Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. We may say that we have the
Speaker 1: birth of a new science, a new philosophy, with a
Speaker 1: new life. The time of deliverance has come at last,
Speaker 1: and henceforward the career of humanity is upward and onward
Speaker 1: a mighty, a noble, and a godlike career. All the
Speaker 1: revelations of spiritualism heretofore, all the control of spirits over mortals,
Speaker 1: and the instruction and discipline they have given us, have
Speaker 1: only paved the way, as it were, for the advent
Speaker 1: of a great practical movement, such as the world little
Speaker 1: dreams of, though it has long deeply yearned for it,
Speaker 1: and agonized and groaned away its life because it did
Speaker 1: not come sooner. And this new motive power is to
Speaker 1: lead the way in the great, speedily coming salvation. It
Speaker 1: is to be the physical savior of the race. The
Speaker 1: history of its inception, its various stages of progress, and
Speaker 1: its completion will show the world a most beautiful and
Speaker 1: significant analogy to the advent of Jesus is the spiritual
Speaker 1: savior of the race. Hence, we most confidently assert that
Speaker 1: the advent of the science of all sciences the philosophy
Speaker 1: of all philosophies and the art of all arts has
Speaker 1: now fairly commenced. The child is born, not long hints
Speaker 1: he will go alone. Then he will dispute with the
Speaker 1: doctors and the temples of science, and then hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe, what is what is going
Speaker 1: on here? I'm reading a quote. This is a quote
Speaker 1: from a Boston newspaper, the June fifty four edition of
Speaker 1: a Boston newspaper called The New Era or Heaven Opened
Speaker 1: to Man, And this passage was written by a former
Speaker 1: Universalist minister named Simon Hewitt. So after this passage, one
Speaker 1: skeptical reader named Emma Hardinge commented that quote nothing could
Speaker 1: be given further beyond vague hints of what was to follow.
Speaker 1: The awful then, which broke off breathless at the contemplation
Speaker 1: of its own inexpressible possibilities. So all this preamble to
Speaker 1: something amazing that's going to change humanity? What on earth
Speaker 1: could Simon Hewitt have been talking about? Well, he was
Speaker 1: referring to something that sat inside the upper room of
Speaker 1: a large tower overlooking the coast beyond the town of Lynn, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: This is high rock tower. If you want to look
Speaker 1: it up, you can see a picture of this place.
Speaker 1: It still exists to kind of get a sense of it.
Speaker 1: And inside the upper room of this tower were the
Speaker 1: fruits of what I would sort of think of as
Speaker 1: the ultimate backyard engineering project. It is like garage engineering
Speaker 1: gone to the extreme. So from July eighteen fifty three
Speaker 1: to the following spring in eighteen fifty four, a group
Speaker 1: of universalist reformers and spiritualist enthusiasts had been building a
Speaker 1: machine called the New Motor and it would be something
Speaker 1: I'd say probably never seen before on earth, an electro
Speaker 1: mechanical messiah. Yes, which you know this will bring to
Speaker 1: mind a number of different stunning visuals which we would
Speaker 1: like to dissuade you from. We'll make sure we have
Speaker 1: some links to an images of the the electrical Messiah
Speaker 1: in question on the landing page for this episode. But
Speaker 1: but if you think about a dollec from doctor Who,
Speaker 1: from Doctor who, if a dollec or to breed with
Speaker 1: a coffee table, uh their offspring, and they probably resembled
Speaker 1: the be uh decorated with many like dangling Christmas ornaments. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so it's a hybrid of a coffee table and a
Speaker 1: dialect decorated for Christmas and serving as kind of kind
Speaker 1: of an altarpiece as well. There's certainly an altarpiece vibe
Speaker 1: to this creation. Sure, And this is bridging two worlds
Speaker 1: that we tend to see as sort of I don't
Speaker 1: know what spectrum it is, but there, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: there at the opposite ends of the spectrum. One is
Speaker 1: religion and the other is technology. I mean, we typically
Speaker 1: think of religion as a very low tech affair. You
Speaker 1: tend to go into churches, I don't know, maybe not
Speaker 1: some churches these days, but you see a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that recalls an earlier time. And our religious texts
Speaker 1: in most of the major religions of the world are
Speaker 1: very ancient, and thus the metaphors in which we talk
Speaker 1: about our religions tend to be very ancient. And technology
Speaker 1: is you know, it's the very essence of what is
Speaker 1: new and what the future is. I mean, what is
Speaker 1: science fiction that imagines the future usually focused on its
Speaker 1: new technology? Yeah, I mean most of the major world
Speaker 1: religions you have based on ancient cosmologies that sometimes we're
Speaker 1: okay with updating um Generally at certain points in the
Speaker 1: past we will say, all right, we're gonna actually change
Speaker 1: this a little bit to the fit how we live now.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, yeah, they're rooted in the past,
Speaker 1: and technology is ever rooted in the president in the future. Right,
Speaker 1: But today we want to discuss what happens when you
Speaker 1: cram the ends of that spectrum together and you create
Speaker 1: techno religion. So what happens when technology changes religions, what
Speaker 1: happens when technology becomes a component of religious practice, and
Speaker 1: what happens when technology becomes a god or messiah in itself? Right,
Speaker 1: And this is something that has been happening for ages. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you think of technology and the broader sentence, especially,
Speaker 1: humans have always been developing new technologies, developing gadgets, developing
Speaker 1: um more advanced ways of just looking at the world
Speaker 1: around them and manipulating the world around them. And this
Speaker 1: is always gone hand in hand with our ability to
Speaker 1: understand the purpose of life and the purpose of of
Speaker 1: our existence here on earth. Yeah, and the concept of
Speaker 1: purpose is also built into the idea of technology, because
Speaker 1: we typically think of technology is like a machine or
Speaker 1: a mechanism that does a particular job. But if you
Speaker 1: look at the Standard Dictionary definition of technology, it's going
Speaker 1: to say something like the practical application of scientific knowledge
Speaker 1: toward a purpose. So keep all of that in mind,
Speaker 1: keep those definitions in mind as we explore the convergence
Speaker 1: of technology and religion. Yeah, so I was wondering, what
Speaker 1: are some of the earliest examples of the religious use
Speaker 1: of a machine? Like you can only think back so far.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, nowadays people might I don't know,
Speaker 1: read devotional literature on their iPad or something. But is
Speaker 1: there anything people have been doing for hundreds or thousands
Speaker 1: of years with machines to help them in their spiritual journeys. Yes.
