Discussion

Thiel brings his Antichrist lectures to the Vatican’s doorstep, and Catholic institutions back away

donkey_brains: “Who was the Antichrist? When would he arrive? What would he preach? What kind of SaaS offerings will he want to invest in?”

DaedalusII: the old saying goes that every entrepreneur wishes they were a philosopher, and every philosopher wishes they were an entrepreneurgenerally holds true soros marc rich bill gates musk thiel nassim taleb epstein etc

silexia: AI is the Antichrist.

DonHopkins: Takes one to know one.

rokkamokka: This is an attempt at a reverse Streisand effect, right? He didn't like people memeing that he was the antichrist, so he did all this so any searches would turn up his lectures rather than the memes/accusations.

edgyquant: There’s nothing here about the lectures themselves just constantly repeating that Thiel is a bad guy who founded Palantir and works with republicans to the backdrop of a ton of ads.

m000: Don't you find it problematic that the only reason Thiel can organize these lectures is because he is a billionaire? Is he a bona fide scholar on the subject? Would any tenured theology scholar be welcome to hold the same lectures at the Vatican?I guess that's what you get for electing an American as the Pope. /s

seanalltogether: I grew up in a pretty religious household and my parents fully believed that Armageddon would happen in our lifetime. It wasn't until I was older that I realized there were a lot of American Christians that secretly held this belief, and that it has a meaningful influence on how voters want American politicians to deal with Israel and the Middle East in general.

benrutter: I like that saying but those are all entrepreneurs right? Where are all the philosopher wannabe billionares? From my experience they seem pretty happy in relatively low paying professor jobs.

walthamstow: > Where are all the philosopher wannabe billionares?On Twitter, in my experience. The 'manosphere' is practically all philosopher-wannabe-billionaires.

gmerc: He’s appealing to the largest maga faction, fundamentalist christians because they are the kingmakers after Trump decays.

ZiiS: I am very much not a billionaire; but I can hire a village hall and give a lecture on the antichrist. I may have to work a little harder to get as much press coverage but that is not what is stopping me.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm: If you say what it is you will be called an antisemite.

graemep: Possibly, but I think he does believe it. it fits.A Google search turns up the usual stuff (e.g. his Wikipedia page) and then a Youtube video accusing him of destroying democracy, so if that is what he is trying its not working: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=peter%20thiel&sei=tfWzadnD...

lukan: “Christians debated these prophecies for millennia. Who was the Antichrist? When would he arrive? What would he preach?”Maybe that we all need to surrender all our data to an intransparent global surveillance tool, that gets more and more connected to automatic killer drones?Oh and also despise democracy of course. Jesus Christ was on the side if the poor, so the antichrist would be on the side of the rich.Any ideas who the new antichrist might be?

3rodents: No, he has been ranting and raving about the antichrist for at least a decade. He and JD Vance bonded over it.https://www.wired.com/story/the-real-stakes-real-story-peter...

dgxyz: If he was on a park bench covered in his own piss no one would pay any attention to the same words.

clarionbell: He didn't give lectures at Vatican, not even at the Catholic university close to Vatican, and even Catholic University of America didn't have anything to do with it.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm: Who are the people starting multiple wars, collecting all your data and trying to replace people in what they do for a living?

mariusor: I doubt that anyone could categorize the manosphere phenomenon as philosophy. Without empathy you can't really have philosophy. Or, at least not the kind that you can take seriously.

walthamstow: I don't take them seriously. They do see themselves philosophers though.

moffers: Are these lectures available for anyone to look over or is it only for paying customers? I feel like if it was public it probably has the same weight as the Left Behind books did in the early 2000s.

DaedalusII: nassim taleb is primarily a philosopher who pretends to be a hedge fund guy, jordan peterson, robert kiyosaki, tim ferriss maybe, sam bankman fried, the tech lead ytarchetype is people who sell their success as a model for you to follow while having none themselves, wrapped up as some kind of philosophical position, so they can make moneylots of self help authors, failed vc funds, podcasts

graemep: It depends on the religion in the religious household. Its common among American evangelicals, but (unless American Catholics are very different from Catholics in the rest of the world) its not a common belief among Catholics, and its rarely discussed by them.Why is Thiel, whose parents were American evangelical and whose own beliefs are described as "heterodox", trying to sell this in Catholic packaging outside the US?

kace91: >its not a common belief among Catholics, and its rarely discussed by them.I'll do you one further, as someone from a deeply catholic country: Considering the triggering of Armaggedon in daily politics is seen as batshit crazy.

salad-tycoon: Anyone got a bootleg?

dvh: So many believe that rupture or antichrist arrives in their generation, because it would make them feel special. If they die before, it makes them unimportant.

