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Vatican Rebukes Peter Thiel's Antichrist Lectures in Rome
- vrganj 8mo agoHere's the Vatican's article (in French): https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2026/03/14/thiel-heresie-benanti/ https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2026/03/14/thiel-heresie-bena... The title translates to: >American heresy: should Peter Thiel be burned at the stake?
- expedition32 8mo agoThe Catholic church has a very shall we say complicated stance on democracy, freedom of religion and human rights. Nowadays they realise that the Western world has shifted from their theological and biblical position so they couch it in word salad sophistry.
- embedding-shape 8mo agoThe "nowadays" Catholic church, for better or worse, is also very, very different from the Catholic church that existed before "nowadays". They don't even engage in holy wars anymore, as just one example, that's up to other governments nowadays.
- nutjob2 8mo agoThey're not selling 'indulgences' these days either.
- TheOtherHobbes 8mo agoLuckily people like Paula White-Cain have picked up that banner and they're running it, hard.
- mtrovo 8mo agoThe interesting thing about religions as a whole is that the timespan is so big that you can really see how the backbone of the narrative stays the same while the fanbase and how they pick winners changes a lot, the Vatican state itself is a theocratic state created by an agreement between the pope and the Mussolini. And if you wanna go back even further just remember that while Europe and christian countries were living in the dark ages the Islamic world was the one driving forward scientific knowledge and the exchange of ideas with the East. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
- vrganj 8mo agoOne could also say that a two millenia old institution has evolved alongside the rest of humanity.
- mikkupikku 8mo agoTwo thousand years and they still haven't figured out that Christ wasn't covering himself in gold and jewels. The Vatican has evolved, but not to conform to the ideals espoused by Christ. Note also that evolution isn't synonymous with progress. Lamprey eels evolve too.
- vrganj 8mo agoLook, I'm not a fan of the Church either. But I appreciate them smacking down this lunatic.
- mikkupikku 8mo ago"When a devil gets caught by a monster, I, as a human being, can only hope that they both die."
- notahacker 8mo agoPerhaps one unifying principle behind all the iterations of the Catholic church as social mores changed over time and its influence waxed and waned and was coopted by secular kingdoms, is that every single one of them might have written an article entitled "should Peter Thiel be burned at the stake", if someone had taken the time to explain Peter Thiel to them in terms they might understand. And concluded "yes, probably".
- kergonath 8mo ago> Here's the Vatican's article (in French) That is not the Vatican’s article at all. It’s just a website. You make it sound like the Catholic Church is openly discussing burning someone, it is not the case. And the trope "faut-il brûler … ?" is common in French and completely metaphorical. Again, nobody is advocating putting anyone on a bonfire.
- vrganj 8mo agoThe article on the website is written by the Pope's envoy on AI matters. I think calling that "the Vatican's article" is fair.
- Noumenon72 8mo agoIt's not as official as releasing a formal statement via the Holy See Press Office or some kind of encyclical. Made the headline feel a little misleading when I found out it was an op-ed.
- vrganj 8mo agoFeels like a formal statement would be elevating Thiel too much. But an article written by the Vatican's main guy on this very issue seems quite relevant still.
- kergonath 8mo agoWell, no, because it is not an official statement. It also does not change anything about the other points.
- lo_zamoyski 8mo agoHe is not an “envoy of AI matters”. He is an advisor to the pope on such questions. The articles title is predictably uninformed, as the Church has not made any rebukes. It likely doesn’t have any special concern about Peter Thiel’s lectures; why should it, at least at this point? It’s not like we have a shortage of bad ideas in the world. And Benanti doesn’t have the authority to make pronouncements of that kind in the name of the Church. The quotation is also odd, at least out of context: “Thiel’s entire action can thus be read as a prolonged act of heresy against the liberal consensus: a challenge to the very foundations of civil coexistence, which he now considers outdated.” Sure, he may very well be making statements that could fall under material heresy; I have not read them, because I don’t especially care about what Peter Thiel or much of the SV pseudo-intellectual class thinks. He may also be leaning into heretical ideas as a fulcrum against “liberalism”. However, the bit about liberal consensus admits a weird interpretation thus quoted. Anyone who knows anything about the Church knows that liberalism is not exactly held in high esteem by the Church, given that it is itself a Christian heresy. The Church has taken a stance of tolerance toward liberalism since it assumed dominance under the minimum condition that Catholics be allowed to practice their faith freely in fullness, but this is hardly an endorsement. It can acknowledge that the liberal order is less bad in many ways and relatively speaking than a host of other political orders, but it cannot give it principled support. That being said, I am not criticizing Benanti’s critiques of Thiel, as I have no familiarity with them. I have heard mixed reactions to his views, but that’s about it. The issue I constantly have is the ridiculous pop-cultural caricatures of “the Vatican” that people seem to carry around in their heads. A papal advisor voices an (scholarly perhaps) opinion (that suits someone’s political aims, no less) and all of a sudden “THE VATICAN BORG CUBE” has made a pronouncement. Next we’ll hear that because the pope has said that the Chicago White Sox is the best baseball team, it is now a binding doctrine of the Church because of papal infallibility.