Speaker 1: In fact, we have a couple of really good examples
Speaker 1: of this, the first of which is the prayer wheel,
Speaker 1: which I imagine most people have seen images or footage
Speaker 1: of these, particularly if you've ever traveled into the into
Speaker 1: into East Asia, or or had any kind of contact
Speaker 1: with with with Buddhism. But these tend to be We're
Speaker 1: talking about a wheel and spindle composed of various materials.
Speaker 1: Who find a made made out of you know, ornate metals,
Speaker 1: you'll find them made out of stone. You'll find the
Speaker 1: made out of leather and cotton. And it Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a physical manifestation of the turning wheel of dharma in Buddhism. Okay,
Speaker 1: so physically to picture this is it going to be
Speaker 1: kind of like one of those like game prize wheels,
Speaker 1: uh sort, I mean it's the it's not positioned vertically,
Speaker 1: it's positioned, uh, horizontally. It kind of if you were
Speaker 1: just an outsider looking at it and you knew nothing
Speaker 1: about Eastern religion, you might you might equate it with
Speaker 1: with some sort of a dude at at a child's playground, right,
Speaker 1: just something that seems like you just spin it and
Speaker 1: it's cool to spin. But of course it has far
Speaker 1: more purpose than that within the context of the religion.
Speaker 1: Um So the wheel of dharma. Yeah, the wheel of
Speaker 1: dharma and uh, and it's all tied in with accumulating
Speaker 1: good karma, purifying bad karma because you you spin this wheel,
Speaker 1: and in spinning the prayer wheel, you are assisting yourself
Speaker 1: with the with with with the purging of bad karma
Speaker 1: and the accumulation of the good. And this is accomplished
Speaker 1: by the fact that I mean on top of the
Speaker 1: wheel being this, uh, this, this gadget, this device that
Speaker 1: that that represents this um this cosmological idea. The prayers
Speaker 1: are also filled with up to a mile of prayers. Um.
Speaker 1: So we're talking mantras and sutras generally written in Sanskrit
Speaker 1: and uh. The prayers are recited each time the wheel
Speaker 1: makes a revolution. So a pilgrim spins the wheel and
Speaker 1: with each stin helps helps them gain merit and to
Speaker 1: concentrate the mind on the the mantras and sutras that
Speaker 1: are being re enacted by the wheel. Okay, so much
Speaker 1: in the way that say, a lever or a pulley
Speaker 1: might upgrade our ability to do physical work, this wheel
Speaker 1: can upgrade our ability to do spiritual work. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: I guess one way to think of it would be
Speaker 1: think about a cassette player. Right. Um, So you're you're
Speaker 1: just a really huge fan of I don't know, what's
Speaker 1: your fite. What's your favorite metal album, your favorite rock
Speaker 1: and roll album album? Uh, Dope Throne, Dope Throne, who
Speaker 1: Electric Wizard? Okay, alright, well let's say you particularly love
Speaker 1: Dope Throne, and so you have a cassette of Dope Throne,
Speaker 1: But that cassette doesn't actually play just that. But imagine this,
Speaker 1: the mere act of that tape filtering through the machine
Speaker 1: and revolving around that wheel somehow enacted the spirit of
Speaker 1: that album for you. Okay, that's the kind of what's
Speaker 1: going on. So it gives you the essence or the
Speaker 1: aura of Dope Throne without the sounds having to play. Right,
Speaker 1: And and ideally, I think my understanding too is that
Speaker 1: you would also focus the mind on Dope Throne. So
Speaker 1: it's not just saying I'm turning this machine instead of
Speaker 1: thinking about it. I'm doing both. But but where this
Speaker 1: gets really interesting is when you, for instance, when you
Speaker 1: look at the fact that until the twentieth century, virtually
Speaker 1: the only Tibetan use for the wheel was as a
Speaker 1: device for activating these mantras, so that the wheel was
Speaker 1: was virtually virtually went unused there as a physical, uh tool,
Speaker 1: as a technology for you know, moving things around or
Speaker 1: crushing things, etcetera. It was used almost exclusively as a
Speaker 1: religious technology. Yeah. Um, Now that's not to say that
Speaker 1: all prayer wheels are turned by hand. That's kind of
Speaker 1: the main one, you see, and it's certainly the one
Speaker 1: that often makes the biggest impression visually, that's a money wheel,
Speaker 1: but there are also varieties that are turned by fire, water, wind, um, electricity.
