Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: The vault hangs open. Will you walk inside with us? Yes,
Speaker 1: do walk inside, because we're gonna be cracking out our
Speaker 1: old episodes on Techno Religion, Part one and Part two.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be part one. Yeah, so when did
Speaker 1: these originally published? So part one here originally published on
Speaker 1: June nine. Oh, this was one of my one of
Speaker 1: my first episodes way back when I was a brand
Speaker 1: new baby on this show. I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: some intersections between technology and religion, so we did, and
Speaker 1: Robert it was a lot of fun. I still remember
Speaker 1: those days very fondly. Yeah, we got we got two
Speaker 1: long episodes out of it. And the cool thing is,
Speaker 1: I think we have the potential to do a third
Speaker 1: Techno Religion episode in the future. So keep that in
Speaker 1: mind as you're listening to all of this, and certainly
Speaker 1: shoot us an email if you can think of a
Speaker 1: wonderful example of religious technology that we should include. I
Speaker 1: think we heard after this episode from at least one
Speaker 1: academic who is doing a dissertation on techno religion. Well,
Speaker 1: I've forgot about that. We'll have to reach out to
Speaker 1: them anyway. Here is our classic episode on techno Religion
Speaker 1: for the Masses, Part one, and of course next weekend
Speaker 1: if you want to tune back in on Saturday, we
Speaker 1: will be re airing part two. So here's part one.
Speaker 1: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to blow your mind from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. We may say that we have
Speaker 1: the birth of a new science, a new philosophy, a
Speaker 1: new life. The time of deliverance has come at last,
Speaker 1: and henceforward the career of humanity is upward and onward,
Speaker 1: a mighty, a noble, and a godlike career. All the
Speaker 1: revelations of spiritual as them heretofore, all the control of
Speaker 1: spirits over mortals, and the instruction and discipline they have
Speaker 1: given us, have only paved the way, as it were,
Speaker 1: for the advent of a great practical movement, such as
Speaker 1: the world little dreams of though it has long deeply
Speaker 1: yearned for it, and agonized and groaned away its life
Speaker 1: because it did not come sooner. And this new motive
Speaker 1: power is to lead the way in the great, speedily
Speaker 1: coming salvation. It is to be the physical savior of
Speaker 1: the race, the history of its inception, its various stages
Speaker 1: of progress, and its completion will show the world a
Speaker 1: most beautiful and significant analogy to the advent of Jesus
Speaker 1: is the spiritual savior of the race. Hence we most
Speaker 1: confidently assert that the advent of the science of all sciences,
Speaker 1: the philosophy of all philosophies, and the art of all
Speaker 1: arts has now fairly commenced. The child is born not
Speaker 1: long hence he will go alone. Then he will dispute
Speaker 1: with the doctors and the temples of science. And then hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe, what is what
Speaker 1: is going on here? I'm reading a quote. This is
Speaker 1: a quote from a Boston newspaper. The June four edition
Speaker 1: of a Boston newspaper called the New Era or Heaven
Speaker 1: Opened to Man, And this passage was written by a
Speaker 1: former Universalist minister named Simon Hewitt. So after this passage,
Speaker 1: one skeptical reader named Emma Hardinge commented that quote nothing
Speaker 1: could be given further beyond vague hints of what was
Speaker 1: to follow. The awful then which broke off breathless at
Speaker 1: the contemplation of its own inexpressible possibilities. So all this
Speaker 1: preamble to something amazing that's going to change humanity? What
Speaker 1: on earth could Simon Wit have been talking about? Well,
Speaker 1: he was referring to something that sat inside the upper
Speaker 1: room of a large tower overlooking the coast beyond the
Speaker 1: town of Lynn, Massachusetts. This is high rock tower. If
Speaker 1: you want to look it up, you can see a
Speaker 1: picture of this place. It still exists to kind of
Speaker 1: get a sense of it. And inside the upper room
Speaker 1: of this tower were the fruits of what I would
Speaker 1: sort of think of as the ultimate backyard engineering project.
Speaker 1: It is like garage engineering gone to the extreme. So
Speaker 1: from July eighteen fifty three to the following spring in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty four, a group of universalist reformers and spiritualist
Speaker 1: enthusiasts had been building a machine called the New Motor.
Speaker 1: And it would be something I'd say, probably never seen
Speaker 1: before on earth, an electro mechanical messiah. Yes, which you
Speaker 1: know this will bring to mind a number of different
Speaker 1: stunning visuals. Would we would like to dissuade you from
Speaker 1: We'll make sure we have some links to some images
Speaker 1: of the the electrical Messiah in question on the landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode. But but if you think about
Speaker 1: a Dollec from doctor Who, from Doctor Who, if a
Speaker 1: Dollec were to breed with a coffee table, Uh, their
Speaker 1: offspring when probably resembled the UH decorated with many like
Speaker 1: dangling Christmas ornaments. Yes. Yes, so it's a hybrid of
Speaker 1: a coffee table and a dialect decorated for Christmas and
Speaker 1: serving as kind of kind of an altarpiece as well.
Speaker 1: There's certainly an altarpiece vibe to this creation, sure, And
Speaker 1: this is bridging two worlds that we tend to see
Speaker 1: as sort of I don't know what spectrum it is,
Speaker 1: but there, whatever it is, there at the opposite ends
Speaker 1: of the spectrum. One is religion and the other is technology.
Speaker 1: I mean, we typically think of religion as a very
Speaker 1: low tech affair. You tend to go into churches, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe not some churches these days, but you
Speaker 1: see a lot of stuff that recalls an earlier time.
Speaker 1: And our religious texts in most of the major religions
Speaker 1: of the world are very ancient, and thus the metaphors
Speaker 1: in which we talk about our religions tend to be
Speaker 1: very ancient, and technology is you know, it's the very
Speaker 1: essence of what is new and what the future is.
