurs frequently approached him for professional advice erstwhile they felt “missing the desert”, lonely and spiritually unsatisfied. Stevens suggested that his listeners usage their own dialectic matrix, which divides their work into 4 categories:
bad and easy projects (making senseless iPhone games),
bad and hard projects (making a fresh e-paper),
easy and good projects (create encrypted communicators),
difficult and good projects (the Mars Colonies).
According to Stevens, his company, Anduril, belongs to the second category: it's hard and good work, done where God directs it.. This is besides an crucial issue: the justification of God's will to make highly specialized military control systems in which artificial intelligence will decide to destruct the enemy. fundamentally it is the same concept as Thiel's concept: the salvation of humanity lies in artificial intelligence. Moreover, salvation in the eschatological sense, not mundane.
In the 2015 essay, Peter Thiel argued that discipline and technology are natural allies of Christianity, especially if we “remain open to the eschatological framework in which God operates through us, building the kingdom of heaven today, here on Earth”.
President of Palantir, Alex Karp, expressed akin views by announcing the moral crisis in the technology industry: he felt that considerable capital and a number of talented engineers had been wasted "just to make photograph sharing applications and chat interfaces for the contemporary consumer". Karp blamed modern agnosticism for this. Like Trey Stevens, he believes that the technology sector is overly focused on solving trivial problems, ignoring the most urgent challenges facing society. Karp argued that the problem could be solved by rebuilding the United States from scratch as a "technological republic".
This is simply a clear mention to the thought of the Technocratic Society, kthat existed in the United States and Canada in the 1930s and 1940s and whose goal was to build a strategy of governments, in which all power would belong to engineers and scientists. By the way, Elon Musk's grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was erstwhile a associate of the Society's Canadian branch. Now that a fresh generation of technocrats has powerful tools at their disposal, specified as computers and combined digital systems, the ideas of their predecessors seem entirely feasible. but this time, As Google's co-founder Larry Page utilized to say, it's about creating a "digital god." And if there is simply a god, there are priests..
This means that the clergy of the fresh cult – techno-Christianism – must be the same technocrats who abandoned agnosticism for the fresh religion.
So the technological elite of Silicon Valley, represented by Thiel and the Stevens marriage, are not only successful IT entrepreneurs, but the real chosen by Godwho can build the digital “Kingdom of God” on Earth. And erstwhile built, they can service the flock according to the principles of any esoteric cult, masking its actual anti-humanist content with a technocracy fig leaf and concern for the common good.
If, as technocrats believe, God wants them to make artificial intelligence and implement automated means of destruction, they are simply tools in His hand, and their decisions should be treated as manifestations of God's will, meaning that they should not be complained about or questioned. Isn't that the attractiveness of the technocult that arises before our eyes for the actual rulers of the world?
What a diverse group from Silicon Valley is looking for at ACTS 17 meetings – spiritual improvement or career prospects – is simply a separate issue. The first ACTS 17 event, at which Thiel, of course, spoke, was held in May 2024 in San Francisco, at the home of president Y Combinator, Harry Tan, who created thousands of technology companies with a full marketplace capitalization of over $600 billion. Tan, along with the Stevens marriage, is now effectively promoting the technochristianization of the Silicon Valley elite.
The Stevenses began working closely with Tan after moving to San Francisco and becoming parishioners Epic Church. Epic Church is simply a fresh branch of evangelical Christianity. The Dallas-based Epic Church network places churches in the “difficultly accessible” areas of the United States. San Francisco is 1 of those “difficultly accessible” places. As mentioned above, Christianity in Silicon Valley has until late been marginalized.
Since the launch of weekly services in San Francisco in 2011, Epic Church rapidly developed, attracting about 1,000 people each Sunday. With the support of wealthy parishioners, the church acquired its own building and office space with a full value of $12 million. During the service Pastor Ben Pilgreen explains to the parishioners that any work they do – advertising sales, software creation, etc. – can be sacred. The parishioners, of course, want to believe that they devote time not only to their careers, but besides to a higher intent – serving the Lord. Of course, it happens without any additional effort, which is naturally tempting. Therefore, erstwhile preaching in this spirit, Mr Pilgreen uses the low desires of his flock, as do all pseudo-Christian ministers who promise prosperity and health, completely ignoring the request for spiritual work among their faithful.
‘If you are called to be a graphic designer,” says Pilgreen of his parishioners – “this is simply a sacred calling”.
"We truly feel committed to helping people reflect on how a Christian model can aid them reflect on how they change technology," he said. Paul Taylor, an Oracle worker who became a pastor and presently heads the Center of Faith, labour and Technology of the San Francisco Bay Area, another group helping technocrats to bring religion closer.
