Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: this is part two in our two part exploration of
Speaker 1: techno religion of the convergence of religion and technology. So
Speaker 1: before you listen to this episode, you should definitely go
Speaker 1: back and check out our part one episode of techno Religion.
Speaker 1: And at the beginning of the last episode, I told
Speaker 1: the story about a strange incident taking place at High
Speaker 1: Rock Tower in Lynn, Massachusetts in the eighteen fifties where
Speaker 1: people were trying to build an electro mechanical Messiah, and
Speaker 1: the chief intellectual architect of this event was a guy
Speaker 1: named John Murray Spear. We now continue the story. So
Speaker 1: who was John Murray Spear. He's in some ways a
Speaker 1: much forgotten an overlooked figure from the sort of radical
Speaker 1: reform movement of the early eighteen hundreds. So John R.
Speaker 1: Spear was born in Boston in eighteen o four. His
Speaker 1: father was a blacksmith. He had a brother named Charles
Speaker 1: who was a year older than him, and he and
Speaker 1: his family were members of the Universalist Church. And this
Speaker 1: was a Christian church that was popular in some parts
Speaker 1: of New England back then, and the Universalist Church rejected
Speaker 1: the doctrine of hell. That's one of the most notable
Speaker 1: things about them. They rejected the doctrine of hell and
Speaker 1: eternal damn nation, and they preached that the salvation of
Speaker 1: Christ was applied to all people unconditionally. I like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they also were very often associated with political radical
Speaker 1: reform causes. They were tied up in abolitionist movements. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there was a somewhat utopian strain of thinking about
Speaker 1: earthly life, not just the afterlife, in the Universalist circles
Speaker 1: back then. So John Murray Spear and his brother Charles
Speaker 1: grew up in the Church of Reverend John Murray, for
Speaker 1: whom John Murray Spear was named, and young John they said,
Speaker 1: you know, he was fond of going to solitary places
Speaker 1: and sort of thinking deep thoughts. In his early life
Speaker 1: he was apprentice to a shoemaker, which I had no
Speaker 1: idea about this, but according to the book which is
Speaker 1: my main source on John Murray Spear, which is called
Speaker 1: The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear by John Benedict Baucher,
Speaker 1: back then shoemakers were particularly radical and bookish group. Have
Speaker 1: you ever heard this? No? I never, so the ideas
Speaker 1: shoemakers would have young apprentices, and the the youngest apprentices
Speaker 1: would go out each day and collect a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of pamphlets and newspapers for the day and then would
Speaker 1: sit there reading them out loud to all the shoemakers
Speaker 1: and older apprentice shoemakers while they did their work for
Speaker 1: the day. And I wonder why this is shoemakers, why
Speaker 1: shoemaker And of course the shoemakers would listen to the
Speaker 1: stuff and they'd comment on it, sort of have debates.
Speaker 1: I think maybe this is just completely uninformed. I wonder
Speaker 1: if it's because shoemakers have a job where they're mostly stationary,
Speaker 1: but it's not too loud. That's true. But that's a
Speaker 1: good point because essentially they're listening to podcasts right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and today a lot of people listen to podcasts. Like
Speaker 1: if you're you know, you're working on a spreadsheet, or
Speaker 1: you're doing something at your computer, or you're driving, right,
Speaker 1: these are all tasks that that are not too loud
Speaker 1: and they don't require a level of concentration that is
Speaker 1: so intense that you can't hear a couple of people
Speaker 1: talk about some topic or another. Right, So, John Murray Spear,
Speaker 1: the young John Murray Spear, got some early practice sort
Speaker 1: of dealing with radical ideas and participating in public conversations
Speaker 1: this way through being a shoemaker, and through the influence
Speaker 1: of the Universalist Church, especially eventually through the Universalist luminary
Speaker 1: jose A. Blue, who's a big name in Universalist thinking
Speaker 1: at this time, And eventually John Murray Spear went on
Speaker 1: to become a Universalist minister himself, and he traveled round
Speaker 1: and ministered in several different UH congregations and did a
Speaker 1: lot of radical reform activism, what we would call activism now.
Speaker 1: So he became deeply involved in the movement to abolish
Speaker 1: the death penalty UH. He and his brother Charles were
Speaker 1: both very much involved with that. He became very much
Speaker 1: involved in women's rights and in the abolition of slavery.
Speaker 1: Especially John Mary Spire was very much an abolitionist. He
Speaker 1: he campaigned against slavery constantly, and he was also, i
Speaker 1: would say in a way that was sort of ahead
Speaker 1: of his time, campaigning against what we today know as racism.
Speaker 1: Though I think back then a lot of white people
Speaker 1: didn't even have a word for that or know what
Speaker 1: to call it. But he was against prejudice, not just slavery,
Speaker 1: but prejudice against people of different skin tones. And so
Speaker 1: there's a lot to admire about this guy. I think
Speaker 1: he was. He was active in William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist movements. Actually,
Speaker 1: there's a great quote from this book where William Lloyd
Speaker 1: Garrison was introducing spear as a speaker and an abolitionist convention,
Speaker 1: and he made this horrible pun, but it sort of
Speaker 1: reflects his role. He says, although weapons of our warfare
Speaker 1: are not carnal but spiritual, we do not object at
Speaker 1: all to the use of the spear. Now, this apparently
Speaker 1: is this like a Miltonian reference here as well, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a reference to the angel Etheriel in in
Speaker 1: Paradise Lost, which has a spear that essentially exposes the
Speaker 1: true nature of whatever it touches. It's you know, the
Speaker 1: it's the glasses from they live. Um. So the Euriel
Speaker 1: can touch the spirit to Satan when Satan's in the
Speaker 1: form of a toad and reveal Satan's true nature as
Speaker 1: Satan and This was a common metaphor in the abolitionist
Speaker 1: movement at the time, and I think more generally the
Speaker 1: radical reform movements of the time to sort of expose
Speaker 1: the hypocrisy and oppression of the standard governments and institutions
Speaker 1: of the time. So to summarize this is a this
Speaker 1: is a guy who is very concerned with the real world,
Speaker 1: oh totally. But then John Murray spirit took a turn
Speaker 1: and while still i'd say in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: being concerned with the real world, he took a turn
Speaker 1: towards the spirit world. He became involved with what was
Speaker 1: known at the time as the spiritualist movement. So this
Speaker 1: for I think the first real piece of evidence here
Speaker 1: that was in this book I read. It was in
Speaker 1: August eighteen, John Murray spear penned a review in an
Speaker 1: anti death penalty newspaper that he was co editor of
Speaker 1: called The Prisoner's Friend, and he penned a review of
Speaker 1: a book about spiritualism, which was The Principles of Nature,
Speaker 1: Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind by Andrew
Speaker 1: Jackson Davis. And this was sort of work in the
Speaker 1: emerging field of spiritualism, and Davis claimed to be in
Speaker 1: contact with the spirit of Emmanuel sweden Borg, like channeling
Speaker 1: his statements from beyond the grave, and the book alleged
Speaker 1: that there were these various universal laws at play, and
Speaker 1: it sort of looked at religion from a rationalist angle. Actually,
Speaker 1: this is a thing that might seem weird to us today,
Speaker 1: but at the time, spiritualism represented what some people believe
Speaker 1: to be a more scientific approach to the supernatural. So
Speaker 1: you might have traditional religions that are based on received traditions,
Speaker 1: whereas spiritualism, people sitting around channeling spirits was actually an
Speaker 1: empirically observed phenomenon. You might not believe that they were
Speaker 1: having real supernatural experiences, but the scientific thinking of the
Speaker 1: time was, well, at least we're we're looking at real
Speaker 1: phenomena here and we can make judgments on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you you look back to the spiritualist movement.
