Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today we're coming back to revisit a series that
Speaker 3: we started a few weeks ago. We ended up going
Speaker 3: off and doing some other stuff in the meantime, but
Speaker 3: today we're coming back. This series was called The Thing
Speaker 3: Before the Beginning.
Speaker 2: That's right, what existed before the creation or emergence of
Speaker 2: the universe of reality itself. It's a big one. So
Speaker 2: this is one of the reasons we figured, Hey, even
Speaker 2: after a couple of weeks, folks are still going to
Speaker 2: be interested in this. Lord knows we are.
Speaker 3: Sorry. If I was just looking around all over the place,
Speaker 3: I realized we started recording without me popping rob out
Speaker 3: into the little window that I put you in. Folks
Speaker 3: at home, I don't know if you know that we
Speaker 3: have to arrange things on our screens just right and
Speaker 3: just so. I was just messing around with that. Okay, Now,
Speaker 3: everything's where it should be there.
Speaker 2: You have two screens, though, right.
Speaker 3: I do, but I only look at one while I'm recording.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I mean if I look at the other one,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be really weird. I'm like down here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I technically have two screens because there's
Speaker 2: also the little camera screen.
Speaker 3: But that's just me.
Speaker 2: I don't want to look at that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I'm looking at you up here. I got
Speaker 3: my notes here, so I think we're all good now.
Speaker 3: But yeah, anyway, so we are talking about what existed
Speaker 3: before the creation event in creation stories. Now, this might
Speaker 3: seem like a paradoxical question, because like, how can there
Speaker 3: be something before the creation of the world, But it's
Speaker 3: really not paradoxical, because, as we talked about in the
Speaker 3: last couple of episodes, most creation narratives actually do not
Speaker 3: describe a universe being brought into existence from a state
Speaker 3: of total nothingness. Instead, most creation stories describe the beginning
Speaker 3: as some kind of ordering or transformation of a previously
Speaker 3: existing state of affairs into a stage of some sort
Speaker 3: where the history of the gods or of human beings
Speaker 3: can take place. So in the first episode, we talked
Speaker 3: about the Chinese story of Pengu, the ancient coiled one,
Speaker 3: who emerges inside a cosmic egg from a formless, misty
Speaker 3: primordial state known as the Wuji pengu is often described
Speaker 3: as a hairy giant who manages to separate the essences
Speaker 3: of yin from yang and pushes or holds the sky
Speaker 3: up from the earth. We also talked about the biblical
Speaker 3: creation story in Genesis chapter one, which is interesting for
Speaker 3: a bunch of reasons. For one thing, it is commonly
Speaker 3: misunderstood as a creation ex nihilo, a creation of the
Speaker 3: world from nothing, when actually scholars now pretty much agree
Speaker 3: that it is a story of a God bringing order
Speaker 3: and furnishings into a pre existing world. That pre existing
Speaker 3: world is described as one of dark, deep cosmic waters.
Speaker 3: We also talked about the Babylonian epic of creation, the
Speaker 3: Inuma a leash, which you could think of as having
Speaker 3: two different creation events and thus two different states before creation.
Speaker 3: So the first is a time when the sky above
Speaker 3: and the earth below were without names, implying a very
Speaker 3: interesting kind of spiritual non existence by virtue of the
Speaker 3: fact that they are not acknowledged in language. And so
Speaker 3: you have that you have the essences of fresh water
Speaker 3: and salt water, which are named beings known as apsu
Speaker 3: and tiamot, respectively. These essences are mixed and swirling and
Speaker 3: This mixing gives rise to a sort of first creation
Speaker 3: and the issue of the first generations of gods and
Speaker 3: goddesses from the mingled waters. Then you've got a second
Speaker 3: creation event, that is the creation by combat story, where
Speaker 3: the younger god Marduke wages war against the saltwater goddess
Speaker 3: Tiamot and against her monsters, and then fashions the heavens
Speaker 3: and the earth out of the dead body of his enemy.
Speaker 3: In the second episode, we talked about an interesting creation
Speaker 3: account from Maori traditions, in which the pre creation state
Speaker 3: is this tight loving embrace between the skyfather Rungi and
Speaker 3: the earth mother Papa, and we talked about how the
Speaker 3: act of ordering emerges when their children, who are crushed
Speaker 3: between them, pushed them apart so that they can have
Speaker 3: space and so that light can be let in. This one,
Speaker 3: I thought was really notable because it describes the pre
Speaker 3: creation state in human relational terms, so not like dark
Speaker 3: waters or a great void of welter and waste, but
Speaker 3: an eternal gesture of love which has to be broken
Speaker 3: before history can happen. We also talked about the Aztec
Speaker 3: creation account known as the Legend of the Five Sons.
Speaker 3: This one is interesting in that it posits before the
Speaker 3: creation of this world, there was another world, similar in
Speaker 3: some ways but very different in others. And then before
Speaker 3: that there was another world, and going back, five ages
Speaker 3: characterized by five different suns. And so there's a cycle
Speaker 3: of creation and destruction and creation anew in this account.
Speaker 3: And we're back today to talk about more.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, what do we have up for us
Speaker 2: first here? Ja?
Speaker 3: Well, one that I wanted to talk about because I
Speaker 3: thought it was interesting and because it's so different from
Speaker 3: the stories we've talked about so far, is an account
Speaker 3: of the ordering of the world and commentary on the
Speaker 3: mysteries of the previous state in the creation hymn of
Speaker 3: the rig Veda. So, the rig Veda is a large
Speaker 3: collection of early Sanskrit hymns, considered the most ancient surviving
Speaker 3: Vedic text, making it foundational to the later development of Hinduism.
Speaker 3: I've seen different dates proposed for the origin of the Rigveda.
Speaker 3: My Oxford Companion to World Mythology suggests that at least
Speaker 3: some of the hymns go back to between seventeen hundred
Speaker 3: and two thousand BCE. Other sources say more like fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred to twelve hundred BCE, and these are texts that
Speaker 3: would have been propagated through systems of memorization and oral
Speaker 3: transmission long before they were actually written down. They're thought
Speaker 3: to have emerged from the northwestern Indian subcontinent, sort of
Speaker 3: around the region of Punjab, and the hymns of the
Speaker 3: Rigveda are organized into ten circles or mandolas, which you
Speaker 3: can think of like individual volumes or long chapters. So
Speaker 3: interesting thing about creation within the Rigveda. Broadly, multiple hymns
Speaker 3: of the Rigveda make reference to the creation of the world,
Speaker 3: and thus this corpus actually gives multiple very different accounts
Speaker 3: of creation. Some indicate a creation through combat, kind of
Speaker 3: like we see in the Inuma a Leash, but with
Speaker 3: very different details. Other stories tell about a separation of
Speaker 3: the sky from the earth, like we see in the
Speaker 3: Chinese story of Pengu or in the Maori creation story.