RichEO: It struck me as I was watching the new Louis Theroux Netflix documentary that the manosphere must love Nietzsche.

wnevets: lecture is doing a lot of lifting.

mattkevan: Greta Thunberg, according to Thiel (seriously).

frereubu: The thing that really worries me about these kinds of beliefs in some kind of a god or gods is that they can provide a get-out clause for existential risks to humanity. If this physical universe is just one manifestation of existence, then there's less to worry about because there will be some kind of existence afterwards if you screw it up. But in my view the universe is all there is, and it very definitely doesn't "care" if humanity cooks the planet in a way that makes human life impossible. If that's your view, the first priority of every single person should be to work towards stabilising the climate and reduce our impact on the enviromnent, but instead we have shiny-eyed millenarians piling billions of dollars into things like AI that could be much more productively used in funding an energy transition. (And don't get me started on the idea that AI will help that transition - we already know what we need to do, that isn't complicated, even if the route is complex).

gambiting: I grew up in a religious household as a Roman Catholic, in an extremely religious country(Poland) and I've never heard anyone talk about apocalypse as something that might happen soon or well...ever. From my point of view, the "christianity" that American Evangelicals practice is almost unrecognlisable as having the same base with the religion I grew up with. Like the core tennets of Jesus have been twisted and warped to serve a very narrow political agenda. That's not to say Roman Catholics don't use religion for politics, but Evangelism is just.....next level?

sklargh: American Catholics aren't really a monolith on this matter...or any. There are substantial differences between Catholics who seek out Jesuit parishes and those who seek out the Tridentine Mass and people who are just achieving physical presence and thinking about kickoff at 5:00 PM Sunday Mass to fulfill obligation and get out ASAP (no choir please, keep that sermon snappy). All of these are spiritually valid approaches imho.

lo_zamoyski: “has proven so controversial that the Catholic universities initially associated with it have all denied official involvement”Journalists have a real knack for warping banal things into sensational, ominous nonsense. The implication here is that that universities are monolithic coordinated machines with a single voice where all things are organized top-down. Some club here is hosting this event. That’s it. We had clubs at university that did the same thing. The quoted passages read like factual answers to questions posed by journalists to the Angelicum’s and CUA’s communications offices, not some frantic “distancing” or gotchas. They probably don’t care one way or another.“the Catholic magazine First Things”Not officially Catholic. Ecumenical is perhaps a better term. Even that word is not accurate, as there are plenty of contributions from Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, etc writers.“an ancient Christian concept of the order of love, received a famous slapdown from Pope Francis […] Prevost shared an article […] with the headline, ‘JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.’”Charitably, Francis and then-Prevost were critical of what they privately perceived as a misapplication or misunderstanding of this principle, not the principle itself. Prevost’s own Augustinian order draws heavily from St. Augustine who expounded the concept of ordo amoris/ordo caritatis. The concept isn’t an endorsement of national chauvinism, but merely that our love must be prioritized and ordered. It is a moral obligation and is simply part of and entailed by the natural law.In any case, I don’t see any relevance to the article. It’s like some mish-mash of disconnected propositions held together by dubious or meaningless associations to imply something significant has taken place. Or would have sufficed to say “Peter Thiel lecturing on the Antichrist in Rome”.

fabian2k: It is disconcerting to see that quite a few of the well-known billionaires seem to have just outright insane beliefs. And those are people with real power and the ability to influence events on a larger scale.

jatari: It doesn't seem that supprising. You need a certain level of narcissism/sociopathy to have the drive to become a billionaire in the first place.

kubb: Out of curiosity, what grounds their belief that it's going to happen soon? Why not in a thousand years? As far as I know, there is no mention of the exact date in the Bible.

wl: The land of Israel has been a vassal state or part of another state or empire for most of recorded history. Israel becoming an independent state in 1948 ties in with messianic prophesy.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm: If you mention Israel or anyone from Israel you get auto-flagged. Criticising Americans is somehow much more tolerable.

surgical_fire: I think there's an extra layer of crazy there.So, you (not you, a generic you) believe that Armageddon is happening in your lifetime, and the event is the literal moment when God will pour his Holy Wrath against unrepentant sinners in a final judgement as the world wraps up... And you, deeply religious as you are, will obviously go to Heaven, while all the annoying people you rightly hate will go to Hell, to be punished for eternity.Considering this, is it not obvious that this hypothetical person would wish for Armageddon already? I mean, for you it is the final prize.I believe these people don't want a future. They want the end.