Speaker 1: Hold on a second, So we've got an electric prayer
Speaker 1: karma machine. Yes, yeah, And this is where it gets
Speaker 1: really interesting because because it's one thing to say, all right,
Speaker 1: this one is spun by hand, because also I'm the human,
Speaker 1: I mean, the kind of at the center of this
Speaker 1: religious thing. Right, It's another to say the fire, the wind,
Speaker 1: or the air is going to move because those are
Speaker 1: natural forces created by the gods. Right. Yeah, Well that
Speaker 1: makes me think of an analogy like if you look
Speaker 1: to medieval Catholicism, where you might have chantryes that are
Speaker 1: where it's ay, a wealthy person, Remember, the gentry could
Speaker 1: pay people to pray, and the more prayers that the
Speaker 1: monks would say in these chantry is based on the
Speaker 1: amount they paid could lessen their stay in purgatory. I
Speaker 1: wonder if you know, if they've had this kind of
Speaker 1: technology at the time, would they think, well, would it
Speaker 1: be okay to say the number of prayer machines you
Speaker 1: build could lessen your stay in purgatory? Um? Could like,
Speaker 1: could you get one of those texts to speech synthesizers
Speaker 1: is to say prayers. You know, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: would definitely love to hear from someone uh with more
Speaker 1: insight into the the rules of of Tibetan Buddhism and
Speaker 1: these prayer wheels, because it would seem like you could
Speaker 1: just buy a bunch of these things and just set
Speaker 1: them up, plug them in, and let them go and
Speaker 1: then maybe just completely externalize your your karma situation. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they call these thardo cor lows and that you can
Speaker 1: keep them running twenty four hours a day using a
Speaker 1: four point five vault DC electric current. Uh and and
Speaker 1: and so yeah, you can just keep it running all
Speaker 1: the time, presuming when you're sleeping, when you're eating, when
Speaker 1: you're doing things that I assume do not involve the
Speaker 1: mental concentration. It's like a karmic force field generator exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is even crazier when you think of another
Speaker 1: technological uh uh innovation that you see with the prayer wheels,
Speaker 1: and that's that you can also find microfilm prayer wheels.
Speaker 1: They contain more uh came, even more than a million
Speaker 1: mantras inside them. So yeah, so you between microfilm technology
Speaker 1: and uh and simple electric uh, you know, technology to
Speaker 1: create a spinning wheel. Um, you can really sort of
Speaker 1: change your your karma game. It seems the micro film
Speaker 1: is especially interesting to me. It seems like that's almost
Speaker 1: like a religious implementation of the idea of nanotechnology, like
Speaker 1: accomplishing more in a smaller space. It makes me wonder
Speaker 1: and and perhaps someone has has done something along these lines.
Speaker 1: But why even deal with the physical wheel. What if
Speaker 1: you took the wheel virtually you could have I mean,
Speaker 1: what would the limits there would be pretty much be
Speaker 1: no limits, right, I mean, you could have an absurd
Speaker 1: number of mantras moving through a wheel at pretty much
Speaker 1: any kind of rate you want. Like, you could create
Speaker 1: a computer program that executes a subroutine that is just
Speaker 1: a list of these mantras, and you could tell it
Speaker 1: to loop infinitely. Yeah, kind of a karmic defragging system
Speaker 1: just running in the background out of your your computer
Speaker 1: at all times. Yeah. And of course, so this is
Speaker 1: kind of our outsider's perspective, But I'm sure somebody who
Speaker 1: is actually believing in and using these sorts of prayer
Speaker 1: wheels would have a pretty good and well thought out
Speaker 1: explanation for why you can use technology to achieve a
Speaker 1: karmically significant event in one way but not in another way.
Speaker 1: It might totally make sense in terms of how they
Speaker 1: interpret their spirituality. Yeah, I mean, I think. I think
Speaker 1: anytime you see this convergence of technology and religion, it
Speaker 1: becomes the domain of of the the priest or the
Speaker 1: priest class, or somebody in some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: clerical authority to say, all right, this is the line,
Speaker 1: this is this is how far technology can come into
Speaker 1: the sanctuary. It's okay to you know, read your hymn
Speaker 1: or your Bible on an iPad, but it's not okay
Speaker 1: to do X, y or z. It makes me want
Speaker 1: to ask the question why on that spectrum I talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, where we have, you know, the ancient religion
Speaker 1: on one hand and the new technology on the other,
Speaker 1: Why are they so far apart? Like what is the
Speaker 1: inherent profanity in technology? It does kind of see crass
Speaker 1: when you see, like when you see a religious service
Speaker 1: taking place on a JumboTron or something like that, Why
Speaker 1: is that, Like what is wrong with the technology or
Speaker 1: what is necessarily unspiritual about it? I don't know the answer,
Speaker 1: but there seems to be an intuition like that that
Speaker 1: we have. I guess so much of it is rooted
Speaker 1: in religion tradition, you know. I mean like I've definitely
Speaker 1: had that moment before. I've been at a church service
Speaker 1: and the person giving the sermon or you know her
Speaker 1: officiating at a wedding has been reading off of a
Speaker 1: kindle or a or a you know, a path of
Speaker 1: some good. It looks inappropriate. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's a lot of it has to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that religions tend to be inherently traditional, especially the
Speaker 1: older traditional religions. So just the the image of modern technology,
Speaker 1: especially when you think of technology, is this thing that's
Speaker 1: such a mastery, uh of you know, a human skill
Speaker 1: and ability to see that uh you know, shoehorned in
Speaker 1: with these things that are just supposedly giving to us
Speaker 1: from some sort of higher power. Yeah. No, I wonder
Speaker 1: if people in the ancient world would have thought about
Speaker 1: it in the same way. I mean, this again calls
Speaker 1: to mind something we talked about the last time I
Speaker 1: was on the show, when we talked about eclipses, which
Speaker 1: is the anti Kithera mechanism is an ancient Greek device.
