Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 3: Name is Noel.
Speaker 4: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 4: super producer Paul. Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you,
Speaker 4: You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
Speaker 4: don't want you to know. Some of us, longtime listeners,
Speaker 4: fellow friends, family conspiracy realist may indeed take tonight's episode
Speaker 4: as a sign from beyond right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just so we are.
Speaker 4: In a bit of background. In an earlier episode, we
Speaker 4: explored the concept of what some would call some being
Speaker 4: us an internal conspiracy, the phenomenon or experience of hearing voices,
Speaker 4: and we want to take a moment and thank everyone
Speaker 4: who took the time to write in This was clearly
Speaker 4: impactful for all of us here together tonight, and we
Speaker 4: teased an episode that we are delivering upon this evening.
Speaker 4: A related topic, the idea of what some would call
Speaker 4: a spiritual conspiracy, and funnily enough, atheist and true believers
Speaker 4: alike would call this a spiritual conspiracy. It turns out
Speaker 4: that throughout human history, countless people have been called mad,
Speaker 4: or have been worshiped, or anything in between for insisting
Speaker 4: they have received communication from divine, supernatural, heavenly forces. Let's
Speaker 4: be honest. We live in the United States, and in
Speaker 4: any large city in the United States, you're just like
Speaker 4: three to five blocks away from running into someone on
Speaker 4: the streets who tells you that God speaks to them.
Speaker 4: A lot of people who experience this live short, terrible lives,
Speaker 4: but a few of them, driven but by what they
Speaker 4: saw as righteous cause, fundamentally have changed the world. We're
Speaker 4: asking what is divine intervention? And this is you know,
Speaker 4: it's clearly going to be a sensitive topic for a
Speaker 4: lot of people. Here are the facts. The first fact
Speaker 4: is a disclaimer, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's something we say anytime we're talking about
Speaker 3: matters of faith that your faith is your own. Are
Speaker 3: various interpretations of spirituality and faith are our own, and
Speaker 3: you know, never the Twain shall meet. I guess at
Speaker 3: the very least, we are not trying to convince you
Speaker 3: or in any way diminish your beliefs. This is a
Speaker 3: matter of research and just fascination for us, so please
Speaker 3: take it in the spirit in which it was intended
Speaker 3: worth it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there is. With that being said, there is at
Speaker 4: this point no universally accepted, scientifically recognized proof of a
Speaker 4: higher power as portrayed in the majority of human spiritual
Speaker 4: belief systems. But to that point, there is solid evidence
Speaker 4: in fact that holding this idea of purpose of community
Speaker 4: of a greater good in the human mind can massively
Speaker 4: improve people's quality of life. It can help you, according
Speaker 4: to some of the research we found, it can help
Speaker 4: you live about four years longer on average.
Speaker 3: I have often that I did ascribe some kind of
Speaker 3: level of religious belief because I see it in others.
Speaker 3: I see it in others who use it in the
Speaker 3: manner that you're describing men, and they're very good people.
Speaker 3: There are people who think of others, you know, guided
Speaker 3: by principles. Oftentimes, of course, there are those that use
Speaker 3: their spiritual beliefs as something of a cudgel against others.
Speaker 3: And I don't think anybody that listens to the show
Speaker 3: is probably cool with that. And it's sort of a
Speaker 3: bummer to see that, because it really does in some
Speaker 3: ways diminish the value of these kinds of spiritual beliefs,
Speaker 3: but I have often you know, I grew up Methodists,
Speaker 3: and I sort of, you know, abandoned that type of
Speaker 3: belief throughout the course of my life. But there are
Speaker 3: times where I kind of wish that I hadn't and
Speaker 3: that I could believe that because I do see it
Speaker 3: in others and I'm like, ash, they seem so happy
Speaker 3: and content. I wish I had that.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, lest I sound like a Philistine. I'm probably
Speaker 4: misusing the word less. I sound like an infidel or
Speaker 4: non believer. Methodists are the sprinkle sprinkle guys, right, Methodists
Speaker 4: sprinkle for baptism and there's a sprink.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I think that's right. There's a sprink. It's
Speaker 3: not the full submersion. Well, I don't know. There's different
Speaker 3: flavors of it. I seem to recall growing up that
Speaker 3: baptism wasn't as common. It's more of an event kind of.
Speaker 3: It doesn't seem it's more about like they call it, confirmation,
Speaker 3: I think, rather than baptism, and I think that's when
Speaker 3: you get the sprinkle. Matt. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: were you Methodist as well, or were you more on
Speaker 3: the Baptist tip non de noom.
Speaker 2: All of the above mostly Methodist and non denominational, but
Speaker 2: for the purposes of this episode, the whole point of
Speaker 2: even talking about religion is in this way is because
Speaker 2: humans we like to or organized things. We like to
Speaker 2: see patterns, especially when we look out into the world.
Speaker 2: It helps a lot, I think, for us to give
Speaker 2: meaning or reason behind life itself, both you know, personally
Speaker 2: for ourselves and for the actions we take every day
Speaker 2: and for our aims and goals, but also for the
Speaker 2: you know, purposes of all the others around us that
Speaker 2: we care about, right that we want to see again
Speaker 2: after they perish the same way we will. I don't know,
Speaker 2: and I think so far, yeah, and I think being
Speaker 2: contacted by some force that is responsible for all of
Speaker 2: that you know, good stuff, what could be seen as
Speaker 2: one of the most powerful things that could ever potentially
Speaker 2: happen to you.
Speaker 3: And in most of these belief systems, to my understanding
Speaker 3: at least, the fact that there is no scientifically kind
Speaker 3: of grounded proof of God is a feature, not a bug,
Speaker 3: because it requires you to have faith and to exercise
Speaker 3: as this like I believe in what I cannot see
Speaker 3: in front of me. That's like an important part of
Speaker 3: being a follower of a lot of these.
Speaker 4: Faiths, the absence of proof being proof all its own.
Speaker 4: You know, there's also a strong possibility that the way
Speaker 4: science as a philosophy, a pursuit, and dare we say,
Speaker 4: a religion itself is constructed, it may simply be incapable
Speaker 4: of proving or disproving certain aspects of spirituality. For instance,
Speaker 4: if humanity cannot define consciousness, which can't, how on earth
Speaker 4: does one begin to define a soul? Pardon the wordplay there.
Speaker 4: It's true everything you guys are saying is true if
Speaker 4: you were whether you are a dude in the wall, fundamentalist,
Speaker 4: whatever your denomination, your genre a belief may be, whether
Speaker 4: you're an occasional dabbler what do they call it, You
Speaker 4: guys came up in Christianity, but like Easter Sunday Christian,
Speaker 4: Eastern Christmas Christian something like that, the people only show
Speaker 4: up on a couple of.
Speaker 3: Days of the year.
