Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a walk into the vault. That's right,
Speaker 1: we're going back to June. This was our Techno Religion
Speaker 1: episode two. Yes, so we're re airing part two of
Speaker 1: our Techno Religion for the Masses episodes from last Saturday.
Speaker 1: We reaired part one. This is going to be part two,
Speaker 1: so if you've already listened to that, you should jump
Speaker 1: right in and joined the Holy Robot War. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is part
Speaker 1: two in our two part exploration of techno Religion of
Speaker 1: the convergence of religion and technology. So before you listen
Speaker 1: to this episode, you should definitely go back and check
Speaker 1: out our part one episode of Techno Religion. And at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the last episode, I told the story
Speaker 1: about a strange incident taking place at High Rock Tower
Speaker 1: in Lynn, Massachusetts in the eighteen fifties, where people were
Speaker 1: trying to build an electro mechanical messiah, and the chief
Speaker 1: intellectual architect of this event was a guy named John
Speaker 1: Murray Spear. We now continue the story. So who was
Speaker 1: John Murray Spear. He's in some ways a much forgotten
Speaker 1: and overlooked figure from the sort of radical reform movement
Speaker 1: of the early eighteen hundreds. So John m Rey Spear
Speaker 1: was born in Boston in eighteen o four. His father
Speaker 1: was a blacksmith. He had a brother named Charles who
Speaker 1: was a year older than him, and he and his
Speaker 1: family were members of the Universalist Church. And this was
Speaker 1: a Christian church that was popular in some parts of
Speaker 1: New England back then. And the Universalist Church rejected the
Speaker 1: doctrine of hell. That's one of the most notable things
Speaker 1: about them. They rejected the doctrine of hell and eternal
Speaker 1: damn nation, and they preached that the salvation of Christ
Speaker 1: 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 apprenticed 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 have. So the
Speaker 1: ideas shoemakers would have young apprentices, and 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. And 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,
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 tacit 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 Ah Balu, 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 around
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 Spear 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 of different skin tones. And
Speaker 1: so there's a lot to admire about this guy. I
Speaker 1: think he was. He was active in William Lloyd Garrison's
Speaker 1: abolitionist movements. Actually, there's a great quote from this book
Speaker 1: where William Lloyd Garrison was introducing Spear as a speaker
Speaker 1: at an abolitionist convention and he made this horrible pun
Speaker 1: but it sort of reflects his role. He says although
Speaker 1: weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual. We
Speaker 1: do not object at all to the use of the spear. Now,
Speaker 1: this apparently that he's this like a Miltonian reference here
Speaker 1: as well. Right, Yeah, this is a reference to the
Speaker 1: angel Etheriel in in Paradise Lost, which has a spear
Speaker 1: that essentially exposes the true nature of whatever it touches.
Speaker 1: It's you know, the it's the glasses from they live, okay, um,
Speaker 1: So the Ituriel can touch the spirit to Satan when
Speaker 1: Satan's in the form of a toad and reveal Satan's
Speaker 1: true nature at Satan. And this was a common metaphor
Speaker 1: in the abolitionist movement at the time, and I think
Speaker 1: more generally the radical reform movements of the time, to
Speaker 1: sort of expose the hypocrisy and oppression of the standard
Speaker 1: governments and institutions of the time. So to summarize this
Speaker 1: is a this is a guy who is very concerned
Speaker 1: with the real world, oh totally. But then John Murray
Speaker 1: spirit took a turn. And while still i'd say in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways being concerned with the real world,
Speaker 1: he took a turn towards the spirit world. He became
Speaker 1: involved with what was known at the time as the
Speaker 1: spiritualist movement. So this for I think the first real
Speaker 1: all piece of evidence here that was in this book
Speaker 1: I read. It was in August eighteen forty seven, John
Speaker 1: Murray Spear penned a review in an anti death penalty
Speaker 1: newspaper that he was co editor of called The Prisoner's Friend,
Speaker 1: and he penned a review of a book about spiritualism,
Speaker 1: which was The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and
Speaker 1: a Voice to Mankind by Andrew Jackson Davis. And this
Speaker 1: was sort of a work in the emerging field of spiritualism.