Speaker 1: It's often referred to as the world's oldest computer or
Speaker 1: the first computer. And now obviously it didn't have microprocessors
Speaker 1: or anything. But this was a device that comes from
Speaker 1: more than two thousand years ago, was found in a
Speaker 1: shipwreck in the Mediterranean, and it was an ancient mechanical
Speaker 1: computer for for computing the locations of celestial objects and
Speaker 1: for like predicting lunar eclipses and solar eclipses in the future.
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing about this is it's an amazingly
Speaker 1: advanced piece of technology for the time, just astoundingly advanced.
Speaker 1: But these events, these celestial mechanics had religious significance to
Speaker 1: the people who used it. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly
Speaker 1: something we discussed in that Eclipse episode. When when you
Speaker 1: look back at ancient societies and even not so ancient societies,
Speaker 1: um astronomy and and cosmology are are so linked together,
Speaker 1: like it becomes the domain of the of the priest
Speaker 1: and the clergy to know what the stars are doing,
Speaker 1: to track the stars, so that we know what the
Speaker 1: calendar is telling us and when certain rights should be observed. Well,
Speaker 1: that makes me wonder if star treking technology has entered religion.
Speaker 1: Even ancient religion in the same way the prayer wheel did. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that brings us to the astrolabe. The astrolabe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now everyone I think has probably seen an image
Speaker 1: of an astrolabe in their finer forms. These are just
Speaker 1: works of just pure art. I'm going to tell you
Speaker 1: what a picture tell me how far off I am. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's it looks kind of like that compass you used
Speaker 1: to use in middle school math classes to draw a
Speaker 1: perfect circle with another little half moon piece on it.
Speaker 1: Is that completely wrong kind of yeah, with varying levels
Speaker 1: of artistry and a lot of figures and sliding mechanisms. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it small circular device and these would usually usually these
Speaker 1: would be made of wood or brass um and they
Speaker 1: date back over two thousand years. The concept seems to
Speaker 1: originate around three thir BC, and they were perfected by
Speaker 1: the Arabs in the ninth century, and they remained at
Speaker 1: the basic astronomer's tool for the next seven hundred years.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a model of the stars in the sky
Speaker 1: which can be moved to show where the stars will
Speaker 1: be at any time of the year, and the reverse
Speaker 1: side of the astrolabe concerns the position of the sun
Speaker 1: in the moon. Okay, so it's a lot like the
Speaker 1: end to get through a mechanism in a way. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's portable and has a large display. On top
Speaker 1: of that, if you have a really nice model, it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful work of art, something you might win, easily
Speaker 1: show it off at the dinner table. Uh. It's arguably
Speaker 1: one of, if not the first, personal computer mobile carrying
Speaker 1: it with you doing what you need to do in
Speaker 1: the course of a day. Now, the question is would
Speaker 1: it become overheated if sitting on your lap, if it
Speaker 1: was made out of metal and you were seated in
Speaker 1: the sign, I would say yes, Um, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: sterility hazard. It Uh. You couldn't get an app for
Speaker 1: this thing. But it had a number of features just
Speaker 1: by virtue of how contract the heavens. You can tell
Speaker 1: the date and time. You could calculate distances to be
Speaker 1: used in determine a building height, surveying longitude, latitude, altitude horoscopes. Um.
Speaker 1: You can also figure out the position of the planets.
Speaker 1: But then on top of this, there were various occults usages,
Speaker 1: so it gets a little bit into religion there. But
Speaker 1: the most notable function. Where we see the astrolaid becoming
Speaker 1: a piece of religious technology is in its ability to
Speaker 1: determine Islamic prayer times and determine the direction to Mecca. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is actually that the piece of technology itself
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have religious significance. But there's a fact you
Speaker 1: need to know to ex acute your religion. You know
Speaker 1: perfectly the way you want to do it. If you
Speaker 1: want to face Mecca as well as you can, why
Speaker 1: not have a machine to help you really hone that
Speaker 1: piece of information and get it as accurate as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, in a way, it really becomes an essential
Speaker 1: piece of technology in Islam because a long place is
Speaker 1: a high importance on the position of the believer in
Speaker 1: time and space. For starters, Uh, the s Alot times,
Speaker 1: these are the five prayers a day plus the Friday prayer.
Speaker 1: They depend It depends on a combination of clock time
Speaker 1: and sundial time to determine exactly when they should take place.
Speaker 1: So it concerns the exact coordinates for a given location. Um.
Speaker 1: Because again it's not just it's not just arbitrary about
Speaker 1: when the prayer times are. They have they are specific
Speaker 1: depending on where you are in the world, where you
Speaker 1: are in terms of sun time. And on top of this,
Speaker 1: the faithful has to know exactly where they are in
Speaker 1: relation to the Kaaba in Mecca so that they can
Speaker 1: face that direction during these prayers. Yeah, I think that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: And unlike the prayer wheel, which itself does some sort
Speaker 1: of religious or spiritual work, this is sort of like
Speaker 1: a technology that we used to be most properly informed
Speaker 1: about how to do the rituals that you would be
Speaker 1: doing anyway, because really a lot of the problems that
Speaker 1: occur in religion they occur as the believer moves farther
Speaker 1: away in in time or space. Right, Sure, you're you're
Speaker 1: you're farther away from Mecca. Uh, it's harder to determine
Speaker 1: exactly where you are. Uh. You're not necessarily going to
Speaker 1: have somebody signaling the prayer times each day from a tower,
Speaker 1: so it falls on you to figure it out yourself
Speaker 1: and uh. And then that's where the technology becomes extremely useful.