Speaker 3: Others make suggestions about acts of sacrifice as the origin
Speaker 3: of the world and of human beings. And I think
Speaker 3: this multiplicity of different creation stories within the same corpus
Speaker 3: in itself has interesting implications for how believers in the
Speaker 3: rig Veda as a sacred text would thus start to
Speaker 3: think about creation in a religious context. If you have
Speaker 3: multiple totally different stories all coming from this authoritative religious text, Like,
Speaker 3: how does that affect the way you think about you know,
Speaker 3: the text itself and about the creation. Maybe we can
Speaker 3: come back to that in a minute. But the one
Speaker 3: hymn that I wanted to look at in particular from
Speaker 3: the Rigveda is known as the Creation hymn or the
Speaker 3: Nasadia Sukta, which is ordered as hymn number one twenty
Speaker 3: nine in the tenth Mandola. Now a note about translations here.
Speaker 3: The Rigveda is famously difficult to translate, rob, I bet
Speaker 3: you've read about this before, Like, its original language is
Speaker 3: full of spiritually intellectually freighted words and phrases that have
Speaker 3: all these secondary meanings and ambiguities. Also, it is an
Speaker 3: archaic text, so some meanings are difficult to reach across history.
Speaker 3: Translations tend to be crowded with footnotes trying to explain
Speaker 3: complexities that can't really be captured in a straight translation
Speaker 3: of the text itself. So I cannot do justice to
Speaker 3: all of that or compare a bunch of different translations
Speaker 3: in the time we have here, So please just take
Speaker 3: this section with the caveat that basically all translations of
Speaker 3: the rig Veda are going to be compromises in some
Speaker 3: way that fail to get at some aspects of the original.
Speaker 3: And you could say this is true of all ancient texts,
Speaker 3: but it seems to be especially true of the of
Speaker 3: the Vedas in general and of the rig Veda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in general, we are never the intended readers of
Speaker 2: a text like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So with that caveat, the main translation I'm going
Speaker 3: to refer to here is the one in the Penguin
Speaker 3: Classics edition by the scholar Wendy Donager of the University
Speaker 3: of Chicago. So the creation Him begins like this, There
Speaker 3: was neither non existence nor existence. Then there was neither
Speaker 3: the realm of space nor the sky, which is beyond
Speaker 3: what stirred? Where in whose protection? Was there water bottomlessly deep?
Speaker 3: And just a note on the line in there what's
Speaker 3: stirred and the part what's stirred? Where in whose protection?
Speaker 3: Donager as a footnote saying that this verb stirred here
Speaker 3: is often used to describe the motion of breath, which
Speaker 3: itself brings in a new ambiguity that I like, because
Speaker 3: I wonder does that mean stirring as in breath falling
Speaker 3: upon something and moving it, or stirring as in breathing
Speaker 3: in itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a great point because as a modern reader
Speaker 2: reading this translation, I think stirred within this context, I
Speaker 2: think something stirring within the depths.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: Maybe depending on how you interpret interpret the breath, you
Speaker 2: can maybe get halfway there. But yeah, fascinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this is the first verse of this creation hymn,
Speaker 3: and I'd love that it begins with not with a
Speaker 3: statement of what happened at the beginning. It begins with
Speaker 3: a statement of negation and paradox Like it says there
Speaker 3: was neither non existence nor existence, which is I think
Speaker 3: intentionally provocative and paradoxical because that's like violating the law
Speaker 3: of excluded middle. It's saying there was neither a nor
Speaker 3: not ah. And then it also begins so it's got
Speaker 3: the the negation in paradox, and then it's got questions.
Speaker 3: Instead of saying telling you what stirred, it says what stirred?
Speaker 3: Where in whose protection? Was their water? Not there was water,
Speaker 3: but was their water? Was it bottomlessly deep?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Almost makes me think of the poetry of Blake
Speaker 2: you know, you know what immortal hand or eye you know,
Speaker 2: And by asking these questions, you know, it makes the
Speaker 2: answer more ambiguous and more majestic.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, like Blake. From what I've read, a
Speaker 3: major purpose of this hymn is it is often interpreted
Speaker 3: as meaning to provoke wonder. But anyway it goes on.
Speaker 3: There's a second verse that says there was neither death
Speaker 3: nor immortality. Then again a kind of paradox, neither death
Speaker 3: nor immortality. Then there was no distinguishing sign of night
Speaker 3: nor of day that one breathed. And this phrase that one.
Speaker 3: In other translations, I've seen it rendered as something like
Speaker 3: that one thing, so you could think of it maybe
Speaker 3: like that. But Donnagier here has it as that one
Speaker 3: that one breathed, windless by its own impulse. Other than
Speaker 3: that there was nothing beyond darkness, was hidden by darkness
Speaker 3: in the beginning, with no distinguishing sign. All this was water,
Speaker 3: the life force that was covered with emptiness. That one
Speaker 3: arose through the power of heat. Desire came upon that
Speaker 3: one in the beginning. That was the first seed of mind.
Speaker 3: Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom found the bond
Speaker 3: of existence in non existence. Their cord was ended across
Speaker 3: was there below? Was there above? There were seed placers,
Speaker 3: there were powers, there was impulse beneath, there was giving
Speaker 3: forth above? Who really knows? Who will hear proclaim it?
Speaker 3: Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? The gods
Speaker 3: came afterwards with the creation of this universe? Who then
Speaker 3: knows whence it has arisen? So I like that point there, though.
Speaker 3: You know, gods often play a role in the creation
Speaker 3: of the world in stories, you know, within the Vedas
Speaker 3: and in other traditions. But here it's saying the gods
Speaker 3: came later with the creation of the universe, So what
Speaker 3: brought this earlier state into being? And then finally, the
Speaker 3: last verse is whence this creation has arisen? Perhaps it
Speaker 3: formed itself, or perhaps it did not. The one who
Speaker 3: looks down on it in the highest heaven only he knows,
Speaker 3: or perhaps he does not know. Hm nice I thought this.
