alt.hn

3/22/2026 at 9:35:54 AM

Vatican Rebukes Peter Thiel's Antichrist Lectures in Rome

 https://www.thenerdreich.com/peter-thiels-antichrist-circus-smacked-down-in-rome/

by vrganj

3/22/2026 at 1:29:44 PM

I 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.

by moffers

3/22/2026 at 2:35:13 PM

I’ve had similar thoughts. As much as I’ve tried, I can’t fully imagine the unlimited wealth these people have and what it does to your brain.

It’s all deeply weird, and films like the Mountainhead increasingly seem like they might be more accurate than not.

There’s just clearly some limit around accumulated wealth where it detaches people further and further from reality.

by dd8601fn

3/22/2026 at 2:44:48 PM

Well it is their reality. It's more like most people live in a different, crueller reality than them.

by ashikns

3/22/2026 at 5:02:58 PM

[dead]

by atomic_reed

3/22/2026 at 3:28:34 PM

I suppose the kind of character traits that enable becoming super-rich probably also lend themselves to giving such talks.

Most sane people would stop working by the time they become rich, not super rich. To become a billionaire, your brain must be wired differently, and perhaps with unwavering conviction that you are right, righter than anyone else and the world owes you its attention.

by rich_sasha

3/22/2026 at 6:17:24 PM

This quote is partially apt to your idea:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -GB Shaw

I don't fully agree with the quotation from Shaw, but there's some truth to it. And I suspect a common quality of the billionaire class is ruthless unreasonableness -- and considerable luck.

by busyant

3/22/2026 at 3:56:01 PM

My pet theory is that billionaire weirdness and AI psychosis have the same root cause: talk too much to sychophants and the human mind starts to go off the rails.

Without a reality check, the natural feedback loop that tells us we're wrong sometimes, the human mind starts to diverge into madness.

by kelseyfrog

3/22/2026 at 3:22:24 PM

I think I’d pay people to tell me my ideas were whacky and not to share them.

by trollbridge

3/22/2026 at 3:46:51 PM

I wonder how often someone in his orbit tells him he is wrong?

by lokar

3/22/2026 at 4:20:48 PM

Shit, I post my idiot ideas to HN and people tell me my ideas are wacky and I'm a dumbass. For free!

by fragmede

3/22/2026 at 7:38:58 PM

Damn it - can I invoice you for the last five times I called you a dumbass ?

/s

;-)

by lifeisstillgood

3/22/2026 at 4:44:25 PM

If I had that much wealth I would be starting gigantic libraries like Carnegie once did.

by thewhitetulip

3/22/2026 at 3:25:04 PM

TED is a venue for middlebrow ideas by middlebrows for other middlebrows.

Same with symposia and fora with “distinguished guests” like the Dalai Lama, or Kissinger or one of the Clintons or many other officials.

They do a circuit, often have someone prepare note for them where they rarely challenge prevailing thought among the attendees and come out of it with a lot of money.

There will be some nuggets once in a while but there is rarely any groundbreaking insight like when physicists and mathematicians in the XXth century brought new ideas, challenged old ideas and often suffered indignity for some time before they were vindicated.

by mc32

3/22/2026 at 2:24:25 PM

One might say that Elon's acquisition of Twitter is the ultimate manifestation of this.

by John23832

3/22/2026 at 2:30:39 PM

You 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?

by delichon

3/22/2026 at 6:58:23 PM

Are we forgetting the part where he bought twitter because of a joke, got sued over it for manipulating twitter's stock price, tried to buy his way out by buying twitter, realized it would cost too much money and tried to back out, got sued again and finally was more or less forced to follow through on the purchase?

Are these the actions of a man following a well thought out plan to elect a president?

by cwillu

3/22/2026 at 2:48:14 PM

We 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.

by rf15

3/22/2026 at 4:57:55 PM

> He wanted to control the conversation that was unfavourable to him.

Same thing Thiel is doing for political control: attempting to inherit the religious right from MAGA -perhaps on behalf of hos protegé. Thiel's plans will likely outlive the movement's leader and/or go beyond 2028, it's a race against time to establish his bona fides while the sun shines

by overfeed

3/22/2026 at 3:41:25 PM

He 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

by whamlastxmas

3/22/2026 at 3:57:43 PM

You forgot the bit where he changed the algo to get his posts artificially boosted

by rf15

3/22/2026 at 6:53:44 PM

> How quickly we forget how censored twitter was before he bought it

About as quickly as he forgot “comedy is legal again” when people started criticizing him.

by mcphage

3/22/2026 at 4:13:30 PM

I do, but think that that's orthogonal from the constant positive affirmations to all of his random thoughts. That's a sensation bought.

by John23832

3/22/2026 at 3:43:15 PM

Of course a conversation about Peter Thiel and the Vatican has someone finding a way to mention Elon

by whamlastxmas

3/22/2026 at 11:54:43 AM

He seems like the kind of guy who was only ever a few bad days away from having a full-on break with reality.