- 5o1ecist 8mo ago[dead]
- conartist6 8mo ago[flagged]
- Gualdrapo 8mo agoMakes you wonder if that's where they got the name of Palantir, since Denethor went mad by using one (at least according to the Peter Jackson movies, I reckon the situation was different in the books).
- nkrisc 8mo agoThat’s pretty much what happened in the books. More accurately he lost all hope for the world after being fed visions by Sauron to manipulate him. Hey wait…
- z3phyr 8mo agoThats true, but in the books, Denethor is competent and a seasoned strategist and has a battle of strategy with the witch king, one upping them in most instances, answering with brilliant maneuvers to the brilliant maneuvers of the witch king.
- conartist6 8mo agoPerhaps that's why Sauron's trick is to use the Palantir to show him some things while hiding others, so as to convince him that his every move would be futile. I'm not sure even this is what destroys Denethor's mind though so much as it is the thought of the ring. He sees it as his by right of need. He sacrifices both his sons in his madness to have it, for the madness of power. His view of the world is so bleak that saving it in a way that destroys it seems "right" to him
- nkrisc 8mo agoThat’s a good point, in the movie they only show the already “broken” Denethor.
- mosura 8mo agoAt some point people are going to start asking awkward questions going all the way back to the PayPal mafia and everything that has subsequently happened. Thiel landing on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group just looks too ridiculous, but is a thing, and now this guy goes off ranting about the Antichrist? I am actually sympathetic to much of what Thiel has done, but the current arc makes the supposed Howard Hughes oddities look positively reasonable.
- amunozo 8mo agoJust curious, what are you sympathetic about?
- mike_hearn 8mo agoIt seems these lectures are closed but does anyone have a transcript or writeup of the core arguments? I'd be interested to know what he is saying first hand.
- zug_zug 8mo agoI'm curious too, but here's a recap of the nonsense he's spewed thus far: - Expressed hesitation on whether the human should survive without being moved into computers [1] - That Greta Thunburg could be the antichrist and cause the end of humanity [2] - (Leaked) Apparently he has also called Pope Leo the antichrist [3] 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSp07P8jvYs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSp07P8jvYs 2. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ao_umPlSV6o https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ao_umPlSV6o 3. https://www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/new-jd-vances-top-donor-suggests https://www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/new-jd-vances-top-donor-...
- vrganj 8mo agoThis guy belongs in an institution, not in control of an entire power apparatus.
- edgineer 8mo agoI can see the logic of talking to the people who believe they will live forever, once you start wondering "what if people could actually live forever?"
- mike_hearn 8mo ago[flagged]
- frm88 8mo agoIt includes much more than that. Women for one. "We have become feminized". He extensively quotes Nazi lawyer Carl Schmitt ("the satanic unification of the world" ), René Girard ("We must stop scapegoating and go to church more") and the bible at every turn. See his interview with Jordan Peterson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=918qslcfwfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=918qslcfwfY He is also financing the build out of nuclear power plants for AI with only 1/5 of the shielding, because he dismantled the regulation instances for this ("regulation hinders progress and we are stagnating"). https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-nuclear-power-nrc-safety-doge-vought https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-nuclear-power-nrc-s... ... Where one of his henchmen said: “When SpaceX started building rockets, they sort of expected the first ones to blow up,” he said. If you like to read an In-depth article about the influences on Thiel (incl. by Wolfgang Palaver) there is a very thorough article in Wired (disable JavaScript): https://www.wired.com/story/the-real-stakes-real-story-peter https://www.wired.com/story/the-real-stakes-real-story-peter... Downplay his performances at your own peril.
- mikkupikku 8mo agoThey don't own Rome anymore, the Vatican is their own country now thanks to ol' Benny. Anyway, both parties here are idiots with high opinions of themselves who actually believe in a pile nonsense, but which of the two has really caused more harm for humanity? There is no "THE Antichrist" there are only antichrists, plural, normal not supernatural people and organizations that behave in a notably non-christlike way, and both parties here seem to qualify easily.