Speaker 1: I mean, what is science fiction that imagines the future
Speaker 1: usually focused on its new technology? Yeah, I mean most
Speaker 1: of the major world religions. Yeah, they're based on ancient
Speaker 1: cosmologies that sometimes we're okay with updating. Uh. Generally, at
Speaker 1: certain points in the past we will say, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna actually change this a little bit to the
Speaker 1: fit how we live now. But for the most part, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're rooted in the past, and technology is ever rooted
Speaker 1: in the president in the future. Right, But today we
Speaker 1: want to discuss what happens when you cram the ends
Speaker 1: of that spectrum together and you create techno religion. So
Speaker 1: what happens when technology changes religions, what happens when technology
Speaker 1: becomes a component of religious practice, and what happens when
Speaker 1: technology becomes a god or messiah in itself? Right, And
Speaker 1: this is something that has been happening for ages. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you think of technology and the broader sentence especially,
Speaker 1: humans have always been developing new technologies, developing gadgets, developing
Speaker 1: um more advanced ways of just looking at the world.
Speaker 1: Around them and manipulating the world around them. And this
Speaker 1: has always gone hand in hand with our ability to
Speaker 1: understand the purpose of life and the purpose of of
Speaker 1: our existence here on earth. Yeah. And the concept of
Speaker 1: purpose is also built into the idea of technology, because
Speaker 1: we typically think of technology as like a machine or
Speaker 1: a mechanism that does a particular job. But if you
Speaker 1: look at the Standard Dictionary definition of technology, it's going
Speaker 1: to say something like the practical application of scientific knowledge
Speaker 1: toward a purpose. So keep all of that in mind.
Speaker 1: Keep those definitions in mind as we explore the convergence
Speaker 1: of technology and religion. Yeah. So I was wondering, what
Speaker 1: are some of the earliest examples of the religious use
Speaker 1: of a machine? Like you can only think back so far.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, nowadays people might I don't know,
Speaker 1: read devotional literature on their iPad or something. But is
Speaker 1: there anything people have been doing for hundreds or thousands
Speaker 1: of years with machines to help them in their spiritual journeys. Yes.
Speaker 1: In fact, we have a couple of really good examples
Speaker 1: of this, the first of which is the prayer wheel,
Speaker 1: which I imagine most people have seen images or footage
Speaker 1: of these, particularly if you've ever traveled into the into
Speaker 1: into East Asia, or or had any kind of contact
Speaker 1: with with with Buddhism, but these tend to be We're
Speaker 1: talking about a wheel and spindle composed of various materials.
Speaker 1: Who find a made made out of you know, ornate metals,
Speaker 1: You'll find them made out of stone, You'll find the
Speaker 1: made out of leather and cotton and it Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a physical manifestation of the turning wheel of dharma in Buddhism. Okay,
Speaker 1: so physically to picture this is it going to be
Speaker 1: kind of like one of those like game prize wheels. Uh, sort,
Speaker 1: I mean it's the it's it's not positioned vertically, it's
Speaker 1: positioned h's horizontally. It kind of if you were just
Speaker 1: an outsider looking at it and you knew nothing about
Speaker 1: Eastern religion, you might you might equate it with with
Speaker 1: some sort of a dude at at a child's playground, right,
Speaker 1: just something that seems like you just spin it and
Speaker 1: it's cool to spin. But of course it has far
Speaker 1: more purpose than that within the context of the religion.
Speaker 1: Um So the wheel of Dharma, Yeah, the wheel of
Speaker 1: dharma and uh, and it's all tied in with accumulating
Speaker 1: good karma, purifying bad karma, because you you spin this wheel,
Speaker 1: and in spinning the prayer wheel, you are assisting yourself
Speaker 1: with the with with with the purging of bad karma
Speaker 1: and the accumulation of the good. And this is accomplished
Speaker 1: by the fact that I mean on top of the
Speaker 1: wheel being this, uh, this, this gadget, this device that
Speaker 1: that that presents this um this cosmological idea. The prayers
Speaker 1: are also filled with up to a mile of prayers. Um,
Speaker 1: so we're talking mantras and sutras generally written in Sanskrit
Speaker 1: and uh. The prayers are recited each time the wheel
Speaker 1: makes a revolution. So a pilgrim spins the wheel and
Speaker 1: with each spin helps helps them gain merit and to
Speaker 1: concentrate the mind on the mantras and sutras that are
Speaker 1: being re enacted by the wheel. Okay, so much in
Speaker 1: the way that say, a lever or a pulley might
Speaker 1: upgrade our ability to do physical work, this wheel can
Speaker 1: upgrade our ability to do spiritual work. Yeah, it's I
Speaker 1: guess one way to think if it would be think
Speaker 1: about a cassette player. Right, Um, say you're just a
Speaker 1: really huge fan of I don't know what's your what's
Speaker 1: your favorite metal album, your favorite rock and roll album album? Uh,
Speaker 1: Dope Throne, Dope Throne by Electric Wizard. Okay, right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's say you're particularly love Dope Throne, and so you
Speaker 1: have a cassette of Dope Throne. But that cassette doesn't
Speaker 1: actually play just the But imagine this, The mere act
Speaker 1: of that tape filtering through the machine and revolving around
Speaker 1: that wheel somehow enacted the spirit of that album for you.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of what's going on. So it gives
Speaker 1: you the essence or the aura of Dope Throne without
Speaker 1: the sounds having to play right And and ideally, I
Speaker 1: think my understanding too, is that you would also focus
Speaker 1: the mind on Dope Throne. So it's not just saying
Speaker 1: I'm turning this machine instead of thinking about it. I'm
Speaker 1: doing both. But but where this gets really interesting is
Speaker 1: when you, for instance, when you look at the fact
Speaker 1: that until the twentieth century, virtually the only Tibetan use
Speaker 1: for the wheel was as a device for activating these mantras,
Speaker 1: so that the wheel was was virtually virtually went unused
Speaker 1: there as a physical tool. It's a technology for you know,
Speaker 1: moving things around or crushing things, etcetera. It was used
Speaker 1: almost exclusively as a really is technology. Wow yeah um.