Speaker 4: Wherever you are in the spectrum, Even if you're a
Speaker 4: diehard atheist, we can all readily admit the search for
Speaker 4: this understanding of a nature of reality, this search for meaning,
Speaker 4: it has been the prime mover for human civilization or
Speaker 4: a prime mover definitely a rationalization for the movement of
Speaker 4: empires since the dawn of time. And it's twenty twenty three, Friday,
Speaker 4: September twenty ninth, as we record and billions of humans
Speaker 4: across the planet right now do believe readily with certitude
Speaker 4: that there is some sort of celestial pantheon, an order,
Speaker 4: a heavenly ordered all reality. Like you are saying, Matt,
Speaker 4: the human mind prizes patterns, prizes predictability. It's the reason
Speaker 4: why this primate is the most popular of the bunch
Speaker 4: so far. As a result, humans from the ancient past
Speaker 4: to the modern day believed and believe that not only
Speaker 4: their existence but also their actions are in some way
Speaker 4: serving a greater purpose if those actions are good. Now,
Speaker 4: I do want to for the atheists and the crowd,
Speaker 4: I do want to acknowledge this belief in God or
Speaker 4: the divine is kind of similar to sophisticated tool making.
Speaker 4: That might be offensive to some people, but if you
Speaker 4: look at the practice on the ground, the tendencies toward
Speaker 4: building sophisticated tools, they're kind of one to one with
Speaker 4: the tendencies of building a sophisticated religious ideology that happens
Speaker 4: to agree with whatever you want to do.
Speaker 3: I mean, and to that point, then, even like an
Speaker 3: atheist's kind of philosophy or perspective, you know, philosophy often
Speaker 3: crosses paths with spirituality. You know, we have folks that
Speaker 3: are like, well, not sure about God, but here's some
Speaker 3: ideas that sort of explain some of these things. And
Speaker 3: a lot of times if you really dig deep into
Speaker 3: certain philosophers of the past, there is a certain mysticism
Speaker 3: even inherent in that kind of thinking. It's, you know,
Speaker 3: to your point about the pursuit of these types of answers.
Speaker 3: Philosophy in and of itself, it's not science, but it's
Speaker 3: also not religion. It's its own kind of cross section
Speaker 3: of the two. I always found that very interesting.
Speaker 4: And philosophy is kind of like the isolated biological father
Speaker 4: of science in a lot of ways. And when you
Speaker 4: look toward the bleeding edges of modern science again here
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty three, as we're calling the calendar, what
Speaker 4: we see is that the guesses in astrophysics and things
Speaker 4: that tackle the very large the very small, like quantum physics,
Speaker 4: that becomes philosophy because there there's a relatively rarefied segment
Speaker 4: of the population that is even able to competently argue
Speaker 4: with that. And if you're a world expert, then your
Speaker 4: guess becomes a lot like a lot like a religious screed.
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's you know, we talk about history
Speaker 4: quite often because history is never history really, and empires
Speaker 4: countless empires pretty much all empires at some point claimed
Speaker 4: the approval of a God or a pantheon of God's.
Speaker 4: Countless wars have been fought with the approval of those
Speaker 4: divine forces. The implication was always that whomever opposes us
Speaker 4: is somehow moving against this greater good. These are powers,
Speaker 4: somehow infernal forces.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and when you look at the history
Speaker 3: of civilization and empires, you often look at it very
Speaker 3: similarly to what we maybe see as modern day politics,
Speaker 3: where it's like, do you really believe this or are
Speaker 3: you just wielding it to exert control over the populace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that certainly feels real to me.
Speaker 4: And rabble right, the same story always everyone everyone believed
Speaker 4: there was some sort of greater reality. Everyone believed in
Speaker 4: the past, that there was some sort of to your point,
Speaker 4: that some sort of order an order that could be discerned. However,
Speaker 4: the problem was historically not everyone agreed on what this
Speaker 4: authority was, the specifics the mechanics of this authority, and
Speaker 4: they didn't agree on what the authority wanted. So people
Speaker 4: from different cultures were often super duper offended when they
Speaker 4: met other cultures that did not share their specific beliefs.
Speaker 4: They were like, these guys, are they even human?
Speaker 3: Which is funny because how could they, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Like these things form in their own little vacuums.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't really, you know, stand to reason that
Speaker 3: someone from a completely different part of the world at
Speaker 3: a time where there was no Internet or quick means
Speaker 3: of communication would possibly have your exact same framework. The
Speaker 3: fact of the matter is, though, that there is no
Speaker 3: human culture that doesn't believe in the divine and ben
Speaker 3: you put that in the outline, and while I maybe
Speaker 3: have internally understood that, to see it kind of writ
Speaker 3: large and bold like that, I was like, Oh, I
Speaker 3: guess that's true.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 3: Even fascinating.
Speaker 4: Even cultures that might be considered atheistic by their opponents
Speaker 4: have something like animism, or have something like ancestor war,
Speaker 4: and the problem grows more complicated as a result of that.
Speaker 4: You know, these belief systems quite sophisticated and are quite sophisticated,
Speaker 4: and within their stories these things contain all explanations for
Speaker 4: the natural world as well as politically convenient explanations for
Speaker 4: why the group that follows the belief should sort of
Speaker 4: be in charge, right like, let's save the Heathens, let's
Speaker 4: save the savages, let's convert the infidels, Let's bring them
Speaker 4: to a greater truth and take their blood and treasure
Speaker 4: along the way.
Speaker 3: Well, it does make me think of the idea of
Speaker 3: like advanced you know civilizations like you know, like in
Speaker 3: the film Arrival, for example, or the idea of like
Speaker 3: other aliens, you know, civilizations that we don't know about.
Speaker 3: It almost feels like this stuff arises from a lack
Speaker 3: of knowledge. It arises from a lack of understanding, and
Speaker 3: a suitably further advanced civilization might not even need this
Speaker 3: at all, because they're already imbued with the truths of
Speaker 3: the spheres and of the universe. So this is a
Speaker 3: stand in for having answers at the end of the day.
Speaker 4: You know, sure, and then advanced civilization might well argue.
Speaker 4: Many science fiction authors have argued that the closest you
Speaker 4: can get to divine intervention is the understanding of math.
Speaker 4: But story for another day. Perhaps during times of religious persecution,
Speaker 4: which continue today as you are listening to this, it
Speaker 4: is doubtlessly true that thousands of people are being killed
Speaker 4: because of conflicting religious beliefs. It's still exceedingly rare for
Speaker 4: people to suddenly give up these beliefs. We have to
Speaker 4: realize that people have been tortured, you know, they've been
Speaker 4: forced to watch their own families degraded or executed, and
Speaker 4: even then, billions of people then, as today, they have
Speaker 4: chosen to stay true to their religion. Now science might
Speaker 4: explain this the lens of some cost fallacy or social dynamics,
Speaker 4: but if we take the larger view, if we dare
Speaker 4: disturb the universe and move outside of the comfort zone here,
Speaker 4: then what we see is that there is something so important,
Speaker 4: so defining, that, in countless incidents, billions of people have
Speaker 4: chosen to die rather than to lose that part of
Speaker 4: their identity, Which means that no matter what us listening,
Speaker 4: no matter what we may personally identify with, there is
Speaker 4: something profoundly important, fundamental about this belief in the divide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it can. It can change the course of war,
Speaker 2: it can change the leaders of an empire. Some divinely
Speaker 2: inspired message you know from God can change who's sitting
Speaker 2: on thrones. And there's there are countless examples of this
Speaker 2: where you know, I'm just really quickly guys. You point
Speaker 2: to the Bible first Kings in I think it's chapter
Speaker 2: nineteen where Elijah goes up and is hanging out on
Speaker 2: Mount Sinai alone and God comes to him and says, hey,
Speaker 2: go back down there and appoint these specific people to
Speaker 2: these specific you know you know. Yeah, And also additionally,
Speaker 2: God says, those people are going to kill everybody who
Speaker 2: you know, their predecessors did work able to kill, and
Speaker 2: then we'll basically get a bunch of more followers. Those
Speaker 2: who don't believe in BAI basically are ball. But you know,
Speaker 2: that's a you then have to believe that Elijah actually
Speaker 2: talked to God up on the mountain to then institute
Speaker 2: mass of political changes in a city or felt like
Speaker 2: you did. But yeah, so I mean that's who knows.
