WEBVTT - From the Vault: Techno-Religion, Part 1 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.560 Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:10.320 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:14.000 The vault hangs open. Will you walk inside with us? Yes, 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:18.240 do walk inside, because we're gonna be cracking out our 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:22.079 old episodes on Techno Religion, Part one and Part two. 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:24.160 This is gonna be part one. Yeah, so when did 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:28.159 these originally published? So part one here originally published on 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:31.880 June nine. Oh, this was one of my one of 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:34.920 my first episodes way back when I was a brand 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:38.080 new baby on this show. I wanted to talk about 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:41.920 some intersections between technology and religion, so we did, and 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:43.960 Robert it was a lot of fun. I still remember 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:46.240 those days very fondly. Yeah, we got we got two 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:48.919 long episodes out of it. And the cool thing is, 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:51.479 I think we have the potential to do a third 0:00:51.640 --> 0:00:54.840 Techno Religion episode in the future. So keep that in 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:57.160 mind as you're listening to all of this, and certainly 0:00:57.240 --> 0:00:59.280 shoot us an email if you can think of a 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:03.880 wonderful example of religious technology that we should include. I 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:06.720 think we heard after this episode from at least one 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.720 academic who is doing a dissertation on techno religion. Well, 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:12.920 I've forgot about that. We'll have to reach out to 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:16.679 them anyway. Here is our classic episode on techno Religion 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:19.480 for the Masses, Part one, and of course next weekend 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:21.880 if you want to tune back in on Saturday, we 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:25.200 will be re airing part two. So here's part one. 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:32.040 Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to blow your mind from how 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:42.240 Stuff Works dot com. We may say that we have 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.880 the birth of a new science, a new philosophy, a 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:49.559 new life. The time of deliverance has come at last, 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:53.680 and henceforward the career of humanity is upward and onward, 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:58.320 a mighty, a noble, and a godlike career. All the 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:02.480 revelations of spiritual as them heretofore, all the control of 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:06.200 spirits over mortals, and the instruction and discipline they have 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:09.160 given us, have only paved the way, as it were, 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:13.240 for the advent of a great practical movement, such as 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:16.760 the world little dreams of though it has long deeply 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:20.400 yearned for it, and agonized and groaned away its life 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:23.800 because it did not come sooner. And this new motive 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.000 power is to lead the way in the great, speedily 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:30.920 coming salvation. It is to be the physical savior of 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:35.320 the race, the history of its inception, its various stages 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:38.680 of progress, and its completion will show the world a 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:42.799 most beautiful and significant analogy to the advent of Jesus 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:46.680 is the spiritual savior of the race. Hence we most 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:50.799 confidently assert that the advent of the science of all sciences, 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:54.799 the philosophy of all philosophies, and the art of all 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:58.800 arts has now fairly commenced. The child is born not 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:02.280 long hence he will go alone. Then he will dispute 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:11.560 with the doctors and the temples of science. And then hey, 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:13.320 welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:17.480 Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe, what is what 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:20.160 is going on here? I'm reading a quote. This is 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:24.560 a quote from a Boston newspaper. The June four edition 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:28.880 of a Boston newspaper called the New Era or Heaven 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:31.520 Opened to Man, And this passage was written by a 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:36.640 former Universalist minister named Simon Hewitt. So after this passage, 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:41.600 one skeptical reader named Emma Hardinge commented that quote nothing 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:44.520 could be given further beyond vague hints of what was 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:48.520 to follow. The awful then which broke off breathless at 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:54.080 the contemplation of its own inexpressible possibilities. So all this 0:03:54.240 --> 0:03:58.400 preamble to something amazing that's going to change humanity? What 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:02.680 on earth could Simon Wit have been talking about? Well, 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.760 he was referring to something that sat inside the upper 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:10.640 room of a large tower overlooking the coast beyond the 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:14.920 town of Lynn, Massachusetts. This is high rock tower. If 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:16.159 you want to look it up, you can see a 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:18.400 picture of this place. It still exists to kind of 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.080 get a sense of it. And inside the upper room 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.159 of this tower were the fruits of what I would 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:27.520 sort of think of as the ultimate backyard engineering project. 