WEBVTT - The Thing Before the Beginning, part 3 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:14.600 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:17.560 My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.639 And today we're coming back to revisit a series that 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:23.200 we started a few weeks ago. We ended up going 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:25.880 off and doing some other stuff in the meantime, but 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.639 today we're coming back. This series was called The Thing 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:31.440 Before the Beginning. 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:37.720 That's right, what existed before the creation or emergence of 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:43.199 the universe of reality itself. It's a big one. So 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:45.200 this is one of the reasons we figured, Hey, even 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:47.519 after a couple of weeks, folks are still going to 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:49.199 be interested in this. Lord knows we are. 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:52.120 Sorry. If I was just looking around all over the place, 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:55.520 I realized we started recording without me popping rob out 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:58.240 into the little window that I put you in. Folks 0:00:58.280 --> 0:00:59.560 at home, I don't know if you know that we 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:02.480 have to arrange things on our screens just right and 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:05.560 just so. I was just messing around with that. Okay, Now, 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:06.880 everything's where it should be there. 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:08.360 You have two screens, though, right. 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:10.480 I do, but I only look at one while I'm recording. 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:12.240 Oh okay, I mean if I look at the other one, 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:14.400 it's gonna be really weird. I'm like down here. 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:16.600 Yeah, I guess I technically have two screens because there's 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:17.800 also the little camera screen. 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:18.640 But that's just me. 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:19.959 I don't want to look at that. Yeah. 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:22.360 Yeah, no, I'm looking at you up here. I got 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:24.160 my notes here, so I think we're all good now. 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:28.319 But yeah, anyway, so we are talking about what existed 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:33.360 before the creation event in creation stories. Now, this might 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:37.120 seem like a paradoxical question, because like, how can there 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:39.679 be something before the creation of the world, But it's 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:43.000 really not paradoxical, because, as we talked about in the 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:47.760 last couple of episodes, most creation narratives actually do not 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:51.800 describe a universe being brought into existence from a state 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:57.840 of total nothingness. Instead, most creation stories describe the beginning 0:01:58.040 --> 0:02:02.680 as some kind of ordering or transformation of a previously 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:07.760 existing state of affairs into a stage of some sort 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:10.560 where the history of the gods or of human beings 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:13.960 can take place. So in the first episode, we talked 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:18.200 about the Chinese story of Pengu, the ancient coiled one, 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:23.079 who emerges inside a cosmic egg from a formless, misty 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:28.240 primordial state known as the Wuji pengu is often described 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:31.880 as a hairy giant who manages to separate the essences 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:35.400 of yin from yang and pushes or holds the sky 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:39.560 up from the earth. We also talked about the biblical 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:44.200 creation story in Genesis chapter one, which is interesting for 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:47.240 a bunch of reasons. For one thing, it is commonly 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:51.800 misunderstood as a creation ex nihilo, a creation of the 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:56.640 world from nothing, when actually scholars now pretty much agree 0:02:56.680 --> 0:02:59.840 that it is a story of a God bringing order 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:04.359 and furnishings into a pre existing world. That pre existing 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:08.480 world is described as one of dark, deep cosmic waters. 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:12.640 We also talked about the Babylonian epic of creation, the 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.080 Inuma a leash, which you could think of as having 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:20.760 two different creation events and thus two different states before creation. 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:24.200 So the first is a time when the sky above 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:28.119 and the earth below were without names, implying a very 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:32.280 interesting kind of spiritual non existence by virtue of the 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:36.960 fact that they are not acknowledged in language. And so 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:39.840 you have that you have the essences of fresh water 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.720 and salt water, which are named beings known as apsu 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:48.960 and tiamot, respectively. These essences are mixed and swirling and 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:52.240 This mixing gives rise to a sort of first creation 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:55.080 and the issue of the first generations of gods and 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:58.080 goddesses from the mingled waters. Then you've got a second 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:01.839 creation event, that is the creation by combat story, where 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.640 the younger god Marduke wages war against the saltwater goddess 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:09.440 Tiamot and against her monsters, and then fashions the heavens 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.080 and the earth out of the dead body of his enemy. 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.800 In the second episode, we talked about an interesting creation 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:20.279 account from Maori traditions, in which the pre creation state 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:25.480 is this tight loving embrace between the skyfather Rungi and 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:29.120 the earth mother Papa, and we talked about how the 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:33.200 act of ordering emerges when their children, who are crushed 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:35.960 between them, pushed them apart so that they can have 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:39.080 space and so that light can be let in. This one, 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:41.880 I thought was really notable because it describes the pre 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:46.239 creation state in human relational terms, so not like dark 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.279 waters or a great void of welter and waste, but 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:53.200 an eternal gesture of love which has to be broken 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:56.960 before history can happen. We also talked about the Aztec 0:04:57.040 --> 0:04:59.760 creation account known as the Legend of the Five Sons. 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:03.680 This one is interesting in that it posits before the 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:07.359 creation of this world, there was another world, similar in 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:10.800 some ways but very different in others. And then before 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.839 that there was another world, and going back, five ages 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:18.039 characterized by five different suns. And so there's a cycle 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:21.960 of creation and destruction and creation anew in this account. 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:24.000 And we're back today to talk about more. 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:27.080 All right, Well, what do we have up for us 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:27.760 first here? Ja? 