Speaker 3: What was the Golden Calf story, the the you know
Speaker 3: group that was worshiping idols and then they were basically
Speaker 3: you know, murdered.
Speaker 4: You know it was it was made by the Israelites,
Speaker 4: and the the idea apocryphal. The idea is that there
Speaker 4: were it was. It was a physical metality construction in
Speaker 4: which children were children or politically inconvenient people were sacrificed
Speaker 4: by being cooked alive in the thing. And then Moses,
Speaker 4: who makes an appearance in tonight's episode, comes down and says, hey, guys,
Speaker 4: God said that's not a good look, and you gotta
Speaker 4: stop doing it. And they're like, do we have to
Speaker 4: stop killing people? He goes put a pin in that part.
Speaker 4: The main thing is we we just can't do it
Speaker 4: with the calf anymore.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, well, and also the divine inspiration, like
Speaker 2: being touched and told to do something right. It's really
Speaker 2: fascinating to see how God makes appearances in what form,
Speaker 2: you know, a god takes to communicate things. In the
Speaker 2: case of Eliza, right there, it was basically a storm
Speaker 2: that appeared on the mountain and talked to him, but
Speaker 2: then also was a bunch of wind, and then was
Speaker 2: also a whisper.
Speaker 4: In Elijah's here ah the quiet still voice inside you. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we see the dilemmas inherent in this just by comparing
Speaker 4: social dynamics right with the concept of the personal spiritual compass.
Speaker 4: By the inherent assumption. This is an axiom for any
Speaker 4: divine intervention argument, for the inherent assumption that a god
Speaker 4: or some gods exist, one could imagine if people were better,
Speaker 4: if they rolled better on diplomacy, they could talk it out.
Speaker 4: That's not that's not the case. You know, despite the
Speaker 4: fact that all empires of the past had some sort
Speaker 4: of spiritual belief that is a common thread, right, that
Speaker 4: is a common starting point, they disagreed vehemently about the specifics.
Speaker 4: If your civilization a and you roll up and say, oh, man,
Speaker 4: Zeus is dope, and people say Zeus is just some
Speaker 4: weird thing that you guys made up. We're you know,
Speaker 4: we're uh, we're where's the.
Speaker 3: Astrian people, I'll take the Pepsi challenge against Zeus any
Speaker 3: day of the week. Right, our guy is clearly.
Speaker 4: Going to win out, you know, And Pepsi has saved
Speaker 4: a lot of religions in that respect that the one
Speaker 4: proof could be easily dismissed because there was no evidence
Speaker 4: for another civilization that could be considered objectively. So when
Speaker 4: an empire fell, or when an empire took over another group.
Speaker 4: The winners of the conflict also took that as evidence
Speaker 4: that their beliefs were correct. Otherwise, why would God have
Speaker 4: let them win? But there's another pickle in the jar,
Speaker 4: another badger in the bag. Beyond the abstract here, Matt,
Speaker 4: I love the points you're bringing up. Let's go to
Speaker 4: the individual. Let's go to the microcosmic level. What if
Speaker 4: your God or God's spoke to you. What if at
Speaker 4: the height of battle or just some random you know,
Speaker 4: ancient equivalent of four point thirty on a Friday in
Speaker 4: random day. What if divine forces appear to intervene on
Speaker 4: your behalf. What if they chose you as the messenger?
Speaker 4: What if they tilted the very odds of reality in
Speaker 4: your favor? Heavenly casino rules where the dealer purposely gives
Speaker 4: you a blackjack. That's sorry, Vegas, still up my mind with.
Speaker 3: All of us.
Speaker 4: It's all of us, man, What do you guys say,
Speaker 4: should we should we pause for a word from our sponsors?
Speaker 4: Have some divine intervention or sponsorship intervention, commercial intervention?
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 4: Here's where it gets crazy, This idea of an omniscient
Speaker 4: omnipotent force touching you, specifically choosing you, speaking to you,
Speaker 4: giving you a task. This is the definition of divine intervention,
Speaker 4: the idea that there are certain identifiable situations wherein some
Speaker 4: ordinarily inexplicable force decides to say, hey you, Hey, you
Speaker 4: over the Battle of Long Island, or hey you over
Speaker 4: just just about to go for first chair clarinet. Right,
Speaker 4: you're the one and you just need to do actions A,
Speaker 4: B and C.
Speaker 2: And it's also the concept of someone being saved in
Speaker 2: an unsavable situation and position right.
Speaker 4: The odds work out in your favor. Yeah, something like
Speaker 4: to go this will be the last Vegas example, something
Speaker 4: like hitting on eighteen and getting a three. You know
Speaker 4: what I mean, the odds are very low. But in
Speaker 4: the case of divine intervention, to your point, that's a
Speaker 4: beautiful setup, Matt. Some of the most notable examples are
Speaker 4: from times of conflict.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, you mentioned the Battle of Long Island, George Washington.
Speaker 3: You mentioned off Mike Ben that we recently did an
Speaker 3: episode of Ridiculous History about Aaron Burr, and of these
Speaker 3: battles actually came up. These historical battles where like the
Speaker 3: tide turned on a dime kind of right. So in
Speaker 3: the Battle of.
Speaker 4: Long Island, also met Noel doesn't like Hamilton Musical.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I didn't say that. I said I
Speaker 3: didn't finish watching it because I got distracted. I didn't
Speaker 3: not like it. I think it's quite remarkable. I rose
Speaker 3: to you, I know, roast Aways and you also mentioned
Speaker 3: Ben on the podcast Ridiculous History episode that hype can
Speaker 3: be a hell of a drug, and sometimes it can
Speaker 3: be a thing that maybe turns you off a little bit.
Speaker 3: I didn't get into the Beatles till I was in
Speaker 3: my late twenties. I think largely because they seemed like,
Speaker 3: you know, oh, everybody likes the Beatles. You know that
Speaker 3: they must be kind of square. Gosh, I sound like
Speaker 3: a grandpa, but yeah. George Washington and his fellows August
Speaker 3: twenty seventh, seventeen seventy six, the Battle of Long Island.
Speaker 3: Things were not going well. They had just signed the
Speaker 3: Declaration of Independence, but at this point British forces had
Speaker 3: George and his mates boxed in, trapped in New York City.