- steveBK123 8mo ago> there are only antichrists, plural Agreed, it would be exceptionally hard to choose just 1 (or even 10) right now.
- zug_zug 8mo ago>> both parties here are idiots with high opinions of themselves who actually believe in a pile nonsense, but which of the two has really caused more harm for humanity? That's not really a reasonable argument, because Thiel hasn't had the power of the Vatican (especially the power the vatican used to have), but what he's done with his power so far is much more concerning to me that what the vatican has done in the last 4 years, yes. I think we both agree that the catholic church has received an unwarranted elevation and presumption of beneficence in media, but the distinction I'm drawing is that a billionaire who's toiling in American politics and claiming Greta Thunburg could be the antichrist is actively concerning.
- mikkupikku 8mo agoI think it's a reasonable argument that we should be more concerned with the organization that has the better part of a two thousand year track record of murdering people, but in either case I did just accuse both of them of being antichrists. Anyway, Greta is my queen.
- vintermann 8mo ago> There is no "THE Antichrist" there are only antichrists, plural Funnily enough, the bible agrees, or at least John's epistles. People who fantasize themselves as the antichrist (like Thiel, he's not very good at hiding it) ought to remember that antichrists being a dime a dozen is quite biblical.
- yesbut 8mo agoPower causes brain damage. https://archive.md/sdLQP https://archive.md/sdLQP
- sp4cemoneky 8mo agoLouis XVI would not disagree.
- rkomorn 8mo agoTechnically, I think the blade did most of the brain damage to Louis XVI.
- aaron695 8mo ago[dead]
- plicerin 8mo agoWhere do they think Peter got his ideas?
- 1dom 8mo ago"Believe in an antichrist... No, not like that!" said Peter and Paulo.
- Avshalom 8mo agoJohn Nelson Darby largely. The Catholic Church's official stance is that any sort of literal antichrist and apocalypse is heretical.
- enoint 8mo agoI don’t think the church would consider the broad contours of Darby heretical. It’s not heretical to talk about many antichrists plus one final Antichrist.
- pupppet 8mo agoIronic he fears the Antichrist yet backs Trump, who fits many of those traits.
- heresie-dabord 8mo ago> His florid arguments have the architecture of a conspiracy theory, weaving together random and disconnected elements to make grand assertions. And those assertions—cosmic and sweeping—are more concerning than convincing. To this extent, Shpiel is like any zealot who stalks the halls of institutional religion. However... > Thiel is consciously seeking to position himself as a figure of religious authority, using scripture and philosophy to preach in favor of a capitalism that murders democracy. He clearly wants to recruit people to his cause, perhaps to start a movement. Many US voters have already joined the movement and the current Presiking speaks and acts as though he has no intention of being removed. US voters need to wake up if ever an awakening was needed. Home-grown lunatics and thieves now run the country. As oligarchs, they are positioning themselves to be untouchable by destroying democracy and the rule of law: > his companies and allies embedded in Trump’s fascist regime and his protégé, JD Vance, a heartbeat from the presidency—Thiel has launched a campaign to herald the Antichrist.
- moffers 8mo agoI wonder, if I was surrounded by wealth in the same way, if I would schedule talks on my wacky ideas. The blind encouragement of insurmountable wealth must be intoxicating.
- John23832 8mo agoOne might say that Elon's acquisition of Twitter is the ultimate manifestation of this.
- delichon 8mo agoYou don't think he was aware of the potential to leverage Twitter to elect a friendly president and alleviate his severe regulatory challenges? That part was just a happy accident?
- rf15 8mo agoWe all know why he did it: because people wrote on and listened to twitter a lot, and he didn't like what they said. He wanted to control the conversation that was unfavourable to him.
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- whamlastxmas 8mo agoHe wanted to control the conversation by... buying twitter and removing nearly all existing controls of conversation? How quickly we forget how censored twitter was before he bought it
- mpalmer 8mo agoFor all Thiel's supposed invention, he's having a lot of trouble building a needle you can thread with a camel.
- illwrks 8mo agoIt wasn't immediately obvious to me what you had written... so I had to Google it. Very clever statement :D (Matthew 19:24) "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
- joemazerino 8mo agoMaybe that's why he's on this weird technocrat-humanist tour of his. Coming to grips with his Sin by trying to explain the Antichrist "but not THE Antichrist because that would require believe in the Bible".