Speaker 1: But of course, there are lots of external influences on
Speaker 1: how we practice our religions. A lot of these influences
Speaker 1: are actually going to be technological. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I thought was interesting was to think about writing
Speaker 1: itself as a technology. Now, writing is so crucial to
Speaker 1: the way we think of most of the major religions
Speaker 1: of the world today, because you've got the Torah for Jews,
Speaker 1: you've got the you know, the Hebrew Bible plus the
Speaker 1: New Testament for Christians, You've got the Kuran for Muslims,
Speaker 1: and and of course there are texts that are central
Speaker 1: to Eastern religions as well, the Ramayana and the Mahabata
Speaker 1: specific certainly, Yeah, and so we think about religion as
Speaker 1: a very text based affair. But there's really no reason
Speaker 1: it has to be. I mean, religions can be transmitted
Speaker 1: orally through culture, that can be systems of cultural practices
Speaker 1: that don't necessarily have to be written down or encoded anywhere.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, most of the world's major religions
Speaker 1: have a strong textual component. And I wonder how it
Speaker 1: changed the way we practiced religion when writing came into humanity,
Speaker 1: because writing, I mean, human civilization is much older than writing.
Speaker 1: Of course, human life in general, human culture is even
Speaker 1: older than civilization, so much older than writing. So we
Speaker 1: can only really imagine I think, I mean I'm sure
Speaker 1: that something like a cultural anthropologist or and archael just
Speaker 1: could tell us more about how they think writing might
Speaker 1: have changed the way we practice religions. But I really
Speaker 1: have no idea. Well, I mean, I think at hard
Speaker 1: you're probably dealing on the situation of of of the
Speaker 1: expansion of memory, right, because writing is in essence, the
Speaker 1: ability to externalize human memory. Before writing, how we that
Speaker 1: we can only contain as much as could fit in
Speaker 1: a human mind, or if maybe if you were, you know,
Speaker 1: really skilled, that you might compartmentalize it, right and have
Speaker 1: one person deal with the with these memories versus the other.
Speaker 1: Almost a Fahrenheit four fifty one kind of situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So before writing, it's you're limited by just the power
Speaker 1: of the human mind, remember, and then the ability to
Speaker 1: pass that on to us, which of course we know
Speaker 1: from everyday experience but also from actual studies we we
Speaker 1: don't pass on information all that faithfully if we don't
Speaker 1: write it down right, memory itself is not set in stone,
Speaker 1: And and then there's kind of a telephone game anytime
Speaker 1: we passed something on anything. Really, anytime you remember something,
Speaker 1: you're taking it out, you're potentially changing it. And then
Speaker 1: putting it back in. So yeah, I have to imagine
Speaker 1: though of course I could be wrong that, uh, that
Speaker 1: as much as religious beliefs kind of change from generation
Speaker 1: to generation today, I have to imagine they changed even
Speaker 1: more and much more quickly in times before there were
Speaker 1: sort of like texts to anchor them. Yeah, before you
Speaker 1: could actually set a religion in stone. I imagine a
Speaker 1: religion really just by virtue of how we remembered it.
Speaker 1: It changed with us so very fluid. So some of
Speaker 1: these problems we run into where we're saying, all right,
Speaker 1: we're trying to apply ancient Babylonian cosmology to modern times.
Speaker 1: Part of that is by virtue of depending upon and
Speaker 1: ancient Babylonian cosmology is set in stone, and you know,
Speaker 1: and that that recording of it is considered sacred and holy. Right,
Speaker 1: So these ancient writing technologies, we of course had the
Speaker 1: invention of alphabets, and I think it's very fair to
Speaker 1: consider an alphabet of technology. But then on top of that,
Speaker 1: you just had the preservation technology, So you had scrolls,
Speaker 1: you eventually had caudessease, you had you know, tablets and
Speaker 1: carving and all the different pictograms and libraries and and
Speaker 1: every bit of technology we had, but there was one
Speaker 1: big thing I think that that was the main textual
Speaker 1: technology that really revolutionized the world, and that would be
Speaker 1: the printing press. Yes, yeah, we're talking about the mid
Speaker 1: fifteenth century in Europe, particularly called Gutenberg. Gutenberg, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and his effect on the Bible, the Gutenberg Bible because
Speaker 1: prior to this, any given Western manuscript had to be
Speaker 1: copied by hand, and it was generally this was something
Speaker 1: that was handled by by the clergy. Right can you
Speaker 1: imagine edge and this living in a world where so
Speaker 1: you look to the church as your you know, as
Speaker 1: your authority on all things spiritual. Uh, and probably more
Speaker 1: than that also all things government in some cases and
Speaker 1: and all that. But they have the Bible as the
Speaker 1: authority that's interpreted by the church. And so what is
Speaker 1: the Bible? Well, it is hand copied documents that most
Speaker 1: people don't have much access to. They might be because
Speaker 1: they're so rare. I mean they're kept in scriptory ums
Speaker 1: or libraries or these places that the average person wouldn't
Speaker 1: have any access to. Yeah, they're highly fetishized. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's just not something that the average person would have
Speaker 1: access to. And on top of that, the lack of
Speaker 1: a brnning press means that there's really not much distributed
Speaker 1: commentary on the documents either. And this is something that uh,
Speaker 1: a lot of people would say played a big role
Speaker 1: in the Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, scientific Revolution. If
Speaker 1: you just look at the Protestant Reformation, shan, you have
Speaker 1: to imagine the effect that the printing press had on
Speaker 1: not just the Bible itself, but on the distribution of
Speaker 1: Reformation propaganda. And I don't use the word propaganda there
Speaker 1: in a negative sense. I think that's just the term
Speaker 1: for all of the ways in which Reformation ideas were
Speaker 1: being spread throughout Europe at the time. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: the kind of technological advancement in mass communication that you
Speaker 1: can you can really only compare it to, if not
Speaker 1: the emergence of writing to begin with, and perhaps the
Speaker 1: Internet age like the like, such a big movement and
Speaker 1: such a drastic change in our ability to communicate with
Speaker 1: one another. Speaking of the Scientific Revolution, uh, that makes
Speaker 1: me think about the you know, the whole notion of
Speaker 1: a clockwork universe, which I'm not going to get too
Speaker 1: deep into that here, that could easily be its own podcast.
