Pravles Redneckoff

The target audience of a minimum viable religion are sense-addicted people. Many such people, especially those who have either experienced serious addiction or got close to it, are allergic to lies.

Therefore, the main precepts of a minimal viable religion must comply with the laws of nature and logic.

An addict, especially a recovering one, has a BS detector in their brain. They know that the wrong kinds of beliefs can kill them, so they filter out incoming information for signs of lies or unproven claims.

Here are a few examples of claims which are unlikely to pass the BS filter of a recovering addict:

1. Macroevolution and social Darwinist theories derived from it. Nobody has managed to replicate macroevolution in a lab or provide hard proof for it. Therefore, it's just a theory you can choose to believe or not to believe.
2. Freudian ideas that all people are motivated only by desires for sex, money, power, etc. It's enough to find one person who does something without being rewarded by sex, money, or power to disprove the idea.
3. Western societies value human life more than non-Western ones. The fact that Western societies have been trying to destroy Russian society since at least 1941 is only one example that disproves this idea.

There are certain things that you aren't supposed to do to people you consider friendly or neutral. You only hit, defraud, or lie to an enemy.

No religion can be true if the first encounter with it starts with something hostile, such as manipulation or outright rude behavior.

Here are a few counter-examples:

1. Claims that members of a particular ethnicity have to be members of a particular church. It's an attempt to dominate you disguised as spirituality.
2. Official Christians behaving worse (less Christian) than average humans in that region.
3. When someone wants you to claim that you believe in impossible things, it's not spirituality; it's brainwashing.

There are certain mistakes that societies tend to repeat. A minimal viable religion must help the individual and society avoid repeating these old mistakes.

If you look at many Eurasian societies over the last 200 years, you may notice that intellectuals there believe

1. these societies are hopelessly retarded and
2. therefore need to be absorbed by the allegedly more advanced West.

The facts don't support this view. Most of these societies achieved peak prosperity when they tried to walk their own, non-Western way (USSR). Yet, despite abysmal results, these societies prefer to fight each other (e.g. in Ukraine) instead of together fighting the common enemy (the collective West).

Other societies may have other mistakes they love repeating.

For example: For a long time, people in several very different countries (incl. but not limited to Austria, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Britain) were supposed to take care of themselves, do their little business or build their little career, and not to think too much. You were supposed to leave politics to those who understand it and don't be particularly principled.

Then, suddenly, some of those people found themselves

1. locked up in their homes without due process for months,
2. being treated as subhumans by many of their service providers,
3. in bomb shelters, or
4. trying to defend themselves from folks who want to behead them and from the police who want to arrest them for talking about that.

The recurring mistake all those people made was to think you can prosper without fighting against the elites.

A minimal viable religion must help the individual avoid such common mistakes. This can happen through the accumulation of knowledge over multiple generations. Part of religious practice must be passing knowledge on to your kids and/or other people you care about.

(Since the children are usually different from the parents, requirements nr. 1 and 2 make passing on such knowledge possible.)

Sometimes addicts love other people more than they love themselves. This can be harnessed to help the addict stay clean.

A minimal viable religion must hint at ways how the individual can do something extremely valuable for many other people.

An obvious example is storytelling. I do my best to stay clean so that I can write more, so that I may write something that helps other people survive and prosper.

There are other ways to care for others, which I will explain below.

When I had my black hole moment in 2023, a big part of what made it painful was the feeling that I might die completely and nothing will be left of me after death.

We can face death in better ways if we find a way to survive it, at least symbolically.

A minimal viable religion must provide ways for an individual to have a feeling of immortality without violating laws of nature and logic (requirement nr. 1).

Let's look at the official line. Jesus teaches about kindness, compassion, loving thy neighbor, and heals people. He encourages people to build a "Kingdom of God" either in their souls or in the afterlife. Then, the Roman elites decided to kill him.

From assumption 1 follows that in order for the Romans to want to kill Jesus, they must have had a rational motive to do so.

How does being kind to others and thinking about the afterlife endanger the Roman elites?

There is an alternative way to interpret the New Testament.

Jesus lived in a country occupied by a foreign power. It's the mismanagement by the Israeli elites that led to this situation.

Those elites, represented by the Sanhedrin, seem to like this occupation arrangement because they don't oppose it.

We can assume that Jesus was a highly talented human and as such he could predict where ancient Israel would end up if the elites continued his policy. The destination would be fiery Gehenna, a place so tormented by incessant wars that its fires were believed to never die.

A "Kingdom of God", then, is a form of societal organization which acts in the long-term interests of ancient Israelites than that dominated by the Sanhedrin.

To build the Kingdom of God means to replace the current form of government with a better one. To do this requires the aggregation of the efforts of many people. Jesus' followers probably were such people.