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.400 Well, one that I wanted to talk about because I 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:34.440 thought it was interesting and because it's so different from 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:38.400 the stories we've talked about so far, is an account 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:42.320 of the ordering of the world and commentary on the 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:46.440 mysteries of the previous state in the creation hymn of 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:50.800 the rig Veda. So, the rig Veda is a large 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:56.279 collection of early Sanskrit hymns, considered the most ancient surviving 0:05:56.440 --> 0:06:00.920 Vedic text, making it foundational to the later development of Hinduism. 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:04.760 I've seen different dates proposed for the origin of the Rigveda. 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:08.839 My Oxford Companion to World Mythology suggests that at least 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:11.599 some of the hymns go back to between seventeen hundred 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:16.039 and two thousand BCE. Other sources say more like fifteen 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:20.080 hundred to twelve hundred BCE, and these are texts that 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:25.039 would have been propagated through systems of memorization and oral 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:29.280 transmission long before they were actually written down. They're thought 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:33.200 to have emerged from the northwestern Indian subcontinent, sort of 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:36.840 around the region of Punjab, and the hymns of the 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:41.159 Rigveda are organized into ten circles or mandolas, which you 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:46.000 can think of like individual volumes or long chapters. So 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:53.480 interesting thing about creation within the Rigveda. Broadly, multiple hymns 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:57.200 of the Rigveda make reference to the creation of the world, 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:03.440 and thus this corpus actually gives multiple very different accounts 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:08.320 of creation. Some indicate a creation through combat, kind of 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:10.680 like we see in the Inuma a Leash, but with 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:16.880 very different details. Other stories tell about a separation of 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:18.840 the sky from the earth, like we see in the 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:22.480 Chinese story of Pengu or in the Maori creation story. 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:28.600 Others make suggestions about acts of sacrifice as the origin 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:32.120 of the world and of human beings. And I think 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:36.920 this multiplicity of different creation stories within the same corpus 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:42.200 in itself has interesting implications for how believers in the 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:45.840 rig Veda as a sacred text would thus start to 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:49.280 think about creation in a religious context. If you have 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:56.240 multiple totally different stories all coming from this authoritative religious text, Like, 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:59.640 how does that affect the way you think about you know, 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:04.320 the text itself and about the creation. Maybe we can 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:06.120 come back to that in a minute. But the one 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:09.920 hymn that I wanted to look at in particular from 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:12.760 the Rigveda is known as the Creation hymn or the 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:17.360 Nasadia Sukta, which is ordered as hymn number one twenty 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:22.120 nine in the tenth Mandola. Now a note about translations here. 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:26.080 The Rigveda is famously difficult to translate, rob, I bet 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:29.720 you've read about this before, Like, its original language is 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:36.440 full of spiritually intellectually freighted words and phrases that have 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:40.880 all these secondary meanings and ambiguities. Also, it is an 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:46.040 archaic text, so some meanings are difficult to reach across history. 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:50.440 Translations tend to be crowded with footnotes trying to explain 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.840 complexities that can't really be captured in a straight translation 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.440 of the text itself. So I cannot do justice to 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:01.760 all of that or compare a bunch of different translations 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:04.920 in the time we have here, So please just take 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:07.959 this section with the caveat that basically all translations of 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:10.280 the rig Veda are going to be compromises in some 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:14.160 way that fail to get at some aspects of the original. 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:17.079 And you could say this is true of all ancient texts, 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:19.640 but it seems to be especially true of the of 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:21.800 the Vedas in general and of the rig Veda. 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:26.720 Yeah, in general, we are never the intended readers of 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:27.560 a text like this. 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:31.120 Yeah. So with that caveat, the main translation I'm going 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:33.520 to refer to here is the one in the Penguin 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.360 Classics edition by the scholar Wendy Donager of the University 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:43.480 of Chicago. So the creation Him begins like this, There 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:48.600 was neither non existence nor existence. Then there was neither 0:09:48.720 --> 0:09:52.520 the realm of space nor the sky, which is beyond 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:59.559 what stirred? Where in whose protection? Was there water bottomlessly deep? 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:02.600 And just a note on the line in there what's 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:05.760 stirred and the part what's stirred? Where in whose protection? 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:10.480 Donager as a footnote saying that this verb stirred here 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:14.920 is often used to describe the motion of breath, which 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:18.320 itself brings in a new ambiguity that I like, because 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:23.320 I wonder does that mean stirring as in breath falling 0:10:23.400 --> 0:10:26.959 upon something and moving it, or stirring as in breathing 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:27.840 in itself. 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:31.720 Yeah. That's a great point because as a modern reader 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:35.160 reading this translation, I think stirred within this context, I 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:36.959 think something stirring within the depths. 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:37.880 Yeah, but. 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:43.440 Maybe depending on how you interpret interpret the breath, you 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:45.959 can maybe get halfway there. But yeah, fascinating. 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:49.240 Yeah. So this is the first verse of this creation hymn, 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.559 and I'd love that it begins with not with a 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:58.160 statement of what happened at the beginning. It begins with 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.959 a statement of negation and paradox Like it says there 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:07.440 was neither non existence nor existence, which is I think 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:11.640 intentionally provocative and paradoxical because that's like violating the law 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.600 of excluded middle. It's saying there was neither a nor 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:18.800 not ah. And then it also begins so it's got 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:21.679 the the negation in paradox, and then it's got questions. 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:25.520 Instead of saying telling you what stirred, it says what stirred? 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:29.720 Where in whose protection? Was their water? Not there was water, 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:32.360 but was their water? Was it bottomlessly deep? 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:36.240 Yeah? Almost makes me think of the poetry of Blake 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:40.600 you know, you know what immortal hand or eye you know, 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:43.760 And by asking these questions, you know, it makes the 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:47.319 answer more ambiguous and more majestic. 