Speaker 1: I mean, even in some of the fringier stuff with
Speaker 1: seance an ectoplasm, right, even if it even though ectoplasm
Speaker 1: was a was a con it was an attempt to say, look,
Speaker 1: here's physical proof, some sort of biological manifestation of the spirit. Right.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these people who were into spiritualism,
Speaker 1: were people who were deeply desperately yearning for something to
Speaker 1: cling onto about true messages from beyond, real transcendental knowledge.
Speaker 1: So some Universalist ministries at the time were opposed to spiritualism.
Speaker 1: But in eighteen fifty one, John Murray Spear broke ties
Speaker 1: with the Universalist Church after refusing to affirm a simple
Speaker 1: creed of the Church, which is basically pledging allegiance to
Speaker 1: the guidance of the Bible and the person of Jesus,
Speaker 1: because he's he saw that as too constrictive on on
Speaker 1: sort of freedom of thought by that point, and it
Speaker 1: seems like in some way he began to at least
Speaker 1: secretly train himself as a seer and practitioner of mesmeric trances,
Speaker 1: you know, like the Mesmerism. So on March thirty one,
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two, John Murray Spear actually began his career
Speaker 1: as a spirit medium, and this was a career with
Speaker 1: somewhat mixed reception among his social circles. He'd get messages
Speaker 1: from spirits from beyond the grave, sometimes through automatic writing,
Speaker 1: where he would sit there and just start writing whatever
Speaker 1: came to his mind and believing it came from a
Speaker 1: spirit and sometimes automatic drawing. Some of these drawings sound
Speaker 1: pretty funny, where he'd like draw a human and then
Speaker 1: like draw a spirit guided labels for all their body parts. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes through speech, so sometimes he might just get up
Speaker 1: and give an extemporaneous speech on a subject he didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about, believing he was channeling messages from someone
Speaker 1: who did know something about it, who was in the
Speaker 1: spirit world. So in spiritualism, like I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: sense of evolution to this as well, because it's the
Speaker 1: idea that we die, our spirit passes on and as
Speaker 1: spirits we continue to evolve, and the spirit world is
Speaker 1: filled with the individuals that have have a lot of
Speaker 1: of of knowledge, a lot of wisdom to share with
Speaker 1: the living. And John Murray spirit is essentially opening himself
Speaker 1: up in along these lines as just anytime you want
Speaker 1: to pop in and I am open Mike Night for humanity,
Speaker 1: just pop into me. And so so he's popping in
Speaker 1: and out of the real John Murray Spear and just
Speaker 1: becoming whoever is coming up to the podium to speak,
Speaker 1: that's right, yeah, yeah, exactly. So John Murray Spear and
Speaker 1: his daughter Sophronia also Sophronia as I love that name. Uh.
Speaker 1: They sort of became a spirit medium team. For a while,
Speaker 1: they were both channeling messages of spirits, and for a
Speaker 1: while he was getting various kinds of messages, sometimes like
Speaker 1: vague messages would tell him to travel to a specific
Speaker 1: place and meet people to do healing rituals on them.
Speaker 1: One example was I think at some point Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: contacted him via spirits and told him to go visit
Speaker 1: a lady who had been struck by lightning and was ailing.
Speaker 1: And then also, yeah, he'd be given these discourses on
Speaker 1: the nature of reality, so Benjamin Franklin would inhabit him
Speaker 1: and speak through him on the nature of electricity, magnetism,
Speaker 1: the cosmic ether. There was also there was a particularly
Speaker 1: funny story in this book where John Murray Spear was
Speaker 1: in Cleveland channeling the spirit of the dead physician and
Speaker 1: founding father Benjamin Rush. And this is a direct quote
Speaker 1: from his speech in speaking of the mortal body, it
Speaker 1: will be all things considered. Wisest to commence that what
Speaker 1: looking at all things, may be considered the most or
Speaker 1: more strictly speaking, the more important part, and that is
Speaker 1: the head in the front part just below the eyes
Speaker 1: there is what is generally called by the common people
Speaker 1: a knows, and here it will be perceived that there
Speaker 1: are two apartments. What what does that even mean? Um?
Speaker 1: But it didn't stop there. Unfortunately he uh so, or
Speaker 1: maybe fortunately who knows. Genrey spirit didn't just get these
Speaker 1: discourses on the nature of humanity. He eventually started getting
Speaker 1: messages from a congress of spirits, this great sort of
Speaker 1: enclay of of spirits that formed a general assembly in
Speaker 1: the spirit world. Uh. And these had sub committees basically
Speaker 1: that would communicate to him, and they had these great names.
Speaker 1: One was the Association of Beneficence. They're also the Association
Speaker 1: of Electrizers, Elementizers, education Izers, governmentizers, healthfulizers, and agriculturalizers. It
Speaker 1: makes it makes sense, you know, in terms of the
Speaker 1: cosmology of the thing, right, because if if a living
Speaker 1: human is just the larval form, and the spirit form
Speaker 1: is kind of the adult, then imagine what kind of
Speaker 1: an adult spirit form someone like Benjamin Franklin transforms into. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you have enough of these individuals floating
Speaker 1: around in the spirit realm, they're going to form committees
Speaker 1: exactly right. So this is where things got really interesting
Speaker 1: because the association of electrizers, that's not as sinister as
Speaker 1: it sounds. I think they were providing knowledge on the
Speaker 1: electrification of the world through through technology. Contacted Spear and
Speaker 1: said through Spear that they had some plans that needed
Speaker 1: to be enacted on Earth, and those plans were for
Speaker 1: what they called a new motor. Yes, the new motor,
Speaker 1: which is the physical channel of the new motive power.
