Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist and MAGA donor, is in Rome this week for a series of private lectures on the Antichrist. It’s an event that the Vatican, and the pope, are treating with caution.

  • Gsus4@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    3 hours ago

    Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks the humanities are useless and all that matters is technology, business, economics and STEM: take a good look at this fucking idiot with way too much power.

  • GreenCrunch@piefed.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    50
    ·
    3 days ago

    I still struggle to understand if these people (Thiel et al.) genuinely believe the “DOOM IS COMING, WE MUST DESTROY THE WORLD TO MAKE GOD HAPPY” stuff, or if they’re just trying to market their grifting to the religious people…

    • Kindness is Punk@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      edit-2
      3 days ago

      I will say if it’s option two it seems to be working I’ve heard “it doesn’t matter that we’re on the verge of ecological collapse because there’s no way to avoid it because it’s prophecy” from many religious folks recently.

    • njm1314@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      I suspect that Peter Thiel is one of these AI rationalists that seem so prevalent in the Bay Area. Or maybe an odd offshoot of them like the zizians. He certainly seems to embody a lot of the tendencies and rhetoric, though with a more evangelical bent.

      People who are unfamiliar with these groups are never going to be able to truly grasp the intense psychosis they all exhibit. Behind the Bastards did a brief overview of them in it’s zizians episode that really is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s not a bad introduction.

    • prole
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      3 days ago

      The religious stuff is almost certainly a grift

  • JensSpahnpasta@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    28
    ·
    2 days ago

    It’s absurd to see that he is totally batshit insane and that governments still want to give all of our data to him

  • becausechemistry@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    ·
    3 days ago

    If he wasn’t a billionaire, nobody would even be paying attention to him. He’d just be another wacko religious nut to be easily ignored.

  • birdwing
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    3 days ago

    Why is the Antichrist in Rome? He should be banned from Europe altogether.

  • Ooops@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    2 days ago

    Peter Thiel’s secret lectures on Antichrist

    So he read from his still unpublished autobiography?

    • tamal3@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      2 days ago

      No, he thinks Greta Thunberg is the antichrist.

      I’m not making that up. He’s completeky fucking insane.

  • Goldholz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    3 days ago

    Quick question, what theological study background does he have? If any. I am very curtain that i have more expertise with my adhd autism fueled studies of theologie especially christian theologie

    • reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      3 days ago

      My dad is into theology and he found this podcast episode on Thiel’s theology interesting.

      Thiel grew up under apartheid and went to an elementary school with nazi values though, so that gives a little context.

      • Goldholz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        2 days ago

        I also was a fascist in my teens. That is not an excuse. Its even worse to not see the errors of once way

      • birdwing
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        From one little fascist to a big fascist.

    • hendrik@palaver.p3x.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      3 days ago

      He doesn’t have any. He grew up in an evangelical household. Studied philosophy and law. Somehow he developed a fixation on the Antichrist, Amageddon and the Apocalypse. He doesn’t have any formal backround in bible studies, though. And some people call his lectures “amateurish talk”.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel