WEBVTT - From the Vault: Techno-Religion, Part 2 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:07.600 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:10.879 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:14.280 We're going to take a walk into the vault. That's right, 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:19.520 we're going back to June. This was our Techno Religion 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:23.280 episode two. Yes, so we're re airing part two of 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:27.560 our Techno Religion for the Masses episodes from last Saturday. 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:30.000 We reaired part one. This is going to be part two, 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:32.720 so if you've already listened to that, you should jump 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:39.559 right in and joined the Holy Robot War. Welcome to 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:49.000 Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:50.800 welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:53.560 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is part 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:57.720 two in our two part exploration of techno Religion of 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:01.640 the convergence of religion and technology. So before you listen 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:03.920 to this episode, you should definitely go back and check 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:07.640 out our part one episode of Techno Religion. And at 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:09.760 the beginning of the last episode, I told the story 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:13.040 about a strange incident taking place at High Rock Tower 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:16.800 in Lynn, Massachusetts in the eighteen fifties, where people were 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:21.679 trying to build an electro mechanical messiah, and the chief 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:26.080 intellectual architect of this event was a guy named John 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:31.760 Murray Spear. We now continue the story. So who was 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:36.440 John Murray Spear. He's in some ways a much forgotten 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:40.440 and overlooked figure from the sort of radical reform movement 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:43.840 of the early eighteen hundreds. So John m Rey Spear 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:47.760 was born in Boston in eighteen o four. His father 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:50.000 was a blacksmith. He had a brother named Charles who 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:51.800 was a year older than him, and he and his 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:56.360 family were members of the Universalist Church. And this was 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.560 a Christian church that was popular in some parts of 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:04.080 New England back then. And the Universalist Church rejected the 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:06.480 doctrine of hell. That's one of the most notable things 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:09.880 about them. They rejected the doctrine of hell and eternal 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:14.000 damn nation, and they preached that the salvation of Christ 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:18.040 was applied to all people unconditionally. I like that. Yeah. 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:22.960 And they also were very often associated with political radical 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:27.680 reform causes. They were tied up in abolitionist movements. Yeah. Yeah. 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:31.360 So there was a somewhat utopian strain of thinking about 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:35.560 earthly life, not just the afterlife, in the Universalist circles 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:38.400 back then. So John Murray Spear and his brother Charles 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.440 grew up in the church of Reverend John Murray, for 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:45.360 whom John Murray Spear was named. And young John they said, 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:48.360 you know, he was fond of going to solitary places 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:51.480 and sort of thinking deep thoughts. In his early life 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:54.160 he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, which I had no 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:56.960 idea about this, But according to the book which is 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.280 my main source on John Murray Spear, which is called 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:02.840 The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear by John Benedict Baucher, 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:09.800 back then shoemakers were particularly radical and bookish group. Have 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:11.720 you ever heard this, No, I never have. So the 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:16.560 ideas shoemakers would have young apprentices, and the youngest apprentices 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:19.600 would go out each day and collect a whole bunch 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:22.800 of pamphlets and newspapers for the day, and then would 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:25.680 sit there reading them out loud to all the shoemakers 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:28.400 and older apprentice shoemakers while they did their work for 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:31.520 the day. And I wonder why this is shoemakers, why 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:34.240 shoemaker And of course the shoemakers would listen to the 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:37.080 stuff and they'd comment on it. And sort of have debates. 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:41.360 I think maybe this is just completely uninformed. I wonder 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.400 if it's because shoemakers have a job where they're mostly stationary, 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:48.960 but it's not too loud. That's true, But that's a 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:51.920 good point because essentially they're listening to podcasts right, right, 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:54.320 And today a lot of people listen to podcasts like 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:56.320 if you're you know, you're working on a spreadsheet, or 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.080 you're doing something at your computer, or you're driving. Right, 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:01.600 These are all tacit that that are not too loud, 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:04.680 and they don't require a level of concentration that is 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.120 so intense that you can't hear a couple of people 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:11.320 talk about some topic or another. Right. So, John Murray Spear, 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:14.720 the young John Murray Spear, got some early practice sort 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.400 of dealing with radical ideas and participating in public conversations 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.040 this way through being a shoemaker, and through the influence 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:25.360 of the Universalist Church, especially eventually through the Universalist luminary 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.760 jose Ah Balu, who's a big name in Universalist thinking 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:32.240 at this time, and eventually John Murray Spear went on 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:36.159 to become a Universalist minister himself, and he traveled around 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:40.680 and ministered in several different UH congregations and did a 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:45.440 lot of radical reform activism, what we would call activism now. 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:49.280 So he became deeply involved in the movement to abolish 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:52.160 the death penalty UH. He and his brother Charles were 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:55.120 both very much involved with that. He became very much 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:59.560 involved in women's rights and in the abolition of slavery, 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:02.920 especially John Mary Spear was very much an abolitionist. He 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:06.720 he campaigned against slavery constantly, and he was also, I 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:08.200 would say in a way that was sort of ahead 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:12.960 of his time, campaigning against what we today know as racism, 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:15.200 though I think back then a lot of white people 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:17.640 didn't even have a word for that or know what 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:21.080 to call it. But he was against prejudice, not just slavery, 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:25.360 but prejudice against people of of different skin tones. And 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:28.000 so there's a lot to admire about this guy. I 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:31.400 think he was. He was active in William Lloyd Garrison's 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:34.839 abolitionist movements. Actually, there's a great quote from this book 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:38.600 where William Lloyd Garrison was introducing Spear as a speaker 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:42.279 at an abolitionist convention and he made this horrible pun 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.640 but it sort of reflects his role. He says although 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:49.120 weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual. We 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:53.960 do not object at all to the use of the spear. Now, 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:58.080 this apparently that he's this like a Miltonian reference here 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:00.320 as well. Right, Yeah, this is a reference to the 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:05.159 angel Etheriel in in Paradise Lost, which has a spear 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:09.200 that essentially exposes the true nature of whatever it touches. 