Speaker 1: And Davis claimed to be in contact with the spirit
Speaker 1: of Emmanuel Swedenborg and like channeling his statements from beyond
Speaker 1: the grave. And the book alleged that there were these
Speaker 1: various universal laws at play, and it sort of looked
Speaker 1: at religion from a rationalist angle. Actually, this is a
Speaker 1: thing that might seem weird to us today, but at
Speaker 1: the time spiritualism represented what some people believe to be
Speaker 1: a more scientific approach to the supernatural. So you might
Speaker 1: have traditional religions that are based on received tradition, whereas
Speaker 1: spiritualism people sitting around channeling spirits was actually an empirically
Speaker 1: observed phenomenon. Yeah, 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 the fringier stuff
Speaker 1: with seance an ectoplasm, right, even if it even though
Speaker 1: ectoplasm was a was a con it was an attempt
Speaker 1: to say, look, here is physical proof, some sort of
Speaker 1: biological manifestation of the spirit. Right. So a lot of
Speaker 1: these people who were into spiritualism were people who were
Speaker 1: deeply desperately yearning for something to cling onto about true
Speaker 1: messages from beyond, real transcendental knowledge. So some Universalist ministries
Speaker 1: at the time were opposed to spiritualism. But in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty one, John Murray Spear broke ties with the Universalist
Speaker 1: Church after refusing to affirm a simple creed of the
Speaker 1: Church which is basedly pledging allegiance to the guidance of
Speaker 1: the Bible and the person of Jesus, because he's he
Speaker 1: saw that as too constrictive on on sort of freedom
Speaker 1: of thought by that point, and it seems like in
Speaker 1: some way he began to at least secretly train himself
Speaker 1: as a seer and practitioner of mesmeric trances, you know,
Speaker 1: like the mesmerism. So on March thirty one, eighteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: John Murray Spear actually began his career as a spirit medium,
Speaker 1: and this was a career with somewhat mixed reception among
Speaker 1: his social circles. He'd get messages from spirits from beyond
Speaker 1: the grave, sometimes through automatic writing, where he would sit
Speaker 1: there and just start writing whatever came to his mind
Speaker 1: and believing it came from a spirit. Sometimes automatic drawing.
Speaker 1: Some of these drawings sound pretty funny, where he'd like
Speaker 1: draw a human and then like draws spirit guided labels
Speaker 1: for all their body parts. Uh. Sometimes through speech, so
Speaker 1: sometimes he might just get up and give an extemporaneous
Speaker 1: beach on the subject he didn't know anything about, believing
Speaker 1: he was channeling messages from someone who did know something
Speaker 1: about it, who was in the spirit world. So in spiritualism,
Speaker 1: like I mean, there's a sense of evolution to this
Speaker 1: as well, because it's the idea that we die our
Speaker 1: spirit passes on and as spirits we continue to evolve,
Speaker 1: and the spirit world is filled with the individuals that
Speaker 1: have have a lot of of of knowledge, a lot
Speaker 1: of wisdom to share with the living. And John Murray
Speaker 1: Spear is essentially opening himself up along these lines as
Speaker 1: just anytime you want to pop in and I am open,
Speaker 1: Mike Night for humanity, just pop into me. And so
Speaker 1: so he's popping in and out of the real John
Speaker 1: Murray Spear and just becoming whoever is coming up to
Speaker 1: the podium to speak. That's right, Yeah, yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: John Murray Spear and his daughter Sophronia also Sophronia's I
Speaker 1: love that name. Uh, they sort of became a spirit
Speaker 1: medium team. For a while, they were both channeling messages
Speaker 1: of spirits, and for a while he was getting various
Speaker 1: kinds of messages. Sometimes like vague messages would tell him
Speaker 1: to travel to a specific place and meet people to
Speaker 1: do healing rituals on them. One example was I think
Speaker 1: at some point Benjamin Franklin contacted him via spirits and
Speaker 1: told him to go visit a lady who had been
Speaker 1: struck by lightning and was ailing. And then also, yeah,
Speaker 1: he'd be given these discourses on the nature of reality,
Speaker 1: so Benjamin Franklin would inhabit him and speak through him
Speaker 1: on the nature of electricity, magnetism, the cosmic ether. There
Speaker 1: was also there was a particularly funny story in this
Speaker 1: book where John Mary Spear was in Cleveland channeling the
Speaker 1: spirit of the dead physician and founding father Benjamin Rush.
Speaker 1: And this is a direct quote from his speech in
Speaker 1: speaking of the mortal body, it will be all things considered.
Speaker 1: Why is this to commence that what looking at all
Speaker 1: things may be considered the most or more strictly speaking,
Speaker 1: the more important part, and that is the head in
Speaker 1: the front part, just below the eyes there is what
Speaker 1: is generally called by the common people a knows And
Speaker 1: here it will be perceived that there are two apartments.
Speaker 1: What what does that even mean? Um? But it didn't
Speaker 1: stop there, unfortunately he uh so, or maybe fortunately who knows?
Speaker 1: John Mary spirit didn't just get these discourses on the
Speaker 1: nature of humanity. He eventually started getting messages from a
Speaker 1: congress of spirits, this great sort of enclay of of
Speaker 1: spirits that formed a general assembly in the spirit world.
Speaker 1: Uh And these had sub committees basically that would communicate
Speaker 1: to him, and they had these great names. One was
Speaker 1: the Association of Beneficence. They were also the Associations of Electrizers, Elementizers,
Speaker 1: education Izers, Governmentizers, Healthfulizers, and Agriculturalizers. It makes it makes sense,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of the cosmology of the thing, right,
Speaker 1: because if if the living human is just the larval form,
Speaker 1: and the spirit form is kind of the adult, then
Speaker 1: imagine what kind of an adult spirit form someone like
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin transforms into. I mean, if you have enough
Speaker 1: of these individuals floating around in the spirit realm, they're
Speaker 1: going to form committees exactly right. So this is where
Speaker 1: things got really interesting because the Association of Electrizers, that's
Speaker 1: not as sinister as it sounds. I think they were
Speaker 1: providing knowledge on the electrification of the world through through technology.