Speaker 3: This is such an interesting contrast to many of the
Speaker 3: other stories we've seen so far, and again, like the
Speaker 3: Rigveda does not lack references to more traditional creation stories
Speaker 3: like we talked about, But here, rather than telling a
Speaker 3: story like this happened to bring the world into existence?
Speaker 3: This creation narrative is at its heart questions and expressions
Speaker 3: of skepticism, encouraging the reader or the listener, the person
Speaker 3: engaging with this hymn, to have questions and doubts of
Speaker 3: their own and to kind of think about what it
Speaker 3: means for things to exist. I do like that. One
Speaker 3: of the few things that it seems to posit sort
Speaker 3: of confidently or definitively is something about there being a
Speaker 3: mind principle at the beginning of things, though not attributing
Speaker 3: it to any particular person. Like it's talking about desire
Speaker 3: coming upon this unnamed one, that one at the beginning
Speaker 3: had some kind of desire, and this was the first
Speaker 3: seed of mind, and this seems to be a power
Speaker 3: that gives rise to other things. But then it's never
Speaker 3: described in explicit like creative terms. It doesn't go from
Speaker 3: there to saying, therefore God created X, Y, and Z.
Speaker 2: It's interesting how when you think of a creation myth
Speaker 2: in which everything is described in statements, it is inevitably
Speaker 2: going to produce questions in the mind of the reader
Speaker 2: or the listener. Here we're establishing it via questions, which
Speaker 2: in a way kind of creates an ambiguous certainty if
Speaker 2: that makes sense in the mind of the reader or
Speaker 2: the listener, you know, like it's not like, do the
Speaker 2: questions have formed the mental image, rather than us being
Speaker 2: given a mental image, than then we have questions.
Speaker 3: About Yeah, that's true. That there's almost there's a way
Speaker 3: in which you can have more confidence in a mystery,
Speaker 3: because if you're given a story and told to believe it,
Speaker 3: then naturally one must have doubts. But if instead you
Speaker 3: are you are posed a question and told it is
Speaker 3: a mystery, I mean, how can you argue with that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah. If you definitively say well, this individual was, say,
Speaker 2: the son of the gods, the son of this god
Speaker 2: or that goddess, then well then you got to describe
Speaker 2: how that happened and what were the ramifications of that,
Speaker 2: and what was the why of that. But if it's
Speaker 2: just no one knows who this individual was, what was
Speaker 2: their origin? Were they the child of a god? Were
Speaker 2: they a mortal who became to halfway divine? You know,
Speaker 2: if you ask it in that sense, it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: nobody knows. Maybe it's all those things at once superposition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I love the last statement too, where it's saying, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, nobody really knows the answer to this mystery.
Speaker 3: What what create? What caused creation to arise? What brought
Speaker 3: the world into existence from this state of Again, I
Speaker 3: love how it's saying before that it's not nothingness. The
Speaker 3: pre creation state here is not nothingness. It is neither
Speaker 3: existence nor non existence, which is somehow less than nothingness.
Speaker 3: It is a contradiction in terms. Yeah, but oh but anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I only did the second half. I only did the
Speaker 3: first half of that statement because I got interested in that. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: it begins with this logical contradiction or this neither existence
Speaker 3: nor non existence. When existence comes, what brings it into existence?
Speaker 3: We get this claim that well maybe it is only
Speaker 3: the one in the highest heaven who knows, but maybe
Speaker 3: he does not know.
Speaker 2: And then they go on to write, if you know,
Speaker 2: write it down and send it to the following address.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I really like this him and I think
Speaker 3: this is a really interesting contrast to the things we've
Speaker 3: talked about before in multiple ways, Like I love the questions,
Speaker 3: the role of questions in establishing the pre creation state
Speaker 3: and the act of creation, the the implicit and explicit
Speaker 3: encouraging of of questions in the mind of the listener,
Speaker 3: the raising of doubts, and the closest thing that it
Speaker 3: really gets to describing the pre creation state is the
Speaker 3: use of logical contradictions and paradoxes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, which which kind of situates is a
Speaker 2: thing outside of reason, outside of our our even our
Speaker 2: ability to understand it. I love this. All right. Well, let's, uh, Lena,
Speaker 2: let's return briefly, at least to Egyptian mythology. You know,
Speaker 2: we we've discussed Egyptian mythology multiple times on the show before,
Speaker 2: and we may have I think we alluded to it
Speaker 2: in passing in the previous and stuff elements of the
Speaker 2: thing before the beginning, just pointing out that, well, you know, this,
Speaker 2: this line of thought, or this particular mythology, it has
Speaker 2: some parallels in Egyptian pod and all. So I want
Speaker 2: to bring up a specific Egyptian creation myth here. And
Speaker 2: in bringing this up, we're going to end up touching
Speaker 2: on a couple of pre creation ideas that we've already
Speaker 2: discussed in other examples. One, of course, is common to
Speaker 2: so many different religions, and that is the idea of
Speaker 2: primordial waters.
Speaker 3: Water is big, big, in the pre creation space. A
Speaker 3: lot of people are thinking about water there exactly.
Speaker 2: Yes. And then the second idea is that that the
Speaker 2: pre creation state is a thing that also continues to
Speaker 2: exist either within its own pocket dimension or beyond the
Speaker 2: boundaries of creation, and maybe at least by certain individuals
Speaker 2: and certainly divine individuals can still be reached and interacted with.
Speaker 3: That is really interesting. Yeah. That so that the pre
Speaker 3: creation world is not just something that exists in the past.
Speaker 3: It was what the world was once like and has
Speaker 3: now been totally transformed. You could imagine the world we
Speaker 3: live in as maybe a subset of reality that has
Speaker 3: been transformed into the world we know, but that somewhere
Speaker 3: else there is the world that was before and it's
Speaker 3: still like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And you know, part of this is certainly
Speaker 2: as we'll get into with the we've discussed this before.
Speaker 2: How with the ancient Egyptians, a lot of their belief system,
Speaker 2: it is, is informed by the importance of the nile.