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:13.719 It's you know, the it's the glasses from they live, okay, um, 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:16.760 So the Ituriel can touch the spirit to Satan when 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:19.159 Satan's in the form of a toad and reveal Satan's 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:22.000 true nature at Satan. And this was a common metaphor 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:24.440 in the abolitionist movement at the time, and I think 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.360 more generally the radical reform movements of the time, to 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:31.599 sort of expose the hypocrisy and oppression of the standard 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:35.680 governments and institutions of the time. So to summarize this 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:38.599 is a this is a guy who is very concerned 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:43.080 with the real world, oh totally. But then John Murray 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:47.680 spirit took a turn. And while still i'd say in 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.120 a lot of ways being concerned with the real world, 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:54.200 he took a turn towards the spirit world. He became 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:56.159 involved with what was known at the time as the 0:06:56.240 --> 0:06:59.880 spiritualist movement. So this for I think the first real 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.120 all piece of evidence here that was in this book 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:06.159 I read. It was in August eighteen forty seven, John 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.800 Murray Spear penned a review in an anti death penalty 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:13.520 newspaper that he was co editor of called The Prisoner's Friend, 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:16.720 and he penned a review of a book about spiritualism, 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:20.200 which was The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:24.360 a Voice to Mankind by Andrew Jackson Davis. And this 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:27.600 was sort of a work in the emerging field of spiritualism. 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:29.880 And Davis claimed to be in contact with the spirit 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:34.240 of Emmanuel Swedenborg and like channeling his statements from beyond 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:37.520 the grave. And the book alleged that there were these 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:41.000 various universal laws at play, and it sort of looked 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:45.200 at religion from a rationalist angle. Actually, this is a 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:48.080 thing that might seem weird to us today, but at 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:51.640 the time spiritualism represented what some people believe to be 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:56.440 a more scientific approach to the supernatural. So you might 0:07:56.480 --> 0:08:00.720 have traditional religions that are based on received tradition, whereas 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:05.480 spiritualism people sitting around channeling spirits was actually an empirically 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:09.480 observed phenomenon. Yeah, you might not believe that they were 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:13.240 having real supernatural experiences, but the scientific thinking of the 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:15.600 time was, well, at least we're we're looking at real 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:18.680 phenomena here and we can make judgments on them. Yeah, 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:21.160 I mean you you look back to the spiritualist movement. 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:23.800 I mean even in some of the the fringier stuff 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:26.440 with seance an ectoplasm, right, even if it even though 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:29.680 ectoplasm was a was a con it was an attempt 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:31.920 to say, look, here is physical proof, some sort of 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:36.440 biological manifestation of the spirit. Right. So a lot of 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.880 these people who were into spiritualism were people who were 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:44.280 deeply desperately yearning for something to cling onto about true 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:49.400 messages from beyond, real transcendental knowledge. So some Universalist ministries 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:52.560 at the time were opposed to spiritualism. But in eighteen 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:55.800 fifty one, John Murray Spear broke ties with the Universalist 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:58.960 Church after refusing to affirm a simple creed of the 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:02.199 Church which is basedly pledging allegiance to the guidance of 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.280 the Bible and the person of Jesus, because he's he 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:08.320 saw that as too constrictive on on sort of freedom 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:11.440 of thought by that point, and it seems like in 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:15.719 some way he began to at least secretly train himself 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:19.720 as a seer and practitioner of mesmeric trances, you know, 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:24.880 like the mesmerism. So on March thirty one, eighteen fifty two, 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:28.960 John Murray Spear actually began his career as a spirit medium, 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:33.120 and this was a career with somewhat mixed reception among 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:37.160 his social circles. He'd get messages from spirits from beyond 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:40.040 the grave, sometimes through automatic writing, where he would sit 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:42.520 there and just start writing whatever came to his mind 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:47.160 and believing it came from a spirit. Sometimes automatic drawing. 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:49.600 Some of these drawings sound pretty funny, where he'd like 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:53.240 draw a human and then like draws spirit guided labels 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:56.719 for all their body parts. Uh. Sometimes through speech, so 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:59.880 sometimes he might just get up and give an extemporaneous 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.280 beach on the subject he didn't know anything about, believing 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:07.320 he was channeling messages from someone who did know something 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:10.880 about it, who was in the spirit world. So in spiritualism, 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:12.880 like I mean, there's a sense of evolution to this 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:15.160 as well, because it's the idea that we die our 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:18.240 spirit passes on and as spirits we continue to evolve, 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:21.280 and the spirit world is filled with the individuals that 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:23.760 have have a lot of of of knowledge, a lot 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:26.600 of wisdom to share with the living. And John Murray 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:31.000 Spear is essentially opening himself up along these lines as 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:33.319 just anytime you want to pop in and I am open, 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.480 Mike Night for humanity, just pop into me. And so 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:38.600 so he's popping in and out of the real John 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:41.240 Murray Spear and just becoming whoever is coming up to 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:43.959 the podium to speak. That's right, Yeah, yeah, exactly. So 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:47.520 John Murray Spear and his daughter Sophronia also Sophronia's I 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:49.960 love that name. Uh, they sort of became a spirit 0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:52.760 medium team. For a while, they were both channeling messages 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.840 of spirits, and for a while he was getting various 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:58.800 kinds of messages. Sometimes like vague messages would tell him 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.600 to travel to a specific place and meet people to 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:06.079 do healing rituals on them. One example was I think 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:09.880 at some point Benjamin Franklin contacted him via spirits and 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:11.800 told him to go visit a lady who had been 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.240 struck by lightning and was ailing. And then also, yeah, 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:17.800 he'd be given these discourses on the nature of reality, 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:21.520 so Benjamin Franklin would inhabit him and speak through him 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:26.240 on the nature of electricity, magnetism, the cosmic ether. There 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:29.320 was also there was a particularly funny story in this 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:32.240 book where John Mary Spear was in Cleveland channeling the 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:35.640 spirit of the dead physician and founding father Benjamin Rush. 