The Archons

Note: while my own conceptualization of the Archons is vaguely inspired by Gnosticism, it is also significantly different. What they have in common is the etymology, from the Ancient Greek which means "the rulers"

In this page, "the Archons" are defined as the entities that are behind (any) collections of certain sets of rules, and punishments for not following those rules (including the "secular" laws of modern "western" (i.e. English speaking and/or European) countries). Collections of sets of rules without punishments, I don't call those "Archons", because you can't rule without punishments. Rules without punishments are more like "guidelines" for oneself, one's one moral values, and have nothing to do with being ruled. Whether or not humans can be considered "Archons" depends on the particular interpretation. Any entity which prescribes collections of rules and punishments for breaking those rules is an Archon. It follows that, according to this view (or at least, most of its interpretations), all countries are theocracies, and it's impossible for a country to not be a theocracy. Yahweh and Allah for example are (within the view formulated in this page) both Archons, and so is Tlaloc, who requires child sacrifice, with the threat of severe droughts if that rule is disobeyed. Any deity or non-physical entity that does not prescribe any set or rules and punishments is called (in this page, at least) an "Anarchon" ("not a ruler"). For example, if a deity is conceptualized simply as "the cause of lightning" with no further information, then that deity is an Anarchon. Note that any set or rules and punishments, even absurd ones like "if you eat tomatoes you shall be tortured and put to death", has an Archon behind it.

Pascal's Wager

17th century Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal formulated the following idea: you should "believe in" (i.e. obey, which is what was really meant, and so I will use this word instead since it's more accurate) "God" (i.e. Yahweh), for the following reason: if Yahweh exists [and, I may add, if Yahweh tells the truth about himself, which is a condition Pascal originally took for granted], then if you obey him, he will not torture you after you die, whereas if you disobey him, he will torture you forever after you die. Whereas if Yahweh does not exist [or, I may add, if he exists but he either lies about his characteristics or if he falsely believes something about himself], then even if you follow his rules, you have not lost anything. So, if you follow Yahweh's rules then: if he exists, you'll be spared eternal torture, whereas if he doesn't exist, you won't lose anything. If you disobey his rules however: if he exists, he'll torture you forever after you die, whereas if he doesn't exist, he won't torture you. So, within this framing, it is advantageous to follow his rules to avoid being tortured forever by him in the afterlife.

Of course, the framing of the Pascal's Wager is extremely specific and contains a huge amount of unwarranted assumptions (for example, that the Archon that one is taking into consideration (i.e. Yahweh) has told the truth). The exact same reasoning can be made about any Archon whose punishment is "eternal torture in the afterlife". For example, an argument can be made against eating tomatoes, because if the tomatophobic Archon exists, then by eating tomatoes, it'll torture you forever in the afterlife, whereas if you don't eat tomatoes, you won't get tortured regardless of the existence of the tomatophobic Archon. Furthermore, one can create a version of the wager where the truthfulness of the Archon in question is not taken for granted, and two separate columns are created for "the Archon told the truth" or "the Archon lied/was ignorant about itself" (which can be either conceptualized as one column in the table or two columns.. so how "advantageous" it is to decide to follow an Archon from the structure of Pascal's Wager is entirely a matter of how the table is framed). The first table is how Blaise Pascal formulated the wager ("Yahweh" is substituted with "Archon" to make the reasoning more generic and highlight the structure of the wager rather than its specific content). In this table, it will be assumed, as Pascal did, that the Archon in question tells the truth (a Truthful Archon is also called a Type T Archon):

Table 1: Truthful Afterlife-Torturer Archon (Type T, the type of Archon Pascal assumed in the wager)

Of course, the table above works for any Archon whose punishment is "eternal torture after death", so it could be argued from it that you should avoid eating tomatoes, or that you should follow literally any arbitrary set of rules decided by whoever argues in favor of the wager. Now here's a table that assumes that the Archon that tortures you forever after you die is a liar. Now, if it's a liar, three combinations are possible, for example: neither obeying nor disobeying will lead to eternal torture (I'll call it Type N), both obeying and disobeying will lead to eternal torture (Type Y), or that obeying will lead to eternal torture and disobeying will lead the disobeyer to be spared from eternal torture (Type R). A lying Archon is called a Trickster Archon.

Table 2: Trickster Afterlife-Torturer Archon (Type R, the type of Archon that does the opposite it claims)

Table 3: Trickster Afterlife-Torturer Archon (Type N, the type of Archon that will not torture you even though it claims to torture disobeyers forever)

Table 4: Trickster Afterlife-Torturer Archon (Type Y, the type of Archon that will torture you regardless if you obey or not, even though it claims to spare those who obey)

Assuming that there is an equal chance for an Afterlife-Torturer Archon to be one of those types (25% chance each), obeying or disobeying has equal chance of you ending up being tortured forever by the Archon. Pascal's Wager assumes that the Archon who will torture you after you die is a Type T (Truthful) Archon. A more comprehensive analysis may take into consideration that the Archon may be any of the four types, not just type T. So, depending on which possibilities you take into consideration, your conclusions of whether or not it's more advantageous of obeying an Archon may vary. Not to mention, if the existence of multiple Afterlife-Torturer Archons, each one with different rules, is taken into consideration, then it becomes unclear which Archon one has to obey in order to not be tortured forever, even if one assumes they're all Type T - i.e. truthful - Archons. This latter approach is a common objection against the Pascal's Wager.