I wonder if he's been talking to AI a lot and it pushed him over the edge to psychosis?

by conartist6

3/22/2026 at 2:15:03 PM

Did Thiel seem in any way sane before the advent of LLMs? Don't have a single positive memory about anything he's ever done or said.

by jasonvorhe

3/22/2026 at 3:11:39 PM

The book Zero to One is legitimately good.

His actions helping Hulk Hogan against Gawker were also thoroughly deserved.

by mosura

3/22/2026 at 3:31:22 PM

He only cared cuz it exposed his own hypocrisy

by Obscurity4340

3/22/2026 at 5:59:16 PM

The ends justify the means.

by nslsm

3/22/2026 at 3:12:51 PM

I wonder if he has any positive memories. All these billionaires are so detached from regular life that they don’t experience what humans normally do. It’s why they’re mostly sociopaths.

by SilverElfin

3/22/2026 at 12:28:43 PM

Makes 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).

by Gualdrapo

3/22/2026 at 12:30:37 PM

That’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…

by nkrisc

3/22/2026 at 12:58:57 PM

Thats 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.

by z3phyr

3/22/2026 at 1:13:22 PM

Perhaps 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

by conartist6

3/22/2026 at 2:24:38 PM

That’s a good point, in the movie they only show the already “broken” Denethor.

by nkrisc

3/22/2026 at 2:41:56 PM

In the extended edition of Two Towers they show him in a flashback of Gondor retaking Osgiliath.

It's not a particularly flattering portrayal- the military success is shown as belonging to Boromir more than Denethor- but at least it shows him sane.

by Ichthypresbyter

3/22/2026 at 12:40:33 PM

This guy is obviously on drugs half of the time, his wealth shields him from reality and the yes-men around him let his crazy anti-humanist ideas fester in his mind and turn into religious psychosis. No need for AI here.

In any sane place, his hate of democracy and freedom would make him a pariah. Instead, he is the current US Vice President's mentor and most trusted advisor.

by thrance

3/22/2026 at 1:30:16 PM

One way to view AI-induced psychosis, is that it's just giving regular people access to the kind of sycophancy powerful people always had.

by vintermann

3/22/2026 at 2:13:07 PM

I believe the term is democratization?

by jakeydus

3/22/2026 at 3:32:11 PM

It's wealth-induced psychosis. Still reassuringly exclusive.

by TheOtherHobbes

3/22/2026 at 7:01:51 PM

This is what concerns me. The VP is a protege of a billionaire who wants to end democracy.

by rawgabbit

3/22/2026 at 12:59:16 PM

Couldn't this antichrist stuff be his sane/rational strategy to manipulate the powerful but religious rightwing people under his sway? Is there evidence to assume he himself is on the verge of some kind of psychosis and not fully in control of his faculties?

by lovelearning

3/22/2026 at 2:55:40 PM

Its possibly just an SEO trick. People have been calling Thiel the antichrist for a long time.

by irthomasthomas

3/22/2026 at 1:05:30 PM

My guess is it's just his megalomania playing out in a religious arena instead of a political or economic one.

by arvid-lind

3/22/2026 at 7:46:27 PM

I've listened to him and other people like him a lot, and my conclusion is that their brains are truly fried. I don't believe they are playing roles.

by thrance

3/22/2026 at 1:32:42 PM

I'm not sure battling the Vatican over interpretations of an obscure philosopher who mentored him back when he was an undergrad is the easiest way of winning over the religious right. Most of whom will happily go along with generic arguments about Peter Thiel's portfolio being essential to defeat Communist China and the woke libs. Treating Eliezer Yudkowsky as an irrelevant nutter probably works better on people with all kinds of views on religion and politics than attempting to elevate him to the status of antichrist

by notahacker

3/22/2026 at 12:51:48 PM

> This guy is obviously on drugs half of the time, his wealth shields him from reality and the yes-men around him let his crazy anti-humanist ideas fester in his mind and turn into religious psychosis. No need for AI here.