Speaker 1: Contacted Spear and said through Spear that they had some
Speaker 1: plans that needed to be enacted on Earth, and those
Speaker 1: plans were for what they called a new motor, the
Speaker 1: new motor, which is the physical channel of the new
Speaker 1: motive power, and this is the electro mechanical Messiah. We
Speaker 1: began the episode with, all right, at this point, I
Speaker 1: should probably jump in and just give just a brief
Speaker 1: overview of some of the metaphysics that are play in Spears.
Speaker 1: Spiritualism already touched on the 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. And
Speaker 1: this thought energy is not generated in the mind, so
Speaker 1: that it's it's not coming out of the meat inside
Speaker 1: your head, but rather it's broadcast into our solar system
Speaker 1: by a cosmic God. And then the Sun acts as
Speaker 1: 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 down 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 is channeled through the lens of the Sun. And
Speaker 1: notice all of these technological scientific metaphors that are used
Speaker 1: in the creation of of of of of a cosmology
Speaker 1: 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 spirits 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 the 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 and these 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, so
Speaker 1: that sounds all right, But he had some very enthusiastic
Speaker 1: supporters who were there to tell him, no, John, it's great,
Speaker 1: we're working on it. But to compound matters. Further, it
Speaker 1: wasn't simply going to be a sort of like a
Speaker 1: repeater or receiver, collector and retransmitter of God's electrical psychic energy.
Speaker 1: It was also going to be a perpetual motion machine. Yes,
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 such thing as perpetual motion machine. Motion always
Speaker 1: sort of gets lost to entropy, transformed into heat. But
Speaker 1: they wanted to create a perpetual motion machine or quote
Speaker 1: a self moving machine, right, self moving in the same
Speaker 1: way that that God was perceived as being self moving,
Speaker 1: and potentially in the same sense that a spirit with
Speaker 1: free will is considered to be a self moving soul
Speaker 1: by some interpretations. Right. So they want 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 it's 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: mundane existence into the new realm of life. And kind
Speaker 1: of a sense too that it it is that spear
Speaker 1: that we're talking about earlier, that angelic sphere that reveals truth.
Speaker 1: But the truth that it would supposedly reveal would be
Speaker 1: the the importance, the power of spiritualism and the and
Speaker 1: the reality of this uh, this these met metaphysics that
Speaker 1: John has been revealing to HISS followers. Yeah, now the
Speaker 1: story doesn't in there. Actually, I very much recommend this book.
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier the remarkable life of John Murray, spear
Speaker 1: agitator for the Spirit Land. Because they continued to try
Speaker 1: experiments to get this thing to work. Unfortunately, it did
Speaker 1: not usher in this eschatological event um, but that they
Speaker 1: tried to imbue it with personal magnetism to get it
Speaker 1: to turn on, so that they had this belief sort
Speaker 1: of tied to mesmerism and things, that people had these
Speaker 1: sort of spirit essences, and they'd have certain pairs of
Speaker 1: people of particular types try to transmit their personal or
Speaker 1: psychic energy to the machine to get it to animate
Speaker 1: and come to life. They gave it a ritual birthing
Speaker 1: ceremony with a human mother that did not go well
Speaker 1: with some of the town's folk, who found that a
Speaker 1: moral outrage and then uh, sort of took up arms
Speaker 1: against the machine. Uh. There's a whole story of sort
Speaker 1: of how this machine was received, but it also was
Speaker 1: received sort of as an embarrassment. And I think this
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons John Murray Spear is not
Speaker 1: as well remembered in history as he might have been,
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of the other radical reformers
Speaker 1: of the time, we're like, uh, I don't know how
Speaker 1: much we want to be associated with Mr Spear, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I can define definitely see it because ultimately
Speaker 1: the thing did not work. Yeah, the thing did not
Speaker 1: It didn't meet any of the more elaborate other worldly
Speaker 1: expectations for the thing, and it didn't. It didn't even
Speaker 1: really need like the bare threshold required to impress the
Speaker 1: people who poured their lives into it. Sure, But another
Speaker 1: thing that I think is worth mentioning is that this
Speaker 1: kind of thinking isn't quite as obscure as it would
Speaker 1: seem to us, because there were thoughts back in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century about the perhaps borderline supernatural or psychic psychically
Speaker 1: significant power of electricity. And that's true. Um yeah, back
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, uh it, electricity had a noble,
Speaker 1: if not a divine reputation, to the extent that members
Speaker 1: of the scientific community protested the idea of the electric
Speaker 1: chair as a degradation of both electricity and the scientific
Speaker 1: breakthroughs that made electrocuting a criminal possible. So there was
Speaker 1: sort of like a new a G paradigm laid on
Speaker 1: top of the idea of electrical technology. On that note,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we are going to move forward in time and discuss
Speaker 1: some more um convergences of technology and religion. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're back. We're discussing religion now and in the age
Speaker 1: of science, but also in the age of science fiction,
Speaker 1: in the age of space, and in the age of UFOs. Right,
Speaker 1: so this has got to be one of the most
Speaker 1: obvious places that religion could go when it's changed by technology.