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:50.840 Well, I think, like Blake. From what I've read, a 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:55.160 major purpose of this hymn is it is often interpreted 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:59.800 as meaning to provoke wonder. But anyway it goes on. 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:03.360 There's a second verse that says there was neither death 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:07.200 nor immortality. Then again a kind of paradox, neither death 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:11.680 nor immortality. Then there was no distinguishing sign of night 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:16.319 nor of day that one breathed. And this phrase that one. 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:19.800 In other translations, I've seen it rendered as something like 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:23.160 that one thing, so you could think of it maybe 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.400 like that. But Donnagier here has it as that one 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:31.120 that one breathed, windless by its own impulse. Other than 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:35.600 that there was nothing beyond darkness, was hidden by darkness 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:39.720 in the beginning, with no distinguishing sign. All this was water, 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:43.480 the life force that was covered with emptiness. That one 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:47.880 arose through the power of heat. Desire came upon that 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.960 one in the beginning. That was the first seed of mind. 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:55.440 Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom found the bond 0:12:55.480 --> 0:13:00.880 of existence in non existence. Their cord was ended across 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:06.240 was there below? Was there above? There were seed placers, 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:10.440 there were powers, there was impulse beneath, there was giving 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:14.640 forth above? Who really knows? Who will hear proclaim it? 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:19.320 Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? The gods 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:23.800 came afterwards with the creation of this universe? Who then 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:28.080 knows whence it has arisen? So I like that point there, though. 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:30.840 You know, gods often play a role in the creation 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.760 of the world in stories, you know, within the Vedas 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.320 and in other traditions. But here it's saying the gods 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:39.680 came later with the creation of the universe, So what 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:44.520 brought this earlier state into being? And then finally, the 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:48.439 last verse is whence this creation has arisen? Perhaps it 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:51.880 formed itself, or perhaps it did not. The one who 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:55.080 looks down on it in the highest heaven only he knows, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:14:00.359 or perhaps he does not know. Hm nice I thought this. 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:03.040 This is such an interesting contrast to many of the 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:07.400 other stories we've seen so far, and again, like the 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:12.760 Rigveda does not lack references to more traditional creation stories 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:16.240 like we talked about, But here, rather than telling a 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:19.640 story like this happened to bring the world into existence? 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:26.359 This creation narrative is at its heart questions and expressions 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:31.280 of skepticism, encouraging the reader or the listener, the person 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:35.840 engaging with this hymn, to have questions and doubts of 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:39.440 their own and to kind of think about what it 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:43.280 means for things to exist. I do like that. One 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:46.680 of the few things that it seems to posit sort 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:52.840 of confidently or definitively is something about there being a 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:57.920 mind principle at the beginning of things, though not attributing 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:03.000 it to any particular person. Like it's talking about desire 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:06.640 coming upon this unnamed one, that one at the beginning 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:09.840 had some kind of desire, and this was the first 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:14.120 seed of mind, and this seems to be a power 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:17.040 that gives rise to other things. But then it's never 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:20.840 described in explicit like creative terms. It doesn't go from 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:24.720 there to saying, therefore God created X, Y, and Z. 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:28.200 It's interesting how when you think of a creation myth 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:34.040 in which everything is described in statements, it is inevitably 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.360 going to produce questions in the mind of the reader 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:42.000 or the listener. Here we're establishing it via questions, which 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:46.600 in a way kind of creates an ambiguous certainty if 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:48.960 that makes sense in the mind of the reader or 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:52.240 the listener, you know, like it's not like, do the 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:56.040 questions have formed the mental image, rather than us being 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:58.440 given a mental image, than then we have questions. 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:02.560 About Yeah, that's true. That there's almost there's a way 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:05.200 in which you can have more confidence in a mystery, 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.920 because if you're given a story and told to believe it, 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:13.120 then naturally one must have doubts. But if instead you 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:16.320 are you are posed a question and told it is 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:18.360 a mystery, I mean, how can you argue with that? 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:23.880 Yeah? Yeah, yeah. If you definitively say well, this individual was, say, 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:25.840 the son of the gods, the son of this god 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:28.560 or that goddess, then well then you got to describe 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:30.760 how that happened and what were the ramifications of that, 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:32.960 and what was the why of that. But if it's 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:35.440 just no one knows who this individual was, what was 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:38.960 their origin? Were they the child of a god? Were 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:41.560 they a mortal who became to halfway divine? You know, 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:43.720 if you ask it in that sense, it's like, oh, yeah, 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:47.000 nobody knows. Maybe it's all those things at once superposition. 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:50.520 Yeah, And I love the last statement too, where it's saying, uh, 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:53.720 you know, nobody really knows the answer to this mystery. 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:57.920 What what create? What caused creation to arise? What brought 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:01.760 the world into existence from this state of Again, I 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:05.119 love how it's saying before that it's not nothingness. The 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:09.399 pre creation state here is not nothingness. It is neither 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:13.679 existence nor non existence, which is somehow less than nothingness. 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:18.920 It is a contradiction in terms. Yeah, but oh but anyway, Yeah, 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:20.879 I only did the second half. I only did the 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:24.080 first half of that statement because I got interested in that. So, yeah, 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:28.200 it begins with this logical contradiction or this neither existence 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:32.639 nor non existence. When existence comes, what brings it into existence? 