WEBVTT - Techno-Religion for the Masses: Part 1 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:16.079 Works dot com. We may say that we have the 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:19.520 birth of a new science, a new philosophy, with a 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:23.200 new life. The time of deliverance has come at last, 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:27.320 and henceforward the career of humanity is upward and onward 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.960 a mighty, a noble, and a godlike career. All the 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:37.519 revelations of spiritualism heretofore, all the control of spirits over mortals, 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:40.800 and the instruction and discipline they have given us, have 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:43.959 only paved the way, as it were, for the advent 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.680 of a great practical movement, such as the world little 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:51.199 dreams of, though it has long deeply yearned for it, 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:54.720 and agonized and groaned away its life because it did 0:00:54.760 --> 0:00:58.560 not come sooner. And this new motive power is to 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.400 lead the way in the great, speedily coming salvation. It 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:05.600 is to be the physical savior of the race. The 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:10.240 history of its inception, its various stages of progress, and 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:13.440 its completion will show the world a most beautiful and 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:17.480 significant analogy to the advent of Jesus is the spiritual 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.760 savior of the race. Hence, we most confidently assert that 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:25.600 the advent of the science of all sciences the philosophy 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.119 of all philosophies and the art of all arts has 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:33.240 now fairly commenced. The child is born, not long hints 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:36.200 he will go alone. Then he will dispute with the 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:45.600 doctors and the temples of science, and then hey, welcome 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:47.600 to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:51.520 and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe, what is what is going 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:54.280 on here? I'm reading a quote. This is a quote 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:58.320 from a Boston newspaper, the June fifty four edition of 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:03.040 a Boston newspaper called The New Era or Heaven Opened 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:05.560 to Man, And this passage was written by a former 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:10.520 Universalist minister named Simon Hewitt. So after this passage, one 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:15.480 skeptical reader named Emma Hardinge commented that quote nothing could 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.760 be given further beyond vague hints of what was to follow. 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:23.079 The awful then, which broke off breathless at the contemplation 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:28.600 of its own inexpressible possibilities. So all this preamble to 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:32.639 something amazing that's going to change humanity? What on earth 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:37.280 could Simon Hewitt have been talking about? Well, he was 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:41.040 referring to something that sat inside the upper room of 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:46.079 a large tower overlooking the coast beyond the town of Lynn, Massachusetts. 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:49.079 This is high rock tower. If you want to look 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:50.600 it up, you can see a picture of this place. 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:52.840 It still exists to kind of get a sense of it. 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:56.800 And inside the upper room of this tower were the 0:02:56.840 --> 0:02:58.480 fruits of what I would sort of think of as 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:03.079 the ultimate backyard engineering project. It is like garage engineering 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:08.240 gone to the extreme. So from July eighteen fifty three 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:11.760 to the following spring in eighteen fifty four, a group 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:16.360 of universalist reformers and spiritualist enthusiasts had been building a 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:20.280 machine called the New Motor and it would be something 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:24.280 I'd say probably never seen before on earth, an electro 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:29.000 mechanical messiah. Yes, which you know this will bring to 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:34.000 mind a number of different stunning visuals which we would 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:37.880 like to dissuade you from. We'll make sure we have 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:41.280 some links to an images of the the electrical Messiah 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:43.760 in question on the landing page for this episode. But 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.040 but if you think about a dollec from doctor Who, 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.080 from Doctor who, if a dollec or to breed with 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:53.400 a coffee table, uh their offspring, and they probably resembled 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:58.600 the be uh decorated with many like dangling Christmas ornaments. Yes, yes, 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:01.280 so it's a hybrid of a coffee table and a 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:04.880 dialect decorated for Christmas and serving as kind of kind 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.040 of an altarpiece as well. There's certainly an altarpiece vibe 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:11.680 to this creation. Sure, And this is bridging two worlds 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:14.119 that we tend to see as sort of I don't 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.599 know what spectrum it is, but there, whatever it is, 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:19.480 there at the opposite ends of the spectrum. One is 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:24.680 religion and the other is technology. I mean, we typically 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:29.320 