From the Vault: Techno-Religion, Part 2

Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is part two in our two part exploration of techno Religion of the convergence of religion and technology. So before you listen to this episode, you should definitely go back and check

out our part one episode of Techno Religion. And at the beginning of the last episode, I told the story about a strange incident taking place at High Rock Tower in Lynn, Massachusetts in the eighteen fifties, where people were trying to build an electro mechanical messiah, and the chief intellectual architect of this event was a guy named John Murray Spear. We now continue the story. So who was

John Murray Spear. He's in some ways a much forgotten and overlooked figure from the sort of radical reform movement of the early eighteen hundreds. So John m Rey Spear was born in Boston in eighteen o four. His father was a blacksmith. He had a brother named Charles who was a year older than him, and he and his family were members of the Universalist Church. And this was a Christian church that was popular in some parts of New England back then. And the Universalist Church rejected the

doctrine of hell. That's one of the most notable things about them. They rejected the doctrine of hell and eternal damn nation, and they preached that the salvation of Christ was applied to all people unconditionally. I like that. Yeah. And they also were very often associated with political radical reform causes. They were tied up in abolitionist movements. Yeah. Yeah. So there was a somewhat utopian strain of thinking about earthly life, not just the afterlife, in the Universalist circles

back then. So John Murray Spear and his brother Charles grew up in the church of Reverend John Murray, for whom John Murray Spear was named. And young John they said, you know, he was fond of going to solitary places and sort of thinking deep thoughts. In his early life he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, which I had no idea about this, But according to the book which is my main source on John Murray Spear, which is called The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear by John Benedict Baucher,

back then shoemakers were particularly radical and bookish group. Have you ever heard this, No, I never have. So the ideas shoemakers would have young apprentices, and the youngest apprentices would go out each day and collect a whole bunch of pamphlets and newspapers for the day, and then would sit there reading them out loud to all the shoemakers and older apprentice shoemakers while they did their work for

the day. And I wonder why this is shoemakers, why shoemaker And of course the shoemakers would listen to the stuff and they'd comment on it. And sort of have debates. I think maybe this is just completely uninformed. I wonder if it's because shoemakers have a job where they're mostly stationary,

but it's not too loud. That's true, But that's a good point because essentially they're listening to podcasts right, right, And today a lot of people listen to podcasts like if you're you know, you're working on a spreadsheet, or you're doing something at your computer, or you're driving. Right, These are all tacit that that are not too loud, and they don't require a level of concentration that is so intense that you can't hear a couple of people

talk about some topic or another. Right. So, John Murray Spear, the young John Murray Spear, got some early practice sort of dealing with radical ideas and participating in public conversations this way through being a shoemaker, and through the influence of the Universalist Church, especially eventually through the Universalist luminary jose Ah Balu, who's a big name in Universalist thinking at this time, and eventually John Murray Spear went on

to become a Universalist minister himself, and he traveled around and ministered in several different UH congregations and did a lot of radical reform activism, what we would call activism now. So he became deeply involved in the movement to abolish the death penalty UH. He and his brother Charles were both very much involved with that. He became very much involved in women's rights and in the abolition of slavery,

especially John Mary Spear was very much an abolitionist. He he campaigned against slavery constantly, and he was also, I would say in a way that was sort of ahead of his time, campaigning against what we today know as racism, though I think back then a lot of white people didn't even have a word for that or know what to call it. But he was against prejudice, not just slavery, but prejudice against people of of different skin tones. And so there's a lot to admire about this guy. I

think he was. He was active in William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist movements. Actually, there's a great quote from this book where William Lloyd Garrison was introducing Spear as a speaker at an abolitionist convention and he made this horrible pun but it sort of reflects his role. He says although weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual. We do not object at all to the use of the spear. Now, this apparently that he's this like a Miltonian reference here

as well. Right, Yeah, this is a reference to the angel Etheriel in in Paradise Lost, which has a spear that essentially exposes the true nature of whatever it touches. It's you know, the it's the glasses from they live, okay, um, So the Ituriel can touch the spirit to Satan when Satan's in the form of a toad and reveal Satan's

true nature at Satan. And this was a common metaphor in the abolitionist movement at the time, and I think more generally the radical reform movements of the time, to sort of expose the hypocrisy and oppression of the standard governments and institutions of the time. So to summarize this is a this is a guy who is very concerned with the real world, oh totally. But then John Murray spirit took a turn. And while still i'd say in a lot of ways being concerned with the real world,

