WEBVTT - The Problem of Hell 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:06.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.080 --> 0:00:15.240 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to a bow 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:17.360 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and my name 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:22.439 is Julie Douglas. Julie, do you believe in Hell? I 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:24.560 didn't hear you ask me that. Well, you know, that's 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:27.400 the kind of what this episode is about, about the 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:30.680 belief in Hell, the problems of Hell, why where this 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:34.599 idea comes from, and why it's problematic at times are 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:37.440 are often problematic in our culture. So I thought we'd 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:39.160 we creak it off by just talking about our own 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:41.840 sort of viewpoints. Yeah, just there's a big loaded question. 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:43.440 What do you think do you think I believe in Hell? 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:46.640 I don't think you do. I don't you seem like 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:51.480 a nonbeliever when it comes to especially to a place 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.200 where demons torment souls for all eternity and that sort 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:56.680 of thing. I think it's fascinating. Yeah, I love it. 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:59.480 I love the imagery. But no, I mean, I'm gonna 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:01.600 go out there say it seems a little silly to 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:05.640 me at times, so well, silly in the best of 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:11.240 circumstances meant to, it's not meant to, But um, it's 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:14.920 just such a caricature of humans in a way, um 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:17.920 are our worst thoughts that it's rendered to me in 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:19.840 this way that seems kind of silly. And of course 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:24.480 I've seen so much double imagery and satan imagery, and 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:27.399 of late it seems like Satan has been kind of 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:32.040 a silly figure in some modern works. Well, he certainly 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:35.280 can be. Yeah, I mean the you know, comedy and 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:38.120 Hell go way back, um. And we've recently been doing 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:39.800 a lot of rather research about this and some of 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:43.319 the earliest models of Hell that we encounter, um, you know, 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:47.800 an ancient Mesopotamian mythology. You encounter comedic stories even then, 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:52.200 stories that we think we're more about about being a 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:54.760 little loose with material and then having a little fun 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:57.400 with the material, with individuals going and having adventures in 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:01.440 in the afterlife in some sort of underworld. So the 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:05.640 idea of Hell ranges from yea, from silly too grotesque 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.760 For my own part, when when I think about hell 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:13.640 as is uh, the idea that there is a place 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:18.960 where bad people are are tormented for all eternity or 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:22.000 even for a finite amount of time. I tend to 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:26.440 find that a difficult thing to believe in, and and 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:28.240 you know, in this world, it takes a certain amount 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:31.400 of mental power to believe in anything, and I feel 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:34.320 like that's something that I don't want to focus that 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:38.160 energy on. They're they're far more positive things outside of 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:42.160 our experience than one can put faith into without thinking 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:45.320 about where hell is, who's going into it, and how 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:47.640 long they're going to be there. That being said, I've 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:51.600 always found the idea just richly fascinating. And uh and 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:55.680 and certainly Hell is this this fantastic place in in 0:02:55.760 --> 0:03:00.680 h in the history of human art, human writing, fiction, philosophy. 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:03.040 We keep coming back to it. We can't help but 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:05.679 visit it over and over again, despite all of the 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:09.880 grotesque ideas that fill it. And uh, and sometimes the 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:13.680 grotesque beliefs that prop it up. Well, Uh, I'm sure 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:15.280 you guys have all guests we were gonna be talking 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:18.120 about hell today. UM. In fact, we're gonna another episode 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:20.240 coming out about the science of Hell. And I do 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:22.519 think that it's one of those things that has gone 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:25.480 by the wayside in terms, at least that's from my perspective, 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:29.560 that people really feel invested in. UM. But as we'll 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:31.960 discuss later, it actually is a belief that a lot 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:37.320 of people hold regardless of this idea that it went um, 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:40.160 you know, or according to the economists in the article 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.600 and Everlasting Hell, that theologically it's gone by the wayside, 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:45.640 because even the Vaticans sort of on the fence about 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.160 it um. And in that article it says, you know, 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:51.440 the devils and pitchforks, the brimstone clouds and whaling souls 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.880 have been cleared away rather as a mad aunt might 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.440 be shut up in an attic. So you know, that 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:02.400 being said, it's still this idea that that's pervasive, and 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:05.640 in fact, no matter where you stand on the issue, 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:09.800 you have to admit that it's actually died into the 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:13.960 fabric of our existence, that it is um sort of 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.120 creating some of the rules that we we play by 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:20.280 as humans, right at least in the West in certain cultures. 