Speaker 1: Aliens exactly, right, I mean, you've got to believe because
Speaker 1: in so many ways, I can't remember who I heard
Speaker 1: make this point, but but it's something I heard someone
Speaker 1: say a long time ago, which was the idea that
Speaker 1: if you explained our idea of what aliens are to
Speaker 1: ancient people's, they wouldn't even really make a distinction between
Speaker 1: what we're talking about when we say aliens and their
Speaker 1: concepts of God's We have this distinction between okay, natural
Speaker 1: aliens that's you know, standard natural phenomenon and supernatural entities,
Speaker 1: but they didn't necessarily make that distinction that aliens to
Speaker 1: them would be Yeah, okay, so they they're very powerful
Speaker 1: beings from a place up above, and they can travel
Speaker 1: down to Earth if they want, and you know, we're
Speaker 1: powerless to oppose them. Yeah. Essentially, an alien is a
Speaker 1: supernatural entity that is described and wrapped up in in
Speaker 1: in in the keepings of science, in the traditions of science.
Speaker 1: So that it it makes at least UH, it makes
Speaker 1: some level of scientific sense instead of non scientific. And
Speaker 1: if you look back through time, like any anytime someone
Speaker 1: is dealt with hallucinations, anytime someone has dealt with sleep
Speaker 1: paralysis or some other encounter. You know, what was once
Speaker 1: UH an encounter with fairies in the woods, which what
Speaker 1: was once an assault by demons or or an encounter
Speaker 1: with ghosts UH increasingly become became in the past few
Speaker 1: decades an encounter with aliens or UFOs, right, because that's
Speaker 1: the cultural script that we can fall back on for
Speaker 1: the unexplained, and that essentially the supernatural perfectly. Yeah, aliens
Speaker 1: have become the new otherworldly organism them and this has
Speaker 1: translated into actual religious movements. The main one I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is Raylianism. Yes, so had you heard
Speaker 1: anything much about Ralianism before this? I had never done
Speaker 1: a deep dive into Raylianism, But of course you the
Speaker 1: end up. They end up coming up anytime you look
Speaker 1: in at cloning in particular, and then you know they
Speaker 1: pop up here and there with their various sort of
Speaker 1: eye catching protests and whatnot. Yes, they are fond of
Speaker 1: like UH demonstrations that involve nudity, but also like inflatable
Speaker 1: flying saucers and stuff like that sometimes. But okay, so
Speaker 1: what are they so? Raylianism or Realism or the International
Speaker 1: Raylian Movement was founded in nineteen seventy three or seventy four.
Speaker 1: I think I've seen seventy four, but could be seventy
Speaker 1: three by its chief profit Riyal or rail Rayal born
Speaker 1: Claude Vorrilon, and Vorlon introduces his own life in his
Speaker 1: book by saying, ever since I was nine years old,
Speaker 1: I've had but one passion, motor racing. So, Harry, you've
Speaker 1: got your your technological You're in already. But the Raelians
Speaker 1: believe in a branch of intelligent design, the idea that
Speaker 1: human life was created. It didn't, you know, evolve from
Speaker 1: innerent matter, but that it was created in a conscious
Speaker 1: act of creation. But they believe in the kind of
Speaker 1: intelligent design that most intelligent design advocates like to skip over,
Speaker 1: which is the notion that life was engineered not by
Speaker 1: supernatural god or gods, but by a race of extraterrestrial scientists. Right,
Speaker 1: They're called the Eloheim. So what does this word mean?
Speaker 1: You might have heard it before, Eloheim is a word
Speaker 1: that 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 out 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 seventy three, he was out motoring,
Speaker 1: you know, because he has a passion for motor racing
Speaker 1: out in France, so to speak, and he stopped at
Speaker 1: a volcano that was overlooking Claremont Ferrand in central southern France,
Speaker 1: and he parked his car and got out to sort
Speaker 1: of like walk and jog around the volcanic crater, and
Speaker 1: there he saw an aerial vehicle coming toward him, and
Speaker 1: at first, he says, he thought it was a helicopter,
Speaker 1: but then he noticed it was completely silent, and then
Speaker 1: he realized it was a flying saucer. He says it
Speaker 1: was about seven meters in diameter two point five meters
Speaker 1: in height, so, you know, kind of modest as far
Speaker 1: as flying saucers go. And a stairway descends out of
Speaker 1: the bottom of it, and a being comes out to
Speaker 1: meet him, and he says, at first he thought it
Speaker 1: was a child because it was only four ft tall.
Speaker 1: He says, his eyes were slightly almond shaped, his hair
Speaker 1: was black and long, and he had a small black beard.