think of religion as a very low tech affair. You 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:31.600 tend to go into churches, I don't know, maybe not 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:33.600 some churches these days, but you see a lot of 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:38.280 stuff that recalls an earlier time. And our religious texts 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:40.360 in most of the major religions of the world are 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.719 very ancient, and thus the metaphors in which we talk 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:48.320 about our religions tend to be very ancient. And technology 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:50.960 is you know, it's the very essence of what is 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:52.760 new and what the future is. I mean, what is 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:56.120 science fiction that imagines the future usually focused on its 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:59.200 new technology? Yeah, I mean most of the major world 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:05.000 religions you have based on ancient cosmologies that sometimes we're 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:08.359 okay with updating um Generally at certain points in the 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:10.880 past we will say, all right, we're gonna actually change 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.240 this a little bit to the fit how we live now. 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:15.120 But for the most part, yeah, they're rooted in the past, 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.599 and technology is ever rooted in the president in the future. Right, 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:21.960 But today we want to discuss what happens when you 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:26.120 cram the ends of that spectrum together and you create 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:31.760 techno religion. So what happens when technology changes religions, what 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:36.279 happens when technology becomes a component of religious practice, and 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:40.880 what happens when technology becomes a god or messiah in itself? Right, 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:43.960 And this is something that has been happening for ages. Uh. 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:47.120 If you think of technology and the broader sentence, especially, 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:52.719 humans have always been developing new technologies, developing gadgets, developing 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:57.200 um more advanced ways of just looking at the world 0:05:57.200 --> 0:05:59.479 around them and manipulating the world around them. And this 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:01.560 is always gone hand in hand with our ability to 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:04.560 understand the purpose of life and the purpose of of 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:07.080 our existence here on earth. Yeah, and the concept of 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:11.400 purpose is also built into the idea of technology, because 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:14.720 we typically think of technology is like a machine or 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:17.839 a mechanism that does a particular job. But if you 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.719 look at the Standard Dictionary definition of technology, it's going 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:24.960 to say something like the practical application of scientific knowledge 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:27.080 toward a purpose. So keep all of that in mind, 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:30.000 keep those definitions in mind as we explore the convergence 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:33.520 of technology and religion. Yeah, so I was wondering, what 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:38.240 are some of the earliest examples of the religious use 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.520 of a machine? Like you can only think back so far. 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:44.159 I mean, of course, nowadays people might I don't know, 0:06:44.240 --> 0:06:48.200 read devotional literature on their iPad or something. But is 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:51.440 there anything people have been doing for hundreds or thousands 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:55.240 of years with machines to help them in their spiritual journeys. Yes. 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:57.800 In fact, we have a couple of really good examples 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:00.840 of this, the first of which is the prayer wheel, 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:05.040 which I imagine most people have seen images or footage 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:09.279 of these, particularly if you've ever traveled into the into 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:12.040 into East Asia, or or had any kind of contact 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:15.880 with with with Buddhism. But these tend to be We're 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:19.760 talking about a wheel and spindle composed of various materials. 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:23.160 Who find a made made out of you know, ornate metals, 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:25.120 you'll find them made out of stone. You'll find the 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:28.520 made out of leather and cotton. And it Uh, it's 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:34.040 a physical manifestation of the turning wheel of dharma in Buddhism. Okay, 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:36.240 so physically to picture this is it going to be 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:39.960 kind of like one of those like game prize wheels, 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:43.280 uh sort, I mean it's the it's not positioned vertically, 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:47.080 it's positioned, uh, horizontally. It kind of if you were 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:49.040 just an outsider looking at it and you knew nothing 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:53.239 about Eastern religion, you might you might equate it with 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:55.920 with some sort of a dude at at a child's playground, right, 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:57.720 just something that seems like you just spin it and 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.200 it's cool to spin. But of course it has far 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:03.480 more purpose than that within the context of the religion. 