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:23.479 And I mean just look at sort of at jail. 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:28.560 This is a good example of a concrete, uh idea 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:31.720 of the abstract hell that we think of and that 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:36.279 has been told to us thousands of years now in 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:40.919 various forms. Yeah, conceptions of hell or just go side 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:45.680 by side with with our ideas about what what should 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.440 happen to criminals and wrongdoers in the real world. To 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:50.960 what extent is it is it punishment? To what extent 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.200 are they being shuffled away? To what extenter there being 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.440 m are they going to be saved and turned back 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:58.200 into proper citizen? I mean there's some models of even 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:01.200 um in the in the history of Christie Anity that 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:03.960 saw there there would be a day when even the 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:06.680 devil would be saved and brought back into God. I 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.479 mean there. Um. So when you start looking at the 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:11.840 history of hell, you see all these different takes on it, 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:14.200 all these different ways that we make we make sense 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:16.800 of it. Um. One way that I was thinking about 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:21.000 it recently is it's been proposed that that language is 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:23.640 the operating system, uh, you know, free the human mind 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:25.600 that we we have this brain, we have to put 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:27.280 language in it to deal with a lot of these 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:30.200 higher concepts. Right. And then you might consider religion a 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:33.360 data management program that we install to provide us with 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:38.120 a certain worldview of reality. Okay, Um, it's an optional 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:40.960 install and you may install another worldview software. You may 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:42.920 install multiple ones and do kind of like the thing 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:44.680 on Mac where you have the Windows and you go 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:46.960 back and forth between the two. Um. More than that, 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:50.159 in a second. But but you know how you but 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.400 you know how, you install certain software and it comes 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:55.839 with an antivirus program that you did not want, and 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:57.520 suddenly it's there, and how do you get rid of it? 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:00.960 Sometimes I feel that that's what hell is and need 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.440 not be Christianity. But but we can take Christianity Christianity 0:06:04.480 --> 0:06:07.080 as an example. We can also take uh Tibetan Buddhism 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:11.320 as an example, where once one finds something really um 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:14.240 enamoring about the concept, something really positive, like you know, 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:16.560 like that there's this guy named Jesus and he's gonna 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:19.200 he's gonna save my soul, or there's this there's this 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:21.839 thing called karma and there and I can eventually work 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:25.640 myself through all these different phases of life and find 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:29.040 liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth. But both 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:31.760 Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity, if you if you look at 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:35.280 them closely enough, you you get into these problematic um 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:38.760 concerns about hell in the in the Christian tradition and 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:41.080 in Tibetan Buddhism, a lot of a lot of thought 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:44.279 goes into how to avoid reincarnation into the lower realms 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:48.120 and actually to Devot tibetan Buddhist can cause a great 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:51.440 goal of anxiety. Um, well, and what we're talking about 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:55.240 when we talk about anxiety is the psychology of this. Yes, 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:58.480 and uh I thought it was very interesting in the 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:01.039 book The History of Hell. But les K Turner that 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:04.279 she brought up psychoanalysis and hell. And she said that 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:06.800 the Journey of Dante, because this is sort of the 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:10.160 gold standard that we'll talk about, and Dante's Inferno. The 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:13.240 journey of Dante and Virgil through the Inferno