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:35.879 We get this claim that well maybe it is only 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:38.440 the one in the highest heaven who knows, but maybe 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:39.199 he does not know. 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:43.720 And then they go on to write, if you know, 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:48.760 write it down and send it to the following address. 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:52.400 So anyway, I really like this him and I think 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:55.080 this is a really interesting contrast to the things we've 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:59.080 talked about before in multiple ways, Like I love the questions, 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.600 the role of questions in establishing the pre creation state 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:07.159 and the act of creation, the the implicit and explicit 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:11.800 encouraging of of questions in the mind of the listener, 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:16.840 the raising of doubts, and the closest thing that it 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:20.600 really gets to describing the pre creation state is the 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.640 use of logical contradictions and paradoxes. 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:28.080 Yeah, yeah, yeah, which which kind of situates is a 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.399 thing outside of reason, outside of our our even our 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:45.960 ability to understand it. I love this. All right. Well, let's, uh, Lena, 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:51.800 let's return briefly, at least to Egyptian mythology. You know, 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:55.760 we we've discussed Egyptian mythology multiple times on the show before, 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:58.199 and we may have I think we alluded to it 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:00.840 in passing in the previous and stuff elements of the 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.280 thing before the beginning, just pointing out that, well, you know, this, 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:06.840 this line of thought, or this particular mythology, it has 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:10.119 some parallels in Egyptian pod and all. So I want 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:14.440 to bring up a specific Egyptian creation myth here. And 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:16.520 in bringing this up, we're going to end up touching 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:18.760 on a couple of pre creation ideas that we've already 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:22.040 discussed in other examples. One, of course, is common to 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:24.439 so many different religions, and that is the idea of 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:25.760 primordial waters. 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:28.919 Water is big, big, in the pre creation space. A 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:31.320 lot of people are thinking about water there exactly. 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:33.919 Yes. And then the second idea is that that the 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:37.159 pre creation state is a thing that also continues to 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:40.760 exist either within its own pocket dimension or beyond the 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:46.600 boundaries of creation, and maybe at least by certain individuals 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:50.880 and certainly divine individuals can still be reached and interacted with. 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:56.000 That is really interesting. Yeah. That so that the pre 0:19:56.200 --> 0:19:59.639 creation world is not just something that exists in the past. 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:01.719 It was what the world was once like and has 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.120 now been totally transformed. You could imagine the world we 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:08.520 live in as maybe a subset of reality that has 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:12.320 been transformed into the world we know, but that somewhere 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:15.480 else there is the world that was before and it's 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:16.359 still like that. 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:19.639 Yeah, yeah, And you know, part of this is certainly 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:22.600 as we'll get into with the we've discussed this before. 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:25.760 How with the ancient Egyptians, a lot of their belief system, 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:28.920 it is, is informed by the importance of the nile. 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:31.439 It is it is shaped by the movement of water, 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:34.280 and so in one on one level, there is the 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:37.760 idea that water is flowing from a source to a destination, 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.280 and then there are these you know, we have this 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:45.639 periodic surges in floods, and that's going to have both 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:51.160 destructive and creative ramifications. But you can easily imagine like, okay, 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:53.159 we have all this water, This water is important, it 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:55.840 must come from somewhere. And what is water like when 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:59.960 it's not doing anything? It is stagnant, it's still, it's dark. 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.119 And so we get into similar ideas here. So, as 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:05.000 we've of course discussed in the show, you can't just 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:08.040 talk about Egyptian ancient Egyptian mythology as if it's a 0:21:08.080 --> 0:21:11.760 single codified thing. Rather, we're dealing with an array of 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:14.679 beliefs and traditions that exist across time and across different 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:17.760 parts of Egypt over the course of many thousands of years. 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:22.520 So there are actually multiple creation myths. But worth discussing 0:21:22.560 --> 0:21:27.240 for our purposes here especially is that of none or 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:31.960 noun or none. It's sometimes spelled in English as noun 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:35.199 like a noun or nune like a holy sister of 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:39.960 the cloth. And this is the personification of the prime 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:44.600 evil ocean. So the prime evolution in Egyptian mythology consisted 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:49.360 of the waters of chaos, a kind of vast stagnant potentiality, 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:55.480 the prime evil matter here was dark, moist, boundaryless. And 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:59.720 these attributes are embodied in a group of primordial deities, 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:04.760 all the Ogdode of Hermopolis. The exact makeup of this 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:07.800 group varies from one telling or tradition to the next, 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:11.720 but it generally consists of eight deities consisting of four 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:16.719 male and female counterparts representing about four qualities of the 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:20.040 primeval waters. So the lineup is kind of like the Avengers. 0:22:20.040 --> 0:22:23.480 It's going to vary, but you know, but in this case, 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:28.000 all the different lineups of the Ogdode are going to 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:31.560 include none. None is often included in this kind of 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:37.680 frog headed form, and he's included alongside his female counterpart nonet. 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:42.080 And according to Geraldine Pinch in Egyptian Mythology, in one 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:44.520 of my main books that I look to for this 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:49.640 sort of thing, quote obeying some primitive instinct unquote, the 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:54.280 Ogdode comes together to form the Primeval Mound. This is 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:57.800 the first emergence of land from the prime evil ocean, 0:22:58.080 --> 0:22:59.960 and this would serve as the center of the un 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:05.119 universe and the place where subsequent creation happens. Think of 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:08.320 it as like base camp for all creation, and it 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:11.800 remains a place of continuous creation and renewal. 