From the Vault: Techno-Religion, Part 2

We often think of technology and religion as distinct and separate worlds, but what happens when they converge? Join Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick in this two-part episode as they examine religious world views shaped by technology, such as John Murray Spear’s electrical messiah, the simple prayer wheel and the psycho-spiritual technologies of Scientology. (Originally published Jun 11, 2015)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
We're going to take a walk into the vault. That's right,
we're going back to June. This was our Techno Religion
episode two. Yes, so we're re airing part two of
our Techno Religion for the Masses episodes from last Saturday.

(00:27):
We reaired part one. This is going to be part two,
so if you've already listened to that, you should jump
right in and joined the Holy Robot War. Welcome to
Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,

(00:49):
welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is part
two in our two part exploration of techno Religion of
the convergence of religion and technology. So before you listen
to this episode, you should definitely go back and check
out our part one episode of Techno Religion. And at
the beginning of the last episode, I told the story

(01:09):
about a strange incident taking place at High Rock Tower
in Lynn, Massachusetts in the eighteen fifties, where people were
trying to build an electro mechanical messiah, and the chief
intellectual architect of this event was a guy named John
Murray Spear. We now continue the story. So who was

(01:32):
John Murray Spear. He's in some ways a much forgotten
and overlooked figure from the sort of radical reform movement
of the early eighteen hundreds. So John m Rey Spear
was born in Boston in eighteen o four. His father
was a blacksmith. He had a brother named Charles who
was a year older than him, and he and his
family were members of the Universalist Church. And this was

(01:56):
a Christian church that was popular in some parts of
New England back then. And the Universalist Church rejected the
doctrine of hell. That's one of the most notable things
about them. They rejected the doctrine of hell and eternal
damn nation, and they preached that the salvation of Christ
was applied to all people unconditionally. I like that. Yeah.

(02:18):
And they also were very often associated with political radical
reform causes. They were tied up in abolitionist movements. Yeah. Yeah.
So there was a somewhat utopian strain of thinking about
earthly life, not just the afterlife, in the Universalist circles
back then. So John Murray Spear and his brother Charles

(02:38):
grew up in the church of Reverend John Murray, for
whom John Murray Spear was named. And young John they said,
you know, he was fond of going to solitary places
and sort of thinking deep thoughts. In his early life
he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, which I had no
idea about this, But according to the book which is
my main source on John Murray Spear, which is called

(02:59):
The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear by John Benedict Baucher,
back then shoemakers were particularly radical and bookish group. Have
you ever heard this, No, I never have. So the
ideas shoemakers would have young apprentices, and the youngest apprentices
would go out each day and collect a whole bunch

(03:19):
of pamphlets and newspapers for the day, and then would
sit there reading them out loud to all the shoemakers
and older apprentice shoemakers while they did their work for
the day. And I wonder why this is shoemakers, why
shoemaker And of course the shoemakers would listen to the
stuff and they'd comment on it. And sort of have debates.
I think maybe this is just completely uninformed. I wonder

(03:41):
if it's because shoemakers have a job where they're mostly stationary,
but it's not too loud. That's true, But that's a
good point because essentially they're listening to podcasts right, right,
And today a lot of people listen to podcasts like
if you're you know, you're working on a spreadsheet, or
you're doing something at your computer, or you're driving. Right,
These are all tacit that that are not too loud,

(04:02):
and they don't require a level of concentration that is
so intense that you can't hear a couple of people
talk about some topic or another. Right. So, John Murray Spear,
the young John Murray Spear, got some early practice sort
of dealing with radical ideas and participating in public conversations
this way through being a shoemaker, and through the influence
of the Universalist Church, especially eventually through the Universalist luminary

(04:25):
jose Ah Balu, who's a big name in Universalist thinking
at this time, and eventually John Murray Spear went on
to become a Universalist minister himself, and he traveled around
and ministered in several different UH congregations and did a
lot of radical reform activism, what we would call activism now.

(04:45):
So he became deeply involved in the movement to abolish
the death penalty UH. He and his brother Charles were
both very much involved with that. He became very much
involved in women's rights and in the abolition of slavery,
especially John Mary Spear was very much an abolitionist. He
he campaigned against slavery constantly, and he was also, I

(05:06):
would say in a way that was sort of ahead
of his time, campaigning against what we today know as racism,
though I think back then a lot of white people
didn't even have a word for that or know what
to call it. But he was against prejudice, not just slavery,
but prejudice against people of of different skin tones. And
so there's a lot to admire about this guy. I

(05:28):
think he was. He was active in William Lloyd Garrison's
abolitionist movements. Actually, there's a great quote from this book
where William Lloyd Garrison was introducing Spear as a speaker
at an abolitionist convention and he made this horrible pun
but it sort of reflects his role. He says although
weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual. We

(05:49):
do not object at all to the use of the spear. Now,
this apparently that he's this like a Miltonian reference here
as well. Right, Yeah, this is a reference to the
angel Etheriel in in Paradise Lost, which has a spear
that essentially exposes the true nature of whatever it touches.