Speaker 2: It is it is shaped by the movement of water,
Speaker 2: and so in one on one level, there is the
Speaker 2: idea that water is flowing from a source to a destination,
Speaker 2: and then there are these you know, we have this
Speaker 2: periodic surges in floods, and that's going to have both
Speaker 2: destructive and creative ramifications. But you can easily imagine like, okay,
Speaker 2: we have all this water, This water is important, it
Speaker 2: must come from somewhere. And what is water like when
Speaker 2: it's not doing anything? It is stagnant, it's still, it's dark.
Speaker 2: And so we get into similar ideas here. So, as
Speaker 2: we've of course discussed in the show, you can't just
Speaker 2: talk about Egyptian ancient Egyptian mythology as if it's a
Speaker 2: single codified thing. Rather, we're dealing with an array of
Speaker 2: beliefs and traditions that exist across time and across different
Speaker 2: parts of Egypt over the course of many thousands of years.
Speaker 2: So there are actually multiple creation myths. But worth discussing
Speaker 2: for our purposes here especially is that of none or
Speaker 2: noun or none. It's sometimes spelled in English as noun
Speaker 2: like a noun or nune like a holy sister of
Speaker 2: the cloth. And this is the personification of the prime
Speaker 2: evil ocean. So the prime evolution in Egyptian mythology consisted
Speaker 2: of the waters of chaos, a kind of vast stagnant potentiality,
Speaker 2: the prime evil matter here was dark, moist, boundaryless. And
Speaker 2: these attributes are embodied in a group of primordial deities,
Speaker 2: all the Ogdode of Hermopolis. The exact makeup of this
Speaker 2: group varies from one telling or tradition to the next,
Speaker 2: but it generally consists of eight deities consisting of four
Speaker 2: male and female counterparts representing about four qualities of the
Speaker 2: primeval waters. So the lineup is kind of like the Avengers.
Speaker 2: It's going to vary, but you know, but in this case,
Speaker 2: all the different lineups of the Ogdode are going to
Speaker 2: include none. None is often included in this kind of
Speaker 2: frog headed form, and he's included alongside his female counterpart nonet.
Speaker 2: And according to Geraldine Pinch in Egyptian Mythology, in one
Speaker 2: of my main books that I look to for this
Speaker 2: sort of thing, quote obeying some primitive instinct unquote, the
Speaker 2: Ogdode comes together to form the Primeval Mound. This is
Speaker 2: the first emergence of land from the prime evil ocean,
Speaker 2: and this would serve as the center of the un
Speaker 2: universe and the place where subsequent creation happens. Think of
Speaker 2: it as like base camp for all creation, and it
Speaker 2: remains a place of continuous creation and renewal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so in one literal sense, you can think about
Speaker 3: this because it's easier to do things on land if
Speaker 3: you just think about human organizational activities, you know, ordering,
Speaker 3: it's easier to take place on land. You can build stuff,
Speaker 3: you can sort things. But also I think it's important
Speaker 3: to think about the raising of the land from the
Speaker 3: primordial waters as an act of separation. You are making
Speaker 3: a distinction between two places or two types of things.
Speaker 3: And like so many of these creation myths, somehow they
Speaker 3: focus on an act of separation or distinction drawing, like
Speaker 3: you take a previously undifferentiated place or substance and you
Speaker 3: separate it into two different things, and then you have
Speaker 3: the beginnings of order.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you see that with the octode here as well,
Speaker 2: because it's like they are all they all kind of
Speaker 2: seem to emerge out of descriptions. They're almost like linguistic
Speaker 2: attributes of the primeval waters. So they are like they're
Speaker 2: kind of like the the the hashtags, they're the they're
Speaker 2: the word cloud for the the primeval matter. And then
Speaker 2: they become personifications of that and separated into male and
Speaker 2: female energies. So the prime evil Waters of none, embodied
Speaker 2: again by the god and goddess None and None that
Speaker 2: they continue to exist. This continues to exist, these waters
Speaker 2: both above the stars and beyond the boundaries of creation,
Speaker 2: feeding the life giving waters of the rivers and the ocean.
Speaker 2: So here we get back to what I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: the idea of like the river being all important. Where
Speaker 2: does the water come from? Well, the water has its
Speaker 2: source in this stagnant potentiality. Now I'm going to keep
Speaker 2: referring to the entity as none, but again it also
Speaker 2: exists in the feminine as none, and Pinch refers to
Speaker 2: the entity as an it the oldest of beings, the
Speaker 2: father of the gods, but also something with an eternal
Speaker 2: potential to create life, a demi urge and quote a
Speaker 2: kind of instinctive movement towards consciousness. But again within this,
Speaker 2: within this context here it is also a place that
Speaker 2: may be returned to and has a like a has
Speaker 2: a lot of renewing energy. And here's an example of it.
Speaker 2: We've discussed the god Ra or Ray, the Egyptian god
Speaker 2: of the sun, and how during the day he's piloting
Speaker 2: the sun barge across the sky. It's a movement of
Speaker 2: the Sun and then in the evening what happens goes
Speaker 2: down into the underworld and traverses the underworld. But there's
Speaker 2: something else that happens down there as well. He also
Speaker 2: undergoes regeneration in the nun so And this is interesting
Speaker 2: because again None is both the water and also the
Speaker 2: personification of the waters. And in some ancient Egyptian iconography
Speaker 2: you will see None pictured as a giant, like a
Speaker 2: like a male giant raising the sun barge, the solar
Speaker 2: barge out of the waters above his head like bench
Speaker 2: pressing it back up and and and therefore playing a
Speaker 2: vital role in just continual you know, nightly renewal of
Speaker 2: the energy of the Sun and of the Sun God.
Speaker 3: Very interesting that this implies, at least in a metaphorical
Speaker 3: sense of belief in the constant returning to the pre
Speaker 3: creation state, like every night there is some kind of
Speaker 3: recommunion with what the world was like before it was created. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because as we've talked about before, like the voyage
Speaker 2: of the sun barge is one in which there are
Speaker 2: enemies there they have to be fought off like it's
Speaker 2: it's it is a it is a cycle that is perpetual,
Speaker 2: but not all the way guaranteed. And you know, certain
Speaker 2: things have to be observed in this world and in
Speaker 2: other worlds for this to continue.