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:32.240 It is like garage engineering gone to the extreme. So 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:36.200 from July eighteen fifty three to the following spring in 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:41.080 eighteen fifty four, a group of universalist reformers and spiritualist 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:45.080 enthusiasts had been building a machine called the New Motor. 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.480 And it would be something I'd say, probably never seen 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:54.640 before on earth, an electro mechanical messiah. Yes, which you 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:56.800 know this will bring to mind a number of different 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:02.360 stunning visuals. Would we would like to dissuade you from 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:05.520 We'll make sure we have some links to some images 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:08.680 of the the electrical Messiah in question on the landing 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:10.880 page for this episode. But but if you think about 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.599 a Dollec from doctor Who, from Doctor Who, if a 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:17.560 Dollec were to breed with a coffee table, Uh, their 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:22.720 offspring when probably resembled the UH decorated with many like 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.720 dangling Christmas ornaments. Yes. Yes, so it's a hybrid of 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:29.680 a coffee table and a dialect decorated for Christmas and 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:32.600 serving as kind of kind of an altarpiece as well. 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:35.880 There's certainly an altarpiece vibe to this creation, sure, And 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:39.040 this is bridging two worlds that we tend to see 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:41.680 as sort of I don't know what spectrum it is, 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:44.240 but there, whatever it is, there at the opposite ends 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:50.039 of the spectrum. One is religion and the other is technology. 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.400 I mean, we typically think of religion as a very 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:57.240 low tech affair. You tend to go into churches, I 0:05:57.279 --> 0:05:59.279 don't know, maybe not some churches these days, but you 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:02.159 see a lot of stuff that recalls an earlier time. 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:06.160 And our religious texts in most of the major religions 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:09.280 of the world are very ancient, and thus the metaphors 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:11.599 in which we talk about our religions tend to be 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:16.360 very ancient, and technology is you know, it's the very 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:18.520 essence of what is new and what the future is. 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:21.320 I mean, what is science fiction that imagines the future 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:24.960 usually focused on its new technology? Yeah, I mean most 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:27.760 of the major world religions. Yeah, they're based on ancient 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:33.600 cosmologies that sometimes we're okay with updating. Uh. Generally, at 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:35.960 certain points in the past we will say, all right, 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:38.680 we're gonna actually change this a little bit to the 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:40.560 fit how we live now. But for the most part, yeah, 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:42.960 they're rooted in the past, and technology is ever rooted 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:45.920 in the president in the future. Right, But today we 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.679 want to discuss what happens when you cram the ends 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:54.360 of that spectrum together and you create techno religion. So 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:59.560 what happens when technology changes religions, what happens when technology 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:03.520 becomes a component of religious practice, and what happens when 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:07.400 technology becomes a god or messiah in itself? Right, And 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:10.480 this is something that has been happening for ages. Uh. 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:13.480 If you think of technology and the broader sentence especially, 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:19.080 humans have always been developing new technologies, developing gadgets, developing 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:23.520 um more advanced ways of just looking at the world. 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:25.840 Around them and manipulating the world around them. And this 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:27.920 has always gone hand in hand with our ability to 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:30.880 understand the purpose of life and the purpose of of 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:33.440 our existence here on earth. Yeah. And the concept of 0:07:33.480 --> 0:07:37.680 purpose is also built into the idea of technology, because 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:41.080 we typically think of technology as like a machine or 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:44.200 a mechanism that does a particular job. But if you 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:47.080 look at the Standard Dictionary definition of technology, it's going 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:51.320 to say something like the practical application of scientific knowledge 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:53.480 toward a purpose. So keep all of that in mind. 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.360 Keep those definitions in mind as we explore the convergence 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.760 of technology and religion. Yeah. So I was wondering, what 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:04.600 are some of the earliest examples of the religious use 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.880 of a machine? Like you can only think back so far. 