(06:09):
It's you know, the it's the glasses from they live, okay, um,
So the Ituriel can touch the spirit to Satan when
Satan's in the form of a toad and reveal Satan's
true nature at Satan. And this was a common metaphor
in the abolitionist movement at the time, and I think
more generally the radical reform movements of the time, to
sort of expose the hypocrisy and oppression of the standard

(06:31):
governments and institutions of the time. So to summarize this
is a this is a guy who is very concerned
with the real world, oh totally. But then John Murray
spirit took a turn. And while still i'd say in
a lot of ways being concerned with the real world,
he took a turn towards the spirit world. He became

(06:54):
involved with what was known at the time as the
spiritualist movement. So this for I think the first real
all piece of evidence here that was in this book
I read. It was in August eighteen forty seven, John
Murray Spear penned a review in an anti death penalty
newspaper that he was co editor of called The Prisoner's Friend,
and he penned a review of a book about spiritualism,

(07:16):
which was The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and
a Voice to Mankind by Andrew Jackson Davis. And this
was sort of a work in the emerging field of spiritualism.
And Davis claimed to be in contact with the spirit
of Emmanuel Swedenborg and like channeling his statements from beyond
the grave. And the book alleged that there were these

(07:37):
various universal laws at play, and it sort of looked
at religion from a rationalist angle. Actually, this is a
thing that might seem weird to us today, but at
the time spiritualism represented what some people believe to be
a more scientific approach to the supernatural. So you might
have traditional religions that are based on received tradition, whereas

(08:00):
spiritualism people sitting around channeling spirits was actually an empirically
observed phenomenon. Yeah, you might not believe that they were
having real supernatural experiences, but the scientific thinking of the
time was, well, at least we're we're looking at real
phenomena here and we can make judgments on them. Yeah,
I mean you you look back to the spiritualist movement.

(08:21):
I mean even in some of the the fringier stuff
with seance an ectoplasm, right, even if it even though
ectoplasm was a was a con it was an attempt
to say, look, here is physical proof, some sort of
biological manifestation of the spirit. Right. So a lot of
these people who were into spiritualism were people who were
deeply desperately yearning for something to cling onto about true

(08:44):
messages from beyond, real transcendental knowledge. So some Universalist ministries
at the time were opposed to spiritualism. But in eighteen
fifty one, John Murray Spear broke ties with the Universalist
Church after refusing to affirm a simple creed of the
Church which is basedly pledging allegiance to the guidance of
the Bible and the person of Jesus, because he's he

(09:05):
saw that as too constrictive on on sort of freedom
of thought by that point, and it seems like in
some way he began to at least secretly train himself
as a seer and practitioner of mesmeric trances, you know,
like the mesmerism. So on March thirty one, eighteen fifty two,
John Murray Spear actually began his career as a spirit medium,

(09:29):
and this was a career with somewhat mixed reception among
his social circles. He'd get messages from spirits from beyond
the grave, sometimes through automatic writing, where he would sit
there and just start writing whatever came to his mind
and believing it came from a spirit. Sometimes automatic drawing.
Some of these drawings sound pretty funny, where he'd like

(09:49):
draw a human and then like draws spirit guided labels
for all their body parts. Uh. Sometimes through speech, so
sometimes he might just get up and give an extemporaneous
beach on the subject he didn't know anything about, believing
he was channeling messages from someone who did know something
about it, who was in the spirit world. So in spiritualism,

(10:10):
like I mean, there's a sense of evolution to this
as well, because it's the idea that we die our
spirit passes on and as spirits we continue to evolve,
and the spirit world is filled with the individuals that
have have a lot of of of knowledge, a lot
of wisdom to share with the living. And John Murray
Spear is essentially opening himself up along these lines as

(10:31):
just anytime you want to pop in and I am open,
Mike Night for humanity, just pop into me. And so
so he's popping in and out of the real John
Murray Spear and just becoming whoever is coming up to
the podium to speak. That's right, Yeah, yeah, exactly. So
John Murray Spear and his daughter Sophronia also Sophronia's I
love that name. Uh, they sort of became a spirit
medium team. For a while, they were both channeling messages

(10:52):
of spirits, and for a while he was getting various
kinds of messages. Sometimes like vague messages would tell him
to travel to a specific place and meet people to
do healing rituals on them. One example was I think
at some point Benjamin Franklin contacted him via spirits and
told him to go visit a lady who had been
struck by lightning and was ailing. And then also, yeah,

(11:15):
he'd be given these discourses on the nature of reality,
so Benjamin Franklin would inhabit him and speak through him
on the nature of electricity, magnetism, the cosmic ether. There
was also there was a particularly funny story in this
book where John Mary Spear was in Cleveland channeling the
spirit of the dead physician and founding father Benjamin Rush.

(11:35):
And this is a direct quote from his speech in
speaking of the mortal body, it will be all things considered.
Why is this to commence that what looking at all
things may be considered the most or more strictly speaking,
the more important part, and that is the head in
the front part, just below the eyes there is what
is generally called by the common people a knows And

(11:57):
here it will be perceived that there are two apartments.
What what does that even mean? Um? But it didn't
stop there, unfortunately he uh so, or maybe fortunately who knows?
John Mary spirit didn't just get these discourses on the
nature of humanity. He eventually started getting messages from a

(12:18):
congress of spirits, this great sort of enclay of of
spirits that formed a general assembly in the spirit world.
Uh And these had sub committees basically that would communicate
to him, and they had these great names. One was
the Association of Beneficence. They were also the Associations of Electrizers, Elementizers,

(12:39):
education Izers, Governmentizers, Healthfulizers, and Agriculturalizers. It makes it makes sense,
you know, in terms of the cosmology of the thing, right,
because if if the living human is just the larval form,
and the spirit form is kind of the adult, then
imagine what kind of an adult spirit form someone like
Benjamin Franklin transforms into. I mean, if you have enough