Speaker 1: Now that's not to say that all prayer wheels are
Speaker 1: turned by hand. That's kind of the main one you see,
Speaker 1: and it's certainly the one that often makes the biggest
Speaker 1: impression visually. That's a money wheel. But there are also
Speaker 1: varieties that are turned by fire, water, wind, um, electricity.
Speaker 1: Hold on a second, So we've got an electric prayer
Speaker 1: karma machine. Yes, yeah, it's And this is where it
Speaker 1: gets really interesting because because it's one thing to say,
Speaker 1: all right, this one is spun by hand, because also
Speaker 1: I'm the human, I mean, the kind of at the
Speaker 1: center of this religious thing, right, It's another to say
Speaker 1: the fire, the wind, or the air is going to
Speaker 1: move because those are natural forces created by the gods. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well that makes me think of an analogy like if
Speaker 1: you look to medieval Catholicism, where you might have chantries
Speaker 1: that are where it's ay, a wealthy person, Remember, the
Speaker 1: gentry could pay people to pray, and the more prayers
Speaker 1: that the monks would say in these chantry is based
Speaker 1: on the amount they paid, could lessen their stay in purgatory.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you know, if they've had this kind
Speaker 1: of technology at the time, would they think, well, would
Speaker 1: it be okay to say the number of prayer machines
Speaker 1: you build could lessen your stay in purgatory? Um? Could like,
Speaker 1: could you get one of those texts to speech synthesizers
Speaker 1: to say prayers? You know, I don't know. I would
Speaker 1: definitely love to hear from someone, uh with more insight
Speaker 1: into the the rules of of Tibetan Buddhism and these
Speaker 1: prayer wheels, because it would seem like you could just
Speaker 1: buy a bunch of these things and just set them up,
Speaker 1: plug them in, and let them go and then maybe
Speaker 1: just completely externalize your your karma situation. Um. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: call these tardo corlos, and they can keep them running
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day using a four point five
Speaker 1: vault DC electric current. Uh and and and so yeah,
Speaker 1: you can just keep it running all the time, presuming
Speaker 1: when you're sleeping, when you're eating, when you're doing things
Speaker 1: that I assume do not involve the the the mental concentration.
Speaker 1: It's like a karmic force field generator exactly. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: this is even crazier when you think of another technological
Speaker 1: uh innovation that you see with the prayer of wheels,
Speaker 1: and that's that you can also find microfilm prayer wheels
Speaker 1: that contain more, uh came, even more than a million
Speaker 1: mantras inside them. So yeah, so you between microfilm technology
Speaker 1: and uh and just simple electric uh you know technology
Speaker 1: to create a spinning wheel, Um, you can really sort
Speaker 1: of change your your karma game. It seems the micro
Speaker 1: film is especially interesting to me. It seems like that's
Speaker 1: almost like a religious implementation of the idea of nanotechnology,
Speaker 1: like accomplishing more in a smaller space. It makes me
Speaker 1: wonder and and perhaps someone has has done something along
Speaker 1: these lines. But why even deal with the physical wheel?
Speaker 1: What if you took the wheel virtually you could have
Speaker 1: I mean, what would the limits there would be pretty
Speaker 1: much be no limits, right, I mean, you could have
Speaker 1: and the an absurd number of mantras moving through a
Speaker 1: wheel at pretty much any kind of rate you want. Like,
Speaker 1: you could create a computer program that executes a subroutine
Speaker 1: that is just a list of these mantras and you
Speaker 1: could tell it to loop infinitely. Yeah, kind of a
Speaker 1: karmic defragging system just running in the background out of
Speaker 1: your your computer at all times. Yeah. And of course,
Speaker 1: so this is kind of our outsider's perspective. But I'm
Speaker 1: sure somebody who is actually believing in and using these
Speaker 1: sorts of prayer wheels would have a pretty good and
Speaker 1: well thought out explanation for why you can use technology
Speaker 1: to achieve a karmically significant event in one way but
Speaker 1: not in another way. It might totally make sense in
Speaker 1: terms of how they interpret their spirituality. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think, I think anytime you see this convergence of
Speaker 1: technology and religion, it becomes the domain of of the
Speaker 1: the priest or the priest class, or somebody in some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, clerical authority to say, all right,
Speaker 1: this is the line, this is this is how far
Speaker 1: technology can come into the sanctuary. It's okay to you know,
Speaker 1: read your hymn or your Bible on an iPad, but
Speaker 1: it's not okay to do X, y or z. It
Speaker 1: makes me want to ask the question why on that
Speaker 1: spectrum I talked about earlier where we have, you know,
Speaker 1: the ancient religion on one hand and the new technology
Speaker 1: on the other, why are they so far apart? Like,
Speaker 1: what is the inherent profanity in technology? It does kind
Speaker 1: of seem crass when you see, like when you see
Speaker 1: a religious service taking place on a JumboTron or something
Speaker 1: like that. Why is that, like what is wrong with
Speaker 1: the technology or what is necessarily unspiritual about it. I
Speaker 1: don't know the answer, but there seems to be an
Speaker 1: intuition like that that we have. I guess so much
Speaker 1: of it is rooted in religion, a tradition, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I've definitely had that moment before. I've
Speaker 1: been at a church service and the person giving the
Speaker 1: sermon or you know, officiating at a wedding has been
Speaker 1: reading off of a kindle or a or a you know,
Speaker 1: a path of something. It looks inappropriate. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's a lot of it has to do
Speaker 1: with the fact that religions tend to be inherently traditional,
Speaker 1: especially the older traditional religions. So just the the image
Speaker 1: of modern technology, especially when you think of technology, is
Speaker 1: this thing that's such a mastery uh of you know,
Speaker 1: of of human skill and ability to see that uh
Speaker 1: you know, shoehorned in with these things that are supposedly
Speaker 1: given to us from some sort of a higher power. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Though I wonder if people in the ancient world would
Speaker 1: have thought about it in the same way. I mean,