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:38.960 And this is a direct quote from his speech in 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.239 speaking of the mortal body, it will be all things considered. 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:44.800 Why is this to commence that what looking at all 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:48.199 things may be considered the most or more strictly speaking, 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:51.840 the more important part, and that is the head in 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.400 the front part, just below the eyes there is what 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:57.800 is generally called by the common people a knows And 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:00.679 here it will be perceived that there are two apartments. 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:06.839 What what does that even mean? Um? But it didn't 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:11.280 stop there, unfortunately he uh so, or maybe fortunately who knows? 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.200 John Mary spirit didn't just get these discourses on the 0:12:14.240 --> 0:12:18.040 nature of humanity. He eventually started getting messages from a 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:21.360 congress of spirits, this great sort of enclay of of 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:24.840 spirits that formed a general assembly in the spirit world. 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:29.440 Uh And these had sub committees basically that would communicate 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:31.880 to him, and they had these great names. One was 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:38.880 the Association of Beneficence. They were also the Associations of Electrizers, Elementizers, 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:45.760 education Izers, Governmentizers, Healthfulizers, and Agriculturalizers. It makes it makes sense, 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:48.640 you know, in terms of the cosmology of the thing, right, 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:53.200 because if if the living human is just the larval form, 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:55.320 and the spirit form is kind of the adult, then 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:57.800 imagine what kind of an adult spirit form someone like 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:01.160 Benjamin Franklin transforms into. I mean, if you have enough 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:03.840 of these individuals floating around in the spirit realm, they're 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:07.360 going to form committees exactly right. So this is where 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:13.080 things got really interesting because the Association of Electrizers, that's 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:15.120 not as sinister as it sounds. I think they were 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:19.439 providing knowledge on the electrification of the world through through technology. 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:23.600 Contacted Spear and said through Spear that they had some 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:27.800 plans that needed to be enacted on Earth, and those 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:32.520 plans were for what they called a new motor, the 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:35.319 new motor, which is the physical channel of the new 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:39.480 motive power, and this is the electro mechanical Messiah. We 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:42.199 began the episode with, all right, at this point, I 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:45.440 should probably jump in and just give just a brief 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:48.880 overview of some of the metaphysics that are play in Spears. 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:51.920 Spiritualism already touched on the we already touched on the 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:55.640 whole idea of the the human. The physical human is 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:58.560 being the larval form of a of a spirit form 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.640 that continues to evolve. Right, But Spears metaphysics actually played 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:06.320 into the supposed mechanics of this machine. Yes um, he 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:09.320 said that the mind has three functions, the human mind 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:15.000 three functions. It receives, stores, and transmits spiritual energy. And 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:17.840 this thought energy is not generated in the mind, so 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:20.400 that it's it's not coming out of the meat inside 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:23.800 your head, but rather it's broadcast into our solar system 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.760 by a cosmic God. And then the Sun acts as 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:29.920 a lens to direct this divine signal down to Earth, 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:35.040 where it collects, of course in north polar reservoirs, and 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:38.480 then it dissipates down to the human minds across the Earth. Right, 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.880 So we're sort of like receivers or repeaters of this 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:46.760 cosmic signal coming from God, the electricity of God's love 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.000 that is channeled through the lens of the Sun. And 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:53.760 notice all of these technological scientific metaphors that are used 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:58.240 in the creation of of of of of a cosmology 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:03.000 for the unseen. Right, So what was this machine actually, Well, 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:06.560 in mundane terms, it was a table with a bunch 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:09.640 of pieces attached to it. Yes, if you were introduced 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.200 to this electrical Messiah, I dare say you would be 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:16.400 disappointed because it is not the large robot Jesus that 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:19.600 you wanted to be. Right, So Spear would continually get 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:23.280 new messages from the Spirits, constantly updating the plans for 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:26.280 the machine, and all of his supporters gathered in this 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:30.000 place I mentioned earlier, the High Rock Tower in Lynn, Massachusetts, 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:32.640 and worked for months on this from the summer of 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:37.520 eighteen fifty three and into eighteen fifty four, constantly making 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:42.400 additions to the machine, changing things based on the spirits specifications. Basically, 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:45.560 there was like a metal stalk uh in some ways. 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:48.000 I think it was said to have resembled across a 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:51.720 cruciform in nature, but it also it had metal parts 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:55.480 extending out to the sides, and then these dangling balls 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:59.800 and antennae of various types. So it's sort of like 0:15:59.840 --> 0:16:05.960 a strange metal Christmas tree cross type object on a 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:10.160 dining room table. Yes, and the descriptions that we were 0:16:10.160 --> 0:16:12.280 reading about it. They were kind of like all over 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:15.120 the place in terms of the was it supposed to do? 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:17.400 Like is it? What is it? What is it physically 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:20.800 supposed to do? What is it sort of metaphorically supposed 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:24.520 to do? Because it it was described as a sacramental presence, 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:27.800 a holy force field generator, a gay way to the 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:31.320 spirit realm uh So, it's kind of like this mechanical 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:35.240 symbolic body that's going to channel the free energy of 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.880 the universe or you know, God's love that radio radiates 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:41.960 out from the cosmic center. It's a north pole aligned 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:47.200 aerial antenna to receive electrical spirit energy. It's um and 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:50.320 then on top of all this again he's he's open 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:52.720 mic night for the spirits and these committees that are speaking. 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:56.120 So when he drops back into just good old John Boy, 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:58.680 he'll he's kind of ambivalent about it at times. He's 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:00.960 kind of like, Oh, I don't know anything about technology. 