June 11, 2015 • 53 mins
We often think of technology and religion as distinct and separate worlds, but what happens when they converge? Join Robert and Joe 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.v
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert lamp 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
(00:25):
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 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
(00:45):
the chief intellectual architect of this event was a guy
named John Murray Spear. We now continue the story. So
who was John Murray Spear. He's in some ways a
much forgotten an overlooked figure from the sort of radical
reform movement of the early eighteen hundreds. So John R.
(01:07):
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 a Christian church that was popular in some parts
of New England back then, and the Universalist Church rejected
(01:28):
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,
And they also were very often associated with political radical
reform causes. They were tied up in abolitionist movements. Yeah. Yeah,
(01:51):
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
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
(02:12):
and sort of thinking deep thoughts. In his early life
he was apprentice 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
The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear by John Benedict Baucher,
back then shoemakers were particularly radical and bookish group. Have
(02:33):
you ever heard this? No? I never, so the ideas
shoemakers would have young apprentices, and the the youngest apprentices
would go out each day and collect a whole bunch
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
(02:55):
shoemaker And of course the shoemakers would listen to the
stuff and they'd comment on it, sort of have debates.
I think maybe this is just completely uninformed. I wonder
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, Yeah,
(03:16):
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 tasks that that are not too loud
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
(03:38):
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
jose A. Blue, 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 round
(04:00):
and ministered in several different UH congregations and did a
lot of radical reform activism, what we would call activism now.
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.
(04:23):
Especially John Mary Spire was very much an abolitionist. He
he campaigned against slavery constantly, and he was also, i
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,
(04:45):
but prejudice against people of different skin tones. And so
there's a lot to admire about this guy. I 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 and an abolitionist convention,
and he made this horrible pun, but it sort of
(05:07):
reflects his role. He says, although weapons of our warfare
are not carnal but spiritual, we do not object at
all to the use of the spear. Now, this apparently
is 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
(05:31):
true nature of whatever it touches. It's you know, the
it's the glasses from they live. Um. So the Euriel
can touch the spirit to Satan when Satan's in the
form of a toad and reveal Satan's true nature as
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
(05:52):
the hypocrisy and oppression of the standard 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
(06:15):
towards the spirit world. He became involved with what was
known at the time as the spiritualist movement. So this
for I think the first real piece of evidence here
that was in this book I read. It was in
August eighteen, John Murray spear penned a review in an
anti death penalty newspaper that he was co editor of
(06:36):
called The Prisoner's Friend, and he penned a review of
a book about spiritualism, which was The Principles of Nature,
Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind by Andrew
Jackson Davis. And this was sort of work in the
emerging field of spiritualism, and Davis claimed to be in
contact with the spirit of Emmanuel sweden Borg, like channeling
(06:57):
his statements from beyond the grave, and the book alleged
that there were these 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
(07:20):
you might have traditional religions that are based on received traditions,
whereas spiritualism, people sitting around channeling spirits was actually an
empirically observed phenomenon. 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,
(07:42):
I mean you you look back to the spiritualist movement.
I mean, even in some of 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's 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
(08:06):
cling onto about true 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 basically pledging allegiance to
the guidance of the Bible and the person of Jesus,
(08:28):
because he's he 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
(08:51):
as a spirit medium, 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 and sometimes automatic drawing. Some of these drawings sound
(09:12):
pretty funny, where he'd like draw a human and then
like draw a spirit guided labels for all their body parts. Uh.
Sometimes through speech, so sometimes he might just get up
and give an extemporaneous speech on a 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, like I mean, there's a
(09:35):
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 spirit is essentially opening himself
up in along these lines as just anytime you want
(09:56):
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 as I love that name. Uh.
They sort of became a spirit medium team. For a while,
they were both channeling messages of spirits, and for a
(10:17):
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.
(10:38):
And then also, yeah, 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 Murray Spear was
in Cleveland channeling the spirit of the dead physician and
founding father Benjamin Rush. And this is a direct quote
(11:01):
from his speech in speaking of the mortal body, it
will be all things considered. Wisest 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 here it will be perceived that there
(11:23):
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. Genrey spirit didn't just get these
discourses on the nature of humanity. He eventually started getting
messages from a congress of spirits, this great sort of
(11:44):
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're also the Association
of Electrizers, Elementizers, education Izers, governmentizers, healthfulizers, and agriculturalizers. It
(12:09):
makes it makes sense, you know, in terms of the
cosmology of the thing, right, because if if a 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. Right.
I mean, if you have enough of these individuals floating
around in the spirit realm, they're going to form committees
(12:29):
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 plans that needed
(12:49):
to be enacted on Earth, and those plans were for
what they called a new motor. Yes, 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 al Right, at this point, I should probably
jump in and just give just a brief overview of
(13:10):
some of the metaphysics that are at play in spears spiritualism,
and already touched on THEO. 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
said that the mind has three functions, the human mind
(13:33):
three functions. It receives, stores, and transmits spiritual energy. H
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 a lens to direct this divine signal down to Earth,
(13:54):
where it collects, of course in north polar reservoirs, and
then it dissipates astound 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
that has channeled through the lens of the Sun. Yes,
and notice all of these technological scientific metaphors that are
(14:17):
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
to this electrical messiah, I dare say you would be
disappointed because it is not the large robot Jesus that
(14:40):
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,
and worked for months on this from the summer of
eighteen fifty three and into eighteen fifty four, constantly making
(15:01):
additions to the machine, changing things based on the spirit 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
extending out to the sides and then these dangling balls
and antennae of various types. So it's sort of like
(15:24):
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
the place in terms of what 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
(15:44):
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
the universe or you know, God's love that radio radiates
out from the cosmic center. It's a north pole aligned
(16:06):
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 for his committees that are speaking.