Speaker 1: this again calls to mind something we talked about the
Speaker 1: last time I was on the show, when we talked
Speaker 1: about eclipses, which is the Anti Kither mechanism is an
Speaker 1: ancient Greek device that's often referred to as the world's
Speaker 1: oldest computer or the first computer. And now obviously it
Speaker 1: didn't have microprocessors or anything, but this was a device
Speaker 1: that comes from more than two thousand years ago, is
Speaker 1: found in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean, and it was
Speaker 1: an ancient mechanical computer for for computing the locations of
Speaker 1: celestial objects and for like predicting lunar eclipses and solar
Speaker 1: eclipses in the future. And the interesting thing about this
Speaker 1: is it's an amazingly advanced piece of technology for the time,
Speaker 1: just astoundingly advanced. But these events, these celestial mechanics had
Speaker 1: religious significance to the people who used it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's certainly something we discussed in that eclipse episode. When
Speaker 1: when you look back at ancient societies and even not
Speaker 1: so ancient societies, UM astronomy and UH and cosmology are
Speaker 1: are so linked together, like it becomes the domain of
Speaker 1: the of the priest and the clergy to know what
Speaker 1: the stars are doing, to track the stars, so that
Speaker 1: we know what the calendar is telling us and when
Speaker 1: certain rites should be observed. Well, that makes me wonder
Speaker 1: if star tracking technology has entered religion, even ancient religion,
Speaker 1: in the same way the prayer wheel did. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that brings us to the astrolabe. The astrolabe. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: now everyone I think has probably seen an image of
Speaker 1: an astrolabe in their finer forms. These are just works
Speaker 1: of just pure art. I'm going to tell you what
Speaker 1: a picture tell me how far off I am. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's it looks kind of like that compass you used
Speaker 1: to use in middle school math classes to draw a
Speaker 1: perfect circle with another little half moon piece on it.
Speaker 1: Is that completely wrong kind of yeah, with varying levels
Speaker 1: of artistry and a lot of figures and sliding mechanisms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a small circular device. And these would usually usually
Speaker 1: these would be made of wood or brass um and
Speaker 1: they date back over two thousand years. The concept seems
Speaker 1: to originate around three thirty BC, and they were perfected
Speaker 1: by the Arabs in the ninth century, and they remained
Speaker 1: at the basic astronomer's tool for the next seven hundred years.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a model of the stars in the sky,
Speaker 1: which can be moved to show where the stars will
Speaker 1: be at any time of the year, and the reverse
Speaker 1: side of the astrolabe concerns the position of the sun
Speaker 1: in the Okay, so it's a lot like the end
Speaker 1: to get through a mechanism in a way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's portable and has a large display. On top
Speaker 1: of that, if you have a really nice model, it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful work of art, something you might easily show
Speaker 1: it off at the dinner table. Uh. It's arguably one of,
Speaker 1: if not the first, personal computer mobile carrying it with
Speaker 1: you doing what you need to do in the course
Speaker 1: of a day. Now, the question is would it become
Speaker 1: overheated if sitting on your lap, if it was made
Speaker 1: out of metal and you were sit seated in the sun,
Speaker 1: I would say yes, Um, yeah, that's a sterility hazard. It. Uh.
Speaker 1: You couldn't get an app for this thing, but it
Speaker 1: had a number of features just by virtue of how
Speaker 1: it contract the heavens. You can tell the date and time,
Speaker 1: You could calculate distances. It could be used in determining
Speaker 1: a building height, surveying longitude, latitude, altitude horoscopes. Um. You
Speaker 1: can also figure out the position of the planets. But
Speaker 1: then on top of this there were various occults usages,
Speaker 1: So it gets a little bit into religion there. But
Speaker 1: the most notable function where we see the astrolaid becoming
Speaker 1: a piece of religious technology is in its ability to
Speaker 1: determine Islamic prayer times and determine the direction to Mecca. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is actually that the piece of technology itself
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have religious significance, but there's a fact you
Speaker 1: need to know to execute your religion. You know perfectly
Speaker 1: the way you want to do it. If you want
Speaker 1: to face Mecca as well as you can, why not
Speaker 1: have a machine to help you really hone that piece
Speaker 1: of information and get it as accurate as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it in a way, it really becomes an
Speaker 1: essential piece of technology in Islam because a long place
Speaker 1: is a high importance on the position of the believer
Speaker 1: in time and space. For starters, uh, the s alot times,
Speaker 1: these are the five prayers a day plus the Friday prayer.
Speaker 1: They depend It depends on a combination of clock time
Speaker 1: and sundial time to determine exactly when you should take place.
Speaker 1: So it concerns the exact coordinates for a given location. Um.
Speaker 1: Because again it's not just it's not just arbitrary about
Speaker 1: when the prayer times are they have they are specific
Speaker 1: depending on where you are in the world, about where
Speaker 1: you are in terms of sometime. And on top of this,
Speaker 1: the faithful has to know exactly where they are in
Speaker 1: relation to the Kaaba in Mecca so that they can
Speaker 1: face that direction during these prayers. Yeah, I think that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: And unlike the prayer wheel, which itself does some sort
Speaker 1: of religious or spiritual work, this is sort of like
Speaker 1: a technology that we use to be most properly informed
Speaker 1: about how to do the rituals that you would be
Speaker 1: doing anyway, because really a lot of the problems that
Speaker 1: occur in religion they occur as the believer moves farther
Speaker 1: away in in time or space. Right, you're you're you're
Speaker 1: farther away from Mecca. Uh, it's harder to determine exactly
Speaker 1: where you are. Uh. You're not necessarily going to have
Speaker 1: somebody signaling the prayer times each day from a power,
Speaker 1: so it falls on you to figure it out yourself.