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:03.120 Is that what those guys are telling you? Okay, so 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:05.760 that sounds all right, But he had some very enthusiastic 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:09.320 supporters who were there to tell him, no, John, it's great, 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:13.600 we're working on it. But to compound matters. Further, it 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:17.040 wasn't simply going to be a sort of like a 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:23.760 repeater or receiver, collector and retransmitter of God's electrical psychic energy. 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:27.320 It was also going to be a perpetual motion machine. Yes, 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:32.000 something that uh, apparently the science at the time believed 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:35.040 could not exist. That's still pretty much considered to be, right, 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.879 there's no such thing as perpetual motion machine. Motion always 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.919 sort of gets lost to entropy, transformed into heat. But 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.399 they wanted to create a perpetual motion machine or quote 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:49.160 a self moving machine, right, self moving in the same 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:51.800 way that that God was perceived as being self moving, 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:55.119 and potentially in the same sense that a spirit with 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:58.000 free will is considered to be a self moving soul 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:01.360 by some interpretations. Right. So they want this piece of technology, 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:05.119 this new motor, to be not just an effect but 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:08.000 also a cause in itself, and in that way it 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:12.240 would be kind of like creating a new man or 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:17.760 a new God. Yes, but also in it's kind of 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:21.200 complicated because it's like, in a sense it's it's also 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.760 just about the idea of it should inspire everyone, right, right, 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:27.679 But then they also you do expect the thing to 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:30.639 do something into work right, so that they clearly thought 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:34.200 that it would have some major significance in transforming the world, 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:37.639 in ushering in some kind of s schatological event. They 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:40.760 thought of it as as a sort of like transition 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:43.520 to the end times, though not necessarily the end times 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:46.720 in terms of the apocalyptic imagery we often think of, 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:48.639 or anything negative. They thought of it as like the 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.240 new Age, you know, the new heavens and the new Earth. 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:57.240 Everything changed, transformed, the apotheosis, things brought up out of 0:18:57.320 --> 0:19:01.440 mundane existence into the new realm of life. And kind 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:04.000 of a sense too that it it is that spear 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:06.760 that we're talking about earlier, that angelic sphere that reveals truth. 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:09.359 But the truth that it would supposedly reveal would be 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:12.679 the the importance, the power of spiritualism and the and 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:16.560 the reality of this uh, this these met metaphysics that 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:20.359 John has been revealing to HISS followers. Yeah, now the 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:23.440 story doesn't in there. Actually, I very much recommend this book. 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:26.600 I mentioned earlier the remarkable life of John Murray, spear 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:29.960 agitator for the Spirit Land. Because they continued to try 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:32.720 experiments to get this thing to work. Unfortunately, it did 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:36.760 not usher in this eschatological event um, but that they 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:40.480 tried to imbue it with personal magnetism to get it 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:43.200 to turn on, so that they had this belief sort 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:46.359 of tied to mesmerism and things, that people had these 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:49.679 sort of spirit essences, and they'd have certain pairs of 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.439 people of particular types try to transmit their personal or 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.160 psychic energy to the machine to get it to animate 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:59.000 and come to life. They gave it a ritual birthing 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:02.920 ceremony with a human mother that did not go well 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:05.239 with some of the town's folk, who found that a 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:08.360 moral outrage and then uh, sort of took up arms 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:12.080 against the machine. Uh. There's a whole story of sort 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:16.399 of how this machine was received, but it also was 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:19.640 received sort of as an embarrassment. And I think this 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:22.880 is one of the reasons John Murray Spear is not 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:26.040 as well remembered in history as he might have been, 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:28.520 because I think a lot of the other radical reformers 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:32.920 of the time, we're like, uh, I don't know how 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:37.120 much we want to be associated with Mr Spear, Right, Yeah, 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:38.920 I mean I can define definitely see it because ultimately 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.679 the thing did not work. Yeah, the thing did not 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:45.240 It didn't meet any of the more elaborate other worldly 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:48.520 expectations for the thing, and it didn't. It didn't even 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:53.919 really need like the bare threshold required to impress the 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:57.119 people who poured their lives into it. Sure, But another 0:20:57.200 --> 0:20:59.600 thing that I think is worth mentioning is that this 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:04.000 kind of thinking isn't quite as obscure as it would 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:07.040 seem to us, because there were thoughts back in the 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:13.760 nineteenth century about the perhaps borderline supernatural or psychic psychically 0:21:13.800 --> 0:21:17.920 significant power of electricity. And that's true. Um yeah, back 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:21.320 in the nineteenth century, uh it, electricity had a noble, 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:25.280 if not a divine reputation, to the extent that members 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:29.119 of the scientific community protested the idea of the electric 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:33.200 chair as a degradation of both electricity and the scientific 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:38.199 breakthroughs that made electrocuting a criminal possible. So there was 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:41.000 sort of like a new a G paradigm laid on 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:45.160 top of the idea of electrical technology. On that note, 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:47.160 we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:51.120 we are going to move forward in time and discuss 0:21:51.160 --> 0:22:05.639 some more um convergences of technology and religion. All Right, 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:08.520 we're back. We're discussing religion now and in the age 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:11.040 of science, but also in the age of science fiction, 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:15.680 in the age of space, and in the age of UFOs. Right, 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:17.639 so this has got to be one of the most 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:21.600 obvious places that religion could go when it's changed by technology. 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:25.639 Aliens exactly, right, I mean, you've got to believe because 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:28.720 in so many ways, I can't remember who I heard 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:30.960 make this point, but but it's something I heard someone 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:33.720 say a long time ago, which was the idea that 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:37.760 if you explained our idea of what aliens are to 0:22:38.040 --> 0:22:42.360 ancient people's, they wouldn't even really make a distinction between 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:44.920 what we're talking about when we say aliens and their 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:49.480 concepts of God's We have this distinction between okay, natural 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:54.960 aliens that's you know, standard natural phenomenon and supernatural entities, 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:59.159 but they didn't necessarily make that distinction that aliens to 0:22:59.240 --> 0:23:02.080 them would be Yeah, okay, so they they're very powerful 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:05.520 beings from a place up above, and they can travel 0:23:05.560 --> 0:23:07.760 down to Earth if they want, and you know, we're 0:23:07.800 --> 0:23:11.600 powerless to oppose them. Yeah. Essentially, an alien is a 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:16.840 supernatural entity that is described and wrapped up in in 0:23:16.840 --> 0:23:19.719 in in the keepings of science, in the traditions of science. 