was an 0:07:13.280 --> 0:07:16.560 interior metaphor, and it was an allegory of the human 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:19.120 experience that you have to, you know, trudge through the 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.600 dark knight of the soul before spiritual re emergence. And 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:25.520 so she said that this has really turned out our 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.800 idea of psycho analysis. She says, a patient must explore 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:31.920 with his guide the deep sources of his unhappiness and 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:35.720 inability to follow the true path, and he must endure 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:38.840 the painful purgatory of examining and challenging his behavior before 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:43.040 achieving the relative paradise of mental health. So, even in 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:47.080 this way, Hell has pervaded our idea of of how 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:50.280 we experience things as human beings. How we talk about them, 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:54.400 even psycho analysis. You know, I was thinking about this 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:58.760 in terms of mad Men, because this past season has 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:04.720 been all about a journey and certainly sins and dealing 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.200 with sin and the weight of that sin. Yeah. And 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:10.000 there's an early scene where Don Draper is reading The 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:14.240 Inferno on the beach. Yeah. And there's another great scene 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:18.640 where Roger Sterling is in psychoanalysis with with and he's, uh, 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.360 he's sitting there trying to explain his frustration in life 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:23.720 and where he's arrived. And it's really interesting because usually 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:26.440 Roger Sterling is just sort of cutting up and making jokes, 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:28.400 but here he is sort of giving you a portal 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:31.440 into his soul and he says, uh, he's on this 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:34.160 path and it's a frustrating path. He says, what are 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:36.000 the events in life? It's like you see a door 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:38.280 the first time you come to you say, oh, what's 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:39.960 on the other side of the door. Then you open 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:41.439 a few doors, Then you say, I think I want 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.400 to go over that bridge this time. I'm tired of doors. Finally, 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:45.880 you go through one of these things and you come 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:48.079 out on the other side and you realize that that's 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.040 all there are doors and windows and bridges and gates, 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:52.640 and they all open the same way, and they all 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.120 closed behind you. Look, life is supposed to be a 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:57.800 path and you go along and these things happen to you, 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:00.319 and they're supposed to change you, change your action. But 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:03.400 turns out that's not true. Turns out the experiences are nothing. 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:05.600 They're just some pennies you pick up off the floor 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:07.920 you stick in your pocket, and you're just going in 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:11.600 a straight line to you know where, Hell, of course, 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.480 And so that imagery again, it's and we'll get more 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:18.240 into this when we talk about Dante and we talk 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:21.480 about the nine circles of Hell. But the bridges and 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:23.840 the doors and the gates in the path and the 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:28.120 meandering is all part and parcel of what we think 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:30.280 of um when we think about a journey of our 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:35.880 soul or trying to transcend our physical selves. Yeah. Medievalist 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:38.800 Howard Roland Patch he actually broke down a number of 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.360 the elements appearing in nearly all known accounts of the underworld, 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:45.480 you know, the afterlive, hell, hades, what have you, both 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:47.920 in the Eastern and Western world. And he said that 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:50.560 they include a mountain, barrier, a river, a boar, and 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:54.000 a boatman, a bridge, gates and guardians and import in 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:57.480 an important tree. And except for the bridge, all were 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:01.600 present in ancient Mesopotamian mythol And of course Roger Sterling 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:04.720 alludes to these uh and the passage that you read well, 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.240 and you know, it's still summer and people are still 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.720 taking their their summer trips, their pilgrimages. Even even these 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:13.840 trips that we take to escape the monotony of life 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:17.080 and to find new experiences is in a way reach 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:20.920 writing some of this idea of transcending hell. Yeah, brings 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:24.080 me back to the very first line in Dante's Inferno. 