Speaker 1: And uh, and then that's where the technology becomes extremely useful.
Speaker 1: But of course there are lots of external influences on
Speaker 1: how we practice our religions. A lot of these influences
Speaker 1: are actually going to be technological. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I thought was interesting was to think about writing
Speaker 1: itself as a technology. Now, writing is so crucial to
Speaker 1: the way we think of most of the major religions
Speaker 1: of the world today, because you've got the Torah for Jews,
Speaker 1: you've got the you know, the Hebrew Bible plus the
Speaker 1: New Testament for Christians, You've got the Kuran for Muslims,
Speaker 1: and and of course there are texts that are central
Speaker 1: to Eastern religions as well, the Ramayana and the Mahabarata
Speaker 1: to be specific. Certainly. Yeah, and so we think about
Speaker 1: religion as a very text based of fair but there's
Speaker 1: really no reason it has to be. I mean, religions
Speaker 1: can be transmitted orally through culture. That can be systems
Speaker 1: of cultural practices that don't necessarily have to be written
Speaker 1: down or encoded anywhere. But for some reason, most of
Speaker 1: the world's major religions have a strong textual component, and
Speaker 1: I wonder how it changed the way we practiced religion
Speaker 1: when writing came into humanity, because writing, I mean, human
Speaker 1: civilization is much older than writing. Of course, human life
Speaker 1: in general, human culture is even older than civilization, so
Speaker 1: much older than writing. So we can only really imagine,
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, I'm sure that something like a
Speaker 1: cultural anthropologist or an archaeologists could tell us more about
Speaker 1: how they think writing might have changed the way we
Speaker 1: practice religions, but I really have no idea. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it hard. You're probably doing on the situation
Speaker 1: of of of the expansion of memory, right, because writing
Speaker 1: is in essence the ability to externalized human memory. Before writing,
Speaker 1: how we that we can only contain as much as
Speaker 1: could fit in a human mind, or if maybe if
Speaker 1: you were, you know, really skilled at you might compartmentalize it,
Speaker 1: right and have one person deal with the with these
Speaker 1: memories versus the other, almost a fahrenheit for fifty one
Speaker 1: kind of situation. Yeah, So before writing, it's you're limited
Speaker 1: by just the power of the human mind, remember, and
Speaker 1: then the ability to pass that on to us, which
Speaker 1: of course we know from everyday experience, but also from
Speaker 1: actual studies. We we don't pass on information all that
Speaker 1: faithfully if we don't write it down right, memory itself
Speaker 1: is not set in stone, and uh, and then there's
Speaker 1: kind of a telephone game anytime we pass something on anything. Really,
Speaker 1: anytime you remember something, you're taking it out, you're potentially
Speaker 1: changing it and then putting it back in. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to imagine, though, of course I could be
Speaker 1: wrong that, uh, that as much as religious beliefs kind
Speaker 1: of change from generation to generation today, I have to
Speaker 1: imagine they changed even more and much more quickly in
Speaker 1: times before there were sort of like texts to anchor them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: before you could actually set a religion in stone. I
Speaker 1: imagine a religion really just by virtue of how we
Speaker 1: remembered it. It changed with us so very fluid. So
Speaker 1: some of these problems we run into where we're saying,
Speaker 1: all right, we're trying to apply ancient Babylonian cosmology to
Speaker 1: modern times. Part of that is by virtue of depending
Speaker 1: upon ancient Babylonian cosmology is set in stone, and then
Speaker 1: you know and then that that recording of it is
Speaker 1: considered sacred and holy. Right, So these ancient writing technologies,
Speaker 1: we of course had the invention of alphabets, and I
Speaker 1: think it's very fair to consider an alphabet of technology.
Speaker 1: But then on top of that, you just had the
Speaker 1: preservation technology. So you had scrolls, you eventually had cadsseas,
Speaker 1: you had you know, tablets and carving and and all
Speaker 1: the different pictograms and libraries and and every bit of
Speaker 1: technology we had. But there was one big thing I
Speaker 1: think that that was the main textual technology that really
Speaker 1: revolutionized the world, and that would be the printing press. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the mid fifteenth century in Europe particularly
Speaker 1: called Gutenberg. Gutenberg, yeah, um, and his effect on the Bible,
Speaker 1: the Gutenberg Bible, because prior to this, any given Western
Speaker 1: manuscript had to be copied by hand, and it was
Speaker 1: generally this was something that was handled by by the clergy.
Speaker 1: Right can you imagine this living in a world where
Speaker 1: so you look to the church as your you know,
Speaker 1: as your authority on all things spiritual, uh, and probably
Speaker 1: more than that also all things government in some cases
Speaker 1: and and all that. But they have the Bible as
Speaker 1: the authority that's interpreted by the church. And so what
Speaker 1: is the Bible, Well, it is hand to copy documents
Speaker 1: that most people don't have much access to They might
Speaker 1: be because they're so rare. I mean they're kept in
Speaker 1: script or i ums or libraries or these places that
Speaker 1: the average per and wouldn't have any access to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're highly fetishized. Uh, it's it's just not something that
Speaker 1: the average person would have access to. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, the lack of a printing press means that
Speaker 1: there's really not much distributed commentary on the documents either.