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:14.399 Yeah, so in one literal sense, you can think about 0:23:14.440 --> 0:23:17.440 this because it's easier to do things on land if 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:21.000 you just think about human organizational activities, you know, ordering, 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:23.840 it's easier to take place on land. You can build stuff, 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:27.960 you can sort things. But also I think it's important 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:30.159 to think about the raising of the land from the 0:23:30.280 --> 0:23:34.879 primordial waters as an act of separation. You are making 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:38.720 a distinction between two places or two types of things. 0:23:38.800 --> 0:23:43.000 And like so many of these creation myths, somehow they 0:23:43.080 --> 0:23:47.480 focus on an act of separation or distinction drawing, like 0:23:47.560 --> 0:23:52.480 you take a previously undifferentiated place or substance and you 0:23:52.640 --> 0:23:55.560 separate it into two different things, and then you have 0:23:55.640 --> 0:23:56.840 the beginnings of order. 0:23:57.520 --> 0:24:00.240 Yeah, and you see that with the octode here as well, 0:24:00.240 --> 0:24:02.639 because it's like they are all they all kind of 0:24:02.640 --> 0:24:07.280 seem to emerge out of descriptions. They're almost like linguistic 0:24:08.480 --> 0:24:14.119 attributes of the primeval waters. So they are like they're 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:16.760 kind of like the the the hashtags, they're the they're 0:24:16.760 --> 0:24:21.800 the word cloud for the the primeval matter. And then 0:24:21.840 --> 0:24:25.560 they become personifications of that and separated into male and 0:24:25.600 --> 0:24:30.440 female energies. So the prime evil Waters of none, embodied 0:24:30.440 --> 0:24:33.040 again by the god and goddess None and None that 0:24:33.560 --> 0:24:37.360 they continue to exist. This continues to exist, these waters 0:24:37.600 --> 0:24:41.600 both above the stars and beyond the boundaries of creation, 0:24:42.640 --> 0:24:46.000 feeding the life giving waters of the rivers and the ocean. 0:24:46.080 --> 0:24:47.760 So here we get back to what I mentioned earlier, 0:24:47.800 --> 0:24:51.080 the idea of like the river being all important. Where 0:24:51.080 --> 0:24:53.439 does the water come from? Well, the water has its 0:24:53.520 --> 0:24:57.280 source in this stagnant potentiality. Now I'm going to keep 0:24:57.280 --> 0:25:00.320 referring to the entity as none, but again it also 0:25:00.400 --> 0:25:05.199 exists in the feminine as none, and Pinch refers to 0:25:05.240 --> 0:25:08.679 the entity as an it the oldest of beings, the 0:25:08.720 --> 0:25:11.600 father of the gods, but also something with an eternal 0:25:11.720 --> 0:25:15.840 potential to create life, a demi urge and quote a 0:25:15.960 --> 0:25:21.280 kind of instinctive movement towards consciousness. But again within this, 0:25:21.680 --> 0:25:24.000 within this context here it is also a place that 0:25:24.040 --> 0:25:27.800 may be returned to and has a like a has 0:25:27.800 --> 0:25:31.439 a lot of renewing energy. And here's an example of it. 0:25:32.160 --> 0:25:36.080 We've discussed the god Ra or Ray, the Egyptian god 0:25:36.080 --> 0:25:38.880 of the sun, and how during the day he's piloting 0:25:38.880 --> 0:25:41.080 the sun barge across the sky. It's a movement of 0:25:41.080 --> 0:25:45.000 the Sun and then in the evening what happens goes 0:25:45.040 --> 0:25:48.840 down into the underworld and traverses the underworld. But there's 0:25:48.840 --> 0:25:52.280 something else that happens down there as well. He also 0:25:52.480 --> 0:25:58.359 undergoes regeneration in the nun so And this is interesting 0:25:58.400 --> 0:26:00.639 because again None is both the water and also the 0:26:00.640 --> 0:26:05.440 personification of the waters. And in some ancient Egyptian iconography 0:26:05.760 --> 0:26:09.159 you will see None pictured as a giant, like a 0:26:09.280 --> 0:26:13.560 like a male giant raising the sun barge, the solar 0:26:13.600 --> 0:26:16.120 barge out of the waters above his head like bench 0:26:16.160 --> 0:26:20.600 pressing it back up and and and therefore playing a 0:26:20.680 --> 0:26:26.239 vital role in just continual you know, nightly renewal of 0:26:26.280 --> 0:26:28.600 the energy of the Sun and of the Sun God. 0:26:29.440 --> 0:26:32.560 Very interesting that this implies, at least in a metaphorical 0:26:32.600 --> 0:26:37.200 sense of belief in the constant returning to the pre 0:26:37.280 --> 0:26:40.040 creation state, like every night there is some kind of 0:26:40.119 --> 0:26:44.440 recommunion with what the world was like before it was created. Yeah. 0:26:44.600 --> 0:26:47.200 Yeah, because as we've talked about before, like the voyage 0:26:47.200 --> 0:26:49.040 of the sun barge is one in which there are 0:26:49.160 --> 0:26:51.560 enemies there they have to be fought off like it's 0:26:51.960 --> 0:26:55.400 it's it is a it is a cycle that is perpetual, 0:26:55.920 --> 0:26:58.800 but not all the way guaranteed. And you know, certain 0:26:58.840 --> 0:27:00.840 things have to be observed in this world and in 0:27:00.880 --> 0:27:02.760 other worlds for this to continue. 0:27:02.960 --> 0:27:06.040 That's right. I mean a big part of Egyptian religious 0:27:06.119 --> 0:27:10.560 ritual was humans engaging in rituals that were designed to 0:27:10.800 --> 0:27:14.639 help the sun, the god raw and the sun barge 0:27:14.680 --> 0:27:17.640 on its journey through the underworld. So like we have 0:27:17.720 --> 0:27:21.200 to do rituals to help the god make the journey 0:27:21.240 --> 0:27:22.679 and make sure that he succeeds. 0:27:23.119 --> 0:27:28.040 Yeah, exactly, And so in all this all creation is 0:27:29.119 --> 0:27:33.000 realized in the nun as well. And also there's this 0:27:33.080 --> 0:27:35.760 other little tidbit that pinch mentions that, and that is 0:27:35.800 --> 0:27:39.120 that in some tellings, the world will end one day 0:27:39.280 --> 0:27:45.359 when the creator and slash creators, you know, the creative 0:27:45.680 --> 0:27:47.439 almost you can think of it less in terms of 0:27:47.440 --> 0:27:50.280 a creator entity, but sort of like the creative movement 0:27:50.640 --> 0:27:53.439 returns to the nun. So in a sense, again, if 0:27:53.440 --> 0:27:55.920 we come back to the idea of a great expansion, 0:27:56.760 --> 0:27:58.639 we kind of get into the idea of a great 0:27:58.640 --> 0:28:03.240 collapse that one day everything will just return to primordial, 0:28:03.840 --> 0:28:07.840 stagnant potentiality, and then maybe it will come out again. 0:28:07.920 --> 0:28:10.240 Maybe we'll get the same pattern throughout history. 0:28:11.280 --> 0:28:13.640 If only we could get this exact same pattern again, 0:28:13.760 --> 0:28:14.560 wouldn't that be great? 0:28:15.960 --> 0:28:18.040 Well, maybe the next one will be better, right, hopefully. 0:28:18.080 --> 0:28:21.160 It is kind of like the Aztec model, where each 0:28:21.600 --> 0:28:24.640 new draft is an improvement. Uh. You know, you don't 0:28:24.640 --> 0:28:26.560 want you you don't want your sixth draft to be 0:28:26.600 --> 0:28:29.000 worse than your fifth. Maybe there shouldn't have been a 0:28:29.000 --> 0:28:31.520 fifth draft. Maybe fifth should have been final, that sort 0:28:31.560 --> 0:28:34.760 of thing. All right, So obviously this is this is 0:28:34.800 --> 0:28:37.200 a case. And like most like all these examples we've 0:28:37.200 --> 0:28:39.920 been discussing, these are cases where you're you're dealing with 0:28:41.880 --> 0:28:46.480 generally the ancient world. You're dealing with ancient peoples asking, 0:28:46.640 --> 0:28:50.560 you know, deep complex questions about the nature of reality 0:28:50.600 --> 0:28:54.840 and their place in reality, you know, informed by their 0:28:54.840 --> 0:29:00.239 observations of the world, deep human contemplation. Uh. And and 0:29:00.320 --> 0:29:04.160 also other religious influences of the time, either something that 0:29:04.240 --> 0:29:07.360 was practiced in their own culture or has been brought 0:29:07.400 --> 0:29:10.320 in from another culture. But I think it would be 0:29:10.400 --> 0:29:15.240 an interesting exercise here to look at a few recent 0:29:15.440 --> 0:29:19.760 religious movements, new religious movements to consider what happens when 0:29:19.800 --> 0:29:24.120 you throw in some modern influences, especially the idea that 0:29:24.160 --> 0:29:28.280 these would be religious movements that emerge during the scientific age. 0:29:28.520 --> 0:29:32.280 That's not to say that these are necessarily science informed religions, 0:29:32.880 --> 0:29:36.480 but they are at least culturally informed by a world 0:29:36.840 --> 0:29:39.520 that is shaped by science as well as science fiction. 0:29:40.520 --> 0:29:45.360 I would say that a lot of recently formed religions, 0:29:45.400 --> 0:29:50.040 in my view, they partake of the esthetics of science. 0:29:50.120 --> 0:29:54.400 They don't make necessarily functional use of science, but there 0:29:54.520 --> 0:29:58.680 is a sort of poetry or the language of science 0:29:58.760 --> 0:30:01.360 that they try to incorporate rate into their beliefs. 0:30:01.800 --> 0:30:03.720 Yeah, and at the same time they may do the 0:30:03.760 --> 0:30:06.840 same with ancient religion as well. I mean, we see 0:30:06.840 --> 0:30:11.600 this in esoteric thought and in mysticism all the time, 0:30:12.000 --> 0:30:16.920 where you're also drawing on these ancient practices and you know, 0:30:17.040 --> 0:30:18.960 depending on how you're doing it, who's doing it, and 0:30:19.000 --> 0:30:22.120 so forth, and as well as intention, you know, they 0:30:22.240 --> 0:30:25.200 might be rather accurate. You might be you know, bringing 0:30:25.240 --> 0:30:29.480 in some of these concepts and actually slightly reworking them 0:30:29.480 --> 0:30:32.719 in a way where they function better for certain populations 0:30:32.720 --> 0:30:35.640 of the modern world while still retaining their value. Or 0:30:35.640 --> 0:30:38.760 it could be entirely superficial, you know, where you're just 0:30:38.800 --> 0:30:42.800 taking the dressings of something ancient and using it to 0:30:42.840 --> 0:30:45.640 sell something new. I mean, it's going to run the 0:30:45.640 --> 0:30:46.920 gamut of possibility here. 0:30:47.440 --> 0:30:49.360 There are a lot of reasons to bring in things 0:30:49.400 --> 0:30:51.840 that are ancient, but one of them is that antiquity 0:30:51.880 --> 0:30:55.160 brings implied authority. When you say something is very old, 0:30:55.320 --> 0:30:58.080 people are like, oh, well that's something I should pay attention. 