You just described a good dozen or so VC/Tech Bros

by steveBK123

3/22/2026 at 2:17:59 PM

These people are not interested the love and charity parts of Christianity. They are interested only in the hate and doom parts of it.

by muglug

3/22/2026 at 6:03:05 PM

Note that Christianity is a religion that was grafted onto a previous one that is entirely different by intended recipients and worldview. Christianity is a universalistic religion centered on mercy and forgiveness, ancient Judaism is a transactional pact between God and one People: God gives the land and protection, the People worships God and follows the rules. I was in a church a few days ago and it was almost funny how the priest read from the Old Testament and turned a quite literal passage about the People of Israel, protection from regional enemies and the promise of a kingdom into a metaphor about all humanity and the fatherly care of God towards all. Unfortunately Christianity decided to incorporate the Old Testament and read it as a metaphor and a prophecy, and this allows some Christians to revert to a language of violent conquer and triumph against the enemies whenever it suits them.

by throw310822

3/22/2026 at 2:36:07 PM

Thiel is not a Christian?

by joemazerino

3/22/2026 at 2:56:17 PM

He 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]".

by resoluteteeth

3/22/2026 at 3:05:35 PM

Peter 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.

by dmix

3/22/2026 at 3:29:44 PM

Its ironic because he was homodoxxed by Gawker

by Obscurity4340

3/22/2026 at 3:04:50 PM

But he is a wanker. Does that help?

by LightBug1

3/22/2026 at 5:34:09 PM

Thiel is a heretic.

by tastyface

3/22/2026 at 3:36:40 PM

He is someone who plugged his fingers into the power outlett that is the final mile of the enlightenment. Those guys all have that same shellshocked face and the same mission: to get humanity stable, progress is every step towards a sort of global "home for the handicapped and prone to selfdestruct" everything else is just soothing sounds.

Christianity is supported because it has shown itself to be the only culture capable to produce working institutions and a rule of law. He is all for that, as the alternative is basically permawar with nukes.

Every step taken, every plan, every endavour is part of a scenario tree with fallbacks towards that goal. Selfsurveilance, a hardened education system (ai), if you start to look at the world from that angle a ton of what they do, starts to make way more sense. Also from that point of view, money itself constantly looses value, as the scenario falls down the three. Its capabilities increasing the odds that are valuable. The last billionaire gets a potato for all of it.

His anti-christ is the loop deformation damage of humanity, a species stuck in a low tech environment, unable to ever regain complexity even if history throws it a mounttain of ressources. Look at he middle east for understanding.

by cineticdaffodil

3/22/2026 at 8:08:34 PM

> He is someone who plugged his fingers into the power outlet that is the final mile of the enlightenment.

The fact that you used this analogy is amusing - something so obviously stupid and self-destructive being recast as a necessary step towards enlightenment does indeed reveal a lot about Thiel’s intentions and the attitude of his boosters.

by oa335

3/22/2026 at 4:39:39 PM

> Christianity is supported because it has shown itself to be the only culture capable to produce working institutions and a rule of law.

I'm really sick of these christian nationalists deciding that their chosen religion is the best thing for humanity and forcing it onto the rest of the world. "Working institutions" and "rule of law" for whom?

> Look at he middle east for understanding.

How comically reductive. Would you care to delve into the history of the middle east and of christian/western intervention?

> He is someone who plugged his fingers into the power outlett

Children harm themselves by plugging their fingers into power outlets. That's why we teach them not to.

by text0404

3/22/2026 at 3:16:56 PM

It’s because it helps their addiction to wealth. By saying that being against economic progress is the biggest evil, he’s saying everyone must say yes to what these tech elites push onto the world. Like you might dislike 1 million satellites polluting the night sky but don’t speak up against it unless you’re the antichrist.

Religion is also leverage for their goals. Like they support evangelical driven age verification for porn (defacto porn ban) because it lets them push age verification more broadly, to let them advertise more.

by SilverElfin

3/22/2026 at 2:28:10 PM

Are you referring to Thiel, the Catholic Church or both?

by diego_moita

3/22/2026 at 12:04:49 PM

It 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.

by mike_hearn

3/22/2026 at 12:57:57 PM

I'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

2. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ao_umPlSV6o

3. https://www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/new-jd-vances-top-donor-...

by zug_zug

3/22/2026 at 1:07:23 PM

This guy belongs in an institution, not in control of an entire power apparatus.

by vrganj

3/22/2026 at 3:30:42 PM

I 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?"