Speaker 1: But everyone's heard the idea of a creator God as
Speaker 1: a watchmaker, right, Um, this creator makes the perfect mechanical
Speaker 1: time piece that is the universe and then just lets
Speaker 1: it go. Maybe winds it first, I guess hopefully winds
Speaker 1: it and then lets it go because it doesn't need
Speaker 1: to be rewound or anything. It works perfectly as it's created.
Speaker 1: And this isn't an example of you know, a technological society.
Speaker 1: A society that has these technological ideas in its head
Speaker 1: can't help but think about um, the unseen world in
Speaker 1: terms of those same mechanisms, right. I mean, it's very
Speaker 1: common to want to describe the actions of God in
Speaker 1: terms that we can understand. And what do we understand
Speaker 1: these days? And making machines change? Yeah, I haven't seen
Speaker 1: a lot of this, but I wonder to what extent,
Speaker 1: like modern like email or jargon, etcetera, has has made
Speaker 1: its way into you know, just average say Christian sermons,
Speaker 1: Like does anyone talk about um communication with God prayer
Speaker 1: itself being a form of email. I do think a
Speaker 1: lot of the jokes now displayed on church signs coming
Speaker 1: from email forwards. Indeed, I believe I saw one chart
Speaker 1: church marquis here around town a few years back with
Speaker 1: a talked about sending God some quote an email, which
Speaker 1: I thought when I when I read an email, I
Speaker 1: was instantly thinking, that sounds like a great name for
Speaker 1: some sort of a wrestling move, finishing maneuver right where
Speaker 1: you need somebody in the head and you call it
Speaker 1: an email. Right there, of course, talking about kneeling, uh,
Speaker 1: and then praying, which is a form of n eemail. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's adorable an email. But getting back to the ways
Speaker 1: that external advances in technology have affected the progression of religions,
Speaker 1: one of the ways that I think is very significant
Speaker 1: is looking at the way technology has changed the way
Speaker 1: we do work, which of course is the main thing
Speaker 1: technology does, and how that affects religious beliefs about how
Speaker 1: we should do work. Oh, you're talking, of course about Shabbat, right,
Speaker 1: of course, So if you look at the way some
Speaker 1: Jews interpret teachings in the Torah on what should be
Speaker 1: done or not done on the Sabbath, there have been
Speaker 1: lots of ways in which new technologies have sort of
Speaker 1: intruded on the traditional understanding of what is accepted and
Speaker 1: forbidden to do on the day of rest. Right, This
Speaker 1: is sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, in which Orthodox use
Speaker 1: a forbidden to work, right, which is interesting technology, right uh,
Speaker 1: and to drive vehicle of course, right. And so of
Speaker 1: course what you can guess from drive vehicle is that
Speaker 1: a lot of these things aren't directly commandments stated in
Speaker 1: the Torah itself as an ancient document, but their interpretations
Speaker 1: that have come from the rabbis throughout the years about
Speaker 1: how we should apply the laws of the Torah to
Speaker 1: the new technological world we find ourselves in. Right, because
Speaker 1: just by the basic laws and like the thirty nine
Speaker 1: different activities that are awful limits, um, it would mean
Speaker 1: that you can't cook or light a fire. And by
Speaker 1: extension of that, the interpretation is that there would be
Speaker 1: no moving electricity through a circuit. Okay. So by this interpretation, really,
Speaker 1: if you want to be observant on the Sabbath, you
Speaker 1: should not press a button that causes an electrical device
Speaker 1: to turn on. Right. And that's where it gets kind
Speaker 1: of tricky, because there's some obvious examples that you know,
Speaker 1: you could say, well, don't turn on the vacuum cleaner. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well I'm not gonna turn the vacuum cleaner because I'm
Speaker 1: also not going to vacuum, but then you gotta eat
Speaker 1: on on the on the Sabbath, right, So, so what
Speaker 1: do you do about opening the refrigerator door? Oh, because
Speaker 1: when you open the refrigerator door a light comes on
Speaker 1: exactly that your action of opening the door that has
Speaker 1: caused that light to ignite. Yeah, So I mean for
Speaker 1: the longest there's an easy workaround. Right. You could either
Speaker 1: unscrew the bulb or you just you tape up that
Speaker 1: little button right, right, So those are some pretty simple
Speaker 1: workarounds for that some Orthodox Jews might use, but it
Speaker 1: gets more complicated than that in some scenarios. Right. For instance,
Speaker 1: another classic workaround was involved the use of an oven, right,
Speaker 1: because you need to heat up food. You can't light stove.