Speaker 1: And this is the electro mechanical Messiah. We began the
Speaker 1: episode with al Right, at this point, I should probably
Speaker 1: jump in and just give just a brief overview of
Speaker 1: some of the metaphysics that are at play in spears spiritualism,
Speaker 1: and already touched on THEO. We already touched on the
Speaker 1: whole idea of the the human. The physical human is
Speaker 1: being the larval form of a of a spirit form
Speaker 1: that continues to evolve. Right, But Spears metaphysics actually played
Speaker 1: into the supposed mechanics of this machine. Yes, um, he
Speaker 1: said that the mind has three functions, the human mind
Speaker 1: three functions. It receives, stores, and transmits spiritual energy. H
Speaker 1: And this thought energy is not generated in the mind,
Speaker 1: so that it's it's not coming out of the meat
Speaker 1: inside your head, but rather it's broadcast into our solar
Speaker 1: system by a cosmic God, and then the Sun acts
Speaker 1: as a lens to direct this divine signal down to Earth,
Speaker 1: where it collects, of course in north polar reservoirs, and
Speaker 1: then it dissipates astound to the human minds across the Earth. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're sort of like receivers or repeaters of this
Speaker 1: cosmic signal coming from God, the electricity of God's love
Speaker 1: that has channeled through the lens of the Sun. Yes,
Speaker 1: and notice all of these technological scientific metaphors that are
Speaker 1: used in the creation of of of of of a
Speaker 1: cosmology for the unseen. Right. So what was this machine actually, Well,
Speaker 1: in mundane terms, it was a table with a bunch
Speaker 1: of pieces attached to it. Yes, if you were introduced
Speaker 1: to this electrical messiah, I dare say you would be
Speaker 1: disappointed because it is not the large robot Jesus that
Speaker 1: you wanted to be. Right, So Spear would continually get
Speaker 1: new messages from the spirits, constantly updating the plans for
Speaker 1: the machine, and all of his supporters gathered in this
Speaker 1: place I mentioned earlier, the High Rock Tower in Lynn, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and worked for months on this from the summer of
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty three and into eighteen fifty four, constantly making
Speaker 1: additions to the machine, changing things based on the spirit specifications. Basically,
Speaker 1: there was like a metal stalk uh in some ways.
Speaker 1: I think it was said to have resembled across a
Speaker 1: cruciform in nature, but it also it had metal parts
Speaker 1: extending out to the sides and then these dangling balls
Speaker 1: and antennae of various types. So it's sort of like
Speaker 1: a strange metal Christmas tree cross type object on a
Speaker 1: dining room table. Yes, And the descriptions that we were
Speaker 1: reading about it, they were kind of like all over
Speaker 1: the place in terms of what was it supposed to do,
Speaker 1: like is it, what is it? What is it physically
Speaker 1: supposed to do? What is it sort of metaphorically supposed
Speaker 1: to do? Because it it was described as a sacramental presence,
Speaker 1: a holy force field generator, a gay way to the
Speaker 1: spirit realm uh. So it's kind of like this mechanical
Speaker 1: symbolic body that's going to channel the free energy of
Speaker 1: the universe or you know, God's love that radio radiates
Speaker 1: out from the cosmic center. It's a north pole aligned
Speaker 1: aerial antenna to receive electrical spirit energy. It's um and
Speaker 1: then on top of all this again he's he's open
Speaker 1: mic night for the spirits for his committees that are speaking.
Speaker 1: So when he drops back into just good old John Boy,
Speaker 1: he'll he's kind of ambivalent about it at times. He's
Speaker 1: kind of like, Oh, I don't know anything about technology.
Speaker 1: Is that what those guys are telling you? Okay, that
Speaker 1: sounds right, But he had some very enthusiastic supporters who
Speaker 1: were there to tell him, no, John, it's great, we're
Speaker 1: working on it. But the compound matters further. It wasn't
Speaker 1: simply going to be a sort of like a repeater
Speaker 1: or receiver, collector and retransmitter of God's electrical psychic energy.
Speaker 1: It was also going to be a perpetual motion machine,
Speaker 1: something that uh, apparently the science at the time believed
Speaker 1: could not exist. That's still pretty much considered to be right.
Speaker 1: There's no thing is perpetual motion machine. Motion always sort
Speaker 1: of gets lost to entropy transformed into heat. But they
Speaker 1: wanted to create a perpetual motion machine or quote a
Speaker 1: self moving machine, right, self moving in the same way
Speaker 1: that that God was perceived as being self moving and
Speaker 1: potentially in the same sense that a spirit with free
Speaker 1: will is considered to be a self moving soul by
Speaker 1: some interpretations. Right, So they wanted this piece of technology,
Speaker 1: this new motor, to be not just an effect but
Speaker 1: also a cause in itself, and in that way it
Speaker 1: would be kind of like creating a new man or
Speaker 1: a new God. Yes, but also in gets kind of
Speaker 1: complicated because it's like, in a sense it's it's also
Speaker 1: just about the idea of it should inspire everyone, right, right,
Speaker 1: But then they also you do expect the thing to
Speaker 1: do something into work, right, so that they clearly thought
Speaker 1: that it would have some major significance in transforming the world,
Speaker 1: in ushering in some kind of s schatological event. They
Speaker 1: thought of it as as a sort of like transition
Speaker 1: to the end times, though not necessarily the end times
Speaker 1: in terms of the apocalyptic imagery we often think of,
Speaker 1: or anything negative. They thought of it as like the
Speaker 1: new Age, you know, the new heavens and the new Earth.
Speaker 1: Everything changed, transformed, the apotheosis, things brought up out of
Speaker 1: munday and existence into the new realm of life. And
Speaker 1: kind of a sense too that it it is that
Speaker 1: spear that we're talking about earlier that angel expere that
Speaker 1: reveals truth. But the truth that it would supposedly reveal
Speaker 1: would be the the importance the power of spiritualism and
Speaker 1: the and the reality of this uh, this these metaphysics
Speaker 1: that John has been uh revealing to his followers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now the story doesn't in there. Actually, I very much
Speaker 1: recommend this book. I mentioned earlier the remarkable life of
Speaker 1: John Murray spear agitator for the Spirit Land, because they
Speaker 1: continued to try experiments to get this thing to work.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately it did not usher in this eschatological event um,
Speaker 1: but that they tried to imbue it with personal magnetism
Speaker 1: to get it to turn on, so that they had
Speaker 1: this belief sort of tried to mesmerism and things that
Speaker 1: people had these sort of spirit essences. Then they'd have
Speaker 1: certain pairs of people of particular types try to transmit
Speaker 1: their personal or psychic energy to the machine to get
Speaker 1: it to animate and come to life. They gave it
Speaker 1: a ritual birthing ceremony with a human mother. That did
Speaker 1: not go well with some of the town's folk, who
Speaker 1: found that a moral outrage, and then uh sort of
Speaker 1: took up arms against the machine. Uh, there's a whole
Speaker 1: story of sort of how this machine was received, but
Speaker 1: it also was received sort of as an embarrassment. And
Speaker 1: I think this is one of the reasons John Murray
Speaker 1: Spear is not as well remembered in history as he
Speaker 1: might have been, because I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: other radical reformers of the time, we're like, uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know how much we want to be associated with
Speaker 1: Mr Spear, Right, Yeah, I mean I can define definitely
Speaker 1: see it because ultimately the thing did not work. The
Speaker 1: thing did not It didn't need any of the more
Speaker 1: elaborate other worldly expectations for the thing, and it didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't even really meet like the bare threshold required
Speaker 1: to impress the people who poured their lives into it. Sure,
Speaker 1: But another thing that I think is worth mentioning is
Speaker 1: that this kind of thinking isn't quite as obscure as
Speaker 1: it would seem to us, because there were thoughts back
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century about the perhaps borderline supernatural or
Speaker 1: psychic psychically significant power of electricity. That's true, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: back in the nineteenth century, Uh, electricity had a noble
Speaker 1: you haven't if not a divine reputation to the extent
Speaker 1: that members of the scientific community protested the idea of
Speaker 1: the electric chair as a degradation of both electricity and
Speaker 1: the scientific breakthroughs that made electrocuting a criminal are possible.