Speaker 3: That's right. I mean a big part of Egyptian religious
Speaker 3: ritual was humans engaging in rituals that were designed to
Speaker 3: help the sun, the god raw and the sun barge
Speaker 3: on its journey through the underworld. So like we have
Speaker 3: to do rituals to help the god make the journey
Speaker 3: and make sure that he succeeds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And so in all this all creation is
Speaker 2: realized in the nun as well. And also there's this
Speaker 2: other little tidbit that pinch mentions that, and that is
Speaker 2: that in some tellings, the world will end one day
Speaker 2: when the creator and slash creators, you know, the creative
Speaker 2: almost you can think of it less in terms of
Speaker 2: a creator entity, but sort of like the creative movement
Speaker 2: returns to the nun. So in a sense, again, if
Speaker 2: we come back to the idea of a great expansion,
Speaker 2: we kind of get into the idea of a great
Speaker 2: collapse that one day everything will just return to primordial,
Speaker 2: stagnant potentiality, and then maybe it will come out again.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll get the same pattern throughout history.
Speaker 3: If only we could get this exact same pattern again,
Speaker 3: wouldn't that be great?
Speaker 2: Well, maybe the next one will be better, right, hopefully.
Speaker 2: It is kind of like the Aztec model, where each
Speaker 2: new draft is an improvement. Uh. You know, you don't
Speaker 2: want you you don't want your sixth draft to be
Speaker 2: worse than your fifth. Maybe there shouldn't have been a
Speaker 2: fifth draft. Maybe fifth should have been final, that sort
Speaker 2: of thing. All right, So obviously this is this is
Speaker 2: a case. And like most like all these examples we've
Speaker 2: been discussing, these are cases where you're you're dealing with
Speaker 2: generally the ancient world. You're dealing with ancient peoples asking,
Speaker 2: you know, deep complex questions about the nature of reality
Speaker 2: and their place in reality, you know, informed by their
Speaker 2: observations of the world, deep human contemplation. Uh. And and
Speaker 2: also other religious influences of the time, either something that
Speaker 2: was practiced in their own culture or has been brought
Speaker 2: in from another culture. But I think it would be
Speaker 2: an interesting exercise here to look at a few recent
Speaker 2: religious movements, new religious movements to consider what happens when
Speaker 2: you throw in some modern influences, especially the idea that
Speaker 2: these would be religious movements that emerge during the scientific age.
Speaker 2: That's not to say that these are necessarily science informed religions,
Speaker 2: but they are at least culturally informed by a world
Speaker 2: that is shaped by science as well as science fiction.
Speaker 3: I would say that a lot of recently formed religions,
Speaker 3: in my view, they partake of the esthetics of science.
Speaker 3: They don't make necessarily functional use of science, but there
Speaker 3: is a sort of poetry or the language of science
Speaker 3: that they try to incorporate rate into their beliefs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at the same time they may do the
Speaker 2: same with ancient religion as well. I mean, we see
Speaker 2: this in esoteric thought and in mysticism all the time,
Speaker 2: where you're also drawing on these ancient practices and you know,
Speaker 2: depending on how you're doing it, who's doing it, and
Speaker 2: so forth, and as well as intention, you know, they
Speaker 2: might be rather accurate. You might be you know, bringing
Speaker 2: in some of these concepts and actually slightly reworking them
Speaker 2: in a way where they function better for certain populations
Speaker 2: of the modern world while still retaining their value. Or
Speaker 2: it could be entirely superficial, you know, where you're just
Speaker 2: taking the dressings of something ancient and using it to
Speaker 2: sell something new. I mean, it's going to run the
Speaker 2: gamut of possibility here.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of reasons to bring in things
Speaker 3: that are ancient, but one of them is that antiquity
Speaker 3: brings implied authority. When you say something is very old,
Speaker 3: people are like, oh, well that's something I should pay attention.
Speaker 2: To, which, of course is an interesting scenario to consider
Speaker 2: it with a new religious movement something, you know, where
Speaker 2: somebody's come along and they're like, this is this is
Speaker 2: the new path, this is the way, and they're going
Speaker 2: to lean on maybe some ancient and some sort of
Speaker 2: ancient knowledge one way or another in order to prop
Speaker 2: it up. And that is not to not to not
Speaker 2: to you know, disparage this idea, because of course we
Speaker 2: look at any of these ancient religions, all of these
Speaker 2: were new religions at one point. You know, none of
Speaker 2: these actually like predates the first humans who advanced them.
Speaker 2: You know, again, they may be influenced by earlier models
Speaker 2: and and always were, but yeah, any ancient religion was
Speaker 2: once a new religious movement. We just continue to do this.
Speaker 2: This is a continual human practice. Either you're going to
Speaker 2: reach the point and it makes sense too the world changes,
Speaker 2: culture changes, you either have to continually create new drafts
Speaker 2: of a particular religion, or you have to change ourselves
Speaker 2: to match an old model of religion, or you come
Speaker 2: up with something to some extent entirely new.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I've ever put it in these
Speaker 3: terms before, but I just had the thought, I wonder
Speaker 3: if a lot of the venerable and respectable seeming aspects
Speaker 3: of older religions are actually things that traditions mature into
Speaker 3: the results of things existing for a long time and
Speaker 3: evolving and maturing. That would kind of run counter to
Speaker 3: an intuition that a lot of people have that things
Speaker 3: begin pure and then devolve from there. I wonder if
Speaker 3: some religions actually gain a lot of respectability over time
Speaker 3: as they sort of evolve and grow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean certainly they're you know, we could
Speaker 2: we could easily get into the nuances and the history
Speaker 2: of various new religions, where you know, early on, there
Speaker 2: are a lot of places where you can misstep, certainly
Speaker 2: if you're in an area where everything isn't completely codified
Speaker 2: and is highly controlled by you know, one or two individuals.
Speaker 3: That sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But then again, there are counterexamples of that as well.
Speaker 2: So for our purposes here, I don't want to get
Speaker 2: two into the weeds. This is all fascinating, but I
Speaker 2: want to try and focus mostly on the idea of
Speaker 2: pre creation in some of these religions, without really getting
Speaker 2: into much in the way of, you know, discussing like
Speaker 2: the values or the criticism of any of these religious models,
Speaker 2: and again kind of basing it broadly in the idea
Speaker 2: that all religions were new at one point, and there's
Speaker 2: nothing there's nothing strange about there being new religions today.