Speaker 3: They were out gunned, out classed, outnumbered. They were not
Speaker 3: trained it. Do it, do it, do it. No, you
Speaker 3: can be a new man. That's all I know. I know,
Speaker 3: that's all I know. Guys, that's all I get. Give
Speaker 3: it to us, Matt, whatever we're doing it, I can't.
Speaker 2: I can't do. You know how many references we've made
Speaker 2: to that stuff over the years, just like slyly under
Speaker 2: the radar.
Speaker 3: Under my radar, for damn sure.
Speaker 2: But they were out gunned and they were out manned.
Speaker 2: That's all you need to know.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, they were gunned, out man out classed out,
Speaker 3: you know, foxed out all the things. And it wasn't good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they were trapped, like I said, boxed in New York City, starving,
Speaker 3: freezing the wait, what is it the scent thick? No,
Speaker 3: that's something else that's different. That's sorry. I've only seen
Speaker 3: the the intro. There's no escape across the East River.
Speaker 3: It certainly wasn't a Brooklyn Bridge at the time, and
Speaker 3: the waters were teeming with British warships. This New American
Speaker 3: experiment could have ended before it began, until.
Speaker 4: Dumb dum dum. Two weeks later. It's August twenty ninth.
Speaker 4: The weather takes what the folks on the ground see
Speaker 4: as an unpredictable turn for the worst. On top of everything,
Speaker 4: you're George Washington. You're a few weeks into you know,
Speaker 4: this idea of the United States, and you're like, ah,
Speaker 4: damn it. Now it's also raining. What's going on? Fast forward?
Speaker 4: The rain creates an astonishing fog, what seems to be
Speaker 4: an extraordinarily convenient fog. The next morning, people who are
Speaker 4: in the fog can, according to primary sources, they can
Speaker 4: scarcely discern a man from six yards distance. So this
Speaker 4: is honestly, this is like classic British pea soup fog
Speaker 4: they call it. And the British are stuck waiting for
Speaker 4: this fog to clear so they can continue whipping the
Speaker 4: American forces. But over where the US forces are based,
Speaker 4: the weather's fine, the weather's okay. They're still starving, they're
Speaker 4: still really cold, they still don't have guns, they're still outnumbered,
Speaker 4: but they can see.
Speaker 3: It's like the sad rain cloud that only hangs out
Speaker 3: over Charlie Brown. It's like localized, right.
Speaker 2: But think about how horrifying that situation must have been
Speaker 2: for the British troops. Like knowing that there are others
Speaker 2: around you but you cannot see anything.
Speaker 3: Spooky stuff.
Speaker 4: Gosh, it's like the fear of the open ocean.
Speaker 3: Do you think and to that point, Ben, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of you know, uhlogy or mythologizing of
Speaker 3: you know, life at sea, all of that stuff, a
Speaker 3: lot of the superstitions around that. Do you think you know,
Speaker 3: these are all going to have been religious men, you know,
Speaker 3: do you think they would have clocked at that moment
Speaker 3: that there was some force at play that was working
Speaker 3: against them?
Speaker 4: Maybe in retrospect, because in the heat of the battle,
Speaker 4: the idea is to survive.
Speaker 3: Right, sure?
Speaker 4: And what's that old saying there are no atheists in foxholes.
Speaker 3: That's but we do talk about psyops though, and like
Speaker 3: spooking armies, you know, into like fleeing by you know,
Speaker 3: playing recordings of their dead ancestors and stuff. I just
Speaker 3: wonder if somebody in that British crew was like, yo,
Speaker 3: there's there's some infernal forces at play that are not
Speaker 3: on our side.
Speaker 4: White possibly, However, the British Empire was very much and
Speaker 4: ostensibly remains a theocracy, even as the population grows increasingly
Speaker 4: in the archipelago itself. But it's a good question. Did
Speaker 4: anyone look around and say, like, oh no, Admiral George
Speaker 4: has a fog machine. No, they didn't, because fog machines
Speaker 4: have not been invented, and no one it's important. No
Speaker 4: one in these conflicts historically says God is against us,
Speaker 4: we should surrender. What they say instead is we have
Speaker 4: to earn it right. And there's not really a lot
Speaker 4: of active philosophy in well, there aren't active quote unquote,
Speaker 4: although I hate the term learned philosophers. No one's like, well,
Speaker 4: what about determinism at this point?
Speaker 3: What they're time?
Speaker 4: No time, right, Let's try to survive. This fog is
Speaker 4: extraordinarily convenient. It is a meteorological lottery because it gives
Speaker 4: George and the boys, George and the gang the exact
Speaker 4: time and cover they need to successfully retreat with the
Speaker 4: help of Aerinburg. People don't like to admit it, but
Speaker 4: he helped with the help of Arenberg and George sneaks
Speaker 4: nine thousand troops away from the battle into the relative
Speaker 4: temporary band aid safety of Manhattan. Since there's not a
Speaker 4: meteorologist around to ruin everybody's great time with weather and
Speaker 4: science talk. Multiple sources later conclude it turns out that
Speaker 4: Yahweh himself that God is a big fan of the
Speaker 4: United States, and they say the same thing again not
Speaker 4: too many decades later, it's like the War of eighteen twelve.
Speaker 4: Let's go to that eighteen fourteen. Yet again the British
Speaker 4: have the US on their ass.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they invaded and took Washington, DC, and they started
Speaker 2: burning major buildings there, like we're talking the White House,
Speaker 2: the Capitol Building, set the things on fire.
Speaker 4: Or they go to the White before they burn the
Speaker 4: White House, though they sacked the pantry.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh they all had each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, young market sweep kind of situation. Dude.
Speaker 2: There are there are primary sources, Uh, there's one. There
Speaker 2: are a couple of books, but one of the major
Speaker 2: books in here is by George Robert Gleig g l
Speaker 2: e i G. Who wrote a book called the Campaigns
Speaker 2: of the British Army at Washington in the and New
Speaker 2: Orleans in the years eighteen fourteen to eighteen fifteen. And
Speaker 2: it is so crazy to see him describing Washington, d
Speaker 2: C at the time, and it's all all the language
Speaker 2: is basically like, oh, there was nothing upon which to remark.
Speaker 2: It was just a few buildings. It's just like literally
Speaker 2: like there's there are no characteristics anywhere that I can
Speaker 2: even comment upon about the choice though.
Speaker 3: I mean, like it wouldn't be what we know it
Speaker 3: as today, certainly, like the monuments and all of that.
Speaker 3: It would have been kind of a lot of temporary
Speaker 3: type things, right or what would it have looked like
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 4: I'm cures way fewer monuments. It's uh, us still had
Speaker 4: the new car smell. They didn't know whether it was
Speaker 4: going to work.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing he's saying is like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is a newborn, this newborn thing. And he calls it
Speaker 2: a commercial society or a commercial country, which which.