Speaker 1: So there was sort of like a new a G
Speaker 1: paradigm laid on top of the idea of electrical technology. Yes,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take a quick break, and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we are going to move forward
Speaker 1: in time and discuss some more um convergences of technology
Speaker 1: and religion. All right, we're back. We're discussing religion now
Speaker 1: and in the age of science, but also in the
Speaker 1: age of science fiction, in the age of space, and
Speaker 1: in the age of UFOs. Right, So this has got
Speaker 1: to be one of the most obvious places that religion
Speaker 1: could go when it's changed by technology. Aliens exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got to believe because in so many ways,
Speaker 1: I can't remember who I heard make this point, but
Speaker 1: but it's something I heard someone say a long time ago,
Speaker 1: which was the idea that if you explained our idea
Speaker 1: of what aliens are two ancient people's, they wouldn't even
Speaker 1: really make a distinction between what we're talking about when
Speaker 1: we say aliens and their concepts of God's we have
Speaker 1: this distinction between okay, natural aliens, that's you know, standard
Speaker 1: natural phenomenon and supernatural entities. But they didn't necessarily make
Speaker 1: that distinction that aliens to them would be oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So they they're very powerful beings from a place up
Speaker 1: above and they can travel down to Earth if they want,
Speaker 1: and you know we're powerless to oppose them. Yeah. Essentially,
Speaker 1: an alien is a supernatural entity that is described and
Speaker 1: wrapped up in in in in the keepings of science,
Speaker 1: in the traditions of science, so that it it makes
Speaker 1: at least, uh, it makes some level of scientific sense
Speaker 1: instead of non scientific. And if you look back through time,
Speaker 1: like any anytime someone is dealt with hallucinations, anytime someone
Speaker 1: has dealt with sleep paralysis or some other encounter. You know,
Speaker 1: what was once an encounter with fairies in the woods,
Speaker 1: which what was once an assault by demons or or
Speaker 1: an encounter with ghosts, uh, increasingly become became in the
Speaker 1: past few decades an encounter with aliens or UFOs. Right,
Speaker 1: because that's the cultural script that we can fall back
Speaker 1: on for the unexplained, and that essentially the supernatural perfectly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: aliens have become the new otherworldly organism, and this has
Speaker 1: translated into actual religious movements. The main one I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is Railianism. Yes, so had you heard
Speaker 1: anything much about Relianism before this? I had never done
Speaker 1: a deep dive into Alianism. But of course you the
Speaker 1: the end up. They end up coming up anytime you
Speaker 1: look in at cloning in particular, and then you know
Speaker 1: they pop up here and there with their various sort
Speaker 1: of eye catching protests and whatnot. Yes, they're fond of like, uh,
Speaker 1: demonstrations that involve nudity, but also like inflatable flying saucers
Speaker 1: and stuff like that sometimes. But okay, so what are
Speaker 1: they so. Ralianism or Rayalism or the International Raylian Movement
Speaker 1: was founded in nineteen seventy three or seventy four. I
Speaker 1: think I've seen seventy four, but could be seventy three
Speaker 1: by its chief profit Riyal or rail Royal born Claude Vorilon,
Speaker 1: and Vorlon introduces his own life in his book by saying,
Speaker 1: ever since I was nine years old, I've had but
Speaker 1: one passion motor racing. So Harry, you've got your your
Speaker 1: technological You're in already. But the Raelians believe in a
Speaker 1: branch of intelligent design, the idea that human life was created.
Speaker 1: It didn't, you know, evolve from innerent matter, but that
Speaker 1: it was created in a conscious act of creation. But
Speaker 1: they believe in the kind of intelligent design that most
Speaker 1: intelligent design advocates like to skip over, which is the
Speaker 1: notion that life was engineered not by supernatural god or gods,
Speaker 1: but by a race of extraterrestrial scientists right there called
Speaker 1: the Elohim. So, well, what does this word mean? You
Speaker 1: might have heard it before. Eloheim is a word that
Speaker 1: appears in the Hebrew Bible, and in a literal sense,
Speaker 1: it's the Hebrew plural word for gods or deities, so
Speaker 1: it can be used to refer to groups of lesser
Speaker 1: supernatural entities like angels or pagan gods. Those are all eloheim,
Speaker 1: but it can also be translated to refer to the
Speaker 1: singular God of Israel. So one of the names of
Speaker 1: God used in the Hebrew Bible is Eloheim, and in
Speaker 1: English translations that's usually the word God with the capital G.
Speaker 1: The root of Eloheim seems to be l which is
Speaker 1: an older Canaanite word, and that was l was the
Speaker 1: chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, but also a generic
Speaker 1: word just meaning god, like a god, which also appears
Speaker 1: in the Bible as a title for God, though less often.
Speaker 1: So how did all this come together? What started this event? Well,
Speaker 1: Ryle tells the story in in his own book. So
Speaker 1: he says, in nineteen three, he was out motoring, you know,
Speaker 1: because he has a passion for motor racing, out in France,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and he stopped at a volcano that
Speaker 1: was overlooking Claremont Ferrand in central southern France, and he
Speaker 1: parked his car and got out to sort of like
Speaker 1: walk and jog around the volcanic crater. And there he
Speaker 1: saw an aerial vehicle coming toward him, and at first,
Speaker 1: he says, he thought it was a helicopter, but then
Speaker 1: he noticed it was completely silent, and then he realized
Speaker 1: it was a flying saucer. He says, it was about
Speaker 1: seven meters in diameter two point five meters in heights, so,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of modest as far as flying saucers go.