he took a turn towards the spirit world. He became involved with what was known at the time as the spiritualist movement. So this for I think the first real all piece of evidence here that was in this book I read. It was in August eighteen forty seven, John Murray Spear penned a review in an anti death penalty newspaper that he was co editor of called The Prisoner's Friend, and he penned a review of a book about spiritualism, which was The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and

a Voice to Mankind by Andrew Jackson Davis. And this was sort of a work in the emerging field of spiritualism. And Davis claimed to be in contact with the spirit of Emmanuel Swedenborg and like channeling his statements from beyond the grave. And the book alleged that there were these various universal laws at play, and it sort of looked

at religion from a rationalist angle. Actually, this is a thing that might seem weird to us today, but at the time spiritualism represented what some people believe to be a more scientific approach to the supernatural. So you might have traditional religions that are based on received tradition, whereas spiritualism people sitting around channeling spirits was actually an empirically

observed phenomenon. Yeah, you might not believe that they were having real supernatural experiences, but the scientific thinking of the time was, well, at least we're we're looking at real phenomena here and we can make judgments on them. Yeah, I mean you you look back to the spiritualist movement. I mean even in some of the the fringier stuff with seance an ectoplasm, right, even if it even though ectoplasm was a was a con it was an attempt to say, look, here is physical proof, some sort of

biological manifestation of the spirit. Right. So a lot of these people who were into spiritualism were people who were deeply desperately yearning for something to cling onto about true messages from beyond, real transcendental knowledge. So some Universalist ministries

at the time were opposed to spiritualism. But in eighteen fifty one, John Murray Spear broke ties with the Universalist Church after refusing to affirm a simple creed of the Church which is basedly pledging allegiance to the guidance of the Bible and the person of Jesus, because he's he saw that as too constrictive on on sort of freedom of thought by that point, and it seems like in some way he began to at least secretly train himself as a seer and practitioner of mesmeric trances, you know,

like the mesmerism. So on March thirty one, eighteen fifty two, John Murray Spear actually began his career as a spirit medium, and this was a career with somewhat mixed reception among his social circles. He'd get messages from spirits from beyond the grave, sometimes through automatic writing, where he would sit there and just start writing whatever came to his mind and believing it came from a spirit. Sometimes automatic drawing.

Some of these drawings sound pretty funny, where he'd like draw a human and then like draws spirit guided labels for all their body parts. Uh. Sometimes through speech, so sometimes he might just get up and give an extemporaneous beach on the subject he didn't know anything about, believing he was channeling messages from someone who did know something

about it, who was in the spirit world. So in spiritualism, like I mean, there's a sense of evolution to this as well, because it's the idea that we die our spirit passes on and as spirits we continue to evolve, and the spirit world is filled with the individuals that have have a lot of of of knowledge, a lot of wisdom to share with the living. And John Murray Spear is essentially opening himself up along these lines as just anytime you want to pop in and I am open,

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

kinds of messages. Sometimes like vague messages would tell him to travel to a specific place and meet people to do healing rituals on them. One example was I think at some point Benjamin Franklin contacted him via spirits and told him to go visit a lady who had been struck by lightning and was ailing. And then also, yeah, he'd be given these discourses on the nature of reality, so Benjamin Franklin would inhabit him and speak through him

on the nature of electricity, magnetism, the cosmic ether. There was also there was a particularly funny story in this book where John Mary Spear was in Cleveland channeling the spirit of the dead physician and founding father Benjamin Rush. And this is a direct quote from his speech in speaking of the mortal body, it will be all things considered.

Why is this to commence that what looking at all things may be considered the most or more strictly speaking, the more important part, and that is the head in the front part, just below the eyes there is what is generally called by the common people a knows And here it will be perceived that there are two apartments. What what does that even mean? Um? But it didn't stop there, unfortunately he uh so, or maybe fortunately who knows? John Mary spirit didn't just get these discourses on the

nature of humanity. He eventually started getting messages from a congress of spirits, this great sort of enclay of of spirits that formed a general assembly in the spirit world. Uh And these had sub committees basically that would communicate to him, and they had these great names. One was the Association of Beneficence. They were also the Associations of Electrizers, Elementizers,