(13:01):
of these individuals floating around in the spirit realm, they're
going to form committees exactly right. So this is where
things got really interesting because the Association of Electrizers, that's
not as sinister as it sounds. I think they were
providing knowledge on the electrification of the world through through technology.
Contacted Spear and said through Spear that they had some

(13:23):
plans that needed to be enacted on Earth, and those
plans were for what they called a new motor, the
new motor, which is the physical channel of the new
motive power, and this is the electro mechanical Messiah. We
began the episode with, all right, at this point, I
should probably jump in and just give just a brief

(13:45):
overview of some of the metaphysics that are play in Spears.
Spiritualism already touched on the we already touched on the
whole idea of the the human. The physical human is
being the larval form of a of a spirit form
that continues to evolve. Right, But Spears metaphysics actually played
into the supposed mechanics of this machine. Yes um, he

(14:06):
said that the mind has three functions, the human mind
three functions. It receives, stores, and transmits spiritual energy. And
this thought energy is not generated in the mind, so
that it's it's not coming out of the meat inside
your head, but rather it's broadcast into our solar system
by a cosmic God. And then the Sun acts as

(14:26):
a lens to direct this divine signal down to Earth,
where it collects, of course in north polar reservoirs, and
then it dissipates down to the human minds across the Earth. Right,
So we're sort of like receivers or repeaters of this
cosmic signal coming from God, the electricity of God's love

(14:46):
that is channeled through the lens of the Sun. And
notice all of these technological scientific metaphors that are used
in the creation of of of of of a cosmology
for the unseen. Right, So what was this machine actually, Well,
in mundane terms, it was a table with a bunch
of pieces attached to it. Yes, if you were introduced

(15:09):
to this electrical Messiah, I dare say you would be
disappointed because it is not the large robot Jesus that
you wanted to be. Right, So Spear would continually get
new messages from the Spirits, constantly updating the plans for
the machine, and all of his supporters gathered in this
place I mentioned earlier, the High Rock Tower in Lynn, Massachusetts,

(15:30):
and worked for months on this from the summer of
eighteen fifty three and into eighteen fifty four, constantly making
additions to the machine, changing things based on the spirits specifications. Basically,
there was like a metal stalk uh in some ways.
I think it was said to have resembled across a
cruciform in nature, but it also it had metal parts

(15:51):
extending out to the sides, and then these dangling balls
and antennae of various types. So it's sort of like
a strange metal Christmas tree cross type object on a
dining room table. Yes, and the descriptions that we were
reading about it. They were kind of like all over

(16:12):
the place in terms of the was it supposed to do?
Like is it? What is it? What is it physically
supposed to do? What is it sort of metaphorically supposed
to do? Because it it was described as a sacramental presence,
a holy force field generator, a gay way to the
spirit realm uh So, it's kind of like this mechanical
symbolic body that's going to channel the free energy of

(16:35):
the universe or you know, God's love that radio radiates
out from the cosmic center. It's a north pole aligned
aerial antenna to receive electrical spirit energy. It's um and
then on top of all this again he's he's open
mic night for the spirits and these committees that are speaking.
So when he drops back into just good old John Boy,

(16:56):
he'll he's kind of ambivalent about it at times. He's
kind of like, Oh, I don't know anything about technology.
Is that what those guys are telling you? Okay, so
that sounds all right, But he had some very enthusiastic
supporters who were there to tell him, no, John, it's great,
we're working on it. But to compound matters. Further, it
wasn't simply going to be a sort of like a

(17:17):
repeater or receiver, collector and retransmitter of God's electrical psychic energy.
It was also going to be a perpetual motion machine. Yes,
something that uh, apparently the science at the time believed
could not exist. That's still pretty much considered to be, right,
there's no such thing as perpetual motion machine. Motion always

(17:38):
sort of gets lost to entropy, transformed into heat. But
they wanted to create a perpetual motion machine or quote
a self moving machine, right, self moving in the same
way that that God was perceived as being self moving,
and potentially in the same sense that a spirit with
free will is considered to be a self moving soul
by some interpretations. Right. So they want this piece of technology,

(18:01):
this new motor, to be not just an effect but
also a cause in itself, and in that way it
would be kind of like creating a new man or
a new God. Yes, but also in it's kind of
complicated because it's like, in a sense it's it's also
just about the idea of it should inspire everyone, right, right,

(18:25):
But then they also you do expect the thing to
do something into work right, so that they clearly thought
that it would have some major significance in transforming the world,
in ushering in some kind of s schatological event. They
thought of it as as a sort of like transition
to the end times, though not necessarily the end times
in terms of the apocalyptic imagery we often think of,

(18:46):
or anything negative. They thought of it as like the
new Age, you know, the new heavens and the new Earth.
Everything changed, transformed, the apotheosis, things brought up out of
mundane existence into the new realm of life. And kind
of a sense too that it it is that spear
that we're talking about earlier, that angelic sphere that reveals truth.