Speaker 1: And a stairway descends out of the bottom of it,
Speaker 1: and a being comes out to meet him, and he says,
Speaker 1: at first he thought it was a child because it
Speaker 1: was only four ft tall. He says, his eyes were
Speaker 1: slightly almond shaped, his hair was black and long, and
Speaker 1: he had a small black beard. I liked, there's facial
Speaker 1: hair with these aliens, so so often they don't get
Speaker 1: to rock the facial hair exactly. Yeah, they're they're way
Speaker 1: too smooth. Usually it's kind of strange. But anyway, this
Speaker 1: being proceeded to have a conversation with Brilon, informing him
Speaker 1: that he had visited Earth many times before and that
Speaker 1: he had chosen Vrillon specifically to speak to on that day,
Speaker 1: and it told him that the alien told him to
Speaker 1: come back the next day to bring his Bible and
Speaker 1: something to take notes with, and so then it instructed
Speaker 1: him on many truths about the origins of life on
Speaker 1: Earth and the real meanings of stories in the Bible.
Speaker 1: And then, of course Vrillon later under the name Ral
Speaker 1: published books on the subject and founded the Riley and
Speaker 1: or Rileyan movement. So the main basic ideas that life
Speaker 1: on Earth was created by a group of extraterrestrial scientists
Speaker 1: and then a laboratory, yes, and that we were created
Speaker 1: in the image of those scientists, and so their beliefs
Speaker 1: in general, have a lot in common at the various
Speaker 1: like ancient astronauts theories. If you ever watched any of
Speaker 1: those TV shows where it's like, what happened? How do
Speaker 1: they build the pyramids? Aliens? Yeah, I mean, basically it
Speaker 1: comes down to the fact that you can take any
Speaker 1: ancient text that deals with supernatural entities interacting with humanity,
Speaker 1: and you can easily reread, reinterpret any of them as
Speaker 1: humans dealing with extraterrestrials. And it's it's often a really
Speaker 1: you know, fun imaginative exercise because it turns everything in
Speaker 1: its head, it puts things in a modern perspective, and
Speaker 1: then and you know, you know, ultimately we're talking about
Speaker 1: the exact same scenario. So that kind of reinterpretation you
Speaker 1: to see throughout ancient astronaut thinking, right. So yeah, Ryal
Speaker 1: explains in in his book Intelligent Design, Message from the
Speaker 1: Designers how these beings explained to him that like the
Speaker 1: narrative traditions of Judaism and Christianity are all actually misrememberings
Speaker 1: or misinterpretations of ancient interactions with these extraterrestrial creatures. The
Speaker 1: Eloheam and their technology. I'm going to pick my favorite
Speaker 1: example to site, which is this is a section from
Speaker 1: the book about how the Ark of the Covenant is
Speaker 1: actually a nuclear powered space radio makes perfect things to me.
Speaker 1: And so he says, telepathy is a means of communication
Speaker 1: between the creators and human beings, was only possible when
Speaker 1: the Eloheim were in proximity to the Earth. When they
Speaker 1: were on their distant planet or elsewhere, they could not
Speaker 1: communicate in this way. For this reason, they set up
Speaker 1: a transmitter receiver which was transported in the Ark of God,
Speaker 1: an apparatus containing its own atomic powered cell. This is
Speaker 1: why in the first Book of Samuel, chapters five and six,
Speaker 1: when the Philistines stole the Arc, their idle dagon lay
Speaker 1: face down on the ground nearby as a result of
Speaker 1: an electrical discharge caused by their clumsy mishandling of it.
Speaker 1: They also suffered radiation burns from the dangerous radioactive materials.
Speaker 1: And he quotes First Samuel five six and smote them
Speaker 1: with im rods. That worried emmerrods, I think is generally
Speaker 1: interpreted to mean some kind of like hemorrhoid or tumor uh.
Speaker 1: And so this is I don't know, I'd say that's
Speaker 1: a pretty clever interpretation of that. I mean, I I
Speaker 1: kind of doubt many biblical scholars would give much credence
Speaker 1: to it. But uh no, I think that's a that's
Speaker 1: a wonderful uh you know, overlay of science and science
Speaker 1: fiction over you know, a magical object from uh, from
Speaker 1: from a from an older time. I mean, you see
Speaker 1: this even outside of Christian and Hebraic tradition, with people
Speaker 1: interpreting some of the like super weapons that the gods
Speaker 1: give characters in the Hindu epic, the Mahabarata, where they
Speaker 1: have like essentially you know, crazy powerful god weapons that
Speaker 1: they utilize, and some uh, some people like to look
Speaker 1: back at those and say, oh, well, these were atomic weapons,
Speaker 1: these were laser weapons, these were flying machines. And of
Speaker 1: course the Alians don't just have technological explanations for the past.
Speaker 1: They also are a thoroughly technological religion in terms of
Speaker 1: their ethic for the future, like what they say should
Speaker 1: be happening in society. Just one example is that the
Speaker 1: Alians tend to be very in favor of human cloning.
Speaker 1: That's not something that's true of most religions. As far
Speaker 1: as yeah, they altered the embrace and advocate human cloning
Speaker 1: as a as a necessary technology for the advancement of
Speaker 1: the species. Yeah. And in fact, in two thousand two,
Speaker 1: the Ralians claimed to have cloned a human being. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is probably where a lot of people have heard
Speaker 1: of the Raliance before. From this claim, there was a
Speaker 1: media storm. More precisely, not so much that the Ralians
Speaker 1: claimed to have cloned a human being, but they were
Speaker 1: involved in the publicity of this event. So a doctor
Speaker 1: Bridget Boyselier, I hope I'm saying that right. It was
Speaker 1: a a Raelian bishop and she claimed that her company,
Speaker 1: an organization called Clone Aid not to be confused with
Speaker 1: clonus uh and not to be confused with Clone Aid.
Speaker 1: The Clone Benefit Concert, which was a company originally founded
Speaker 1: in an earlier incarnation by Royal himself, had successfully cloned
Speaker 1: an American woman and produced a healthy baby clone named Eve.
Speaker 1: And media reports at the time were really optical, and
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, no real evidence that
Speaker 1: this is true has ever surfaced. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people thought it was just a publicity stunt for the church,
Speaker 1: but they maintained that they had successfully been the first
Speaker 1: to to clone a healthy human baby, and whatever you
Speaker 1: think of that story. The Ralians typically remain very supportive
Speaker 1: of human cloning research. Yeah, and they continue to claim
Speaker 1: to have really advanced cloning technology, if not at their disposal,
Speaker 1: then like within grasp right, like they I read that
Speaker 1: they claim that their scientists are close to being able
Speaker 1: to transfer someone's mind into a new body, essentially the
Speaker 1: kind of re sleeving of human consciousness that one encounters
Speaker 1: and say, Richard K. Morgan science fiction, So you could
Speaker 1: live forever because here you've cloned the body and then boop,
Speaker 1: just transfer your your mind into the new body and
Speaker 1: flush the old one. Right. Well, this is always a
Speaker 1: big problem we've talked about when we've talked about trans
Speaker 1: humanist ideas on the other podcast I work on, or
Speaker 1: thinking that this is always something that occurs to me.