education Izers, Governmentizers, Healthfulizers, and Agriculturalizers. It makes it makes sense, you know, in terms of the cosmology of the thing, right, because if if the living human is just the larval form, and the spirit form is kind of the adult, then imagine what kind of an adult spirit form someone like Benjamin Franklin transforms into. I mean, if you have enough of these individuals floating around in the spirit realm, they're

going to form committees exactly right. So this is where things got really interesting because the Association of Electrizers, that's not as sinister as it sounds. I think they were providing knowledge on the electrification of the world through through technology. Contacted Spear and said through Spear that they had some plans that needed to be enacted on Earth, and those plans were for what they called a new motor, the new motor, which is the physical channel of the new

motive power, and this is the electro mechanical Messiah. We began the episode with, all right, at this point, I should probably jump in and just give just a brief overview of some of the metaphysics that are play in Spears. Spiritualism already touched on the we already touched on the whole idea of the the human. The physical human is being the larval form of a of a spirit form that continues to evolve. Right, But Spears metaphysics actually played

into the supposed mechanics of this machine. Yes um, he said that the mind has three functions, the human mind three functions. It receives, stores, and transmits spiritual energy. And this thought energy is not generated in the mind, so that it's it's not coming out of the meat inside your head, but rather it's broadcast into our solar system by a cosmic God. And then the Sun acts as a lens to direct this divine signal down to Earth, where it collects, of course in north polar reservoirs, and

then it dissipates down to the human minds across the Earth. Right, So we're sort of like receivers or repeaters of this cosmic signal coming from God, the electricity of God's love that is channeled through the lens of the Sun. And notice all of these technological scientific metaphors that are used in the creation of of of of of a cosmology for the unseen. Right, So what was this machine actually, Well, in mundane terms, it was a table with a bunch

of pieces attached to it. Yes, if you were introduced to this electrical Messiah, I dare say you would be disappointed because it is not the large robot Jesus that

you wanted to be. Right, So Spear would continually get new messages from the Spirits, constantly updating the plans for the machine, and all of his supporters gathered in this place I mentioned earlier, the High Rock Tower in Lynn, Massachusetts, and worked for months on this from the summer of eighteen fifty three and into eighteen fifty four, constantly making

additions to the machine, changing things based on the spirits specifications. Basically, there was like a metal stalk uh in some ways. I think it was said to have resembled across a cruciform in nature, but it also it had metal parts extending out to the sides, and then these dangling balls and antennae of various types. So it's sort of like a strange metal Christmas tree cross type object on a dining room table. Yes, and the descriptions that we were

reading about it. They were kind of like all over the place in terms of the was it supposed to do? Like is it? What is it? What is it physically supposed to do? What is it sort of metaphorically supposed to do? Because it it was described as a sacramental presence, a holy force field generator, a gay way to the spirit realm uh So, it's kind of like this mechanical symbolic body that's going to channel the free energy of the universe or you know, God's love that radio radiates

out from the cosmic center. It's a north pole aligned aerial antenna to receive electrical spirit energy. It's um and then on top of all this again he's he's open mic night for the spirits and these committees that are speaking. So when he drops back into just good old John Boy, he'll he's kind of ambivalent about it at times. He's kind of like, Oh, I don't know anything about technology.

Is that what those guys are telling you? Okay, so that sounds all right, But he had some very enthusiastic supporters who were there to tell him, no, John, it's great, we're working on it. But to compound matters. Further, it wasn't simply going to be a sort of like a repeater or receiver, collector and retransmitter of God's electrical psychic energy. It was also going to be a perpetual motion machine. Yes, something that uh, apparently the science at the time believed

could not exist. That's still pretty much considered to be, right, there's no such thing as perpetual motion machine. Motion always sort of gets lost to entropy, transformed into heat. But they wanted to create a perpetual motion machine or quote a self moving machine, right, self moving in the same way that that God was perceived as being self moving, and potentially in the same sense that a spirit with free will is considered to be a self moving soul

by some interpretations. Right. So they want this piece of technology, this new motor, to be not just an effect but also a cause in itself, and in that way it would be kind of like creating a new man or

a new God. Yes, but also in it's kind of complicated because it's like, in a sense it's it's also just about the idea of it should inspire everyone, right, right, But then they also you do expect the thing to do something into work right, so that they clearly thought that it would have some major significance in transforming the world,

in ushering in some kind of s schatological event. They thought of it as as a sort of like transition to the end times, though not necessarily the end times in terms of the apocalyptic imagery we often think of, or anything negative. They thought of it as like the new Age, you know, the new heavens and the new Earth. Everything changed, transformed, the apotheosis, things brought up out of

mundane existence into the new realm of life. And kind of a sense too that it it is that spear that we're talking about earlier, that angelic sphere that reveals truth. But the truth that it would supposedly reveal would be the the importance, the power of spiritualism and the and the reality of this uh, this these met metaphysics that John has been revealing to HISS followers. Yeah, now the story doesn't in there. Actually, I very much recommend this book.