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:26.520 In the middle of the journey of our life, I 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:29.120 came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:32.480 way was lost. There you go. That's what I say 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:34.120 every time I get in the car to go on 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:37.200 a road trip. One more thing to to touch on 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:39.880 before we start breaking down some of the roots of 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:43.920 hell Um is important to note that a lot of 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:48.520 us have multiple ideas of what the soul is and 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:52.439 what the afterlife is um or isn't in our head 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:54.160 at the same time. You know, it's a it's a 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:57.480 bit simplistic to say, uh, my name is Robert Lamb 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.800 and I don't believe in ghosts because they're generally I 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:03.040 don't believe in ghosts, but there are times where I'm 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.120 more inclined to believe in it, or more inclined to 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:07.720 want to believe in it. And uh, you know, the 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:11.720 same goes with a lot of religious and mythic things. Um. 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:13.920 And I've talked before about this idea of like a 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.440 spiritual salad bar, where you take what you want and 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:18.800 you leave the rest. And apparently it's even more popular 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:21.960 with the with millennials these days, where they feel completely 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:24.120 you know, okay with with saying, all right, I like 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:26.640 this stuff in Buddhism, I'm gonna take that. Um, I 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:28.800 like this bit from Christianity, I'm gonna take that, and 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:31.880 then you sort of build your one faith or worldview 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:34.319 out of that. Uh. But but really we do a 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:37.079 lot of that anyway. It's kind of the the the 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:39.000 view of the world that I have right now is 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:41.840 not necessarily the one I have, um, you know, yesterday tomorrow. 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.880 So a lot of people have varying and conflicting ideas 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.319 about what the soul is and and who we are 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:51.200 and and really really we talked about human consciousness and 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:52.920 our views of that in the past, and and a 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:54.760 lot of that is part and partial to this to 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:57.720 do hell and and beliefs in the after live, because 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:00.319 a lot of it comes down to our queens and 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:02.720 our inability to to come to terms with the difference 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:05.959 between between flesh and mind and trying to figure out 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:07.760 what the mind is. And we get into this idea 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:11.360 of the mind slash soul is this thing that exists 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.120 outside of ourselves and therefore continues after we're gone. So yeah, 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:17.800 it's so fascinating when you start to think about it 0:12:17.880 --> 0:12:20.000 that way, that hell is not only the way that 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:22.680 we color our perception of the world and we organize 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:25.000 our world again, think of jail's I think of our 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:30.840 judicial system, but also it is part and parcel of consciousness. So, 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:33.440 in other words, since the beginning of time that man 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:37.400 became conscious that you know, he or she was alive 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:40.320 and looked up at the stars and wondered about death 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.160 and wondered about what would happen afterwards, there has always 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:46.080 been some sort of afterlife story put in place, or 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:49.600 some sort of exploration of that topic, which you can't 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:54.000 have consciousness without having this idea of what would happen afterwards. 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:57.320 Even if even if that that thing that happened afterwards 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:01.000 was nothing, that's still a story in a sense, Yeah, exactly. 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:03.560 And it comes down to early people and even modern 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:06.120 people trying to figure out how the world works. And 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:08.040 there are things that you can test and that you 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:11.680 can you can throw a scientific investigation at um, and 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.120 then there are things that you cannot. And when you 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.760 cannot answer those questions with science, that's where all of 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:19.720 this myth building comes into play. Um. Now we're gonna 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:21.839 go into kind of a brief history of Hell, and 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:23.920 I'm not gonna go through everything. If you want to 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:28.480 really fabulous uh examination of the history of Hell and 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:30.559 our belief in it, do check out The History of 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:33.840 Hell by Alice K. Turner is a fabulous book, very readable, 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:37.440 wonderful illustrations throughout. Um. But we're not going to give 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:41.040 that concise of a journey because we'll be here all day. Uh. 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:42.440 One thing to keep in mind though with all of 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:44.680 this is that is that you you have to look 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:48.400 at religion not as a thing that comes off the press, 0:13:48.480 --> 0:13:51.960 is you know, completely made it is um. It's more 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:56.240 like a pit through which humans have thrown ideas down 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:00.199 or like an ice cream cone where we're piling ideas up. Um. 