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:06.480 Um So the wheel of dharma. Yeah, the wheel of 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:10.400 dharma and uh, and it's all tied in with accumulating 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:14.160 good karma, purifying bad karma because you you spin this wheel, 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:19.440 and in spinning the prayer wheel, you are assisting yourself 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:21.960 with the with with with the purging of bad karma 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:26.160 and the accumulation of the good. And this is accomplished 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:28.880 by the fact that I mean on top of the 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:33.000 wheel being this, uh, this, this gadget, this device that 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:38.480 that that represents this um this cosmological idea. The prayers 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:42.280 are also filled with up to a mile of prayers. Um. 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:45.920 So we're talking mantras and sutras generally written in Sanskrit 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:51.160 and uh. The prayers are recited each time the wheel 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:54.920 makes a revolution. So a pilgrim spins the wheel and 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:58.360 with each stin helps helps them gain merit and to 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:02.040 concentrate the mind on the the mantras and sutras that 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:05.560 are being re enacted by the wheel. Okay, so much 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:08.160 in the way that say, a lever or a pulley 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:12.840 might upgrade our ability to do physical work, this wheel 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:17.560 can upgrade our ability to do spiritual work. Yeah, it's 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:18.960 I guess one way to think of it would be 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:22.439 think about a cassette player. Right. Um, So you're you're 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.480 just a really huge fan of I don't know, what's 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:27.480 your fite. What's your favorite metal album, your favorite rock 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:31.079 and roll album album? Uh, Dope Throne, Dope Throne, who 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:35.440 Electric Wizard? Okay, alright, well let's say you particularly love 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:38.200 Dope Throne, and so you have a cassette of Dope Throne, 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:42.199 But that cassette doesn't actually play just that. But imagine this, 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:45.760 the mere act of that tape filtering through the machine 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:50.240 and revolving around that wheel somehow enacted the spirit of 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:53.480 that album for you. Okay, that's the kind of what's 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:55.680 going on. So it gives you the essence or the 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.679 aura of Dope Throne without the sounds having to play. Right, 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:01.240 And and ideally, I think my understanding too is that 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:03.520 you would also focus the mind on Dope Throne. So 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:06.080 it's not just saying I'm turning this machine instead of 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:09.640 thinking about it. I'm doing both. But but where this 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:12.040 gets really interesting is when you, for instance, when you 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:15.160 look at the fact that until the twentieth century, virtually 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:18.720 the only Tibetan use for the wheel was as a 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:22.680 device for activating these mantras, so that the wheel was 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:27.280 was virtually virtually went unused there as a physical, uh tool, 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:30.319 as a technology for you know, moving things around or 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:33.360 crushing things, etcetera. It was used almost exclusively as a 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:38.400 religious technology. Yeah. Um, Now that's not to say that 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:41.080 all prayer wheels are turned by hand. That's kind of 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:42.760 the main one, you see, and it's certainly the one 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:46.959 that often makes the biggest impression visually, that's a money wheel, 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:53.400 but there are also varieties that are turned by fire, water, wind, um, electricity. 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:57.319 Hold on a second, So we've got an electric prayer 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:01.560 karma machine. Yes, yeah, And this is where it gets 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.480 really interesting because because it's one thing to say, all right, 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:06.960 this one is spun by hand, because also I'm the human, 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:08.480 I mean, the kind of at the center of this 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:12.280 religious thing. Right, It's another to say the fire, the wind, 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:13.760 or the air is going to move because those are 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:16.520 natural forces created by the gods. Right. Yeah, Well that 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:18.520 makes me think of an analogy like if you look 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:23.520 to medieval Catholicism, where you might have chantryes that are 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:26.280 where it's ay, a wealthy person, Remember, the gentry could 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:30.280 pay people to pray, and the more prayers that the 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:32.400 monks would say in these chantry is based on the 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:36.320 amount they paid could lessen their stay in purgatory. I 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:38.280 wonder if you know, if they've had this kind of 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:40.840 technology at the time, would they think, well, would it 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:44.520 be okay to say the number of prayer machines you 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:49.360 build could lessen your stay in purgatory? Um? Could like, 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:52.559 could you get one of those texts to speech synthesizers 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:54.640 