If we accept such a hypothesis,

• the actions of the Romans become logical,
• the willingness of Christian martyrs to die for their beliefs becomes logical, and
• the teaching becomes relevant in 2026.

Jesus wanted Israeli society to be more effective and efficient in pursuing its own (Israeli) long-term interests, not those of

1. foreign occupiers and
2. local elites who were in cahoots with them.

The existing arrangement satisfied both the occupiers and the local elites. It may have been codified in law.

According to assumption 1, how often was one social order replaced with another peacefully?

This means that Jesus and his followers wanted to replace the social order in the most frequently used way – through violence.

In the modern US, such actions may fall under seditious conspiracy (18 U.S.C. § 2384) and rebellion or insurrection (18 U.S.C. § 2383). The punishment is up to 20 years' imprisonment.

In ancient Israel, the punishment for such "crimes" may have been harsher, and this is why Jesus was executed.

There are many stories about early Christian saints who preferred to die under torture than denounce Jesus' teaching.

If Jesus taught that the ancient Israelites had to fight the elites to make them act in the long-term interests of the Israeli population, then Jesus' teaching was about ensuring the survival of the Israeli nation in the long run.

Jesus' followers may have seen themselves as a kind of people who managed to do something for the future of their society. Whether 2000 years ago or now, such people are extremely rare.

Imagine one such saint being given the choice to renounce Jesus' teaching or die. If he chooses to die, it may inspire other people to follow Jesus' teaching, i.e. to do something for the survival of their society. If such a saint can focus on the long-term outcome instead of his immediate pain, he may rationally choose to die for the cause as a way to attract new followers and thus increase the likelihood of his or her society surviving.

It is possible that the early Christian saints followed the logic of Soviet heroes in WWII. Back then, the collective West under German leadership invaded Russia and tried to exterminate the local population. In the early phases (1941) the Germans were winning decisively. People like

• Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya,
• Yelizaveta Chaikina, and
• Dmitry Karbyshev

were captured by the Germans and chose to die under torture rather than cooperate with them.

Whoever learned about their martyrdom would inevitably ask themselves: They refused to help the Germans even at the cost of their lives and dignity. Could it be that they did this so that someone, e.g. me, would get another chance at defeating the Germans?

The Darlings sing

Never give them control!

They've got their money but we′ve got our soul!

That soul is the part of the psyche which makes a person buy the lottery ticket of long-term survival of others with their own painful death… and by doing so convincing others that their cause (survival of the society) is worth living and dying for.

A no-BS reading of the New Testament shows a world where

1. your country is occupied by a foreign power,
2. your elites cooperating with the aggressor, and
3. life is getting worse and worse for the average person.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Oligarchs like Elon Musk and most of the political establishment (influenced by AIPAC) would be the American analogs of the Sanhedrin. Most other countries are also controlled from outside.

The overwhelming majority of branches of Christianity follow the Nicene Creed, which mandates that you believe that

1. Jesus was a god (not a human like you and me),
2. Jesus was born to a virgin,
3. Jesus rose from the dead, and
4. ascended into heaven.

Statements 2 and 3 are impossible according to the laws of nature as we know them; statement 4 is unprovable (unfalsifiable).

If you want to join a Christian church, you need to force yourself to believe in things that are wrong or unprovable.

Question: Would you force a loved one to believe (or pretend to believe) in obviously false statements?

Probably not, because saying things you don't believe is a manipulation technique which usually aims at making the target voluntarily give up their thinking freedom.

Imagine a normal person is presented with an unrealistic claim, such as virgin birth. Without extraordinary evidence, they will reject the claim as false. They know the laws of nature and the laws of logic. They may be willing to revise the understanding of them, but only after sufficient proof.

In other words: A normal, healthy person decides himself (herself) what's true and what's not.

If you manage to break a person's spirit, they may accept other people's ideas without scrutiny. Brainwashing like this may happen when prisoners of war are "reeducated" into the ideology of their captors.

Mainstream Christianity seems to employ brainwashing masquerading as the Nicene Creed to its own members.

Isn't breaking someone's spirit a hostile action, something you only do to your enemies?

Isn't indoctrinating children with obviously false beliefs equally unethical?

I believe that the Nicene Creed was an attempt by the elites to destroy Christianity. Jesus' teachings were extremely dangerous to the elites.

They tried to kill the teaching by killing the leader, and it didn't work.

So they decided to corrupt the teaching. A talented human became "Son of God," and the focus went from fighting the elites in this life to bodily resurrection, virgin births, ascensions, and the building of the kingdom of God in the afterlife.

The Nicene Creed was the vehicle which moved Christianity from fighting foreign-controlled elites around 30 A.D. to praying for them in March 2025.

Mainstream Christianity also wants you to believe that the human is inherently flawed and guilty of the cardinal sin (even as a newborn).

Imagine a recovering addict coming to Christianity. Such a person won't be very strong psychologically because they hit rock bottom recently. Do you think it's conducive to their recovery to tell them are inherently bad?