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.200 But for instance, UM, you know, I've read a little 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:05.400 bit about the Hinduism here and there, and I often 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.400 um read that it described as something that you can't 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:10.440 really sum up, like you can't give like a really 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:14.359 good one paragraph summary of what Hinduism is, because Hinduism 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:17.440 is such an old religion built on you know, earlier 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:20.280 Vedic models. It just it's just a pit that goes 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:24.080 down through the centuries, through through millennia, and there have 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:27.680 just been all these ideas about gods and goddesses and 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:30.720 the human soul thrown down there, ranging from the literal 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:34.440 to the philosophic and uh. And there are there are 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:37.960 shallower pits as well, such as the pits of of 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:41.680 of of Judeo Christian and Islamic tradition and uh. And 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:44.080 those two are are built upon all these ideas that 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:46.360 have built up over over the years. And like the 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:49.240 Christianity of today is not the Christianity of a few 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:52.680 centuries ago, etcetera. So keep all of that in mind. Yeah, 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.880 I kind of think of it as those being sentiments, right, 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:58.960 the layers of stories that have just been built upon 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:00.800 each other. And if you were to take a soil 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:03.400 sample and bringing out you could be you would be 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.720 able to identify like, oh, look there's the Egyptian Book 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:10.160 of Dead, Um, you know, there's Judaiciah, there's you know, 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:12.640 and and be able to say like that informed this, 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:14.640 and this informed that and so on and so forth. 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:17.720 And to go back to the the analogy of religion 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:20.200 as a as a program on the operating system, it 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:23.800 probably makes for a pretty unruly program that I'm sure 0:15:23.840 --> 0:15:26.280 some of our programmer listeners out there can can attest 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:28.680 to that. It's it's the system that's just built up 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:30.680 over time and probably you know, you probably need to 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:32.600 go in there and just recreate everything. But you have 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:35.760 all this stuff that's in there. Uh fie a legacy. Okay, 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:37.560 so we should all pull up a chair right now, 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:41.320 get settled and uh laid on us, give us, give 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:44.920 us the roots of hell. Okay. Well, uh fabulous notion 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:46.720 that was presented in some of the texts we're looking at, 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:48.880 uh is the idea that what happens when you go 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:53.920 back to like really ancient man, hunter gatherer man, what 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:57.320 what what are they? What kind of gods are they? Glimpsing. Well, 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:00.640 certainly gods that had to do with hunting, right, because 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:03.600 this was not an agrarian society yet. So they're on 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:06.600 the move, and uh, it seems to me like they 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:10.320 would be things would be a lot less um stable 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:12.480 for them. Yeah, be like the winds of change all 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:16.240 the time, chaotic even, Yes. So the argument is that 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:20.960 the the early humans they looked to horned gods, gods 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:23.200 of the hunt, gods that were like, you know, like 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:25.920 the dear God that is over the deer that we hunt. Um, 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:28.320 it's a god of chaos, and it's a god that 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:30.840 you're just kind of really you're really hoping that the 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:33.240 dear God will shine on you so that you can 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:35.560 actually find enough deer, kill enough deer, and bring back 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:39.080 enough meat where your people can survive for another day. 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:41.720 So those are the gods of the hunt. But then 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.600 in time we learn to grow things. This agrarian society 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:47.480 begins to grow up, and suddenly we begin to adopt 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:51.360 new gods. So we'd bring in celestial gods, gods that 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:54.320 are in line with the seasons and cycles, because now 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:56.560 we're farming and we're much more tied to the land 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:59.560 and things are a lot more predictable. Right, So you 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:03.360 kind have all of these demi gods hanging out from 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:05.320 from years past, right, Yeah, you don't want to throw 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:07.639 out the old gods thousands years past. It sounds like 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:10.199 a bad idea. And they're chaotic and they have horns, 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:12.680 so we keep them, but they're more resided to the earth, 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:15.120 and so we end up with these these hornet Earth 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:20.040 gods and these celestial sky gods. Um. So that's one 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:21.959 kind of cool idea of just sort of looking at 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:24.800 the roots of some of our beliefs about uh, not 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:30.600 only ruling uh, you know, superhuman deities, but also the 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:34.920 places they inhabit. This idea of sky and deep Earth 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.399 and then the middle ground where we humans do our things. 