Holy Watermelon (Holy Watermelon)
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| Date | Titre | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 09 May 2022 | Audits & Aliens | 01:06:44 | |
Scientology gets a lot of bad press (and most of it is hard to refute), but we're going to shed a little light on the sci-fi religion of L Ron Hubbard, and explore the aspects of this authoritarian cultus that make it so enticing to initiates and so terrifying to survivors. What happened to Shelly Miscavige? Why is Tom Cruise reported to be leaving the church when he's up to his neck in it with David Miscavige? There's a lot more to this space-age religion than Dianetics, pseudo-science, and alternative facts. It's all fair game, now. Hail Xenu! They say you can't take your engrams with you across the Bridge to Total Freedom. We can't make you operating thetans, but we can give you the tools to protect yourself from them. These suppressive persons will take you on a voyage that rivals the power of Hubbard's Sea Org. Check out our previous episode, "Fake Me to Church," to learn more about authoritarian cults. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: I'm waiting for you to say hello to me.
[00:00:13] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie.
[00:00:13] Katie Dooley: Hi, Preston.
[00:00:16] Preston Meyer: Oh, man, what a good day.
[00:00:18] Katie Dooley: Today is a blessed day. If you're a Scientologist,
[00:00:22] Preston Meyer: Right? Yay! Dianetics it's the anniversary.
[00:00:27] Katie Dooley: Happy anniversary, Dianetics! Today on the.
[00:00:31] Both Speakers: Holy Watermelon podcast.
[00:00:34] Katie Dooley: Um, I feel like we should say that we're not actually that excited about Dianetics having a birthday,
[00:00:40] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, as far as anniversaries of books go, meh. I've never celebrated the anniversary of a book before today, so there is something special about this.
[00:00:52] Katie Dooley: I guess so. And as far as religions go, also meh. Or maybe even more ehhhhh.
[00:00:59] Preston Meyer: It's not so meh
[00:01:00] Katie Dooley: . We're here living in 2022 and Scientology is living in 3022.
[00:01:09] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they they play with a bigger calendar though to. That Xenu business was like 75 million years ago.
[00:01:17] Katie Dooley: Wow. We're gonna get into Xenu. I just have, like, a fun little note that usually we're pretty tolerant about religions, but we're gonna rake this one over the coals.
[00:01:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. This, uh, we'll try and be pretty objective, but there will be times where it gets really hard to do that.
[00:01:38] Katie Dooley: Yes. But again, so this is the anniversary of Dianetics. It is actually a very important Scientology holiday, May 9th. Um, so yeah, let's get this crazy show started.
[00:01:50] Preston Meyer: All right. Oh, man. Yeah. So being a Scientologist gets really expensive. It's remember how I talked about how Freemasonry and the ancient Egyptian religions and some of the Druids traditions? They're like tiered mystery schools where you got to move up from one layer to the next. That's an expensive process. Here it is.
[00:02:14] Katie Dooley: I've heard. I was trying to figure out how much Tom Cruise in particular had spent on Scientology, and it's estimated about 25 million. But there was a multi-millionaire in Atlanta who has spent 360 million on Scientology.
[00:02:27] Preston Meyer: Okay, that's definitely more than the cost of going through the the Operating Thetan levels. There's definitely some extra donations there and whatnot.
[00:02:35] Katie Dooley: Still far too much money to spend on this organization. Um, so some stats that I thought were interesting and keep this one in mind in particular as we get into the cost of things, is that on national censuses, there's only about 30,000 Members of Scientology. So that's across that was taken from the US, Canada, Great Britain or sorry, United Kingdom. And I think Australia or New Zealand censuses, it only totaled about 30,000 people. And then when we started talking about how much money they have, I think there's a little bit of like churn and burn where people give them all their money and then leave because they can't afford to keep going. Or then you have these high-profile people who give a fuck ton of money. I've also compared this to Wicca a bit, because Scientology claims to be the newest modern religion, started in 1953, but Wicca was introduced to the public in 1954. And Wicca has 300,000 members in the US alone. Now, they don't give them Wicca millions of dollars, so it doesn't have the profile that Scientology has. But suck it, scientology.
[00:03:52] Preston Meyer: Well see Wicca. Wiccam is an economic powerhouse, but it's not a whole bunch of people giving money to the Church of Wicca. It's just a huge population of people engaged in the market of buying and selling paraphernalia and goods and tools and whatnot. So a much healthier reality. But you said newest modern religion and calling Wicca modern when it's based on a quite old tradition does flavor that a little bit.
[00:04:28] Katie Dooley: Fair. But suck it, scientology.
[00:04:31] Preston Meyer: Right? There are newer religions still.
[00:04:35] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. NXIVM,ehhh...
[00:04:37] Preston Meyer: So L Ron Hubbard,
[00:04:44] Katie Dooley: LRH.
[00:04:45] Preston Meyer: So I always every time I hear L Ron, I think of Elrond from Lord of the Rings.
[00:04:51] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Don't give him that much credit.
[00:04:53] Preston Meyer: But Ronnie Hubbard was a popular writer, or at least prolific writer before Lord of the Rings was ever published. So it's not any rip-off of a name of this dude renaming himself to sound like the fanciest of the elves. He's actually, let's be real, elrond is not the fanciest of the elves. He's just important. Uh, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was born in 1911, March 13th. Dates not super important. Hella long time ago. More than 100 years ago. So you can reasonably expect the man is dead.
[00:05:34] Katie Dooley: Oh. Is he?
[00:05:36] Preston Meyer: We'll get into that.
[00:05:37] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:05:39] Preston Meyer: But he has published more than 235 works of fiction in his life, mostly sci-fi, which is interesting since that's the sort of religion he ended up starting.
[00:05:55] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:05:56] Preston Meyer: In 1950, he published a book called Dianetics. Dianetics is a wacky idea about the relationship between the mind and the body. We do recognize the mind and the body are attached, but the way this guy talks about it gets really weird. He hated psychology, and Scientologists kind of stick to that tradition. They still abhor psychology today, but for some reason, Dianetics, which is definitely a kind of psychology, is just the best thing ever. Which is why today is a special day. Uh, Dianetics is a pseudoscience. Um, but it never really caught on. Really, there's obviously some people who like it. Hubbard realized that there was way more money in religion, so that's okay. Let's shift gears a little bit. And he's actually quoted several times saying things like this, that writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make $1 million, the best way would be to start his own religion. Big red flag. So L Ron Hubbard also has a history of lying. Naturally, this is a thing that should also raise alarms. Most of his lies are about his military service. Saying that he was far more decorated than he was. He did get a couple of awards, but really nothing fancy, nothing terribly special.
[00:07:25] Katie Dooley: Not the Purple Heart or whatever he claimed to have but he definitely claimed to have been awarded combat medals for World War Two. He didn't have any. Yeah, some pretty big ones he didn't have at all. Which is... I mean, the military keeps track of that. This is very easy to prove.
[00:07:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, he was in active service in the Navy during the Second World War. But not everybody gets all the medals. That's not the way it goes.
[00:07:52] Katie Dooley: No, I will say before we jump on to the next section, this is a very brief overview of all that Scientology is, and we can, if anyone wants, we can do a full episode on LRH, or we're about to talk about David Miscavige or some of the more nitty gritty details of Scientology, but it is vast and wild. So I feel like we're just glossing over things, but we have to for an hour-long episode. So after L Ron Hubbard, the current leader of the Church of Scientology, is a man by the name of David Miscavige. He was the captain of the Sea Org or the Sea Organization, Sea Org for short. A private navy and the chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center. So this made him the de facto leader of the church once LRH died...
[00:08:45] Preston Meyer: I love the suspicion on that word.
[00:08:48] Katie Dooley: Well, he's coming back or he's already back. They believe in reincarnation. So anyway, his personal website, highly recommend if you want to go down a crazy rabbit hole, advertises that he's been awarded by the Colombian National Police for humanitarian contributions.
[00:09:07] Preston Meyer: I thought that was such a weird thing to see prominently placed on his web page but...
[00:09:14] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I thought it was weird how many video testimonials he had about being a great person. Like, I fully as a business owner. Testimonials are great, but there's like a point where when you have 300, I start to not believe it.
[00:09:27] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah I saw I flipped through these and I saw one for this old guy and he was just credited as CEO of a software company. Generic. Meaningless. Super weird. I had to google the dude's name. It makes sense that that's the only credit they gave him because the company is super small.
[00:09:49] Katie Dooley: Ah, he's he is the company.
[00:09:53] Preston Meyer: I mean, pretty much he's since retired. The company is now defunct, but that's the way it goes.
[00:09:59] Katie Dooley: Uh, David Miscavige grew up in new Jersey, and over the course of more than 20 years, David fought to get tax-exempt status for the church. And eventually he decided that they needed to harass IRS employees. And it was. It's wild. This is like a whole actually quite interesting part of the history of Scientology. Um, and it eventually worked. He is married to a woman named Michelle Miscavige. She was also in the sea organization growing up. And we'll talk more about her later.
[00:10:29] Preston Meyer: Poor Shelly.
[00:10:30] Katie Dooley: Poor Shelly. Yes. She was known as known as Shelly. Or is known as Shelly. Foreshadowing! And David in the church spent a lot of time and energy trying to convince people that he is only a conduit for Hubbard's message, rather than being a real person with his own agenda. But as wild as Scientology was with Hubbard, it's even wilder now, so...
[00:10:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah, because Scientology needs to work.
[00:11:03] Katie Dooley: KSW - Keep Scientology Working!
[00:11:07] Preston Meyer: And of course, we can't really talk about Scientology without talking about people like Tom Cruise.
[00:11:13] Katie Dooley: Okay. Like he's the third highest in the church. L Ron. David Miscavige. Tom Cruise. Like, not even a joke.
[00:11:22] Preston Meyer: He's a big deal.
[00:11:26] Katie Dooley: There are a lot of kooky celebrity Scientologists Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Juliette Lewis, Danny Masterson. Masterson, to name some. And then formerly, Leah Remini and Leah Remini will talk about as well, and whose she was actually born into it and has since left and been incredibly vocal against Scientology. She has a great podcast and TV show. Neil Gaiman, Laura Prepon, Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley are all former members, but Tom Cruise is beyond the couch-jumping crazy eyes. He is David Miscavige's right-hand man.
[00:12:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah, he's he's a big, important fella. He's like, second to the Pope, kind of important.
[00:12:06] Katie Dooley: Yes. Which is terrifying for an actor.
[00:12:11] Preston Meyer: I mean, America has hired Hollywood faces for president more than once and every time, it has been disastrous.
[00:12:20] Katie Dooley: I feel like that's like something as a nation they need to reflect on. Anyway, Miscavige was Cruise's best man at his wedding to both Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes, and Tom Cruise has his own home next door to Miscavige's at the Scientology headquarters in California.
[00:12:40] Preston Meyer: So they're buddies.
[00:12:41] Katie Dooley: Apparently, it's a really creepy bromance.
[00:12:44] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah?
[00:12:45] Katie Dooley: This is all from. This is such a weird episode to even study because they ended up on, like, TMZ websites.
[00:12:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Cruise has spent a lot of time trying to convert other celebrities to Scientology. Cause, you know, that's what you do if you're part of an evangelical style religion, and you need to convince more appealing people to your organization to help it grow. That's what you do. And Cruise has that kind of pull. He tries so hard. So tried getting the Beckhams in, the Pinkett-Smiths. He's lobbied politicians all over the US and Europe to get the church recognized as a proper religion too,, which has had some pretty mixed results. France hates this business.
[00:13:39] Katie Dooley: Yes. Which, man, we have so much to talk about. Also, an interesting fact is that anytime you see an article come up about saying that Cruise is like leaving the Church of Scientology or whatever, I guarantee you he has a movie coming out and that's like planned because people know how, even if you don't know how gross Scientology can get, it's weird. At the best, they always are. Like, "oh, he's not really a Scientologist anymore". Then they release his film and then he ends up couch-jumping on Oprah or releasing crazy promo videos with crazy eyes for Scientology.
[00:14:18] Preston Meyer: He's so cool. He does his own stunts.
[00:14:23] Katie Dooley: I mean, it is pretty cool how often he's jumped out of planes. I'll give him that.
[00:14:27] Preston Meyer: The Mission Impossible movies are fun, but crazy guy... Yes. Bryant, my husband and sound guy, we were just talking about how, like, even if Tom Cruise wanted to leave the church, he basically couldn't. And there's the sunk cost of all the money he's put in. But Scientology, I saw you put a question mark in the notes, and I didn't have a chance to expand on it, but one of their policies is to put everything in writing, so when you're getting audited, it's all written down. So they know everything about Tom Cruise. It also gives him a lot of power. So they've actually helped him find all of his girlfriends including Katie Holmes. They like interview and vet them for him so he doesn't have to do that work.
[00:15:07] Preston Meyer: I mean convenient for him.
[00:15:10] Katie Dooley: Creepy for the creepy for the poor woman being interviewed.
[00:15:14] Preston Meyer: Yes, that's pretty gross.
[00:15:17] Katie Dooley: Dear listener, dear listener, that is not how you find a mate.
[00:15:21] Preston Meyer: I mean, arranged marriages are actually not terribly uncommon around this world. They're getting less common as years go by.
[00:15:30] Katie Dooley: I don't know, there's just something about, like, David Miscavige staring at a bunch of women and I'm like, ehhhh,
[00:15:35] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:15:36] Katie Dooley: It's one thing if it's your parents looking out for your best interests, but...
[00:15:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we'll get into this a little bit more for how this works, generally speaking. But the sunk cost this that's an interesting turn of phrase. There's a lot of things he's gotten for free.
[00:15:54] Katie Dooley: That's true.
[00:15:55] Preston Meyer: That they will bill him for if he left that at this point would be crippling.
[00:16:00] Katie Dooley: That's true. And there's a lot of he gets a lot of perks that probably other members would have to pay for, and they've just given him because he's Tom Cruise. We'll get into how Scientology has this weird relationship with celebrity, and they put a lot of value on celebrity anyway.
[00:16:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Scientology. Like I mentioned before, France doesn't really like this business. It's a really interesting case study on how different countries use differing definitions of religion we talked about before. There is no one definition for religion that everyone can agree on. That doesn't help.
[00:16:35] Katie Dooley: Right? And this is even, you know, a good episode to pair this with is our parody religions episode of, you know, the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster trying to get tax-exempt status to see how, you know, maybe we can be a little more is decisive the word I want to use or...
[00:16:52] Preston Meyer: More discerning.
[00:16:53] Katie Dooley: Thank you. Yes, discerning. Thank you, in how we pick what is considered a religion or a charity in whatever nation we're in.
[00:17:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So the IRS did give tax-exempt status to the Church of Scientology in the United States in 1993. It's a big win for David Miscavige because he'd been fighting for 37 years with the IRS doing all kinds of really shady stuff, including blackmail, harassment, and of course, just straight-up tax evasion.
[00:17:25] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I think there was a case where a bunch of people broke into the IRS to steal documents. Um...
[00:17:31] Preston Meyer: They were also harassing IRS employees in their homes.
[00:17:34] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah. Privately and personally.
[00:17:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Gross.
[00:17:38] Katie Dooley: But it helps. I mean,
[00:17:41] Preston Meyer: It got the job done.
[00:17:42] Katie Dooley: It got the job done. Um, tax-exempt status is huge for a, I mean, any religion or charity. Um, but when you are dealing with the kind of money that the Church of Scientology is, it's huge. And then also it kind of legitimizes it as a church or a religion. Ehhhh.... You're gonna hear that sound a lot from me this episode.
[00:18:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Legitimizing this religion feels icky. But here we are
[00:18:12] Katie Dooley: Uh, here we are hearing Canada, the Church of Scientology, does have tax-exempt status and is allowed to perform marriages, but is not a federally registered charity. So it's more like a... France is actually openly hostile to the church, as Preston alluded to, and they fined them for fraud in 2009.
[00:18:33] Preston Meyer: Good move.
[00:18:35] Katie Dooley: New Zealand, for example, doesn't legally recognize Scientology as a religion, but they are a tax-exempt charitable organization. So there is there's a Wikipedia article you can look up. Not every country in the world, but probably every country scientology is in and see what they... How the country has chosen to dealt with it. It is everything from France being openly hostile and not considered a religion to it's a religion and tax exempt and as all of the rights and privileges of a religion. So it's wild.
[00:19:06] Preston Meyer: Let's take a look at this Dianetics thing.
[00:19:08] Katie Dooley: Yeah. What do Scientologists actually believe? We know they spend a lot of money, and we know there are a lot of celebrities
[00:19:08] Preston Meyer: Right? So it's mostly really tied pretty tightly to the original publication of Dianetics. The full name of the book was Dianetics: A New Science of the Mind. It was published in the May 1950 issue of a pulp magazine called Astounding Science Fiction.
[00:19:33] Katie Dooley: Red flag
[00:19:35] Preston Meyer: And then a few weeks later, a full book came out called Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. And this is the book that...
[00:19:43] Katie Dooley: Was published today.
[00:19:45] Preston Meyer: Published and republished. They actually lost the rights to it a little while, for a little while, when L Ron Hubbard just kind of really lost control of everything. It was terrible, but well deserved. But he managed to get the rights back and managed to secure all of it to a point where he could start a religion. Anyway, this book is generally trashed by real experts of psychology. This is a really important detail, but also good old Ronnie hates psychologists and psychiatrists. So it makes sense.
[00:20:24] Katie Dooley: And I mean, this is where the church is very good at public relations and marketing is their sort of spin on it is that we're giving too many people too many drugs, which, you know, probably, um, but...