Speaker 2: I'm going to begin with with all three of these
Speaker 2: are ones that I think everyone has heard of, but
Speaker 2: maybe you're not as up on exactly what they seem
Speaker 2: to be saying about this strange idea of the thing
Speaker 2: that existed before reality. So I want to start with
Speaker 2: the Raelian Movement. This is an international atheistic UFO religion
Speaker 2: founded by the French religious leader Rayel born nineteen forty six.
Speaker 2: This religion is based on his alleged UFO experiences in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three. As of this recording, he is still alive.
Speaker 2: So this is kind of a this is an interesting
Speaker 2: example and that this is a new religious movement in
Speaker 2: which the founder is still living and presumably active in
Speaker 2: the faith. So I'm not going to get it. As
Speaker 2: with all these I'm not going to get into all
Speaker 2: the teachings, but the Raelian movement teaches that life on
Speaker 2: Earth originated via directed panspermia, so like directed seating of
Speaker 2: the planet's life twenty five thousand years ago by aliens
Speaker 2: known as the elhem However, mirroring modern conceptions of eternity
Speaker 2: and some cosmological models, Raelian teachings contend that there simply
Speaker 2: is no beginning and there's also no end. Both space
Speaker 2: and time are boundless, and their chief religious symbol of
Speaker 2: infinity is a combination of the Star of David and
Speaker 2: the swastika, meant to convey some sense of all of this.
Speaker 2: I'm going to read from their website that this is
Speaker 2: certainly one of those one of the modern religious movements
Speaker 2: where they have a lot of information on their websites
Speaker 2: and you can just go and just read exactly what
Speaker 2: they are saying about themselves, and this is what they say,
Speaker 2: quote the extraterrestrials who created humankind, and laboratories have proven
Speaker 2: that the infinitely small and the infinitely large have the
Speaker 2: same structure. The atoms in our hands contain tiny galaxies,
Speaker 2: which themselves contain planets and minuscule humanities, and our own
Speaker 2: galaxy is a tiny particle and a huge atom that
Speaker 2: forms part of an immense world, etc. At infintium. So
Speaker 2: powers of ten basically, except with like little universes inside
Speaker 2: us and our entire universes inside of something inside of
Speaker 2: a macro world, and it just goes on forever. There's
Speaker 2: no beginning, there's no end. And it does match up
Speaker 2: with you to some extent with numerous cosmological hypotheses that
Speaker 2: have featured on one level or another, the idea of
Speaker 2: a cosmos without true beginning around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the universe is beginning from other universes and seeding
Speaker 3: other universes beyond. I don't know of anybody. I don't
Speaker 3: know of any theories that say, like atoms actually have
Speaker 3: universes inside them. Maybe somebody thinks that with scientific basis,
Speaker 3: so I kind of doubt it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're getting more into the realm of
Speaker 2: mysticism here when you start considering that. But you know,
Speaker 2: in another way, it kind of rubs up against the
Speaker 2: idea of many worlds, right, I mean, they're being a
Speaker 2: multiverse out there, that sort of thing. So again, I
Speaker 2: think there's an important distinction to be made here, Like
Speaker 2: we're not making the case and I don't think we're
Speaker 2: not discussing it anyway as if these are examples of
Speaker 2: scientifically informed religions, but they are religions that have emerged
Speaker 2: within a scientifically literate culture, and therefore they are going
Speaker 2: to at least rub up against these scientific concepts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah, and in a way, you know,
Speaker 3: you think about it, that might not actually be different
Speaker 3: than ancient creation stories. It's just that we have more
Speaker 3: and different knowledge that we think of as scientific about
Speaker 3: the world. I mean, you know, ancient cultures didn't really
Speaker 3: have a concept of scientific but they would have had
Speaker 3: understandings of the natural world that included maybe complex knowledge
Speaker 3: about how to do certain things. You know, you can
Speaker 3: imagine creation accounts that involve things about technology, things about
Speaker 3: agriculture and metal working and building of structures, things like that,
Speaker 3: all these things that are sort of physical discoveries about
Speaker 3: how things work in the universe and things we can
Speaker 3: do with the substances around us, and that knowledge, like
Speaker 3: secular functional knowledge is included into the creation accounts of
Speaker 3: old Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think that's an important point all right. Now,
Speaker 2: in talking about scientifically informed or inspired religions, we of
Speaker 2: course have to talk about one of the big ones,
Speaker 2: at least in name Scientology, founded by science fiction author l.
Speaker 2: Ron Hubbard who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: He claimed to have developed the teachings through this is
Speaker 2: rather interesting through experimentation rather than divine revelation, at least
Speaker 2: in the hard sense. And I think this is rather interesting.
Speaker 2: You know that the idea that it's not that I
Speaker 2: have gone back and discovered something in ancient writings or
Speaker 2: I have you know, uncovered some forgotten tone of knowledge.
Speaker 2: This is like a product of my own research, in
Speaker 2: my own like sort of lab work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's funny. I one day, when I was long
Speaker 3: long ago, there was a day when I was basically
Speaker 3: stuck in a library all day with no ability to
Speaker 3: go anywhere or do anything. So I was just wandering
Speaker 3: around and I found a copy of Dianetics in the
Speaker 3: library and I started reading it. I remember actually being
Speaker 3: disappointed and thinking that it would be more interesting than
Speaker 3: it was. It's got a slog for me.
Speaker 2: I had, I had, I had a similar experience with it.
Speaker 2: You know, I was, I was interested, I was, you know,
Speaker 2: has a volcano on the front for crying out loud? Yeah,
Speaker 2: it seems like it's going to be dynamic. It had
Speaker 2: some pretty cool television commercials back in the day, and
Speaker 2: I assume they're still probably doing some TV commercials. And
Speaker 2: and then when I started reading it, it like starts off
Speaker 2: very confrontational and and and in general, I can sometimes
Speaker 2: I can find Hubbard's writing a bit hard to crack.
Speaker 2: I mean not to and that's not even necessarily a knock.