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:10.520 I mean, of course, nowadays people might I don't know, 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:14.560 read devotional literature on their iPad or something. But is 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:17.800 there anything people have been doing for hundreds or thousands 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:21.600 of years with machines to help them in their spiritual journeys. Yes. 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:24.160 In fact, we have a couple of really good examples 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:27.200 of this, the first of which is the prayer wheel, 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.400 which I imagine most people have seen images or footage 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:35.640 of these, particularly if you've ever traveled into the into 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:38.400 into East Asia, or or had any kind of contact 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:42.240 with with with Buddhism, but these tend to be We're 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:46.120 talking about a wheel and spindle composed of various materials. 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:49.520 Who find a made made out of you know, ornate metals, 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:51.439 You'll find them made out of stone, You'll find the 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:54.880 made out of leather and cotton and it Uh, it's 0:08:54.920 --> 0:09:00.440 a physical manifestation of the turning wheel of dharma in Buddhism. Okay, 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:02.600 so physically to picture this is it going to be 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:07.320 kind of like one of those like game prize wheels. Uh, sort, 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:09.840 I mean it's the it's it's not positioned vertically, it's 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:13.520 positioned h's horizontally. It kind of if you were just 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:15.600 an outsider looking at it and you knew nothing about 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:19.680 Eastern religion, you might you might equate it with with 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.280 some sort of a dude at at a child's playground, right, 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:24.080 just something that seems like you just spin it and 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:26.560 it's cool to spin. But of course it has far 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:29.840 more purpose than that within the context of the religion. 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:32.839 Um So the wheel of Dharma, Yeah, the wheel of 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:36.760 dharma and uh, and it's all tied in with accumulating 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:40.520 good karma, purifying bad karma, because you you spin this wheel, 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:45.760 and in spinning the prayer wheel, you are assisting yourself 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:48.320 with the with with with the purging of bad karma 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:52.520 and the accumulation of the good. And this is accomplished 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:55.240 by the fact that I mean on top of the 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:59.360 wheel being this, uh, this, this gadget, this device that 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:04.840 that that presents this um this cosmological idea. The prayers 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:08.640 are also filled with up to a mile of prayers. Um, 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:12.280 so we're talking mantras and sutras generally written in Sanskrit 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:17.520 and uh. The prayers are recited each time the wheel 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:21.280 makes a revolution. So a pilgrim spins the wheel and 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:24.720 with each spin helps helps them gain merit and to 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:28.600 concentrate the mind on the mantras and sutras that are 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:32.000 being re enacted by the wheel. Okay, so much in 0:10:32.040 --> 0:10:34.880 the way that say, a lever or a pulley might 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:39.439 upgrade our ability to do physical work, this wheel can 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:44.000 upgrade our ability to do spiritual work. Yeah, it's I 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:45.520 guess one way to think if it would be think 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:49.080 about a cassette player. Right, Um, say you're just a 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:52.280 really huge fan of I don't know what's your what's 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:55.400 your favorite metal album, your favorite rock and roll album album? Uh, 0:10:55.559 --> 0:11:00.320 Dope Throne, Dope Throne by Electric Wizard. Okay, right, Well, 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:03.080 let's say you're particularly love Dope Throne, and so you 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:05.960 have a cassette of Dope Throne. But that cassette doesn't 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:09.680 actually play just the But imagine this, The mere act 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:13.080 of that tape filtering through the machine and revolving around 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:17.560 that wheel somehow enacted the spirit of that album for you. 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:20.720 That's the kind of what's going on. So it gives 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:23.480 you the essence or the aura of Dope Throne without 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:26.160 the sounds having to play right And and ideally, I 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:28.480 think my understanding too, is that you would also focus 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.079 the mind on Dope Throne. So it's not just saying 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:33.280 I'm turning this machine instead of thinking about it. I'm 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:37.199 doing both. But but where this gets really interesting is 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:39.040 when you, for instance, when you look at the fact 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:43.000 that until the twentieth century, virtually the only Tibetan use 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:47.439 for the wheel was as a device for activating these mantras, 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:50.719 so that the wheel was was virtually virtually went unused 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:55.360 there as a physical tool. It's a technology for you know, 0:11:55.400 --> 0:11:58.520 moving things around or crushing things, etcetera. It was used 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:03.439 almost exclusively as a really is technology. Wow yeah um. 