Tag: Technology

The Metaverse and the Garden of Eden

· Hieromonk Gabriel 6 Leave a Comment on %s
Recently the company formerly known as Facebook officially rebranded itself as “Meta,” declaring that its new “overarching goal” is “to help bring the metaverse to life.” What exactly is the metaverse? According to an increasing number of influential CEOs and other leaders in the tech world, it is a nascent globally connected virtual reality experience which, in the words of Mark Zuckerberg, will eventually become “an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content…

On Big Tech and Christian Freedom

· Hieromonk Gabriel 11 Leave a Comment on %s
Over the last month we have been given a glimpse of just how much power Big Tech has gained over our society. In the aftermath of the Capitol Hill riot, the corporations which have become the de facto gatekeepers of the internet acted with remarkable unanimity in deplatforming those they deemed to be responsible for the outbreak of violence… including no less than the sitting President of the United States. For the better part of a…

Demonic Autonomy and Divine Obedience (Anthropology of Antichristianity, Part 8)

· Hieromonk Gabriel 5 Leave a Comment on %s
Brethren, join in imitating me, and mark those who so live as you have an example in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it…

The Age of Loneliness (Anthropology of Antichristianity, Part 2)

· Hieromonk Gabriel
We live in strange times. Modern technology has nearly obliterated the constraints of distance, allowing us to become interconnected with one another to an extent unimaginable even a few short decades ago, and yet nevertheless at the same time we find ourselves living in an age of absolutely unprecedented loneliness. According to a recent article in Psychology Today: In the last 50 years, rates of loneliness have doubled in the United States. In a survey of over 20,000…

The Consequences of Contraception

· Hieromonk Gabriel
50 years ago, Pope Paul VI issued a papal encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae, which he addressed not only to Catholics but also “to all men of good will.” In it, he reaffirmed the universal and unbroken teaching of the Church Fathers, both of the East and of the West, that artificial contraception is intrinsically sinful and incompatible with the Christian life. At the time of its publication, the widespread Orthodox response was…

How to Socially Engineer Secularism

· Hieromonk Gabriel
Apparently, using AI to learn how to socially engineer the secularization of vast numbers of Middle Eastern refugees really is a thing. It seems that, to paraphrase Turkey’s ErdoÄźan, “pluralism” is a train you get off once you have reached your destination. The goal of the project is to give politicians an empirical tool that will help them assess competing policy options so they can choose the most effective one. It’s a noble idea:…

Paradise 2.0: Google’s Plan to Program Heaven on Earth

· Hieromonk Gabriel
I’ve made some pretty serious claims on this site over the past few months. Even if many agree with some of the things that I’ve said, chances are high that many also think that I’ve been prone to hyperbole in certain cases. The central thesis of this blog, that modernity is essentially the gradual development of the new religion of the Antichrist, is no doubt a rather bold assertion which many regard…

The New Rituals of Techno-Utopia

· Hieromonk Gabriel
Perhaps my assertion that secular humanism is the embryonic form of the religion of the Antichrist, and that scientific materialism is essentially a tool to build that religion, struck some people as a bit extreme, perhaps even ludicrous. If so, then I would encourage you to take a look at a very interesting article in today’s Atlantic about the new rituals being created to accommodate modern sensibilities, i.e. mankind’s worship of man.…