Speaker 1: I like that there's facial hair with these aliens so
Speaker 1: so often there they don't get to rock the facial
Speaker 1: hair exactly. Yeah, they're they're way too smooth. Usually it's
Speaker 1: kind of strange. But anyway, that this being proceeded to
Speaker 1: have a conversation with Rilon, informing him that he had
Speaker 1: visited Earth many times before and that he had chosen
Speaker 1: Rillon specifically to speak to on that day, and it
Speaker 1: told him that the alien told him to come back
Speaker 1: the next day to bring his Bible and something to
Speaker 1: take notes with, and so then it instructed him on
Speaker 1: many truths about the origins of life on Earth and
Speaker 1: the real meanings of stories in the Bible. And then
Speaker 1: of course Vorrillon later under the name ril published books
Speaker 1: on the subject and founded the Riley and or Rileyan movement.
Speaker 1: So the main basic idea is that life on Earth
Speaker 1: was created by a group of extraterrestrial scientists and then
Speaker 1: a laboratory, yes, and that we were created in the
Speaker 1: image of those scientists. And so their beliefs in general
Speaker 1: have a lot in common with the various like ancient
Speaker 1: astronauts theories. If you ever watched any of those TV
Speaker 1: shows where it's like, what happened? How do they build
Speaker 1: the pyramids? Aliens? Yeah, I mean, basically it comes down
Speaker 1: to the fact that you can take any ancient text
Speaker 1: that deals with supernatural entities interacting with humanity, and you
Speaker 1: can easily reread, reinterpret any of them as humans dealing
Speaker 1: with extraterrestrials. And it's it's often a really you know,
Speaker 1: far unnaginative exercise because it turns everything in its head,
Speaker 1: it puts things in a modern perspective, and and and
Speaker 1: you know, you know, ultimately we're talking about the exact
Speaker 1: same scenario. So that kind of of reinterpretation you just
Speaker 1: see throughout ancient astronaut thinking, right. So yeah, Ryal explains
Speaker 1: in in his book Intelligent Design, Message from the Designers
Speaker 1: how these beings explained to him that like the narrative
Speaker 1: traditions of Judaism and Christianity, are all actually misrememberings or
Speaker 1: misinterpretations of ancient interactions with these extraterrestrial creatures, the Eloheam
Speaker 1: and their technology. I'm going to pick my favorite example
Speaker 1: the site, which is this is a section from the
Speaker 1: book about how the Ark of the Covenant is actually
Speaker 1: a nuclear powered space radio. Makes perfect sense to me.
Speaker 1: So he says, telepathy is a means of communication between
Speaker 1: the creators and human beings, was only possible when the
Speaker 1: Eloheam were in proximity to the Earth. When they were
Speaker 1: on their distant planet or elsewhere, they could not communicate
Speaker 1: in this way. For this reason, they set up a
Speaker 1: 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 em rods. That worried emmerrods, I think is generally
Speaker 1: interpreted to mean some kind of like hemorrhoid or tumor.
Speaker 1: Uh And so this is I don't know, I'd say
Speaker 1: that's a pretty clever interpretation of that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: I kind of doubt many biblical scholars would give much
Speaker 1: credence to it. But uh no, I think that's a
Speaker 1: that's a wonderful uh you know, overlay of science and
Speaker 1: science fiction over you know, a magical object from 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 Aralians 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: Ralians 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 alter, they embrace and and advocate human
Speaker 1: cloning as a as a necessary technology for the advancement
Speaker 1: of the species. Yeah. And in fact, in two thousand two,
Speaker 1: the Ralians claim to have cloned a human being. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is probably where a lot of people have her
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 Raelian bishop, and she claimed that her company, an
Speaker 1: organization called Clone Aid not to be confused with clonas
Speaker 1: Uh and not to be confused with Clone Aid. The
Speaker 1: Clone Benefit Concert, which was a company originally founded in
Speaker 1: an earlier incarnation by Royal himself, had successfully cloned an
Speaker 1: American woman and produced a healthy baby clone named Eve.
Speaker 1: And media reports at the time were really skeptical, 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
Speaker 1: disposal 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 resleaving of human consciousness that one encounters and say,
Speaker 1: Richard K. Morgan science fiction, So you could live forever
Speaker 1: because here you've cloned the body and then boop, just
Speaker 1: transfer your your mind into the new body and flush
Speaker 1: the old one. Right. Well, this is always a big
Speaker 1: problem we've talked about when we've talked about trans humanist
Speaker 1: ideas on the other podcast, I work on forward thinking
Speaker 1: that this is always something that occurs to me. People
Speaker 1: seem to be discussing the idea of digital immortality without
Speaker 1: answering the question of like, Okay, maybe you could make
Speaker 1: a copy of your brain, of your memories or something
Speaker 1: 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. It
Speaker 1: seems to me the much easier thing would be it's
Speaker 1: like you make a copy of yourself and then you
Speaker 1: die and then there's a copy of you, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is terrifying and it's but but also you know, that's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's also yeah, a form of immortality
Speaker 1: that that lines up with our scientific understanding of how
Speaker 1: we work. Yeah, I say, with the reorganism, you do
Speaker 1: get this overall sense of science and futurism as articles
Speaker 1: of the faith. Um. And it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to discuss a faithful of UFOs cloning and weird
Speaker 1: sexuality is ridiculous, Uh, even as we cling to these
Speaker 1: ancient models and traditions that again involved a Joel's coming
Speaker 1: down from above, bodily resurrection, physical immortality, and also lots
Speaker 1: of weird sexuality as well. Well, I feel like that's
Speaker 1: that ties into that that's sort of like abhorrence of
Speaker 1: the new thing that I was talking about earlier, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that that we find the presence of too
Speaker 1: much technology and our religious rights and in our religious
Speaker 1: holy places as kind of like somehow vaguely blasphemous or
Speaker 1: crass or or it just doesn't feel right. And I
Speaker 1: can totally see this parallel. When you look at the
Speaker 1: beliefs of the Rillyans, I see a whole lot of
Speaker 1: parallels with a lot of ancient religions. And I wonder
Speaker 1: if one of the only major differences in my attitude
Speaker 1: towards it is just that it's new. Yeah, you see
Speaker 1: that all. I mean, even as we were talking about it,
Speaker 1: we're kind of having fun with the concept. But with
Speaker 1: some of the concepts they were, you know, they bring
Speaker 1: up such as, I mean, I love the idea that
Speaker 1: I think Satan was Arablian, not Arablian. Satan was el
Speaker 1: him from the home planet. It was opposed to creating
Speaker 1: new life. And then Lucifer is another one that is
Speaker 1: evolved in the the generation of life here on Earth
Speaker 1: and also had a role in creating the dinosaurs. Like
Speaker 1: all that, I mean, you can't help but laugh because
Speaker 1: it's it's also kind of hysterical in its own way.