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:06.240 Now that's not to say that all prayer wheels are 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:08.320 turned by hand. That's kind of the main one you see, 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:11.160 and it's certainly the one that often makes the biggest 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:14.280 impression visually. That's a money wheel. But there are also 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:19.960 varieties that are turned by fire, water, wind, um, electricity. 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:23.679 Hold on a second, So we've got an electric prayer 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:27.079 karma machine. Yes, yeah, it's And this is where it 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.440 gets really interesting because because it's one thing to say, 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:32.800 all right, this one is spun by hand, because also 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:34.319 I'm the human, I mean, the kind of at the 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:37.319 center of this religious thing, right, It's another to say 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:39.400 the fire, the wind, or the air is going to 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.600 move because those are natural forces created by the gods. Right. Yeah, 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:44.560 Well that makes me think of an analogy like if 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.560 you look to medieval Catholicism, where you might have chantries 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:51.880 that are where it's ay, a wealthy person, Remember, the 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:56.360 gentry could pay people to pray, and the more prayers 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:58.559 that the monks would say in these chantry is based 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:02.160 on the amount they paid, could lessen their stay in purgatory. 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:04.520 I wonder if you know, if they've had this kind 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:07.120 of technology at the time, would they think, well, would 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:10.560 it be okay to say the number of prayer machines 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:15.720 you build could lessen your stay in purgatory? Um? Could like, 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:18.920 could you get one of those texts to speech synthesizers 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:21.240 to say prayers? You know, I don't know. I would 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:24.240 definitely love to hear from someone, uh with more insight 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:28.880 into the the rules of of Tibetan Buddhism and these 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:31.440 prayer wheels, because it would seem like you could just 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:33.720 buy a bunch of these things and just set them up, 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:35.880 plug them in, and let them go and then maybe 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:41.360 just completely externalize your your karma situation. Um. Yeah. They 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:45.480 call these tardo corlos, and they can keep them running 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:48.680 twenty four hours a day using a four point five 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:53.480 vault DC electric current. Uh and and and so yeah, 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:55.360 you can just keep it running all the time, presuming 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:57.600 when you're sleeping, when you're eating, when you're doing things 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:02.120 that I assume do not involve the the the mental concentration. 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:06.600 It's like a karmic force field generator exactly. Yeah. And 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.720 this is even crazier when you think of another technological 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:13.360 uh innovation that you see with the prayer of wheels, 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:16.679 and that's that you can also find microfilm prayer wheels 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:19.600 that contain more, uh came, even more than a million 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:25.360 mantras inside them. So yeah, so you between microfilm technology 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:29.480 and uh and just simple electric uh you know technology 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.480 to create a spinning wheel, Um, you can really sort 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:35.960 of change your your karma game. It seems the micro 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:38.560 film is especially interesting to me. It seems like that's 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:43.000 almost like a religious implementation of the idea of nanotechnology, 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:46.400 like accomplishing more in a smaller space. It makes me 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:49.640 wonder and and perhaps someone has has done something along 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:52.480 these lines. But why even deal with the physical wheel? 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:54.800 What if you took the wheel virtually you could have 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:57.240 I mean, what would the limits there would be pretty 0:14:57.320 --> 0:14:59.160 much be no limits, right, I mean, you could have 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:02.680 and the an absurd number of mantras moving through a 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:06.600 wheel at pretty much any kind of rate you want. Like, 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:10.640 you could create a computer program that executes a subroutine 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:14.000 that is just a list of these mantras and you 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:16.800 could tell it to loop infinitely. Yeah, kind of a 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:19.880 karmic defragging system just running in the background out of 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:22.280 your your computer at all times. Yeah. And of course, 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.000 so this is kind of our outsider's perspective. But I'm 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:29.120 sure somebody who is actually believing in and using these 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:31.720 sorts of prayer wheels would have a pretty good and 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.320 