Speaker 1: People seem to be discussing the idea of digital immortality
Speaker 1: without answering the question of like, Okay, maybe you could
Speaker 1: make a copy of your brain, of your memories or
Speaker 1: something inside a computer, but how do you become that computer?
Speaker 1: How do you transfer your experience to that machine? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets existentially mucky really fast, because you end up
Speaker 1: just coming against the same old problem that we don't
Speaker 1: really have a good graph on what human consciousness is.
Speaker 1: We have this we run into this whole blind brain
Speaker 1: scenario where we can't really perceive what's going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems to me the much easier thing would be
Speaker 1: it's like you make a copy of yourself and then
Speaker 1: you die, and then there's a copy of you. Yea,
Speaker 1: which is terrifying, but but also you know, that's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's also yeah, a form of immortality that
Speaker 1: that lines up with our scientific understanding of how we work. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I say, with the reorganism, you do get this overall
Speaker 1: sense of science and futurism as articles of the faith. Um,
Speaker 1: And it's you know, it's it's easy to discuss a
Speaker 1: faithful of UFOs cloning and weird sexuality is ridiculous, Uh,
Speaker 1: even as we cling to these ancient models and traditions
Speaker 1: that again involved angels coming down from above, bodily resurrection,
Speaker 1: physical immortality, and also lots of weird sexuality as well. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's that ties into that that's sort
Speaker 1: of like abhorrence of the new thing that I was
Speaker 1: talking about there. You know the fact that that we
Speaker 1: find the presence of too much technology and our religious
Speaker 1: rights and in our religious holy places as kind of
Speaker 1: like a somehow vaguely blasphemous or crass or or it
Speaker 1: just doesn't feel right. And I can totally see this
Speaker 1: parallel when you look at the beliefs of the Rillyans,
Speaker 1: I see a whole lot of parallels with a lot
Speaker 1: of ancient religions. And I wonder if one of the
Speaker 1: only major differences in my attitude towards it as just
Speaker 1: that it's new. Yeah, you see that all. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if we were talking about it, we're kind of
Speaker 1: having fun with the concept. But with some of the
Speaker 1: concepts they were, you know, they bring up such as,
Speaker 1: I mean, I love the idea that I think Satan
Speaker 1: was Aralian, not araliance. Satan was Elohim from the Elohim
Speaker 1: home planet that was opposed to creating new life. And
Speaker 1: then Lucifer is another one that is involved in the
Speaker 1: the generation of life here on Earth and also had
Speaker 1: a role in creating the dinosaurs. Like all of that,
Speaker 1: I mean, it can't help but left because it's it's
Speaker 1: also kind of hysterical in its own way, but it's
Speaker 1: not really that different from anything that exists in any
Speaker 1: ancient religion. It's just we're more willing to buy into
Speaker 1: some weird, outlandish story that was written down by some
Speaker 1: dude if that dude lived, you know, five hundred years
Speaker 1: ago rather than fifty years ago. Right, we just naturally
Speaker 1: assigned more authority to the ancient regime. Now, in discussing
Speaker 1: religion and technology in the modern day, we and not
Speaker 1: help but discuss the Church of Scientology a little bit. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is another religion, not just of the
Speaker 1: current technological age, but it does have technology infused all
Speaker 1: throughout its practices. So one of the things that would
Speaker 1: be pretty obvious is the E meter. We can come
Speaker 1: back to that in a minute. But the first thing
Speaker 1: that actually made me think of Scientology as a technological religion,
Speaker 1: or at least something that has technology deeply embedded in
Speaker 1: its ideology is literally the use of the word technology. See,
Speaker 1: I've noticed in interviews like televised interviews and things that
Speaker 1: I've seen with some representatives of the Church of Scientology
Speaker 1: that they use the word technology when what they're talking
Speaker 1: about are the beliefs and practices of Scientology. Um, So
Speaker 1: that kind of doesn't give with how we usually use
Speaker 1: the word technology, Like I was saying, it's usually a machine, right,
Speaker 1: A technology is usually a mechanism, and they're talking about
Speaker 1: it more as in like how a doctrine can be
Speaker 1: a technolog ology, Yeah, or even you can think of
Speaker 1: it in terms, I guess of a blueprint, right, I
Speaker 1: have a blueprint for a steam engine. Sure, steam engine
Speaker 1: is a technology, but also the blueprint is is a
Speaker 1: technology in itself because it tells you how did the
Speaker 1: process by which you create this thing? And that's ultimately
Speaker 1: what they're they're offering their followers, right A a blueprint
Speaker 1: to become this better engine totally. Yeah, so I can
Speaker 1: see it like that it is in in the dictionary
Speaker 1: definition since the technology perhaps like it is a at
Speaker 1: least an application of what they believe to be scientific
Speaker 1: knowledge to a practical purpose. Yeah. So you see mention
Speaker 1: of the dionetic spiritual healing technology of study technology. And
Speaker 1: they also have their Religious Technology Center which aims to
Speaker 1: quote protect the public from a misapplication of the technology
Speaker 1: and to see that the religious technologies of dionetics and
Speaker 1: scientology remain in proper hands and are properly ministered. So
Speaker 1: it's like the f D A of the technologies of
Speaker 1: science oology. Yeah, you know, in in terms of or
Speaker 1: so certainly the the division of scientology concerned with with
Speaker 1: maintaining those copyrights and those patents. Sure. Yeah. But then
Speaker 1: of course there is actually within scientology in their actual
Speaker 1: practices a device that you've probably heard of, the E meter.
Speaker 1: It's an electrical device that they use in what is
Speaker 1: called auditing. Yeah, I mean, it's very much. I mean
Speaker 1: I would be tempted to make a comparison between the
Speaker 1: role of the E meter with say, the role of
Speaker 1: a of a chalice in in a Roman Catholic tradition, right,
Speaker 1: the you need for the sacred right of a communion. Uh.