I mentioned earlier the remarkable life of John Murray, spear agitator for the Spirit Land. Because they continued to try

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

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

received sort of as an embarrassment. And I think this is one of the reasons John Murray Spear is not as well remembered in history as he might have been, because I think a lot of the other radical reformers of the time, we're like, uh, I don't know how much we want to be associated with Mr Spear, Right, Yeah, I mean I can define definitely see it because ultimately the thing did not work. Yeah, the thing did not It didn't meet any of the more elaborate other worldly

expectations for the thing, and it didn't. It didn't even really need like the bare threshold required to impress the people who poured their lives into it. Sure, But another thing that I think is worth mentioning is that this kind of thinking isn't quite as obscure as it would seem to us, because there were thoughts back in the nineteenth century about the perhaps borderline supernatural or psychic psychically

significant power of electricity. And that's true. Um yeah, back in the nineteenth century, uh it, electricity had a noble, if not a divine reputation, to the extent that members of the scientific community protested the idea of the electric chair as a degradation of both electricity and the scientific breakthroughs that made electrocuting a criminal possible. So there was sort of like a new a G paradigm laid on

top of the idea of electrical technology. On that note, we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we are going to move forward in time and discuss some more um convergences of technology and religion. All Right, we're back. We're discussing religion now and in the age of science, but also in the age of science fiction, in the age of space, and in the age of UFOs. Right, so this has got to be one of the most obvious places that religion could go when it's changed by technology.

Aliens exactly, right, I mean, you've got to believe because in so many ways, I can't remember who I heard make this point, but but it's something I heard someone say a long time ago, which was the idea that if you explained our idea of what aliens are to ancient people's, they wouldn't even really make a distinction between what we're talking about when we say aliens and their concepts of God's We have this distinction between okay, natural

aliens that's you know, standard natural phenomenon and supernatural entities, but they didn't necessarily make that distinction that aliens to them would be Yeah, okay, so they they're very powerful beings from a place up above, and they can travel down to Earth if they want, and you know, we're powerless to oppose them. Yeah. Essentially, an alien is a supernatural entity that is described and wrapped up in in in in the keepings of science, in the traditions of science.

So that it it makes at least UH, it makes some level of scientific sense instead of non scientific. And if you look back through time, like any anytime someone is dealt with hallucinations, anytime someone has dealt with sleep

paralysis or some other encounter. You know, what was once UH an encounter with fairies in the woods, which what was once an assault by demons or or an encounter with ghosts UH increasingly become became in the past few decades an encounter with aliens or UFOs, right, because that's the cultural script that we can fall back on for the unexplained, and that essentially the supernatural perfectly. Yeah, aliens have become the new otherworldly organism them and this has

translated into actual religious movements. The main one I want to talk about is Raylianism. Yes, so had you heard anything much about Ralianism before this? I had never done a deep dive into Raylianism, But of course you the end up. They end up coming up anytime you look in at cloning in particular, and then you know they pop up here and there with their various sort of eye catching protests and whatnot. Yes, they are fond of like UH demonstrations that involve nudity, but also like inflatable

flying saucers and stuff like that sometimes. But okay, so what are they so? Raylianism or Realism or the International Raylian Movement was founded in nineteen seventy three or seventy four. I think I've seen seventy four, but could be seventy three by its chief profit Riyal or rail Rayal born Claude Vorrilon, and Vorlon introduces his own life in his book by saying, ever since I was nine years old, I've had but one passion, motor racing. So, Harry, you've

got your your technological You're in already. But the Raelians believe in a branch of intelligent design, the idea that human life was created. It didn't, you know, evolve from innerent matter, but that it was created in a conscious act of creation. But they believe in the kind of intelligent design that most intelligent design advocates like to skip over, which is the notion that life was engineered not by supernatural god or gods, but by a race of extraterrestrial scientists. Right,

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

singular out of Israel. So one of the names of God used in the Hebrew Bible is Eloheim, and in English translations that's usually the word God with the capital G. The root of Eloheim seems to be l, which is an older Canaanite word, and that was l was the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, but also a generic word just meaning God like a god, which also appears in the Bible as a title for God, though less often.