[00:20:41] Preston Meyer: A lot of little statements that in isolation are actually.
[00:20:46] Katie Dooley: Probably true.
[00:20:47] Preston Meyer: True. Um, one of the big things that he pushed in this book is the idea that humans are instinctively trying to survive.
[00:20:55] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:20:55] Preston Meyer: And then everything else complicates that. Yes. That's true. Easy to get on board, but that's how they get you.
[00:21:03] Katie Dooley: That is absolutely how they get you.
[00:21:04] Preston Meyer: Little bits of truth, little things that you agree with mixed with a couple of things that you don't instinctively agree with. But then you just kind of accept because they're in the pudding. And eventually that pudding gets pudding gets worse and worse and you don't notice. That's what a cult is.
[00:21:23] Katie Dooley: Wow, Preston, you've done it. We're SPs.
[00:21:28] Preston Meyer: Oh, no.
[00:21:28] Katie Dooley: Well, get on what that is. But this was the moment.
[00:21:31] Preston Meyer: I guess so.
[00:21:32] Katie Dooley: Well done, preston.
[00:21:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Anyway, Ron claimed that he spent 12 years doing research for this book, but both scientists and his friends say there's no way that's true.
[00:21:46] Katie Dooley: Just like I wrote it one night.
[00:21:48] Preston Meyer: Like, he may have just jammed it out sitting at a typewriter throughout 1949. And that's it.
[00:21:54] Katie Dooley: Well, I mean, if you were working on a research, I mean, I knew when you were going to university if you were working on a serious, huge research project for a decade. I think I would know.
[00:22:03] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:22:04] Katie Dooley: Hey, Preston. I don't see you around so often. What's keeping you so busy?
[00:22:08] Preston Meyer: I'm doing research for this great paper.
[00:22:10] Katie Dooley: Well, tell me more.
[00:22:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's not what Ron was doing.
[00:22:15] Katie Dooley: That conversation did not happen with L Ron Hubbard or any of his friends.
[00:22:20] Preston Meyer: To be fair, he was always writing, and so I think people just got used to the fact that he was always writing. Remember, he produced about 250 books.
[00:22:29] Katie Dooley: That's a lot of books.
[00:22:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's Stephen King level of prolific writing. So except the quality.
[00:22:37] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I was gonna say Stephen King is much better at writing than L Ron Hubbard is.
[00:22:43] Preston Meyer: As far as volume goes, or maybe, to be fair, let's compare them more to somebody like R.L. Stine.
[00:22:50] Katie Dooley: Yeah, that's probably more accurate.
[00:22:54] Preston Meyer: But sci fi. Anyway, the basic idea is that we need to get rid of fears and other mental blocks that keep us from being happy. And of course, this goes all the way down into healing psychosomatic illnesses.
[00:23:12] Katie Dooley: And I'm sure it's later on in our notes. I just don't remember where. But Scientologists believe that we are reincarnated so that we have to get rid of these blocks and fears from past lives, which is what auditing is, which we'll we'll get there. But, uh, it's not just, you know, my daddy didn't love me in this life. How far back did your daddy's not love you? And you have to go through all of that.
[00:23:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's a struggle.
[00:23:43] Katie Dooley: Which, again, generational trauma we know is real. But that's not reincarnation. Anyway. Good thing I'm covered in thetans.
[00:23:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I guess, except according to the church, that's a very bad thing.
[00:23:59] Katie Dooley: I mean. Ron Hubbard says the name was conceived by his wife, Mary Sue. And a thetan weighs about 45g, or 1.5oz. But what the heck is a of that.
[00:23:59] Preston Meyer: A Thetan.
[00:24:14] Katie Dooley: Thetan. Excuse me.
[00:24:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's actually deliberately named after the Greek letter theta. Yeah.
[00:24:19] Katie Dooley: Thank you.
[00:24:20] Preston Meyer: A Thetan is a living soul. The individual. The individual that operates your body. Katie proper. The eternal Katie is a Thetan but then there's also other Thetans.
[00:24:33] Katie Dooley: My reincarnated Thetans.
[00:24:36] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:24:36] Katie Dooley: Or other things that have glommed on to me?
[00:24:39] Preston Meyer: Yes, that. Yeah, yeah. A person does not have a Thetan. They are a Thetan, except the lesser body Thetans. Though you do have those. The terminology gets a little funky, a little inconsistent, but not to the point that it's totally incomprehensible, but.
[00:24:58] Katie Dooley: Enough that you need to pay someone to help you figure it out.
[00:25:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:03] Katie Dooley: Convenient. Yes. So you are infested with Thetans and you are also a Thetan. But you only want your Thetan, not the other Thetans.
[00:25:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And so all of these infesting Thetan parasites 75 million years.
[00:25:16] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's nothing.
[00:25:17] Preston Meyer: Since Xenu banished them to Earth, which is the secret of OT3. But we'll get more into that story later.
[00:25:26] Katie Dooley: So thetans are immortal and perpetual, and they willed themselves into existence at some point several trillion years ago. After they originated, thetans generated points. Points to view or dimension points causing space to come into existence. They agreed that other thetans dimension points, existed, and that's how they brought into existence the entire universe. Is that like the Spider-Man meme where they're all pointing at each other? Hey, and recognizing that they exist.
[00:26:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:26:01] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Okay, the universe has no independent reality, but persists because most thetans agree it exists. Thetans fell from grace when they began to identify with their creation, rather than their original state of spiritual purity. Mhm. Eventually, they lost their memory of their true nature, along with the associated spiritual and creative powers. Now, most of thetans think of themselves as nothing but embodied beings. Oh, I think of myself as a body being,
[00:26:34] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:26:34] Katie Dooley: Oh, no.
[00:26:35] Preston Meyer: See, You find yourself where you are.
[00:26:38] Katie Dooley: Okay. But through the powers of Scientology, you can get your spiritual and creative powers back to your true thetan form.
[00:26:48] Preston Meyer: That's enticing. I'd like to have that power now. So if there's somebody listening to me.
[00:26:54] Katie Dooley: Hey, we're pointing at each other. I'm pointing at Preston. He's not participating. Yay! There we go. Thank you. If you don't figure out thetans are reborn again and again in new bodies through reincarnation.
[00:27:07] Preston Meyer: So there's this great process of auditing.
[00:27:11] Katie Dooley: And the Bridge to Total Freedom!
[00:27:14] Preston Meyer: So in real neuropsychology, engrams are theoretical units of memory storage in the physical brain, more or less. It's really complicated. That's the best way I could bring it down to one digestible phrase is.,,
[00:27:31] Katie Dooley: I like it.
[00:27:31] Preston Meyer: Theoretical units of memory storage in the physical brain. In Scientology, engrams are a little different. They use the word differently. Engrams are traumatic memories that need to be rooted out so that we can heal. I mean, getting rid of trauma to heal, that's a good.
[00:27:48] Katie Dooley: That's a good thing. I'm sold. No.
[00:27:54] Preston Meyer: There's so much that feels easy to sell, but there's there's ickiness to it. It's sticky and gross. And ew. Anyway. When all your engrams are gone, you can and you can reliably stop making new ones, you are certified clear. Which is a big deal.
[00:28:18] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:28:19] Preston Meyer: And so to accomplish that, you have to reveal your darkest, most traumatizing, most damning secrets to an auditor who may or may not use those secrets to control you or blackmail you.
[00:28:29] Katie Dooley: Again, everything is. This was a L Ron Hubbard piece of doctrine is that everything needed to be written down. So all auditing sessions are written down and stored in your Scientology file.
[00:28:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah. No. Confession is a thing that exists in an awful lot of religions, but this is different.
[00:28:51] Preston Meyer: It is because, I mean, I've never I've never confessed in a religious form because I'm not. But my understanding is that is that it's all willing. You go to confession when you want and you tell them what you want them to know.
[00:29:06] Preston Meyer: I've never been hypnotized while meeting with my bishop.
[00:29:09] Katie Dooley: Also important, but it sounds like, especially as you go up the bridge to total freedom, they really start to dig. Which, you know, if you're with a psychologist or a trauma specialist, sure, that knows what they're doing and when to push you and when to let you sit with it. But they literally just want your dirt.
[00:29:28] Preston Meyer: Well, and the process is like, oh, it's. You go in and they hypnotize you and they tell you to go back to a memory that you are ready to face. So okay. That's fair. They're not, at least in the documents that I've been able to to read. They say, go back to a thing that you're ready to face, and they make you go through it over and over and over again, knowing that it does have trauma attached to it. But you did say you're ready to face it. They didn't pick it for you. You pick it for yourself, and then you keep going through it until you can smile about it. I mean, dealing with trauma is good. This feels weird, but eventually you're getting into stuff that is like serious shame. Very likely, occasionally some criminal stuff just seems likely.
[00:30:28] Katie Dooley: I mean, for all the people on all the planet. Who? Yeah, probably.
[00:30:33] Preston Meyer: And then they do this thing where they promise that at the end of this session I'm going to say canceled. And this isn't like cancel culture. This is the thing that lets you know that you're allowed to feel okay about the end of the session, because we promise that when I say cancelled, you are no longer hypnotized, and you will be in the present. I mean, you just spent an hour or two hours or more digging through trauma. Ehhh... Okay, now, go on your way.
[00:31:09] Katie Dooley: Bye bye. Have a good day.
[00:31:13] Preston Meyer: Thanks for your moneies. I mean, guaranteed there's at least one psychologist who is also that same level of crappy.
[00:31:22] Katie Dooley: Oh, absolutely.
[00:31:23] Preston Meyer: But that. That's not religion. And we're not dealing with that.
[00:31:27] Katie Dooley: No. And at least they have checks and balances by psychological associations.
[00:31:33] Preston Meyer: Right? You can pull somebody's psychological license.
[00:31:36] Katie Dooley: Yes. You cannot pull your auditor's license.
[00:31:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Well are they. I would imagine if you have the job, you are licensed, more or less.
[00:31:46] Katie Dooley: Yeah. You would have some sort of training through the church, but I think anyone can do it.
[00:31:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, ehhh. Yeah, a clear person is somebody who no longer has his own reactive mind and therefore suffers none of the ill effects the reactive mind can cause. Sounds good. Surface level. But all of these words have a really slightly - they've got extra baggage in Scientology. And that extra baggage feels weird too.
[00:32:27] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And I part of me is like, I think there's some things you want your reactive mind for.
[00:32:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. To be able to react reflexively is a good thing, but to be fully controlled by it is problematic.
[00:32:41] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:32:42] Preston Meyer: So again, it's one of those things that's kind of tricky and like telling a person that they can they can be in be in control is nice, but it doesn't have the same effect as showing them and allowing them to realize it, which is really the philosophy behind all of this auditing too. At least, what is being told to the people giving in their money. But mostly it's give us your secrets. Can we control you?
[00:33:15] Katie Dooley: When you're being audited, you use what's called an E-meter, which is basically like two tin cans that you hold and it creates an electrical circuit. And so they'll say something and they'll watch a spike happen on this E-meter. So they're saying, so you have a reaction to it. This is how they're monitoring your reactions.
[00:33:34] Preston Meyer: Um, it's kind of like a lie detector, but it's that's not what it is.
[00:33:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it's just trying to see if you're having some sort of reaction to it. So they will pick at whatever this scab is until the E-meter doesn't show anything,
[00:33:50] Preston Meyer: Until you're cool with it,
[00:33:51] Katie Dooley: Until you're cool with it and you can.
[00:33:54] Preston Meyer: And that's why Tom Cruise is fully dead inside.
[00:33:58] Katie Dooley: They have killed him.
[00:33:59] Preston Meyer: I mean, he still has a pulse. He still does his own stunts, but...
[00:34:04] Katie Dooley: He's emotionally dead inside.
[00:34:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:34:07] Katie Dooley: A thetan, who is completely rehabilitated, can do everything a thetan should do. Such as? Move MEST.
[00:34:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that. So in this quotation, MEST comes up a few times. MEST is an acronym for matter, energy, space and time.
[00:34:24] Katie Dooley: So it can move MEST and control others from a distance or create his own universe. A person who is able to create his own universe, or living in the MEST universe, is able to create illusions perceivable by others at will to handle MEST universe objects without mechanical means, and to have and feel no need of bodies or even the MEST universe to keep himself and his friends interested in existence. So Tom Cruise can literally create a level three vision spell.
[00:34:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, for those of us who are familiar with the Riddle of Steel role-playing system,
[00:35:01] Katie Dooley: What would be a Dungeons and Dragons equivalent?
[00:35:03] Preston Meyer: I mean, generic conjuring of magical beasts, maybe, I don't know. I don't know DND well enough.
[00:35:11] Katie Dooley: Right. Neither do I. Um, but, hmmm.
[00:35:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's quite the claim.
[00:35:17] Katie Dooley: That's why he can do all his own stunts because he's actually living in a different plane of reality. He's not going to die.
[00:35:26] Preston Meyer: I mean, that's what they say about Ron is that he didn't die. He was so clear that when he was living in his motorhome in the desert in 1986, instead of dying, the church claims that he chose to shed his body so he could continue his research in another universe.
[00:35:45] Katie Dooley: Wow. Wow. Ron. Good for you.
[00:35:50] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:35:51] Katie Dooley: Just... It's not funny, but it's funny. Another piece of Scientology doctrine is a Suppressive Person or an SP, which we are now. An SP is someone with an... They say it's someone with an antisocial personality.
[00:36:05] Preston Meyer: When you're anti a specific society. Sure.
[00:36:08] Katie Dooley: Yeah. They are people in your life who are trying to prevent you from going clear in your Scientology journey, or the Bridge to Total Freedom. In practice, however, an SP is basically anyone who speaks out against Scientology. So Remini from King of Queens fame, and Mike Rinder, who is a former senior executive of the Church of Scientology and Sea Org with their popular podcast, Scientology Fair Game, are SPs because they talk about how shitty Scientology is all the time. And because Preston called it a cult about ten minutes ago, he is now an SP as well.
[00:36:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but we're small potatoes.
[00:36:48] Katie Dooley: Yes. Yeah. I don't think we'll be, uh fair game.
[00:36:53] Preston Meyer: No.
[00:36:53] Katie Dooley: Which is another piece of Scientology doctrine. So the title of the Remini Rinder Podcast, Scientology: Fair Game, comes from a policy that states that threatening SPs like Remini and Rinder can be harassed by any means possible. They are fair game. So there have been some very prominent figures in the church who have left that are fair game, including Mike Rinder, Ron Miscavige, so David's father and longtime Scientologist, David, was born into the church, and Mark Rathbun, another former senior executive. So they are all fair game and they experience harassment from the church on the regular. Friends and family are also encouraged to disconnect, similar to disfellowship with SPs in their life. So, for example, this one's actually really sad as Nicole Kidman has not spoken to her two children with Tom cruise because she is an SP and they were raised in. Yeah,
[00:37:50] Preston Meyer: But she got out so good for her.
[00:37:51] Katie Dooley: She got out married that country singer who I can't think.
[00:37:56] Preston Meyer: Keith Urban.
[00:37:56] Katie Dooley: Keith Urban has a big farm in Australia and they have a kid, so I hope she's better. You know, I don't like, want to care about celebrities, but that's pretty sad that you can't, like, see your kid. And I'm sure there's other stories that are not celebrity stories. So you don't hear about them of people not ever seeing their kids again.
[00:38:12] Preston Meyer: Let's move on to Xenu.
[00:38:15] Katie Dooley: Xenu! Bryant, like, put in a guitar riff here. Xenu!
[00:38:21] Preston Meyer: Xenu or Xemu, depending on sources. Both spellings are acceptable.
[00:38:26] Katie Dooley: Because nobody could read L. Ron Hubbard's handwriting is kind of what it comes down to.
[00:38:29] Preston Meyer: So there was a time where he did, he said Xenu like pronounced it with an n, but then immediately afterwards spelled it.
[00:38:38] Katie Dooley: Xemu.
[00:38:39] Preston Meyer: X-e-m-u. Yeah, it was it was weird. And so you'll have books that will use one consistently or the other. Anyway, this figure is very controversial.
[00:38:54] Katie Dooley: Very controversial. Yep.
[00:38:56] Preston Meyer: No active Scientologist will ever confirm the existence of the belief in Xenu, but a lot of people who have left the church have been willing to come forward and say, here's the weird thing they taught me.
[00:39:06] Katie Dooley: So this was actually I didn't follow up on it for the research for this. But when I had previously rabbit holed down the Scientology path, that was actually what got Leah Remini out of Scientology was she got to OT level three and she was there with her mom, and they're like, here's, Xenu, and she was like, what the fuck? Like, after growing up in the church, she was, well, probably into her 40s because this was like after King of Queens. She left the church in 2013, when she couldn't find her best friend and she was like, what the fuck is Xenu? So that's when she really started, like questioning. And then the Shelley thing, which we'll get to.
[00:39:47] Preston Meyer: Any church that holds back on significant doctrines that are important narratives higher up. But the the peons don't get to hear why, what do you think you're doing?
[00:39:59] Katie Dooley: Well and then like, so like Remy was in the Sea Org. Like she was in it.
[00:40:04] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:40:05] Katie Dooley: And then to throw something at her that she's like what? Huh? Anyway.
[00:40:11] Preston Meyer: Super weird.
[00:40:12] Katie Dooley: Super weird. But there are interviews where they asked people in Scientology and they're like, what about Xenu? And they're like, that's not even real.
[00:40:20] Preston Meyer: What?
[00:40:20] Katie Dooley: Yeah, they they gaslight you like right back. Yeah.