Speaker 1: But it's not really that different from anything that exists
Speaker 1: in any ancient religion. It's just we're more willing to
Speaker 1: buy into some weird, outlandish story that was written down
Speaker 1: by some dude if that dude lived, you know, five
Speaker 1: hundred years ago rather than fifty years ago. Right, we
Speaker 1: just naturally assigned more authority to the ancient regime. Now,
Speaker 1: in discussing religion and technology in the modern day, we
Speaker 1: cannot 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. Yea. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: would be pretty obvious is the E meter, and we
Speaker 1: can come back to that in a minute. But the
Speaker 1: first thing that actually made me think of scientology as
Speaker 1: a technological religion, or at least something that has technology
Speaker 1: deeply embedded in its ideology is literally the use of
Speaker 1: the word technology. See, I've noticed in interviews, like televised
Speaker 1: interviews and things that I've seen with some representatives of
Speaker 1: the Church of Scientology that they use the word technology
Speaker 1: when what they're talking about are the beliefs and practices
Speaker 1: of Scientology. Um, so that kind of doesn't jive with
Speaker 1: how we usually use the word technology. Like I was saying,
Speaker 1: it's usually a machine, right, A technology is usually a mechanism,
Speaker 1: and they're talking about it more as in like how
Speaker 1: a doctrine can be a technology, yeah, or even you
Speaker 1: can think of it in terms, I guess of a blueprint, Right,
Speaker 1: I have a blueprint for a steam engine. Sure, steam
Speaker 1: engine is a technology, but also the blueprint is is
Speaker 1: a technology in itself because it tells you how did
Speaker 1: the process by which you create this thing? And that's
Speaker 1: ultimately what they're they're offering their followers, right a a
Speaker 1: blueprint to become this better engine totally. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: can see it like that. It is in in the
Speaker 1: dictionary definition since the technology perhaps like it is a
Speaker 1: at least an application of what they believe to be
Speaker 1: scientific knowledge to a practical purpose. Yeah. So you see
Speaker 1: mention of the dionetic spiritual healing technology of study technology,
Speaker 1: and they also have their Religious Technology Center which aims
Speaker 1: to quote protect the public from a misapplication of the
Speaker 1: technology and to see that the religious technologies of dionetics
Speaker 1: and scientology remain in proper hands and are properly ministered.
Speaker 1: So it's like the f d A of the technologies
Speaker 1: of Scientology. Yeah, you know, in terms of or certainly
Speaker 1: the uh the division of Scientology concerned with with maintaining
Speaker 1: those copyrights and those patents. Sure. Yeah. But then of
Speaker 1: course there is actually within Scientology in their actual practices
Speaker 1: a device that you've probably heard of 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,
Speaker 1: right that 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 the meto the motto. And this is a
Speaker 1: device for displaying and or recording the electrodermal activity or
Speaker 1: the e d A of a human being. It's actually
Speaker 1: one of the factors covered in a standard polygraph test
Speaker 1: as well as in scientific studies regarding human emotions. 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. But science scientologists have been using it
Speaker 1: as an auditing tool. Um, and they have their own
Speaker 1: patents for their own emeter devices that they continue to
Speaker 1: to update. UM. Now, what is auditing. That's an entire
Speaker 1: that's an entire conversation in and of itself. But essentially,
Speaker 1: you have an auditor that is a meeting with a
Speaker 1: member of the faith and they are hooking them up
Speaker 1: to the E meter to record these uh these reactions
Speaker 1: in the dermis, basically their emotional reaction to stimuli, words, phrases, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And the Church of Scientology itself describes auditing UH as this.