So how did all this come together? What started this event? Well, Ryle tells the story in in his own book, So he says, in nineteen seventy three, he was out motoring, you know, because he has a passion for motor racing out in France, so to speak, and he stopped at a volcano that was overlooking Claremont Ferrand in central southern France, and he parked his car and got out to sort of like walk and jog around the volcanic crater, and there he saw an aerial vehicle coming toward him, and

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

He says, his eyes were slightly almond shaped, his hair was black and long, and he had a small black beard. I like that there's facial hair with these aliens so so often there they don't get to rock the facial hair exactly. Yeah, they're they're way too smooth. Usually it's

kind of strange. But anyway, that this being proceeded to have a conversation with Rilon, informing him that he had visited Earth many times before and that he had chosen Rillon specifically to speak to on that day, and it told him that the alien told him to come back the next day to bring his Bible and something to take notes with, and so then it instructed him on many truths about the origins of life on Earth and

the real meanings of stories in the Bible. And then of course Vorrillon later under the name ril published books on the subject and founded the Riley and or Rileyan movement. So the main basic idea is that life on Earth was created by a group of extraterrestrial scientists and then a laboratory, yes, and that we were created in the image of those scientists. And so their beliefs in general have a lot in common with the various like ancient astronauts theories. If you ever watched any of those TV

shows where it's like, what happened? How do they build the pyramids? Aliens? Yeah, I mean, basically it comes down to the fact that you can take any ancient text that deals with supernatural entities interacting with humanity, and you can easily reread, reinterpret any of them as humans dealing

with extraterrestrials. And it's it's often a really you know, far unnaginative exercise because it turns everything in its head, it puts things in a modern perspective, and and and you know, you know, ultimately we're talking about the exact same scenario. So that kind of of reinterpretation you just

see throughout ancient astronaut thinking, right. So yeah, Ryal explains in in his book Intelligent Design, Message from the Designers how these beings explained to him that like the narrative traditions of Judaism and Christianity, are all actually misrememberings or misinterpretations of ancient interactions with these extraterrestrial creatures, the Eloheam

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

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

And he quotes First Samuel five six and smote them with em rods. That worried emmerrods, I think is generally interpreted to mean some kind of like hemorrhoid or tumor. Uh And so this is I don't know, I'd say that's a pretty clever interpretation of that. I mean, I I kind of doubt many biblical scholars would give much credence to it. But uh no, I think that's a that's a wonderful uh you know, overlay of science and science fiction over you know, a magical object from from

from a from an older time. I mean, you see this even outside of Christian and Hebraic tradition, with people interpreting some of the like super weapons that the gods give characters in the Hindu epic, the Mahabarata where they have like essentially you know, crazy powerful god weapons that they utilize, and some uh, some people like to look back at those and say, oh, well, these were atomic weapons,

these were laser weapons, these were flying machines. And of course the Aralians don't just have technological explanations for the past. They also are a thoroughly technological religion in terms of their ethic for the future, like what they say should be happening in society. Just one example is that the Ralians tend to be very in favor of human cloning.

That's not something that's true of most religions as far as yeah, they alter, they embrace and and advocate human cloning as a as a necessary technology for the advancement of the species. Yeah. And in fact, in two thousand two, the Ralians claim to have cloned a human being. Yes, yeah, this is probably where a lot of people have her of the Raliance before. From this claim, there was a media storm. More precisely, not so much that the Ralians claimed to have cloned a human being, but they were

involved in the publicity of this event. So a doctor Bridget Boyselier, I hope I'm saying that right, It was a Raelian bishop, and she claimed that her company, an organization called Clone Aid not to be confused with clonas Uh and not to be confused with Clone Aid. The Clone Benefit Concert, which was a company originally founded in an earlier incarnation by Royal himself, had successfully cloned an American woman and produced a healthy baby clone named Eve.