[00:40:24] Preston Meyer: Uh. It's terrible. So anyway, Xenu was the leader of the Galactic Confederacy, but his totalitarian regime wasn't very popular. So he got the help of a bunch of psychiatrists.
[00:40:35] Katie Dooley: What?
[00:40:36] Preston Meyer: To evaluate the expendable and seditious parts of the population. He trapped them in a gel made of alcohol and glycol, so that they couldn't escape, and shipped them off to the Australia of the galaxy, an underdeveloped world called Teegeeack, which is Earth.
[00:40:55] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:40:57] Preston Meyer: Uh, anyway, the spaceship didn't just look like generic airplanes. It specifically, Hubbard insisted, they really looked exactly identical to DC8 planes, but without the engines.
[00:41:11] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:41:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah, he was very specific about that. And it's... That feels weird. Anyway, spaceships don't even need wings.
[00:41:25] Katie Dooley: Nope.
[00:41:25] Preston Meyer: But here we are. So they dropped them on Teegeeack. But that wasn't enough. They needed to be dumped into volcanoes and nuked. Of course, he called them hydrogen bombs because that was the verbiage of the 50s.
[00:41:45] Katie Dooley: And this is 75 million years ago.
[00:41:47] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:41:47] Katie Dooley: That we were nuking thetans.
[00:41:50] Preston Meyer: We weren't this no galactic civilization of which we are not part of.
[00:41:54] Katie Dooley: Right. Okay. So they had nukes long before we had nukes?
[00:41:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:41:58] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:41:59] Preston Meyer: It would be weird if a spacefaring community didn't have nukes. It'd also be weird if they insisted that their spaceships have wings, but.
[00:42:09] Katie Dooley: Okay. But here we are.
[00:42:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But of course, thetans are indestructible and Xenu knew that. So Xenu's military captured the hundreds of billions of disembodied thetans with an electric ribbon and forced them into two cinemas. One in Hawaii, one in the Canary Islands to watch a 3D movie that lasted 36 days. What?
[00:42:37] Katie Dooley: This doesn't even sound real, Preston.
[00:42:39] Preston Meyer: No, but this is the story.
[00:42:41] Katie Dooley: Oh, dear. I guess that's the whole point. Is that it doesn't sound real.
[00:42:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And so all of these disembodied thetans chilling out in two cinemas, hundreds of billions.
[00:42:55] Katie Dooley: But they're tiny. They're like only 1.5oz.
[00:42:59] Preston Meyer: I guess.
[00:43:00] Katie Dooley: They don't need big seats.
[00:43:01] Preston Meyer: Well, we don't know how big they are. They just don't weigh much.
[00:43:04] Katie Dooley: They weigh much. I guess so.
[00:43:07] Preston Meyer: Because they're disembodied.
[00:43:08] Katie Dooley: Right.
[00:43:11] Preston Meyer: Uh, anyway, this movie that they're watching for more than a month, which I have to assume is based on our calendar because it's written by a dude who understands only our calendar.
[00:43:22] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:43:22] Preston Meyer: He likes sci-fi, but he's not that far into crazy time measurements. These movies are supposed to be the brainwashing event behind the existence of the various religions of the world and every other unsubstantiated belief, and every other sort of thing that could ever cause trauma.
[00:43:41] Katie Dooley: All the isms.
[00:43:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah, all of them. It's quite the burden to throw on this.
[00:43:49] Katie Dooley: I'm surprised. Honestly, I'm surprised it only took 36 days to explain sexism and racism and ageism and ableism and every world ism.
[00:43:59] Preston Meyer: And fascism and capitalism and Christianity and...
[00:44:03] Katie Dooley: Every world. Wow. That's actually. I'm impressed. Yeah, cause we've been doing this for a year, and we've barely scratched the surface on any of those religions.
[00:44:13] Preston Meyer: Right. Hubbard specifically said that the idea of the crucifixion is born from this trauma that's remembered from these propaganda brainwashing videos.
[00:44:28] Katie Dooley: So he doesn't think it's real. It was just in the video.
[00:44:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:44:32] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:44:34] Preston Meyer: It's quite the position to hold.
[00:44:37] Katie Dooley: I mean, again, I am impressed that a spacefaring civilization was even creative enough to hang an Arab man on a wooden cross. 75 million years ago.
[00:44:51] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:44:52] Katie Dooley: Because they would have been there living in 3022, writing something for the year zero on a shitty ass planet.
[00:45:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:45:01] Katie Dooley: Wow. They were just so creative.
[00:45:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The way that Hubbard describes the way the people of the galactic community, the Galactic Confederacy, were living their lives identical to living in the 50s and 60s.
[00:45:18] Katie Dooley: Wow. Like nothing better.
[00:45:21] Preston Meyer: Nothing better at all. There are so many great science fiction writers living in his time, and I don't think he read anything anybody else wrote because he could not think of anything that wasn't already in his face in day-to-day life.
[00:45:37] Katie Dooley: Which means you're a really shitty sci-fi writer,
[00:45:40] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:45:41] Katie Dooley: Like it's just garbage. Can you just, like, imagine? This is way funnier than it should be. Oh, like, can you imagine a sci-fi writer today just writing about 2020? Oh. I'm dying. And there, there were some cars were gas-powered and some were electric. Whoaa! and you could fly from Toronto to London in four hours. Whoa!
[00:46:30] Preston Meyer: Like he wrote sci-fi. He did write about things that didn't exist. But I guess he just he recognized that they were all bullshit and just said, this is stuff that nobody's going to believe if I say they existed in the old Empire, so they didn't.
[00:46:47] Katie Dooley: Oh my goodness. I'm literally weeping on this side of the mic. Uh...
[00:46:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So anyway, these thetans who had to go through this really long 3D video in these giant cinemas in the Canary Islands in Hawaii are now sticking to humans and giving them anxiety disorders.
[00:47:07] Katie Dooley: So there is like archeological proof that there were two giant cinemas in Hawaii and the Canary Islands. Right?
[00:47:16] Preston Meyer: Is there?
[00:47:17] Katie Dooley: No, I'm being facetious.
[00:47:20] Preston Meyer: Here I was thinking you did more research and found something I didn't see.
[00:47:23] Katie Dooley: No, no, I'm being facetious.
[00:47:29] Preston Meyer: Ah, that's what I get. Xenu was eventually deposed by all these people. Well, not the same people that he tried to get rid of, but some of the people who were left behind. And he was locked away on Teegeeack which remember that that is our earth. This is our home. Some people say that it's in the Pyrenees mountains. Other people are like, no, no, that was a Martian outpost. That's different. Either way, Xenu is still here today because he's immortal. A little piece of me is like, is there another level that hasn't been published that calls his rebirth the actual manifestation of the end of the world the equivalent of an anti-Christ.
[00:48:17] Katie Dooley: So, I mean, this is actually a thing in Scientology where because people have reached the end of the bridge to total freedom that they keep adding, because people aren't actually being able to move physical objects with their mind.
[00:48:32] Preston Meyer: Well, there's eight Operating Thetan levels, and I mean, the last one is very exclusive. And of course, you have to repeat levels sometimes if you're not getting it, if you aren't getting the benefits or don't fully believe what you were told, you just keep doing it. Which of course costs more money.
[00:48:52] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. Yes. They've definitely found ways to prolong it because at some point they need more money from you. But be like, what's been promised has not come true.
[00:49:03] Preston Meyer: Which and what a great cop out of, oh, you just haven't gotten it yet. Go through it again. Do it again.
[00:49:11] Katie Dooley: Well, and we've had this conversation in past episodes. This is one where I'm like, does David Miscavige know this is a whole bunch of bullshit, and he's just reaping in the money from it, and he's okay with that?
[00:49:22] Preston Meyer: Or is he a total dumbass?
[00:49:23] Katie Dooley: Or is he actually insane? I mean, either way, he would be insane to be able to just like, take people's money and know it's a bunch of bullshit because I'm pretty sure he's not moving things with his mind. So either he's like, really upset with himself that he hasn't gotten clear, like L Ron Hubbard, or he's like, what a great job. Never gonna leave.
[00:49:46] Preston Meyer: Well, imagine being able to tell people, you've got all this power, you can control the world, but I'm going to have to pay a security force to suppress all these other suppressive persons and harass them in their homes and murder people, make people disappear. When if you had control over the world in a psychic, telekinetic kind of way, you could you could pinch off a vein or artery in somebody's brain, give them an aneurysm, and they would die on the spot. Why would that not be the way you handle your suppressive people if you actually had power?
[00:50:22] Katie Dooley: Right? I hope Mike Rinder and Leah are okay.
[00:50:28] Preston Meyer: Ah. It's terrible.
[00:50:30] Katie Dooley: It is. So now we're going to get into practices of Scientology.
[00:50:34] Preston Meyer: I mean, we've scratched that surface a little bit. Ickies. But let's get into the other stuff.
[00:50:41] Katie Dooley: So in 1969, Yvonne Gilliam established the first celebrity center to achieve the goal of attracting powerful people.
[00:50:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Hubbard had said this thing back in about '55 that is now called Project Celebrity. The idea was that the best way to grow your group is to attract people, to have more power, to influence others. Which reminds me of a book I lent you a little while ago, the How to Start Your Own Religion. That that was one of the chapters, and it was find somebody like Harrison Ford to be the face of your religion and you are set for life.
[00:51:19] Katie Dooley: I mean, especially when you look at the numbers like and obviously the Celebrity Center is in LA and they have special courses for people who want to be actors. If you look at the numbers and think there's only 30,000 Scientologists. Like it wouldn't take you very long. It would take you a fuck ton of money, but it wouldn't take you very long to move up the ranks enough to actually start meeting real celebrities. And if that's what you want to do for a living, I can see how a desperate actor would, you know, get into that. You probably aren't meeting Tom Cruise because he's the right-hand guy, but you'd probably meet some B-listers and work your way up. Or even people that aren't actors, but people in the industry. I mean, and then just the fangirls that these people or yeah, if you really wanted to meet John Travolta. Yeah.
[00:52:11] Preston Meyer: Or if you want to get into politics, they appeal to artists and politicians too.
[00:52:15] Katie Dooley: It's a good tactic, but also a toxic tactic.
[00:52:20] Preston Meyer: For sure. And there's actually several of these celebrity centers all over the place where they have...
[00:52:25] Katie Dooley: Celebrities. There's probably a celebrity center in London.
[00:52:29] Preston Meyer: I think so. I went through the list and there's there's a good handful of countries that have celebrity centers, but I clearly didn't write those names down.
[00:52:39] Katie Dooley: That's fine. Maybe we'll throw it in the Discord after the episode airs.
[00:52:42] Preston Meyer: Now there's another organization that I think is.
[00:52:46] Katie Dooley: Terrifying.
[00:52:46] Preston Meyer: An interesting topic. So like I mentioned before, good old Ronnie, he was in the Navy during the Second World War and then in the reserves for another five years after the end of the war. So the Sea Organization, usually just called the Sea Org, is an actual paramilitary navy that had a full fleet of ships. And they don't anymore or. Well, they sold off all their ships years ago and then bought one new one a little while ago. It's kind of crazy, though. Hubbard said that their mission was to explore time and space. They floated in the two-dimensional space of the ocean. But time and space, here we come.
[00:53:33] Katie Dooley: Oh, boy. So members of the Sea Org were, and probably still are given a small weekly allowance, but they also had their rooms and meals taken care of, which sounds kind of good.
[00:53:45] Preston Meyer: If you're in the actual Navy, you get paid a little bit and room and board is covered.
[00:53:50] Katie Dooley: But then it gets a little scary. Because they sign a billion-year contract,
[00:53:56] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:53:57] Katie Dooley: Never sign a billion-year contract. I don't care what it's for. The only...
[00:54:01] Preston Meyer: When you believe in reincarnation though, this has meaning.
[00:54:05] Katie Dooley: But what if the. I guess so, but the what of the reincarnation version of you's changed. What if you're different? Yeah. What if you've gotten rid of a thetan and now the car's not right for you?
[00:54:18] Preston Meyer: Unfortunately, that is exactly directly contrary to their beliefs.
[00:54:23] Katie Dooley: The more thetans you get, the more the Sea Org is for you.
[00:54:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:54:28] Katie Dooley: But that would be so scary because then you could get audited and they'd be like, oh, what is this, thetan? It says you didn't like the Sea Org. That means you had a contract with the Sea Org, which means you need to get back on that ship.
[00:54:39] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah it's terrible.
[00:54:42] Katie Dooley: Right.
[00:54:43] Preston Meyer: So if you leave the Sea Org you are billed for every item and every service you ever received during your service.
[00:54:51] Katie Dooley: That's your food and board!
[00:54:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Which is terrible. That is absolutely crippling cost if you've been in it for a while. So people don't like leaving. If you do, this bill is not legally enforceable. People have fought it and succeeded in their fight. However, you can't get any more services from the Church of Scientology until you pay this bill. So hopefully you were planning on actually leaving the church if you also...
[00:55:23] Katie Dooley: Leave the Sea Org, yeah.
[00:55:25] Preston Meyer: What's weird, though, is that the Sea Org is a really elite, I guess, group.
[00:55:31] Katie Dooley: It's definitely not for everyone. Not every Scientologist is a member of the Sea Org.
[00:55:35] Preston Meyer: Right? If you were in the Sea Org, you're forbidden to marry outside the organization. Like, generally speaking, not even other Scientologists. Which is really weird because if you get pregnant in the Sea Org, you have to leave the Sea Org.
[00:55:55] Katie Dooley: This is how David and Shelley met. They were both in the Sea Org.
[00:55:59] Preston Meyer: Nice. So it's really weird. You can't have babies and be in the Sea Org. So Scientology does speak out publicly against abortion, but privately they encourage and sometimes even force women to get abortions so that they don't get demoted out of the Sea Org.
[00:56:22] Katie Dooley: So they're just Republican politicians. I said it.
[00:56:26] Preston Meyer: I don't think there's a lot of Democratic appeal within the Church of Scientology.
[00:56:32] Katie Dooley: I just mean, like Republicans are usually vocal against abortions. And then you hear about an affair and an abortion.
[00:56:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. The Republicans are two-faced at best. Anyway, the Sea Org did sell all of their ships in 1975, moved to land, but then in 1987, they bought a new ship, La Boheme, which they renamed Freewinds. And it's a pretty fancy boat. It's a decent size, a little bit bigger than a football field, and that's the only place where you can reach OT eight, which is currently the top operating thing.
[00:57:17] Katie Dooley: So you can just like go for a boat ride. Or do you have to join the Sea Org to reach operating thetan level eight?
[00:57:23] Preston Meyer: I don't know the answer to that.
[00:57:25] Katie Dooley: Okay, I'm curious,
[00:57:27] Preston Meyer: But because the boat is operated by the Sea Org for sure.
[00:57:30] Katie Dooley: Oh, absolutely. I just like Tom Cruise isn't a Sea Org member because he has a career
[00:57:30] Preston Meyer: He's OT8.
[00:57:38] Katie Dooley: I think even John Travolta's up there, but they also make a lot of, um, exceptions for powerful celebrities. So it's hard to say.
[00:57:47] Preston Meyer: Good old David Miscavige met his wife in the Sea Org, as you mentioned. And whatever happened to her?
[00:57:52] Katie Dooley: Nobody knows. She's probably dead, is the short answer.
[00:57:55] Preston Meyer: Oh, good.
[00:57:55] Katie Dooley: Um, this was the question that got Leah Remini in trouble and eventually was part of the reason she left Scientology. So. Shelly Miscavige is the the wife and has not been seen since 2007 in public. As recent as 2020, the Church of Scientology has said that she's fine and alive. But that's a really long time to not see someone.
[00:58:21] Preston Meyer: It sure is.
[00:58:22] Katie Dooley: Remini filed a missing persons report in 2013, and unfortunately, the church has so much pull that they basically were just able to turn the police away by telling them that Shelly is fine.
[00:58:32] Preston Meyer: That's suspicious. Right? This is after she's been gone for six years.
[00:58:36] Katie Dooley: Yes. And Remini filed the missing persons report after the Tom Cruise Katie Holmes wedding, where David Miscavige was best man and his wife wasn't there. So you're the leader of the church. You're the best man at the wedding of the year, and your wife's not there.
[00:58:53] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Suspicious.
[00:58:54] Katie Dooley: Don't be suspicious. Um, so, you know, I made this point that. Remini is a celebrity. And, you know, I made the point about Nicole Kidman, and it's easy to be not sympathetic towards celebrities. Remini and Shelly Miscavige grew up together in the church.
[00:59:11] Preston Meyer: Best friends.
[00:59:12] Katie Dooley: This is like your best friend going missing and nobody telling you what is happening. So yeah, like, we have one weird cult leader's wife and a celebrity, so it's easy to be like, whatever. But like, please imagine your best friend disappearing and nobody having answers for you and the police not giving a shit. Like that's terrifying.
[00:59:34] Preston Meyer: And all your other close your circle are gaslighting you.
[00:59:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So yeah, that might make someone leave a church and become a suppressive person.
[00:59:46] Preston Meyer: You'd think, yeah.
[00:59:47] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So some people believe she's being held at the Church of Spiritual Technology, a Scientologist compound in California. That's like former senior execs. Mike Rinder, Mark Rothman if she's even alive. Um, they think she's being held there, uh, probably against her will. I mean, I'd like to go out in public in the last. What is that, 13 years? Yeah.
[01:00:12] Preston Meyer: Uh, that's that was 15 years ago. She's been gone, 2007. It's a long time.
[01:00:19] Katie Dooley: It's a long time to not know where someone is. But she's fine, guys, she's totally fine.