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:22.920 So that it it makes at least UH, it makes 0:23:22.960 --> 0:23:26.439 some level of scientific sense instead of non scientific. And 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:29.120 if you look back through time, like any anytime someone 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:31.920 is dealt with hallucinations, anytime someone has dealt with sleep 0:23:31.960 --> 0:23:35.800 paralysis or some other encounter. You know, what was once 0:23:36.040 --> 0:23:38.240 UH an encounter with fairies in the woods, which what 0:23:38.400 --> 0:23:42.159 was once an assault by demons or or an encounter 0:23:42.240 --> 0:23:46.240 with ghosts UH increasingly become became in the past few 0:23:46.280 --> 0:23:50.360 decades an encounter with aliens or UFOs, right, because that's 0:23:50.400 --> 0:23:53.320 the cultural script that we can fall back on for 0:23:53.480 --> 0:23:57.399 the unexplained, and that essentially the supernatural perfectly. Yeah, aliens 0:23:57.440 --> 0:24:01.920 have become the new otherworldly organism them and this has 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:05.640 translated into actual religious movements. The main one I want 0:24:05.680 --> 0:24:10.960 to talk about is Raylianism. Yes, so had you heard 0:24:11.000 --> 0:24:13.680 anything much about Ralianism before this? I had never done 0:24:13.920 --> 0:24:16.199 a deep dive into Raylianism, But of course you the 0:24:16.359 --> 0:24:18.120 end up. They end up coming up anytime you look 0:24:18.119 --> 0:24:21.199 in at cloning in particular, and then you know they 0:24:21.240 --> 0:24:23.359 pop up here and there with their various sort of 0:24:23.400 --> 0:24:26.560 eye catching protests and whatnot. Yes, they are fond of 0:24:26.880 --> 0:24:31.639 like UH demonstrations that involve nudity, but also like inflatable 0:24:31.640 --> 0:24:34.800 flying saucers and stuff like that sometimes. But okay, so 0:24:35.000 --> 0:24:39.480 what are they so? Raylianism or Realism or the International 0:24:39.560 --> 0:24:43.480 Raylian Movement was founded in nineteen seventy three or seventy four. 0:24:43.600 --> 0:24:46.159 I think I've seen seventy four, but could be seventy 0:24:46.160 --> 0:24:50.600 three by its chief profit Riyal or rail Rayal born 0:24:50.800 --> 0:24:55.520 Claude Vorrilon, and Vorlon introduces his own life in his 0:24:55.600 --> 0:24:58.280 book by saying, ever since I was nine years old, 0:24:58.320 --> 0:25:03.560 I've had but one passion, motor racing. So, Harry, you've 0:25:03.560 --> 0:25:09.000 got your your technological You're in already. But the Raelians 0:25:09.080 --> 0:25:12.680 believe in a branch of intelligent design, the idea that 0:25:12.760 --> 0:25:15.600 human life was created. It didn't, you know, evolve from 0:25:15.640 --> 0:25:18.480 innerent matter, but that it was created in a conscious 0:25:18.520 --> 0:25:21.119 act of creation. But they believe in the kind of 0:25:21.160 --> 0:25:25.600 intelligent design that most intelligent design advocates like to skip over, 0:25:26.080 --> 0:25:28.880 which is the notion that life was engineered not by 0:25:29.160 --> 0:25:36.160 supernatural god or gods, but by a race of extraterrestrial scientists. Right, 0:25:36.200 --> 0:25:39.320 They're called the Eloheim. So what does this word mean? 0:25:39.359 --> 0:25:41.520 You might have heard it before, Eloheim is a word 0:25:41.560 --> 0:25:45.280 that appears in the Hebrew Bible, and in a literal sense, 0:25:45.280 --> 0:25:49.840 it's the Hebrew plural word for gods or deities, so 0:25:49.880 --> 0:25:52.080 it can be used to refer to groups of lesser 0:25:52.160 --> 0:25:56.800 supernatural entities like angels or pagan gods. Those are all eloheim, 0:25:56.840 --> 0:25:59.040 but it can also be translated to refer to the 0:25:59.119 --> 0:26:02.679 singular out of Israel. So one of the names of 0:26:02.800 --> 0:26:06.639 God used in the Hebrew Bible is Eloheim, and in 0:26:06.720 --> 0:26:10.800 English translations that's usually the word God with the capital G. 0:26:13.200 --> 0:26:15.720 The root of Eloheim seems to be l, which is 0:26:15.720 --> 0:26:18.560 an older Canaanite word, and that was l was the 0:26:18.640 --> 0:26:21.840 chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, but also a generic 0:26:21.920 --> 0:26:24.880 word just meaning God like a god, which also appears 0:26:24.920 --> 0:26:27.720 in the Bible as a title for God, though less often. 0:26:28.680 --> 0:26:33.240 So how did all this come together? What started this event? Well, 0:26:33.440 --> 0:26:36.560 Ryle tells the story in in his own book, So 0:26:36.640 --> 0:26:41.120 he says, in nineteen seventy three, he was out motoring, 0:26:41.560 --> 0:26:43.840 you know, because he has a passion for motor racing 0:26:43.920 --> 0:26:46.720 out in France, so to speak, and he stopped at 0:26:46.800 --> 0:26:52.440 a volcano that was overlooking Claremont Ferrand in central southern France, 0:26:52.960 --> 0:26:56.040 and he parked his car and got out to sort 0:26:56.040 --> 0:26:59.440 of like walk and jog around the volcanic crater, and 0:26:59.560 --> 0:27:03.760 there he saw an aerial vehicle coming toward him, and 0:27:03.800 --> 0:27:05.760 at first, he says, he thought it was a helicopter, 0:27:05.880 --> 0:27:09.160 but then he noticed it was completely silent, and then 0:27:09.160 --> 0:27:11.760 he realized it was a flying saucer. He says it 0:27:11.840 --> 0:27:14.639 was about seven meters in diameter two point five meters 0:27:14.680 --> 0:27:17.959 in height, so, you know, kind of modest as far 0:27:17.960 --> 0:27:21.480 as flying saucers go. And a stairway descends out of 0:27:21.480 --> 0:27:23.520 the bottom of it, and a being comes out to 0:27:23.560 --> 0:27:25.280 meet him, and he says, at first he thought it 0:27:25.280 --> 0:27:27.680 was a child because it was only four ft tall. 0:27:28.240 --> 0:27:31.560 He says, his eyes were slightly almond shaped, his hair 0:27:31.720 --> 0:27:34.520 was black and long, and he had a small black beard. 0:27:35.960 --> 0:27:38.160 I like that there's facial hair with these aliens so 0:27:38.160 --> 0:27:40.280 so often there they don't get to rock the facial 0:27:40.320 --> 0:27:43.280 hair exactly. Yeah, they're they're way too smooth. Usually it's 0:27:43.320 --> 0:27:46.480 kind of strange. But anyway, that this being proceeded to 0:27:46.480 --> 0:27:50.159 have a conversation with Rilon, informing him that he had 0:27:50.240 --> 0:27:53.360 visited Earth many times before and that he had chosen 0:27:53.960 --> 0:27:56.720 Rillon specifically to speak to on that day, and it 0:27:56.800 --> 0:27:59.160 told him that the alien told him to come back 0:27:59.240 --> 0:28:02.800 the next day to bring his Bible and something to 0:28:02.800 --> 0:28:06.240 take notes with, and so then it instructed him on 0:28:06.359 --> 0:28:09.600 many truths about the origins of life on Earth and 0:28:09.640 --> 0:28:12.160 the real meanings of stories in the Bible. And then 0:28:12.200 --> 0:28:16.440 of course Vorrillon later under the name ril published books 0:28:16.440 --> 0:28:19.880 on the subject and founded the Riley and or Rileyan movement. 0:28:20.960 --> 0:28:23.600 So the main basic idea is that life on Earth 0:28:24.040 --> 0:28:28.400 was created by a group of extraterrestrial scientists and then 0:28:28.400 --> 0:28:31.280 a laboratory, yes, and that we were created in the 0:28:31.320 --> 0:28:35.320 image of those scientists. And so their beliefs in general 0:28:35.359 --> 0:28:37.600 have a lot in common with the various like ancient 0:28:37.640 --> 0:28:40.000 astronauts theories. If you ever watched any of those TV 0:28:40.080 --> 0:28:42.800 shows where it's like, what happened? How do they build 0:28:42.800 --> 0:28:46.360 the pyramids? Aliens? Yeah, I mean, basically it comes down 0:28:46.480 --> 0:28:48.280 to the fact that you can take any ancient text 0:28:48.400 --> 0:28:52.680 that deals with supernatural entities interacting with humanity, and you 0:28:52.720 --> 0:28:56.760 can easily reread, reinterpret any of them as humans dealing 0:28:56.760 --> 0:28:59.479 with extraterrestrials. And it's it's often a really you know, 0:28:59.760 --> 0:29:02.640 far unnaginative exercise because it turns everything in its head, 0:29:02.680 --> 0:29:05.640 it puts things in a modern perspective, and and and 0:29:05.680 --> 0:29:07.719 you know, you know, ultimately we're talking about the exact 0:29:07.720 --> 0:29:10.560 same scenario. So that kind of of reinterpretation you just 0:29:10.600 --> 0:29:15.360 see throughout ancient astronaut thinking, right. So yeah, Ryal explains 0:29:15.440 --> 0:29:18.800 in in his book Intelligent Design, Message from the Designers 0:29:18.840 --> 0:29:21.880 how these beings explained to him that like the narrative 0:29:21.920 --> 0:29:25.720 traditions of Judaism and Christianity, are all actually misrememberings or 0:29:25.760 --> 0:29:31.520 misinterpretations of ancient interactions with these extraterrestrial creatures, the Eloheam 0:29:31.520 --> 0:29:41.400 and their technology. I'm going to pick my favorite example 0:29:41.440 --> 0:29:44.040 the site, which is this is a section from the 0:29:44.080 --> 0:29:47.120 book about how the Ark of the Covenant is actually 0:29:47.200 --> 0:29:51.040 a nuclear powered space radio. Makes perfect sense to me. 0:29:51.440 --> 0:29:55.000 So he says, telepathy is a means of communication between 0:29:55.040 --> 0:29:57.680 the creators and human beings, was only possible when the 0:29:57.720 --> 0:30:00.720 Eloheam were in proximity to the Earth. When they were 0:30:00.760 --> 0:30:03.760 on their distant planet or elsewhere, they could not communicate 0:30:03.800 --> 0:30:06.000 in this way. For this reason, they set up a 0:30:06.040 --> 0:30:09.480 transmitter receiver which was transported in the Ark of God, 0:30:09.800 --> 0:30:13.920 an apparatus containing its own atomic powered cell. This is 0:30:13.920 --> 0:30:16.720 why in the First Book of Samuel, chapters five and six, 0:30:16.760 --> 0:30:20.000 when the Philistines stole the arc, their idle dagon lay 0:30:20.000 --> 0:30:22.320 face down on the ground nearby as a result of 0:30:22.320 --> 0:30:25.840 an electrical discharge caused by their clumsy mishandling of it. 0:30:26.320 --> 0:30:30.520 They also suffered radiation burns from the dangerous radioactive materials. 