And media reports at the time were really skeptical, and as far as I can tell, no real evidence that this is true has ever surfaced, So a lot of people thought it was just a publicity stunt for the church, but they maintained that they had successfully been the first to to clone a healthy human baby. And whatever you think of that story, the Ralians typically remain very supportive

of human cloning research. Yeah, and they continue to claim to have really advanced cloning technology, if not at their disposal then like within grasp right, like they I read that, they claim that their scientists are close to being able to transfer someone's mind into a new body, essentially the kind of resleaving of human consciousness that one encounters and say, Richard K. Morgan science fiction, So you could live forever because here you've cloned the body and then boop, just

transfer your your mind into the new body and flush the old one. Right. Well, this is always a big problem we've talked about when we've talked about trans humanist ideas on the other podcast, I work on forward thinking

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

How do you transfer your experience to that machine? Yeah, it gets existentially mucky really fast, because you end up just coming against the same old problem that we don't really have a good graph on what human consciousness is. We have this, we run into this whole blind brain

scenario where we can't really perceive what's going on. It seems to me the much easier thing would be it's like you make a copy of yourself and then you die and then there's a copy of you, Yeah, which is terrifying and it's but but also you know, that's it's it's it's it's also yeah, a form of immortality that that lines up with our scientific understanding of how we work. Yeah, I say, with the reorganism, you do get this overall sense of science and futurism as articles

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

of weird sexuality as well. Well, I feel like that's that ties into that that's sort of like abhorrence of the new thing that I was talking about earlier, you know, the fact that that we find the presence of too much technology and our religious rights and in our religious holy places as kind of like somehow vaguely blasphemous or crass or or it just doesn't feel right. And I can totally see this parallel. When you look at the beliefs of the Rillyans, I see a whole lot of

parallels with a lot of ancient religions. And I wonder if one of the only major differences in my attitude towards it is just that it's new. Yeah, you see that all. I mean, even as we were talking about it, we're kind of having fun with the concept. But with some of the concepts they were, you know, they bring up such as, I mean, I love the idea that I think Satan was Arablian, not Arablian. Satan was el him from the home planet. It was opposed to creating

new life. And then Lucifer is another one that is evolved in the the generation of life here on Earth and also had a role in creating the dinosaurs. Like all that, I mean, you can't help but laugh because 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 assigned more authority to the ancient regime. Now, in discussing religion and technology in the modern day, we cannot help but discuss the Church of Scientology a little bit. Right, Well, I mean, this is another religion not just of the current technological age, but it does have technology infused all throughout its practices. Yea. So one of the things that would be pretty obvious is the E meter, and we

can come back to that in a minute. But the first thing that actually made me think of scientology as a technological religion, or at least something that has technology deeply embedded in its ideology is literally the use of the word technology. See, I've noticed in interviews, like televised interviews and things that I've seen with some representatives of the Church of Scientology that they use the word technology when what they're talking about are the beliefs and practices

of Scientology. Um, so that kind of doesn't jive with how we usually use the word technology. Like I was saying, it's usually a machine, right, A technology is usually a mechanism, and they're talking about it more as in like how a doctrine can be a technology, yeah, or even you can think of it in terms, I guess of a blueprint, Right, I have a blueprint for a steam engine. Sure, steam engine is a technology, but also the blueprint is is a technology in itself because it tells you how did

the process by which you create this thing? And that's ultimately what they're they're offering their followers, right a a blueprint to become this better engine totally. Yeah, so I can see it like that. It is in in the dictionary definition since the technology perhaps like it is a at least an application of what they believe to be

scientific knowledge to a practical purpose. Yeah. So you see mention of the dionetic spiritual healing technology of study technology, and they also have their Religious Technology Center which aims to quote protect the public from a misapplication of the technology and to see that the religious technologies of dionetics and scientology remain in proper hands and are properly ministered. So it's like the f d A of the technologies

of Scientology. Yeah, you know, in terms of or certainly the uh the division of Scientology concerned with with maintaining those copyrights and those patents. Sure. Yeah. But then of course there is actually within Scientology in their actual practices a device that you've probably heard of of, the E meter. It's an electrical device that they use in what is

called auditing. Yeah, I mean it's very much. I mean I would be tempted to make a comparison between the role of the E meter with say, the role of a of a chalice in in a Roman Catholic tradition, right that you need for the sacred right of a communion. Uh. The use of the E meter uh in auditing is essentially a sacred right. Okay. So what is auditing and what does the E meter actually do? Yeah, the E meter is a real thing, and its origins uh lay