Of course not. It's much healthier to frame the cardinal sin as a type of mistake a person or society tends to repeat. This is much more helpful because you can avoid repeating a mistake (but you can't rid yourself of the cardinal sin).

Before a new society can be built in practice, it must be built in people's minds. Before there were the Russian and Chinese revolutions, there was Marx's Das Kapital. Before smartphones and tablets became reality, they were introduced in the 1960s in Star Trek. Something which allows the population to exert influence on the elites regularly is an invention which can take many brains to develop.

It's the job of writers to invent such mechanisms and show them in fiction books.

Entrepreneurs are required to build companies which may result in a more people-oriented economy.

In order for writers and entrepreneurs to survive and work, warriors must defend them from foreign occupiers and allied local oligarchs.

The latter won't give up their power without a fight. As much as I hate violence, building a Kingdom of God in real life is unlikely without someone fighting.

Let me give you a few examples of what building a Kingdom of God looks like today.

In 1917 the Socialists took power in Russia and built a society which, in many ways, was better for most inhabitants of Russia than Tsarism.

The revolution and the Civil War led to casualties in the millions, but you can make a case that it was a price worth paying for the prosperity of generations that followed them (esp. from 1945 through 1985).

In 2014, a highly destructive regime came into power in Ukraine as part of a coup.

In the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, enough people didn't want to live under such a regime and fought to secede from Ukraine (after eight years they became part of Russia in 2022).

Hadn't they fought for over eight years, they would now live like the rest of Ukraine does (with busification and a ban on speaking the language most Ukrainians speak in private, intimate conversations).

Compared to Ukraine in 2026, Russia of 2026 is a Kingdom of God (significantly freer than Ukraine, despite all the problems).

You could argue that by fighting for over eight years, the people in Donetsk and Lugansk bought themselves a much better life than they would have if they had stayed in Ukraine.

This example also shows how the famous quote by Seraphim of Sarov can work in practice.

Save yourself, and thousands around you will be saved.

Many defenders of Donbas were probably as opposed to violence as I am. They saved themselves, i.e. acquired a state of mind which allowed them to do what's right (fight against armed Nazis) despite their pacifism.

Their fighting saved millions of inhabitants of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions from war crimes committed by the illegal Kiev regime.

Note that those Donbas fighters are doubly heroic because they fought both against the Kiev regime and the Moscow officials who supported it (see 85 Days in Slavyansk for a history of the conflict).

Remember the story about ancient Israel being occupied by a foreign power, with the local elites being in cahoots with the occupiers?

Let's look at the history of Iran and see if there are parallels.

After WWII, Iran was under the strong influence of foreign powers, especially the UK and the US. Among other things, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company de facto belonged to the British government.

After over 30 years of struggle, the Iranian elites managed to install a regime more favorable to the long-term interests of the Iranian people. After 1954, the oil profits of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company stayed in Iran and have likely supported the many improvements that Iranian society experienced since the removal of the foreign-controlled Shah (life expectancy, infant mortality, literacy, university students).

We can say that the Iranian elites managed to implement Jesus' vision:

1. They removed the foreign-controlled elites represented by the Shah (1951–1979).
2. They've been improving their country from 1979 on.
3. Their elites were honest enough to resist the attempts to buy them off (contrary to so-called Russian and so-called Ukrainian elites).
4. As of 2026, they continue to successfully defend themselves from the West and its proxies (Israel and others).

This is the Christian mission well-executed over multiple generations.

You may say: "But Pravles, the Iranians are Muslims, that is, heathens from the Christian point of view?"

To this I, a proud heathen, say:

1. Mark 11:17 (my emphasis): "My Temple will be called a house of prayer for the people of all nations."
2. Luke 4:25–27: Here Jesus claims that the prophets Elijah and Elisha were sent to Gentiles (who are the equivalent of heathens for mainstream Christians).
3. In Matthew 28:19 Jesus says (my emphasis) "Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples." People in foreign lands are likely to have different (other than Judaism) religions. Jesus says they can be as good Christians as those who converted from Judaism.
4. Galatians 3:26–28 (my emphasis): "It is through faith that all of you are God's children […] So there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free people, between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus."
5. Romans 10:11–12: "The scripture says, 'Whoever believes in him will not be disappointed.' This includes everyone, because there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles."

I hear another objection: "You can 'prove' any piece of BS with a Bible quote."

True, but BS won't pass my requirement nr. 1. Unless you can prove to me that white Christians are better in some way (e.g. have a larger brain) than non-white and/or non-Christians, I don't see a reason why we can't learn from the Iranians how to take back our country.

Those examples show it is possible to implement the true Christian mission in our time. Every society is unique, and therefore the path from a worse state (your country being controlled by a foreign power) to a better one (your country gaining some sovereignty) is always unique to the society and the time in question.