0:30:57.760 --> 0:31:00.640 To, which, of course is an interesting scenario to consider 0:31:00.640 --> 0:31:03.120 it with a new religious movement something, you know, where 0:31:03.400 --> 0:31:06.160 somebody's come along and they're like, this is this is 0:31:06.200 --> 0:31:09.040 the new path, this is the way, and they're going 0:31:09.160 --> 0:31:12.000 to lean on maybe some ancient and some sort of 0:31:12.040 --> 0:31:16.560 ancient knowledge one way or another in order to prop 0:31:16.600 --> 0:31:19.640 it up. And that is not to not to not 0:31:19.760 --> 0:31:22.600 to you know, disparage this idea, because of course we 0:31:22.600 --> 0:31:24.840 look at any of these ancient religions, all of these 0:31:24.840 --> 0:31:27.520 were new religions at one point. You know, none of 0:31:27.560 --> 0:31:32.640 these actually like predates the first humans who advanced them. 0:31:32.680 --> 0:31:35.480 You know, again, they may be influenced by earlier models 0:31:34.800 --> 0:31:40.120 and and always were, but yeah, any ancient religion was 0:31:40.120 --> 0:31:43.120 once a new religious movement. We just continue to do this. 0:31:43.120 --> 0:31:45.920 This is a continual human practice. Either you're going to 0:31:46.000 --> 0:31:48.800 reach the point and it makes sense too the world changes, 0:31:48.840 --> 0:31:55.200 culture changes, you either have to continually create new drafts 0:31:55.240 --> 0:31:59.400 of a particular religion, or you have to change ourselves 0:31:59.400 --> 0:32:01.640 to match an old model of religion, or you come 0:32:01.720 --> 0:32:04.560 up with something to some extent entirely new. 0:32:06.400 --> 0:32:07.760 I don't know if I've ever put it in these 0:32:07.840 --> 0:32:10.560 terms before, but I just had the thought, I wonder 0:32:10.720 --> 0:32:16.040 if a lot of the venerable and respectable seeming aspects 0:32:16.040 --> 0:32:22.200 of older religions are actually things that traditions mature into 0:32:22.920 --> 0:32:25.920 the results of things existing for a long time and 0:32:26.000 --> 0:32:29.720 evolving and maturing. That would kind of run counter to 0:32:29.760 --> 0:32:31.840 an intuition that a lot of people have that things 0:32:31.960 --> 0:32:36.120 begin pure and then devolve from there. I wonder if 0:32:36.120 --> 0:32:40.320 some religions actually gain a lot of respectability over time 0:32:40.440 --> 0:32:42.320 as they sort of evolve and grow. 0:32:43.080 --> 0:32:46.560 Yeah, yeah, I mean certainly they're you know, we could 0:32:46.560 --> 0:32:49.479 we could easily get into the nuances and the history 0:32:49.520 --> 0:32:52.239 of various new religions, where you know, early on, there 0:32:52.240 --> 0:32:55.280 are a lot of places where you can misstep, certainly 0:32:55.280 --> 0:32:58.600 if you're in an area where everything isn't completely codified 0:32:58.880 --> 0:33:02.800 and is highly controlled by you know, one or two individuals. 0:33:02.120 --> 0:33:02.840 That sort of thing. 0:33:04.040 --> 0:33:06.920 But then again, there are counterexamples of that as well. 0:33:07.880 --> 0:33:09.880 So for our purposes here, I don't want to get 0:33:09.880 --> 0:33:12.920 two into the weeds. This is all fascinating, but I 0:33:12.960 --> 0:33:15.400 want to try and focus mostly on the idea of 0:33:15.400 --> 0:33:18.560 pre creation in some of these religions, without really getting 0:33:18.560 --> 0:33:21.680 into much in the way of, you know, discussing like 0:33:22.400 --> 0:33:25.200 the values or the criticism of any of these religious models, 0:33:25.400 --> 0:33:28.040 and again kind of basing it broadly in the idea 0:33:28.120 --> 0:33:31.400 that all religions were new at one point, and there's 0:33:31.440 --> 0:33:34.400 nothing there's nothing strange about there being new religions today. 0:33:36.120 --> 0:33:38.640 I'm going to begin with with all three of these 0:33:38.640 --> 0:33:41.600 are ones that I think everyone has heard of, but 0:33:41.640 --> 0:33:44.880 maybe you're not as up on exactly what they seem 0:33:44.920 --> 0:33:48.160 to be saying about this strange idea of the thing 0:33:48.240 --> 0:33:51.600 that existed before reality. So I want to start with 0:33:51.680 --> 0:33:55.960 the Raelian Movement. This is an international atheistic UFO religion 0:33:56.040 --> 0:34:01.680 founded by the French religious leader Rayel born nineteen forty six. 0:34:02.640 --> 0:34:06.520 This religion is based on his alleged UFO experiences in 0:34:06.600 --> 0:34:10.280 nineteen seventy three. As of this recording, he is still alive. 0:34:10.360 --> 0:34:13.120 So this is kind of a this is an interesting 0:34:13.160 --> 0:34:15.200 example and that this is a new religious movement in 0:34:15.239 --> 0:34:18.239 which the founder is still living and presumably active in 0:34:18.280 --> 0:34:20.480 the faith. So I'm not going to get it. As 0:34:20.520 --> 0:34:21.719 with all these I'm not going to get into all 0:34:21.760 --> 0:34:25.520 the teachings, but the Raelian movement teaches that life on 0:34:25.560 --> 0:34:31.719 Earth originated via directed panspermia, so like directed seating of 0:34:31.800 --> 0:34:35.560 the planet's life twenty five thousand years ago by aliens 0:34:35.640 --> 0:34:42.839 known as the elhem However, mirroring modern conceptions of eternity 0:34:42.920 --> 0:34:48.040 and some cosmological models, Raelian teachings contend that there simply 0:34:48.280 --> 0:34:52.640 is no beginning and there's also no end. Both space 0:34:52.680 --> 0:34:56.520 and time are boundless, and their chief religious symbol of 0:34:56.640 --> 0:35:00.080 infinity is a combination of the Star of David and 0:35:00.080 --> 0:35:02.799 the swastika, meant to convey some sense of all of this. 0:35:04.200 --> 0:35:06.600 I'm going to read from their website that this is 0:35:06.640 --> 0:35:09.359 certainly one of those one of the modern religious movements 0:35:09.360 --> 0:35:11.120 where they have a lot of information on their websites 0:35:11.160 --> 0:35:13.080 and you can just go and just read exactly what 0:35:13.080 --> 0:35:17.480 they are saying about themselves, and this is what they say, 0:35:17.560 --> 0:35:21.760 quote the extraterrestrials who created humankind, and laboratories have proven 0:35:21.840 --> 0:35:25.560 that the infinitely small and the infinitely large have the 0:35:25.600 --> 0:35:29.200 same structure. The atoms in our hands contain tiny galaxies, 0:35:29.200 --> 0:35:33.399 which themselves contain planets and minuscule humanities, and our own 0:35:33.440 --> 0:35:35.960 galaxy is a tiny particle and a huge atom that 0:35:36.040 --> 0:35:40.440 forms part of an immense world, etc. At infintium. So 0:35:40.560 --> 0:35:43.680 powers of ten basically, except with like little universes inside 0:35:43.719 --> 0:35:47.759 us and our entire universes inside of something inside of 0:35:48.520 --> 0:35:51.080 a macro world, and it just goes on forever. There's 0:35:51.120 --> 0:35:54.440 no beginning, there's no end. And it does match up 0:35:54.440 --> 0:35:58.440 with you to some extent with numerous cosmological hypotheses that 0:35:58.480 --> 0:36:00.920 have featured on one level or another, the idea of 0:36:00.960 --> 0:36:02.840 a cosmos without true beginning around. 0:36:03.040 --> 0:36:06.560 Yeah, the universe is beginning from other universes and seeding 0:36:06.600 --> 0:36:11.879 other universes beyond. I don't know of anybody. I don't 0:36:11.880 --> 0:36:14.920 know of any theories that say, like atoms actually have 0:36:15.080 --> 0:36:19.320 universes inside them. Maybe somebody thinks that with scientific basis, 0:36:19.320 --> 0:36:20.200 so I kind of doubt it. 0:36:20.480 --> 0:36:22.200 Yeah, I think you're getting more into the realm of 0:36:23.880 --> 0:36:27.560 mysticism here when you start considering that. But you know, 0:36:28.280 --> 0:36:30.759 in another way, it kind of rubs up against the 0:36:30.840 --> 0:36:35.920 idea of many worlds, right, I mean, they're being a 0:36:36.040 --> 0:36:39.640 multiverse out there, that sort of thing. So again, I 0:36:39.680 --> 0:36:42.799 think there's an important distinction to be made here, Like 0:36:42.800 --> 0:36:45.040 we're not making the case and I don't think we're 0:36:45.080 --> 0:36:48.440 not discussing it anyway as if these are examples of 0:36:48.600 --> 0:36:53.600 scientifically informed religions, but they are religions that have emerged 0:36:53.840 --> 0:36:58.040 within a scientifically literate culture, and therefore they are going 0:36:58.040 --> 0:37:01.120 to at least rub up against these scientific concepts. 0:37:01.239 --> 0:37:04.560 Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah, and in a way, you know, 0:37:04.600 --> 0:37:06.920 you think about it, that might not actually be different 0:37:07.160 --> 0:37:11.040 than ancient creation stories. It's just that we have more 0:37:11.360 --> 0:37:14.959 and different knowledge that we think of as scientific about 0:37:14.960 --> 0:37:17.239 the world. I mean, you know, ancient cultures didn't really 0:37:17.280 --> 0:37:19.719 have a concept of scientific but they would have had 0:37:20.200 --> 0:37:24.800 understandings of the natural world that included maybe complex knowledge 0:37:24.800 --> 0:37:26.879 about how to do certain things. You know, you can 0:37:26.920 --> 0:37:31.760 imagine creation accounts that involve things about technology, things about 0:37:31.800 --> 0:37:36.160 agriculture and metal working and building of structures, things like that, 0:37:36.200 --> 0:37:39.680 all these things that are sort of physical discoveries about 0:37:39.680 --> 0:37:42.200 how things work in the universe and things we can 0:37:42.280 --> 0:37:46.040 do with the substances around us, and that knowledge, like 0:37:46.200 --> 0:37:51.239 secular functional knowledge is included into the creation accounts of 0:37:51.280 --> 0:37:52.560 old Yeah. 0:37:52.560 --> 0:38:05.600 Absolutely, I think that's an important point all right. Now, 0:38:05.600 --> 0:38:10.200 in talking about scientifically informed or inspired religions, we of 0:38:10.200 --> 0:38:12.840 course have to talk about one of the big ones, 0:38:12.840 --> 0:38:17.080 at least in name Scientology, founded by science fiction author l. 0:38:17.160 --> 0:38:20.600 Ron Hubbard who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen eighty six. 0:38:21.520 --> 0:38:24.600 He claimed to have developed the teachings through this is 0:38:24.680 --> 0:38:30.359 rather interesting through experimentation rather than divine revelation, at least 0:38:30.360 --> 0:38:33.320 in the hard sense. And I think this is rather interesting. 