(19:07):
But the truth that it would supposedly reveal would be
the the importance, the power of spiritualism and the and
the reality of this uh, this these met metaphysics that
John has been revealing to HISS followers. Yeah, now the
story doesn't in there. Actually, I very much recommend this book.
I mentioned earlier the remarkable life of John Murray, spear
agitator for the Spirit Land. Because they continued to try

(19:30):
experiments to get this thing to work. Unfortunately, it did
not usher in this eschatological event um, but that they
tried to imbue it with personal magnetism to get it
to turn on, so that they had this belief sort
of tied to mesmerism and things, that people had these
sort of spirit essences, and they'd have certain pairs of
people of particular types try to transmit their personal or

(19:53):
psychic energy to the machine to get it to animate
and come to life. They gave it a ritual birthing
ceremony with a human mother that did not go well
with some of the town's folk, who found that a
moral outrage and then uh, sort of took up arms
against the machine. Uh. There's a whole story of sort
of how this machine was received, but it also was

(20:16):
received sort of as an embarrassment. And I think this
is one of the reasons John Murray Spear is not
as well remembered in history as he might have been,
because I think a lot of the other radical reformers
of the time, we're like, uh, I don't know how
much we want to be associated with Mr Spear, Right, Yeah,

(20:37):
I mean I can define definitely see it because ultimately
the thing did not work. Yeah, the thing did not
It didn't meet any of the more elaborate other worldly
expectations for the thing, and it didn't. It didn't even
really need like the bare threshold required to impress the
people who poured their lives into it. Sure, But another

(20:57):
thing that I think is worth mentioning is that this
kind of thinking isn't quite as obscure as it would
seem to us, because there were thoughts back in the
nineteenth century about the perhaps borderline supernatural or psychic psychically
significant power of electricity. And that's true. Um yeah, back

(21:17):
in the nineteenth century, uh it, electricity had a noble,
if not a divine reputation, to the extent that members
of the scientific community protested the idea of the electric
chair as a degradation of both electricity and the scientific
breakthroughs that made electrocuting a criminal possible. So there was

(21:38):
sort of like a new a G paradigm laid on
top of the idea of electrical technology. On that note,
we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
we are going to move forward in time and discuss
some more um convergences of technology and religion. All Right,

(22:05):
we're back. We're discussing religion now and in the age
of science, but also in the age of science fiction,
in the age of space, and in the age of UFOs. Right,
so this has got to be one of the most
obvious places that religion could go when it's changed by technology.
Aliens exactly, right, I mean, you've got to believe because
in so many ways, I can't remember who I heard

(22:28):
make this point, but but it's something I heard someone
say a long time ago, which was the idea that
if you explained our idea of what aliens are to
ancient people's, they wouldn't even really make a distinction between
what we're talking about when we say aliens and their
concepts of God's We have this distinction between okay, natural

(22:49):
aliens that's you know, standard natural phenomenon and supernatural entities,
but they didn't necessarily make that distinction that aliens to
them would be Yeah, okay, so they they're very powerful
beings from a place up above, and they can travel
down to Earth if they want, and you know, we're
powerless to oppose them. Yeah. Essentially, an alien is a

(23:11):
supernatural entity that is described and wrapped up in in
in in the keepings of science, in the traditions of science.
So that it it makes at least UH, it makes
some level of scientific sense instead of non scientific. And
if you look back through time, like any anytime someone
is dealt with hallucinations, anytime someone has dealt with sleep

(23:31):
paralysis or some other encounter. You know, what was once
UH an encounter with fairies in the woods, which what
was once an assault by demons or or an encounter
with ghosts UH increasingly become became in the past few
decades an encounter with aliens or UFOs, right, because that's
the cultural script that we can fall back on for

(23:53):
the unexplained, and that essentially the supernatural perfectly. Yeah, aliens
have become the new otherworldly organism them and this has
translated into actual religious movements. The main one I want
to talk about is Raylianism. Yes, so had you heard
anything much about Ralianism before this? I had never done

(24:13):
a deep dive into Raylianism, But of course you the
end up. They end up coming up anytime you look
in at cloning in particular, and then you know they
pop up here and there with their various sort of
eye catching protests and whatnot. Yes, they are fond of
like UH demonstrations that involve nudity, but also like inflatable
flying saucers and stuff like that sometimes. But okay, so

(24:35):
what are they so? Raylianism or Realism or the International
Raylian Movement was founded in nineteen seventy three or seventy four.
I think I've seen seventy four, but could be seventy
three by its chief profit Riyal or rail Rayal born
Claude Vorrilon, and Vorlon introduces his own life in his

(24:55):
book by saying, ever since I was nine years old,
I've had but one passion, motor racing. So, Harry, you've
got your your technological You're in already. But the Raelians
believe in a branch of intelligent design, the idea that
human life was created. It didn't, you know, evolve from

(25:15):
innerent matter, but that it was created in a conscious
act of creation. But they believe in the kind of
intelligent design that most intelligent design advocates like to skip over,
which is the notion that life was engineered not by
supernatural god or gods, but by a race of extraterrestrial scientists. Right,

(25:36):
They're called the Eloheim. So what does this word mean?
You might have heard it before, Eloheim is a word
that appears in the Hebrew Bible, and in a literal sense,
it's the Hebrew plural word for gods or deities, so
it can be used to refer to groups of lesser
supernatural entities like angels or pagan gods. Those are all eloheim,

(25:56):
but it can also be translated to refer to the
singular out of Israel. So one of the names of
God used in the Hebrew Bible is Eloheim, and in
English translations that's usually the word God with the capital G.
The root of Eloheim seems to be l, which is
an older Canaanite word, and that was l was the

(26:18):
chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, but also a generic
word just meaning God like a god, which also appears
in the Bible as a title for God, though less often.
So how did all this come together? What started this event? Well,
Ryle tells the story in in his own book, So
he says, in nineteen seventy three, he was out motoring,

(26:41):
you know, because he has a passion for motor racing
out in France, so to speak, and he stopped at
a volcano that was overlooking Claremont Ferrand in central southern France,
and he parked his car and got out to sort
of like walk and jog around the volcanic crater, and
there he saw an aerial vehicle coming toward him, and