by edgineer

3/22/2026 at 5:05:00 PM

I'm curious also: who would have enough will power to go to this place to be lectured by him on this subject ? What is the interest of both parties (Thiel and this place) in this event (besides obvious publicity) ?

by cthe

3/22/2026 at 3:35:29 PM

Behind the Bastards (Robert Evan) has covered Thiel a great deal including specifically his little "lectures"

by Obscurity4340

3/22/2026 at 2:35:51 PM

Why would that be interesting to you?

by adampunk

3/22/2026 at 12:02:33 PM

At 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.

by mosura

3/22/2026 at 12:14:51 PM

They 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.

by mikkupikku

3/22/2026 at 1:28:16 PM

> 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.

by vintermann

3/22/2026 at 2:35:52 PM

Not completely true, the bible mention "antichrists" as in many and a particular "The Antichrist". The Antichrist is supposed to be the apex of the hubris.

by davyAdewoyin

3/22/2026 at 1:33:19 PM

>but which of the two has really caused more harm for humanity?

I take it you would like to compare against the whole of the Vatican's existence, and not against just the whole of Peter Thiel's adulthood?

by bryanrasmussen

3/22/2026 at 1:45:07 PM

If you like, we could compare a single Thiel adulthood to individual randomly chosen lives of popes. The average pope has a lot more blood on their hands. Both are bad, but one has caused more harm to humanity no matter which way you slice it. To argue that a single heretic is worse than the whole catholic church rings pretty silly to me. The best would be if they were to both destroy each other, but let's be real and acknowledge that Peter Thiel is going to die and become irrelevant long before the catholic church, which may very well continue on for another two thousand years for all we know.

by mikkupikku

3/22/2026 at 2:04:20 PM

What is the average pope? Fabian? Felix IV? Linus? Eusebius? Pius IV?

by JackFr

3/22/2026 at 5:39:16 PM

Benedict V!

by bryanrasmussen

3/22/2026 at 12:51:03 PM

>> 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.

by zug_zug

3/22/2026 at 12:55:31 PM

I 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.

by mikkupikku

3/22/2026 at 12:50:59 PM

> there are only antichrists, plural

Agreed, it would be exceptionally hard to choose just 1 (or even 10) right now.

by steveBK123

3/22/2026 at 3:26:01 PM

It 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.

by markus_zhang

3/22/2026 at 3:39:01 PM

Are we talking about the Pope or Thiel?

by briandw

3/22/2026 at 2:12:19 PM

Based 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.

by drooopy

3/22/2026 at 3:31:41 PM

The 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.

by timbit42

3/22/2026 at 5:08:33 PM

> 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.

by jonathanlb

3/22/2026 at 1:50:46 PM

For all Thiel's supposed invention, he's having a lot of trouble building a needle you can thread with a camel.

by mpalmer

3/22/2026 at 2:31:33 PM

It 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."

by illwrks

3/22/2026 at 2:38:43 PM

Maybe 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".

by joemazerino

3/22/2026 at 6:40:48 PM

Obviously 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.

by tim-tday

3/22/2026 at 12:15:38 PM

Power causes brain damage.

https://archive.md/sdLQP

by yesbut

3/22/2026 at 12:19:39 PM

Louis XVI would not disagree.

by sp4cemoneky

3/22/2026 at 12:21:16 PM

Technically, I think the blade did most of the brain damage to Louis XVI.

by rkomorn

3/22/2026 at 3:15:05 PM

> 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?

by shwaj

3/22/2026 at 3:26:48 PM

Peter Thiel and cadre.

by danny_codes

3/22/2026 at 4:40:23 PM

Hence the eye roll. Peter Thiel is Silicon Valley like, say, Trump or Biden is white people.

by shwaj

3/22/2026 at 1:06:42 PM

Where do they think Peter got his ideas?

by plicerin

3/22/2026 at 3:02:21 PM

John Nelson Darby largely. The Catholic Church's official stance is that any sort of literal antichrist and apocalypse is heretical.

by Avshalom

3/22/2026 at 3:31:34 PM

I 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.

by enoint

3/22/2026 at 2:31:45 PM

"Believe in an antichrist... No, not like that!" said Peter and Paulo.

by 1dom

3/22/2026 at 2:59:27 PM

Not a great time for blasphemy.. I have to wonder where a fatwa would lead with the US' conservative religious allies.

by follie

3/22/2026 at 12:57:49 PM

Ironic he fears the Antichrist yet backs Trump, who fits many of those traits.

by pupppet

3/22/2026 at 2:28:50 PM

ehhh, 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...