well thought out explanation for why you can use technology 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.880 to achieve a karmically significant event in one way but 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:41.240 not in another way. It might totally make sense in 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:44.800 terms of how they interpret their spirituality. Yeah, I mean, 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:47.240 I think, I think anytime you see this convergence of 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:52.800 technology and religion, it becomes the domain of of the 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:55.280 the priest or the priest class, or somebody in some 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:57.920 sort of you know, clerical authority to say, all right, 0:15:57.960 --> 0:15:59.880 this is the line, this is this is how far 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:05.040 technology can come into the sanctuary. It's okay to you know, 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:07.560 read your hymn or your Bible on an iPad, but 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:10.240 it's not okay to do X, y or z. It 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:13.520 makes me want to ask the question why on that 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:15.760 spectrum I talked about earlier where we have, you know, 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:18.440 the ancient religion on one hand and the new technology 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:21.000 on the other, why are they so far apart? Like, 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:26.040 what is the inherent profanity in technology? It does kind 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:29.600 of seem crass when you see, like when you see 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:32.880 a religious service taking place on a JumboTron or something 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:36.040 like that. Why is that, like what is wrong with 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:39.920 the technology or what is necessarily unspiritual about it. I 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:41.960 don't know the answer, but there seems to be an 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:44.360 intuition like that that we have. I guess so much 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:46.880 of it is rooted in religion, a tradition, you know. 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.560 I mean, like I've definitely had that moment before. I've 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:53.120 been at a church service and the person giving the 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:56.520 sermon or you know, officiating at a wedding has been 0:16:56.560 --> 0:17:00.240 reading off of a kindle or a or a you know, 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.080 a path of something. It looks inappropriate. Yeah, I mean, 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:04.560 I think it's a lot of it has to do 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:07.800 with the fact that religions tend to be inherently traditional, 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:11.880 especially the older traditional religions. So just the the image 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:15.600 of modern technology, especially when you think of technology, is 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:19.520 this thing that's such a mastery uh of you know, 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:23.360 of of human skill and ability to see that uh 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:26.399 you know, shoehorned in with these things that are supposedly 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:29.440 given to us from some sort of a higher power. Yeah. 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:31.760 Though I wonder if people in the ancient world would 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:33.520 have thought about it in the same way. I mean, 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:36.400 this again calls to mind something we talked about the 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:38.080 last time I was on the show, when we talked 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:42.600 about eclipses, which is the Anti Kither mechanism is an 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:45.399 ancient Greek device that's often referred to as the world's 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:48.240 oldest computer or the first computer. And now obviously it 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.760 didn't have microprocessors or anything, but this was a device 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:54.359 that comes from more than two thousand years ago, is 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:57.720 found in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean, and it was 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:02.439 an ancient mechanical computer for for computing the locations of 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:06.800 celestial objects and for like predicting lunar eclipses and solar 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:10.040 eclipses in the future. And the interesting thing about this 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:13.120 is it's an amazingly advanced piece of technology for the time, 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:18.000 just astoundingly advanced. But these events, these celestial mechanics had 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:21.120 religious significance to the people who used it. Yeah, I mean, 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:24.440 it's certainly something we discussed in that eclipse episode. When 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:27.040 when you look back at ancient societies and even not 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:32.360 so ancient societies, UM astronomy and UH and cosmology are 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:35.119 are so linked together, like it becomes the domain of 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:38.520 the of the priest and the clergy to know what 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:40.639 the stars are doing, to track the stars, so that 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:43.000 we know what the calendar is telling us and when 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:45.280 certain rites should be observed. Well, that makes me wonder 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:49.720 if star tracking technology has entered religion, even ancient religion, 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:53.080 in the same way the prayer wheel did. Yes, and 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:56.480 that brings us to the astrolabe. The astrolabe. Yeah, and 0:18:56.520 --> 0:18:58.600 now everyone I think has probably seen an image of 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:03.320 an astrolabe in their finer forms. These are just works 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:06.080 of just pure art. I'm going to tell you what 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:08.840 a picture tell me how far off I am. Basically, 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:11.840 it's it looks kind of like that compass you used 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:14.280 to use in middle school math classes to draw a 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:17.359 perfect circle with another little half moon piece on it. 