Speaker 1: And this is something that uh, a lot of people
Speaker 1: would say played a big role in the Renaissance, Protestant Reformation,
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment, scientific Revolution. If you just look at the
Speaker 1: Protestant Reformation, you have to imagine the effect that the
Speaker 1: printing press had on not just the Bible itself, but
Speaker 1: on the distribution of Reformation propaganda. And I don't use
Speaker 1: the word propaganda there in a negative sense. I think
Speaker 1: that's just the term for all of the ways in
Speaker 1: which Reformation ideas were being spread throughout Europe at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really the kind of technological advancement in mass communication
Speaker 1: that you can you can really only compare it to,
Speaker 1: if not the emergence of writing to begin with, and
Speaker 1: perhaps the Internet age like that, like such a big
Speaker 1: movement in such a drastic change in our ability to
Speaker 1: communicate with one another. Speaking of the scientific revolution, Uh,
Speaker 1: that makes me think about the you know, the whole
Speaker 1: notion of a clockwork universe, which I'm not gonna get
Speaker 1: too deep into that here that could easily be its
Speaker 1: own podcast. But everyone's heard the idea of a creator
Speaker 1: God as a watchmaker, right, Um, this creator makes the
Speaker 1: perfect mechanical time piece that is the universe and then
Speaker 1: just lets it go. Maybe winds it first, I guess
Speaker 1: hopefully winds it and then lets it go because it
Speaker 1: doesn't need to to be rewound or anything. It works
Speaker 1: perfectly as it's created. And this is an example of,
Speaker 1: you know, a technological society, A society that has these
Speaker 1: technological ideas in its head can't help but think about, um,
Speaker 1: the unseen world in terms of those same mechanisms, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very common to want to describe the
Speaker 1: actions of God in terms that we can understand. And
Speaker 1: what do we understand these days? And making machines scenes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen a lot of this, but I wonder
Speaker 1: to what extent, like modern like email or jargon, etcetera,
Speaker 1: has has made its way into you know, just average
Speaker 1: say Christian sermons, Like, does anyone talk about um communication
Speaker 1: with God, prayer itself being a form of email. I
Speaker 1: do think a lot of the jokes now displayed on
Speaker 1: church signs come from email forwards. Yeah, indeed, I believe
Speaker 1: I saw one chart church marquee here around town a
Speaker 1: few years back with a talked about sending God some
Speaker 1: quote an email, which I thought when I when I
Speaker 1: read an email, I was instantly thinking, that sounds like
Speaker 1: a great name for some sort of a wrestling move,
Speaker 1: finishing maneuver right where you need somebody in the head,
Speaker 1: and you call it an email. But there of course
Speaker 1: talking about kneeling, uh, and then praying, which is a
Speaker 1: form of an email. That's adorable an email. But getting
Speaker 1: back to the ways that external advances in technology have
Speaker 1: affected the progression of religions, one of the ways that
Speaker 1: I think is very significant is looking at the way
Speaker 1: technology has changed the way we do work, which of
Speaker 1: course is the main thing technology does, and how that
Speaker 1: affects religious beliefs about how we should do work. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're talking of course about Shabbat, right, of course, So
Speaker 1: if you look at the way some Jews interpret teachings
Speaker 1: in the Torah on what should be done or not
Speaker 1: done on the Sabbath. There have been lots of ways
Speaker 1: in which new technologies have sort of intruded on the
Speaker 1: traditional understanding of what is accepted and forbidden to do
Speaker 1: on the day of rest. Right, this is sundown Friday
Speaker 1: to send down Saturday, in which Orthodox user forbidden to work, right,
Speaker 1: which is interesting technology, right uh? And to drive vehicle
Speaker 1: of course, right. And so of course what you can
Speaker 1: guess from drive a vehicle is that a lot of
Speaker 1: these things aren't directly commandments stated in the tour itself
Speaker 1: as an ancient document, but their interpretations that have come
Speaker 1: from the rabbis throughout the years about how we should
Speaker 1: apply the laws of the Torah to the new technological
Speaker 1: world we find ourselves in. Right, because just by the
Speaker 1: basic laws and like the thirty nine different activities that
Speaker 1: are off limits, um, it would mean that you can't
Speaker 1: cook or light a fire, and by extension of that,
Speaker 1: the interpretation is that there would be no moving electricity
Speaker 1: through a circuit. Okay. So by this interpretation, really, if
Speaker 1: you want to be observant on the Sabbath, you should
Speaker 1: not press a button that causes an electrical device to
Speaker 1: turn on. Right, And that's where it gets kind of
Speaker 1: tricky because there's some obvious examples, uh that you know,
Speaker 1: you could say, well, don't turn on the vacuum cleaner. Okay,
Speaker 1: well I'm not gonna turn on the vauum cleaner because
Speaker 1: I'm also not going to vacuum. But then you gotta
Speaker 1: eat on on the on the Sabbath, right, So, so
Speaker 1: what do you do about opening the refrigerator door? Oh,
Speaker 1: because when you open the refrigerator door, a light comes
Speaker 1: on exactly. That's your action of opening the door that
Speaker 1: has cause that light to ignite. Yeah. So I mean
Speaker 1: for the longest there's an easy workaround, right. You could
Speaker 1: either unscrew the bulb or you just you tape up
Speaker 1: that little button right, right. So those are some pretty
Speaker 1: simple workarounds for that some orthodox chose might use. But
Speaker 1: it gets more complicated than that in some scenarios. Right.
Speaker 1: For instance, another classic workaround was involved the use of
Speaker 1: an oven, right, because you need to heat up food.