Speaker 1: You can't activate the oven by pushing the button. But
Speaker 1: if you activate the oven, you turn it on before
Speaker 1: sundown m on Friday and just leave it running through
Speaker 1: and keep it warm, you know, through sundown on Saturday,
Speaker 1: then you can make use of that heat. You're you're
Speaker 1: just setting an emotion beforehand and then picking up after
Speaker 1: the Sabbath is due. I'd imagine a lot of ovens
Speaker 1: today are programmed not to do that because they don't
Speaker 1: want it would be a safety hazard to just leave
Speaker 1: an oven on and leave town or something. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they probably have like an automatic shut off, right they do, Yeah,
Speaker 1: an automatic safety shut off. And when they started using these,
Speaker 1: you know, they were getting complaints from people who who
Speaker 1: needed to keep their oven on in order to observe
Speaker 1: the religious practices. So this is where we get Sabbath
Speaker 1: mode on on on various appliances, uh not where they
Speaker 1: play Sabbath albums. Right, So that would that was certainly
Speaker 1: an innovation that would be that would be great on
Speaker 1: modern Welcome in my house, a black Sabbath mode on
Speaker 1: your your dishwasher, etcetera. But no, this would involve simply
Speaker 1: a manual override to the safety features so that you
Speaker 1: could operate your cooking technology in accordance with your religious
Speaker 1: of faith. You know, I bet that there are specific
Speaker 1: manufacturers that do this. There are, and in fact, there's
Speaker 1: actually something called star K Kosher Certification for Appliances. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can actually go to their their website it's star
Speaker 1: uh dash K dot org and they have a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff dealing with with kosher foods, what have you.
Speaker 1: But also in a whole system, whole section on appliances
Speaker 1: where you can look up the appliances and see what
Speaker 1: their their their potential of Sabbath modes are, how to
Speaker 1: activate them, how to use them in accordance with these
Speaker 1: rules and regulations. Another classic example about the shabat and
Speaker 1: technology is the use of an elevator. Right occasonally, you
Speaker 1: need to use an elevator to move around in a
Speaker 1: high rise building. How do you do it if you
Speaker 1: can't push a button? While you just simply program the elevator,
Speaker 1: uh during the Shabbat to go from floor to floor
Speaker 1: to floor to floor, up and down, up and down NonStop.
Speaker 1: And then you just get on and you just ride
Speaker 1: the ride. Wow. Yeah, so I might be a long
Speaker 1: ride and a long wait, but at least you can
Speaker 1: observe your your practices exactly. Another bit of a religious
Speaker 1: technology wanted to touch on real quick is a sixteenth
Speaker 1: century clockwork monk created by one Ello Toryana, who was
Speaker 1: a mechanic for Spanish Emperor Charles the Fifth. Now the
Speaker 1: emperor's son, King Philip the Second, the story goes, was
Speaker 1: praying at the bedside of his own dying son, and
Speaker 1: he's getting desperate so he's making promises to the divine.
Speaker 1: He's promising a miracle for a miracle. Uh, even his
Speaker 1: child survives, he ends up recovering, and he has to
Speaker 1: keep his promise. What kind of a miracle can can
Speaker 1: a king actually do? Well? Obviously, the king's gonna um
Speaker 1: his mechanical constolled as a mechanic and get him to
Speaker 1: create a miracle as a as kind of an offering
Speaker 1: right as a as a as a thank you to
Speaker 1: the divine. And so that's where one ello comes in,
Speaker 1: and he creates a key wound spring operated automaton and
Speaker 1: it really complicated automaton at that. Yeah, I've seen pictures
Speaker 1: of this and it's fascinating. You can, like, I think
Speaker 1: there's a little compartment where you can peek in on
Speaker 1: the inside of it, and it's got gears and I
Speaker 1: don't I couldn't begin to understand how it works on
Speaker 1: the inside. But what does it actually do well? I
Speaker 1: mean it it walks around, uh kind of a square shape.
Speaker 1: It it strikes its chest with its right arm. It
Speaker 1: raises and lowers a small cross and rosary with it's left.
Speaker 1: It occasionally kisses the cross, It turns and nods its head,
Speaker 1: it rolls its eyes, and it mouths, you know, silent
Speaker 1: prayers and whatnot. So so what you said, it strikes
Speaker 1: its chest. So is this is this auto automatic self flagellation.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's quite flagellation. Okay, but that would
Speaker 1: be a different That would be an interesting different. Yea um.
Speaker 1: But some of you probably heard a Radio Lab episode
Speaker 1: of years back where they did like a short profile
Speaker 1: of this piece and sort of the mysteries around it,
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of questions regarding you know,
Speaker 1: why why was this created? What's the exact purpose? You know,
Speaker 1: what was the mindset in creating it? Is it simply
Speaker 1: an offering, uh, you know to God? Is it's a
Speaker 1: Is it something you're supposed to put on the table
Speaker 1: and you also around in prayer, pray while observing it? Right,
Speaker 1: my question would be does it do something relevant or
Speaker 1: is it more kind of like when a great painter
Speaker 1: sculptor would create a work of art and dedicate it
Speaker 1: to the Lord. I think that seems to be the
Speaker 1: prevalent interpretation, though in the light of what we talked
Speaker 1: about with the prayer wheel, it's it's tempting to want
Speaker 1: to go that direction with it, you know, and think
Speaker 1: of it as a think that, like its prayers had
Speaker 1: some efficacy. Yeah, I mean, I'm tempting. I really want
Speaker 1: to believe that I can, in good uh, in good
Speaker 1: faith put that forward. Is is something that I think
Speaker 1: or that even the majority of the extorts think that
Speaker 1: that was in the mind of of the king or
Speaker 1: the mechanic responsible. But you can't help but but wonder
Speaker 1: exactly how the mindset of the mechanic played into it.