is to say prayers. You know, I don't know. I 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:57.439 would definitely love to hear from someone uh with more 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:02.240 insight into the the rules of of Tibetan Buddhism and 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.000 these prayer wheels, because it would seem like you could 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:07.040 just buy a bunch of these things and just set 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:08.920 them up, plug them in, and let them go and 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:14.840 then maybe just completely externalize your your karma situation. Um. Yeah, 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:18.360 they call these thardo cor lows and that you can 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:21.520 keep them running twenty four hours a day using a 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:26.640 four point five vault DC electric current. Uh and and 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:28.200 and so yeah, you can just keep it running all 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:30.520 the time, presuming when you're sleeping, when you're eating, when 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.679 you're doing things that I assume do not involve the 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:39.880 mental concentration. It's like a karmic force field generator exactly. Yeah. 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:42.120 And this is even crazier when you think of another 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:46.960 technological uh uh innovation that you see with the prayer wheels, 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:50.319 and that's that you can also find microfilm prayer wheels. 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:53.240 They contain more uh came, even more than a million 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:58.800 mantras inside them. So yeah, so you between microfilm technology 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:03.240 and uh and simple electric uh, you know, technology to 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:06.240 create a spinning wheel. Um, you can really sort of 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:10.000 change your your karma game. It seems the micro film 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:12.560 is especially interesting to me. It seems like that's almost 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:16.800 like a religious implementation of the idea of nanotechnology, like 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:20.600 accomplishing more in a smaller space. It makes me wonder 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:23.800 and and perhaps someone has has done something along these lines. 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:26.360 But why even deal with the physical wheel. What if 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:28.800 you took the wheel virtually you could have I mean, 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:31.240 what would the limits there would be pretty much be 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:34.200 no limits, right, I mean, you could have an absurd 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:38.320 number of mantras moving through a wheel at pretty much 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.040 any kind of rate you want. Like, you could create 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.840 a computer program that executes a subroutine that is just 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.160 a list of these mantras, and you could tell it 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:52.000 to loop infinitely. Yeah, kind of a karmic defragging system 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:54.520 just running in the background out of your your computer 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:56.319 at all times. Yeah. And of course, so this is 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.560 kind of our outsider's perspective, But I'm sure somebody who 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:03.360 is actually believing in and using these sorts of prayer 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:06.320 wheels would have a pretty good and well thought out 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:10.199 explanation for why you can use technology to achieve a 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.480 karmically significant event in one way but not in another way. 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:15.719 It might totally make sense in terms of how they 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:19.560 interpret their spirituality. Yeah, I mean, I think. I think 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:22.960 anytime you see this convergence of technology and religion, it 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:27.440 becomes the domain of of the the priest or the 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:29.920 priest class, or somebody in some sort of you know, 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:32.280 clerical authority to say, all right, this is the line, 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:34.760 this is this is how far technology can come into 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:39.320 the sanctuary. It's okay to you know, read your hymn 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:42.640 or your Bible on an iPad, but it's not okay 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:44.440 to do X, y or z. It makes me want 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:48.000 to ask the question why on that spectrum I talked 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:50.480 about earlier, where we have, you know, the ancient religion 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:52.520 on one hand and the new technology on the other, 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:55.240 Why are they so far apart? Like what is the 0:14:55.280 --> 0:15:00.680 inherent profanity in technology? It does kind of see crass 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:04.240 when you see, like when you see a religious service 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:07.720 taking place on a JumboTron or something like that, Why 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:10.720 is that, Like what is wrong with the technology or 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:14.400 what is necessarily unspiritual about it? I don't know the answer, 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:16.800 but there seems to be an intuition like that that 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:18.960 we have. I guess so much of it is rooted 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:22.040 in religion tradition, you know. I mean like I've definitely 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:24.440 had that moment before. I've been at a church service 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:28.440 and the person giving the sermon or you know her 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:32.000 officiating at a wedding has been reading off of a 