Speaker 1: They say the goal of auditing is to restore being,
Speaker 1: this and ability, and this is accomplished by one helping
Speaker 1: individuals rid themselves of any spiritual disabilities and to increasing
Speaker 1: spiritual abilities. Yeah, this is interesting. I mean it seems
Speaker 1: to me that I certainly, not being all that familiar
Speaker 1: with the practice, can't say exactly how it's used, but
Speaker 1: it seems like a rough analogy too, if you were
Speaker 1: to hook yourself up to a polygraph test when you
Speaker 1: go in for a Catholic confession. Yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the vibe I I'm getting off of it as as well,
Speaker 1: that it's you know, it's it's about this individual meeting
Speaker 1: with you too to audit you, to to to to
Speaker 1: discuss and and figure out your sort of emotional your
Speaker 1: psychic state right, and to do that, you know, they'll
Speaker 1: throughout some words and see if those words trouble you
Speaker 1: or you know what kind of an emotional resonance they
Speaker 1: create in your body. And so in this we we
Speaker 1: have a wonderful example of a a modern religion that
Speaker 1: is using modern technology, that has adapted modern technology for
Speaker 1: its sacred rights and observances. Now, again, scientology is a
Speaker 1: subject unto itself, and maybe when we should come back
Speaker 1: to in a future episode, but we mainly just wanted
Speaker 1: to focus on the the use of the E meter here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also I think the general attitude towards the idea
Speaker 1: of technology and what role it plays in the religion,
Speaker 1: because they're the word seems to be held up in
Speaker 1: a positive light. It's it's something that's reacting against this
Speaker 1: thing we've been talking about, like the profanity of technology,
Speaker 1: technology being this kind of like new fangled, unbeautiful thing
Speaker 1: that that should be kept out of the sacred sphere
Speaker 1: of religion. These are ideologies that are actually really about
Speaker 1: intentionally bringing technology in. It's not incidental, it's not intruding
Speaker 1: on the religion. It's a core part of it. And
Speaker 1: I think this should finally bring us to the idea
Speaker 1: of the singularity Ah, yes, it always comes back to
Speaker 1: the singularity, right. Well, I mean this is a popular
Speaker 1: topic among weirdos like US and the singularity. If I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've probably heard of it before, but just in
Speaker 1: case you haven't, what's the general idea of the singularity.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the the purpose of the new motor.
Speaker 1: It's somewhat egg but but it's a general point in
Speaker 1: human evolution where we sort of achieve a level of
Speaker 1: technological sophistication, where suddenly technology advances so rapidly that we
Speaker 1: cannot keep up with it that it revolutionizes and changes
Speaker 1: human nature. A lot of times, it's associated with the
Speaker 1: sort of a moment of transition to being transhumanist, like
Speaker 1: where human biology merges with technology and you get this
Speaker 1: new breed of humanity that's like cyborg basically, that's ultimately
Speaker 1: uplifted and transformed to a status of an almost godlike
Speaker 1: power by their technology. Yeah, kind of a point where
Speaker 1: you stop talking about, oh, this is human human race
Speaker 1: and they have technology, but rather the two or one
Speaker 1: or perhaps even the biological aspect of the species is
Speaker 1: secondary to the technological presence. Right, So, one of the
Speaker 1: big names in singularity thinking would be raker as while
Speaker 1: he's someone who has been very positive about this idea,
Speaker 1: who has had a lot of interesting and good things
Speaker 1: to say about it. Uh. He sort of popularized the
Speaker 1: notion of some of these transhumanist notions in a book
Speaker 1: called The Age of Spiritual Machines, and then also in
Speaker 1: a book called The Singularity Is Near and I think curs.
Speaker 1: While and at least some supporters of the idea of
Speaker 1: the singularity would disavow the idea that singularity thinking is
Speaker 1: religious in nature, despite the fact that the phrase spiritual machines.
Speaker 1: That's that's your argument. But there are some critics and
Speaker 1: observers who do like to attribute sort of aspects of
Speaker 1: being a religion to singularity thinking. And one of those
Speaker 1: 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 poly 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 something where people are sort of uplifted to
Speaker 1: a higher state of existence into like a newer, better
Speaker 1: flesh kind of a situation. Yeah, and also you could
Speaker 1: think about it as in some ways treating technology truly
Speaker 1: like a god. That it is, on one hand, something
Speaker 1: that we're creating, but on the other hand, it is
Speaker 1: a force that is kind of unstoppable and at some
Speaker 1: point beyond our comprehension that comes in and imposes its
Speaker 1: will on us. Its will is hopefully benevolent. But you
Speaker 1: can get opposing viewpoints about that from many other people
Speaker 1: who are worried about the the advances in artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: and what they'll mean for human life. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's an interesting critique in an interesting way of
Speaker 1: looking at at singularitarianism as it might be. Is this
Speaker 1: a religion? And if so, what does it mean for
Speaker 1: all the people, especially all the people who are power
Speaker 1: players in Silicon Valley who are subscribers to this notion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because at 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 uh religions, 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 their inspiration. The Greeks.