[01:00:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah. When I was living in Jersey, um, which is where David Miscavige grew up, I didn't actually look up the town. It said he moved around a little bit. It's not even where he was born. But he grew up in Jersey, and I lived there for a couple of years. And I came across a group called the Nation of Islam, which is a dangerously racist cult with actually minimal interest in the Prophet Muhammad, but they use the name Islam anyway. Louis Farrakhan is a big deal. He was the leader for quite awhile, and he's been using Dianetics since 2010.
[01:00:58] Katie Dooley: Wow. Weird.
[01:01:00] Preston Meyer: Which is the year that I learned about them and ran into them. So that's interesting little detail. For my personal experience, and he's been encouraging his whole branch of Muslims to connect with Scientology and get audited and just fully embrace Scientology, which feels really weird.
[01:01:21] Katie Dooley: It does. And I'm curious what Scientology thinks of a very racist cult. They probably just want the money. They probably don't give a shit.
[01:01:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Louis Farrakhan is a very gross figure. A lot of people call him Black Hitler because he is super racist. He teaches. He didn't start the story, but he actively advocates for the idea that white people are the worst part of humanity, created by and deliberately created by a black scientist.
[01:01:55] Katie Dooley: That last part's weird. I almost agree with the first part.
[01:01:59] Preston Meyer: I mean, white people have been pretty terrible to this planet, but honestly, on every cultural group on this planet has done a lot of damage, so...
[01:02:09] Katie Dooley: It's because of that video. The 36-day movie, Preston. We've all been brainwashed for so long.
[01:02:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So Scientology is definitely saying, hey, Islam not so great. And Farrakhan's like, well, you know what? We're not that kind of Muslims, so. Sure.
[01:02:27] Katie Dooley: Oh, dear. Oh, boy.
[01:02:29] Preston Meyer: It's weird. But that's just one example of how Scientology is creeping its gross little tendrils into really weird places.
[01:02:41] Katie Dooley: I mean, they will go anywhere you will have them. Actually, and before we wrap up with your wrap-up quote, I will just caution to our listeners is obviously, we encourage you to explore and learn about other religions. Preston and I are going to go visit some other church services in a little bit here. Be very careful when you approach Scientologists.
[01:03:03] Preston Meyer: Don't use your real name. Don't use your real phone number. Do not give them your home address.
[01:03:09] Katie Dooley: You can get their books from the public library as opposed to buying them if you're interested in reading anything. But yes, they even my religious studies professor was like, they will harass you to get you to come back and spend more money, so go for it. Watch a bunch of Scientology TV like I did this week. Just don't give them any personal information.
[01:03:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah. High risk. I've got one final great quote from good old Lafayette Ronald Hubbard "Writing action pulp doesn't have much agreement with what I want to do, because it retards my progress by demanding incessant attention and further actually weakens my name. So you see, I've got to do something about it. And at the same time strengthen the old financial position. I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take legendary form, even if all books are destroyed. That goal is the real goal, as far as I'm concerned." Mission accomplished bro.
[01:04:13] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Uh, yeah. What a weird guy,
[01:04:17] Preston Meyer: Right?
[01:04:18] Katie Dooley: And there's even more about L Ron that we could have covered.
[01:04:21] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah.
[01:04:22] Katie Dooley: Um, so, yeah, I'll just reiterate. If there's any piece of this that you want us to deep dive into, we are more than happy to, but we're at over an hour, and, uh, we've just, like, glossed over all of Scientology, so...
[01:04:34] Preston Meyer: There's, like, every religion. There's a lot to it. And there is a lot of baggage here.
[01:04:43] Katie Dooley: Well, there's a lot to pick through. I remember trying to read Dianetics before and I mean now. And oh, it's brutal. Now that I have a better understanding of where it fits into the Scientology puzzle, I probably should read Dianetics again, but yeah. Oh, boy.
[01:05:00] Preston Meyer: It's tricky though. You can you can watch a lot of Scientology publications and definitely feel the appeal that draws so many other people in. You just be very careful because it's dangerous.
[01:05:17] Katie Dooley: Yes. Remember, Tom Cruise has spent $25 million on Scientology. Uh, Leah Remini has said it's easily $500,000 to get... I forget what level, but easily $500,000 to move up the Bridge to Total Freedom. So, um, if it's your jam and that's where you want to invest your money, cool. But just know it's about you're looking $1 million easily.
[01:05:37] Preston Meyer: Have I got a great alternative, though? The Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[01:05:43] Katie Dooley: Wow. Tell me more about this religious organization.
[01:05:46] Preston Meyer: Oh, man. It's great.
[01:05:49] Katie Dooley: We help people.
[01:05:49] Preston Meyer: I would love to get to a point where we have the funds as an organization, as the Holy Watermelon Podcast, to help people escape situations like this. We're not there yet. It'll probably be a long time, but it's a goal that one day we can accomplish that. Right now, basically, we're accepting donations through Patreon, and also we've got a Spreadshop.
[01:06:16] Katie Dooley: Spreadshirt merch shop. Yeah. Where you can buy some sweet, sweet, Holy Watermelon gear. If you want to tell us how much of a suppressed person you are, feel free to join us on our Discord or Instagram or Facebook. Thanks for joining us.
[01:06:31] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 29 Mar 2021 | Keep Kami & Carry On | 01:01:17 | |
In this episode, we discuss Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan. It doesn't have one central figure or doctrine that is based on, but rather the worship of spirits or kami. Our first records of Shinto as a religion date back to 4CE, but because it is so integral to the formation of the nation of Japan, we believe that these beliefs developed even earlier. Kami can be almost anything including ancestors, or natural elements like rivers and mountains, which means Shinto is rooted in nature worship. Shinto is not an exclusionary religion. Like Buddhism, you can be a Shintoist and something else. Many people who practice Shinto are also practicing Buddhists and Confucianists. On the Japanese census, 70% of the population said they were Buddhist and 60% said they were Shinto! The emperor was considered a great Kami until after WWII when the Allied forces forced Japan to separate religion and state. A big concept in Shintoism is cleanliness and pollution. Cleanliness is godliness and physical purity relates directly to spiritual purity. There are about 80,000 shrines in Japan. People leave flowers, food and monetary donations to the Kami at their shrines. Big public Shinto shrines are run by priests, these shrines are very welcoming to the public. They will show you how to make an offering to the Kami!
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Katie Dooley 00:12 Hello.
Preston Meyer 00:14 Welcome
Both Hosts 00:15 to the Holy Watermelon Podcast.
Preston Meyer 00:20 Man, that was terrible.
Katie Dooley 00:21 That was that was one of our worst last week. I was like, Oh, we're getting so much better. But not all weeks can be winners. I'm Katie.
Preston Meyer 00:29 I'm Preston.
Katie Dooley 00:30 And we're your hosts. And today we are wrapping up, I guess a mini series on the largest organized religions around the globe.
Preston Meyer 00:44 So you say organized, Hinduism is not very well organized. And the same can be said of, well, okay, the same can be said less reliably, of Shintoism.
Katie Dooley 00:57 Which is our topic today, what would you call these, then the ones with the stamp of approval, major religions?
Preston Meyer 01:04 People like to call them the world religions, because they're huge in population and have spread over pretty much the entirety of the earth. And Shintoism, as didn't used to have a centralized authority until this idea of state Shintoism showed up.
Katie Dooley 01:23 Which we'll get into. Yeah, jumping ahead a bit.
Preston Meyer 01:26 Yeah. But it's better if we start a little closer to the beginning on this one.
Katie Dooley 01:31 That's my rewind noise. That's not a very good one. But I always like to start with the numbers for these religions. So I'm just looking at the notes. Shintoism started in the fourth century. So it's quite old. You're giving me a look.
Preston Meyer 01:49 I mean, the way that Shintoism is visible today, it seems to have started around that time, yeah.
Katie Dooley 01:57 But being an indigenous religion to Japan, and a nature worship religion, it's probably fair to say it started even before then.
Preston Meyer 02:07 Absolutely. In fact, we've talked a lot about labels in the past. And Shintoism is so vast that one label, while it might seem really good in the moment that we'll use it, there is going to be part of this whole ball of wax, where that label just doesn't stick.
Katie Dooley 02:34 Well, we don't like labels in religion, because exactly, they don't always fit. And I think that's fair for Shintoism because I had trouble wrapping my head around it, I got there. But it was a lot of digging and research, whereas something like Buddhism, where it's all numbered, it was way easier to figure out their beliefs and practices.
Preston Meyer 02:56 Yeah, so when you say it's a nature, religion, that's true in a lot of ways. But also, you do have Shintoists who don't really worry about the river god, or the mountain god or the sky god of their area, and only really pray to their ancestors. And then you have some that will do the occasional prayer to their ancestors. And we'll be a lot more worried about their own agricultural profitability, let's say, and they'll pray to the god of rice, or the god of the rain, and spectrum.
Katie Dooley 03:32 Spectrum! The basis I guess, of Shintoism is the worship of the kami and the closest English translation we have for kami is spirits. And as Preston was saying, spirits can live in the rivers and the mountains. They can also live in manmade objects or as people, and that's where we'll get into state Shintoism. But the emperor was considered a great Kami not to be confused with the communist as I was saying it, I was like, that sounds really bad.
Preston Meyer 04:05 Yeah, the emperor was a great kami.
Katie Dooley 04:08 That's what clued my mind, there are about 100 million Shintoists in the world, because it's a religion of Japanese origin, their predominantly in Japan or of Japanese descent.
Preston Meyer 04:23 So you'll find a lot more on the east coast of Canada and United States. No that's not true, west. It's not even that hard. They're on the west coast of Asia and the east coast of North America. And also a lot of Japanese people.
Katie Dooley 04:38 You literally said that backwards today. Yeah, it's the east coast of Asia. Yeah. And the west coast of Canada. I can't even
Preston Meyer 04:47 Words aren't even that hard, but here we are.
Katie Dooley 04:51 Some words are hard.
Preston Meyer 04:52 And there's also a huge Japanese population in Brazil, which is not on the west coast of South Africa.
Katie Dooley 05:00 It's on the East Coast, yeah. Geography lesson for you today as well.
Preston Meyer 05:05 I'll get there.
Katie Dooley 05:06 So Shinto. Shintoism is not an exclusatory religion, you can be Shinto and something else. I think it's almost borderline encouraged.
Preston Meyer 05:16 Yeah, we talked about a couple episodes ago, in our discussion of Buddhism, that an awful lot, probably even most Shintoists are also Buddhists and Confucianists, which is kind of cool. This amalgamation of ideas. And as we get into Shintoism, a little bit more, you'll see how that's actually really easy to come across.
Katie Dooley 05:43 I think it's a good way to be too because you can really utilize the different beliefs and practices for certain points in your life. And there's a very specific reason that most people die Buddhist. But to be able to actually use religion to find guidance and comfort and shift that religion as necessary in your life, I think is probably a healthy thing.
Preston Meyer 06:12 Yeah, I think so.
Katie Dooley 06:14 Do you want to go more into Shinto and Buddhism being best friends?
Preston Meyer 06:18 Yeah, for sure. So in the early seventh century, Buddhism had spread all the way across from the top of the Indian subcontinent, all the way east, through China, up into Japanese borders. And it became so popular, that Prince Sku, but we spell it S-K-U I,
Katie Dooley 06:46 Oh, like the barcode.
Preston Meyer 06:49 It is spelt like that in the way we typically transliterated. I assume that my pronunciation is acceptable, if it's not correct, Prince Sku or Sku, I don't know, he sponsored Buddhism as the state religion of Japan, which sounds really weird when Shintoism was already wildly popular as the native indigenous religion. And I think this illustrates how Shintoism wasn't seen as a religion, in the same way that they saw Buddhism, or Christianity as a religion, that Shintoism was just a fact of life, that it was a thing that you did, you would pray to your ancestors, you would pray for things. And it wasn't... saying prayer makes it feel like it would have been a religious action. But they would simply... you go to a place where you can communicate with the spirits. And that's it. That's all it was. Or that's the way it was seen anyway. So there was no real conflict in making Buddhism a state religion. And so over the next 150 years, it became more popular and more kind of forced by the government as it being the state religion, this Buddhism. And so Buddhist monasteries and temples can be found in every province by about the middle of the eighth century. So they kind of, well, they didn't kind of they did coexist. And Confucianism, about the same time arrived in Japan, and became very popular as a good way of guiding people to be good neighbors, which was kind of addressed in Buddhism, pretty well, and not actually explicitly laid out in any rigorous religious form in Shintoism. And so it kind of became part of that triune religion of the state, which is kind of nifty. This Confucianism was brought into Japan, basically attached to Taoism, which of course is the Chinese understanding of spirits and because that's what Taoism basically is they it was never really adopted by the Japanese people because Shintoism already filled that role. And so they've, those three, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shintoism have coexisted and have been tightly attached to each other firmly for more than 1000 years in Japan.
Katie Dooley 09:31 I saw a stat in my research, and it was, I guess, was the Japanese census and I was saying that 70% of the population is Buddhist, and 60% of the population is Shinto. And if anyone here is good at numbers, you know that is grossly over 100%.
Preston Meyer 09:49 It sure is. And that's because people are comfortable being both of those things. And it's I don't think you're allowed to check off more than one religion box in the Canadian census.
Katie Dooley 10:05 It's been a long time since I've done a census. But what if you're a multi-religious household? You must be allowed to.
Preston Meyer 10:13 Honestly, it's been a long time since I've looked at the census. I don't remember if they asked about the household or individual members for that. I could be wrong. You totally probably could check off multiple boxes in the Canadian census.
Katie Dooley 10:26 I'm curious.
Preston Meyer 10:27 Rght? I mean, we've got a census coming around soon. Yeah, I've applied for that job. So hopefully, they don't listen to this episode of our podcast and write me off as somebody who does not care enough. We'll see
Katie Dooley 10:42 You're going to be the person I avoid when "ah census worker I'll just do it online."
Preston Meyer 10:46 Right. Everybody should be doing it online.
Katie Dooley 10:51 I want to make an inappropriate joke about how you're probably used to that, though
Preston Meyer 10:55 Right? I've spent years of my life trying to bug people don't want to
Katie Dooley 11:02 Not that guy again.
Preston Meyer 11:04 Right? So it's kind of nifty that these religions coexist. And things did get kind of complicated. More recently, in history, the imperial power has always been tied tightly to Shinto theology, the Emperor being the highest ranking priest, and also the newest of the gods, which is also, as we discussed what a god is, in one of our earlier episodes. It's, I think it's perfectly fair to say that anything that is worshipped is a God. And all of the Kamis seem to have worship directed to them. So even though the word is pretty faithfully translated to the word spirit, they're also gods.
Katie Dooley 11:54 Yep. Fair. Yeah. I think when we, in my mind, jump in if I'm wrong, when we use the term spirit, I feel like that's the manifestation of the god. Am I making sense?
Preston Meyer 12:08 Yeah, I follow you. I think that's pretty fair.
Katie Dooley 12:12 That we have a different idea of how other gods show up or don't show up. And I think in Shinto, they show up as spirits in things.
Preston Meyer 12:26 Yeah. So even the mountain being a powerful figure in that theology of this divine created land, having a mountain show up to you, doesn't work, but having the spirit of the mountain showed up to you, that is a lot more reasonable. In whatever form that might take, it's probably not going to be a billion tonne rock.
Katie Dooley 12:59 Do you... and this is off topic. Do you think that the idea of spirits and Kami in the sense that they speak to their ancestor spirits... Do you think that influences Western cultures idea of like ghosts, and this idea of an afterlife, or an after that your spirit can hang out on the ground? And haunt things?
Preston Meyer 13:24 It might. I think it does for some people?
Katie Dooley 13:27 Or was there enough in like... did we have that idea in the West? Before we had Japanese influence?
Preston Meyer 13:33 We've definitely had the idea of ghosts in our cultural mind before we had strong connections with the Far East. So yeah, more recent history of Shintoism. Things got a little hairy, we mentioned right at the very beginning. We mentioned at the very beginning, this idea of state Shintoism. That, well, what year was that? Did I write it down?
Katie Dooley 14:03 1945? So the year, late 18th century.
Preston Meyer 14:06 Now, that's the end of that problem, or, yeah, more or less the end of that problem? So in the late 19th century, there was this nationalist effort to separate Buddhism from Shinto Kami worship, a lot of people just trying to get rid of outside influences and really shore up what was the Japanese identity. Christianity also lost a little bit of popularity there too. So they tried to push out Buddhist influence, which I don't think was a great move. As a personal opinion, seeing what Buddhism brought to the table. I just I don't agree with that move and it seems like a lot of people agreed at the time. There was a lot of public shrines that came under government control, and people were encouraged to worship the Emperor. Encouraged, often by force. Things got really very... nearly 80,000 shrines shut down with the persecution of traditional religious Shintoism, which is, I mean, also a hard enough thing to define. But anything that incorporated anything that wasn't strictly approved by the State became a big problem for people's lives. And that lasted for not really a long time, because the middle of the 20th century came around. And Japan joined the Second World War, and lost the Second World War. And the peace treaty that really cut them out of the war, forced them to separate religion from the state. And this, of course, included a clause that required the Emperor to no longer claim a divine status, which seems perfectly reasonable to any secularist, was a huge problem for Japan.
Katie Dooley 16:13 Yeah, and right, we talked about the separation of church and state and the Emperor giving up his divinity, but we still think Queen Elizabeth is divine has the divine right to the throne. So that's doesn't sound you know, we, this isn't so backwards, I guess. Right. So thinking that you're a leader is somehow divine, because we still in Western culture, think that.