So when he drops back into just good old John Boy,
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, that
(16:27):
sounds 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 the compound matters further. It wasn't
simply going to be a sort of like a repeater
or receiver, collector and retransmitter of God's electrical psychic energy.
(16:48):
It was also going to be a perpetual motion machine,
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 thing is perpetual motion machine. Motion always sort
of gets lost to entropy transformed into heat. But they
wanted to create a perpetual motion machine or quote a
(17:09):
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 wanted this piece of technology,
this new motor, to be not just an effect but
also a cause in itself, and in that way it
(17:32):
would be kind of like creating a new man or
a new God. Yes, but also in gets 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,
But then they also you do expect the thing to
do something into work, right, so that they clearly thought
(17:54):
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,
or anything negative. They thought of it as like the
new Age, you know, the new heavens and the new Earth.
(18:16):
Everything changed, transformed, the apotheosis, things brought up out of
munday and 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 angel expere that
reveals truth. But the truth that it would supposedly reveal
would be the the importance the power of spiritualism and
(18:36):
the and the reality of this uh, this these metaphysics
that John has been uh revealing to his 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 experiments to get this thing to work.
Unfortunately it did not usher in this eschatological event um,
(19:00):
but that they tried to imbue it with personal magnetism
to get it to turn on, so that they had
this belief sort of tried to mesmerism and things that
people had these sort of spirit essences. Then they'd have
certain pairs of people of particular types try to transmit
their personal or psychic energy to the machine to get
it to animate and come to life. They gave it
(19:21):
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 received sort of as an embarrassment. And
(19:43):
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, I mean I can define definitely
see it because ultimately the thing did not work. The
(20:05):
thing did not It didn't need any of the more
elaborate other worldly expectations for the thing, and it didn't.
It didn't even really meet like the bare threshold required
to impress the people who poured their lives into it. Sure,
But another thing that I think is worth mentioning is
that this kind of thinking isn't quite as obscure as
(20:27):
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. That's true, Um, yeah,
back in the nineteenth century, Uh, electricity had a noble
you haven't if not a divine reputation to the extent
(20:48):
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 are possible.
So there was sort of like a new a G
paradigm laid on top of the idea of electrical technology. Yes,
(21:08):
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, we're back. We're discussing religion now
(21:31):
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 make this point, but
(21:53):
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 two 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 aliens, that's you know, standard
(22:15):
natural phenomenon and supernatural entities. But they didn't necessarily make
that distinction that aliens to them would be oh 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 supernatural entity that is described and
(22:38):
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 paralysis or some other encounter. You know,
(22:58):
what was once 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 the unexplained, and that essentially the supernatural perfectly. Yeah,
(23:20):
aliens have become the new otherworldly organism, and this has
translated into actual religious movements. The main one I want
to talk about is Railianism. Yes, so had you heard
anything much about Relianism before this? I had never done
a deep dive into Alianism. But of course you the
the end up. They end up coming up anytime you
(23:41):
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're fond of like, uh,
demonstrations that involve nudity, but also like inflatable flying saucers
and stuff like that sometimes. But okay, so what are
they so. Ralianism or Rayalism or the International Raylian Movement
(24:04):
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 Royal born Claude Vorilon,
and Vorlon introduces his own life in his 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
(24:27):
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 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
(24:50):
notion that life was engineered not by supernatural god or gods,
but by a race of extraterrestrial scientists right there called
the Elohim. So, well, 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
(25:13):
it can be used to refer to groups of lesser
supernatural entities like angels or pagan gods. Those are all eloheim,
but it can also be translated to refer to the
singular God 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.
(25:36):
The root of Eloheim seems to be l which is
an older Canaanite word, and that was l was the
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,
(25:57):
Ryle tells the story in in his own book. So
he says, in nineteen three, he was out motoring, 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
(26:17):
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 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 heights, so,
(26:39):
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 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 liked, there's facial
(27:00):
hair with these aliens, so so often 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, this
being proceeded to have a conversation with Brilon, informing him
that he had visited Earth many times before and that
he had chosen Vrillon specifically to speak to on that day,
and it told him that the alien told him to
(27:22):
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 the real meanings of stories in the Bible.