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:20.680 Is that completely wrong kind of yeah, with varying levels 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:26.200 of artistry and a lot of figures and sliding mechanisms. Yeah, 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.800 it's a small circular device. And these would usually usually 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:32.960 these would be made of wood or brass um and 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:36.639 they date back over two thousand years. The concept seems 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:40.760 to originate around three thirty BC, and they were perfected 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:44.000 by the Arabs in the ninth century, and they remained 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:47.679 at the basic astronomer's tool for the next seven hundred years. 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:51.040 It's essentially a model of the stars in the sky, 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:54.240 which can be moved to show where the stars will 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:56.480 be at any time of the year, and the reverse 0:19:56.560 --> 0:19:59.560 side of the astrolabe concerns the position of the sun 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:01.840 in the Okay, so it's a lot like the end 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:04.160 to get through a mechanism in a way. Yeah, yeah, 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:07.440 it's it's portable and has a large display. On top 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:08.919 of that, if you have a really nice model, it's 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:11.560 a beautiful work of art, something you might easily show 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:15.399 it off at the dinner table. Uh. It's arguably one of, 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:19.240 if not the first, personal computer mobile carrying it with 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:21.160 you doing what you need to do in the course 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:23.480 of a day. Now, the question is would it become 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:26.640 overheated if sitting on your lap, if it was made 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:28.640 out of metal and you were sit seated in the sun, 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:33.960 I would say yes, Um, yeah, that's a sterility hazard. It. Uh. 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:35.760 You couldn't get an app for this thing, but it 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:39.200 had a number of features just by virtue of how 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:42.200 it contract the heavens. You can tell the date and time, 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:46.200 You could calculate distances. It could be used in determining 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:52.359 a building height, surveying longitude, latitude, altitude horoscopes. Um. You 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:55.480 can also figure out the position of the planets. But 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:59.600 then on top of this there were various occults usages, 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:01.800 So it gets a little bit into religion there. But 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:05.120 the most notable function where we see the astrolaid becoming 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:09.480 a piece of religious technology is in its ability to 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:15.840 determine Islamic prayer times and determine the direction to Mecca. Okay, 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:20.240 so this is actually that the piece of technology itself 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:24.760 doesn't necessarily have religious significance, but there's a fact you 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:29.160 need to know to execute your religion. You know perfectly 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:30.440 the way you want to do it. If you want 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:34.040 to face Mecca as well as you can, why not 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:36.560 have a machine to help you really hone that piece 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:39.360 of information and get it as accurate as possible. Yeah, 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:40.919 I mean it in a way, it really becomes an 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:44.000 essential piece of technology in Islam because a long place 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:46.560 is a high importance on the position of the believer 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:50.879 in time and space. For starters, uh, the s alot times, 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:53.879 these are the five prayers a day plus the Friday prayer. 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:57.280 They depend It depends on a combination of clock time 0:21:57.359 --> 0:22:00.879 and sundial time to determine exactly when you should take place. 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:05.840 So it concerns the exact coordinates for a given location. Um. 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:08.240 Because again it's not just it's not just arbitrary about 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:10.800 when the prayer times are they have they are specific 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:12.960 depending on where you are in the world, about where 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:15.480 you are in terms of sometime. And on top of this, 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:17.840 the faithful has to know exactly where they are in 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:20.600 relation to the Kaaba in Mecca so that they can 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:24.040 face that direction during these prayers. Yeah, I think that's fascinating. 0:22:24.840 --> 0:22:28.720 And unlike the prayer wheel, which itself does some sort 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:31.880 of religious or spiritual work, this is sort of like 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:35.600 a technology that we use to be most properly informed 0:22:35.680 --> 0:22:38.760 about how to do the rituals that you would be 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:40.879 doing anyway, because really a lot of the problems that 0:22:40.880 --> 0:22:45.960 occur in religion they occur as the believer moves farther 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:50.440