0:30:30.880 --> 0:30:33.840 And he quotes First Samuel five six and smote them 0:30:33.880 --> 0:30:36.720 with em rods. That worried emmerrods, I think is generally 0:30:36.800 --> 0:30:39.400 interpreted to mean some kind of like hemorrhoid or tumor. 0:30:40.560 --> 0:30:42.640 Uh And so this is I don't know, I'd say 0:30:42.640 --> 0:30:45.240 that's a pretty clever interpretation of that. I mean, I 0:30:46.000 --> 0:30:48.920 I kind of doubt many biblical scholars would give much 0:30:48.920 --> 0:30:51.120 credence to it. But uh no, I think that's a 0:30:51.200 --> 0:30:54.000 that's a wonderful uh you know, overlay of science and 0:30:54.080 --> 0:30:58.600 science fiction over you know, a magical object from from 0:30:58.640 --> 0:31:00.720 from a from an older time. I mean, you see 0:31:00.720 --> 0:31:04.680 this even outside of Christian and Hebraic tradition, with people 0:31:05.040 --> 0:31:08.360 interpreting some of the like super weapons that the gods 0:31:08.440 --> 0:31:12.120 give characters in the Hindu epic, the Mahabarata where they 0:31:12.120 --> 0:31:15.400 have like essentially you know, crazy powerful god weapons that 0:31:15.440 --> 0:31:19.160 they utilize, and some uh, some people like to look 0:31:19.160 --> 0:31:21.800 back at those and say, oh, well, these were atomic weapons, 0:31:21.800 --> 0:31:24.160 these were laser weapons, these were flying machines. And of 0:31:24.160 --> 0:31:27.800 course the Aralians don't just have technological explanations for the past. 0:31:28.560 --> 0:31:32.160 They also are a thoroughly technological religion in terms of 0:31:32.240 --> 0:31:34.920 their ethic for the future, like what they say should 0:31:35.000 --> 0:31:38.440 be happening in society. Just one example is that the 0:31:38.520 --> 0:31:41.480 Ralians tend to be very in favor of human cloning. 0:31:42.600 --> 0:31:45.239 That's not something that's true of most religions as far 0:31:45.280 --> 0:31:48.640 as yeah, they alter, they embrace and and advocate human 0:31:48.640 --> 0:31:51.400 cloning as a as a necessary technology for the advancement 0:31:51.440 --> 0:31:54.000 of the species. Yeah. And in fact, in two thousand two, 0:31:54.080 --> 0:31:58.240 the Ralians claim to have cloned a human being. Yes, yeah, 0:31:58.280 --> 0:31:59.960 this is probably where a lot of people have her 0:32:00.040 --> 0:32:02.440 of the Raliance before. From this claim, there was a 0:32:02.520 --> 0:32:06.200 media storm. More precisely, not so much that the Ralians 0:32:06.240 --> 0:32:08.120 claimed to have cloned a human being, but they were 0:32:08.160 --> 0:32:11.400 involved in the publicity of this event. So a doctor 0:32:11.560 --> 0:32:15.360 Bridget Boyselier, I hope I'm saying that right, It was 0:32:15.480 --> 0:32:19.320 a Raelian bishop, and she claimed that her company, an 0:32:19.400 --> 0:32:23.240 organization called Clone Aid not to be confused with clonas 0:32:23.480 --> 0:32:25.880 Uh and not to be confused with Clone Aid. The 0:32:25.960 --> 0:32:31.360 Clone Benefit Concert, which was a company originally founded in 0:32:31.440 --> 0:32:35.960 an earlier incarnation by Royal himself, had successfully cloned an 0:32:36.000 --> 0:32:39.880 American woman and produced a healthy baby clone named Eve. 0:32:40.720 --> 0:32:43.560 And media reports at the time were really skeptical, and 0:32:43.560 --> 0:32:46.160 as far as I can tell, no real evidence that 0:32:46.280 --> 0:32:48.400 this is true has ever surfaced, So a lot of 0:32:48.400 --> 0:32:51.520 people thought it was just a publicity stunt for the church, 0:32:52.200 --> 0:32:55.960 but they maintained that they had successfully been the first 0:32:56.000 --> 0:32:59.520 to to clone a healthy human baby. And whatever you 0:32:59.560 --> 0:33:02.680 think of that story, the Ralians typically remain very supportive 0:33:02.720 --> 0:33:06.720 of human cloning research. Yeah, and they continue to claim 0:33:06.760 --> 0:33:10.600 to have really advanced cloning technology, if not at their 0:33:10.600 --> 0:33:14.680 disposal then like within grasp right, like they I read that, 0:33:14.760 --> 0:33:17.880 they claim that their scientists are close to being able 0:33:17.920 --> 0:33:22.800 to transfer someone's mind into a new body, essentially the 0:33:22.880 --> 0:33:26.840 kind of resleaving of human consciousness that one encounters and say, 0:33:27.160 --> 0:33:30.640 Richard K. Morgan science fiction, So you could live forever 0:33:30.760 --> 0:33:33.280 because here you've cloned the body and then boop, just 0:33:33.320 --> 0:33:35.960 transfer your your mind into the new body and flush 0:33:36.040 --> 0:33:38.040 the old one. Right. Well, this is always a big 0:33:38.040 --> 0:33:40.600 problem we've talked about when we've talked about trans humanist 0:33:40.680 --> 0:33:43.520 ideas on the other podcast, I work on forward thinking 0:33:43.600 --> 0:33:46.160 that this is always something that occurs to me. People 0:33:46.200 --> 0:33:49.520 seem to be discussing the idea of digital immortality without 0:33:49.520 --> 0:33:53.120 answering the question of like, Okay, maybe you could make 0:33:53.160 --> 0:33:56.040 a copy of your brain, of your memories or something 0:33:56.080 --> 0:33:59.520 inside a computer, but how do you become that computer? 0:34:00.080 --> 0:34:04.160 How do you transfer your experience to that machine? Yeah, 0:34:04.200 --> 0:34:08.200 it gets existentially mucky really fast, because you end up 0:34:08.239 --> 0:34:11.040 just coming against the same old problem that we don't 0:34:11.080 --> 0:34:13.799 really have a good graph on what human consciousness is. 0:34:14.360 --> 0:34:16.800 We have this, we run into this whole blind brain 0:34:16.840 --> 0:34:20.239 scenario where we can't really perceive what's going on. It 0:34:20.280 --> 0:34:22.560 seems to me the much easier thing would be it's 0:34:22.640 --> 0:34:24.600 like you make a copy of yourself and then you 0:34:24.680 --> 0:34:27.440 die and then there's a copy of you, Yeah, which 0:34:27.960 --> 0:34:31.640 is terrifying and it's but but also you know, that's 0:34:31.680 --> 0:34:36.080 it's it's it's it's also yeah, a form of immortality 0:34:36.160 --> 0:34:39.600 that that lines up with our scientific understanding of how 0:34:39.680 --> 0:34:42.319 we work. Yeah, I say, with the reorganism, you do 0:34:42.520 --> 0:34:46.240 get this overall sense of science and futurism as articles 0:34:46.280 --> 0:34:49.520 of the faith. Um. And it's you know, it's it's 0:34:49.560 --> 0:34:53.560 easy to discuss a faithful of UFOs cloning and weird 0:34:53.680 --> 0:34:57.480 sexuality is ridiculous, Uh, even as we cling to these 0:34:57.520 --> 0:35:00.799 ancient models and traditions that again involved a Joel's coming 0:35:00.840 --> 0:35:06.160 down from above, bodily resurrection, physical immortality, and also lots 0:35:06.160 --> 0:35:09.200 of weird sexuality as well. Well, I feel like that's 0:35:09.239 --> 0:35:13.239 that ties into that that's sort of like abhorrence of 0:35:13.280 --> 0:35:15.799 the new thing that I was talking about earlier, you know, 0:35:15.840 --> 0:35:18.520 the fact that that we find the presence of too 0:35:18.600 --> 0:35:21.920 much technology and our religious rights and in our religious 0:35:21.920 --> 0:35:26.759 holy places as kind of like somehow vaguely blasphemous or 0:35:26.920 --> 0:35:31.360 crass or or it just doesn't feel right. And I 0:35:31.360 --> 0:35:33.799 can totally see this parallel. When you look at the 0:35:33.840 --> 0:35:37.200 beliefs of the Rillyans, I see a whole lot of 0:35:37.239 --> 0:35:40.280 parallels with a lot of ancient religions. And I wonder 0:35:40.320 --> 0:35:43.640 if one of the only major differences in my attitude 0:35:43.760 --> 0:35:46.680 towards it is just that it's new. Yeah, you see 0:35:46.719 --> 0:35:48.120 that all. I mean, even as we were talking about it, 0:35:48.120 --> 0:35:50.880 we're kind of having fun with the concept. But with 0:35:50.960 --> 0:35:52.879 some of the concepts they were, you know, they bring 0:35:52.960 --> 0:35:54.960 up such as, I mean, I love the idea that 0:35:55.080 --> 0:35:59.000 I think Satan was Arablian, not Arablian. Satan was el 0:35:59.160 --> 0:36:02.560 him from the home planet. It was opposed to creating 0:36:02.640 --> 0:36:05.480 new life. And then Lucifer is another one that is 0:36:05.520 --> 0:36:09.040 evolved in the the generation of life here on Earth 0:36:09.320 --> 0:36:12.120 and also had a role in creating the dinosaurs. Like 0:36:12.360 --> 0:36:14.160 all that, I mean, you can't help but laugh because 0:36:14.160 --> 0:36:16.680 it's it's also kind of hysterical in its own way. 0:36:16.719 --> 0:36:19.880 But it's not really that different from anything that exists 0:36:19.920 --> 0:36:23.080 in any ancient religion. It's just we're more willing to 0:36:23.160 --> 0:36:27.879 buy into some weird, outlandish story that was written down 0:36:27.960 --> 0:36:31.839 by some dude if that dude lived, you know, five 0:36:31.920 --> 0:36:34.759 hundred years ago rather than fifty years ago. Right, we 0:36:34.920 --> 0:36:39.120 just naturally assigned more authority to the ancient regime. Now, 0:36:39.160 --> 0:36:42.680 in discussing religion and technology in the modern day, we 0:36:42.840 --> 0:36:48.359 cannot help but discuss the Church of Scientology a little bit. Right, Well, 0:36:48.400 --> 0:36:51.040 I mean, this is another religion not just of the 0:36:51.400 --> 0:36:55.759 current technological age, but it does have technology infused all 0:36:55.800 --> 0:36:59.400 throughout its practices. Yea. So one of the things that 0:36:59.440 --> 0:37:01.920 would be pretty obvious is the E meter, and we 0:37:01.960 --> 0:37:03.400 can come back to that in a minute. But the 0:37:03.719 --> 0:37:06.799 first thing that actually made me think of scientology as 0:37:06.800 --> 0:37:10.359 a technological religion, or at least something that has technology 0:37:10.400 --> 0:37:13.600 deeply embedded in its ideology is literally the use of 0:37:13.640 --> 0:37:19.600 the word technology. See, I've noticed in interviews, like televised 0:37:19.640 --> 0:37:22.160 interviews and things that I've seen with some representatives of 0:37:22.200 --> 0:37:25.480 the Church of Scientology that they use the word technology 0:37:25.560 --> 0:37:28.400 when what they're talking about are the beliefs and practices 0:37:28.400 --> 0:37:32.960 of Scientology. Um, so that kind of doesn't jive with 0:37:33.000 --> 0:37:35.520 how we usually use the word technology. Like I was saying, 0:37:35.719 --> 0:37:38.799 it's usually a machine, right, A technology is usually a mechanism, 0:37:39.120 --> 0:37:41.000 and they're talking about it more as in like how 0:37:41.040 --> 0:37:44.400 a doctrine can be a technology, yeah, or even you 0:37:44.400 --> 0:37:46.319 can think of it in terms, I guess of a blueprint, Right, 0:37:46.320 --> 0:37:49.680 I have a blueprint for a steam engine. Sure, steam 0:37:49.680 --> 0:37:52.279 engine is a technology, but also the blueprint is is 0:37:52.280 --> 0:37:54.799 a technology in itself because it tells you how did 0:37:54.840 --> 0:37:58.240 the process by which you create this thing? And that's 0:37:58.320 --> 0:38:01.799 ultimately what they're they're offering their followers, right a a 0:38:01.880 --> 0:38:06.080 blueprint to become this better engine totally. Yeah, so I 0:38:06.320 --> 0:38:08.279 can see it like that. It is in in the 0:38:08.520 --> 0:38:13.040 dictionary definition since the technology perhaps like it is a 0:38:13.040 --> 0:38:15.360 at least an application of what they believe to be 0:38:15.440 --> 0:38:18.600 scientific knowledge to a practical purpose. Yeah. So you see 0:38:18.640 --> 0:38:23.680 mention of the dionetic spiritual healing technology of study technology, 0:38:23.880 --> 0:38:28.120 and they also have their Religious Technology Center which aims 0:38:28.160 --> 0:38:31.680 to quote protect the public from a misapplication of the 0:38:31.719 --> 0:38:35.520 technology and to see that the religious technologies of dionetics 0:38:35.520 --> 0:38:38.920 and scientology remain in proper hands and are properly ministered. 