Speaker 4: Is which is uh, the the historical equivalent of a
Speaker 4: sneak diss. Yeah, it's the idea. The idea is like,
Speaker 4: look at these guys. They're just about money. They don't
Speaker 4: they don't understand our grand mission.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, well and it and it literally he he
Speaker 2: states like, they didn't do anything. They didn't have any
Speaker 2: plan for when we British troops were going to roll
Speaker 2: through there. They literally just kind of took off running
Speaker 2: when we showed up, and we just all.
Speaker 4: Their stuff unlettered merchants.
Speaker 3: Oh nice.
Speaker 2: Well, so so the story goes, they begin burning Washington, DC.
Speaker 2: And then very soon after there is one of those
Speaker 2: crazy storms like a durecho or you know, maybe a
Speaker 2: tornado that rolls through allegedly a tornado, but definitely crazy
Speaker 2: high winds that roll through and torrential rains. And so
Speaker 2: as Washington, DC is burning, something causes all of those
Speaker 2: fires to go out with this rain.
Speaker 3: Right, this is like Moses level stuff, y'all. I mean
Speaker 3: in a minute, but that's wait, yeah, no, no doubt.
Speaker 2: But it all depends on perspective, right, it depends on what,
Speaker 2: like how you're feeling, which side you're on, Like, what
Speaker 2: does this mean that the storm came through, because it
Speaker 2: did kill at least according to some sources, it killed
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of British troops. But I've only I've
Speaker 2: only seen it officially written that two or a few
Speaker 2: other British troops actually were killed as a result of
Speaker 2: the storm. But there were thirty Americans who were killed
Speaker 2: as a result of the storm, largely due to debris
Speaker 2: and collapsing buildings.
Speaker 3: And flying cows twister style.
Speaker 4: But the flying golden calves, yeah, there you.
Speaker 2: Go, ball and all that stuff. And but or was
Speaker 2: that m Moulloch thinks, yeah, so, But the craziest thing
Speaker 2: is that there were a bunch of buildings in Washington,
Speaker 2: DC that were not burned by British troops but were
Speaker 2: completely leveled by the storm.
Speaker 4: So God does construction too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also also counterpoy, you could say, you know, if we've
Speaker 4: got this storm troop atitude that is so prevalent in
Speaker 4: American history, maybe it looks like two British soldiers because
Speaker 4: they all had the same names, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: Maybe it was all Maybe it was like Stevenson seventy
Speaker 4: to eighty, George George's and Steven Steve. But no, you're right, Matt.
Speaker 4: This this is this is a point that I think
Speaker 4: is incredibly crucial the idea, Like you could say it's
Speaker 4: divine intervention because the fires went out, But could you
Speaker 4: also say, how does one explain the damage the fact
Speaker 4: that innocent civilians, right, not not military members fighting for
Speaker 4: the forces God apparently supports, They were killed and buildings
Speaker 4: that were not being burned were not integral to the
Speaker 4: construction of the United States. Those buildings also got wrecked. Uh,
Speaker 4: I I don't know. We've got a note here too
Speaker 4: to talk about some of the the GETTAA tactics.
Speaker 2: Uh, oh, we don't do. It was just a it's
Speaker 2: just an aside about it. That same author was talking
Speaker 2: about a time when his company was marching through a
Speaker 2: battlefield where British troops had just won a battle against
Speaker 2: American troops. I've got it right here. It's it's just
Speaker 2: a quote. It was interesting to me because again, it
Speaker 2: speaks to the American Revolution. It speaks to the way
Speaker 2: people thought about the ordered nature of many things, and
Speaker 2: especially the ordered nature of war and the rules that
Speaker 2: are applied to it. So here it goes. Quote one object, however,
Speaker 2: struck me as curious. I saw several men hanging lifeless
Speaker 2: among the branches of trees, and learned they had been
Speaker 2: riflemen who chose during the battle to fix themselves in
Speaker 2: these elevated positions for the combined purposes of securing a
Speaker 2: good aim and avoiding danger. Whatever might be their success
Speaker 2: in the first of these designs, in the last they failed,
Speaker 2: for our men soon discovered them, and, considering the thing
Speaker 2: as unfair, refused to give them quarter and shot them
Speaker 2: on their purchase.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But again, and there's there's there's yet again. This rationalization
Speaker 4: of less than right that the executing this sort of behavior.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Look, well, you know how if you don't if you
Speaker 4: don't like someone, you're going to find a reason to
Speaker 4: rationalize your dislike.
Speaker 3: And giving quarter, by the way, is like mercy in
Speaker 3: a war situation. Yeah, creating a pow instead of a body,
Speaker 3: got it.
Speaker 2: But I guess to me, the interesting thing is that
Speaker 2: it the use of the word unfair because there are
Speaker 2: the rules about the battlefield, how you fought or how
Speaker 2: you were allowed to engage others, right, But in this case,
Speaker 2: these guys are up in trees, firing from the firing
Speaker 2: at them, and you know, the British troops can't see
Speaker 2: where it's coming from until they do. And then instead
Speaker 2: of giving them quarter and you know, taking them as prisoners,
Speaker 2: they just kill him. But just previously in that book
Speaker 2: he describes and goes in a huge section about encountering
Speaker 2: a soldier in the bushes who had been shot in
Speaker 2: the leg, and it just describes how the American told him, well,
Speaker 2: we've been told that you British troops will give no quarter,
Speaker 2: so we also are going to give no quarter. And
Speaker 2: the author is taken aback by that, so he like
Speaker 2: picks him up, takes him over to a hospital, gets
Speaker 2: his leg amputated, and you know, saves him and everything.
Speaker 2: And it's partly propaganda as to you know, the greatness
Speaker 2: of our side when it's a British soldier writing about
Speaker 2: this kind of thing, but it's also, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it speaks somehow to the what we're talking about, the
Speaker 2: way an individual feels like God is on my side,
Speaker 2: in my team's side. Right, I'm doing the right thing.
Speaker 2: But in this case they were unfair.
Speaker 4: So right, because it's different when it's you. Human individuals
Speaker 4: tend to suffer from main characters syndrome make a narcissism. Right,
Speaker 4: I have a reason for doing what I'm doing, and
Speaker 4: your thing, if it does not, my thing is therefore incorrect.
Speaker 4: I mean, we could create an entire series about all
Speaker 4: the purported divine interventions during the heat of war, the
Speaker 4: angels showing up in World War One in Europe, for instance.
Speaker 4: We could talk at length about these things, and I
Speaker 4: hope there is a podcast doing this, because otherwise off
Speaker 4: to create it. But these examples across the world throughout history,
Speaker 4: they occur, and we can see commonalities. In many cases,
Speaker 4: something strange happened, and eclipse maybe save someone from being
Speaker 4: sacrificed or turns the tide of a battle. In a
Speaker 4: culture that does not have technology such that they can
Speaker 4: understand or predict the passages of the moon or the sun,
Speaker 4: a natural weather event like this like this storm in DC, disaster,
Speaker 4: an earthquake, right, a flood, a wildfire, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: What we see also in commonality is that after the
Speaker 4: event in retrospect, moments, years, decades later, survivors look back
Speaker 4: and if they feel like their team one, they ascribe
Speaker 4: that event to the hand of the divine. With the
Speaker 4: benefit of retrospect and with research, it is entirely possible
Speaker 4: for the more skeptical amid us to dismiss a lot
Speaker 4: of these as clearly explicable phenomena that were simply convenient
Speaker 4: to accept and then misunderstood at the time. But still
Speaker 4: that's not quite as interesting as the cases of divine intervention,
Speaker 4: wherein someone claims God said, hey you, you, specifically you,
Speaker 4: I'm real, I have a thing I need you to do.