This is the hint my interpretation of the New Testament gives as to the mission of a particular person:

1. Invent a plan for how your society can start acting in the self-interest of its members (over one or multiple generations).
2. Given that plan, figure out in what role (writer, entrepreneur, warrior, or other) you personally can contribute to the realization of the plan from the previous steps, given your talents and inclinations.
3. If you believe you are too stupid or too weak in other ways to contribute to that mission in any meaningful way, think about what you can do to become smarter (more disciplined, stronger, etc.).

Every of the above steps is complex and hard enough to keep you busy (which may make it easier to keep the addictions in control).

You may say: "But Pravles, where am I going to get the energy for doing those heroic tasks?"

There is a simple process for that.

First, find someone in your society you care deeply about. It can be your wife, husband, ex-lover, child, relative, whoever.

Second, realize that this loved one looks and behaves and lives the way they do because your society functions like it does now.

Put that same person into a fiery Gehenna, and they would, in the best case, act very differently. Note that fiery Gehenna isn't some imaginary place in cuckoo-banana land. The Israelis (supported by the West) turned Gaza into a fiery Gehenna. Before that, there was Iraq and Libya. They tried to turn Serbia into a fiery Gehenna, but didn't quite succeed.

Note that "fiery Gehenna" isn't necessarily a geographical concept. It may refer to unhinged elites oppressing people on a massive scale, such as during the plandemic. It can also mean that the elites get excessively violent towards citizens exercising their legitimate rights.

Compare the videos of state-sponsored kidnappings disguised as mobilization in Ukraine to the way ICE behaves in the US or the German police behaves towards peaceful protesters. To me, it looks like American and German thugs with shoulder boards learn from their colleagues in Ukraine. This means: Fiery Gehenna can one day come to any society.

Third, if you could do something today that would prevent your loved one from ending up in such a place, would you do it?

Conversely, if you could do something today that increases the likelihood of your loved one leading a civilized, normal (by Western standards) life, would you do it?

If the answer is "yes" or "maybe", it means you may contribute to saving society one loved person at a time.

Faith plays a central role in mainstream Christianity, but it has been corrupted as most other concepts.

Here is my definition of faith:

Faith is the totality of qualities and skills which allow a person to regularly make the right decisions in the face of uncertainty.

Faith in this sense is fundamental to the well-being of the individual and society as a whole.

Let me give you an example.

1. Imagine a young person.
2. They can get hired immediately to flip burgers.
3. They can choose a career that requires training and long dedication.
4. Flipping burgers gives you immediate money and is easy to do.
5. Becoming a professional takes a lot of work, and the results are not guaranteed.

The right decision is to sacrifice years of fun in favor of mastering a complex skill with no guarantee of success. The wrong decision is the path of least resistance.

Faith is what makes that young person improve their skills until they are so good they can make a living.

Note that faith is also an antidote to the central theme of "Infinite Jest" – addiction. If having written gives you a feeling of no suffering (like it does for me), you need to exercise faith to write so you end up without suffering as often as possible. When you feel no suffering you are less likely to get addicted.

Note that in my definition, faith includes skills. You don't get born with enough faith; you develop it through exercise (among others).

A writer who enjoys having written often needs to force himself to write. This is faith.

That kid from my example also needs to practice sitting down and improving whatever their chosen craft is.

One person can help another develop their faith, e.g. through body doubling.

To show up and improve oneself, pure discipline is not enough. Discipline is the result of the right beliefs. When someone knows why he or she should learn that particular craft (despite uncertainty of success), it is easier to manipulate oneself into actually doing the work. A person with faith regularly succeeds in telling himself those words which will make him work here and now, despite distractions and suboptimal conditions.

A person with little faith will stop mastering their craft when someone criticizes them. A person with more faith will convert the anger they feel towards the critics, reframe it, and use it as fuel for continuing to work (e.g. by working to prove the critics wrong).

This kind of internal work forces a person to get to know themselves and make up their mind what they live for. If they succeed, not only are they more likely to master their chosen craft, but they are also less likely to get addicted.

A society can only be independent if enough people invest their time, money, and other resources into activities which increase society's survival and prosperity in the future. A society can only force the elites to act in its long-term interests if enough people practice the right faith.

A sufficient number of active Iranians had and have enough faith, or they couldn't have gained independence from the West. This feat would be impossible if they asked, "How am I going to make 1000% profit within three months on this sovereignty thing?"

Rugged individualism to a society is what flipping burgers is to a young person.

Post-1991, many active and smart Russians and Ukrainians were minding their own little businesses and leaving politics to politicians (rugged individualism). Over the course of 30 years, the latter made two very similar nations fight each other without a clear idea of what the goal is (what victory looks like).

The society in "Infinite Jest" where everybody is an addict, may be the result of a similar attitude.