Preston Meyer 16:38 Yeah, the Allies forced Japan to build a line between church and state to the point where they couldn't have a state religion anymore. England still has a state religion. The queen is head of the Church of England. Yeah. So it's kind of funky. There's actually a lot of religions that enjoy a special state status on this planet.
Katie Dooley 17:01 I mean, even the US though it's off the books. We've had this conversation before, you cannot get elected President of the United States and not be a Christian. It'll be a long time before we see that happen.
Preston Meyer 17:13 Yeah, even though America is officially a state with no state religion. There's a de facto status for Christianity that everybody seems to agree. At least well, I can't say everybody because there's an awful lot of far more reasonable voices that say no, there's no state religion. An awful lot of Christians say this is a Christian country. And the fact is that even though it's not that way on paper it is.
Katie Dooley 17:47 What does the $1 bill say? One Nation under God. I thought it said and God We Trust
Preston Meyer 17:52 Oh, isn't there another one though?
Katie Dooley 17:58 But there's like
Preston Meyer 18:00 There's Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase one nation under God
Katie Dooley 18:05 I was like why is that in my head but you're right In God We Trust is on the dollar bill. So clearly, there's not much separation there either
Preston Meyer 18:13 Well and see even that was the product of the fight against the communists.
Katie Dooley 18:21 Not the Kamis. The commies. Oh, hilarious today. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Preston Meyer 18:32 It was thrown on to American money. Because money is the thing that people see every day, because the wonderful pleasures of capitalism is that you will be spending money. And so the fight against communism was fought on the money itself, by pointing out that we are better than those godless communists because we have God on our money. And I think we talked about this a few episodes ago and in our discussion of what Gods are, that in America, money is God.
Katie Dooley 19:09 Let's dive into what Shintoists is actually believe. And I have written down their creation myth. There's two books, neither of these are considered divine. There's no divine, one divine being or godlike because it's all around Kamis. And these books, the Kojiki and the Nihon-gi are from the late 18th century and they explain the origin story of Japan. So their creation myth is how Japan came into being.
Preston Meyer 19:47 I think it's interesting that they don't agree exactly. They tell more or less the same stories, but there are some details that are different. And also, I mean, you can go ahead and buy these books and read them but they don't actually really figure into the religious life of most Shintoists.
Katie Dooley 20:08 Yeah, what this origin story is not like a day to day thing like you'd hear the Garden of Eden or what have you.
Preston Meyer 20:16 I mean, it's weird how much evangelical Christians put so much emphasis on Genesis, especially just the first three chapters. It's like, That's how far they got in their book before they got bored.
Katie Dooley 20:35 Oh, that was bad. Katie, the probably. So yeah, like Preston said, this doesn't really play into day to day life, but it is the how Wolverine became Wolverine. How Japan showed up, right. The first couple Izanagi and Izanami descended from heaven to the island of Japan. And they produced the sun goddess or Kami, Amaterasu.
Preston Meyer 21:06 I'm not going to correct your pronunciation. I just, I don't think I can do better than that looks pretty good.
Katie Dooley 21:13 I think that's a compliment. And that's about it. You know, there are a few more Kami more came from that.
Preston Meyer 21:25 Well, they're not the first Kami. But they're the first with a personal attachment to the whole land of Japan. Yeah, it's their cosmology is kind of vast. And it's, there's a lot of dealing with creators, but there's no real prophecy to it at all. It's just this is where we come from.
Katie Dooley 21:50 And that's why I can't really expand on it. Because basically, all I could find is that this is where the country of Japan comes from. And yeah, that's about it. And they were, I don't wanna say we're ruled by spirits. But that spirits play a part of our world.
Preston Meyer 22:17 And there are spirits everywhere. The rivers, the trees, the forests, the mountains, you've also got your ancestors. If you've gotten into genealogy very much, you'll find that a lot of families in Japan have got decently far back records of their families. So they can track their genealogy is the word I've said and then lost. They can track their genealogy and see how they're connected to the Kamis that they have shrines for in their ancestral homes, which is pretty nifty. Of course, there's a lot of those that have been lost over time as well. And, of course, the greatest of those human Kamis are your your conquerors and your emperors, your big people who did so much in their life that you could expect that they can help you in your own life. And, of course, you've got you've got Kamis that find their origin in idealogical myths, like the God of the thunder. He explains the story around him explains why there is thunder, lightning, rains, rice, all kinds of things.
Katie Dooley 23:34 Did you know there's a Kami in Mount Fuji?
Preston Meyer 23:38 I fully expected that there was my brief survey couldn't actually find his name as I was just going through random lists of things. I didn't actually specifically search for what is the Kami of Mount Fuji, though that thought actually had entered my mind what is his name? Or her name? Is it a he or a she?
Katie Dooley 23:56 The Kamiah Fuji is a princess named Konohanasakuya.
Preston Meyer 24:07 The longer the name the harder it is to pronounce
Katie Dooley 24:10 Vecause you gotta like string it all together. Konohanasakuya. Konohanasakuya. Use that one.
Preston Meyer 24:17 I like it. I won't try and say it but I like it. So Mount Fuji is a girl
Katie Dooley 24:25 Mount Fuji's a girl. A girl mountain. It kind of makes sense.
Preston Meyer 24:30 Sure. I mean, that's just one as opposed to what your miming. It's a huge mountain. I mean, it looks that way, anyway.
Katie Dooley 24:41 I think it's quite a big deal.
Preston Meyer 24:43 I have no idea how it compares to the other mountains of the world.
Katie Dooley 24:49 And the symbol of this princess is a cherry blossom.
Preston Meyer 24:59 There's a shrine set up at the base of it specifically to ward off eruptions.
Katie Dooley 25:05 Gotta keep her happy, right?
Preston Meyer 25:06 Right? Last thing is that Princess having a freakout.
Katie Dooley 25:11 So bad.
Preston Meyer 25:13 But true. Right?
Katie Dooley 25:16 I mean, yeah, I wouldn't want Mount Fuji to erupt just because she's angry, right?
Preston Meyer 25:21 Which is definitely the the narrative that goes along with interruption is the mountains are angry everywhere in the world. That's the way it goes.
Katie Dooley 25:30 Yeah, so I would say she's definitely probably one of the bigger Kamis along with the sun goddess. And I think you have a few more in mind to talk about?
Preston Meyer 25:40 None whose names I can pronounce.
Katie Dooley 25:42 That's fine Tell me about some.
Preston Meyer 25:45 There's almost triune set of creators who are responsible for the creation of the world as a whole, rather than just Japan that separated the earth from the heavens. Their names are long and complicated, and I just can't pronounce them. And they're kind of cool. And then there's another, well, before I get on to the next two these three, just kind of came into existence. There's, there is a time before them, but they are not the product of procreation. And they don't seem to procreate, either. But they just create. And then there's two more Gods whose names are also that I can't pronounce them that are more specifically associated with the heaven and the earth as a whole, the whole of the skies the whole of the Earth, one being a lot bigger than the other, I guess.
Katie Dooley 26:50 Yeah, well, one had his work cut out for him.
Preston Meyer 26:53 And then after that, there's a series of male/female pairs. And the two that you had mentioned as being the creators of Japan, are one of those male/female pairs.
Katie Dooley 27:09 They just kept going, because there's a ton of them.
Preston Meyer 27:11 And then then each of those created all of the features of the land that have kami associated with them. Or they created the Kamis, who created those features of the land. It's all about the storytelling on how the world came to be the way it is.
Katie Dooley 27:35 I'm really excited about this next part, Preston, go for it. Oscar winning film, Spirited Away, is all Shintoism. All of it. It's so exciting to my brain. Spirited Away. It's right in the name. There's tons of spirits if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. And we have the radish spirit. And there you take all these different forms. And this is the idea that kamis can, you know, be nature, inanimate objects or people.
Preston Meyer 28:09 And where does the story take place?
Katie Dooley 28:11 Japan
Preston Meyer 28:12 No but like, where in Japan? What... what is?
Katie Dooley 28:14 Oh, in a bath house! Is that what you mean? Yeah, I was gonna get to that. When I posted in our Discord, which you should hop on to that I was researching Shintoism I sent the GIF of no face stuffing his face. That's my personal spirit..
Preston Meyer 28:34 It's a little off putting but adorable the same time No Face is hard to digest.
Katie Dooley 28:42 Sometimes when I'm hungry, I'll text Bryant that gift just gorging himself. Spirited Away takes place in a bath house because cleanliness and pollution are big themes in Shintoism. So there's no moral code like we see in the Abrahamic religions where you don't eat certain food or you have to dress a certain way or...
Preston Meyer 29:10 Your regular behaviors have no real effect on Shintoism at all.
Katie Dooley 29:16 Except for this concept of clean and dirty and polluted so there's a lot of themes in Spirited Away. Well, it's literally in a bath house. And then there's the river spirit that comes in it's filthy and Shen like helps clean them up and Haku, her little friend is a river spirit that sorry, spoiler alert. He's trapped because his river was paved over. So the director Hayao Miyazaki is like big on the environment, but this is also like, hugely important in Shintoism as well, and in my research, Hayao Miyazaki, Shintoism is important to him personally. So we say in North America that cleanliness is next to godliness in Shintoism, it is literally godliness. To the point where physical pure purity correlates directly with spiritual purity. The this is part of the reason Japan is like a super clean country. I mean, there's other reasons in their cultural values.
Preston Meyer 30:28 Cultural superiority. They're just better than us because we're trash.
Katie Dooley 30:33 Wow, Preston,
Preston Meyer 30:34 You walk out on our streets right now and see how much garbage that our people throw on the streets.
Katie Dooley 30:40 Oh, yeah. But I don't. I don't think they go day to day being like those North American pigs.
Preston Meyer 30:46 I mean, you don't need to say it when it's so easy to see.
Katie Dooley 30:50 I know honor is a big value in Japan. and I think that plays into... I'm digressing from the topic of religion but the term kegare means unclean or defilement. And there's a couple that makes sense and then a couple I was personally offended by. So death, disease, and rape are all kegare. They're all unclean defilements. Death, I'm like, and we'll get into death more as like, eh you don't really have a choice, but it's considered unclean. Also, childbirth adminstration are kegare. They're impure, dirty, pretty things.
Preston Meyer 31:33 That's pretty standard, well in fact, this whole list is pretty standard for what we're familiar with in the Abrahamic faiths. That if you're going to go to the place of worship, typically the temple rather than the synagogue, there is a need to be physically clean. And our hygiene standards have evolved a lot since then. If you were menstruating 3000 years ago, you were going to be physically dirty.
Katie Dooley 32:05 That's true and you'd be locked up from basically everyone.
Preston Meyer 32:08 Yeah, so I understand where it's coming from. But as our hygiene practices have evolved, so should our outlook.
Katie Dooley 32:20 Being in the state of kegare is, I mean, the way that it is bad for you, but it also pollutes the community around you, so it's important that you remedy that by purification rituals. And that is sort of the big piece of Shinto worship is this idea of purifying your space. I didn't make any notes on it, because I couldn't find can find a ton of stuff on it. But even when you're moving into a home, you purify it, so that the Kami that from your home or your ancestral economy that are coming with you in their little shrines feel comfortable in your new home.
Preston Meyer 33:00 Makes sense. I like to be comfortable in my home,
Katie Dooley 33:02 Right? I cleaned my new home when I moved in so I can see why my dead grandma would feel the same.
Preston Meyer 33:11 Seems perfectly natural and reasonable to me.
Katie Dooley 33:14 So on, the topic of kegare death, like I said, death is kegare and so Shintoists don't deal with it. Because it'sthe state of impurity, which is where...
Preston Meyer 33:30 It's fair to say Shintoism doesn't deal with it.
Katie Dooley 33:34 Shintoism doesn't deal with it. So this is where Buddhism just like swaggers in and they say that you're married Shinto and you die, Buddhists. And I, it really bothered me I couldn't I googled it and couldn't find it. But I remember in religious studies class, they said, there's a reason people marry Shinto. And I think it's like some economical reason. Like, I think there's some gifting there's some benefit to being married Shinto, and then you die Buddhists, because worst case scenario, you get reincarnated, best case scenario, you reach Nirvana instead of being in kegare instead of being dirty.
Preston Meyer 34:13 It's interesting that for Shintoism, there is the sense of heaven, and, and the netherworld, on either side of the mortal realm. But the heaven of Shintoism is just the plane where the kami live, and it's not an expected destination for the departed dead. And the netherworld when it shows up in Shinto myth is the place for unclean kami, and occasionally the unclean dead. When a kami dies, that's part of the story is they go to this netherworld, but it's not promised thing that when you die, you're gonna go to either place. They don't address that at all and so Buddhism absolutely fills in that blank space in the story.
Katie Dooley 35:13 And so because of that Shinto cemeteries basically don't exist. They're all Buddhist cemeteries.
Preston Meyer 35:27 You're gonna hold on to this vessel, and the guy that was in it, is gonna go make another one. It's an interesting way to see the world that you're able to kind of fence off the two different ideas and still adopt both. I don't know, it's not something you see a whole lot among people who grew up in a Christian tradition.
Katie Dooley 35:56 No, I think this is. I don't want to say it's the only example but it's the best example of two religions coexisting? In a symbiotic way.
Preston Meyer 36:10 Yeah, it's weird that it's not like one really absorbed the other. There's not a whole lot of obvious syncretism, where one just changes and adopts values to the other. It's being both
Katie Dooley 36:24 Yeah, no, they're two very different and separate things. That just happen to live together. Like you and me! Awe we just had a moment. Day to day, what does it look like to be Shinto?
Preston Meyer 36:48 The weird thing about day to day Shintoism, is that there's things that are, what you would expect from anybody, that the way that it got away with being almost secular, is really interesting. And so somebody who's just a Shintoist, who maybe doesn't adopt Buddhism, for the sake of this example, wouldn't look really any different from an atheist, apart from the occasional visit to a shrine, which could happen once a year, once every decade, once a month, once a week. Who knows?
Katie Dooley 37:36 My, in my research and my understanding is that most people... so the note I have is that you know, we talk about Buddhism is this way of life is i a religion? We had this conversation. I would actually say Shinto is more of a air quotes "way of life". Because most people in Japan don't even consider themselves religious. And I think that's because being Shinto is so interesting. In...
Preston Meyer 38:07 Intrinsically?
Katie Dooley 38:09 I wanted to say intricately and then my brain... Intricately connected to being Japanese, you don't even like I don't even think they see the line between religion and being Japanese.
Preston Meyer 38:23 It's just a thing you do.
Katie Dooley 38:24 Like, liking poutine as a Canadian, you can separate that as a food, eh? It's just part of the culture.
Preston Meyer 38:30 But you know that it's food?
Katie Dooley 38:32 No, it's my heart and soul, eh.
Preston Meyer 38:36 You live in breathes poutine.
Katie Dooley 38:38 I live and breathe poutine. I don't think you understand. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's just when you ask, apparently, when you ask a Japanese person, if they think they're religious the answer is no.
Preston Meyer 38:54 Even if they're actively pressed into on a regular basis. It's, it's interesting. It's... religion is complicated. We've said this before, I'll say it again, that's just our reality./
Katie Dooley 39:08 That's why we have content to the rest of our lives.
Preston Meyer 39:13 It's interesting that just like there's no singular way to be Shintoist. There's no monolithic historical founder. That's not a thing we've, the ancient history of Shintoism is lost. It's, we understand that these things are worshipped. We know they've been worshipped for as long as history records and that's it. In fact, I tried looking up the etymology of the names of a lot of kami and found nothing at all their names are so old that we don't even mean anymore. Some of them we do, or some of them we have guesses, but for a lot of them, we just don't know what they mean anymore. There's no solid scripture that is the canon by which worship is measured or anything like that. There's, like you mentioned those two books and that's kind of it, you've got a handful of family stories, and different families will tell the same story different ways. But there's no set of Scripture that unifies them at all.
Katie Dooley 40:19 Yeah, it's just like this inherent belief that you know, kami exist. Yeah. And that you need to keep them happy.
Preston Meyer 40:25 Yeah. In fact, there's a lot of argument on how to define Shintoism. And the most popular scholarly definition for Shintoism. is the belief in kami.
Katie Dooley 40:43 Yeah, and this makes me feel better about my struggle to wrap my head around Shintoism this week.
Preston Meyer 40:51 Yeah, it's we're trying really hard to make it a thing that is an approachable discussion topic. Because it's a very complex thing.
Katie Dooley 40:59 I might argue that this might be one of the most complex maybe next to Christianity.
Preston Meyer 41:05 It's weird that it feels more complicated than Hinduism.
Katie Dooley 41:11 But Hinduism has its like set of beliefs, and then a ton of Gods. That you can pick and choose, whereas this doesn't have a set of beliefs, and then a ton of Gods.
Preston Meyer 41:20 Right. And with Hinduism there was a foundational scripture that came in with this religion as it moved into the Indus Valley. We don't have that for Shintoism. It's just the idea that there are kami.
Katie Dooley 41:35 Part of kami worship is, of course shrines. And this is, like I said, you can even see in Spirited Away when they're driving to their new home, there's little spirit shrines on the road that they point out. And shrines can be like a tiny home shrine, or a tiny side of the road shrie or they can be massive community shrines, there's about 80,000 shrines in Japan. And this is where it comes to worship takes place. There is a... kami hang out in a shin tae. So this is the specific object within the shrine where they're residing. And this can be basically anything and they can they're often manmade as well. So you have your shrine, this little house, and then there's something in the shrine where the kamis like, "Hi, here I am!"
Preston Meyer 42:31 So is there any sort of preparation that person has to undertake before they visit one of these shrine?