(27:03):
at first, he says, he thought it was a helicopter,
but then he noticed it was completely silent, and then
he realized it was a flying saucer. He says it
was about seven meters in diameter two point five meters
in height, so, you know, kind of modest as far
as flying saucers go. And a stairway descends out of
the bottom of it, and a being comes out to
meet him, and he says, at first he thought it

(27:25):
was a child because it was only four ft tall.
He says, his eyes were slightly almond shaped, his hair
was black and long, and he had a small black beard.
I like that there's facial hair with these aliens so
so often there they don't get to rock the facial
hair exactly. Yeah, they're they're way too smooth. Usually it's
kind of strange. But anyway, that this being proceeded to

(27:46):
have a conversation with Rilon, informing him that he had
visited Earth many times before and that he had chosen
Rillon specifically to speak to on that day, and it
told him that the alien told him to come back
the next day to bring his Bible and something to
take notes with, and so then it instructed him on
many truths about the origins of life on Earth and

(28:09):
the real meanings of stories in the Bible. And then
of course Vorrillon later under the name ril published books
on the subject and founded the Riley and or Rileyan movement.
So the main basic idea is that life on Earth
was created by a group of extraterrestrial scientists and then
a laboratory, yes, and that we were created in the

(28:31):
image of those scientists. And so their beliefs in general
have a lot in common with the various like ancient
astronauts theories. If you ever watched any of those TV
shows where it's like, what happened? How do they build
the pyramids? Aliens? Yeah, I mean, basically it comes down
to the fact that you can take any ancient text
that deals with supernatural entities interacting with humanity, and you

(28:52):
can easily reread, reinterpret any of them as humans dealing
with extraterrestrials. And it's it's often a really you know,
far unnaginative exercise because it turns everything in its head,
it puts things in a modern perspective, and and and
you know, you know, ultimately we're talking about the exact
same scenario. So that kind of of reinterpretation you just
see throughout ancient astronaut thinking, right. So yeah, Ryal explains

(29:15):
in in his book Intelligent Design, Message from the Designers
how these beings explained to him that like the narrative
traditions of Judaism and Christianity, are all actually misrememberings or
misinterpretations of ancient interactions with these extraterrestrial creatures, the Eloheam
and their technology. I'm going to pick my favorite example

(29:41):
the site, which is this is a section from the
book about how the Ark of the Covenant is actually
a nuclear powered space radio. Makes perfect sense to me.
So he says, telepathy is a means of communication between
the creators and human beings, was only possible when the
Eloheam were in proximity to the Earth. When they were
on their distant planet or elsewhere, they could not communicate

(30:03):
in this way. For this reason, they set up a
transmitter receiver which was transported in the Ark of God,
an apparatus containing its own atomic powered cell. This is
why in the First Book of Samuel, chapters five and six,
when the Philistines stole the arc, their idle dagon lay
face down on the ground nearby as a result of
an electrical discharge caused by their clumsy mishandling of it.

(30:26):
They also suffered radiation burns from the dangerous radioactive materials.
And he quotes First Samuel five six and smote them
with em rods. That worried emmerrods, I think is generally
interpreted to mean some kind of like hemorrhoid or tumor.
Uh And so this is I don't know, I'd say
that's a pretty clever interpretation of that. I mean, I
I kind of doubt many biblical scholars would give much

(30:48):
credence to it. But uh no, I think that's a
that's a wonderful uh you know, overlay of science and
science fiction over you know, a magical object from from
from a from an older time. I mean, you see
this even outside of Christian and Hebraic tradition, with people
interpreting some of the like super weapons that the gods
give characters in the Hindu epic, the Mahabarata where they

(31:12):
have like essentially you know, crazy powerful god weapons that
they utilize, and some uh, some people like to look
back at those and say, oh, well, these were atomic weapons,
these were laser weapons, these were flying machines. And of
course the Aralians don't just have technological explanations for the past.
They also are a thoroughly technological religion in terms of

(31:32):
their ethic for the future, like what they say should
be happening in society. Just one example is that the
Ralians tend to be very in favor of human cloning.
That's not something that's true of most religions as far
as yeah, they alter, they embrace and and advocate human
cloning as a as a necessary technology for the advancement
of the species. Yeah. And in fact, in two thousand two,

(31:54):
the Ralians claim to have cloned a human being. Yes, yeah,
this is probably where a lot of people have her
of the Raliance before. From this claim, there was a
media storm. More precisely, not so much that the Ralians
claimed to have cloned a human being, but they were
involved in the publicity of this event. So a doctor
Bridget Boyselier, I hope I'm saying that right, It was

(32:15):
a Raelian bishop, and she claimed that her company, an
organization called Clone Aid not to be confused with clonas
Uh and not to be confused with Clone Aid. The
Clone Benefit Concert, which was a company originally founded in
an earlier incarnation by Royal himself, had successfully cloned an

(32:36):
American woman and produced a healthy baby clone named Eve.
And media reports at the time were really skeptical, and
as far as I can tell, no real evidence that
this is true has ever surfaced, So a lot of
people thought it was just a publicity stunt for the church,
but they maintained that they had successfully been the first
to to clone a healthy human baby. And whatever you

(32:59):
think of that story, the Ralians typically remain very supportive
of human cloning research. Yeah, and they continue to claim
to have really advanced cloning technology, if not at their
disposal then like within grasp right, like they I read that,
they claim that their scientists are close to being able
to transfer someone's mind into a new body, essentially the