Speaker 1: The use of the E meter uh in auditing is
Speaker 1: essentially a sacred right. Okay, So what is auditing and
Speaker 1: what does the E meter actually do? Yeah, the E
Speaker 1: meter is a real thing, and its origins uh lay
Speaker 1: outside of scientology. Actually, it is an electro psychometer. Come on, Robert,
Speaker 1: it's a psychometer. Okay, electro psychometer if you will, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Tomato the motto, And this is a device
Speaker 1: for displaying and or recording the electrodermal activity or the
Speaker 1: e d A of a human being. It's actually one
Speaker 1: of the factors covered in a standard polygraph test as
Speaker 1: well as in scientific studies regarding human emotions. So again,
Speaker 1: the E meter is not a technology that exists solely
Speaker 1: within the world of scientology. It's one of the components
Speaker 1: of a polygraph, right, But science scientiotists have been using
Speaker 1: it as an auditing tool. Um. And they have their
Speaker 1: own patents for their own emeter devices that they continue
Speaker 1: to to update. UM. Now, what is auditing. That's an
Speaker 1: entire that's an entire conversation in and of itself, But
Speaker 1: essentially you have an auditor that is a meeting with
Speaker 1: a member of the faith and they are hooking them
Speaker 1: up to the E meter to record these uh these
Speaker 1: reactions in the dermist basically their emotional reaction to stimuli, words, phrases, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And the Church of Scientology it's self describes auditing uh
Speaker 1: as this. They say the goal of auditing is to
Speaker 1: restore being, this and ability, and this is accomplished by
Speaker 1: one helping individuals rid themselves of any spiritual disabilities and
Speaker 1: to increasing spiritual abilities. Yeah, this is interesting. I mean
Speaker 1: it seems to me that I certainly not being all
Speaker 1: that familiar with the practice. Can't say exactly how it's used,
Speaker 1: but it seems like a rough analogy too, if you
Speaker 1: were to hook yourself up to a polygraph test when
Speaker 1: you go in for a Catholic confession. Yeah, that's kind
Speaker 1: of the vibe I I'm getting off of it as
Speaker 1: as well, that it's you know, it's it's about this
Speaker 1: individual meeting with you to to audit you, to to
Speaker 1: to to discuss and figure out your sort of emotional
Speaker 1: your psychic state, right, and to do that, you know,
Speaker 1: they'll throw out some words and see if those words
Speaker 1: trouble you or you know what kind of an emotional
Speaker 1: resonance they create in your body. And so in this
Speaker 1: we we have a wonderful example of a a modern
Speaker 1: religion that is using modern technology, that has adapted modern
Speaker 1: technology for its sacred rights and observances. Yeah. Now, again,
Speaker 1: scientology is a subject unto itself, and maybe when we
Speaker 1: should come back to in a future episode, but we
Speaker 1: mainly just wanted to focus on the the use of
Speaker 1: the e meater here. Yeah, and also I think the
Speaker 1: general attitude towards the idea of technology and what role
Speaker 1: it plays in the religion because they're the word seems
Speaker 1: to be held up in a positive light. It's it's
Speaker 1: something that's reacting against this thing we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: like the profanity of technology, technology being this kind of
Speaker 1: like new fangled, unbeautiful thing that that should be kept
Speaker 1: out of the sacred sphere of religion. These are ideologies
Speaker 1: that are actually really about intentionally bringing technology in. It's
Speaker 1: not incidental, it's not intruding on the religion. It's a
Speaker 1: core part of it. And I think this should finally
Speaker 1: bring us to the idea of the singularity. Ah. Yes,
Speaker 1: it always comes back to the singularity, right, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean this is a popular topic among weirdos like us
Speaker 1: and the singularity. If I'm sure you've probably heard of
Speaker 1: it before, but just in case you haven't, what's the
Speaker 1: general idea of the singularity. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: purpose of the new motor. It's somewhat vague, but but
Speaker 1: it's a general point in human evolution where we sort
Speaker 1: of achieve a level of technological sophistication, where suddenly technology
Speaker 1: advances so rapidly that we cannot keep up with it
Speaker 1: that it revolutionizes and changes human nature. A lot of
Speaker 1: times it's associated with the sort of a moment of
Speaker 1: transition to being transhumanist, like where human biology merges with
Speaker 1: technology and you get this new breed of humanity that's
Speaker 1: like cyborg basically, that's ultimately uplifted and transformed to a
Speaker 1: status of an almost godlike power by their technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of a point where you stop talking about, oh,
Speaker 1: this is human the human race, and they have technology,
Speaker 1: but rather the two or one or perhaps even the
Speaker 1: biological aspect of the species is secondary to the technological presence. Right.
Speaker 1: So one of the big names and singularity thinking would
Speaker 1: be Ray Kers. While he's someone who has been very
Speaker 1: positive about this idea, who has had a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting and good things to say about it. Uh, he
Speaker 1: sort of popularized the notion of some of these transhumanist
Speaker 1: notions in a book called The Age of Spiritual Machines
Speaker 1: and then also in a book called The Singularity Is
Speaker 1: Near and I Think curse. While and at least some
Speaker 1: supporters of the idea of the singularity would disavow the
Speaker 1: idea that singularity thinking is religious in nature, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that the phrase spiritual machines, Why do you bok
Speaker 1: that that that's your argument, But there are some critics
Speaker 1: and observers who do like to attribute sort of aspects
Speaker 1: of being a religion to singularity thinking. And one of
Speaker 1: those is the is the interesting author and technologist Jarren Lanier.
Speaker 1: So Jarren Lanier, for many years has been a big
Speaker 1: name in sort of technology circles. He's known as sort
Speaker 1: of like the guy behind virtual reality, and he's often
Speaker 1: described as sort of a genius polymath and just a
Speaker 1: big thinker, you know, he has lots of big ideas
Speaker 1: about the future and and how we should handle it.