outside of scientology. Actually, it is an electro psychometer. Come on, Robert, it's a psychometer. Okay, electro psychometer if you will. Uh, you know the meto the motto. And this is a device for displaying and or recording the electrodermal activity or the e d A of a human being. It's actually one of the factors covered in a standard polygraph test as well as in scientific studies regarding human emotions. Again, the E meter is not a technology that exists solely

within the world of scientology. It's one of the components of a polygraph. But science scientologists have been using it as an auditing tool. Um, and they have their own patents for their own emeter devices that they continue to to update. UM. Now, what is auditing. That's an entire

that's an entire conversation in and of itself. But essentially, you have an auditor that is a meeting with a member of the faith and they are hooking them up to the E meter to record these uh these reactions in the dermis, basically their emotional reaction to stimuli, words, phrases, etcetera. And the Church of Scientology itself describes auditing UH as this.

They say the goal of auditing is to restore being, this and ability, and this is accomplished by one helping individuals rid themselves of any spiritual disabilities and to increasing spiritual abilities. Yeah, this is interesting. I mean it seems to me that I certainly, not being all that familiar with the practice, can't say exactly how it's used, but it seems like a rough analogy too, if you were to hook yourself up to a polygraph test when you

go in for a Catholic confession. Yeah, that's kind of the vibe I I'm getting off of it as as well, that it's you know, it's it's about this individual meeting with you too to audit you, to to to to discuss and and figure out your sort of emotional your psychic state right, and to do that, you know, they'll throughout some words and see if those words trouble you or you know what kind of an emotional resonance they

create in your body. And so in this we we have a wonderful example of a a modern religion that is using modern technology, that has adapted modern technology for its sacred rights and observances. Now, again, scientology is a subject unto itself, and maybe when we should come back to in a future episode, but we mainly just wanted

to focus on the the use of the E meter here. Yeah, and also I think the general attitude towards the idea of technology and what role it plays in the religion, because they're the word seems to be held up in a positive light. It's it's something that's reacting against this thing we've been talking about, like the profanity of technology, technology being this kind of like new fangled, unbeautiful thing that that should be kept out of the sacred sphere

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

topic among weirdos like US and the singularity. If I'm sure you've probably heard of it before, but just in case you haven't, what's the general idea of the singularity. It's kind of like the the purpose of the new motor. It's somewhat egg but but it's a general point in human evolution where we sort of achieve a level of technological sophistication, where suddenly technology advances so rapidly that we cannot keep up with it that it revolutionizes and changes

human nature. A lot of times, it's associated with the sort of a moment of transition to being transhumanist, like where human biology merges with technology and you get this new breed of humanity that's like cyborg basically, that's ultimately uplifted and transformed to a status of an almost godlike

power by their technology. Yeah, kind of a point where you stop talking about, oh, this is human human race and they have technology, but rather the two or one or perhaps even the biological aspect of the species is secondary to the technological presence. Right, So, one of the big names in singularity thinking would be raker as while he's someone who has been very positive about this idea, who has had a lot of interesting and good things

to say about it. Uh. He sort of popularized the notion of some of these transhumanist notions in a book called The Age of Spiritual Machines, and then also in a book called The Singularity Is Near and I think curs. While and at least some supporters of the idea of the singularity would disavow the idea that singularity thinking is religious in nature, despite the fact that the phrase spiritual machines.

That's that's your argument. But there are some critics and observers who do like to attribute sort of aspects of being a religion to singularity thinking. And one of those is the is the interesting author and technologist Jarren Lanier. So Jarren Lanier for many years has been a big name in sort of technology circles. He's known as sort of like the guy behind virtual reality, and he's often described as sort of a genius poly and just a

big thinker. You know. He has lots of big ideas about the future and and how we should handle it. And he's for a long time been a critic of singularity thinking, and a lot of these critics of singularity thinking point out that there are uncomfortably religious seeming aspects of thinking that we're entering an age where artificial intelligence

and technology is going to enter this transcendental level. I mean, if you think about it, the idea of transforming humans into a higher state of existence is, you know, in a lot of ways, kind of like the end times beliefs of many religions. You might think about it as a parallel to sort of like the rapture and evangelical Christianity or something where people are sort of uplifted to a higher state of existence into like a newer, better

flesh kind of a situation. Yeah, and also you could think about it as in some ways treating technology truly like a god. That it is, on one hand, something that we're creating, but on the other hand, it is a force that is kind of unstoppable and at some point beyond our comprehension that comes in and imposes its will on us. Its will is hopefully benevolent. But you can get opposing viewpoints about that from many other people who are worried about the the advances in artificial intelligence