(33:22):
kind of resleaving of human consciousness that one encounters and say,
Richard K. Morgan science fiction, So you could live forever
because here you've cloned the body and then boop, just
transfer your your mind into the new body and flush
the old one. Right. Well, this is always a big
problem we've talked about when we've talked about trans humanist
ideas on the other podcast, I work on forward thinking

(33:43):
that this is always something that occurs to me. People
seem to be discussing the idea of digital immortality without
answering the question of like, Okay, maybe you could make
a copy of your brain, of your memories or something
inside a computer, but how do you become that computer?
How do you transfer your experience to that machine? Yeah,

(34:04):
it gets existentially mucky really fast, because you end up
just coming against the same old problem that we don't
really have a good graph on what human consciousness is.
We have this, we run into this whole blind brain
scenario where we can't really perceive what's going on. It
seems to me the much easier thing would be it's
like you make a copy of yourself and then you

(34:24):
die and then there's a copy of you, Yeah, which
is terrifying and it's but but also you know, that's
it's it's it's it's also yeah, a form of immortality
that that lines up with our scientific understanding of how
we work. Yeah, I say, with the reorganism, you do
get this overall sense of science and futurism as articles

(34:46):
of the faith. Um. And it's you know, it's it's
easy to discuss a faithful of UFOs cloning and weird
sexuality is ridiculous, Uh, even as we cling to these
ancient models and traditions that again involved a Joel's coming
down from above, bodily resurrection, physical immortality, and also lots
of weird sexuality as well. Well, I feel like that's

(35:09):
that ties into that that's sort of like abhorrence of
the new thing that I was talking about earlier, you know,
the fact that that we find the presence of too
much technology and our religious rights and in our religious
holy places as kind of like somehow vaguely blasphemous or
crass or or it just doesn't feel right. And I

(35:31):
can totally see this parallel. When you look at the
beliefs of the Rillyans, I see a whole lot of
parallels with a lot of ancient religions. And I wonder
if one of the only major differences in my attitude
towards it is just that it's new. Yeah, you see
that all. I mean, even as we were talking about it,
we're kind of having fun with the concept. But with
some of the concepts they were, you know, they bring

(35:52):
up such as, I mean, I love the idea that
I think Satan was Arablian, not Arablian. Satan was el
him from the home planet. It was opposed to creating
new life. And then Lucifer is another one that is
evolved in the the generation of life here on Earth
and also had a role in creating the dinosaurs. Like
all that, I mean, you can't help but laugh because

(36:14):
it's it's also kind of hysterical in its own way.
But it's not really that different from anything that exists
in any ancient religion. It's just we're more willing to
buy into some weird, outlandish story that was written down
by some dude if that dude lived, you know, five
hundred years ago rather than fifty years ago. Right, we

(36:34):
just naturally assigned more authority to the ancient regime. Now,
in discussing religion and technology in the modern day, we
cannot help but discuss the Church of Scientology a little bit. Right, Well,
I mean, this is another religion not just of the
current technological age, but it does have technology infused all

(36:55):
throughout its practices. Yea. So one of the things that
would be pretty obvious is the E meter, and we
can come back to that in a minute. But the
first thing that actually made me think of scientology as
a technological religion, or at least something that has technology
deeply embedded in its ideology is literally the use of
the word technology. See, I've noticed in interviews, like televised

(37:19):
interviews and things that I've seen with some representatives of
the Church of Scientology that they use the word technology
when what they're talking about are the beliefs and practices
of Scientology. Um, so that kind of doesn't jive with
how we usually use the word technology. Like I was saying,
it's usually a machine, right, A technology is usually a mechanism,
and they're talking about it more as in like how

(37:41):
a doctrine can be a technology, yeah, or even you
can think of it in terms, I guess of a blueprint, Right,
I have a blueprint for a steam engine. Sure, steam
engine is a technology, but also the blueprint is is
a technology in itself because it tells you how did
the process by which you create this thing? And that's
ultimately what they're they're offering their followers, right a a

(38:01):
blueprint to become this better engine totally. Yeah, so I
can see it like that. It is in in the
dictionary definition since the technology perhaps like it is a
at least an application of what they believe to be
scientific knowledge to a practical purpose. Yeah. So you see
mention of the dionetic spiritual healing technology of study technology,

(38:23):
and they also have their Religious Technology Center which aims
to quote protect the public from a misapplication of the
technology and to see that the religious technologies of dionetics
and scientology remain in proper hands and are properly ministered.
So it's like the f d A of the technologies
of Scientology. Yeah, you know, in terms of or certainly

(38:45):
the uh the division of Scientology concerned with with maintaining
those copyrights and those patents. Sure. Yeah. But then of
course there is actually within Scientology in their actual practices
a device that you've probably heard of of, the E meter.
It's an electrical device that they use in what is
called auditing. Yeah, I mean it's very much. I mean

(39:08):
I would be tempted to make a comparison between the
role of the E meter with say, the role of
a of a chalice in in a Roman Catholic tradition,
right that you need for the sacred right of a communion. Uh.
The use of the E meter uh in auditing is
essentially a sacred right. Okay. So what is auditing and

(39:28):
what does the E meter actually do? Yeah, the E
meter is a real thing, and its origins uh lay
outside of scientology. Actually, it is an electro psychometer. Come on, Robert,
it's a psychometer. Okay, electro psychometer if you will. Uh,
you know the meto the motto. And this is a
device for displaying and or recording the electrodermal activity or