And then, of course Vrillon later under the name Ral
published books on the subject and founded the Riley and
(27:42):
or Rileyan movement. So the main basic ideas that life
on Earth was created by a group of extraterrestrial scientists
and then a laboratory, yes, and that we were created
in the image of those scientists, and so their beliefs
in general, have a lot in common at the various
like ancient astronauts theories. If you ever watched any of
(28:03):
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 can easily reread, reinterpret any of them as
humans dealing with extraterrestrials. And it's it's often a really
you know, fun imaginative exercise because it turns everything in
(28:25):
its head, it puts things in a modern perspective, and
then and you know, you know, ultimately we're talking about
the exact same scenario. So that kind of reinterpretation you
to see throughout ancient astronaut thinking, right. So yeah, Ryal
explains 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
(28:49):
or misinterpretations of ancient interactions with these extraterrestrial creatures. The
Eloheam and their technology. I'm going to pick my favorite
example to 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 things to me.
And so he says, telepathy is a means of communication
(29:11):
between the creators and human beings, was only possible when
the Eloheim were in proximity to the Earth. When they
were on their distant planet or elsewhere, they could not
communicate 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,
(29:33):
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.
They also suffered radiation burns from the dangerous radioactive materials.
And he quotes First Samuel five six and smote them
with im rods. That worried emmerrods, I think is generally
(29:53):
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 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 uh, from
(30:15):
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
have like essentially you know, crazy powerful god weapons that
they utilize, and some uh, some people like to look
(30:36):
back at those and say, oh, well, these were atomic weapons,
these were laser weapons, these were flying machines. And of
course the Alians don't just have technological explanations for the past.
They also are a thoroughly technological religion in terms of
their ethic for the future, like what they say should
be happening in society. Just one example is that the
Alians tend to be very in favor of human cloning.
(30:59):
That's not something that's true of most religions. As far
as yeah, they altered the embrace and advocate human cloning
as a as a necessary technology for the advancement of
the species. Yeah. And in fact, in two thousand two,
the Ralians claimed to have cloned a human being. Yeah.
This is probably where a lot of people have heard
of the Raliance before. From this claim, there was a
media storm. More precisely, not so much that the Ralians
(31:23):
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
a a Raelian bishop and she claimed that her company,
an organization called Clone Aid not to be confused with
clonus uh and not to be confused with Clone Aid.
The Clone Benefit Concert, which was a company originally founded
(31:48):
in an earlier incarnation by Royal himself, had successfully cloned
an American woman and produced a healthy baby clone named Eve.
And media reports at the time were really optical, 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,
(32:09):
but they maintained that they had successfully been the first
to to clone a healthy human baby, and whatever you
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
(32:31):
they claim that their scientists are close to being able
to transfer someone's mind into a new body, essentially the
kind of re sleeving 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
(32:52):
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, or
thinking 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
(33:12):
something inside a computer, but how do you become that computer?
How do you transfer your experience to that machine? Yeah,
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
(33:33):
scenario where we can't really perceive what's going on. Yeah,
it seems to me the much easier thing would be
it's like you make a copy of yourself and then
you die, and then there's a copy of you. Yea,
which is terrifying, 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. Sure, Yeah,
(33:58):
I say, with the reorganism, you do get this overall
sense of science and futurism as articles 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 angels coming down from above, bodily resurrection,
(34:20):
physical immortality, and also lots of weird sexuality as well. Well,
I feel like that's that ties into that that's sort
of like abhorrence of the new thing that I was
talking about there. 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 a somehow vaguely blasphemous or crass or or it
(34:46):
just doesn't feel right. And I 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 as just
that it's new. Yeah, you see that all. I mean,
even if we were talking about it, we're kind of
having fun with the concept. But with some of the
(35:08):
concepts they were, you know, they bring up such as,
I mean, I love the idea that I think Satan
was Aralian, not araliance. Satan was Elohim from the Elohim
home planet that was opposed to creating new life. And
then Lucifer is another one that is involved in the
the generation of life here on Earth and also had
a role in creating the dinosaurs. Like all of that,
(35:29):
I mean, it can't help but left because 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 just naturally
(35:52):
assigned more authority to the ancient regime. Now, in discussing
religion and technology in the modern day, we and not
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
(36:12):
throughout its practices. So one of the things that would
be pretty obvious is the E meter. 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,
(36:33):
I've noticed in interviews like televised 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 give with how we usually use
the word technology, Like I was saying, it's usually a machine, right,
(36:54):
A technology is usually a mechanism, and they're talking about
it more as in like how a doctrine can be
a technolog ology, 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
(37:15):
what they're they're offering their followers, right A a 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
(37:36):
of the dionetic spiritual healing technology of study technology. 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
(37:57):
it's like the f D A of the technologies of
science oology. Yeah, you know, in in terms of or
so certainly the 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, the E meter.
(38:18):
It's an electrical device that they use in what is
called auditing. Yeah, I mean, it's very much. I mean
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,
the you need for the sacred right of a communion. Uh.
The use of the E meter uh in auditing is
(38:42):
essentially a sacred right. Okay, So what is auditing and
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, Tomato the motto, And this is a device
(39:02):
for displaying and or recording the electrodermal activity or 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. So again,
the E meter is not a technology that exists solely
within the world of scientology. It's one of the components
(39:24):
of a polygraph, right, But science scientiotists have been using
it 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
(39:46):
a member of the faith and they are hooking them
up to the E meter to record these uh these
reactions in the dermist basically their emotional reaction to stimuli, words, phrases, etcetera.