Speaker 1: You can't light your stove. You can't activate the oven
Speaker 1: by pushing the button. But if you activate the oven,
Speaker 1: you turn it on before sundown. Um on Friday and
Speaker 1: just leave it running through and keep it warm, you know,
Speaker 1: through sundown on Saturday. Then you can make use of
Speaker 1: that heat. You're you're just setting an emotion beforehand and
Speaker 1: then picking up after the Sabbath is done. I'd imagine
Speaker 1: a lot of ovens today are programmed not to do
Speaker 1: that because they don't want it would be a safety
Speaker 1: hazard to just leave an oven on and leave town
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, so they probably have like an automatic
Speaker 1: shut off, right they do, Yeah, an automatic safety shut off.
Speaker 1: And when they started using these, you know, they were
Speaker 1: getting complaints from people who who needed uh to keep
Speaker 1: their oven on in order to observe the religious practices.
Speaker 1: So this is where we get Sabbath mode on on
Speaker 1: various appliances, Uh not where they play Sabbath albums. Right,
Speaker 1: So that would that was certainly an innovation that would
Speaker 1: be that would be great on modern Welcome in my house,
Speaker 1: a black Sabbath mode on your your dishwasher, etcetera. But no,
Speaker 1: this would involve simply a manual override to the safety
Speaker 1: features so that you could operate your cooking technology in
Speaker 1: accordance with your religious faith. You know, I bet that
Speaker 1: there are specific manufacturers that do this. There are and
Speaker 1: in fact there's actually something called star K Kosher Certification
Speaker 1: for Appliances. Yeah, you can actually go to their their
Speaker 1: website it's star uh dash K dot org and they
Speaker 1: have a lot of stuff dealing with with kosher foods,
Speaker 1: what have you. But also at a whole system, a
Speaker 1: whole section on appliances where you can look up the
Speaker 1: appliances and see what they're their, their potential Sabbath modes are,
Speaker 1: how to activate them, how to use them in accordance
Speaker 1: with these rules and regulations. Another classic example about the
Speaker 1: Shabbat and technology is the use of an elevator. Right, reasonly,
Speaker 1: you need to use an elevator to move around in
Speaker 1: a high rise building. How do you do it if
Speaker 1: you can't push a button? While you just simply program
Speaker 1: the elevator, uh, during the Sabbat to go from floor
Speaker 1: to floor to floor to floor, up and down, up
Speaker 1: and down NonStop. And then you just get on and
Speaker 1: you just ride the ride. Wow. Yeah, so I might
Speaker 1: be a long ride and a long wait, but at
Speaker 1: least you can observe your your practices exactly. Another bit
Speaker 1: of religious technology wounded to touch on real quick is
Speaker 1: a sixteenth century clockwork monk created by one La Torriana,
Speaker 1: who was a mechanic for Spanish Emperor Charles the Fifth,
Speaker 1: the emperor's son, King Philip the Second, the story goes,
Speaker 1: was praying at the bedside of his own dying son
Speaker 1: and he's getting desperate, so he's making promises to the divine.
Speaker 1: He's promising a miracle for a miracle. Uh it is
Speaker 1: child survives, he ends up recovering, and he has to
Speaker 1: keep his promise. What kind of a miracle can can
Speaker 1: a king actually do? Well? Obviously, the king is gonna
Speaker 1: um his mechanical constelled as a mechanic and get him
Speaker 1: to create a miracle as a as kind of an
Speaker 1: offering right as a as as a thank you to
Speaker 1: the divine. And so that's where when Ello comes in
Speaker 1: and he creates a key wound spring operated automaton and
Speaker 1: a really complicated automaton at that. Yeah, I've seen pictures
Speaker 1: of this and it's fascinating. You can, like, I think
Speaker 1: there's a little compartment where you can peek in on
Speaker 1: the inside of it, and it's got gears, and I
Speaker 1: don't I couldn't begin to understand how it works on
Speaker 1: the inside. But what does it actually do? Well? I
Speaker 1: mean it it walks around, uh kind of a square shape.
Speaker 1: It strikes its chest with its right arm. It raises
Speaker 1: and lowers a small cross and rosary with its left.
Speaker 1: It occasionally kisses the cross. It turns and nods its head,
Speaker 1: It rolls its eyes, and it mouths you know, silent
Speaker 1: prayers and whatnot. So so wait, you said it strikes
Speaker 1: its chest, So is this is this auto automatic self flagellation.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's quite flagellation, but that would be
Speaker 1: a different That would be an interesting different. Yea. Um,
Speaker 1: But some of you probably heard a Radio Lab episode
Speaker 1: a few years back where they did like a short
Speaker 1: profile of this piece and sort of the mysteries around it,
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of questions regarding, you know,
Speaker 1: why why was this created? What's the exact purpose? You know,
Speaker 1: what was the mindset in creating it? Because it's simply
Speaker 1: an offering, uh, you know to God. Is it's a
Speaker 1: is it something you're supposed to put on the table
Speaker 1: and you also around in prayer, pray while observing it? Right,
Speaker 1: my question would be does it do something relevant or
Speaker 1: is it more kind of like when a painter sculptor
Speaker 1: would create a work of art and dedicate it to
Speaker 1: the Lord. I think that seems to be the prevalent interpretation,
Speaker 1: though in the light of what we talked about with
Speaker 1: the prayer wheel, it's it's tempting to want to go
Speaker 1: that direction with it, you know, and think of it
Speaker 1: as a think that, like its prayers had some efficacy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm tempting. I really want to believe that
Speaker 1: I can, in good uh, in good faith, put that forward.