(39:50):
the e d A of a human being. It's actually
one of the factors covered in a standard polygraph test
as well as in scientific studies regarding human emotions. Again,
the E meter is not a technology that exists solely
within the world of scientology. It's one of the components
of a polygraph. But science scientologists have been using it

(40:12):
as an auditing tool. Um, and they have their own
patents for their own emeter devices that they continue to
to update. UM. Now, what is auditing. That's an entire
that's an entire conversation in and of itself. But essentially,
you have an auditor that is a meeting with a
member of the faith and they are hooking them up

(40:32):
to the E meter to record these uh these reactions
in the dermis, basically their emotional reaction to stimuli, words, phrases, etcetera.
And the Church of Scientology itself describes auditing UH as this.
They say the goal of auditing is to restore being,
this and ability, and this is accomplished by one helping
individuals rid themselves of any spiritual disabilities and to increasing

(40:56):
spiritual abilities. Yeah, this is interesting. I mean it seems
to me that I certainly, not being all that familiar
with the practice, can't say exactly how it's used, but
it seems like a rough analogy too, if you were
to hook yourself up to a polygraph test when you
go in for a Catholic confession. Yeah, that's kind of
the vibe I I'm getting off of it as as well,
that it's you know, it's it's about this individual meeting

(41:19):
with you too to audit you, to to to to
discuss and and figure out your sort of emotional your
psychic state right, and to do that, you know, they'll
throughout some words and see if those words trouble you
or you know what kind of an emotional resonance they
create in your body. And so in this we we
have a wonderful example of a a modern religion that

(41:40):
is using modern technology, that has adapted modern technology for
its sacred rights and observances. Now, again, scientology is a
subject unto itself, and maybe when we should come back
to in a future episode, but we mainly just wanted
to focus on the the use of the E meter here. Yeah,
and also I think the general attitude towards the idea

(42:00):
of technology and what role it plays in the religion,
because they're the word seems to be held up in
a positive light. It's it's something that's reacting against this
thing we've been talking about, like the profanity of technology,
technology being this kind of like new fangled, unbeautiful thing
that that should be kept out of the sacred sphere

(42:20):
of religion. These are ideologies that are actually really about
intentionally bringing technology in. It's not incidental, it's not intruding
on the religion. It's a core part of it. And
I think this should finally bring us to the idea
of the singularity Ah, yes, it always comes back to
the singularity, right. Well, I mean this is a popular

(42:43):
topic among weirdos like US and the singularity. If I'm
sure you've probably heard of it before, but just in
case you haven't, what's the general idea of the singularity.
It's kind of like the the purpose of the new motor.
It's somewhat egg but but it's a general point in
human evolution where we sort of achieve a level of

(43:06):
technological sophistication, where suddenly technology advances so rapidly that we
cannot keep up with it that it revolutionizes and changes
human nature. A lot of times, it's associated with the
sort of a moment of transition to being transhumanist, like
where human biology merges with technology and you get this

(43:28):
new breed of humanity that's like cyborg basically, that's ultimately
uplifted and transformed to a status of an almost godlike
power by their technology. Yeah, kind of a point where
you stop talking about, oh, this is human human race
and they have technology, but rather the two or one
or perhaps even the biological aspect of the species is

(43:51):
secondary to the technological presence. Right, So, one of the
big names in singularity thinking would be raker as while
he's someone who has been very positive about this idea,
who has had a lot of interesting and good things
to say about it. Uh. He sort of popularized the
notion of some of these transhumanist notions in a book
called The Age of Spiritual Machines, and then also in

(44:14):
a book called The Singularity Is Near and I think curs.
While and at least some supporters of the idea of
the singularity would disavow the idea that singularity thinking is
religious in nature, despite the fact that the phrase spiritual machines.
That's that's your argument. But there are some critics and

(44:35):
observers who do like to attribute sort of aspects of
being a religion to singularity thinking. And one of those
is the is the interesting author and technologist Jarren Lanier.
So Jarren Lanier for many years has been a big
name in sort of technology circles. He's known as sort
of like the guy behind virtual reality, and he's often

(44:58):
described as sort of a genius poly and just a
big thinker. You know. He has lots of big ideas
about the future and and how we should handle it.
And he's for a long time been a critic of
singularity thinking, and a lot of these critics of singularity
thinking point out that there are uncomfortably religious seeming aspects

(45:18):
of thinking that we're entering an age where artificial intelligence
and technology is going to enter this transcendental level. I mean,
if you think about it, the idea of transforming humans
into a higher state of existence is, you know, in
a lot of ways, kind of like the end times
beliefs of many religions. You might think about it as
a parallel to sort of like the rapture and evangelical

(45:41):
Christianity or something where people are sort of uplifted to
a higher state of existence into like a newer, better
flesh kind of a situation. Yeah, and also you could
think about it as in some ways treating technology truly
like a god. That it is, on one hand, something
that we're creating, but on the other hand, it is

(46:02):
a force that is kind of unstoppable and at some
point beyond our comprehension that comes in and imposes its
will on us. Its will is hopefully benevolent. But you
can get opposing viewpoints about that from many other people
who are worried about the the advances in artificial intelligence
and what they'll mean for human life. But yeah, I

(46:24):
think that's an interesting critique in an interesting way of
looking at at singularitarianism as it might be. Is this
a religion? And if so, what does it mean for
all the people, especially all the people who are power
players in Silicon Valley who are subscribers to this notion. Yeah,
because at hard it's it's ultimately about human technology, uh,