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)

by erelong

3/22/2026 at 1:23:02 PM

> 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.

by heresie-dabord

3/22/2026 at 3:30:17 PM

[dead]

by jaco6

3/22/2026 at 11:54:05 AM

[dead]

by 5o1ecist

3/22/2026 at 3:27:26 PM

[dead]

by 3842056935870

3/22/2026 at 12:34:47 PM

[dead]

by aaron695

3/22/2026 at 4:46:15 PM

I 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?

by _blk

3/22/2026 at 4:49:54 PM

It's no longer 2014. It's time to move on, buddy.

by torlok

3/22/2026 at 2:14:44 PM

>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.

by jmclnx

3/22/2026 at 2:41:39 PM

I 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.

by pfisherman

3/22/2026 at 2:51:58 PM

This is about the most accurate description of many of the "thought leaders" in the tech industry I've ever read.

by lkjdsklf

3/22/2026 at 3:18:30 PM

As someone put it, “it turns out 4d chess is topologically isomorphic to checkers.”

by roughly

3/22/2026 at 9:41:14 AM

Here's the Vatican's article (in French): https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2026/03/14/thiel-heresie-bena...

The title translates to:

>American heresy: should Peter Thiel be burned at the stake?

by vrganj

3/22/2026 at 1:12:04 PM

> 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.

by kergonath

3/22/2026 at 1:31:28 PM

The article on the website is written by the Pope's envoy on AI matters.

I think calling that "the Vatican's article" is fair.

by vrganj

3/22/2026 at 3:17:52 PM

It'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.

by Noumenon72

3/22/2026 at 3:23:12 PM

Feels 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.

by vrganj

3/22/2026 at 3:26:06 PM

Well, no, because it is not an official statement. It also does not change anything about the other points.

by kergonath

3/22/2026 at 7:52:43 PM

He 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.

by lo_zamoyski

3/22/2026 at 12:01:26 PM

The 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.

by expedition32

3/22/2026 at 1:13:39 PM

Perhaps 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".

by notahacker

3/22/2026 at 12:08:11 PM

The "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.

by embedding-shape

3/22/2026 at 1:22:43 PM

The 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

by mtrovo

3/22/2026 at 12:38:32 PM

They're not selling 'indulgences' these days either.

by nutjob2

3/22/2026 at 3:54:42 PM

Luckily people like Paula White-Cain have picked up that banner and they're running it, hard.

by TheOtherHobbes

3/22/2026 at 12:23:12 PM

One could also say that a two millenia old institution has evolved alongside the rest of humanity.

by vrganj

3/22/2026 at 12:59:44 PM

Two 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.

by mikkupikku

3/22/2026 at 1:02:27 PM

Look, I'm not a fan of the Church either. But I appreciate them smacking down this lunatic.

by vrganj

3/22/2026 at 1:23:45 PM

"When a devil gets caught by a monster, I, as a human being, can only hope that they both die."

by mikkupikku

3/22/2026 at 2:53:38 PM

Unlike 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.

by slibhb

3/22/2026 at 3:35:14 PM

> humanity was stuck in a rut technology/progress-wise until the past few years

Can you please expand on this claim? The past 20 years have seen hundreds of millions lifted out of poverty, I’m not quite sure what you mean by “progress” here.

by oa335

3/22/2026 at 3:33:52 PM

Yeah I reject the point. People aren’t excessively fearful of global warming. Clearly people aren’t scared enough, or they wouldn’t be building 1GW data centers powered by gas turbines

by danny_codes

3/22/2026 at 3:12:25 PM

Do 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?

by mpalmer

3/22/2026 at 3:46:05 PM

Thinking about it more concretely, nuclear shows no credible signs of becoming smaller and cheaper, just a lot of handwaving and hopium about how it might, one day, maybe, perhaps.

Meanwhile we could have gone hard on renewables from the 60s onwards, and the tech actually has a solid objective record of becoming cheaper and more efficient.

One person's timidity is another person's realism.

Tech in itself is never a solution to political problems. And scarcity, etc, are fundamentally political problems.

The problem specifically is creating a political system that keeps narcissists and sociopaths far from power. All of the main isms suffer from this problem, and the consequences of failing to deal with it are consistently, predictably, catastrophically horrific.

by TheOtherHobbes

3/22/2026 at 3:09:17 PM

I 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?

by adampunk