- drooopy 8mo agoBased on my recollection of The Bible and the Book of Revelation (it's been almost 30 years since I was last forced to read it), Peter Thiel and his ilk match the definition of what an "antichrist" is or should be.
- timbit42 8mo agoThe book of Revelation doesn't mention any antichrist. Only the epistles of John mention antichrists and the definition of what they are. Any proposed link between any antichrists and the book of Revelation was created in the past few hundred years.
- jonathanlb 8mo ago> Any proposed link between any antichrists and the book of Revelation was created in the past few hundred years. Actually, the idea of an end times Antichrist has been around for much of Christianity's history. Irenaeus of Lyon synthesized the beast of Revelation (which is what most people conflate with "The Antichrist"), Daniel's imagery, and Paul's "man of lawlessness" (2 Thess. 2) into a composite end-times figure back around 180 CE in his work "Against Heresies". Additionally, Hippolytus of Rome also wrote an entire treatise, "On Christ and Antichrist", back in early 200 CE, that also explored that relevant symbolism in the Old and New Testaments. For context, both Irenaeus and Hippolytus are considered among the most important of the early Church Fathers.
- timbit42 8mo agoSome of the ideas have been around a long time but they weren't integrated together into a whole until over a hundred years ago by John Nelson Darby and was then were popularized by the Schofield Reference Bible 1 hundred years ago.
- jmclnx 8mo ago>but he still cannot stop talking about the Antichrist Well with the antichrist in charge of the US, I guess he has a good example to follow :) To me, all this shows is being rich still won't make you smart. With that said, I wish the Pope would send a real message. Start excommunicating Roman Catholics who enable Trump. I would start with the ones on the US Supreme Court then move on to Congress and the VP.
- pfisherman 8mo agoI think Peter Thiel is smart, but exhibiting one of smart people’s most common modes of failure, overestimating one’s ability while not maintaining a healthy sense of skepticism about the correctness of one’s own beliefs. Put simply, he (and many other tech bros) have galaxy brained themselves into some very stupid stuff.
- muglug 8mo agoThese people are not interested the love and charity parts of Christianity. They are interested only in the hate and doom parts of it.
- diego_moita 8mo agoAre you referring to Thiel, the Catholic Church or both?
- joemazerino 8mo agoThiel is not a Christian?
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- resoluteteeth 8mo agoHe is going around talking about biblical prophecies and the antichrist so regardless of whether you consider thiel a Christian or whether he considers himself a Christian the comment you are responding to is entirely accurate in saying he is interested "only in the hate and doom parts of [Christianity]".
- dmix 8mo agoPeter grew up in an Evangelical household which probably shaped his framing/worldview. As an adult he still identifies as a 'heterodox protestant'. Which in America usually means he's not really Christian, he just picks and chooses some ideas from it. The way he uses 'Antichrist' to talk about politics and tech (not just a single person or religious entity) seems to confirm that idea.
- Obscurity4340 8mo agoIts ironic because he was homodoxxed by Gawker
- LightBug1 8mo ago
- erelong 8mo agoehhh, for a lot of traditional Catholics neither Thiel nor Rome are Catholic currently so I think there would be disagreement with both sides here I thought Thiel's argument was that the anti-AI crowd might tend towards a pagan primitivism (like with mentioning those like Greta) and authoritarian measures to stamp out technology with an Anti-Christ leader, emphasizing base physical pleasure over technological "progress". I guess that's one "End Times" possible trajectory. Catholicism's not necessarily really for or against (classically) liberal democracies, with exception of specific configurations that might be condemned afaik with books like "Liberalism is a Sin" (liberalismisasin.com) or writings against the "heresy of Americanism". The Vatican could have pointed to Catholic views of prophecy, like Rev. Huchede's "History of Anti-Christ", so people might compare views being presented: https://archive.org/details/huchede-history-anti-christ-best-version https://archive.org/details/huchede-history-anti-christ-best... p. 11 says, in contrast to a top comment here that claims there is no singular Anti-Christ figure: "the Sacred Scriptures speak of Antichrist in various places as being a particular person or individual." Rome has been thought to have fallen to modernism with the Vatican 2 changes, which sets them up more for accepting or bringing about the rise of an Anti-Christ movement in the views of some traditionalists (can elaborate on anything if anyone requests it)
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- slibhb 8mo agoUnlike a lot of the posters here, I find Thiel interesting. I agree with his idea that humanity was stuck in a rut technology/progress-wise until the past few years, and I'm glad we're out of it. I wish we were building more stuff faster (housing, nuclear, renewables, electric cars, etc). I don't consider myself a "transhumanist" but I do think that humanity should orient itself towards overcoming what have been our fundamental limitations (scarcity, death, etc). Ultimately, that could lead to some form of transhumanism albeit in the far, far future. Thiel's "antichrist" spiel is the idea that fear related to existential risks (climate, nuclear, AI, etc) will make people too timid, and lead to a one-world government that de-prioritizes progress and economic freedom, resulting in longterm stagnation. I'm not especially worried about that, but I do think that excessive timidity is a real problem. I don't mind that Europe increasingly doesn't care about economic growth and has made it harder to invent/build/create, but I don't want the whole world to be like that. If you disagree with this broad view, think about it more concretely. Take the example of nuclear reactors. If we had been steadily building nuclear reactors for the past 70 years, they would be smaller, safer, more efficient, energy would be more plentiful, and climate change would be less of an issue. Ultimately it was excessive fear that led to the decline of nuclear energy. So, if you find the "antichrist" stuff bizarre and off-putting, at least consider the basic point: excessive fear is a real obstacle towards the goal of fundamentally bettering the human condition.