0:38:40.080 --> 0:38:42.480 So it's like the f d A of the technologies 0:38:42.520 --> 0:38:45.800 of Scientology. Yeah, you know, in terms of or certainly 0:38:45.840 --> 0:38:48.760 the uh the division of Scientology concerned with with maintaining 0:38:48.760 --> 0:38:52.200 those copyrights and those patents. Sure. Yeah. But then of 0:38:52.239 --> 0:38:57.480 course there is actually within Scientology in their actual practices 0:38:57.800 --> 0:39:01.040 a device that you've probably heard of of, the E meter. 0:39:01.160 --> 0:39:04.279 It's an electrical device that they use in what is 0:39:04.320 --> 0:39:08.480 called auditing. Yeah, I mean it's very much. I mean 0:39:08.480 --> 0:39:11.400 I would be tempted to make a comparison between the 0:39:12.040 --> 0:39:14.000 role of the E meter with say, the role of 0:39:14.040 --> 0:39:17.680 a of a chalice in in a Roman Catholic tradition, 0:39:17.760 --> 0:39:21.080 right that you need for the sacred right of a communion. Uh. 0:39:21.120 --> 0:39:24.640 The use of the E meter uh in auditing is 0:39:25.120 --> 0:39:28.520 essentially a sacred right. Okay. So what is auditing and 0:39:28.600 --> 0:39:31.320 what does the E meter actually do? Yeah, the E 0:39:31.400 --> 0:39:34.160 meter is a real thing, and its origins uh lay 0:39:34.160 --> 0:39:39.360 outside of scientology. Actually, it is an electro psychometer. Come on, Robert, 0:39:39.600 --> 0:39:43.160 it's a psychometer. Okay, electro psychometer if you will. Uh, 0:39:43.200 --> 0:39:45.200 you know the meto the motto. And this is a 0:39:45.200 --> 0:39:50.200 device for displaying and or recording the electrodermal activity or 0:39:50.239 --> 0:39:52.960 the e d A of a human being. It's actually 0:39:53.040 --> 0:39:56.320 one of the factors covered in a standard polygraph test 0:39:56.560 --> 0:40:00.600 as well as in scientific studies regarding human emotions. Again, 0:40:00.640 --> 0:40:04.280 the E meter is not a technology that exists solely 0:40:04.320 --> 0:40:07.600 within the world of scientology. It's one of the components 0:40:07.640 --> 0:40:11.960 of a polygraph. But science scientologists have been using it 0:40:12.000 --> 0:40:14.879 as an auditing tool. Um, and they have their own 0:40:15.080 --> 0:40:19.000 patents for their own emeter devices that they continue to 0:40:19.000 --> 0:40:22.480 to update. UM. Now, what is auditing. That's an entire 0:40:22.600 --> 0:40:25.880 that's an entire conversation in and of itself. But essentially, 0:40:26.120 --> 0:40:29.640 you have an auditor that is a meeting with a 0:40:29.719 --> 0:40:32.400 member of the faith and they are hooking them up 0:40:32.400 --> 0:40:35.440 to the E meter to record these uh these reactions 0:40:35.920 --> 0:40:41.360 in the dermis, basically their emotional reaction to stimuli, words, phrases, etcetera. 0:40:41.560 --> 0:40:45.440 And the Church of Scientology itself describes auditing UH as this. 0:40:45.600 --> 0:40:48.360 They say the goal of auditing is to restore being, 0:40:48.440 --> 0:40:51.800 this and ability, and this is accomplished by one helping 0:40:51.840 --> 0:40:56.560 individuals rid themselves of any spiritual disabilities and to increasing 0:40:56.680 --> 0:41:00.000 spiritual abilities. Yeah, this is interesting. I mean it seems 0:41:00.160 --> 0:41:03.000 to me that I certainly, not being all that familiar 0:41:03.040 --> 0:41:05.400 with the practice, can't say exactly how it's used, but 0:41:05.480 --> 0:41:08.480 it seems like a rough analogy too, if you were 0:41:08.520 --> 0:41:10.880 to hook yourself up to a polygraph test when you 0:41:10.960 --> 0:41:13.759 go in for a Catholic confession. Yeah, that's kind of 0:41:13.800 --> 0:41:15.920 the vibe I I'm getting off of it as as well, 0:41:16.440 --> 0:41:19.399 that it's you know, it's it's about this individual meeting 0:41:19.440 --> 0:41:22.080 with you too to audit you, to to to to 0:41:22.200 --> 0:41:25.319 discuss and and figure out your sort of emotional your 0:41:25.360 --> 0:41:27.839 psychic state right, and to do that, you know, they'll 0:41:27.880 --> 0:41:30.560 throughout some words and see if those words trouble you 0:41:30.800 --> 0:41:33.160 or you know what kind of an emotional resonance they 0:41:33.200 --> 0:41:36.520 create in your body. And so in this we we 0:41:36.640 --> 0:41:40.239 have a wonderful example of a a modern religion that 0:41:40.360 --> 0:41:45.760 is using modern technology, that has adapted modern technology for 0:41:45.920 --> 0:41:50.560 its sacred rights and observances. Now, again, scientology is a 0:41:50.600 --> 0:41:52.880 subject unto itself, and maybe when we should come back 0:41:52.920 --> 0:41:55.120 to in a future episode, but we mainly just wanted 0:41:55.160 --> 0:41:57.680 to focus on the the use of the E meter here. Yeah, 0:41:57.760 --> 0:42:00.480 and also I think the general attitude towards the idea 0:42:00.480 --> 0:42:03.880 of technology and what role it plays in the religion, 0:42:03.920 --> 0:42:07.040 because they're the word seems to be held up in 0:42:07.080 --> 0:42:10.960 a positive light. It's it's something that's reacting against this 0:42:11.000 --> 0:42:13.640 thing we've been talking about, like the profanity of technology, 0:42:13.680 --> 0:42:17.560 technology being this kind of like new fangled, unbeautiful thing 0:42:17.719 --> 0:42:20.840 that that should be kept out of the sacred sphere 0:42:20.840 --> 0:42:25.240 of religion. These are ideologies that are actually really about 0:42:25.400 --> 0:42:30.640 intentionally bringing technology in. It's not incidental, it's not intruding 0:42:30.680 --> 0:42:33.600 on the religion. It's a core part of it. And 0:42:33.800 --> 0:42:37.240 I think this should finally bring us to the idea 0:42:37.520 --> 0:42:40.400 of the singularity Ah, yes, it always comes back to 0:42:40.440 --> 0:42:43.480 the singularity, right. Well, I mean this is a popular 0:42:43.520 --> 0:42:49.160 topic among weirdos like US and the singularity. If I'm 0:42:49.160 --> 0:42:50.960 sure you've probably heard of it before, but just in 0:42:51.000 --> 0:42:54.439 case you haven't, what's the general idea of the singularity. 0:42:54.680 --> 0:42:58.960 It's kind of like the the purpose of the new motor. 0:42:59.120 --> 0:43:03.120 It's somewhat egg but but it's a general point in 0:43:03.239 --> 0:43:06.880 human evolution where we sort of achieve a level of 0:43:06.920 --> 0:43:12.920 technological sophistication, where suddenly technology advances so rapidly that we 0:43:12.960 --> 0:43:16.600 cannot keep up with it that it revolutionizes and changes 0:43:16.719 --> 0:43:19.640 human nature. A lot of times, it's associated with the 0:43:19.680 --> 0:43:23.400 sort of a moment of transition to being transhumanist, like 0:43:23.440 --> 0:43:28.040 where human biology merges with technology and you get this 0:43:28.160 --> 0:43:33.320 new breed of humanity that's like cyborg basically, that's ultimately 0:43:33.520 --> 0:43:37.840 uplifted and transformed to a status of an almost godlike 0:43:37.880 --> 0:43:40.799 power by their technology. Yeah, kind of a point where 0:43:40.800 --> 0:43:43.719 you stop talking about, oh, this is human human race 0:43:43.840 --> 0:43:46.960 and they have technology, but rather the two or one 0:43:47.160 --> 0:43:51.080 or perhaps even the biological aspect of the species is 0:43:51.160 --> 0:43:54.520 secondary to the technological presence. Right, So, one of the 0:43:54.560 --> 0:43:58.080 big names in singularity thinking would be raker as while 0:43:58.200 --> 0:44:01.640 he's someone who has been very positive about this idea, 0:44:02.280 --> 0:44:04.200 who has had a lot of interesting and good things 0:44:04.239 --> 0:44:07.360 to say about it. Uh. He sort of popularized the 0:44:07.400 --> 0:44:10.919 notion of some of these transhumanist notions in a book 0:44:10.960 --> 0:44:14.319 called The Age of Spiritual Machines, and then also in 0:44:14.360 --> 0:44:18.640 a book called The Singularity Is Near and I think curs. 0:44:18.719 --> 0:44:21.480 While and at least some supporters of the idea of 0:44:21.480 --> 0:44:25.600 the singularity would disavow the idea that singularity thinking is 0:44:25.719 --> 0:44:30.640 religious in nature, despite the fact that the phrase spiritual machines. 0:44:32.320 --> 0:44:35.640 That's that's your argument. But there are some critics and 0:44:35.719 --> 0:44:40.200 observers who do like to attribute sort of aspects of 0:44:40.239 --> 0:44:44.040 being a religion to singularity thinking. And one of those 0:44:44.280 --> 0:44:48.240 is the is the interesting author and technologist Jarren Lanier. 