and what they'll mean for human life. But yeah, I think that's an interesting critique in an interesting way of looking at at singularitarianism as it might be. Is this a religion? And if so, what does it mean for all the people, especially all the people who are power players in Silicon Valley who are subscribers to this notion. Yeah, because at hard it's it's ultimately about human technology, uh, becoming godlike, and then even by extension, the possibility that

we create artificial intelligence that is essentially God. And then of course the question is what kind of God if we create it? Because if we look at the models of of the of the divine that we see in our myths and uh religions, they tend to you know, sometimes they're rather benevolent, but a lot of times they're moody and petty and destructive and uh and not always a friend to the little man. Right, Well, very often they're selectively benevolent. Right. They might be benevolent to one

group and malevolent to another. Yeah, And and they're not opposed to having sex with us in the form of various animals. So yeah, we have to think about that. Well, we really have to hope that our that our robot overlords do not take the Greek myths their inspiration. The Greeks. The Greek gods tend to be about the worst because there they tend to be the pettiest and the most carnal I find. But but yeah, do we end up looking at a benevolent vision of this or a more

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

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

which someone comments that you know for ages. We believed in making packs with devils and demons, and it was impossible until we made it possible through technology in the creation of ais that you can enter into bargains with it,

as occurs in the book. And uh. And that's that's kind of part and partial to some of the singularity ideas, where it's at least when we think of them in terms of religion, that technology be to make possible things that were previously purely supernatural and from a scientific perspective

non existent, such as the afterlife. Because we've talked about, you know, the possibilities of digitizing human consciousness and the human experience and placing that digital consciousness within a virtual world, it becomes conceivable to have a virtual heaven, of virtual hell, of virtual purgatory in which to file away your your the minds of believers after their bodily death. Sure well, I mean definitely, people like rakerswill have envisioned a digital

immortality or some form of technologically enabled immortality. And if you actually could achieve that, I'm skeptical of that, especially because of like, how could you even be sure with the consciousness transfer problem, how could you ever know that that technology was successful, you know what I mean? Like to say, you create a computer that claims to be a copy of somebody, and then that person's body dies and uh and their their computer copy continues to live

on saying oh, yes, I had continuous consciousness. How do you know if that's true? Yeah? And then and then you get into a whole you know, sort of black mirror area of trying to figure out how you're supposed to treat this thing. Um, you know, is if it's if it's not just completely happy all the time, then are you? I mean, what kind of monstrous thing have you done? Here? And then again, so we're imagining digital immortality as being a sort of embodiment of heaven. But

what if you didn't like your digital immortality. What if you didn't like your digital immortality and then you were unable to die, you'd be like the you know, sort of the immortal wanderer from various myths, right where you just sort of roaming across the digital countryside, hoping that one day the divine forces, the ai s or what have you, will will give you the gift of death so you can just have sweet oblivion. Man, So that William Gibson quote you had is still sticking with me.

I think that's really interesting. Yeah. I keep going back to the uh, like we have to invent the devil before we could sell our soul to him. Yeah, and UH, you know, the virtual afterlife ideas come up in a number of short stories. I've read that the first example was supposedly, uh, American sci fi writer Frederick Pole in a short story titled The Tunnel under the World from fifty five. I was the first to really deal with this, but one that I loved from a few years back.

It was one of the culture novels by Ian and Banks. I mentioned earlier his novel Surface Detail, which deals in large part with a a virtual war over the existence of virtual hells. So there are various planets, various species, and people's that can that have faiths that maintain virtual hells for believers that we're judged to be morally failing, and so they're you know, digital realms of torment and horror. And you have lived plenty of living individuals and some

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

I'd like to read that book now. It's good. I highly recommend uh the works of the late uh I N. M. Banks. Good, great stuff, great science fiction that's you know, concerned with where technology is taking us, but also you know, some of the the philosophical existential problems of the current times. Alright, So there you have it, Uh, the end of our two parter on techno religion, the convergence of technology and religion, from the earliest prayer wheels to the distant possibility of

a singularity birth God. This has been a wild ride. Thank you for having me on for this forever. Hey, Hey, thank you, thank you for joining me. Hey. In the meantime, 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 posts, 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 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 their's right to us that blow the mind. At how stuff works dot com for more

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