Speaker 2: It's like we're talking about like ancient religious texts that
Speaker 2: are difficult to understand and maybe intentionally a bit cryptic
Speaker 2: and suggestive. And you can certainly find that in scientology
Speaker 2: writings as well, again perhaps intended, but anyway, the broader
Speaker 2: teachings of scientology involve a number of philosophical and psychiatric
Speaker 2: concepts ideas from Western esoteric practices, along with some definite
Speaker 2: Sci Fi related concepts. And I'm not going to pretend
Speaker 2: to be an expert on scientology or its teachings, and
Speaker 2: I'm not a scientologist, but I'm to understand that the
Speaker 2: basic idea is that the universe we experience is the
Speaker 2: mess the nest the matter, energy and space time universe,
Speaker 2: and this was born seventy six sorry, seventy six trillion
Speaker 2: years ago out of a pre existing static universe of
Speaker 2: pure Thetan energy, So a universe composed all of Thetans,
Speaker 2: spiritual beings and our true selves. But then the Thetans
Speaker 2: become lost in their own creation something to this effect. So,
Speaker 2: as far as I understand it as a non scientologist,
Speaker 2: the idea is that prior to the beginning, you just
Speaker 2: have like a pure sort of communal spiritual existence, but
Speaker 2: also one that you could think of is kind of
Speaker 2: you know, having a lot in common with these ideas
Speaker 2: of pure potentiality as well. But but then that you
Speaker 2: could also I think you can directly compare this too
Speaker 2: to sort of a you know, it has a certain
Speaker 2: what prelaps arian energy as well. The idea that that
Speaker 2: through scientology, the practitioner is trying to sort of return
Speaker 2: to that condition before this reality and sort of reconnect
Speaker 2: with the Thetan that they are slash were, And this
Speaker 2: also brings in various concepts of human potential as well.
Speaker 2: Like I have to I have to find my true
Speaker 2: potential by connecting with the pure energy being that I
Speaker 2: was in the sort of the realm of potentiality that
Speaker 2: existed before our universe.
Speaker 3: So the return to Eden is in this case that
Speaker 3: it's the return to the pure Thetan energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And and again you can you can kind
Speaker 2: of compare that to even the ancient Egyptian model. We
Speaker 2: were just discussing the idea that there's some sort of
Speaker 2: renewal to be found in the pre creation existence, and
Speaker 2: there is some connection between where we are now and
Speaker 2: what we are now, and that like vital pre existing energy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I guess I created accidentally. They're created some
Speaker 3: of the wrong implications by saying Eden, because Eden is
Speaker 3: not a pre created state. It's just the good state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the good state.
Speaker 3: But that's very much the created state.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. And then I do not know, there
Speaker 2: may be something else in scientology that explores what existed
Speaker 2: before the Thetans, or perhaps Thetans I may be mispronouncing it,
Speaker 2: what existed before them.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe they're they're a constant state that always existed. I
Speaker 2: suspect that might be the case, all right, And then
Speaker 2: one more to discuss. This one is by far the
Speaker 2: largest and much larger than the aforementioned groups, and generally
Speaker 2: considered the most successful new religious movement of the past
Speaker 2: couple of centuries, and that is the Church of Jesus
Speaker 2: Christ of Latter day Saints, founded by Joseph Smith in
Speaker 2: eighteen thirty. And it is easy to forget that this
Speaker 2: too is a religion that, despite its connection to older
Speaker 2: Christian traditions and its use of scriptures that invoke this
Speaker 2: feeling of ancient time, it's easy to forget that this too,
Speaker 2: is a religion that really takes shape and takes off
Speaker 2: in the scientific age. And we see that reflected. We've
Speaker 2: discussed this a little bit on the show before in
Speaker 2: some of the ways that it is space friendly. Again
Speaker 2: not making the case that any of these new religious
Speaker 2: movements are necessarily science informed, but it has been observed
Speaker 2: that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Speaker 2: is largely space friendly, explicitly stating that there are other
Speaker 2: inhabited planets, so at least, you know, acknowledging a modern
Speaker 2: understanding of the cosmos and in incorporating that into its worldview,
Speaker 2: and you know, into some of its ideas of what
Speaker 2: came before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you don't have to say that the
Speaker 3: scientific ideas taken on board are necessarily all that complex.
Speaker 3: Just to acknowledge that this is like a post Galileo religion.
Speaker 3: This is a religion from the age in which it
Speaker 3: is a It is common knowledge that the other planets
Speaker 3: are not just like movable points of light in the
Speaker 3: sky that move on different patterns than the rest of
Speaker 3: the stars, that they are spheres of like rock and gas,
Speaker 3: and there are other things like you could walk on
Speaker 3: the other planets.
Speaker 2: Right, And therefore it's acknowledged that there there is life
Speaker 2: on other planets, and and then that has to be
Speaker 2: theologically worked out to some degree, which is not something
Speaker 2: that comes up in like you know, ancient Christian or
Speaker 2: Jewish thought. You know, like nobody's saying, but wait, what
Speaker 2: about people potentially living on other planets? Like what are
Speaker 2: you talking about? That's not going with it's not going
Speaker 2: in the book. Yeah. So we again, as we've mentioned before,
Speaker 2: you know, several notable prominent NASA figures were LDS members,
Speaker 2: including fourth and seventh NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher. So
Speaker 2: I think a strong case can be made for being
Speaker 2: like a space friendly religion and some extent to some extent,
Speaker 2: but coming back to the bigger question. According to the
Speaker 2: Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter day Saints, what
Speaker 2: comes before the beginning then? And how does this rub
Speaker 2: up against modern scientific concepts. Well, it's spelled out on
Speaker 2: their website, so again this is coming more or less
Speaker 2: directly from the Church. The idea is that Jesus Christ,
Speaker 2: under the direction of the heavenly Father, is not creating
Speaker 2: things out of magic, is not snapping his fingers and
Speaker 2: making things pop into existence. He is organizing pre existing matter.
Speaker 3: Obviously, there's going to be a difference here in that
Speaker 3: it names and asserts Jesus as the creator, but at
Speaker 3: least in the aspect that it is an organization of
Speaker 3: some pre existing material world rather than a creation ex nihilo.