And the Church of Scientology it's self describes auditing uh
as this. They say the goal of auditing is to
restore being, this and ability, and this is accomplished by
(40:07):
one helping individuals rid themselves of any spiritual disabilities and
to increasing 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
(40:30):
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 with you to to audit you, to to
to to discuss and figure out your sort of emotional
your psychic state, right, and to do that, you know,
they'll throw out 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
(40:52):
we we have a wonderful example of a a modern
religion that is using modern technology, that has adapted modern
technology for its sacred rights and observances. Yeah. 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
(41:13):
the e meater here. Yeah, and also I think the
general attitude towards the idea 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
(41:36):
out of the sacred sphere 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,
(41:56):
it always comes back to the singularity, right, Well, I
mean this is a popular 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
purpose of the new motor. It's somewhat vague, but but
(42:18):
it's a general point in human evolution where we sort
of achieve a level of 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
(42:43):
technology and you get this 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 the human race, and they have technology,
but rather the two or one or perhaps even the
(43:05):
biological aspect of the species is secondary to the technological presence. Right.
So one of the big names and singularity thinking would
be Ray Kers. 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
(43:26):
notions in a book called The Age of Spiritual Machines
and then also in a book called The Singularity Is
Near and I Think curse. 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, Why do you bok
(43:49):
that that that's your argument, But there are some critics
and 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
(44:09):
name in sort of technology circles. He's known as sort
of like the guy behind virtual reality, and he's often
described as sort of a genius polymath 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
(44:29):
thinking point out that there are uncomfortably religious seeming aspects
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
(44:50):
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
Christianity or someth thing where people are sort of uplifted
to a higher state of existence reborn into like a newer,
better flesh kind of a situation. Yeah. And also you
could think about it as in some ways treating technology
(45:13):
truly like a god. That it is on one hand,
something that we're creating, but on the other hand, it
is 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
(45:34):
people who are worried about the the advances in artificial
intelligence and what they'll mean for human life. But yeah,
I 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,
(45:57):
because it's hard. It's it's ultimately about human technology, uh,
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
(46:18):
our myths and religions that they tend to you know,
sometimes they're rather benevolent, but a lot of times they're
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
(46:39):
opposed to having sex with us in the form of
various animals. So yeah, we have to think about that. Well,
we really have to hope that our that our robot
overlords do not take the Greek myths if their inspiration,
and 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
(47:00):
we end up looking at a benevolent vision of this
or a more diabolical and I tend to I tend
to follow the 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,
(47:22):
I've on my other podcast a lot of Hymdenhut about
you know what, what I really think about the idea
of transcendental artificial 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
(47:46):
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 which someone comments that, you know, for ages,
we believed in making packs with devils and d hmans,
and it was impossible until we made it possible through
technology in the creation of AIS that you can enter
(48:06):
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 you know, it's at
least when we think of them in terms of religion,
that technology begins to make possible things that were previously
purely supernatural and from a scientific perspective non existent, such
as the afterlife. If we've talked about you know the
(48:28):
possibilities of digitizing human consciousness and the human experience, and
placing that digital consciousness within a virtual world. 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
(48:49):
mean definitely people like rakerswill have envisioned a digital immortality
or some form of technologically enabled immortality. And if you
actually could achieve that, I'm skept tickle 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
(49:12):
to say, you create a computer that claims to be
a copy of somebody and then that person's body dies
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 sort of black mirror area
of trying to di forigret how you're supposed to treat
this thing. Um, you know is if it's if it's
(49:35):
not just completely happy all the time, then are you
I mean, what kind of monstrous thing have 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 sort of the immortal wanderer from
(49:57):
Various Deaths, right where you just sort of roaming across
the digital countryside, hoping that one day the divine forces,
the ai s or whatever 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 the uh, like we have to
(50:19):
invent the devil before we could sell our soul to him. Yeah,
and uh, you know, the virtual afterlife ideas come up
in a number of short stories. I've read that the
first example was supposedly American sci fi writer Frederick Pole
in a short story title The Tunnel under the World
from fifty 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
(50:41):
Banks I mentioned earlier his novel Surface Detail, which deals
in large part with a virtual war over the existence
of virtual hells. So there are various planets, various species
and people's that can that to have faiths that maintain
virtual hells for believers that we're edge to be morally failing,
(51:01):
and so they're you know, digital realms of torment and horror.
And you have lived plenty of living individuals and some
digital individuals who say that is completely awful. You should
not have that. In the same way that you have
plenty 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 l we should lay
waste to that as well. And so in this book
(51:23):
by Banks, this virtual war over their existence of in
which spills out into an actual real war in the universe,
and 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 H. N. M. Banks.
Good great stuff, great science fiction that's you know, concerned
(51:45):
with where technology is taking us. But also you know,
some of the the philosophical existential problems of the current times.
All right, 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
(52:08):
a wild ride. Thank you for having me on for this,
Robert Hey, Hey, thank you, thank you for joining me. Hey.