0:44:48.960 --> 0:44:52.520 So Jarren Lanier for many years has been a big 0:44:52.600 --> 0:44:55.040 name in sort of technology circles. He's known as sort 0:44:55.040 --> 0:44:58.080 of like the guy behind virtual reality, and he's often 0:44:58.120 --> 0:45:01.600 described as sort of a genius poly and just a 0:45:01.600 --> 0:45:04.160 big thinker. You know. He has lots of big ideas 0:45:04.160 --> 0:45:06.920 about the future and and how we should handle it. 0:45:06.960 --> 0:45:09.440 And he's for a long time been a critic of 0:45:09.560 --> 0:45:12.640 singularity thinking, and a lot of these critics of singularity 0:45:12.680 --> 0:45:18.359 thinking point out that there are uncomfortably religious seeming aspects 0:45:18.560 --> 0:45:22.120 of thinking that we're entering an age where artificial intelligence 0:45:22.160 --> 0:45:25.279 and technology is going to enter this transcendental level. I mean, 0:45:25.320 --> 0:45:29.440 if you think about it, the idea of transforming humans 0:45:29.520 --> 0:45:32.920 into a higher state of existence is, you know, in 0:45:32.960 --> 0:45:34.960 a lot of ways, kind of like the end times 0:45:35.040 --> 0:45:38.440 beliefs of many religions. You might think about it as 0:45:38.480 --> 0:45:41.880 a parallel to sort of like the rapture and evangelical 0:45:41.960 --> 0:45:45.319 Christianity or something where people are sort of uplifted to 0:45:45.400 --> 0:45:49.160 a higher state of existence into like a newer, better 0:45:49.239 --> 0:45:51.960 flesh kind of a situation. Yeah, and also you could 0:45:52.000 --> 0:45:56.480 think about it as in some ways treating technology truly 0:45:56.640 --> 0:45:59.800 like a god. That it is, on one hand, something 0:45:59.800 --> 0:46:02.840 that we're creating, but on the other hand, it is 0:46:02.880 --> 0:46:05.960 a force that is kind of unstoppable and at some 0:46:06.040 --> 0:46:11.480 point beyond our comprehension that comes in and imposes its 0:46:11.480 --> 0:46:15.400 will on us. Its will is hopefully benevolent. But you 0:46:15.440 --> 0:46:17.919 can get opposing viewpoints about that from many other people 0:46:17.960 --> 0:46:21.480 who are worried about the the advances in artificial intelligence 0:46:21.520 --> 0:46:23.880 and what they'll mean for human life. But yeah, I 0:46:24.160 --> 0:46:27.120 think that's an interesting critique in an interesting way of 0:46:27.160 --> 0:46:31.000 looking at at singularitarianism as it might be. Is this 0:46:31.080 --> 0:46:34.719 a religion? And if so, what does it mean for 0:46:34.760 --> 0:46:36.840 all the people, especially all the people who are power 0:46:36.880 --> 0:46:40.879 players in Silicon Valley who are subscribers to this notion. Yeah, 0:46:40.880 --> 0:46:44.920 because at hard it's it's ultimately about human technology, uh, 0:46:45.200 --> 0:46:49.080 becoming godlike, and then even by extension, the possibility that 0:46:49.120 --> 0:46:54.239 we create artificial intelligence that is essentially God. And then 0:46:54.239 --> 0:46:56.160 of course the question is what kind of God if 0:46:56.160 --> 0:46:58.720 we create it? Because if we look at the models 0:46:58.760 --> 0:47:01.040 of of the of the divine that we see in 0:47:01.040 --> 0:47:04.880 our myths and uh religions, they tend to you know, 0:47:04.920 --> 0:47:07.520 sometimes they're rather benevolent, but a lot of times they're 0:47:07.680 --> 0:47:12.719 moody and petty and destructive and uh and not always 0:47:12.840 --> 0:47:15.720 a friend to the little man. Right, Well, very often 0:47:16.239 --> 0:47:19.359 they're selectively benevolent. Right. They might be benevolent to one 0:47:19.360 --> 0:47:22.840 group and malevolent to another. Yeah, And and they're not 0:47:22.880 --> 0:47:25.600 opposed to having sex with us in the form of 0:47:25.680 --> 0:47:28.759 various animals. So yeah, we have to think about that. Well, 0:47:28.800 --> 0:47:31.440 we really have to hope that our that our robot 0:47:31.480 --> 0:47:35.360 overlords do not take the Greek myths their inspiration. The Greeks. 0:47:35.400 --> 0:47:37.239 The Greek gods tend to be about the worst because 0:47:37.280 --> 0:47:39.919 there they tend to be the pettiest and the most 0:47:39.960 --> 0:47:44.279 carnal I find. But but yeah, do we end up 0:47:44.320 --> 0:47:47.000 looking at a benevolent vision of this or a more 0:47:47.040 --> 0:47:50.160 diabolical one? I tend to I tend to follow the 0:47:50.160 --> 0:47:54.600 the the E. N. M. Banks culture UH series approach, 0:47:54.600 --> 0:47:57.560 where you have kind of a benevolent to AI force. 0:47:57.600 --> 0:48:01.400 It becomes in a way the guardians of humanity, but 0:48:01.480 --> 0:48:05.839 also the the ruling power of humanity. Yeah, I've on 0:48:05.880 --> 0:48:09.640 my other podcast a lot of Hymdenhut about you know what, 0:48:09.640 --> 0:48:13.400 what I really think about the idea of transcendental artificial 0:48:13.440 --> 0:48:16.640 intelligence and trans humanism and stuff. In the end, I 0:48:16.880 --> 0:48:20.120 guess I've read enough persuasive stuff in both ways that 0:48:20.160 --> 0:48:22.600 I can't really say what I think it would truly 0:48:22.640 --> 0:48:26.359 be like in reality, though I can certainly see why 0:48:26.440 --> 0:48:29.560 it would take on a spiritual dimension in the minds 0:48:29.600 --> 0:48:32.520 of many people. Yeah, I always I always come back 0:48:32.560 --> 0:48:37.719 to There's one quote in uh Gibson's neurom Answer in 0:48:37.760 --> 0:48:40.680 which someone comments that you know for ages. We believed 0:48:40.680 --> 0:48:44.120 in making packs with devils and demons, and it was 0:48:44.160 --> 0:48:47.640 impossible until we made it possible through technology in the 0:48:47.640 --> 0:48:50.040 creation of ais that you can enter into bargains with it, 0:48:50.040 --> 0:48:53.239 as occurs in the book. And uh. And that's that's 0:48:53.280 --> 0:48:55.960 kind of part and partial to some of the singularity ideas, 0:48:55.960 --> 0:48:57.800 where it's at least when we think of them in 0:48:57.880 --> 0:49:01.920 terms of religion, that technology be to make possible things 0:49:02.080 --> 0:49:06.560 that were previously purely supernatural and from a scientific perspective 0:49:06.560 --> 0:49:11.600 non existent, such as the afterlife. Because we've talked about, 0:49:11.640 --> 0:49:14.680 you know, the possibilities of digitizing human consciousness and the 0:49:14.760 --> 0:49:19.280 human experience and placing that digital consciousness within a virtual world, 0:49:19.640 --> 0:49:24.560 it becomes conceivable to have a virtual heaven, of virtual hell, 0:49:24.640 --> 0:49:29.000 of virtual purgatory in which to file away your your 0:49:29.160 --> 0:49:32.560 the minds of believers after their bodily death. Sure well, 0:49:32.600 --> 0:49:36.000 I mean definitely, people like rakerswill have envisioned a digital 0:49:36.000 --> 0:49:40.799 immortality or some form of technologically enabled immortality. And if 0:49:40.840 --> 0:49:44.000 you actually could achieve that, I'm skeptical of that, especially 0:49:44.040 --> 0:49:46.239 because of like, how could you even be sure with 0:49:46.280 --> 0:49:50.480 the consciousness transfer problem, how could you ever know that 0:49:50.480 --> 0:49:53.879 that technology was successful, you know what I mean? Like 0:49:54.960 --> 0:49:57.120 to say, you create a computer that claims to be 0:49:57.120 --> 0:50:00.720 a copy of somebody, and then that person's body dies 0:50:00.960 --> 0:50:04.200 and uh and their their computer copy continues to live 0:50:04.239 --> 0:50:07.080 on saying oh, yes, I had continuous consciousness. How do 0:50:07.120 --> 0:50:09.880 you know if that's true? Yeah? And then and then 0:50:09.920 --> 0:50:11.520 you get into a whole you know, sort of black 0:50:11.560 --> 0:50:14.200 mirror area of trying to figure out how you're supposed 0:50:14.239 --> 0:50:17.399 to treat this thing. Um, you know, is if it's 0:50:17.640 --> 0:50:19.799 if it's not just completely happy all the time, then 0:50:19.840 --> 0:50:22.239 are you? I mean, what kind of monstrous thing have 0:50:22.320 --> 0:50:25.840 you done? Here? And then again, so we're imagining digital 0:50:25.880 --> 0:50:29.000 immortality as being a sort of embodiment of heaven. But 0:50:29.080 --> 0:50:32.000 what if you didn't like your digital immortality. What if 0:50:32.000 --> 0:50:34.759 you didn't like your digital immortality and then you were 0:50:34.880 --> 0:50:38.799 unable to die, you'd be like the you know, sort 0:50:38.800 --> 0:50:41.719 of the immortal wanderer from various myths, right where you 0:50:41.800 --> 0:50:46.400 just sort of roaming across the digital countryside, hoping that 0:50:46.480 --> 0:50:49.160 one day the divine forces, the ai s or what 0:50:49.239 --> 0:50:51.399 have you, will will give you the gift of death 0:50:51.440 --> 0:50:54.439 so you can just have sweet oblivion. Man, So that 0:50:54.600 --> 0:50:56.799 William Gibson quote you had is still sticking with me. 0:50:56.880 --> 0:50:59.640 I think that's really interesting. Yeah. I keep going back 0:50:59.680 --> 0:51:03.480 to the uh, like we have to invent the devil 0:51:03.560 --> 0:51:06.200 before we could sell our soul to him. Yeah, and UH, 0:51:06.239 --> 0:51:08.360 you know, the virtual afterlife ideas come up in a 0:51:08.440 --> 0:51:10.640 number of short stories. I've read that the first example 0:51:10.640 --> 0:51:14.160 was supposedly, uh, American sci fi writer Frederick Pole in 0:51:14.200 --> 0:51:16.719 a short story titled The Tunnel under the World from 0:51:16.719 --> 0:51:19.480 fifty five. I was the first to really deal with this, 0:51:19.560 --> 0:51:22.120 but one that I loved from a few years back. 0:51:22.239 --> 0:51:24.920 It was one of the culture novels by Ian and Banks. 0:51:25.000 --> 0:51:28.400 I mentioned earlier his novel Surface Detail, which deals in 0:51:28.480 --> 0:51:31.600 large part with a a virtual war over the existence 0:51:31.600 --> 0:51:35.080 of virtual hells. So there are various planets, various species, 0:51:35.120 --> 0:51:39.240 and people's that can that have faiths that maintain virtual 0:51:39.360 --> 0:51:44.400 hells for believers that we're judged to be morally failing, 0:51:44.760 --> 0:51:47.560 and so they're you know, digital realms of torment and horror. 0:51:47.880 --> 0:51:50.480 And you have lived plenty of living individuals and some 0:51:50.560 --> 0:51:53.400 digital individuals who say that is completely awful. You should 0:51:53.400 --> 0:51:55.200 not have that in the same way that you have 0:51:55.239 --> 0:51:58.440 plenty of of living people today. Is say that theology 0:51:58.480 --> 0:52:01.279 of hell itself is kind of a horrible idea and 0:52:01.320 --> 0:52:03.839 should be you know, we should weigh like we should 0:52:03.920 --> 0:52:06.319 lay waste to that as well. And so in this 0:52:06.360 --> 0:52:10.200 book by Banks, this virtual war over their existence eventually 0:52:10.239 --> 0:52:13.880 spills out into an actual real war in the universe 0:52:14.800 --> 0:52:19.240 in very, very fascinating ways. That is a truly fascinating idea. 0:52:19.280 --> 0:52:21.080 I'd like to read that book now. It's good. I 0:52:21.520 --> 0:52:25.560 highly recommend uh the works of the late uh I N. M. Banks. Good, 0:52:25.640 --> 0:52:28.160 great stuff, great science fiction that's you know, concerned with 0:52:28.200 --> 0:52:30.680 where technology is taking us, but also you know, some 0:52:30.760 --> 0:52:36.400 of the the philosophical existential problems of the current times. Alright, 0:52:36.440 --> 0:52:38.440 So there you have it, Uh, the end of our 0:52:38.560 --> 0:52:43.400 two parter on techno religion, the convergence of technology and religion, 0:52:43.760 --> 0:52:48.120 from the earliest prayer wheels to the distant possibility of 0:52:48.360 --> 0:52:51.759 a singularity birth God. This has been a wild ride. 0:52:51.800 --> 0:52:53.960 Thank you for having me on for this forever. Hey, Hey, 0:52:53.960 --> 0:52:56.880 thank you, thank you for joining me. Hey. In the meantime, 0:52:56.920 --> 0:52:58.640 you want to check out more episodes of Stuff to 0:52:58.640 --> 0:53:01.080 Blow your Mind, head on over to stuff to Blow 0:53:01.120 --> 0:53:02.800 your Mind dot com. 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