- adampunk 8mo agoI dunno. You can hear the same spiel on any city bus in the us, but the guy giving it isn’t rich. How come the whole “world government” thing doesn’t set off tiny alarm bell for you? It’s the politics version of reading a math paper that suddenly starts talking about P=NP; you might be dealing with a crank. Is it not important to you that most other people going on about one world governments eventually turn out to just mean “the Jews”? And why are we supposed to wade through Thiel’s screeds? To learn that nuclear power is good and that people are scared of things?! Is he the only or the best place to learn that? Is that even all that novel?
- mpalmer 8mo agoDo you think that someone who could spend the average person's entire lifetime income without a second thought might have a blind spot when it comes to obstacles blocking humanity's betterment?
- follie 8mo agoNot a great time for blasphemy.. I have to wonder where a fatwa would lead with the US' conservative religious allies.
- shwaj 8mo ago> spelling out Silicon Valley’s plan to weaponize religion in a war against democracy :eye_roll: Is Google on board with that plan? Or Apple or Meta or Netflix or anyone? Who is “Silicon Valley” to this author?
- danny_codes 8mo agoPeter Thiel and cadre.
- shwaj 8mo agoHence the eye roll. Peter Thiel is Silicon Valley like, say, Trump or Biden is white people.
- danny_codes 8mo agoI agree. However, if we consider public perception Thiel’s pitches are probably more salient than say Tim Cook. Which is to say, competent, relatively ethical business is not as newsworthy as deranged philosopher-billionaires going closed door lectures on the anti-Christ. The latter has a sort of morbid fascination
- markus_zhang 8mo agoIt must be fun to be super rich. They live in high castles where few reach, and talk with cloud over their heads. They hold parties high in wine and drug, that flows down into the river through the aqueduct, then picked up by the masses.
- briandw 8mo agoAre we talking about the Pope or Thiel?
- markus_zhang 8mo agoWhich one is going to give me less downvotes? :D
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- _blk 8mo agoI don't know much about all this but skimming the article, I doubt that that the author has treated his acute TDS. I know this is a rather left leaning crowd but I can't believe that smart people like here all believe Trump leads a fascist regime.. Please enlighten me ar what makes this article so popular?
- torlok 8mo agoIt's no longer 2014. It's time to move on, buddy.
- tim-tday 8mo agoObviously the Catholic church has the trademark on the word Antichrist. So this tracks. Can’t have randos muscling in. They might do irreparable harm to the brand name.
- tsoukase 8mo agoThiel seems to talk like a practical business teacher. Through his quotes I see advice for entrepreneurs and founders, greedy suggestions and ruthless behaviour, exactly the US way of high business. Because the bad side of religion supports these goals, he is considered religious and not atheist. In order to be an atheist you have to not believe to any God but also to any other universal power (eg physical laws, mathematics, human civilisation). For me an uneducated person can only become an atheist.
- krapp 8mo ago>In order to an atheist you have to not believe to any God but also to any other universal power (eg physical laws, mathematics, human civilisation). To be an atheist you just have to not believe in any God, full stop. Of course atheists believe in physics, mathematics and natural law. Just not in metaphysics and the supernatural.
- blks 8mo agoI think Mr Thiel’s mental health will benefit greatly if he’s stripped away from most of his wealth.