Katie Dooley 42:35 Tthank you for the lead in Preston. So back to the cleanliness and the purity/impurity, you have to wash your mouth and wash your hands, which feels very common that happens in Islam as well, for sure.
Preston Meyer 42:50 Realistically if you're going to visit anywhere, it's polite to not be dirty.
Katie Dooley 42:55 But ritual cleansing is a little different than just not being dirty. And spiritual cleansing. So people pray at shrine, they make monetary donations, they leave food, they leave, I think they leave flowers as well. Yeah, you're just leaving small tokens of your appreciation for the kami.
Preston Meyer 43:17 Sounds pretty all right.
Katie Dooley 43:19 Oh, this one, in fact, was fun. And I made a note because like, literally as I was researching, so you can tell the difference between a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist shrine by the torii gate. So these are, there can be really simple Torii gates that are like two posts and a beam. But there's definitely like a look,
Preston Meyer 43:39 There's a stereotypical look that you'll recognize them.
Katie Dooley 43:41 And as I was studying this, I saw someone with a torii gate in their yard. And I was like, do you know what that is? Do you know what that is?
Preston Meyer 43:51 It's hard to say if you don't know the person
Katie Dooley 43:53 No and I didn't, but I was like hmmmm.
Preston Meyer 43:56 You could have just a dude who's way into Japanese tradition and you know, hang a set of swords on his wall, and we'll never get married. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum, you'll have somebody who's really into their religion.
Katie Dooley 44:13 Yeah. Or it could just be somebody thought it was a nice yarn? I want to say yard and lawn ornament. So I'm curious who lives there but right.
Preston Meyer 44:26 It could be a family that genuinely opens their home to anybody who wants to worship the kami.
Katie Dooley 44:31 Maybe I'd be curious what kami lives there. The largest and most important shine, Google it, guys. It's really cool. It's called the Ise Grand, which is dedicated to that first sun goddess Amaterasu. And my note says, and I'm going to read it, it's really fucking old. It was originally built in the fourth century, which is where we start having this record that Shinto is a thing but it's obviously it's been rebuilt several times since. But it's pretty remarkable that there's been a shrine there for 16... 1700 years. And it's massive. And you can go as a tourist, Shintoists are very welcoming. And they'll teach you how to, like, say a prayer and leave a thing for our a kami. And because they're, you know, open to other religions coming like you can just go in and check one out. So, if you're in Japan, check out the Ise Grand.
Preston Meyer 45:30 On that point, I think it's really interesting that Shintoists follow the model that we're familiar with in Western Asian henotheism, where when you go to a city that has a shrine to the local god of the city or the city state, that you're expected to give a sacrifice in those situations. And you're absolutely welcome to do the same at a Shinto shrine that anybody can is pretty cool. That's how you show that you are respectful of the community.
Katie Dooley 46:06 I will definitely visit Ise Grand when I go to Japan, I don't know when not going to Japan, but I will visit when I go. One story I remember from my religious studies class is apparently there's a Shinto shrine in the Toyota factory. Makes sense. And my religious studies teacher came from a very devoutly Christian family. And he like told his in laws that there was a Shinto shrine in the Toyota effect, and they sold their Toyota. They couldn't handle that there was another god mucking around with their car.
Preston Meyer 46:43 See, I understand from a Western perspective, the idea of having even a Christian shrine in the workplace is problematic for a lot of people. I mean, it would be annoying for most atheists, I think, but we've actually made it so much part of our culture that you must be separating your work from your religious life, that maybe that's part of the feelings there.
Katie Dooley 47:16 I mean, I don't know. Because I, and I don't know if we want to say it's more maybe it's just a it's probably just ignorance. Can you hear me thinking while I'm talking? It's probably just ignorance, because I remember we went for Vietnamese pickup not that long ago. And they had Old Buddha on the counter, and there was coins and things on it. Like obviously they...
Preston Meyer 47:38 if you go to East Asian restaurant, doesn't have to be Chinese could be Laotian or whatever. Not seeing a shrine would be actually kind of weird.
Katie Dooley 47:49 Well, yeah, but this is where I'm saying like, I mean, I don't know if incredibly devout Christians wouldn't eat at a Vietnamese place, because Buddhist. But I think we ignore that. And then you hear a story about Toyota, and you're like "ah my pearls!"
Preston Meyer 48:06 Right? Some of my family, who are pretty Christian, but not like, real hardcore Christian, go for Chinese food on Christmas, because they're the only one's that are open and they like to eat out. And it's funny that... and I think an awful lot of Jews eat out Chinese food in the winter season as well. I've observed it more in the winter than the summer, but I doubt there's actually much difference timewise, to be honest. And both Christians and Jews and Muslims have this idea that you have to stay away from idols of other gods. And yet, we all love Chinese food, and almost all of them have these shrines.
Katie Dooley 48:54 Well, and that's what I mean, where I think it just comes back to ignorance.
Preston Meyer 48:57 They just don't know that it's a shrine.
Katie Dooley 48:59 They just right or you wouldn't even clue in to, you know, especially in again, this is more with Buddha, because it's a we have a physical manifestation of what Buddha looks like, or Buddai.
Preston Meyer 49:17 You notice very few places have both apart from retailers.
Katie Dooley 49:20 I was gonna say with retailers. We've commercialized this idea of Buddha, and Zen Buddhism and so much that I honestly don't think people claiming that it's a religious. Oh, even before we hopped on, and when we're like, yoga is not just a sport. It's like a thing, but we've commercialized it so much in the West that we don't realize how spiritual and religious it actually is.
Preston Meyer 49:44 Yoga is incredibly religiously charged.
Katie Dooley 49:47 Yeah, so it's funny. I read the Bhagavad Gita after our Hinduism episode, which, not great for timing, but yeah, it's mentioned a whole bunch in the Bhagavad Gita. Anyway, we went on a bit of a tangent, but I hope you learned something in that tangent. The last piece, I don't have a ton of notes on it. But Shinto shrines are run by priests and the priests Oh, yeah, big public, obviously a home train or a small roadside train wouldn't but the big public shrines. The term is Kannushi, not to be confused with Tanuki. Like Mario, I'm kidding. And they'll conduct rituals. They're a little bit of a customer service piece they'll talk the guests through who are not Shinto practitioners through the ringing of the bells, and the prayers and the monetary or whatever sacrifices, and they can communicate with the Kami. You can be a man or a woman priest. There's no restriction on that, like there is in the West, certain Western practices, and you can marry as well as a Shinto priests. They're pretty chill.
Preston Meyer 51:01 Yeah, it's it's not so hard to be a Shintoist as it is to be, say, a Catholic priest, which is not the life for me.
Katie Dooley 51:13 Not the life for a lot of people. They're leaving in droves.
Preston Meyer 51:16 It's true. All right. So I found a a couple of nifty ideas. I have them attached to the name Hawaii.
Katie Dooley 51:26 I'm gonna let you talk about this because I saw this
Preston Meyer 51:29 And decided not..
Katie Dooley 51:31 Not to go down that route.
Preston Meyer 51:34 So I feel like an awful lot of people when they hear the word kami, there is the instinctive response to add another portion to that word. In the English language, especially, say seventy years ago, kami was always attached to the word kaze. Kamikaze means the spirit wind. And it's attached to the Bushido principle of honor until death, which, as we've seen in many religions, occasionally means violence. And so when you have airplanes flying into aircraft carriers, kamikaze is the motivation for that action and came to be the name of that portion of the air force that has made that word become popular. What's interesting is that Shintoism actually had a presence in Hawaii long before the Second World War. And there's a really cool place called the Daijingu temple in Honolulu. It houses shrines to Amaterasu
Katie Dooley 52:50 Oh, you did and you did it better than I did both times.
Preston Meyer 52:54 I can't say it's better, but I did it smoothly.
Katie Dooley 52:59 Fair. I'll give you that Amaterasu. Fuck you!
Preston Meyer 53:04 Nice and smooth. I like it. So there's there's shrines to Amaterasu, there's shrines to other traditional economy, as well as shrines to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, they are worshipped as kami because of their status as the founder of the Union and the repairer of the Union, which is pretty cool. I think. There's also other Shrines to other heroes, and also one to all who have died in war, which I think is a part of the reason why it's still a popular shrine to visit. It's moved around a few times, as the American government has seized their lands for one reason or another during the Second World War. But they're in Honolulu, and it's a pretty hot tourist spot. So that's the cool notes I have for Hawaii and Shintoism. But Shintoism is pretty much anywhere where you have a large population of Japanese migrants.
Katie Dooley 54:08 I didn't do any research on it. And now I'm curious, are there non-Japanese Shintoists?
Preston Meyer 54:15 I fully expect that there are but I don't think there's any real big, scholarly work done on them. I think if you were to look through a census, you'd probably find a handful of people who identified as non-Japanese and Shinto, but I don't think there's lots.
Katie Dooley 54:37 It's definitely not an evangelical religion. And then with that, it's really hard to explain. Even if you did get into a position where you could.
Preston Meyer 54:47 Realistically it's easy enough to say, you know what, I'm going to become a Shinto. All you have to do is clean myself and pray to whichever God I select in In a manner that matches what I Google, and then I could say to my own satisfaction (maybe not everyone else's) yeah, I'm a Shinto now. But there's there's nobody asking anybody to do that, which is interesting.
Katie Dooley 55:16 Yeah. Any final thoughts as we wrap up the last episode in this world religions mini-series?
Preston Meyer 55:24 I've pointed out a couple of similarities, I guess. And also contrasting points with Hinduism. That Hinduism was a name that I don't love for the religion because it's a name thrown on them by white people. And the name Shinto has a similar trickiness to it. It's from what I've been reading, it seems like Shintoism isn't a word that's used a lot by practitioners of Shintoism. We've talked about how it's like a lot of Shinto us don't see themselves as religious. That's part of the reason. But also, the word Shinto, which when you look it up, it was it said that it means the way of the kami. The Japanese way to say the way of the kami is kaminomici or something close to that. Very smooth, I try. And the name Shinto is hardly a Japanese word. It's derived from the Chinese words, Shen Tao, which does mean the way of the spirit or the spirit way. And Tao being also visible in the word Taoism, which we've mentioned briefly earlier as the Chinese religion around the spirits. So Shinto comes from that Chinese Shen Tao, which got transliterated into Japanese as Jindo initially, which basically denoted non Buddhist deities, and popular belief. So Shinto is another problematic title that we've just accepted as this is the title that gets used for this thing all the time.
Katie Dooley 57:26 Yep. All right.
Preston Meyer 57:30 Naming things is important. Before you can really study them, you have to be able to identify what you're talking about. But sometimes the way we name things is just nonsense.
Katie Dooley 57:41 No, this is, I mean, definitely an instance of imperialism. Even if it's Chinese imperialism. And it's we, you know, in the example you give is Germany, right? We just call them Germany. And they're like, No, it's Deutschland. Like, no, it's Germany. So, Germany,
Preston Meyer 58:00 Oh those dirty Romans. Imperialism does terrible things for Anthropology.
Katie Dooley 58:10 Yeah, that privilege. So I hope that made some sense. Shinto.
Preston Meyer 58:21 If you followed along, as well, as we were able to present what we know. You've learned a lot, I hope. I know I did.
Katie Dooley 58:32 Do we want to give a little preview about what we can expect next, since we're shifting gears again.
Preston Meyer 58:38 Yeah, now that we're done this mini series on religion, we're gonna get back into the, the tougher conversations. So what do we have first on our list?
Katie Dooley 58:48 Oh, next, I guess two weeks from now. We are covering belief, the concept of belief. And I'm really excited about that one. That was a big topic. It's a big topic
Preston Meyer 59:00 It's huge and complicated. We cover epistemology, we cover the nature of knowledge. For those of you who don't know it, epistemology is... We cover.
Katie Dooley 59:13 Yeah, it's definitely not recorded already.
Preston Meyer 59:18 I don't think I use the past tense. I think I use the...
Katie Dooley 59:21 No, you said we covered.
Preston Meyer 59:23 I thought I just said we cover
Katie Dooley 59:24 Okay, well carry on.
Preston Meyer 59:25 Oh, well, okay. What I said doesn't matter what
Katie Dooley 59:28 I said when I said!
Preston Meyer 59:31 And then we're going to talk a little bit about the weird
Katie Dooley 59:36 The C word. Cults.
Preston Meyer 59:41 And that'll be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to that too.
Katie Dooley 59:44 I started the research on it and we're gonna have a conversation when I stoprecording.
Preston Meyer 59:49 Absolutely. And then after cults, we're going to talk a little bit about a satirical religion
Katie Dooley 59:55 This is a fan request. So please know that we do check our social media and our Discord if there's something you want to hear the satirical religions episode is brought to us by Mr. Tim. Thanks, Tim.
Preston Meyer 1:00:08 And then we're going to look into what it means to be an atheist or an agnostic, both of them
Katie Dooley 1:00:13 The lack of religion. I kind of well read it when we get to the episode, but I love my notes for this.
Preston Meyer 1:00:23 Yeah, it'll be good. And then you'll see where we go after that.
Katie Dooley 1:00:26 Well, yeah, we will all see. where we go after that If you like what you're hearing if you can drop us a review on Apple podcasts. Please follow us on Facebook and Instagram and we do have a Discord available for you to join and check out. The link is on our social media. If you have any requests, concerns or hate mail, please email us at holywatermelonpod@gmail.com
Preston Meyer 1:00:57 Peace be with you.
Katie Dooley 1:00:59 I was like, Are you gonna say something else?
Both Hosts 1:01:04 Peace be with you.
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| 23 Sep 2024 | Branded Self-Help | 01:17:39 | |
Keith Raniere is the object of worship in the NXIVM cult, a god in the plainest sense of the word. The founder of a few MLMs, this guy knew how to make a fortune from people who turned out to be easy to manipulate. From collecting voluntary celebrities and multi-millionaires to veritable human trafficking, NXIVM started out looking like a simple self-help group with a complicated oath and patent, but things got dark when you got too deep. Faith-healing, hypnosis, and unsafe medical research should have been early clues, but hundreds of people are still committed to Raniere today. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 27 Mar 2023 | Breaking (Down) the Law - an Interview with Dr. Wes Thiessen | 01:03:21 | |
Dr. Wes Thiessen isn't just a great storyteller, he's a conflict resolution expert, and he's here to tell us about Sharia Law, its history, its real world function in Muslim communities, and why it shouldn't make anybody nervous. Islam is not monolithic, and neither is the study of law. The Golden Rule is extremely important in most legal cases, and the way it's applied in most cases deserves credit, as we'll hear Wes explain. Living and working throughout the "Muslim World," Dr. Wes has a lot of experience that we find useful for "understanding the other," and building better relationships across what many prefer to see as boundaries. We also look at the legal background of the extremist groups that are causing trouble for Muslims and their neighbours all around the globe. This interview continues on Patreon You can WATCH this interview on YouTube Connect with Dr. Wes on Instagram or Facebook, or check out his website: UnderstandingTheOther.com Find Holy Watermelon merch at Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Get more great religion facts in your feed on Facebook and Instagram Other links for Islam in Alberta: Al-Rashid Mosque, Edmonton Islamic Information Society of Calgary For other Islamic connections local to you, we'd be happy to connect you.