It was in the Epic Church community that the Stevens States improved their ideas on how Christian religion should affect Silicon Valley. For 4 years (until the end of 2021) they organized a group called ‘Faith and Work’who met on Tuesday mornings to discuss religion's relation with their professional life. Among the celebrated guests of these seminars were Peter Thiel and Harry Tan. At the same time, this tiny group, led by Stevens, studied work René Girarda, a literary theorist who became a valued theologian in Silicon Valley.
Girard, who died in 2015, spent many years at Stanford University, where He was Thiel's mentor. Girard offers a position of religion that later perfectly fits the Silicon Valley belief system. He suggested that all human desires are "mimetical" – that is, that we want the same thing that another people want. (In fact, we are talking about the effect of the crowd.)
According to Girard, 1 of those who managed to break this cycle of rivalry was Jesus Christ, who, alternatively of being the scapegoat chosen by the masses as a sacrifice, voluntarily sacrificed himself. Interpreting Girard's work, Silicon Valley seemingly found a way to overcome insignificant desires and fight the endless "successful race": namely conversion to Christianity and an effort to follow Christ.
This in peculiar indirectly confirms the fact that J.D. Vance converted to Catholicism. His father was a associate of the Pentecostal community, and his grandmother, who had a large influence on Vance, had a hard relation with this confession, but inactive was a devout believer. He describes his individual way to religion on his blog (Entry 1 April 2020) Vance points, among another things, to Thiel's key influence – during the lecture in 2011, he heard about Girard and the problem of all "successful people".
“According to him (Thiela – auto.), at all phase our work active longer hours of work, social alienation from colleagues and work, whose prestige could not compensate for its senselessness. <...> He believed that these 2 trends – elite professionals trapped in work based on hypercompetitiveness and technological stagnation of society – were linked," writes Vance. He adds that Thiel expressed a feeling that had not been there so far: “I was obsessed with achieving myself—not as a crucial goal, but as a triumph in social competition.”
It might seem that Vance, and the parishioners of the rather elite Epic Church, and the listeners of Thiel's lectures search the same: the meaning of life. And it's kind of true. But it is besides apparent that in their lives spiritual religion boils down to a tool that sustains individual productivity, a individual ethical code that recommends actions contributing to wealth generation. In another words, spiritual life is subject to material life, which fundamentally contradicts the Christian concept of salvation. In this sense, Christians in Silicon Valley most likely view Christianity as a kind of success technology or psychopractice to keep a state of head that is effective.
From this perspective, we repeat Mrs. Shanahan's spiritual search, as we have already described, is much more like the search for a wonderful pill, a psychoactive drug that stimulates its own motivation and, according to Girard's mimetic concept, allows us to follow trends.
However, Girard himself felt that saving the soul requires not the introduction of artificial intelligence into “every iron”, but simply going to church.
But what Church is is another issue.
After all, according to 1 of Thiel's main opponents, Austrian theologian Wolfgang Palaver, excessive absorption with the Antichrist's subject could paradoxically accelerate its arrival. Palaver cites as an example the spiritual mentor of Thiel, German lawyer and thinker Carl Schmitt.
Therefore, Palaver argued that Schmitt's support for national socialists was motivated by the fear of the "Satan unification of the world" under the regulation of a global state which Schmitt viewed as synonymous with the regulation of Antichrist. And since the communists dreamed of uniting the full planet into a single global republic and building a classless society, free from hostility and war, it was the Russian communism Schmitt that saw Schmitt as a "global threat" and Hitler as a catechon ("restraint"). ‘Schmitt realized besides late that his support for Hitler served in fact the Antichrist," says Palaver, adding that the atrocities committed by the Nazis yet led to the creation of the first truly global institution—the United Nations.
It must be acknowledged to Thiel that he openly admits in interviews that the United States is now taking on the function of Antichrist and catechon. However, asked by tv presenter Ross Dout whether Thiel believes that the technology companies he founded actually make tools for the Antichrist, Thiel evasively replied that they did not. However, the fundamental global nature of the Palantiru surveillance system, which is developed through the Pentagon funding, suggests that this tool is very convenient for the Antichrist.
It seems that the certainty that seized Thiel, the belief that he could effectively fight the Antichrist (although according to the Scriptures it is Christ's prerogative), makes him an instrument of the Antichrist. In full agreement with the ideas of his teacher, Schmitt.
If Christianity proved to be (at least in the United States) the last real obstacle in subjecting the human soul to the logic of the machine, then technocrats and Gentiles would have done better if they had not destroyed it, but created a mythical wave that would drive anything unsuspecting Christian flock into the net of false prophets—right into the clutches of the digital Antichrist.
Written by Anastasia Gromowa and Maxim Kariev
for:Лжепророки Кремниевой долины. Часть 2
(choice, emphasis and crowd. PZ)