Speaker 1: And he's for a long time been a critic of
Speaker 1: singularity thinking. And a lot of these critics of singularity
Speaker 1: thinking point out that there are uncomfortably religious seeming aspects
Speaker 1: of thinking that we're entering an age where artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: and technology is going to enter this transcendental level. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, the idea of transforming humans
Speaker 1: into a higher state of existence is, you know, in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, kind of like the end times
Speaker 1: beliefs of many religions. You might think about it as
Speaker 1: a parallel to sort of like the rapture and evangelical
Speaker 1: Christianity or someth thing where people are sort of uplifted
Speaker 1: to a higher state of existence reborn into like a newer,
Speaker 1: better flesh kind of a situation. Yeah. And also you
Speaker 1: could think about it as in some ways treating technology
Speaker 1: truly like a god. That it is on one hand,
Speaker 1: something that we're creating, but on the other hand, it
Speaker 1: is a force that is kind of unstoppable and at
Speaker 1: some point beyond our comprehension that comes in and imposes
Speaker 1: its will on us. Its will is hopefully benevolent. But
Speaker 1: you can get opposing viewpoints about that from many other
Speaker 1: people who are worried about the the advances in artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence and what they'll mean for human life. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting critique in an interesting way
Speaker 1: of looking at at singularitarianism as it might be is
Speaker 1: this a religion? And if so, what does it mean
Speaker 1: for all the people, especially all the people who are
Speaker 1: power players in Silicon Valley who are subscribers to this notion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's hard. It's it's ultimately about human technology, uh,
Speaker 1: becoming godlike, and then even by extension, the possibility that
Speaker 1: we create artificial intelligence that is essentially God. And then
Speaker 1: of course the question is what kind of God if
Speaker 1: we create it? Because if we look at the models
Speaker 1: of of the of the divine that we see in
Speaker 1: our myths and religions that they tend to you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're rather benevolent, but a lot of times they're
Speaker 1: moody and petty and destructive and uh and not always
Speaker 1: a friend to the little man. Right, Well, very often
Speaker 1: they're selectively benevolent. Right. They might be benevolent to one
Speaker 1: group and malevolent to another. Yeah, and and they're not
Speaker 1: opposed to having sex with us in the form of
Speaker 1: various animals. So yeah, we have to think about that. Well,
Speaker 1: we really have to hope that our that our robot
Speaker 1: overlords do not take the Greek myths if their inspiration,
Speaker 1: and the Greeks, the Greek gods tend to be about
Speaker 1: the worst because there they tend to be the pettiest
Speaker 1: and the most carnal I find. But but yeah, do
Speaker 1: we end up looking at a benevolent vision of this
Speaker 1: or a more diabolical and I tend to I tend
Speaker 1: to follow the the the E. N. M. Banks culture
Speaker 1: uh series approach, where you have kind of a benevolent
Speaker 1: to ai force. It becomes in a way the guardians
Speaker 1: of humanity, but also the the ruling power of humanity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've on my other podcast a lot of Hymdenhut about
Speaker 1: you know what, what I really think about the idea
Speaker 1: of transcendental artificial intelligence and trans humanism and stuff. In
Speaker 1: the end, I guess I've read enough persuasive stuff in
Speaker 1: both ways that I can't really say what I think
Speaker 1: it would truly be like in reality, though I can
Speaker 1: certainly see why it would take on a spiritual dimension
Speaker 1: in the minds of many people. Yeah, I always I
Speaker 1: always come back to there's one quote in uh Gibson's
Speaker 1: neurom Answer in which someone comments that, you know, for ages,
Speaker 1: we believed in making packs with devils and d hmans,
Speaker 1: and it was impossible until we made it possible through
Speaker 1: technology in the creation of AIS that you can enter
Speaker 1: into bargains with it, as occurs in the book. And
Speaker 1: uh and that's that's kind of part and partial to
Speaker 1: some of the singularity ideas, where you know, it's at
Speaker 1: least when we think of them in terms of religion,
Speaker 1: that technology begins to make possible things that were previously
Speaker 1: purely supernatural and from a scientific perspective non existent, such
Speaker 1: as the afterlife. If we've talked about you know the
Speaker 1: possibilities of digitizing human consciousness and the human experience, and
Speaker 1: placing that digital consciousness within a virtual world. It becomes
Speaker 1: conceivable to have a virtual heaven, of virtual hell, of
Speaker 1: virtual purgatory in which to file away your your the
Speaker 1: minds of believers after their bodily death. Sure well, I
Speaker 1: mean definitely people like rakerswill have envisioned a digital immortality
Speaker 1: or some form of technologically enabled immortality. And if you
Speaker 1: actually could achieve that, I'm skept tickle of that, especially
Speaker 1: because of like, how could you even be sure with
Speaker 1: the consciousness transfer problem? How could you ever know that
Speaker 1: that technology was successful? You know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: to say, you create a computer that claims to be
Speaker 1: a copy of somebody and then that person's body dies
Speaker 1: and uh and their their computer copy continues to live
Speaker 1: on saying oh, yes, I had continuous consciousness. How do
Speaker 1: you know if that's true? Yeah? And then and then
Speaker 1: you get into a whole sort of black mirror area
Speaker 1: of trying to di forigret how you're supposed to treat
Speaker 1: this thing. Um, you know is if it's if it's
Speaker 1: not just completely happy all the time, then are you
Speaker 1: I mean, what kind of monstrous thing have you done
Speaker 1: here and then again? So we're imagining digital immortality as
Speaker 1: being a sort of embodiment of heaven. But what if
Speaker 1: you didn't like your digital immortality. What if you didn't
Speaker 1: like your digital immortality and then you were unable to die,
Speaker 1: You'd be like the sort of the immortal wanderer from
Speaker 1: Various Deaths, right where you just sort of roaming across
Speaker 1: the digital countryside, hoping that one day the divine forces,
Speaker 1: the ai s or whatever you will, will give you
Speaker 1: the gift of death so you can just have sweet oblivion. Man.
Speaker 1: So that William Gibson quote you had is still sticking
Speaker 1: with me. I think that's really interesting. Yeah. I keep
Speaker 1: going back to the the uh, like we have to
Speaker 1: invent the devil before we could sell our soul to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, the virtual afterlife ideas come up
Speaker 1: in a number of short stories. I've read that the
Speaker 1: first example was supposedly American sci fi writer Frederick Pole
Speaker 1: in a short story title The Tunnel under the World
Speaker 1: from fifty was the first to really deal with this,
Speaker 1: but one that I loved from a few years back.
Speaker 1: It was one of the culture novels by Ian and
Speaker 1: Banks I mentioned earlier his novel Surface Detail, which deals
Speaker 1: in large part with a virtual war over the existence
Speaker 1: of virtual hells. So there are various planets, various species
Speaker 1: and people's that can that to have faiths that maintain
Speaker 1: virtual hells for believers that we're edge to be morally failing,
Speaker 1: and so they're you know, digital realms of torment and horror.
Speaker 1: And you have lived plenty of living individuals and some
Speaker 1: digital individuals who say that is completely awful. You should
Speaker 1: not have that. In the same way that you have
Speaker 1: plenty of living people today is say that theology of
Speaker 1: hell itself is kind of a horrible idea and should
Speaker 1: be you know, we should weigh l we should lay
Speaker 1: waste to that as well. And so in this book
Speaker 1: by Banks, this virtual war over their existence of in
Speaker 1: which spills out into an actual real war in the universe,
Speaker 1: and in very very fascinating ways, that is a truly
Speaker 1: fascinating idea. I'd like to read that book now. It's good.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend uh the works of the late H. N. M. Banks.
Speaker 1: Good great stuff, great science fiction that's you know, concerned
Speaker 1: with where technology is taking us. But also you know,
Speaker 1: some of the the philosophical existential problems of the current times.
Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it, uh the end
Speaker 1: of our two parter on techno religion, the convergence of
Speaker 1: technology and religion, from the earliest prayer wheels to the
Speaker 1: distant possibility of a singularity birth God. This has been
Speaker 1: a wild ride. Thank you for having me on for this,
Speaker 1: Robert Hey, Hey, thank you, thank you for joining me. Hey.
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Speaker 1: out to some of the materials we've discussed here, such
Speaker 1: as that book The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear.
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