0:38:33.400 --> 0:38:36.960 You know that the idea that it's not that I 0:38:36.960 --> 0:38:40.360 have gone back and discovered something in ancient writings or 0:38:40.440 --> 0:38:43.640 I have you know, uncovered some forgotten tone of knowledge. 0:38:44.080 --> 0:38:47.160 This is like a product of my own research, in 0:38:47.200 --> 0:38:49.560 my own like sort of lab work. 0:38:50.160 --> 0:38:55.960 Yeah, that's funny. I one day, when I was long 0:38:56.000 --> 0:38:58.000 long ago, there was a day when I was basically 0:38:58.040 --> 0:39:01.120 stuck in a library all day with no ability to 0:39:01.120 --> 0:39:03.480 go anywhere or do anything. So I was just wandering 0:39:03.520 --> 0:39:05.759 around and I found a copy of Dianetics in the 0:39:05.800 --> 0:39:08.959 library and I started reading it. I remember actually being 0:39:09.000 --> 0:39:12.120 disappointed and thinking that it would be more interesting than 0:39:12.160 --> 0:39:14.520 it was. It's got a slog for me. 0:39:14.880 --> 0:39:18.239 I had, I had, I had a similar experience with it. 0:39:18.520 --> 0:39:20.719 You know, I was, I was interested, I was, you know, 0:39:20.760 --> 0:39:23.319 has a volcano on the front for crying out loud? Yeah, 0:39:23.360 --> 0:39:25.000 it seems like it's going to be dynamic. It had 0:39:25.040 --> 0:39:28.520 some pretty cool television commercials back in the day, and 0:39:28.560 --> 0:39:32.000 I assume they're still probably doing some TV commercials. And 0:39:32.000 --> 0:39:33.960 and then when I started reading it, it like starts off 0:39:34.080 --> 0:39:39.440 very confrontational and and and in general, I can sometimes 0:39:39.560 --> 0:39:42.920 I can find Hubbard's writing a bit hard to crack. 0:39:43.040 --> 0:39:45.479 I mean not to and that's not even necessarily a knock. 0:39:45.480 --> 0:39:48.080 It's like we're talking about like ancient religious texts that 0:39:48.120 --> 0:39:53.480 are difficult to understand and maybe intentionally a bit cryptic 0:39:53.640 --> 0:39:57.080 and suggestive. And you can certainly find that in scientology 0:39:57.080 --> 0:40:01.680 writings as well, again perhaps intended, but anyway, the broader 0:40:01.760 --> 0:40:06.719 teachings of scientology involve a number of philosophical and psychiatric 0:40:06.800 --> 0:40:12.000 concepts ideas from Western esoteric practices, along with some definite 0:40:12.040 --> 0:40:15.080 Sci Fi related concepts. And I'm not going to pretend 0:40:15.080 --> 0:40:17.480 to be an expert on scientology or its teachings, and 0:40:17.520 --> 0:40:20.920 I'm not a scientologist, but I'm to understand that the 0:40:20.960 --> 0:40:24.759 basic idea is that the universe we experience is the 0:40:26.000 --> 0:40:30.200 mess the nest the matter, energy and space time universe, 0:40:30.600 --> 0:40:33.880 and this was born seventy six sorry, seventy six trillion 0:40:33.960 --> 0:40:37.360 years ago out of a pre existing static universe of 0:40:37.480 --> 0:40:42.360 pure Thetan energy, So a universe composed all of Thetans, 0:40:42.760 --> 0:40:47.160 spiritual beings and our true selves. But then the Thetans 0:40:47.200 --> 0:40:51.359 become lost in their own creation something to this effect. So, 0:40:51.440 --> 0:40:54.799 as far as I understand it as a non scientologist, 0:40:54.880 --> 0:40:57.000 the idea is that prior to the beginning, you just 0:40:57.040 --> 0:41:00.480 have like a pure sort of communal spiritual existence, but 0:41:00.520 --> 0:41:02.440 also one that you could think of is kind of 0:41:03.920 --> 0:41:05.880 you know, having a lot in common with these ideas 0:41:05.880 --> 0:41:11.040 of pure potentiality as well. But but then that you 0:41:11.040 --> 0:41:13.879 could also I think you can directly compare this too 0:41:13.920 --> 0:41:17.480 to sort of a you know, it has a certain 0:41:17.800 --> 0:41:21.759 what prelaps arian energy as well. The idea that that 0:41:22.040 --> 0:41:26.400 through scientology, the practitioner is trying to sort of return 0:41:26.840 --> 0:41:30.600 to that condition before this reality and sort of reconnect 0:41:30.960 --> 0:41:35.440 with the Thetan that they are slash were, And this 0:41:35.480 --> 0:41:38.680 also brings in various concepts of human potential as well. 0:41:38.800 --> 0:41:40.799 Like I have to I have to find my true 0:41:40.800 --> 0:41:43.960 potential by connecting with the pure energy being that I 0:41:44.239 --> 0:41:48.759 was in the sort of the realm of potentiality that 0:41:48.800 --> 0:41:50.240 existed before our universe. 0:41:51.560 --> 0:41:53.880 So the return to Eden is in this case that 0:41:53.920 --> 0:41:56.040 it's the return to the pure Thetan energy. 0:41:56.760 --> 0:42:00.799 Yeah. Yeah, And and again you can you can kind 0:42:00.800 --> 0:42:03.520 of compare that to even the ancient Egyptian model. We 0:42:03.520 --> 0:42:06.440 were just discussing the idea that there's some sort of 0:42:06.520 --> 0:42:11.319 renewal to be found in the pre creation existence, and 0:42:11.400 --> 0:42:14.440 there is some connection between where we are now and 0:42:14.480 --> 0:42:18.520 what we are now, and that like vital pre existing energy. 0:42:19.320 --> 0:42:23.120 Yeah, so I guess I created accidentally. They're created some 0:42:23.239 --> 0:42:26.600 of the wrong implications by saying Eden, because Eden is 0:42:26.640 --> 0:42:28.960 not a pre created state. It's just the good state. 0:42:29.200 --> 0:42:30.759 Yeah, the good state. 0:42:31.000 --> 0:42:32.800 But that's very much the created state. 0:42:33.040 --> 0:42:36.000 Yeah yeah, yeah. And then I do not know, there 0:42:36.000 --> 0:42:40.440 may be something else in scientology that explores what existed 0:42:40.480 --> 0:42:43.920 before the Thetans, or perhaps Thetans I may be mispronouncing it, 0:42:44.840 --> 0:42:45.879 what existed before them. 0:42:45.880 --> 0:42:46.200 I don't know. 0:42:46.239 --> 0:42:51.080 Maybe they're they're a constant state that always existed. I 0:42:51.320 --> 0:42:54.680 suspect that might be the case, all right, And then 0:42:54.719 --> 0:42:57.880 one more to discuss. This one is by far the 0:42:57.960 --> 0:43:01.480 largest and much larger than the aforementioned groups, and generally 0:43:01.520 --> 0:43:04.840 considered the most successful new religious movement of the past 0:43:04.840 --> 0:43:07.120 couple of centuries, and that is the Church of Jesus 0:43:07.200 --> 0:43:10.360 Christ of Latter day Saints, founded by Joseph Smith in 0:43:10.400 --> 0:43:14.000 eighteen thirty. And it is easy to forget that this 0:43:14.080 --> 0:43:17.000 too is a religion that, despite its connection to older 0:43:17.120 --> 0:43:21.200 Christian traditions and its use of scriptures that invoke this 0:43:21.280 --> 0:43:25.520 feeling of ancient time, it's easy to forget that this too, 0:43:25.560 --> 0:43:29.320 is a religion that really takes shape and takes off 0:43:29.640 --> 0:43:33.160 in the scientific age. And we see that reflected. We've 0:43:33.160 --> 0:43:35.319 discussed this a little bit on the show before in 0:43:35.400 --> 0:43:39.880 some of the ways that it is space friendly. Again 0:43:40.280 --> 0:43:43.040 not making the case that any of these new religious 0:43:43.040 --> 0:43:47.520 movements are necessarily science informed, but it has been observed 0:43:47.560 --> 0:43:49.840 that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints 0:43:49.880 --> 0:43:55.719 is largely space friendly, explicitly stating that there are other 0:43:55.840 --> 0:44:01.040 inhabited planets, so at least, you know, acknowledging a modern 0:44:01.280 --> 0:44:07.440 understanding of the cosmos and in incorporating that into its worldview, 0:44:07.520 --> 0:44:10.440 and you know, into some of its ideas of what 0:44:10.560 --> 0:44:11.080 came before. 0:44:11.360 --> 0:44:13.960 Yeah, I mean, you don't have to say that the 0:44:14.120 --> 0:44:17.440 scientific ideas taken on board are necessarily all that complex. 0:44:17.840 --> 0:44:21.240 Just to acknowledge that this is like a post Galileo religion. 0:44:21.360 --> 0:44:24.080 This is a religion from the age in which it 0:44:24.160 --> 0:44:27.759 is a It is common knowledge that the other planets 0:44:27.840 --> 0:44:30.560 are not just like movable points of light in the 0:44:30.640 --> 0:44:33.040 sky that move on different patterns than the rest of 0:44:33.080 --> 0:44:37.920 the stars, that they are spheres of like rock and gas, 0:44:37.920 --> 0:44:40.239 and there are other things like you could walk on 0:44:40.280 --> 0:44:41.680 the other planets. 0:44:41.360 --> 0:44:44.440 Right, And therefore it's acknowledged that there there is life 0:44:44.440 --> 0:44:47.319 on other planets, and and then that has to be 0:44:47.360 --> 0:44:50.360 theologically worked out to some degree, which is not something 0:44:50.360 --> 0:44:55.480 that comes up in like you know, ancient Christian or 0:44:55.520 --> 0:44:59.600 Jewish thought. You know, like nobody's saying, but wait, what 0:44:59.680 --> 0:45:02.640 about people potentially living on other planets? Like what are 0:45:02.640 --> 0:45:04.600 you talking about? That's not going with it's not going 0:45:04.600 --> 0:45:09.320 in the book. Yeah. So we again, as we've mentioned before, 0:45:09.360 --> 0:45:13.960 you know, several notable prominent NASA figures were LDS members, 0:45:14.000 --> 0:45:17.560 including fourth and seventh NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher. So 0:45:17.600 --> 0:45:19.080 I think a strong case can be made for being 0:45:19.120 --> 0:45:21.920 like a space friendly religion and some extent to some extent, 0:45:22.360 --> 0:45:25.400 but coming back to the bigger question. According to the 0:45:25.480 --> 0:45:27.360 Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter day Saints, what 0:45:27.520 --> 0:45:30.319 comes before the beginning then? And how does this rub 0:45:30.440 --> 0:45:34.640 up against modern scientific concepts. Well, it's spelled out on 0:45:34.719 --> 0:45:37.480 their website, so again this is coming more or less 0:45:37.920 --> 0:45:41.600 directly from the Church. The idea is that Jesus Christ, 0:45:41.960 --> 0:45:44.720 under the direction of the heavenly Father, is not creating 0:45:44.760 --> 0:45:47.680 things out of magic, is not snapping his fingers and 0:45:47.719 --> 0:45:51.960 making things pop into existence. He is organizing pre existing matter. 