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