Speaker 1: And of course, in our modern time, um, we've plenty
Speaker 1: of examples of prayer taking place online U prayer groups, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Sharing their concerns via the Internet. And I don't know
Speaker 1: to what extent they can you know, they ever consider
Speaker 1: the email itself a prayer. But but certainly that seems
Speaker 1: like a line that will blur more and more as
Speaker 1: that becomes like standard practice, right because certainly, uh, at
Speaker 1: some point the written word uh became holy. Right, And
Speaker 1: then I can't help but but imagine that in the
Speaker 1: advent of the printing press, maybe initially the printed word
Speaker 1: was a little less holy, a little more manufactured. Sure
Speaker 1: than that becomes uh, you know, de facto holy as well? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: This is the other side of the advance of the
Speaker 1: textual technology uh progression, because religion is so inherently social
Speaker 1: and in most the way most people practice it, and
Speaker 1: it's something that deeply does involve communication between groups, and
Speaker 1: so allowing greater communication between people who think alike or
Speaker 1: want to offer each other religious advice or interpretation or consolation.
Speaker 1: The Internet is obviously going to be a huge explosion
Speaker 1: in that. But it's also not just a peer to
Speaker 1: peer exchange, right, So you can have your sort of
Speaker 1: like your religious you know, email circle where you forward
Speaker 1: each other the things that you know you want to
Speaker 1: show to your friends and your peers in the church.
Speaker 1: You can also have services provided by church officials over
Speaker 1: telecommunications links. Indeed, and uh, you know, here's a question
Speaker 1: that comes to mind here. If it's if it's blasphemous
Speaker 1: to um, to burn or to face a religious text
Speaker 1: such as the Bible or the Koran? What have you
Speaker 1: deleted an e book of its? Oh? Man, is that's
Speaker 1: it's that blasphemous? I don't know. I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: sure some people have opinions on that. Yeah, I personally
Speaker 1: do not. Hey, and we haven't even mentioned exorcism online, right, Well,
Speaker 1: that would be one of those services that could be
Speaker 1: offered by you know, your religious official who might be
Speaker 1: so far away. What if they're in a cabin in
Speaker 1: Alaska that hopefully has a fast Internet connection, but they
Speaker 1: want to offer the spiritual service that you really need,
Speaker 1: and that might be the exorcism of a demon or
Speaker 1: multiple demons from your person. Right. And there are individuals
Speaker 1: who have and continue to offer online exorcism services. Back
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, famed Israelian Kabbala master Rabbi bot
Speaker 1: three attempted to remove a dibbck, a disembodied spirit from
Speaker 1: a Brazilian man via the Internet. And more recently we've
Speaker 1: seen evangelical Reverend Bob Larson offering exorcisms for a fee,
Speaker 1: of course, via Skype. And this, uh, this was actually
Speaker 1: featured on The Daily Show several months back. Really, yes,
Speaker 1: so I imagine I didn't see that. Imagine a number
Speaker 1: of our listeners caught it there. Yeah, that's sounds way
Speaker 1: more interesting than the video conferencing that we have here
Speaker 1: at work. Yeah, but you know, ultimately, what's I don't
Speaker 1: see what the big big deal is because if if
Speaker 1: an exorcism involves like this, right, by which you're driving
Speaker 1: a spiritual invader out. That's essentially that the demon is
Speaker 1: kind of telecommuting through an individual, right, yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. I mean it seems to me that the
Speaker 1: ideology behind an exorcism would suggest that it's a it's
Speaker 1: an interpersonal connection that breaks the power of the demon.
Speaker 1: It's sort of the spiritual or emotional or intellectual presence
Speaker 1: of the clerical official that can drive the demon out,
Speaker 1: not so much the physical presence, like why would they
Speaker 1: really need to be in the room. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it reminds me. I think we've both recently rewatched portions
Speaker 1: are the entirety of the The Hell Razor Bloodlines movie
Speaker 1: where and of course you know religious technology, right, the
Speaker 1: limit configuration is a little mechanical device and you solve it,
Speaker 1: and the demon show up, the cinebyte show up and
Speaker 1: in that movie as an individual that's cheating right by
Speaker 1: trying by solving it virtually or remotely by use of
Speaker 1: a robot. Right, yes, he's he's using essentially the technology
Speaker 1: of a bomb disposal robot, but to solve the lament
Speaker 1: configuration puzzle box and workroom. Initially it works, but then
Speaker 1: some some people who are not very technologically savvy or like, well,
Speaker 1: we gotta solve this problem. They open the door to
Speaker 1: the room where the cinobytes are contained, and then there's
Speaker 1: a big problem. But that's interesting. Initially they're able to
Speaker 1: out maneuver the technologically empowered demons that are the cinabytes
Speaker 1: via more advanced technology. Right, they can put those cinobytes
Speaker 1: in a box inside a box, exactly inside a box,
Speaker 1: all right. So that's going to be the end of
Speaker 1: part one here. This is very much again a two
Speaker 1: part series. Yeah, and if you want to hear the
Speaker 1: conclusion of that story that we started this episode with
Speaker 1: the construction of the electro mechanical Messiah at the High
Speaker 1: Rock Tower in Lynn, Massachusetts, that's gonna be in our
Speaker 1: next episode. So that's going to be in part two. Indeed,
Speaker 1: we're also gonna get into some some wonderful UFO and
Speaker 1: scientology territory as well. So hey, if you're if you're
Speaker 1: listening to this episode as it comes out, just wait
Speaker 1: a couple of days and you know, get the second part.
Speaker 1: If you're catching up on this at a later point,
Speaker 1: I will make sure that there is a link to
Speaker 1: the second episode on the landing page for this episode
Speaker 1: at stuff to blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership.
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find all the episodes, all the videos,
Speaker 1: all the blog posts, plus links out to our social
Speaker 1: media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. And if you
Speaker 1: want to let us know about any interesting thoughts you
Speaker 1: have or stories you've ever experienced about the intersection of
Speaker 1: religion and technology, or even the complete synthesis and marriage
Speaker 1: of religion and technology, email us at blow the Mind
Speaker 1: at how stuffworks dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com?
Speaker 1: Could you be you Plier