Speaker 4: Do me a couple of favors while you're up on Earth.
Speaker 4: And that's where we get to like messengers profits and
Speaker 4: in the interest of playing along at home, you might
Speaker 4: be able to predict the next event our ad break.
Speaker 3: And we're back getting to the part of the episode
Speaker 3: that I think I've personally been very excited to get to,
Speaker 3: the discussion of profits and some truly ancient historical stories
Speaker 3: of divine intervention in battle. Ben I mentioned earlier that
Speaker 3: in some of these cases of a fog, a tornado
Speaker 3: or whatever, really brings your mind back to Biblical times
Speaker 3: and you know, Moses and the parting of the Red
Speaker 3: Sea and all of that stuff. And there's a really
Speaker 3: great article from The Guardian that talks about some research
Speaker 3: that explained the parting of the Red Sea as being
Speaker 3: basically just a wrong east wind that blew overnight. But
Speaker 3: of course, in the way that it's dramatized and whatever
Speaker 3: you believe, we have to acknowledge that the Bible is
Speaker 3: dramatized to a certain degree. It probably didn't part right
Speaker 3: when Moses, you know, lifted his hands. It may have
Speaker 3: happened overnight, you know, but it's a lot less sexy
Speaker 3: of a scene when you talk about it that way.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, Yeah, profits, The idea of the individual, right,
Speaker 4: that is what consumes the human species. Everyone is a
Speaker 4: protagonist in their own story, and so these concepts of
Speaker 4: I don't know. Even if you look at the news
Speaker 4: or larger events today, you realize that people want a
Speaker 4: face on a problem. Whether they agree with a cause,
Speaker 4: whether they disagree with the cause, they want to face
Speaker 4: they can put on it. And so instead of for instance,
Speaker 4: talking about buzzwords like climate change or the further ecological
Speaker 4: degradation of the planet, the planet's going to be fine.
Speaker 4: Humans might not, but the planet will be fine overall.
Speaker 4: They don't want the stats, you know, they don't want
Speaker 4: the they don't want the studies. They want the Greta Thumberg.
Speaker 4: They want. They want to face and they can and
Speaker 4: they can substitute that. In this practice in literature is
Speaker 4: called metonomy. You have a smaller thing that represents a
Speaker 4: greater idea. People love metonomy, even if they don't know
Speaker 4: the name autonomy. They dig it, right. That's why celebrities
Speaker 4: are so popular, That's why gods are so popular. So
Speaker 4: the most famous instance, therefore, are instances of divine intervention
Speaker 4: come from individual accounts of people and about people in
Speaker 4: the West right now, and I would hazard globally across
Speaker 4: all the eight plus billion people living today. The most famous,
Speaker 4: uh the most famous example of divine intervention is Jesus
Speaker 4: Christ under a variety of names, variety of translations, a
Speaker 4: monopoly of perspectives. This one figure who still remains to
Speaker 4: be clear historically disputed by the secular world. This figure
Speaker 4: is the most famous example of divine intervention, differentiated from
Speaker 4: other prophets because the Christian faith says, this person or
Speaker 4: this individual did not just get messages from the divine,
Speaker 4: this person actually was Divine is Divine is God, the
Speaker 4: least is God made flesh. And this belief is so
Speaker 4: important that denominations of Christianity overall each other for what
Speaker 4: would seem like relatively trivial disagreements upon the nature of
Speaker 4: this single, this single human, godlike individual. There are other
Speaker 4: incredibly influential prophets successfully created religions or spread the word
Speaker 4: of their divine revelations. The prophet Mohammad piece be unto
Speaker 4: him Moses, as you mentioned earlier, Nol. In every single case,
Speaker 4: these individuals are tasked with specific missions to spread the
Speaker 4: capital g capital w good word, to save as much
Speaker 4: of humanity as possible, and to free people from bondage
Speaker 4: in the case of Moses and the miracles. And then
Speaker 4: there are the more kind of on the ground prophets
Speaker 4: or messengers who are divinely inspired to pursue secular goals
Speaker 4: on behalf of a greater purpose. I would call a
Speaker 4: lot of the war priest. Like Joe Bark is a
Speaker 4: war priest. You know, she's kind of for Anny Fellow
Speaker 4: d and d nerds out there, dungeons and dragons nerds.
Speaker 4: She's kind of a paladin. I think she informed the
Speaker 4: idea of a dungeons and dragons or what is it
Speaker 4: met ultima paladin? Do they have paladins and ultima.
Speaker 3: Well maybe, and they definitely have them in the Fallout games,
Speaker 3: Like there's a whole sect of these armored you know,
Speaker 3: suit wearing kind of religious zealot sort of knights of
Speaker 3: the future.
Speaker 4: So what is a paladin then, in that regard.
Speaker 3: To my understanding, it is, you know, a military leader
Speaker 3: that is acting on a message or instructions from God.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like a combination priest and general almost right,
Speaker 3: or at the very least, someone that can command others,
Speaker 3: you know, by wielding not only weapons of war, but
Speaker 3: you know, messages.
Speaker 4: Of the divine yes, yeah, and the world of fiction,
Speaker 4: a paladin is descended from the Western idea of the crusader,
Speaker 4: but there are many, many other iterations of that in
Speaker 4: the real world and throughout history. So Joan of Arc
Speaker 4: aka street name Made of Orleans, also Saint Joan of
Speaker 4: Arc nowadays, has a very interesting story. She was born
Speaker 4: in a working class, lower class family in fourteen twelve.
Speaker 4: By her own admission, she began hearing voices at the
Speaker 4: age of twelve, and she heard the voices of specific saints,
Speaker 4: sort of like how Gabriel the Angel spoke to the
Speaker 4: prophet Mohammed. She's not immediately hearing directly from God. She's
Speaker 4: hearing from our representatives of a divine for Saint Michael,
Speaker 4: Saint Catharine, Saint Margaret. She's also illiterate, so there is
Speaker 4: no primary source of her life written in her hand.
Speaker 4: She told people about this until she got in trouble,
Speaker 4: and she said it was saints and other divine beings
Speaker 4: or intercessors, if we want to put a tie on it,
Speaker 4: who guided her infamous combat strategies by this time, Let's
Speaker 4: be honest, fourteen hundreds Western Europe. She has not the
Speaker 4: first person to claim to have heard voices, and claiming
Speaker 4: to hear voices or demons is a well established part
Speaker 4: of the culture in which she was born and later
Speaker 4: burned alive at the age of nineteen. But here's the thing, though,
Speaker 4: if you look at the tactics, if you look at
Speaker 4: the battles and campaigns in which Joan of Arc participated,
Speaker 4: doesn't matter if you believe in God. She was really good.
Speaker 4: She was super good, at the very least incredibly lucky.