There may actually be one good argument in favor of the Pascal's Wager, and I'm not sure if anyone else has thought about it before so I'll describe it. Assuming that the psychic energies of humans is what power Archons and deities in general, one can deduce then that the deity with the highest amount of psychic energies is the most powerful one, and therefore, competing claims between the Archons are won by the Archon who has accumulated the highest amount of psychic energies. If all human beings give an equal amount of psychic energies, then the most powerful Archon is Yahweh, the only deity that Christians are supposed to worship. One can however argue that it's not necessarily the amount of people we need to consider, but the amount of psychic energies. One can argue that Muslims give more psychic energies to their deity compared to Christians, because Muslims pray five times a day, and that means Allah receives a higher amount of psychic energies overall, making Allah the most powerful deity, and so it's Allah who has the power to torture or spare people in the afterlife. Yet another hypothesis is that there may be a secret group somewhere on Earth whose members give an exceptionally high amount of psychic energies to their deity (due to the members' incredible, almost super-human psychic abilities), making that deity the most powerful. It is speculation however to guess what kind of characteristics this secret most powerful deity may have. It's possible for example that it may not be an Archon, and that instead of torturing people, it creates a beautiful and happy afterlife for everyone. Or maybe not.

When the Archons actually "rule" (or don't rule) over humans

It's possible that, if everyone on Earth is a Muslim, then Allah has enough psychic energies to kill every human and spell the end of the human race. But now, since only a minority is a Muslim, Allah doesn't have enough psychic energies to kill the entire human species (or anyone, for that matter), so humans have to kill people on his behalf, because he currently can't kill anyone, with the amount of psychic energies he has. There is a hierarchy among the Archons:

-Supreme Archon: creates a set of rules and enforces it directly, without human intervention (like Physis (which I'll explain eventually)).
-High Archons: they create a set of rules, but can only enforce it directly if they have enough psychic energies from humans. For example, an Archon that bans tomatoes with the death penalty, if it receives enough psychic energies from humans, can kill a tomato-eater directly.
-Middle Archons: they create a set of rules but cannot enforce them directly. If they have enough psychic energies, they can convince humans to enforce those rules on their behalf. Allah is an example of a Middle Archon, and Yahweh is one too.
-Low Archons: they create a set of rules but can never enforce them, neither directly nor indirectly. Even if most people in a society agree with a certain set of rules (proposed by a Low Archon), that set of rule is not implemented.

It's possible that these categories are fixed and that each Archon always stays at the same category, but it's also possible that the categories are not fixed and that, with a higher amount of psychic energies, an Archon can climb the ladder. It's possible that, for example, if everyone in the world is a Muslim, then Allah is no longer a Middle Archon but becomes a High Archon, and, if he wants, he could exterminate the entire human species by himself. He does not seem to be currently capable of that, though, because in Islamic countries, gay people are not killed/imprisoned by Allah, but by humans. That means Allah is a Middle Archon, just like Yahweh.

But another possible categorization is that only the Supreme Archon (what I call "Physis") exists, and that anytime what is called a High Archon in the previous categorization enforces a rule by itself, that's actually the Supreme Archon enforcing that rule. In this categorization, High Archons, Middle Archons and Low Archons do not exist, and the rules of the Middle Archons are created and enforced by humans, making an actual theocracy impossible. One can only (falsely) believe that a country is a theocracy, but it's all human-made rules. As for who the Supreme Archon is, I call it Physis. Physis forbids travelling faster than light (as per our current understanding), or to travel one kilometer/mile with just one jump on Earth. Having Dragonball-like superpowers is also forbidden by Physis. These are "absolute rules", that cannot be violated, but there are also "softer" rules, that can be violated but there is punishment. Drinking Cyanide is punished with death. Physis forbids drinking cyanide and Yahweh and Allah forbid homosexuality. If you drink cyanide, Physis itself will put you to death, whereas if you are gay in Saudi Arabia, it's not Allah who kills you, but humans (the government). In the previous categorization, that's because Physis is the Supreme Archon and Allah is a Middle Archon, who has created a set of rules and, since he has enough psychic energies in Saudi Arabia, his set of rules is implemented, albeit by humans. In this categorization where the Supreme Archon is the only Archon (mono-archonism???), then the explaination is that the Supreme Archon puts you to death as a punishment for drinking cyanide, but that there is no Archon forbidding homosexuality, and that what happens in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries is just a set of rules created and enforced by humans, with no divine intermediary or influence. Next, I may try to explain what would a Christian or a Muslim say about this and how would they explain this phenomenon, and why Yahweh/Allah do not enforce their own rules themselves. This philosophy section tries to explore all the options, after all.