[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: Hi, Preston. [00:00:12] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie. [00:00:14] Katie Dooley: I am very excited for today's episode of [00:00:17] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast. [00:00:21] Preston Meyer: That was not a great. We always try and sync up and it always fails over Google Meets. [00:00:27] Katie Dooley: Because we're not together. But I am excited because we have Dr. Wes Thiessen here to talk about Sharia law and probably a bunch of other religious studies topics too, because he knows a lot of stuff. Welcome, Wes. [00:00:41] Wes Thiessen: Well, thanks, Katie, I'm delighted to be here. This is so exciting to be able to meet with you and talk about these things. [00:00:47] Katie Dooley: I mean, we like having religious conversations, and anyone who's willing to join us is a friend of ours. [00:00:53] Wes Thiessen: I like having religious conversations, too. So it's going to be pretty exciting. And I don't very often have them with people that are outside of my current circles. [00:01:06] Katie Dooley: Okay, well, this is going to be good. I'm just going to quickly read Dr Wes's bio so that we can get into the meat of it. Dr Wes Thiessen is a conflict resolution practitioner and a certified mediator. Born and raised in the city of Calgary. Dr Thiessen began his mediation training in BC following an undergraduate degree in psychology and theological studies and a master's in Historical Geography of the Ancient Near East, and studied in Jerusalem. He worked both inside and outside the justice system to resolve conflicts in many forms family, spousal, assault and property crime. He later completed a PhD in Islamic history after spending over another decade in North Africa. This life experience and education assist Wes in better understanding conflict with cultural and/or religious elements. In this practice, he assists families in conflict, employment conflict, and neighborhood disputes. He especially loves to help people resolve their differences to build better relationships with us. Wes has four children and five grandchildren and is also a part-time pastor of a rural church. [00:02:10] Wes Thiessen: Katie, I should have read that whole thing over because it's actually outdated. [00:02:14] Katie Dooley: Oh well, tell us what's the update? [00:02:17] Wes Thiessen: I have six grandchildren, not just five. [00:02:21] Katie Dooley: Congrats. [00:02:21] Preston Meyer: Congratulations. [00:02:23] Wes Thiessen: Yeah, the last one was born in September, so obviously that bio hasn't been updated since September. [00:02:29] Katie Dooley: Well, now now it's updated. He has six grandchildren. Everyone. So first question Preston had is what was your master's and PhD? [00:02:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I'm always curious about that sort of thing. What brought you here? [00:02:46] Wes Thiessen: So yeah, the subject of my master's thesis a long time ago was called, it was called "The Altar of Burnt Offering in Light of Recent Archeological Excavations." [00:02:59] Katie Dooley: Okay. [00:03:01] Preston Meyer: Okay. Interesting. [00:03:02] Wes Thiessen: Yeah, I spent two years. I spent two years studying in Jerusalem at the Institute of Holy Land Studies. If you look for it now, it's probably listed under the name Jerusalem University College. It's a graduate school that's located geographically on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, outside of the Old City walls, but in a very historical area. It is run by a board that is based, I think their charter comes out of Minnesota, but most of the administrative work, I think comes from the state of Illinois. But it's a graduate school that is run mostly by Americans but has an international student body, usually fairly small, but they have short-term programs and the longerterm programs. And I went there with the idea in mind that I was just going to spend a semester there, but ended up being there for two years because the learning that I experienced there just changed so much about my experience with the Bible. I went there on the suggestion of a professor of mine when I was doing my undergraduate work. He taught Old Testament studies, and he said that if I was thinking about working with the church, it would be excellent for me to go to the school for a semester to learn more about the land, language, and people of the Bible. And after six weeks, I decided to stay for a couple of years. And finding a topic for my master's research was just a matter of what's interesting for me. The program focused on history, archeology, language, Hebrew, and also archeology, and I went and participated in a dig for a few weeks in the land, and I was really interested in the intersection between what archeology discovered and how we understand the Old Testament, because there's always people who are looking for evidence to prove what they read is actually true. And I was looking more for what have we found and how does it change, how we understand what we read. And that's why I ended up with the topic that I did. Digs at the time were uncovering sometimes cultic objects, and it was helping us to better understand and interpret what we read in the Old Testament about the altar of burnt offering. [00:05:24] Preston Meyer: I do love your angle that you're coming at it, looking to learn more about what you're reading, instead of forcing what you're reading onto what you're finding. [00:05:34] Wes Thiessen: Well, I don't think I was always of that mindset though, so I think I experienced quite a bit of shift in that while I was living in Jerusalem. And as I was reading the texts and understanding our interpretation is like everything else, we filter what we read through what we already believe, and somehow we need to try and come back to the text with a little bit less bias, and see if it's possible for us to incorporate other possible interpretations, or at least relax our interpretation to the point where we can widen the circle a little bit, if that makes sense. Maybe some of your listeners understand what that means. [00:06:26] Preston Meyer: I think so, we got some pretty clever listeners. [00:06:30] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Our, uh, our listener base is all ready to, to learn, and they're very open. I don't think we'd attract anything else. And what about your PhD? [00:06:41] Wes Thiessen: So my PhD is entitled "The Formation of the Mudawana." [00:06:45] Katie Dooley: I don't know what that is. [00:06:47] Preston Meyer: You're going to have to tell us more. [00:06:51] Wes Thiessen: You can tell that that subject obviously is made for people who already have kind of an understanding of Islamic studies. [00:06:59] Preston Meyer: That's the case for a lot of PhD work. [00:07:03] Wes Thiessen: Yeah. I mean, there's not even a subtitle for my, my, my dissertation. So people have to at least know what the Mudawana is or, or be able to figure out what that word means. And the Mudawana is one of the two legal texts that's at the foundation of the Sunni classical school of Islamic law that was prevalent all across North Africa, which is the Maliki school. And just as in the way when people study under a particular PhD supervisor, they might be highly influenced by that particular supervisor. Maybe they will even be put into a particular box because of the person who they studied with. In the same way, in the early parts, in what we call it the formative period of of Islam, there were schools of thought. People were schooled by certain scholars and then by their disciples later on. And eventually these schools of learning became known as classical schools of Islamic law. And in Sunni Islam, there were four classical schools of Islamic law. Because I lived in the Muslim world, in North Africa, I was surrounded by people who had been versed in the Maliki school, and the Maliki school is simply named, like the other three schools, by the founder or what later Islamic scholars recognize as being the founder of the school. His name is Malik, and so it's called the Maliki school, just like we have the Shafi'i school, who is called after Shafi'i, and we have the Hanafi school, which is by Abu Hanifa, and so on. So the names of the schools are really named after people that they recognize as having founded or started or being the impetus for that particular school of thought. And the Mudawana is a text that eventually was gathered together, I suppose we can say, by people who followed the teachings of Malik, but were centered in the city of Kairouan in Tunisia, where I lived for 15 years. So I chose a topic based on the places where I lived, because I wanted to better understand the people around whom I was living. I wanted to know why do they believe the things that they believe? How was Islamic law formed? How did this law get created here in this particular place, and why did people follow this particular teaching? So the Mudawana is one of these books of law that was created in that area, caused me to ask these questions, and I wanted to know, how was this book made? So I started down some rabbit holes. [00:09:52] Preston Meyer: Makes perfect sense. Learn about the people that you're with. That's half of the motivation behind the Holy Watermelon. [00:09:58] Wes Thiessen: I'd love to taste that, by the way. Yeah. So that was that was a little bit about my dissertation. It's a little I don't know, it's it's a pretty deep rabbit trail like most dissertations. [00:10:12] Preston Meyer: Well, if it's not really long, is it even going to get really carefully observed. [00:10:19] Wes Thiessen: Uh, yeah. I, you know, another scholar really encouraged me to try and publish my, my dissertation, but I knew that was going to be another project. As I try and decide to edit and decide, what do I want the focus of the book to be if I'm going to publish it. And because I never ended up going into teaching in academic circles, I didn't end up pursuing it. Even though I did start a couple of relationships with a couple of publishing houses. But I really don't think that it gets many hits. You can download it for free now from the university where it's archived, but like I say, it's great for people who have insomnia. [00:11:01] Katie Dooley: Maybe we'll link it in our show notes and then people can read it. [00:11:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that'd be great. [00:11:06] Wes Thiessen: Yeah, sure. [00:11:08] Preston Meyer: So I'm curious, have your studies in Islam affected the way you approach your Christian faith? [00:11:14] Wes Thiessen: You know, I think, Preston, when I consider that, I would have to say that any interaction that I have with any other faith has impacted what I believe, really. I remember reading a book that somebody wrote about how the five pillars of Islam have changed my Christian faith. And I think that as you investigate other people's religious beliefs and their life and their practice, it's going to impact. It's going to influence how you think about your own. It's going to make you stop and think a little bit more about what is it that you do. Provided, of course, that you can just get over that little judgment piece. You know, a lot of a lot of people have this judgment piece that their religion, of course, is the right one and the best one. And, you know, I'm sure that a lot of your listeners are way beyond that. But until you can sit down and just have a conversation with another person because they're a person and not put them into the box of they believe something different than I do, therefore they don't have the same value that I do. [00:12:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's a struggle that a lot of people are still working with. [00:12:28] Wes Thiessen: Let me give you one example about how studying or learning about Islam has impacted me. So if we talk about the five pillars of Islam, one of them is salat, which means prayer. And you know, there are different practices depending on what kind of Muslim you are, whether you're Sunni or Shia or Sufi or Ismaili or whatever your branch is. But in Sunni Islam, which is probably the branch of Islam which is most well known and quite well defined or boxed. In traditional Sunni practice, Muslims should pray five times a day. And I was just watching a movie the other day. Interestingly enough, somebody brought a drink. A waiter brought a drink to somebody who was at a in a lounge chair by a swimming pool at a hotel in Beirut. It was obviously morning because the waiter said, good morning. He hands him his drink and the guy is drinking the drink. And in the background you can hear the call to prayer. And I said, well, that was that was really poor scripting because the call to prayer happens before sunrise, and then it happens at noon. And so that period where he's lounging by the pool isn't a period when it would be expected that somebody would hear the call to prayer anyway. [00:13:51] Preston Meyer: Maybe he's saying, good morning at 1158. Maybe. [00:13:57] Katie Dooley: Preston. [00:13:59] Preston Meyer: I gotta try. Right. [00:14:01] Wes Thiessen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How can we make it work? Just when you stop to think about the fact that Muslims who are dedicated to what they believe will spend time performing particular acts of devotion in prayer on a five times a day is pretty committed. And they will do particular gesticulations with their body. You know, they have to bend and they have to kneel and they have to bow in their forehead, has to touch the floor. So there's there's a lot of guidelines that you have to follow in order for your prayer to be acceptable and for somebody to be that committed to do it. You can see that that religious belief is going to permeate a lot of who they are. And Christians who balk at the idea that I don't want to do something that's so prescribed and so mechanical. Kind of like the debate that might happen in in worship circles between liturgical churches and non-liturgical churches. You might say, well, Muslims, you know, they're just they're just performing something out of habit. But even for a person, any kind of person, to perform a religious action, even if it's not very well defined or prescribed five times a day religiously, if we can use that word, that's pretty committed, that's going to impact your daily life. It's going to change how you think and it's that's going to impact your beliefs. And so I was just challenged as a Christian to think about, well, do I pray? Okay. I don't pray in the same way that Muslims pray, but that's pretty dedicated prayer. Are we dedicated to what we believe to the same degree? So questions of reflection on my own Christian practice based on what I've seen experienced in the Muslim world. And when you hear the call to prayer, if you hear the call to prayer living in the Muslim world, that's also another reminder. You know, it's it's a part of everybody's life that surrounds you. You're a part of that community which has its positives and its negatives, because you're either in or you're out right, or you're out right. You're pretending you're in or you know, you're out and everybody knows you're out, and then you're really out. [00:16:27] Katie Dooley: I feel like this is a weird question. What do non-Muslims do during call to prayer? Like, if you're a Canadian tourist visiting Dubai. [00:16:35] Wes Thiessen: You just carry on doing whatever you're doing. It's like it's like the music playing at the at the shopping mall. You go to the shopping mall at Christmas time and it's Christmas carols. And you know, you don't believe in Christmas and so you just sort of ignore it. You carry on doing whatever you're doing, okay? But you could walk into a shop and the person who owns the shop isn't standing at the counter. He's, uh, at the back on his prayer carpet, performing his prayer. And you just wait there. You wait until he finishes and he comes back, and then life returns to normal. [00:17:09] Preston Meyer: Have you ever joined in the prayer? [00:17:13] Wes Thiessen: Um, so I have joined in the prayer in the sense of being present. Physically present. Muslims don't make it a habit in the circles that I was in. They don't make it a habit of inviting non-Muslims to perform the prayer with them. And so they would expect somebody to do the other pillar of Islam, which is the shahada, or the testimony of faith. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. They would wait until somebody makes this testimony of faith before they would invite them into prayer with them. So I've been physically present while people have been praying, but not being invited to pray with them. And at different parts of the Muslim world, non-Muslims, the practice of whether or not non-Muslims can even come into a place of prayer will change. So, for example, in Turkey, non-Muslims are permitted to enter provided that they're dressed modestly enough. But in Tunisia, where I lived, if you're not a professing Muslim, you're not allowed to come into the prayer hall at all. So you have to look into the mosque from the door of the mosque. [00:18:20] Katie Dooley: Interesting. What's it like? I've we've talked about going to a Muslim service here, but I haven't looked into it. Would it depend on the dialoguingmosque or is it pretty open here? [00:18:33] Wes Thiessen: They are very open in Canada. In fact, if you're looking for a mosque to visit in Edmonton, I can set you up with somebody there. I've got some friends who work in the mosques in Edmonton. If some of your readers or listeners are in Calgary, I can also connect them with a couple of mosques here in Calgary, where they would be welcome to go and visit, meet the Imam, ask questions. I find that the Muslim leaders in Canada are very open to telling people about what they believe and dialoguing with people about their faith, and there are some branches of Muslims here in Canada who actually do proactive open house days where they advertise open house at their mosque on a particular day, on a Saturday, and invite people to come and have conversation with them, see the mosque, do a tour, ask questions, that sort of thing. [00:19:26] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I'd love those resources and we can put them on our social media and in the show notes. [00:19:32] Wes Thiessen: Yeah. Okay. [00:19:33] Katie Dooley: Now we do have a specific topic in mind for this interview, which we discussed with us. But because you're you have your PhD in Islamic studies, we want to talk about Sharia law today, because that's one of those topics that scares a lot of people and probably for no good reason. From what I know about it, it's not that scary. [00:19:52] Wes Thiessen: I think you're right on the money. [00:19:54] Katie Dooley: Okay. So how was Sharia law developed historically and how were these rules selected, sorted, established? You talked a little bit about the school you lived in. That sounds like it has its own rules and laws. Yeah, let's start there. [00:20:16] Wes Thiessen: Sharia law is very different than most people in North America conceive of it as. And that is because of how our laws are organized in North America or in the West in general. There's been a completely different development of law in our societies. And so when we think about somebody else's system of law, we naturally take our own template and we just overlay it on what we think theirs must be. And the trouble is that you can't actually do that. You can't take Western law and the way that our laws are written and designed, and how our whole law system works, and lay that as a template on top of Islamic law, because they were formed at very different time periods and in different ways and for different purposes. First of all, I feel really inadequate talking about Sharia law and its development only because as you study anything to a deeper and deeper level, you start to realize how little you actually know about something. But I suppose I probably know more about it than most of your listeners. And when I told people in Tunisia that I was studying about Imam Sahnoun and the Mudawana, many people would say to me, oh, you probably know more about Islam than I do. And I would have to concede, well, maybe that's true. I'm not a practicing Muslim, but maybe I do more do know more about your your historical development. But Sharia law is really it's a system and it's not a code. In the West we have a code of laws. So for example, in Canada we even have a, you know, a legal document that's called the Criminal Code of Canada. And in that criminal code, it tells you what you're allowed to do or what you're not allowed to do. And if you do this thing that you're not allowed to do what the punishment is going to be. And it doesn't work like that in Islam, because in Sharia, Sharia is a system of how law impacts life. And like I said, I'm not the best person. So if people are listening to this, let them know that they should listen to other people's perspectives and that maybe they will get a deeper and a wider perspective, that they listen to other voices as well. And this is just, you know, just a sliver into looking at what the subject is. But Sharia law means that I'm going to go back even a little bit further, and I'm going to draw back in something else from my Old Testament studies this last Sunday when I was preaching to my congregation. It's Transfiguration Sunday this last Sunday. So we're on the 21st of February. That was what the 19th and Transfiguration Sunday ,they celebrate the transformation that Jesus Christ experienced on Mount Tabor when he took his three disciples up and to talk about Transfiguration Sunday, I also brought in the text from Exodus, which is when Moses was invited to go up the mountain where he was going to meet with God, and in that going up the mountain, Moses went up the mountain with Joshua. And he told the Israelites as he was going up the mountain, you have Aaron and Hur here who will help you as I go up the mountain. Well, why did he need to do that? He did that because he was telling them. Me, Moses, your judge, the person who is helping you decide whether you can do these things or you can't do things, I'm going to go away. But even though I'm gone, these two people are going to help you. Now, that's really useful if you know that information from Old Testament studies, because that idea is also found within Islam, that Islamic law is based around somebody who guides you, somebody who judges, somebody who teaches. Because most of Islamic law is based around the idea of somebody going to talk to the judge, knocking on the door and asking him, I've got this situation. Is it permissible for me to be able to do this, or is it permissible for me to be able to do that? And so a lot of Islamic law developed out of hypothetical situations or even real situations where people would bring their questions to the legal expert and they would ask the legal expert, is it permissible for me to divide my property in half so that my son can build on this property, even though the property was given to me by my father in law or something like that, and then the person who is making the legal opinion will draw on all of their experience, and other judgments that have been made will explain those, and then they will make a judgment. And so you, some of the listeners might remember somebody by the name of Salman Rushdie, who wrote a book called The Satanic Verses, and then there was a fatwa that was put out against Salman Rushdie. So a fatwa is like a legal ruling and in order for a legal ruling to be made properly within orthodox Sunni Islam, the person who is asking the question asks the question, and then the judge or the decider is going to have to go back, and they're going to have to see all of the times in Islamic history that they're aware of, that this particular topic has been brought up before, who the judges were, who ruled on something. And what they ruled on and why they ruled on it before they're able to make their judgment. And so basically they use precedent to be able to make modern decisions. But in addition to that, they also have to go by the Quran, which is the written expression of the direct word of God, revelation of God for Muslims from God through the angel Gabriel to Muhammad, who then learned all of these things, and some of them were written down on scraps of bone, and some of them were written down on scraps of leather. Eventually, it was all recited and written down on scrolls and gathered. By the time of the fourth leader of the Muslim world, at least, this is the narrative that we understand about how the Quran develops. So the Quran is very important. This is one thing that Islamic law has to line up with. The second thing that Islamic law has to line up with is the Sunnah. And the word Sunni Muslim comes from the word sunnah. And Sunnah means the behavior or the actions or the life or the speaking of the Prophet Muhammad. So Muslims all recognize that God's direct revelation was given to Muhammad, and Muhammad then became the Messenger of God