Speaker 4: Like she got shot through the neck with an arrow,
Speaker 4: she kept going. She had all these fatal wounds she
Speaker 4: had suffered that would have put anyone else down. Other
Speaker 4: people died easily as a result of getting shot through
Speaker 4: the neck. But this Joan of Arc character is ten
Speaker 4: toes down. And if you look at her various successful conflicts,
Speaker 4: it is a heck of a track record. You can
Speaker 4: understand why so many people might believe she was divinely inspired.
Speaker 4: And it does seem that she, at least according to
Speaker 4: what we have as primary sources and so on, it
Speaker 4: does seem that she believed she was experiencing messages from beyond.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: I think that's the difference between someone you know on
Speaker 2: the streets claiming to be a prophet, whether it's in
Speaker 2: biblical times or if it's in the fourteen hundreds, or
Speaker 2: if it's in you know, twenty twenty three. The difference
Speaker 2: is if there are actions that actually appear somehow on
Speaker 2: the service to back up what's being stated, right. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's why it works for Moses. That's why he's in
Speaker 2: the books and why he's lauded in the way he is.
Speaker 2: That's that's why Joan of Arc is because people watched
Speaker 2: her take an arrow and then just keep going.
Speaker 4: You know, I can't argue with the results. I feel
Speaker 4: you on that one. I agree, you know, But the
Speaker 4: problem is, you know, think about it. In a time
Speaker 4: of conflict in these theocracies, that person is convenient. They
Speaker 4: rally the troops. Turns out they're good as bad. Max
Speaker 4: fury Road would say they're good.
Speaker 3: At making war.
Speaker 4: However, once that conflict, once that chaos is quelled, these
Speaker 4: same demagogues become politically disadvantageous. So Joan of Arc outlived
Speaker 4: her political usefulness. Unfortunately for the powers that be, she
Speaker 4: survived all those conflicts that she won. They would have
Speaker 4: loved it. I'm sure if she died tragically at some
Speaker 4: point she didn't. She was like the old energizer buddy
Speaker 4: kept going, and as a result, she posed a threat
Speaker 4: to the established socio religious regime. So jod of arc
Speaker 4: Is arrested, goes a kangaroo court. They didn't know what
Speaker 4: kangaroos were. But she goes to a kangaroo court and
Speaker 4: she is executed by the same church she spent her
Speaker 4: young life fighting for January ninth, fourteen thirty one. They're like,
Speaker 4: this chick is so blasphemous. Those visions she gets, they're
Speaker 4: not from God, they're from demonic forces. Heritic right, right,
Speaker 4: heretic and blasphemy, two separate charges. She get it, you know,
Speaker 4: law and order fourteen hundreds, boom boom, and then like harpsichord.
Speaker 4: I guess no, I don't know if the harpsichord was around.
Speaker 5: Then.
Speaker 3: Do you think, though, Ben, that this was largely I mean,
Speaker 3: she was obviously convene for them when she was out
Speaker 3: there kicking ass and taking names. But at this point
Speaker 3: people were starting to believe in her, and I think
Speaker 3: she maybe posed a threat to the status quo of
Speaker 3: church leadership, where it was like, we can't have this
Speaker 3: person out there saying that she's speaking to God. That's
Speaker 3: not good for us. We haven't also mentioned really that,
Speaker 3: you know, Catholicism for the longest time was largely based
Speaker 3: on the idea that priests, you needed a priest in
Speaker 3: order to pray properly because the priest was speaking directly
Speaker 3: to God, who were men. These priests were men. So
Speaker 3: it seems to me like this was a great example
Speaker 3: of an inconvenient person that just needed to be dealt with.
Speaker 4: Exactly again, a demagogue, a rallying cry is politically convenient.
Speaker 4: Joan is very good at winning wars. But their dream,
Speaker 4: the powers that be, their dream, would be to have
Speaker 4: her conveniently die, right, and once the chaos is quelled,
Speaker 4: she becomes a problem for that, for the order of
Speaker 4: the day, for the socio religious hierarchy. And so that's
Speaker 4: why she ends up being on trial, because she will
Speaker 4: be a threat to the ruling regime. January ninth, fourteen
Speaker 4: thirty one. It's kind of like, you guys know, the
Speaker 4: trial of al Capone, right, how al Capone ultimately did
Speaker 4: not get convicted on as many crimes he got convicted
Speaker 4: due to the IRS due to dodging taxes. So put
Speaker 4: in a position where they're going against the people's champ
Speaker 4: the church states at the time, they say, we're going
Speaker 4: to get her on cross dressing, and she's wearing dudes clothing,
Speaker 4: which is a big no no. At the time, the
Speaker 4: church cannot convince her to confess her crimes because she says,
Speaker 4: you mortals cannot judge my deeds and actions. God told
Speaker 4: me to do this. Therefore only God can judge me.
Speaker 4: So they say, all right, fine, you're convicted of cross dressing,
Speaker 4: and she's like, ah, you got me, and then they
Speaker 4: burn her alive at this stake in fourteen thirty one.
Speaker 4: She is like Captain America at this point, and she's
Speaker 4: publicly executed. Twenty years later, because this person becomes a
Speaker 4: full hero, religious authorities come back. They say, we'll do
Speaker 4: a new trial now that she's dead, and lo and behold,
Speaker 4: they clear her. She has posthumously declared a martyr, and
Speaker 4: nowadays she's a saint. It is virtually impossible to estimate
Speaker 4: how many other people throughout history you have had a
Speaker 4: similar experience, Like right now twenty twenty three, how many
Speaker 4: individuals across the planet believe they are divinely inspired or
Speaker 4: think they're somehow related to God or think they're The
Speaker 4: idea of being a reincarnation of Christ is always going
Speaker 4: to be a particularly popular persona. The news reports these
Speaker 4: folks as lunatics or cult leaders, because oddly enough, with
Speaker 4: the rise of technological innovation, with the democratization of audio
Speaker 4: and video technology, support for claims of divine intervention have
Speaker 4: nose dived in comparison to previous eras. So the question
Speaker 4: is what do all these cases prove. They prove you
Speaker 4: can frame stuff however you wish, be an atheist, be
Speaker 4: a true believer. You can believe that you yourself have
Speaker 4: received messages from beyond the mortal veil. But no matter
Speaker 4: what you believe or how we frame things in a
Speaker 4: given culture, the results are in the concept of divine
Speaker 4: intervention is fundamentally shaped human civilization and may well continue
Speaker 4: to do so. But there are a lot of problems,
Speaker 4: like why does so many of these armies appear to
Speaker 4: have divine aid in one conflict and get their asses
Speaker 4: whipped in the next one. Are there multiple divine conflicts
Speaker 4: or are there like multiple gods that don't agree with
Speaker 4: each other? Is there some deistic entity that leaves Earth
Speaker 4: for its own devices and then occasionally checks in or
Speaker 4: is there only chaos? A continual chain of humans desperately
Speaker 4: chasing resources throughout history, obsessed with imagining purpose in a
Speaker 4: universe with no true captain at the wheeled.