aestetix: There were a few news outlets (I think maybe the Washington Post?) that got copies of recordings of these insane lectures when Peter Thiel did them in San Francisco. I think it would be in the public interest for them to release the lectures in full.Maybe people should put some pressure on these outlets to do so.

wyldfire: The same self-centeredness that drove man to think that Earth was the center of its Universe.See also: bean soup / "what about me?*

d--b: South Park season 28 has Peter Thiel as an exorcist trying to cure Cartman's devilish obsession with 6-7.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_season_28

kubb: Well, even European Evangelicals are vastly different from their American counterparts. There's no megachurches, prosperity gospel, televangelism, and the religion is not as strongly intertwined with politics.

kylecazar: I've listened to several of his antichrist talks and remain confused by his stance. He's imprecise on the topic and rambles often, but in my opinion it boils down to one of a few options:1) These are actual good faith views that are nonsense inspired by his own piety2) This is some chess game he thinks he's playing in which he erects the world government/ totalitarian state as the antichrist, with Thunberg and other "woke" leaders as candidates, because they pose a risk to his business interest. Peace and safety are the enemy as they undermine Palantir3) He is too rich/disconnected and has disappeared up his own ass

rob74: He's not doing it directly, that's why his lectures are secr... er, invitation-only. Thiel is content to pull the strings from the background, he's not demen... er, fool..., er, courageous enough to actually accept a role with the Trump administration like Musk was.

mattkevan: Behind the Bastards did a good two-parter on Thiel's lectures. He sounds dangerously insane.It'd be bad enough if he was just some random crank, but the fact he's got the level of power and influence needed to actually make his beliefs happen makes it exponentially worse.Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtR7ny9TuCYPart 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXhyx-vVG_Y

camillomiller: Genuine questions: what can be done in a democratic setting to stop him?Who should take into their hands the job to stop him, and to what lengths should they push themselves?

avidphantasm: What would China do to such billionaires run amok?

thrance: [delayed]

beezlebroxxxxxx: > Genuine questions: what can be done in a democratic setting to stop him?Thiel is only "relevant" because he's wealthy.In a system that allows wealth to equal political power, systematically weakening the impact of wealth on civic and political systems is an effective method. Whether that can be done in America, with the current understanding of the constitution and the current philosophy that many take towards taxation/wealth is questionable; but the idea that we can do nothing is just not true. We don't need to slide back into an era of 19th century robber barons and pseudo-aristocracy. If we do, it's because we largely gave up or allowed it to happen.

yuppiepuppie: Ask yourself - where does his wealth (power) come from and how do you stop that?In his case - I assume most of it is from Palantir these days. Therefore stop your governments from contracting with them.

hattmall: >If that's your view, the first priority of every single person should be to work towards stabilising the climate and reduce our impact on the enviromnentBut why though? If that's what you believe and there's nothing more, we know the sun is going to explode and destroy everything and an asteroid impact is likely to happen that destroys even sooner than that, so why does that matter?

tootie: Some reporting on the contents of the speech from last year:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-...It's suitably insane rambling nonsense. It actually seems to dovetail pretty well with Andreesen's manifesto in that evil is portrayed as anyone who opposed relentless technological progress at any cost. If you worry about the economic or human effects of tech oligarchs (Grete Thunberg is named as a candidate) then you are preparing your evil army for the final battle. Seeking to regulate AI also makes you a candidate.

trollbridge: “People who oppose what I want to do are the antichrist” is one step away from “I’m Jesus!”, which is something you normally hear in mental wards.

dmurray: It's a Pascal's wager. If you're convinced Armageddon is going to happen at some point, then you should do all you can to prepare for it happening in your lifetime. And that approach is explicitly encouraged in the Bible: "You do not know the day or hour", etc.

trollbridge: It remains a fact, though, that the Catholic Church doesn’t teach these things about Armageddon.

dep_b: It’s almost like they reject the parts of the bible featuring Christ, and only cling on to the Old Testament and the parts after Christ as their guide.In lack of a better word, that sounds more like anti-Cristian

trollbridge: It is not even a universal belief among evangelicals. The denomination/overall group Peter Hegseth is part of (conservative Reformed Christianity) expressly teaches against this, or even makes fun of it.I would venture that it is less than half of Christians who believe in this idea at all. It does seem to be the domain of wild eyed TV evangelists though.

coffeebeqn: That’s all tech bros and self-help gurus? I guess anyone can claim themselves to be an “philosopher”

tim-projects: It seems to me that the idea of Armageddon without clear evidence, is the lizard brain taking over.My point is that it's not crazy, it's survival. It's a feature not a bug.In other words this looks dangerous, but it's really just every day normality for all of us.