In the meantime, 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 podcast episodes. You'll find videos who find
blog post links out to social media accounts like our
Facebook and our Twitter and our tumbler and hey. On
the landing pages for these two episodes, you'll find links
(52:30):
out to some of the materials we've discussed here, such
as that book The 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 use technology and your religious practices,
or how you've seen people use it in there's right
to us that blow the mind. At how Stuff Works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
(52:56):
Is it how stuff works? Dot com? Did you could
beat you? Pier
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert lamp 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
(00:25):
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 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
(00:45):
the chief intellectual architect of this event was a guy
named John Murray Spear. We now continue the story. So
who was John Murray Spear. He's in some ways a
much forgotten an overlooked figure from the sort of radical
reform movement of the early eighteen hundreds. So John R.
(01:07):
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 a Christian church that was popular in some parts
of New England back then, and the Universalist Church rejected
(01:28):
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,
And they also were very often associated with political radical
reform causes. They were tied up in abolitionist movements. Yeah. Yeah,
(01:51):
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
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
(02:12):
and sort of thinking deep thoughts. In his early life
he was apprentice 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
The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear by John Benedict Baucher,
back then shoemakers were particularly radical and bookish group. Have
(02:33):
you ever heard this? No? I never, so the ideas
shoemakers would have young apprentices, and the the youngest apprentices
would go out each day and collect a whole bunch
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
(02:55):
shoemaker And of course the shoemakers would listen to the
stuff and they'd comment on it, sort of have debates.
I think maybe this is just completely uninformed. I wonder
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, Yeah,
(03:16):
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 tasks that that are not too loud
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
(03:38):
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
jose A. Blue, 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 round
(04:00):
and ministered in several different UH congregations and did a
lot of radical reform activism, what we would call activism now.
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.
(04:23):
Especially John Mary Spire was very much an abolitionist. He
he campaigned against slavery constantly, and he was also, i
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,
(04:45):
but prejudice against people of different skin tones. And so
there's a lot to admire about this guy. I 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 and an abolitionist convention,
and he made this horrible pun, but it sort of
(05:07):
reflects his role. He says, although weapons of our warfare
are not carnal but spiritual, we do not object at
all to the use of the spear. Now, this apparently
is 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
(05:31):
true nature of whatever it touches. It's you know, the
it's the glasses from they live. Um. So the Euriel
can touch the spirit to Satan when Satan's in the
form of a toad and reveal Satan's true nature as
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
(05:52):
the hypocrisy and oppression of the standard 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
(06:15):
towards the spirit world. He became involved with what was
known at the time as the spiritualist movement. So this
for I think the first real piece of evidence here
that was in this book I read. It was in
August eighteen, John Murray spear penned a review in an
anti death penalty newspaper that he was co editor of
(06:36):
called The Prisoner's Friend, and he penned a review of
a book about spiritualism, which was The Principles of Nature,
Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind by Andrew
Jackson Davis. And this was sort of work in the
emerging field of spiritualism, and Davis claimed to be in
contact with the spirit of Emmanuel sweden Borg, like channeling
(06:57):
his statements from beyond the grave, and the book alleged
that there were these 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
(07:20):
you might have traditional religions that are based on received traditions,
whereas spiritualism, people sitting around channeling spirits was actually an
empirically observed phenomenon. 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,
(07:42):
I mean you you look back to the spiritualist movement.
I mean, even in some of 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's 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
(08:06):
cling onto about true 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 basically pledging allegiance to
the guidance of the Bible and the person of Jesus,
(08:28):
because he's he 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
(08:51):
as a spirit medium, 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 and sometimes automatic drawing. Some of these drawings sound
(09:12):
pretty funny, where he'd like draw a human and then
like draw a spirit guided labels for all their body parts. Uh.
Sometimes through speech, so sometimes he might just get up
and give an extemporaneous speech on a 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, like I mean, there's a
(09:35):
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 spirit is essentially opening himself
up in along these lines as just anytime you want
(09:56):
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 as I love that name. Uh.
They sort of became a spirit medium team. For a while,
they were both channeling messages of spirits, and for a
(10:17):
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.
(10:38):
And then also, yeah, 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 Murray Spear was
in Cleveland channeling the spirit of the dead physician and
founding father Benjamin Rush. And this is a direct quote
(11:01):
from his speech in speaking of the mortal body, it
will be all things considered. Wisest 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 here it will be perceived that there
(11:23):
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. Genrey spirit didn't just get these
discourses on the nature of humanity. He eventually started getting
messages from a congress of spirits, this great sort of
(11:44):
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're also the Association
of Electrizers, Elementizers, education Izers, governmentizers, healthfulizers, and agriculturalizers. It
(12:09):
makes it makes sense, you know, in terms of the
cosmology of the thing, right, because if if a 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. Right.
I mean, if you have enough of these individuals floating
around in the spirit realm, they're going to form committees
(12:29):
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 plans that needed
(12:49):
to be enacted on Earth, and those plans were for
what they called a new motor. Yes, 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 al Right, at this point, I should probably
jump in and just give just a brief overview of
(13:10):
some of the metaphysics that are at play in spears spiritualism,
and already touched on THEO. 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
said that the mind has three functions, the human mind
(13:33):
three functions. It receives, stores, and transmits spiritual energy. H
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 a lens to direct this divine signal down to Earth,
(13:54):
where it collects, of course in north polar reservoirs, and
then it dissipates astound 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
that has channeled through the lens of the Sun. Yes,
and notice all of these technological scientific metaphors that are
(14:17):
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
to this electrical messiah, I dare say you would be
disappointed because it is not the large robot Jesus that
(14:40):
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,
and worked for months on this from the summer of
eighteen fifty three and into eighteen fifty four, constantly making
(15:01):
additions to the machine, changing things based on the spirit 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
extending out to the sides and then these dangling balls
and antennae of various types. So it's sort of like
(15:24):
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
the place in terms of what 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
(15:44):
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
the universe or you know, God's love that radio radiates
out from the cosmic center. It's a north pole aligned
(16:06):
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 for his committees that are speaking.