0:45:52.480 --> 0:45:54.480 Obviously, there's going to be a difference here in that 0:45:54.640 --> 0:46:00.080 it names and asserts Jesus as the creator, but at 0:46:00.160 --> 0:46:03.080 least in the aspect that it is an organization of 0:46:03.120 --> 0:46:07.600 some pre existing material world rather than a creation ex nihilo. 0:46:08.440 --> 0:46:12.640 It's interesting in that that is actually what the Christian 0:46:12.760 --> 0:46:17.400 and Jewish creation narrative in its original text does say, 0:46:17.680 --> 0:46:21.759 Like the text of Genesis is an ordering narrative, not 0:46:21.840 --> 0:46:27.000 a creation x nihilo narrative, but it is commonly misunderstood 0:46:27.080 --> 0:46:30.759 as a creation x nihilo narrative. So it's funny that 0:46:30.760 --> 0:46:34.200 that this is like a making more explicit something that 0:46:34.480 --> 0:46:39.440 is true about the original text but is often misunderstood 0:46:39.440 --> 0:46:41.000 by believers in that text. 0:46:41.400 --> 0:46:45.360 Yeah yeah, So, so of reacting to the misunderstanding and 0:46:45.400 --> 0:46:49.000 the interpretation that is kind of like you know, common 0:46:49.080 --> 0:46:53.200 to the world and then pushing against that and instead 0:46:53.320 --> 0:46:57.640 like adhering to say that the law of the conservation 0:46:57.760 --> 0:47:00.840 of mass and energy and saying like, you know, no, no, 0:47:00.880 --> 0:47:05.080 we're not saying that the divine architect just made all 0:47:05.080 --> 0:47:09.040 the materials. No, the divine architect move things around. And 0:47:09.080 --> 0:47:11.239 in fact, I'm going to read here from the this 0:47:11.320 --> 0:47:15.920 is the from the LDS Book of Abraham. This is 0:47:15.960 --> 0:47:18.600 three twenty four from their website. 0:47:18.719 --> 0:47:19.040 Quote. 0:47:19.080 --> 0:47:22.160 And there stood one among them that was like unto God, 0:47:22.239 --> 0:47:25.360 and he said, unto those who were with him, we 0:47:25.440 --> 0:47:28.120 will go down, for there is space there, and we 0:47:28.160 --> 0:47:30.600 will take of these materials and we will make an 0:47:30.640 --> 0:47:35.440 earth where on these may dwell. Okay, So yeah, so 0:47:35.680 --> 0:47:38.200 God is an organizer. God is God is architect, God 0:47:38.239 --> 0:47:41.239 is builder, as opposed to you know, a snap of 0:47:41.239 --> 0:47:43.280 the fingers and things you know, pop into existence. 0:47:44.360 --> 0:47:46.239 Well, you know what, actually, I do want to come 0:47:46.280 --> 0:47:48.719 back on that, because there is a I think there 0:47:48.800 --> 0:47:52.520 are things in the Genesis narrative where God does bring 0:47:52.640 --> 0:47:55.560 things into existence that didn't exist before, Like he speaks 0:47:55.600 --> 0:47:58.640 things into existence, such as light. It seems like that 0:47:59.080 --> 0:48:01.480 he says, let their light, and then there is light. 0:48:02.000 --> 0:48:04.120 But it's just that he doesn't do that with the 0:48:04.160 --> 0:48:07.480 world itself. There is already a material world, and he 0:48:07.640 --> 0:48:11.600 organizes that and then additional things he brings into existence 0:48:11.640 --> 0:48:12.920 by speaking their names. 0:48:13.440 --> 0:48:17.600 Yeah, yeah, yeah, so so again, Yeah, I think it's 0:48:17.640 --> 0:48:20.440 fascinating how you know, these these newer religions like the 0:48:20.440 --> 0:48:24.640 older religions. You know, they're ultimately answering the same questions. 0:48:24.960 --> 0:48:28.560 They're using a lot of the same answers, but the 0:48:28.600 --> 0:48:31.080 way they're rolled out, you know, again, sometimes they have 0:48:31.200 --> 0:48:34.600 to there's an effort to make them adhere a little 0:48:34.640 --> 0:48:37.880 more to the modern world as we understand it, and 0:48:37.920 --> 0:48:39.920 to fit into like yeah, like you said, like in 0:48:39.960 --> 0:48:42.840 the ancient world, it was fitting in with social knowledge 0:48:43.080 --> 0:48:47.560 and say agricultural technological understanding, you know, crafting knowledge, that 0:48:47.600 --> 0:48:51.680 sort of thing. Whatever the the readily accessible metaphors were, 0:48:52.080 --> 0:48:54.319 and today the metaphors are different. In the future, the 0:48:54.360 --> 0:48:57.320 metaphors will be different, Like what are the new religious 0:48:57.320 --> 0:49:01.560 movements of the future going to be rolling out. I mean, 0:49:01.920 --> 0:49:03.880 my main hope is that humans are still involved in 0:49:03.920 --> 0:49:09.920 the process of creating these uh these stories, but you know, inherently, 0:49:10.239 --> 0:49:16.800 inevitably they're going to draw on some different contemporary knowledge 0:49:16.840 --> 0:49:17.600 sets to do so. 0:49:18.080 --> 0:49:32.279 Yeah. Interesting, I wonder if there are any religions yet 0:49:32.360 --> 0:49:36.960 that have a creation account, essentially a creation by biological evolution. 0:49:38.600 --> 0:49:40.680 Yeah, that's a great question. I think we should come 0:49:40.680 --> 0:49:44.560 back to that in a future episode, you know, evolution 0:49:45.520 --> 0:49:48.200 and at least the if not the creation of new 0:49:48.320 --> 0:49:50.640 religious movements, but the up we can even discuss, like 0:49:50.680 --> 0:49:55.560 the the tweaking of understanding regarding these older faiths as 0:49:55.600 --> 0:50:00.640 well incorporating evolutionary knowledge instead of you know, completely rejecting it. 0:50:01.040 --> 0:50:03.000 Yeah. But I don't know. I'm trying to imagine the 0:50:03.040 --> 0:50:06.320 particulars of how evolution would really work as a creation narrative. 0:50:06.320 --> 0:50:07.800 I'm not I'm not sure it really works. 0:50:08.080 --> 0:50:10.960 I don't well that would entail I mean, one of 0:50:11.000 --> 0:50:13.760 the it also depends on, As with all of these things, 0:50:14.040 --> 0:50:16.960 it also depends on like how deep into the concept 0:50:17.040 --> 0:50:20.600 you're getting. So with evolution, for example, I think it 0:50:20.640 --> 0:50:24.040 is is very logical to say to take a view 0:50:24.120 --> 0:50:26.480 that if there is a divine creator, then that divine 0:50:26.480 --> 0:50:31.120 creator sets certain acts in motion. But you get into 0:50:31.160 --> 0:50:34.520 this with evolution. You also have the situation where well, 0:50:34.680 --> 0:50:37.839 sometimes it at least from our human perspective, that is, 0:50:37.880 --> 0:50:39.920 you know, perhaps incomplete compared doing it, you know, in 0:50:40.000 --> 0:50:43.720 kind of like divine entity. Evolution can appear very cruel. 0:50:44.160 --> 0:50:44.520 It can. 0:50:45.239 --> 0:50:49.080 It can take directions that you know, end up being 0:50:49.160 --> 0:50:52.759 dead ends and so forth. So it raises additional theological 0:50:52.880 --> 0:50:56.640 questions like why, you know, why would the divine force 0:50:56.719 --> 0:50:58.880 set this act in motion if it was going to 0:50:59.520 --> 0:51:02.560 end and say the creation of a parasite that blinds 0:51:02.640 --> 0:51:07.480 children or something. You know. So, yeah, there's a there's 0:51:07.480 --> 0:51:08.640 a lot to unravel there. 0:51:09.160 --> 0:51:12.080 I guess another question, if our world was created via 0:51:12.120 --> 0:51:16.560 evolution would be what what part of the evolutionary model 0:51:16.840 --> 0:51:20.560 is the world? Is the world the I don't know, 0:51:20.640 --> 0:51:23.880 a cell or an organism as a whole, or is 0:51:23.920 --> 0:51:26.719 it like a gene or a mutation? You know, like 0:51:27.239 --> 0:51:28.760 I guess is our world a mutation? 0:51:29.600 --> 0:51:32.600 Yeah? I mean we get into the model presented in 0:51:32.600 --> 0:51:36.560 really Scott's Prometheus, right where exactly the engineers set things 0:51:36.600 --> 0:51:40.080 in motion and they have maybe a certain agenda in mind, 0:51:40.080 --> 0:51:42.800 but also accidents happen, and then those accidents have to 0:51:42.840 --> 0:51:43.840 be corrected later on. 0:51:44.120 --> 0:51:45.280 That is my religion. 0:51:45.400 --> 0:51:48.239 Yeah, it does kind of come back to the Church 0:51:48.239 --> 0:51:50.879 of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints in a sense. 0:51:50.960 --> 0:51:53.520 I was reading a little bit about how this idea 0:51:53.840 --> 0:51:59.160 of a creator who is, you know, adjusting some sort 0:51:59.160 --> 0:52:03.920 of pre existing it kind of sort of reframed. It's 0:52:03.920 --> 0:52:07.319 almost like when a new I'm not making the case 0:52:07.320 --> 0:52:10.040 that this is directly what's involved here, but it's kind 0:52:10.040 --> 0:52:13.160 of like, imagine you have a new boss arrive on 0:52:13.200 --> 0:52:17.439 the scene. They get to sort of establish themselves as 0:52:17.880 --> 0:52:21.680 the guy who's fixing stuff. You know, I'm instituting changes 0:52:21.719 --> 0:52:25.520 that are improving the company, and if there are problems beforehand, 0:52:25.560 --> 0:52:27.360 well that's that's kind of out of my hands. But 0:52:27.400 --> 0:52:29.960 I'm just here to fix things. I'm the good guy boss. 0:52:30.000 --> 0:52:31.520 And so in a way it kind of you can 0:52:31.560 --> 0:52:35.560 get into this area where you're establishing a creator deity 0:52:35.680 --> 0:52:38.799 as as a complete good guide boss. To some extent, 0:52:38.840 --> 0:52:40.920 I don't know, it gets messy, it gets complicated, because 0:52:40.960 --> 0:52:43.560 you know that is that's the These are the problems 0:52:43.600 --> 0:52:46.720 of theology, and then we have to justify the ways 0:52:46.719 --> 0:52:51.000 of God demand and that ultimately is the role of poets. 0:52:51.600 --> 0:52:54.080 Okay, does that do it? For part three of I 0:52:54.080 --> 0:52:54.400 think so? 0:52:54.560 --> 0:52:57.319 Yeah? Yeah, I feel myself beginning to ramble here, because again, 0:52:57.360 --> 0:52:59.520 they can go in so many different directions with this. 0:52:59.840 --> 0:53:02.759 I will say that certainly, if anyone out there, if 0:53:02.800 --> 0:53:06.960 you were you know, a current or past adherent to 0:53:07.000 --> 0:53:10.600 any of the religious faces that we've discussed here, and 0:53:10.640 --> 0:53:12.680 you want to write in with your additional thoughts on it, 0:53:12.760 --> 0:53:15.319 or if we got something wrong, yeah, do write in. 0:53:15.360 --> 0:53:17.319 We would love to hear from you and potentially hash 0:53:17.360 --> 0:53:19.040 that out in a future episode of Stuff to Blow 0:53:19.040 --> 0:53:21.319 your Mind listener mail, which we run those about once 0:53:21.360 --> 0:53:25.000 a month. Yeah, so write in. We'd love to hear 0:53:25.000 --> 0:53:27.520 from you. 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