Speaker 1: Is is something that I think or that even the
Speaker 1: majority of the experts think that that was in the
Speaker 1: mind of of the king or the mechanic responsible. But
Speaker 1: you can't help but but wonder exactly how the mindset
Speaker 1: of the mechanic played into it. And of course, in
Speaker 1: our modern time, UM, we've plenty of examples of of
Speaker 1: prayer taking place online U prayer groups, etcetera. Sharing their
Speaker 1: concerns via the Internet. And I don't know to what
Speaker 1: extent they can you know, they ever consider the email
Speaker 1: itself a prayer. But but certainly that seems like a
Speaker 1: lot that will blurn more and more as that becomes
Speaker 1: like standard practice, right because certainly, uh, at some point
Speaker 1: the written word uh became holy. Right, and then I
Speaker 1: can't help but but imagine that in the advent of
Speaker 1: the printing press, maybe initially the printed word was a
Speaker 1: little less holy, a little more manufactured. Sure than that
Speaker 1: becomes uh, you know, de facto holy as well. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: this is the other side of the advance of the
Speaker 1: textual technology uh progression, because religion is so inherently social
Speaker 1: and in most the way most people practice it, and
Speaker 1: it's something that deeply does involve communication between groups and
Speaker 1: so allowing greater communication between people who think alike or
Speaker 1: want to offer each other religious advice or interpretation or consolation.
Speaker 1: The Internet is obviously going to be a huge explosion
Speaker 1: in that. But it's also not just a peer to
Speaker 1: peer exchange, right. So you can have your sort of
Speaker 1: like your religious you know, emails goal where you forward
Speaker 1: each other the things that you know you want to
Speaker 1: show to your friends and your peers in the church.
Speaker 1: You can also have services provided by church officials over
Speaker 1: telecommunications links. Indeed, and uh, you know, here's a question
Speaker 1: that comes to mind here if it's if it's blasphemous
Speaker 1: to um, to burn or to face a religious text
Speaker 1: such as the Bible or the Koran. What have you
Speaker 1: deleted an e book of it? Oh? Man, is that's
Speaker 1: this that blasphemous? I don't know, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: sure some people have opinions on that. Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: personally do not. Hey, and we haven't even mentioned exorcism online, right, Well,
Speaker 1: that would be one of those services that could be
Speaker 1: offered by you know, your religious official who might be
Speaker 1: so far away. What if they're in a cabin in
Speaker 1: Alaska that hopefully has a fast Internet connection, but they
Speaker 1: want to offer the spiritual service that you really need,
Speaker 1: and that might be the exorcism of a demon or
Speaker 1: multiple demons from your person. Right, And there are individuals
Speaker 1: who have and continue to offer online exorcism services. Back
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, famed Israelian Kabbala master Rabbi Botsfrey
Speaker 1: attempted to remove a dibbic, a disembodied spirit from a
Speaker 1: Brazilian man via the Internet. And more recently we've seen
Speaker 1: evangelical Reverend Bob Larson offering exorcisms for a fee, of course,
Speaker 1: via Skype. And this, uh, this was actually featured on
Speaker 1: the Daily Show several months back. Yeah, so imagine I
Speaker 1: didn't see that imagine a number of our listeners caught
Speaker 1: it there. Yeah, that sounds way more interesting than the
Speaker 1: video conferencing that we have here at work. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately, what's I don't see what the big
Speaker 1: big deal is because if if an exorcism involved like
Speaker 1: this right by which you're driving a spiritual invader out,
Speaker 1: that's essentially that the demon is kind of telecommuting through
Speaker 1: an individual, right, Yeah, Yeah, that makes sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems to me that the ideology behind an exorcism
Speaker 1: would suggest that it's a it's an interpersonal connection that
Speaker 1: breaks the power of the demon. It's sort of the
Speaker 1: spiritual or emotional or intellectual presence of the clerical official
Speaker 1: that can drive the demon out, not so much the
Speaker 1: physical presence, like why would they really need to be
Speaker 1: in the room. Yeah, I mean it reminds me of
Speaker 1: I think we both recently rewatched portions are the entirety
Speaker 1: of the Hell Razor Bloodlines movie, where an individual, of course,
Speaker 1: you know religious technology, right, the limit configuration is a
Speaker 1: little mechanical device and you solve it, and the demon
Speaker 1: show up, the cinobyte show up. And in that movie,
Speaker 1: there's an individual that's cheating, right, by trying by solving
Speaker 1: it virtually or remotely by use of a robot. Right, yes,
Speaker 1: he's he's using essentially the technology of a bomb disposal robot,
Speaker 1: but to solve the lament configuration puzzle box and workroom.
Speaker 1: Initially it works, but then some some people who are
Speaker 1: not very technologically savvy or like, well, we gotta solve
Speaker 1: this problem. They opened the door to the room where
Speaker 1: the cinobytes are contained, and then there's a problem. But
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Initially they're able to outmaneuver the technologically empowered
Speaker 1: demons that are the cinabytes via more advanced technology. Right,
Speaker 1: they can put those cinobytes in a box inside a box,
Speaker 1: exactly inside a box. All right. So that's gonna be
Speaker 1: the end of part one here. This is very much
Speaker 1: again a two part series. Yeah, and if you want
Speaker 1: to hear the conclusion of that story that we started
Speaker 1: this episode with the construction of the electro mechanical Messiah
Speaker 1: at the High Rock Tower in Lynn, Massachusetts, that's gonna
Speaker 1: be in our next episode. So that's going to be
Speaker 1: in part two. Indeed, we're also gonna get into some
Speaker 1: some wonderful UFO and scientology territory as well. So hey,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're listening to this episode as it
Speaker 1: comes out, just wait a couple of days and you know,
Speaker 1: get the second part. If you're catching up on this
Speaker 1: at a later point, I will make sure that there
Speaker 1: is a link to the second episode on the landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode at stuff to blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. That's the mothership. That's where we'll find all
Speaker 1: the episodes, all the videos, all the blog post plus
Speaker 1: links out to our social media accounts such as Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter. And if you want to let us know
Speaker 1: about any interesting thoughts you have or stories you've ever
Speaker 1: experienced about the intersection of religion and technology, or even
Speaker 1: the complete synthesis and marriage of religion and technology, email
Speaker 1: us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com.