So when he drops back into just good old John Boy,
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, that
(16:27):
sounds 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 the compound matters further. It wasn't
simply going to be a sort of like a repeater
or receiver, collector and retransmitter of God's electrical psychic energy.
(16:48):
It was also going to be a perpetual motion machine,
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 thing is perpetual motion machine. Motion always sort
of gets lost to entropy transformed into heat. But they
wanted to create a perpetual motion machine or quote a
(17:09):
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 wanted this piece of technology,
this new motor, to be not just an effect but
also a cause in itself, and in that way it
(17:32):
would be kind of like creating a new man or
a new God. Yes, but also in gets 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,
But then they also you do expect the thing to
do something into work, right, so that they clearly thought
(17:54):
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,
or anything negative. They thought of it as like the
new Age, you know, the new heavens and the new Earth.
(18:16):
Everything changed, transformed, the apotheosis, things brought up out of
munday and 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 angel expere that
reveals truth. But the truth that it would supposedly reveal
would be the the importance the power of spiritualism and
(18:36):
the and the reality of this uh, this these metaphysics
that John has been uh revealing to his 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 experiments to get this thing to work.
Unfortunately it did not usher in this eschatological event um,
(19:00):
but that they tried to imbue it with personal magnetism
to get it to turn on, so that they had
this belief sort of tried to mesmerism and things that
people had these sort of spirit essences. Then they'd have
certain pairs of people of particular types try to transmit
their personal or psychic energy to the machine to get
it to animate and come to life. They gave it
(19:21):
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 received sort of as an embarrassment. And
(19:43):
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, I mean I can define definitely
see it because ultimately the thing did not work. The
(20:05):
thing did not It didn't need any of the more
elaborate other worldly expectations for the thing, and it didn't.
It didn't even really meet like the bare threshold required
to impress the people who poured their lives into it. Sure,
But another thing that I think is worth mentioning is
that this kind of thinking isn't quite as obscure as
(20:27):
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. That's true, Um, yeah,
back in the nineteenth century, Uh, electricity had a noble
you haven't if not a divine reputation to the extent
(20:48):
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 are possible.
So there was sort of like a new a G
paradigm laid on top of the idea of electrical technology. Yes,
(21:08):
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, we're back. We're discussing religion now
(21:31):
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 make this point, but
(21:53):
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 two 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 aliens, that's you know, standard
(22:15):
natural phenomenon and supernatural entities. But they didn't necessarily make
that distinction that aliens to them would be oh 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 supernatural entity that is described and
(22:38):
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 paralysis or some other encounter. You know,
(22:58):
what was once 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 the unexplained, and that essentially the supernatural perfectly. Yeah,
(23:20):
aliens have become the new otherworldly organism, and this has
translated into actual religious movements. The main one I want
to talk about is Railianism. Yes, so had you heard
anything much about Relianism before this? I had never done
a deep dive into Alianism. But of course you the
the end up. They end up coming up anytime you
(23:41):
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're fond of like, uh,
demonstrations that involve nudity, but also like inflatable flying saucers
and stuff like that sometimes. But okay, so what are
they so. Ralianism or Rayalism or the International Raylian Movement
(24:04):
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 Royal born Claude Vorilon,
and Vorlon introduces his own life in his 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
(24:27):
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 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
(24:50):
notion that life was engineered not by supernatural god or gods,
but by a race of extraterrestrial scientists right there called
the Elohim. So, well, 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
(25:13):
it can be used to refer to groups of lesser
supernatural entities like angels or pagan gods. Those are all eloheim,
but it can also be translated to refer to the
singular God 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.
(25:36):
The root of Eloheim seems to be l which is
an older Canaanite word, and that was l was the
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,
(25:57):
Ryle tells the story in in his own book. So
he says, in nineteen three, he was out motoring, 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
(26:17):
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 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 heights, so,
(26:39):
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 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 liked, there's facial
(27:00):
hair with these aliens, so so often 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, this
being proceeded to have a conversation with Brilon, informing him
that he had visited Earth many times before and that
he had chosen Vrillon specifically to speak to on that day,
and it told him that the alien told him to
(27:22):
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 the real meanings of stories in the Bible.
And then, of course Vrillon later under the name Ral
published books on the subject and founded the Riley and
(27:42):
or Rileyan movement. So the main basic ideas that life
on Earth was created by a group of extraterrestrial scientists
and then a laboratory, yes, and that we were created
in the image of those scientists, and so their beliefs
in general, have a lot in common at the various
like ancient astronauts theories. If you ever watched any of
(28:03):
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 can easily reread, reinterpret any of them as
humans dealing with extraterrestrials. And it's it's often a really
you know, fun imaginative exercise because it turns everything in
(28:25):
its head, it puts things in a modern perspective, and
then and you know, you know, ultimately we're talking about
the exact same scenario. So that kind of reinterpretation you
to see throughout ancient astronaut thinking, right. So yeah, Ryal
explains 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
(28:49):
or misinterpretations of ancient interactions with these extraterrestrial creatures. The
Eloheam and their technology. I'm going to pick my favorite
example to 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 things to me.
