About Zachary R.J. Strong

Prelude

In his famous Guide for the Perplexed, the twelfth-century Jewish scholar Maimonides strongly recommends that people seeking to understand Creation should pursue studies in logic, mathematics, physics, and metaphysics, in that order. This has been, roughly, the course that Zachary has taken.

Ever since Zachary was a child standing in a Port Dover church listening to his grandfather preach, he has been curious about the “big questions” and why people believe what they believe. After a childhood spent mastering puzzles and strategy games, his quest to understand, combined with an interest in the “big problems” facing society, eventually led Zachary to pursue an engineering physics degree at McMaster University. There, he deepened his understanding of science and its applications.

After studying physics, chemistry, mathematics, and philosophy for many years, and having come of age in the era of “New Atheism”, Zachary was satisfied that the big metaphysical questions were a closed case, and that religion could be discarded in favor of science. Upon graduation, Zachary therefore pursued a career in marketing, with side-hobbies of student mentorship, keynote speaking, and game-playing.

However, after accepting an invitation to study an experiential learning program at McMaster University, and after an expansive research process conducted during evenings and weekends, Zachary became fascinated – as any engineer might – at the process of human development and the fundamental mechanisms that might drive it.

In 2018, Zachary realized that the syntax of students’ language roughly corresponded to their problem-solving ability, and that this phenomenon was not isolated, but in fact well-understood within certain niches of developmental psychology. Furthermore, his experience with the program he was studying indicated that transformational growth was possible on timescales currently thought impossible by the mainstream, and his literature review indicated that the Western mainstream was underestimating the potential of human beings tremendously.

Overture

As it happened, Zachary’s search for the fundamental mechanisms of human development coincided with the rise of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, a controversial clinical psychologist whose opus work Maps of Meaning proved to be very influential. Among other things, Peterson demonstrated that human life is characterized by confrontations with chaos and the need to create structure, and that this phenomenon has been identified by many different disciplines and is even instantiated metaphorically in ancient mythology.

Following a catastrophic nervous breakdown that left him bedridden for years and using his scholarship as a substitute for social interaction during the pandemic, Zachary began with own literature review and Peterson’s references, then consumed about six hundred books and journal articles between 2017 and 2022. His sprawling investigation investigated phenomena in many areas of human life, and involved some of the most respected works in psychology, neuroscience, media ecology, anthropology, educational theory, and biology.

This period of time in Zachary’s life produced several papers, a treatise on higher education, a review and extension of the anti-technology Unabomber manifesto, and eventually Fundamentals of Integrity Psychology, a summary of his psychological investigations and a radical new perspective on human development. Structured like a progressive rock album and full of musical references, Fundamentals encapsulates not only Zachary’s attitude towards mainstream psychology, but also his audaciously optimistic perspectives on human nature and human potential.

Crescendo

While Zachary’s research into human development bore much fruit, however, Peterson’s emphasis on the importance of religion in human life also drew Zachary back to the Bible. After reading said Bible in conjunction with Peterson’s Maps of Meaning and Julian Jaynes’ Origin of Consciousness, Zachary had a two-day religious experience which is described by Orthodox Christians as a ‘Baptism of Fire and Tears’, something considered so profound Zachary now has elements of priestly authority within their faith.

This powerful experience catalyzed a voracious search into the truth claims of Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, and eventually Orthodox Judaism – the only religion that satisfies Zachary’s skepticism as an engineering physics graduate and philosopher.

Indeed, Zachary's unique perspective on Jewish faith claims, driven by his understanding of topics like quantum physics, thermodynamics, and media ecology, has allowed him to make unique contributions to the growing library of documents regarding the claims of Orthodox Judaism. In his written work and on YouTube, Zachary provides accessible and robust evidence for the Biblical Exodus and the creation narrative in Genesis, as well as sophisticated critiques of the current scientific paradigm.

Among many other things, Zachary used his pandemic-disability sabbatical to…

• Discover a major error in the Lower Egyptian carbon-14 literature
• Productively dispute the notion that our universe is an isolated system
• Corroborate Jewish scholarship on the Genesis creation narrative
• Leverage powerful discoveries in neuroscience to refine “simulation theory”
• Tentatively connect verses in Genesis 1 to the creation of Earth’s magnetosphere

Expressivo

After reflecting on some unsolved mysteries following the release of Integrity Psychology, Zachary was successfully able to make connections between topics in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and Weaver and Shannon’s work on information and entropy. Among other things, this gave Zachary sufficient answers regarding the “fundamental mechanisms of human development” and allowed him to view the human lifespan as both a learning problem and an engineering problem.

The insights from these connections sparked an incredible attempt to use neuroscience, physics, and developmental psychology as the primary lens with which to view all social behavior, link many disciplines together with the best of Western philosophy, ground them all within Torah frameworks, and then prove with reference to physics and archaeology that Orthodox Jewish faith claims can be taken as sufficiently true in courtroom contexts.

In his most ambitious work to date, Ticket to Heaven, Zachary philosophizes with a laser, destroying and rebuilding the entire Western intellectual tradition. Alongside offering comprehensive solutions for the many crises facing Western society, Zachary reclaimed and elaborated on the concept of the Übermensch, demonstrated that Biblical idolatry is a thermodynamic force in human societies, and showed indisputably that most people lack the will to be fully human.

Unexpectedly and unintentionally, Zachary also demonstrated that an infamous fascist manifesto from Germany was correct on many points, including the Jews being at the center of history… but as the solution hiding in plain sight. We just had to ask!

Honestly convinced of the truth of Orthodox Judaism down to the finer details of Big Bang physics, entropy, blockchain technology, and the Egyptian dynastic chronology, Zachary is now on a mission to help the world zakar – remember – the truth of who we are and why we are here. He is now an author, YouTuber, counter-missionary, street outreach worker, advocate, and artist hoping to lay at least one cobblestone for the Jewish Messiah to walk on. Speedily in our time!

Art, Poetry, Music

Formally educated in piano, clarinet, drawing, watercolor painting, acoustic recording techniques, and Scottish Highland Dance, Zachary is also a self-taught graphic designer, guitarist, bass guitarist, and percussionist. His eclectic style is a reflection of his many inspirations, influences, and interests, and is expressed in a variety of mediums.

A student of media as well as a user, Zachary enjoys pushing the boundaries of traditional mediums to deliver powerful messages in efficient and elegant forms. He leverages his ten years of marketing experience to create religious outreach commercials, binds dead sticks together with twine and chandelier shards to create kinetic scultures, creates music videos for songs he likes, and designs gamified experiences for curious people that surprise and delight.

• 2023: Elaborate Idols (PDF Copy)
• 2023: Hymn of the Simulation (PDF Copy)