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:34.360 kindle or a or a you know, a path of 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:37.240 some good. It looks inappropriate. Yeah, I mean, I think 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:38.400 it's a lot of it has to do with the 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:42.120 fact that religions tend to be inherently traditional, especially the 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:46.840 older traditional religions. So just the the image of modern technology, 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:49.720 especially when you think of technology, is this thing that's 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:54.480 such a mastery, uh of you know, a human skill 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:58.240 and ability to see that uh you know, shoehorned in 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:00.680 with these things that are just supposedly giving to us 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:03.800 from some sort of higher power. Yeah. No, I wonder 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:05.920 if people in the ancient world would have thought about 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.240 it in the same way. I mean, this again calls 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:10.640 to mind something we talked about the last time I 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:13.800 was on the show, when we talked about eclipses, which 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:17.480 is the anti Kithera mechanism is an ancient Greek device. 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:20.200 It's often referred to as the world's oldest computer or 0:16:20.200 --> 0:16:23.280 the first computer. And now obviously it didn't have microprocessors 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:26.360 or anything. But this was a device that comes from 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:28.480 more than two thousand years ago, was found in a 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:32.680 shipwreck in the Mediterranean, and it was an ancient mechanical 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:38.160 computer for for computing the locations of celestial objects and 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.560 for like predicting lunar eclipses and solar eclipses in the future. 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:45.040 And the interesting thing about this is it's an amazingly 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:48.440 advanced piece of technology for the time, just astoundingly advanced. 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:52.800 But these events, these celestial mechanics had religious significance to 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:55.800 the people who used it. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:58.520 something we discussed in that Eclipse episode. When when you 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.880 look back at ancient societies and even not so ancient societies, 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:07.200 um astronomy and and cosmology are are so linked together, 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:09.840 like it becomes the domain of the of the priest 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:12.960 and the clergy to know what the stars are doing, 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:15.439 to track the stars, so that we know what the 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:18.200 calendar is telling us and when certain rights should be observed. Well, 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:21.800 that makes me wonder if star treking technology has entered religion. 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:26.480 Even ancient religion in the same way the prayer wheel did. Yes, 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:30.080 and that brings us to the astrolabe. The astrolabe. Yeah, 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:32.200 and now everyone I think has probably seen an image 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:36.560 of an astrolabe in their finer forms. These are just 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:39.639 works of just pure art. I'm going to tell you 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:42.480 what a picture tell me how far off I am. Basically, 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:45.480 it's it looks kind of like that compass you used 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.919 to use in middle school math classes to draw a 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:51.000 perfect circle with another little half moon piece on it. 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:54.280 Is that completely wrong kind of yeah, with varying levels 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:59.840 of artistry and a lot of figures and sliding mechanisms. Okay, yeah, 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:03.640 it small circular device and these would usually usually these 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:06.959 would be made of wood or brass um and they 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:10.320 date back over two thousand years. The concept seems to 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:14.679 originate around three thir BC, and they were perfected by 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:17.800 the Arabs in the ninth century, and they remained at 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:21.320 the basic astronomer's tool for the next seven hundred years. 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:24.680 It's essentially a model of the stars in the sky 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:27.880 which can be moved to show where the stars will 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:30.159 be at any time of the year, and the reverse 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:33.200 side of the astrolabe concerns the position of the sun 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:35.320 in the moon. Okay, so it's a lot like the 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:37.800 end to get through a mechanism in a way. Yeah. Yeah, 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:41.080 it's it's portable and has a large display. On top 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:42.560 of that, if you have a really nice model, it's 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:45.000 a beautiful work of art, something you might win, easily 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:48.160 show it off at the dinner table. Uh. It's arguably 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.639 one of, if not the first, personal computer mobile carrying 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:54.480 it with you doing what you need to do in 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:56.760 the course of a day. Now, the question is would 0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:00.040 it become overheated if sitting on your lap, if it 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:01.879 was made out of metal and you were seated in 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:04.439 the sign, I would say yes, Um, yeah, that's a 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:08.800 sterility hazard. It Uh. You couldn't get an app for 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:11.560 this thing. But it had a number of features just 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:15.040 by virtue of how contract the heavens. You can tell 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:18.600 the date and time. You could calculate distances to be 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:25.800 used in determine a building height, surveying longitude, latitude, altitude horoscopes. Um. 