And so he says, telepathy is a means of communication
(29:11):
between the creators and human beings, was only possible when
the Eloheim were in proximity to the Earth. When they
were on their distant planet or elsewhere, they could not
communicate 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,
(29:33):
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.
They also suffered radiation burns from the dangerous radioactive materials.
And he quotes First Samuel five six and smote them
with im rods. That worried emmerrods, I think is generally
(29:53):
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 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 uh, from
(30:15):
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
have like essentially you know, crazy powerful god weapons that
they utilize, and some uh, some people like to look
(30:36):
back at those and say, oh, well, these were atomic weapons,
these were laser weapons, these were flying machines. And of
course the Alians don't just have technological explanations for the past.
They also are a thoroughly technological religion in terms of
their ethic for the future, like what they say should
be happening in society. Just one example is that the
Alians tend to be very in favor of human cloning.
(30:59):
That's not something that's true of most religions. As far
as yeah, they altered the embrace and advocate human cloning
as a as a necessary technology for the advancement of
the species. Yeah. And in fact, in two thousand two,
the Ralians claimed to have cloned a human being. Yeah.
This is probably where a lot of people have heard
of the Raliance before. From this claim, there was a
media storm. More precisely, not so much that the Ralians
(31:23):
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
a a Raelian bishop and she claimed that her company,
an organization called Clone Aid not to be confused with
clonus uh and not to be confused with Clone Aid.
The Clone Benefit Concert, which was a company originally founded
(31:48):
in an earlier incarnation by Royal himself, had successfully cloned
an American woman and produced a healthy baby clone named Eve.
And media reports at the time were really optical, 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,
(32:09):
but they maintained that they had successfully been the first
to to clone a healthy human baby, and whatever you
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
(32:31):
they claim that their scientists are close to being able
to transfer someone's mind into a new body, essentially the
kind of re sleeving 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
(32:52):
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, or
thinking 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
(33:12):
something inside a computer, but how do you become that computer?
How do you transfer your experience to that machine? Yeah,
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
(33:33):
scenario where we can't really perceive what's going on. Yeah,
it seems to me the much easier thing would be
it's like you make a copy of yourself and then
you die, and then there's a copy of you. Yea,
which is terrifying, 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. Sure, Yeah,
(33:58):
I say, with the reorganism, you do get this overall
sense of science and futurism as articles 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 angels coming down from above, bodily resurrection,
(34:20):
physical immortality, and also lots of weird sexuality as well. Well,
I feel like that's that ties into that that's sort
of like abhorrence of the new thing that I was
talking about there. 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 a somehow vaguely blasphemous or crass or or it
(34:46):
just doesn't feel right. And I 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 as just
that it's new. Yeah, you see that all. I mean,
even if we were talking about it, we're kind of
having fun with the concept. But with some of the
(35:08):
concepts they were, you know, they bring up such as,
I mean, I love the idea that I think Satan
was Aralian, not araliance. Satan was Elohim from the Elohim
home planet that was opposed to creating new life. And
then Lucifer is another one that is involved in the
the generation of life here on Earth and also had
a role in creating the dinosaurs. Like all of that,
(35:29):
I mean, it can't help but left because 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 just naturally
(35:52):
assigned more authority to the ancient regime. Now, in discussing
religion and technology in the modern day, we and not
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
(36:12):
throughout its practices. So one of the things that would
be pretty obvious is the E meter. 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,
(36:33):
I've noticed in interviews like televised 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 give with how we usually use
the word technology, Like I was saying, it's usually a machine, right,
(36:54):
A technology is usually a mechanism, and they're talking about
it more as in like how a doctrine can be
a technolog ology, 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
(37:15):
what they're they're offering their followers, right A a 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
(37:36):
of the dionetic spiritual healing technology of study technology. 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
(37:57):
it's like the f D A of the technologies of
science oology. Yeah, you know, in in terms of or
so certainly the 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, the E meter.
(38:18):
It's an electrical device that they use in what is
called auditing. Yeah, I mean, it's very much. I mean
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,
the you need for the sacred right of a communion. Uh.
The use of the E meter uh in auditing is
(38:42):
essentially a sacred right. Okay, So what is auditing and
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, Tomato the motto, And this is a device
(39:02):
for displaying and or recording the electrodermal activity or 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. So again,
the E meter is not a technology that exists solely
within the world of scientology. It's one of the components
(39:24):
of a polygraph, right, But science scientiotists have been using
it 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
(39:46):
a member of the faith and they are hooking them
up to the E meter to record these uh these
reactions in the dermist basically their emotional reaction to stimuli, words, phrases, etcetera.