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:41.160 And speaking of deep Earth, where are we burying people 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:43.679 but in the earth. So again there's this idea of 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:46.600 afterlife being tied to what is under us. Now I 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:49.520 already mentioned some of the the the elements that you 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.440 find and even the most ancient ideas of the afterlife 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:55.560 and uh, and this all takes back to to just 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:58.800 ancient Mesopotamian mythology. This is the age of Gilgamesh four 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:02.040 thousand years ago. And even here you had, you had 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:05.560 a celestial queen named in Nana or Ishtar, who rules 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:07.680 over the heavens and the earth, while we're sister queen 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:10.960 Erska Gal or allowed to rules over the dead in 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:12.679 the Land of No Return. And we live in that 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:16.200 space between, this borderland between heaven and a sort of hell. 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:19.800 Uh and and and and we quickly find Gilgamesh traveling 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:22.439 to the other side in the first of many descent 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:25.480 stories to fill human history. Um. And then there's another 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:28.560 story where Erska Gal even takes a hostage from the heavens, 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:31.800 ushering in cyclical seasons, which is another trope that occurs 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:34.639 throughout myth, the idea that that one of the sky 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.840 beings is taken and has to live a certain part 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:41.119 of the year, the winter uh in the underworld. Uh. 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:43.880 And then there's even another tale where Erska Gal threatens 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:46.480 to flood the earth with the dead quote so that 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:48.600 they might devour the living, which also makes it kind 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:51.639 of the oldest zombie account, or at least the threat 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:54.840 of zombies. But even in these these uh, these stories, 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:57.600 the afterlife remains a place of sort of generic in life, 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:00.600 a sort of limbo uh. In another world, there's no 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:04.560 true punishment or reward. It's just this idea that well, 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:07.399 the soul, the consciousness lives on and what does it do? 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:09.320 I guess it just kind of bums about in a gray, 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:12.720 shadowy world. And this is an idea that that sticks 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:16.040 with us for a very long time. Now, if we 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:18.520 look back at the Egyptian Book of the Dead uh 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:23.760 from around we we find some very fascinating, very rich 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:27.280 views of what the afterlife would be. Now, in the 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:31.320 ancient Egyptian religion, it failed to travel well, as Alice K. 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:34.480 Turner makes makes this point. Also, it didn't survive a 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.360 test of time. But it's just not something that really spread. 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:40.199 And it didn't have legs, you could say, no, and 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:43.359 if it did, we would probably all worship cats, right, Yes, 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:46.560 they loved they love their cats more than we do now. Yeah. 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:48.400 But but it was a rich religion and it put 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:52.040 extreme emphasis on the afterlife. It had just a lot 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:55.280 of a lot of amazing ideas about what the soul was. 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:58.520 For instance, the soul was just one aspect of the person. 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:00.760 He had a soul or bo the often depicted as 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:03.320 a human headed bird uh. And there's just one part 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:06.600 of the cocktail of being which and also involved a 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.720 car or life force, a coup or spiritual intelligence, a 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:14.640 sekim or power, and a cohibit shadow and a wren name. 0:20:14.800 --> 0:20:17.680 So all these things come together to make up who 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:20.080 we are. Um. But then the idea is that if 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:23.360 you die, then your soul will continues on this journey. 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:26.280 And this is where I think it's really interesting because 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:28.320 in the Egyptian Book of Dead you begin to see 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:32.520 this judicial system evolve because your soul can actually be weighed, 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:35.560 and it can be weighed against the feather from the 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.320