Speaker 1: The Greek gods tend to be about the worst because
Speaker 1: there they tend to be the pettiest and the most
Speaker 1: carnal I find. But but yeah, do we end up
Speaker 1: looking at a benevolent vision of this or a more
Speaker 1: diabolical one? I tend to I tend to follow the
Speaker 1: the the E. N. M. Banks culture UH series approach,
Speaker 1: where you have kind of a benevolent to AI force.
Speaker 1: It becomes in a way the guardians of humanity, but
Speaker 1: also the the ruling power of humanity. Yeah, I've on
Speaker 1: my other podcast a lot of Hymdenhut about you know what,
Speaker 1: what I really think about the idea of transcendental artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence and trans humanism and stuff. In the end, I
Speaker 1: guess I've read enough persuasive stuff in both ways that
Speaker 1: I can't really say what I think it would truly
Speaker 1: be like in reality, though I can certainly see why
Speaker 1: it would take on a spiritual dimension in the minds
Speaker 1: of many people. Yeah, I always I always come back
Speaker 1: to There's one quote in uh Gibson's neurom Answer in
Speaker 1: which someone comments that you know for ages. We believed
Speaker 1: in making packs with devils and demons, and it was
Speaker 1: impossible until we made it possible through technology in the
Speaker 1: creation of ais that you can enter into bargains with it,
Speaker 1: as occurs in the book. And uh. And that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of part and partial to some of the singularity ideas,
Speaker 1: where it's at least when we think of them in
Speaker 1: terms of religion, that technology be to make possible things
Speaker 1: that were previously purely supernatural and from a scientific perspective
Speaker 1: non existent, such as the afterlife. Because we've talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, the possibilities of digitizing human consciousness and the
Speaker 1: human experience and placing that digital consciousness within a virtual world,
Speaker 1: it becomes conceivable to have a virtual heaven, of virtual hell,
Speaker 1: of virtual purgatory in which to file away your your
Speaker 1: the minds of believers after their bodily death. Sure well,
Speaker 1: I mean definitely, people like rakerswill have envisioned a digital
Speaker 1: immortality or some form of technologically enabled immortality. And if
Speaker 1: you actually could achieve that, I'm skeptical 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 you know, sort of black
Speaker 1: mirror area of trying to figure out how you're supposed
Speaker 1: to treat this thing. Um, you know, is if it's
Speaker 1: if it's not just completely happy all the time, then
Speaker 1: are you? I mean, what kind of monstrous thing have
Speaker 1: you done? Here? And then again, so we're imagining digital
Speaker 1: immortality as being a sort of embodiment of heaven. But
Speaker 1: what if you didn't like your digital immortality. What if
Speaker 1: you didn't like your digital immortality and then you were
Speaker 1: unable to die, you'd be like the you know, sort
Speaker 1: of the immortal wanderer from various myths, right where you
Speaker 1: just sort of roaming across the digital countryside, hoping that
Speaker 1: one day the divine forces, the ai s or what
Speaker 1: have you, will will give you the gift of death
Speaker 1: so you can just have sweet oblivion. Man, So that
Speaker 1: William Gibson quote you had is still sticking with me.
Speaker 1: I think that's really interesting. Yeah. I keep going back
Speaker 1: to the uh, like we have to invent the devil
Speaker 1: before we could sell our soul to him. Yeah, and UH,
Speaker 1: you know, the virtual afterlife ideas come up in a
Speaker 1: number of short stories. I've read that the first example
Speaker 1: was supposedly, uh, American sci fi writer Frederick Pole in
Speaker 1: a short story titled The Tunnel under the World from
Speaker 1: fifty five. I 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 Banks.
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier his novel Surface Detail, which deals in
Speaker 1: large part with a 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 have faiths that maintain virtual
Speaker 1: hells for believers that we're judged 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 of living people today. Is say that theology
Speaker 1: of hell itself is kind of a horrible idea and
Speaker 1: should be you know, we should weigh like we should
Speaker 1: lay waste to that as well. And so in this
Speaker 1: book by Banks, this virtual war over their existence eventually
Speaker 1: spills out into an actual real war in the universe
Speaker 1: in very, very fascinating ways. That is a truly fascinating idea.
Speaker 1: I'd like to read that book now. It's good. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend uh the works of the late uh I N. M. Banks. Good,
Speaker 1: great stuff, great science fiction that's you know, concerned with
Speaker 1: where technology is taking us, but also you know, some
Speaker 1: of the the philosophical existential problems of the current times. Alright,
Speaker 1: So there you have it, Uh, the end of our
Speaker 1: two parter on techno religion, the convergence of technology and religion,
Speaker 1: from the earliest prayer wheels to the distant possibility of
Speaker 1: a singularity birth God. This has been a wild ride.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me on for this forever. Hey, Hey,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you for joining me. Hey. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: you want to check out more episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, head on over to stuff to Blow
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Speaker 1: out to social media accounts like our Facebook and our Twitter,
Speaker 1: and our tumbler and Hey. On the landing pages for
Speaker 1: these two episodes, you'll find links out to some of
Speaker 1: the materials we've discussed here, such as that book The
Speaker 1: Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear. If you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us about any strange stories you've
Speaker 1: had about the interaction of technology and religion, how you
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