kubb: Right "you do not know the day or the hour", not "you know that the day will be sometime between 2026 and 2076". I understand being prepared and whatnot. I don't understand the certainty of the date. Even the Bible says that it's unknown.

nemo44x: Correct. We call that “credibility”. People can earn credibility in this world through their accomplishments. If your life accomplishment is sitting in your own piss you lack credibility.

haunter: In this case it's more of Halo effect which is plaguing the tech world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

kace91: The same is true here, yes. You'll see widely different stances and practical approaches to topics like immigration, premarital sex, and so on. Some people are strict, some people self define as catholic but only see church during weddings and funerals.Putting effort in triggering the end of the world is nowhere on the spectrum though. I think if you told a priest you're pushing for that he would be seriously alarmed, like calling the police alarmed if you hold power.

NalNezumi: The difference to robber Baron this time is that those companies have gone global, so a new Teddy Roosevelt being elected in USA only wouldn't help, because these multinationals can just extend outside jurisdiction. Which is every similar to the actually dynamics of states/federal that Teddy tackled [1]Unfortunately the political rhetoric have smeared "the globalists" and equated people that want global coordination to limit those multinationals with power, with the ones abusing it. Even the platform that was promising to drain the swamp turns out was just another swamp, so one would need to start from the scratch for that political movement.[1] https://youtu.be/ItKtQCAZHhg?is=-h_05pyB-37MHVJB

user3939382: Not only is there no date, it explicitly says the time and date is not known to us.

krapp: The closest we have to a "date" is Jesus claiming the current generation wouldn't pass away before the end times arrived, which obviously didn't happen. So even the "Son of God" got it wrong.

Nuzzerino: I personally think that when he mentioned her name during that interview, it was intended to be used as an archetypal proxy in place of someone else (another public figure) that he had personal dealings with. Yudkowsky checks those same boxes (mission focused on specific existential risk, gets a cult following) for example.That being said, I don’t care much for Christian prophecies. Better to talk why than who.

mattkevan: There’s nothing Christian about what Thiel is talking about here, even if he does wrap it up in the bible.Whether you believe in Christianity or not, his views are deeply, deeply heretical. He’s so far out of pocket he’s in a completely different pair of trousers.

dandanua: I would say it is natural that humans with so much power go crazy. What is not natural is allowing them to have that power in the first place. If a society allows that, it deserves anything that could happen to it, whether it's Armageddon, climate change, pollution, idiocracy, or whatever.

anaksjz: He’s a neocon project. All the way back to getting his start at the Stanford review. Him, Vance, etc are the face of right wing Jewish power in America after the neocons burn out as a sacrifice for this doomed Iran war. Palantir is just another symptom of the same problem thats kept America furthering Israel’s goals for decades now.People need to start seeing power is as much about who, whom as well as a specific government system or framework. Voting, debate, democracy are for people that are on the same team. Thiel, the neocons, yarvin etc are not Americans and not on our team. You do not vote your way out of these problems.

expedition32: The penchant for Christ clown insanity is distinctly American though. Secularism never truly touched the hearts of Americans.

NalNezumi: I think you're missing the historical context of how the "life after death" idea served as an utility, in many religions.We today have laws and moral separated from religion and institutions that both teaches it to the young citizen and uphold it. But that wasn't the case for vast majority of the history.How would you convince a tribal person that can't perceive something beyond "good for me & my family/tribe is all justifications required" to act collaboratively beyond that view? Especially if that attitude is also causing suboptimal behavior around him.Introduce the concept of "good behavior" but there's no guarantee he will follow. Even if you introduced law & punishment you really have no efficient way to enforce it, back in the days.So you introduce the idea that "if you behave bad,(or your children does) you'll suffer beyond your death".Just so happen this simple yet powerful idea don't really scale with a complex world

jackmott42: We are not in a democratic setting in America any more, the people in power are willing to start wars to protect pedophiles, they are willing to hire Nazi thugs to shoot your wives in the face. They are willing to bribe supreme court justices and dismantle democracy, and they will if not stopped by force.Thiel has been obviously and evil sack of shit for decades but more than half of HN viewers revere him. I fear we have no hope, and the good people asking how we can democratically solve this problem makes me feel even more hopeless. Yall don't get it.

mattkevan: Not agreeing as a society that money == speech would be a good start.

JKCalhoun: I like that.I also like a two-pronged approach which includes taxing the billionaires out of existence. I haven't heard any significant downside to doing that. All the more so when weighed against the possible upsides.I think what frustrates me above all else is that we, as a society, as a people, could have it so much better.We could all be living in such a better world but for the allowances we make for the most sociopathic and greedy among us.

wl: Blame William Miller for American Evangelicalism's preoccupation with the end times.