(46:45):
becoming godlike, and then even by extension, the possibility that
we create artificial intelligence that is essentially God. And then
of course the question is what kind of God if
we create it? Because if we look at the models
of of the of the divine that we see in
our myths and uh religions, they tend to you know,
sometimes they're rather benevolent, but a lot of times they're

(47:07):
moody and petty and destructive and uh and not always
a friend to the little man. Right, Well, very often
they're selectively benevolent. Right. They might be benevolent to one
group and malevolent to another. Yeah, And and they're not
opposed to having sex with us in the form of
various animals. So yeah, we have to think about that. Well,

(47:28):
we really have to hope that our that our robot
overlords do not take the Greek myths their inspiration. The Greeks.
The Greek gods tend to be about the worst because
there they tend to be the pettiest and the most
carnal I find. But but yeah, do we end up
looking at a benevolent vision of this or a more
diabolical one? I tend to I tend to follow the

(47:50):
the the E. N. M. Banks culture UH series approach,
where you have kind of a benevolent to AI force.
It becomes in a way the guardians of humanity, but
also the the ruling power of humanity. Yeah, I've on
my other podcast a lot of Hymdenhut about you know what,
what I really think about the idea of transcendental artificial

(48:13):
intelligence and trans humanism and stuff. In the end, I
guess I've read enough persuasive stuff in both ways that
I can't really say what I think it would truly
be like in reality, though I can certainly see why
it would take on a spiritual dimension in the minds
of many people. Yeah, I always I always come back
to There's one quote in uh Gibson's neurom Answer in

(48:37):
which someone comments that you know for ages. We believed
in making packs with devils and demons, and it was
impossible until we made it possible through technology in the
creation of ais that you can enter into bargains with it,
as occurs in the book. And uh. And that's that's
kind of part and partial to some of the singularity ideas,
where it's at least when we think of them in

(48:57):
terms of religion, that technology be to make possible things
that were previously purely supernatural and from a scientific perspective
non existent, such as the afterlife. Because we've talked about,
you know, the possibilities of digitizing human consciousness and the
human experience and placing that digital consciousness within a virtual world,

(49:19):
it becomes conceivable to have a virtual heaven, of virtual hell,
of virtual purgatory in which to file away your your
the minds of believers after their bodily death. Sure well,
I mean definitely, people like rakerswill have envisioned a digital
immortality or some form of technologically enabled immortality. And if

(49:40):
you actually could achieve that, I'm skeptical of that, especially
because of like, how could you even be sure with
the consciousness transfer problem, how could you ever know that
that technology was successful, you know what I mean? Like
to say, you create a computer that claims to be
a copy of somebody, and then that person's body dies

(50:00):
and uh and their their computer copy continues to live
on saying oh, yes, I had continuous consciousness. How do
you know if that's true? Yeah? And then and then
you get into a whole you know, sort of black
mirror area of trying to figure out how you're supposed
to treat this thing. Um, you know, is if it's
if it's not just completely happy all the time, then
are you? I mean, what kind of monstrous thing have

(50:22):
you done? Here? And then again, so we're imagining digital
immortality as being a sort of embodiment of heaven. But
what if you didn't like your digital immortality. What if
you didn't like your digital immortality and then you were
unable to die, you'd be like the you know, sort
of the immortal wanderer from various myths, right where you
just sort of roaming across the digital countryside, hoping that

(50:46):
one day the divine forces, the ai s or what
have you, will will give you the gift of death
so you can just have sweet oblivion. Man, So that
William Gibson quote you had is still sticking with me.
I think that's really interesting. Yeah. I keep going back
to the uh, like we have to invent the devil
before we could sell our soul to him. Yeah, and UH,
you know, the virtual afterlife ideas come up in a

(51:08):
number of short stories. I've read that the first example
was supposedly, uh, American sci fi writer Frederick Pole in
a short story titled The Tunnel under the World from
fifty five. I was the first to really deal with this,
but one that I loved from a few years back.
It was one of the culture novels by Ian and Banks.
I mentioned earlier his novel Surface Detail, which deals in

(51:28):
large part with a a virtual war over the existence
of virtual hells. So there are various planets, various species,
and people's that can that have faiths that maintain virtual
hells for believers that we're judged to be morally failing,
and so they're you know, digital realms of torment and horror.
And you have lived plenty of living individuals and some

(51:50):
digital individuals who say that is completely awful. You should
not have that in the same way that you have
plenty of of living people today. Is say that theology
of hell itself is kind of a horrible idea and
should be you know, we should weigh like we should
lay waste to that as well. And so in this
book by Banks, this virtual war over their existence eventually
spills out into an actual real war in the universe

(52:14):
in very, very fascinating ways. That is a truly fascinating idea.
I'd like to read that book now. It's good. I
highly recommend uh the works of the late uh I N. M. Banks. Good,
great stuff, great science fiction that's you know, concerned with
where technology is taking us, but also you know, some
of the the philosophical existential problems of the current times. Alright,

(52:36):
So there you have it, Uh, the end of our
two parter on techno religion, the convergence of technology and religion,
from the earliest prayer wheels to the distant possibility of
a singularity birth God. This has been a wild ride.
Thank you for having me on for this forever. Hey, Hey,
thank you, thank you for joining me. Hey. In the meantime,

(52:56):
you want to check out more episodes of Stuff to
Blow your Mind, head on over to stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all the
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the materials we've discussed here, such as that book The

(53:17):
Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear. If you want to
get in touch with us about any strange stories you've
had about the interaction of technology and religion, how you
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(53:37):
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