Speaker 3: It really it makes me think of I think there
Speaker 3: isn't there a video game where there's like different gods
Speaker 3: from pantheons. It's like a fighting game AI generated thing.
Speaker 4: It is definitely a game. It's like a two D
Speaker 4: street fighter thing.
Speaker 3: I think that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's great, and we have to look to science, right,
Speaker 4: it's the dominant belief system of this age. There's one
Speaker 4: honorable mention we have to say, and that is the
Speaker 4: God helmet or the Koran helmet. This thing uses weak
Speaker 4: magnetic fields to stimulate the temporal lobes of the human
Speaker 4: brain and it creates, through that stimulation the sensation of
Speaker 4: another worldly presence. The majority of people who wear the helmet,
Speaker 4: the god helmet, it's called. The majority of people wearing
Speaker 4: that feel that they are in the presence of something divine.
Speaker 3: So this is news to me. Tell us a bit
Speaker 3: more about the creation of this thing.
Speaker 4: Ah, yeah, it's made by Stanley korn In conjunction with
Speaker 4: a neuroscientist named Michael Persinger, and what they found was
Speaker 4: even Christopher Hitchins noted polemical atheists tried it, and you
Speaker 4: know that guy never apologized or was never chill. So
Speaker 4: even that guy had to say.
Speaker 6: I felt like an irritating thought. You know, I felt
Speaker 6: irritated because he couldn't say he felt he was in
Speaker 6: the presence of God. The thing is, modern society cannot
Speaker 6: explain adequately the idea of divine intervention, but can now
Speaker 6: recreate the sensation to that note about the Pepsi test,
Speaker 6: and this it really makes us think, this spiritual conspiracy concept,
Speaker 6: it makes us think about the divide between science and spirituality.
Speaker 6: They're answering two differing, distinct, tremendously important human questions. Science
Speaker 6: attempts to explain how happens. Spirituality attempts to explain why
Speaker 6: and to fully experienced life, Human beings and human communities
Speaker 6: need to have some form of both. All the other
Speaker 6: animals on the planet obsess about the how. Humans uniquely
Speaker 6: obsess over the why.
Speaker 4: And that might be why. Sometimes, no matter who you are,
Speaker 4: you feel like you get this impulse all of a
Speaker 4: sudden you have an inexplicable urge that says step two
Speaker 4: feet to the right, move to the leath too.
Speaker 3: It's almost a luxury to be able to ask the
Speaker 3: question of why you know what I mean because you
Speaker 3: have a beat, because you're not just so focused on
Speaker 3: survival all the time that you have that minute to
Speaker 3: think larger about it, to think about what's at the
Speaker 3: next level, what's at the next tier.
Speaker 2: Well, we've had amazing stories told to us from listeners.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of one where a mother was leaving her
Speaker 2: daughter at home. She was in her car, she got
Speaker 2: a couple blocks away, and it's related to hearing voices
Speaker 2: and divine intervention, but she heard a voice say go
Speaker 2: back and get your daughter, don't leave without her. So
Speaker 2: she goes back, picks up her daughter, and as soon
Speaker 2: as they take off again, her daughter, who's never had
Speaker 2: a major seizure, has a huge major seizure in the
Speaker 2: back of the mother's car. And if she if the
Speaker 2: mother would have just left her there, she would have
Speaker 2: had that seizure on her own, Like who knows what
Speaker 2: would have happened. And the mom was able to take
Speaker 2: her immediately to the hospital. Like that's crazy, that's like
Speaker 2: How did that happen? Why did something tell her to
Speaker 2: go back and get her daughter? Was it just her
Speaker 2: and her intuition or was it divine intervention?
Speaker 4: Well check out our Vibe episode.
Speaker 3: I think I mentioned on the Hearing Voices episode the
Speaker 3: story about the science fiction author Philip K. Dick. That's dramatized,
Speaker 3: it's also kind of autobiographical. In the novel Vallas, he
Speaker 3: believes that he was shot in the head by a
Speaker 3: laser from space that he refers to as a god
Speaker 3: like presence that gave him information about a malady that
Speaker 3: his son had that would have killed him if he
Speaker 3: hadn't acted on it.
Speaker 4: Wow, And the more skeptical say, yeah, Phila is crazy.
Speaker 4: But there's there's there's this point. Also, I'm really glad
Speaker 4: you brought this up that we need to thank the
Speaker 4: multiple folks who have written to us with your own experiences,
Speaker 4: fellow listeners of inexplicable intervention, right, whether divine or not.
Speaker 4: Something that happened, a thought that arrived, a compulsion that
Speaker 4: arrived that resulted in a better outcome if you had
Speaker 4: not listened to that message from somewhere, even if it's
Speaker 4: from yourself. Humans act on these impulses surprisingly often, and
Speaker 4: if nothing appears to happen, humans don't call it a
Speaker 4: revelation until that is, you look back and realize that
Speaker 4: moment was pivotal, it may have changed the course of events.
Speaker 4: And then later, maybe minutes later, maybe years later, maybe
Speaker 4: decades later, you look back, because you always do. You
Speaker 4: look back, and from far enough away, that snap decision
Speaker 4: may look a lot like the hand of God. And
Speaker 4: that's where we ended again. You know we, as we
Speaker 4: said it the top, We're not here to tell anybody
Speaker 4: what to believe. Your beliefs are your own, but we
Speaker 4: do find it fascinating that this has been such a
Speaker 4: continual thread throughout human history, and that so many huge
Speaker 4: events have hinge upon listening to that little voice, wherever
Speaker 4: you feel it may come from. I think that's it
Speaker 4: for us, right, guys, I know we've gone a little long.
Speaker 4: Maybe we pass the torch here. You don't have to
Speaker 4: be divinely inspired to write to us. You can just
Speaker 4: have some ideas. Heck, you might just have a limerick
Speaker 4: or a pun. We love all of those. We try
Speaker 4: to be easy to find online.
Speaker 3: Conspiracy stuff on x nay, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Conspiracy
Speaker 3: stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2: Yes, there are other ways to contact us. Sorry, I
Speaker 2: just want to add one thing here before we go
Speaker 2: to the voicemail. I would be interested in hearing more
Speaker 2: about how God appears, right, like the mechanisms through which
Speaker 2: someone is given that message, because we talked about hearing
Speaker 2: a voice. Other times it's Bush.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a physical thing.
Speaker 3: Or it's a Joseph Smith, you know, and the angel
Speaker 3: more what's the name that's great moroney that appeared to
Speaker 3: Joseph Smith apparently presented him with gold with tablets that
Speaker 3: caused him to start the Mormon faith.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or a giant storm on a mountain. I don't
Speaker 2: know there there, it's there's interesting stuff there. So maybe
Speaker 2: write to us and or tell us, you know other
Speaker 2: mechanisms that we're not thinking about. Our number is one
Speaker 2: eight three three st d w y t K. It's
Speaker 2: a voicemail system. You got three minutes. Give yourself a name,
Speaker 2: and please let us know if we can use your
Speaker 2: name and message on the air. If you don't want
Speaker 2: to do that, why not send us an email.
Speaker 4: We are the people who read every email you send.
Speaker 4: We're conspiracy at iHeartRadio.
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