And the Church of Scientology it's self describes auditing uh
as this. They say the goal of auditing is to
restore being, this and ability, and this is accomplished by
(40:07):
one helping individuals rid themselves of any spiritual disabilities and
to increasing 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
(40:30):
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 with you to to audit you, to to
to to discuss and figure out your sort of emotional
your psychic state, right, and to do that, you know,
they'll throw out 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
(40:52):
we we have a wonderful example of a a modern
religion that is using modern technology, that has adapted modern
technology for its sacred rights and observances. Yeah. 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
(41:13):
the e meater here. Yeah, and also I think the
general attitude towards the idea 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
(41:36):
out of the sacred sphere 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,
(41:56):
it always comes back to the singularity, right, Well, I
mean this is a popular 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
purpose of the new motor. It's somewhat vague, but but
(42:18):
it's a general point in human evolution where we sort
of achieve a level of 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
(42:43):
technology and you get this 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 the human race, and they have technology,
but rather the two or one or perhaps even the
(43:05):
biological aspect of the species is secondary to the technological presence. Right.
So one of the big names and singularity thinking would
be Ray Kers. 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
(43:26):
notions in a book called The Age of Spiritual Machines
and then also in a book called The Singularity Is
Near and I Think curse. 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, Why do you bok
(43:49):
that that that's your argument, But there are some critics
and 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
(44:09):
name in sort of technology circles. He's known as sort
of like the guy behind virtual reality, and he's often
described as sort of a genius polymath 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
(44:29):
thinking point out that there are uncomfortably religious seeming aspects
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
(44:50):
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
Christianity or someth thing where people are sort of uplifted
to a higher state of existence reborn into like a newer,
better flesh kind of a situation. Yeah. And also you
could think about it as in some ways treating technology
(45:13):
truly like a god. That it is on one hand,
something that we're creating, but on the other hand, it
is 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
(45:34):
people who are worried about the the advances in artificial
intelligence and what they'll mean for human life. But yeah,
I 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,
(45:57):
because it's hard. It's it's ultimately about human technology, uh,
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
(46:18):
our myths and religions that they tend to you know,
sometimes they're rather benevolent, but a lot of times they're
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
(46:39):
opposed to having sex with us in the form of
various animals. So yeah, we have to think about that. Well,
we really have to hope that our that our robot
overlords do not take the Greek myths if their inspiration,
and 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
(47:00):
we end up looking at a benevolent vision of this
or a more diabolical and I tend to I tend
to follow the 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,
(47:22):
I've on my other podcast a lot of Hymdenhut about
you know what, what I really think about the idea
of transcendental artificial 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
(47:46):
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 which someone comments that, you know, for ages,
we believed in making packs with devils and d hmans,
and it was impossible until we made it possible through
technology in the creation of AIS that you can enter
(48:06):
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 you know, it's at
least when we think of them in terms of religion,
that technology begins to make possible things that were previously
purely supernatural and from a scientific perspective non existent, such
as the afterlife. If we've talked about you know the
(48:28):
possibilities of digitizing human consciousness and the human experience, and
placing that digital consciousness within a virtual world. 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
(48:49):
mean definitely people like rakerswill have envisioned a digital immortality
or some form of technologically enabled immortality. And if you
actually could achieve that, I'm skept tickle 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
(49:12):
to say, you create a computer that claims to be
a copy of somebody and then that person's body dies
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 sort of black mirror area
of trying to di forigret how you're supposed to treat
this thing. Um, you know is if it's if it's
(49:35):
not just completely happy all the time, then are you
I mean, what kind of monstrous thing have 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 sort of the immortal wanderer from
(49:57):
Various Deaths, right where you just sort of roaming across
the digital countryside, hoping that one day the divine forces,
the ai s or whatever 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 the uh, like we have to
(50:19):
invent the devil before we could sell our soul to him. Yeah,
and uh, you know, the virtual afterlife ideas come up
in a number of short stories. I've read that the
first example was supposedly American sci fi writer Frederick Pole
in a short story title The Tunnel under the World
from fifty 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
(50:41):
Banks I mentioned earlier his novel Surface Detail, which deals
in large part with a virtual war over the existence
of virtual hells. So there are various planets, various species
and people's that can that to have faiths that maintain
virtual hells for believers that we're edge to be morally failing,
(51:01):
and so they're you know, digital realms of torment and horror.
And you have lived plenty of living individuals and some
digital individuals who say that is completely awful. You should
not have that. In the same way that you have
plenty 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 l we should lay
waste to that as well. And so in this book
(51:23):
by Banks, this virtual war over their existence of in
which spills out into an actual real war in the universe,
and 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 H. N. M. Banks.
Good great stuff, great science fiction that's you know, concerned
(51:45):
with where technology is taking us. But also you know,
some of the the philosophical existential problems of the current times.
All right, 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
(52:08):
a wild ride. Thank you for having me on for this,
Robert Hey, Hey, thank you, thank you for joining me. Hey.
In the meantime, 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 podcast episodes. You'll find videos who find
blog post links out to social media accounts like our
Facebook and our Twitter and our tumbler and hey. On
the landing pages for these two episodes, you'll find links
(52:30):
out to some of the materials we've discussed here, such
as that book The 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 use technology and your religious practices,
or how you've seen people use it in there's right
to us that blow the mind. At how Stuff Works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
(52:56):
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