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:28.760 You can also figure out the position of the planets. 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:33.240 But then on top of this, there were various occults usages, 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:35.439 so it gets a little bit into religion there. But 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:38.760 the most notable function. Where we see the astrolaid becoming 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:43.119 a piece of religious technology is in its ability to 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:49.480 determine Islamic prayer times and determine the direction to Mecca. Okay, 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:53.879 so this is actually that the piece of technology itself 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:58.399 doesn't necessarily have religious significance. But there's a fact you 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:02.040 need to know to ex acute your religion. You know 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:03.879 perfectly the way you want to do it. If you 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:07.520 want to face Mecca as well as you can, why 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:09.879 not have a machine to help you really hone that 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:13.000 piece of information and get it as accurate as possible. Yeah, 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:15.040 I mean, in a way, it really becomes an essential 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:17.760 piece of technology in Islam because a long place is 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:20.800 a high importance on the position of the believer in 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:24.520 time and space. For starters, Uh, the s Alot times, 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:27.520 these are the five prayers a day plus the Friday prayer. 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:30.919 They depend It depends on a combination of clock time 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:34.480 and sundial time to determine exactly when they should take place. 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:39.480 So it concerns the exact coordinates for a given location. Um. 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:41.880 Because again it's not just it's not just arbitrary about 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:44.440 when the prayer times are. They have they are specific 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:46.680 depending on where you are in the world, where you 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:49.119 are in terms of sun time. And on top of this, 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:51.480 the faithful has to know exactly where they are in 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:54.240 relation to the Kaaba in Mecca so that they can 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:57.680 face that direction during these prayers. Yeah, I think that's fascinating. 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:02.360 And unlike the prayer wheel, which itself does some sort 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:05.520 of religious or spiritual work, this is sort of like 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:09.240 a technology that we used to be most properly informed 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:12.359 about how to do the rituals that you would be 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:14.520 doing anyway, because really a lot of the problems that 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:19.600 occur in religion they occur as the believer moves farther 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:23.720 away in in time or space. Right, Sure, you're you're 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:27.360 you're farther away from Mecca. Uh, it's harder to determine 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:30.080 exactly where you are. Uh. You're not necessarily going to 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:34.000 have somebody signaling the prayer times each day from a tower, 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:36.560 so it falls on you to figure it out yourself 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:40.000 and uh. And then that's where the technology becomes extremely useful. 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:50.959 But of course, there are lots of external influences on 0:21:51.000 --> 0:21:54.480 how we practice our religions. A lot of these influences 0:21:54.520 --> 0:21:58.119 are actually going to be technological. One of the things 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:01.720 that I thought was interesting was to think about writing 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:06.480 itself as a technology. Now, writing is so crucial to 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:09.280 the way we think of most of the major religions 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:13.520 of the world today, because you've got the Torah for Jews, 0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:16.439 you've got the you know, the Hebrew Bible plus the 0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:20.080 New Testament for Christians, You've got the Kuran for Muslims, 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:23.040 and and of course there are texts that are central 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:26.960 to Eastern religions as well, the Ramayana and the Mahabata 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:31.639 specific certainly, Yeah, and so we think about religion as 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:35.119 a very text based affair. But there's really no reason 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:38.160 it has to be. I mean, religions can be transmitted 0:22:38.280 --> 0:22:42.359 orally through culture, that can be systems of cultural practices 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:46.320 that don't necessarily have to be written down or encoded anywhere. 0:22:46.920 --> 0:22:49.760 But for some reason, most of the world's major religions 0:22:49.760 --> 0:22:55.240 have a strong textual component. And I wonder how it 0:22:55.400 --> 0:23:00.399 changed the way we practiced religion when writing came into humanity, 0:23:00.440 --> 0:23:03.520 because writing, I mean, human civilization is much older than writing. 0:23:04.040 --> 0:23:07.600 Of course, human life in general, human culture is even 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:10.920 older than civilization, so much older than writing. So we 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:13.440