Speaker 3: It's interesting in that that is actually what the Christian
Speaker 3: and Jewish creation narrative in its original text does say,
Speaker 3: Like the text of Genesis is an ordering narrative, not
Speaker 3: a creation x nihilo narrative, but it is commonly misunderstood
Speaker 3: as a creation x nihilo narrative. So it's funny that
Speaker 3: that this is like a making more explicit something that
Speaker 3: is true about the original text but is often misunderstood
Speaker 3: by believers in that text.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, So, so of reacting to the misunderstanding and
Speaker 2: the interpretation that is kind of like you know, common
Speaker 2: to the world and then pushing against that and instead
Speaker 2: like adhering to say that the law of the conservation
Speaker 2: of mass and energy and saying like, you know, no, no,
Speaker 2: we're not saying that the divine architect just made all
Speaker 2: the materials. No, the divine architect move things around. And
Speaker 2: in fact, I'm going to read here from the this
Speaker 2: is the from the LDS Book of Abraham. This is
Speaker 2: three twenty four from their website.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: And there stood one among them that was like unto God,
Speaker 2: and he said, unto those who were with him, we
Speaker 2: will go down, for there is space there, and we
Speaker 2: will take of these materials and we will make an
Speaker 2: earth where on these may dwell. Okay, So yeah, so
Speaker 2: God is an organizer. God is God is architect, God
Speaker 2: is builder, as opposed to you know, a snap of
Speaker 2: the fingers and things you know, pop into existence.
Speaker 3: Well, you know what, actually, I do want to come
Speaker 3: back on that, because there is a I think there
Speaker 3: are things in the Genesis narrative where God does bring
Speaker 3: things into existence that didn't exist before, Like he speaks
Speaker 3: things into existence, such as light. It seems like that
Speaker 3: he says, let their light, and then there is light.
Speaker 3: But it's just that he doesn't do that with the
Speaker 3: world itself. There is already a material world, and he
Speaker 3: organizes that and then additional things he brings into existence
Speaker 3: by speaking their names.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so so again, Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 2: fascinating how you know, these these newer religions like the
Speaker 2: older religions. You know, they're ultimately answering the same questions.
Speaker 2: They're using a lot of the same answers, but the
Speaker 2: way they're rolled out, you know, again, sometimes they have
Speaker 2: to there's an effort to make them adhere a little
Speaker 2: more to the modern world as we understand it, and
Speaker 2: to fit into like yeah, like you said, like in
Speaker 2: the ancient world, it was fitting in with social knowledge
Speaker 2: and say agricultural technological understanding, you know, crafting knowledge, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. Whatever the the readily accessible metaphors were,
Speaker 2: and today the metaphors are different. In the future, the
Speaker 2: metaphors will be different, Like what are the new religious
Speaker 2: movements of the future going to be rolling out. I mean,
Speaker 2: my main hope is that humans are still involved in
Speaker 2: the process of creating these uh these stories, but you know, inherently,
Speaker 2: inevitably they're going to draw on some different contemporary knowledge
Speaker 2: sets to do so.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Interesting, I wonder if there are any religions yet
Speaker 3: that have a creation account, essentially a creation by biological evolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. I think we should come
Speaker 2: back to that in a future episode, you know, evolution
Speaker 2: and at least the if not the creation of new
Speaker 2: religious movements, but the up we can even discuss, like
Speaker 2: the the tweaking of understanding regarding these older faiths as
Speaker 2: well incorporating evolutionary knowledge instead of you know, completely rejecting it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But I don't know. I'm trying to imagine the
Speaker 3: particulars of how evolution would really work as a creation narrative.
Speaker 3: I'm not I'm not sure it really works.
Speaker 2: I don't well that would entail I mean, one of
Speaker 2: the it also depends on, As with all of these things,
Speaker 2: it also depends on like how deep into the concept
Speaker 2: you're getting. So with evolution, for example, I think it
Speaker 2: is is very logical to say to take a view
Speaker 2: that if there is a divine creator, then that divine
Speaker 2: creator sets certain acts in motion. But you get into
Speaker 2: this with evolution. You also have the situation where well,
Speaker 2: sometimes it at least from our human perspective, that is,
Speaker 2: you know, perhaps incomplete compared doing it, you know, in
Speaker 2: kind of like divine entity. Evolution can appear very cruel.
Speaker 3: It can.
Speaker 2: It can take directions that you know, end up being
Speaker 2: dead ends and so forth. So it raises additional theological
Speaker 2: questions like why, you know, why would the divine force
Speaker 2: set this act in motion if it was going to
Speaker 2: end and say the creation of a parasite that blinds
Speaker 2: children or something. You know. So, yeah, there's a there's
Speaker 2: a lot to unravel there.
Speaker 3: I guess another question, if our world was created via
Speaker 3: evolution would be what what part of the evolutionary model
Speaker 3: is the world? Is the world the I don't know,
Speaker 3: a cell or an organism as a whole, or is
Speaker 3: it like a gene or a mutation? You know, like
Speaker 3: I guess is our world a mutation?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean we get into the model presented in
Speaker 2: really Scott's Prometheus, right where exactly the engineers set things
Speaker 2: in motion and they have maybe a certain agenda in mind,
Speaker 2: but also accidents happen, and then those accidents have to
Speaker 2: be corrected later on.
Speaker 3: That is my religion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does kind of come back to the Church
Speaker 2: of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints in a sense.
Speaker 2: I was reading a little bit about how this idea
Speaker 2: of a creator who is, you know, adjusting some sort
Speaker 2: of pre existing it kind of sort of reframed. It's
Speaker 2: almost like when a new I'm not making the case
Speaker 2: that this is directly what's involved here, but it's kind
Speaker 2: of like, imagine you have a new boss arrive on
Speaker 2: the scene. They get to sort of establish themselves as
Speaker 2: the guy who's fixing stuff. You know, I'm instituting changes
Speaker 2: that are improving the company, and if there are problems beforehand,
Speaker 2: well that's that's kind of out of my hands. But
Speaker 2: I'm just here to fix things. I'm the good guy boss.
Speaker 2: And so in a way it kind of you can
Speaker 2: get into this area where you're establishing a creator deity
Speaker 2: as as a complete good guide boss. To some extent,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it gets messy, it gets complicated, because
Speaker 2: you know that is that's the These are the problems
Speaker 2: of theology, and then we have to justify the ways
Speaker 2: of God demand and that ultimately is the role of poets.
Speaker 3: Okay, does that do it? For part three of I
Speaker 3: think so?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I feel myself beginning to ramble here, because again,
Speaker 2: they can go in so many different directions with this.
Speaker 2: I will say that certainly, if anyone out there, if
Speaker 2: you were you know, a current or past adherent to
Speaker 2: any of the religious faces that we've discussed here, and
Speaker 2: you want to write in with your additional thoughts on it,
Speaker 2: or if we got something wrong, yeah, do write in.
Speaker 2: We would love to hear from you and potentially hash
Speaker 2: that out in a future episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind listener mail, which we run those about once
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