or the rasul of God. And this messenger lived out what God's law was more perfectly than anybody else did. And so his life and his sayings become a model or a template for Muslims to follow. So Islamic law must line up with the Quran, it must line up with the Sunnah. And then, depending on the Sunni school of jurisprudence that you belong to, there's two other parts of it as well. One is called the ismah and ismah means the consensus. And so many people, probably in Christian circles, would be familiar with the idea of consensus. If they come from a congregation that follows a consensus style, which is where everybody in the congregation, and for Muslims, this would be the senior leaders, where they would all sort of agree together. Yes, this is the right way. Yes, this is the good decision. Yes, this is the good thing to do. And then the last of the four considerations of Islamic law would be called in Arabic prius, which means analogical reasoning. An analogical reasoning becomes important because the Quran is a book that was revealed and then recorded at a specific period and context in time. But there are some subjects that the Quran doesn't deal with directly, and so in order for us to understand how the Quran relates to those things, like for example, using a computer, somebody might come to an Islamic judge and might ask the question, is it permissible for me to use a computer? Is it right or is it wrong? Can I use a computer? And so then the judge would go back and in their analogical reasoning, they're going to look for something in the Quran that talks about something similar to what the idea of a believer using a computer means now, and apply that information to the current situation. So we have these four different streams that any idea that you're asking about, or anything that you want to rule it on has to be filtered through the Quran, the Sunnah, the consensus of the leaders, and then analogical reasoning. Of the for this is a really long answer, Preston. Of the four Orthodox schools of classical Islamic thought, three of those schools follow those four as being the help that they need in order to determine legality of any particular question somebody will come to somebody with asking. However, there is one school of thought which, instead of following those four, only follows the first two, the Quran and the Sunnah. And what happens when you reduce the perspective when you're asking religious questions? When you reduce, when you reduce that perspective? If I can loosely say you become more narrow-minded and it is out of this school, this classical school, that we now have many more of them, of the extremist interpretations of Islam, because they only access the Quran and the Sunnah, and they have a very conservative view of interpreting the Quran and a very conservative view of interpreting the Sunnah as well. I'm not sure if I even answered the question, but I gave you a lot of information. [00:30:33] Katie Dooley: I think you answered multiple questions in that answer that were coming up, so that's great. [00:30:40] Preston Meyer: I'm looking at our list of questions and seeing that the next one has, in fact been answered. So the idea of what is criminal versus what is civil law is. It's a pretty soft line in between those two categories. [00:30:59] Wes Thiessen: Yeah, I'm going to make a comment about that, Preston, without you even asking a question. [00:31:03] Preston Meyer: I think you know what the question is. Go for it. [00:31:06] Wes Thiessen: I think Islamic law, from my understanding, Islam touches on everything in life. It tells you about civil society. It tells you about politics. It tells you about social interactions. It tells you about your personal life with your spouse. It tells you about how to relate to your relatives. It tells you what happens when you die. It tells you when you should, when you should wash and how you should wash. It just covers everything. So to say that Shariah only covers criminal is not correct. And this might be one of the reasons why people in the West get concerned when the topic of Sharia law comes up, because Islamic law filters into everything that you do in society, it has something to say about everything. And if you can't find a specific answer, then you just go to this person who interprets the law for you and ask them, is it permissible for me to do this? And they'll give you the answer. [00:32:08] Preston Meyer: Right? And it's really not terribly different from the large codex of laws that we have in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible, that it does cover your civil stuff, your what we would call criminal activity. So it's interesting to see the parallels there that it's so different from what we are familiar with today. [00:32:29] Katie Dooley: Well and we have this conversation last episode press and the difference between Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy and I think that's Judaism and Islam are very much orthopraxic religions where what you do really matters. Is that fair? [00:32:46] Wes Thiessen: Definitely, definitely. Yes. [00:32:50] Preston Meyer: So how is the law typically enforced in communities where it's the predominant way of life? [00:32:58] Katie Dooley: I'd also even add to that what does it look like in Muslim communities in Canada? To compare. [00:33:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah. [00:33:06] Wes Thiessen: You're going to need another guest to ask about the Canadian Muslim communities, because I haven't lived in Canada long enough understanding what I do about Islam or its communities to know how they cope with it. And I'm not an insider, so I'm not going to have those answers either. I could connect you with somebody if you'd like, but but that question, how is Islamic law governed today in the Muslim world differs depending on where you are in the Muslim world. It's not the same across the board as you probably would have guessed. And that difference is dependent on the region of the world and the history and the current government in that particular region. So. You know, the Muslim world is not homogenous. Sorry to break somebody's bubble. Muslims themselves are also not homogenous, just as in the same way there's all sorts of Christians. There's all sorts of Muslims. And meeting one Muslim doesn't mean that you have met everyone else and that you understand everything about everybody else. I learned this quite quickly in Tunisia, because even marital customs differ from one area of Tunisia to another. And so going to a wedding in the city where I lived didn't mean that you knew what people would do at a wedding in another city of the same country. In this in the same reference frame of reference, where you are in the Muslim world is going to change how Islamic law is regulated. So after the breakup of the Turkish Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, there was a breakup by international powers of taking those that region and dividing it up and putting it under mandates by other countries. So the region that I was in, in North Africa was under French rule, including Tunisia and Algeria, and the Italians took over Libya. And I think the British Mandate was in Palestine and in Egypt, and the French were in Syria and in Lebanon. And those Western nations had a huge influence on what happened in civil law in those countries. And so because they went there and like, for example, there was a, you know, a almost, you know, Arabs would call this like an occupation. But the French colonized Tunisian Algeria. They actually dealt with them both differently, to one point where the nation of Algeria was actually considered France. It was French territory, whereas Tunisia was like a protectorate or under colonial power by the French. The French would bring their law. And I'm only speaking about these areas because I know these specific geographical areas better than others. But the French brought their civil law, and they would regulate what was happening in Tunisia at that time period by French civil law. And when the Tunisians gained independence in 1956, much of the French civil law continued to be practiced in the country. Whereas now Tunisian law is basically based on French civil law, it's not based on Sharia. Now there are other countries in the Muslim world like Afghanistan and Pakistan and even further afield, where they didn't have this same influence by their colonial powers, and so their traditional laws would have carried over a lot more than in other places. So now in Tunisia, they don't talk so much about Sharia as they do about what's the law? What does the law say? Uh, this is French civil law now morphed into something modernized in Tunisia. And then depending on how each government, how progressive they are, uh, how interested they are in trying to reform something or move things in what they believe is a modernizing way, they will completely change the legal system. And so when the revolution happened in 2011, in Tunisia, there was a religious party that came in and they wanted to rewrite the constitution, and they wanted to rewrite the Constitution in more of a religious milieu. They didn't want to institute Sharia law as part of civil law, but they wanted to emphasize that their current form of law could be more Islamicized than what it had been because of the French influence. So that's a partial answer to your question. But I want to push the issue a little bit more, because I know a little bit more about Islamic law than I think that the two of you do. And sometimes when you don't know about something, you don't actually know what questions to ask, right? You don't know what you don't know. And so I want to talk for a minute about something called hadd punishments. And it's, um. It had punishment is kind of like you can sort of relate to it. If you understand the Old Testament idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, right? If he stole this from me, then I should be able to get this from him, right? If they murdered somebody in my family, I should be able to murder somebody in their family. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And when people talk about Sharia law in the West, they get they get this really concerned sense because it means all of a sudden, if somebody accidentally does somebody kill somebody, then the only way that we're going to get this taken care of is by revenge, by killing somebody else in their family. And the other famous ones that a lot of people in the West are familiar with is if you steal something, then the punishment is that we're going to cut off your hand. Right. And if one hand is gone already and you're still stealing, we'll cut off your other hand. And then they move to the feet. And eventually you might have somebody with no hands and no feet. And the idea behind that, I think, is, is the concept. If you're missing a hand, it's going to be much more difficult to steal. But what people don't realize is that cutting off somebody's hand when they steal something is considered a hadd punishment and hadd actually means like a border, an end, a maximum. So it would be the equivalent in our code of the maximum penalty that when somebody comes before the law, if they get convicted of drunk driving, I don't know what. Does anybody know what the maximum penalty is for drunk driving now in Canadian courts? [00:39:53] Katie Dooley: No, but I can Google it. [00:39:56] Preston Meyer: I've while she Googles it, I've always understood that it as exactly that, that the maximum punishment is this thing. When talking about the whole eye for an eye thing in the Hebrew Bible, where it's this is a new law, a new limitation on what was before a situation of revenge, where, yeah, sure, he stole my sheep and now I get to kill his family. Nope. That's way too extreme. You get exactly what you lost. [00:40:24] Wes Thiessen: That's exactly right, Preston. That's exactly what the Islamic idea is, that there is a boundary on that and hadd. Another form of the word hadd, a cognate of it in Arabic is hudud, and it means boundary, like the boundary between Canada and the United States. And so a hadd punishment is giving you a maximum. This is as much as you can have, and no more. But the idea also in practice is that we don't go for the maximum. That's not what we start with. Usually we start with something much, much less than that. Because the idea behind Islamic law at its heart, is actually the idea of reform, that we want to change the individual, that we want the impact of what we're going to do to have a positive outcome, and so that our society is going to be better. And the best understanding that I have of this in a modern context is, is what happens in First Nations communities when people are convicted of something, that they bring a circle around them, of leaders in the community, and that circle is there to try and help bring positive impact and positive change on the person who's responsible for the crime. [00:41:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's an excellent parallel. Katie, did you find what you're looking for? [00:41:46] Katie Dooley: I did. A summary conviction carries a two years in prison. An indictment has a maximum of 14 years. And if you kill someone, you can get life in prison. [00:41:56] Wes Thiessen: Wow. Yeah. But I'm sure if you have any experience or you've heard stories, people are convicted of drunk driving. And, you know, they don't. They don't spend two years in jail. Yeah, they might get their license taken away from them. [00:42:12] Preston Meyer: And even that's not a sure thing. [00:42:14] Wes Thiessen: Yeah, yeah. [00:42:16] Preston Meyer: So that principle of, you know, hopefully we can get them to reform is present in our tradition too. Though, it feels just a tiny little bit different because we have different expectations of what we count as the other. Plus, we like telling stories of people getting their hand cut off. [00:42:35] Wes Thiessen: Yeah, but like the media, people are always attracted to the extreme. They're always attracted to the bizarre. And we like to lift those up as we think of them as being the norm when they're not. You know, you hear about somebody who's stoned in Afghanistan or somebody who's executed in Saudi Arabia. These are these are not the norm. They do happen, but they're not the norm. [00:43:03] Katie Dooley: The stories of people going to their leaders to ask how to deal with their mother in law. Never make the news. [00:43:10] Wes Thiessen: That's right. Yeah. [00:43:12] Katie Dooley: Going to their mediator? Wes. [00:43:17] Wes Thiessen: Thanks for the plug, Katie. [00:43:19] Katie Dooley: Important work, but probably not newsworthy. [00:43:22] Wes Thiessen: Exactly right. [00:43:23] Katie Dooley: Unfortunately. So that is a good context to put it in. What are. Do you know any interesting or surprising laws that Sharia has? The example I put in our questions you might have read. We did an episode, a bonus episode on abortion and abortion is permissible in Islam if it benefits the mother and the family. But if you're a devout Catholic, that probably looks pretty barbaric. So that one surprised me. [00:43:52] Wes Thiessen: So, you know, if you read a compendium of Islamic law, which is similar to the book that I studied for my PhD dissertation and just, you know, a disclaimer out there, I didn't read the entire book. It's so long. And but I looked at sections of it and I translated a very small portion of it. It's very intense. And I'm not a specialist in Islamic law. But when you look at those compendiums, they will all have very similar section titles. And those section titles relate to the really important aspects of life that Muslims in the formative period of Islam were dealing with. And so, for example, at that point in Islam, the religious expectations of prayer were beginning to be codified. I don't like the word codified, but sort of formed. And what people were expected to do. And it changes again from one classical school to another classical school, like, for example, the way that you kneel and whether or not you have your back feet so that they're both equally on the carpet, or if you have one foot on top of the other foot, which foot that should be, whether it's the right foot that should be on the left foot or vice versa. And then when you stand up, there's also a discrepancy between two schools of thought, of how your hand position should be when you're standing, whether both of your hands should be overlapped on on top of each other, on your belly, close to where your belly button is, or if they should be down at your side. And so each particular school of law will have a different form that's important for them. And these compendious chapters that they have that are relevant to the time of Muslims in the formative period of Islam. One of them, for example, that is always curious for people is about purification. Because for Muslims, before they pray, they go through a ritual purification to make themselves clean in order to enter into the mosque and to perform prayer. And as most Westerners I think probably know, when you go into a mosque, the first thing you do is you take your shoes off and you leave your shoes at the entrance to the mosque because nobody goes into the prayer space in your shoes. And this comes simply from the, the background that people when they came into a space to pray, during the time of early Islam, people wore open shoed, open-toed shoes or sandals. Their feet would get dirty because they were in a dusty space. Islam, you know, it's it's formative areas in the region of Saudi Arabia and and the Middle East. So it's hot, people are sweaty, it's dusty. And you take your sandals off before you come in, and then you go and you wash. And washing was really important actually to make sure that people were clean. And the washing would include the area around their feet, up to their knees, depending on the particular school you come from, and then carrying your hands over your head with some water to be able to wash that, and then around your ears and, and in your nose and around your mouth. Because with your ears, your nose and your mouth, you're actually cleaning the orifices of your body that takes things in sound and smells and speech and food. And so there is a figurative purification, but also a literal purification. We're cleaning the dust off, but we're also metaphorically cleaning the parts of our bodies, our faces, our eyes, the senses that bring things into our bodies. And then, of course, your hands and up to your elbows. And in different schools they will have different regulations about how many times you have to do this. And I think for people from the West, this is one of those things that's interesting or surprising. Why is it that there is so much, maybe you could say perseveration on this kind of a ritual purification, and it's really important to understand what the background is and the context to be able to bring you to a place where you can see, well, why did this develop and and why was this important? And now tradition has carried this on. And tradition is extremely important within Islam because as you can see, when I talked about the Quran and the Sunnah, which is what the prophet did, that tradition of what the prophet did is very, very important for people to follow because they recognize that as being the best way. And so they want to make sure that they imitate the best way. [00:48:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I think it's interesting that different schools of thought have different precise rules on the exact method of what counts as purification that somebody went to, the one who gets to make the judgment. And he said, you got to be really clean. And somebody went to a different judge and said, you got to be really, really clean. And apparently that's different. And it's of course, became more detailed. [00:49:24] Wes Thiessen: Right. It's important to remember, too, that those schools developed in different regional areas, um, around a personality. And there's, there's, you know, uh, of course, academic argument amongst scholars as to whether or not it developed by a region or if it developed around a personality. And so that debate is still ongoing about the formation of Islamic law, but geographically and by those schools, you can see that they moved in this direction. And maybe in the same way that language develops, because we have regional accents as a result of language developing in one area differently than it does in another. We have a similar thing when Islamic law developed that it formed in a particular way and this particular region like this, for this reason, and it formed somewhere else for this reason. And there there wasn't the same. You couldn't just Google or or, you know, do a VoIP call to somebody to check with them about how they dealt with this. And so you get different schools moving in different directions, generally the same. But you know, some some details that are different. [00:50:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Dealing with back to specifically cleanliness. It's going to feel a little different in the jungle versus the desert. I feel like that that question of geography versus personality, I feel like uh, depending on which aspects you're looking at, you're looking at a combination of the two. [00:50:53] Wes Thiessen: Yes. [00:50:53] Katie Dooley: I think I'm going to combine these last two questions. So obviously talking about Sharia law, I think we have to talk about ISIS and the Taliban. But also people are scared of Sharia law. And we're seeing a lot of Christian nationalism, especially in the States. But here as well, what should we actually be scared about? [00:51:13] Wes Thiessen: You know, I think if I stop and think about that for a little while, I might actually be more scared about Christian nationalism than I am about Sharia law. [00:51:22] Katie Dooley: I would in North America. I absolutely would be. [00:51:25] Wes Thiessen: Yeah, yeah. But that said, I've also travelled to other parts of the Muslim world. I, you know, I was in, uh, eastern Turkey and northern Iraq in 2019, and I went back to northern Iraq this last August and September, and I went because I was distributing eyeglasses to Muslim. Well, actually, not not Muslim necessarily, to refugees and to internally displaced peoples. And it was especially poignant to me in 2019 when I was in a refugee camp in Turkey and I met some I met this guy there who had heard that I had been around and wanted me to come and help his uncle, and I met him at outside of barbershop, and so I made an agreement that I'd come and see his family in a day or two, and they were living in a refugee camp. That they had been forced out of the region that they were in because of ISIS and the family got special treatment because this uncle that I had come to see was handicapped, and because of his handicap, he was given the best housing in the refugee camp, which was a cement box. It was a building with four walls and a roof, but it was a cement shell. And people in North America would just recognize it as you know, this is a building that's in development. But and it wasn't very big, you know, maybe like somebody large living room. Well, I shouldn't say large, an average-sized living room in North America. And they had carpets on the floor and we were welcomed in. I was with a couple of friends, and they had pillows around the corners for us to sit on to make us more comfortable. And the door didn't shut all the way, so you could see through the crack in the door what was going on in the courtyard outside. Or at least, you know, a sliver of activity. And there was a washroom that was connected to this building. But again, it was just four walls and then a Turkish toilet, if people knows what those are in the floor. That was and this was, this was the deluxe accommodations. Everybody else was in tents. And I could see while I was sitting in that room through the crack in the door, people were going back and forth, lots of movement, back and forth, going out of the yard and back into the yard, and people coming back into the yard carrying bags. And I could sort of tell what was in the bags. And then I sort of figured out what was going on. And a few minutes later, they brought in this enormous silver tray decked out with roast chicken and lots of food. And I knew that the amount of money that they had spent in order to try and bring me a meal that they thought was worthy of who I was as their guest, completely unnecessary in my mind, but that the hospitality in that region of the world is just unbelievable. And the honor that they give to guests puts us to shame. I'm just trying to create a little bit of a context in order to set up what I'm about to describe, when you talk to these people who have been displaced about some of the experiences that they've gone through and what it's like now. Your heart breaks and there's there's no words that you can say that bring any kind of a sense of empathy or good feeling to this person as they describe. We were living in our home, Christians and Muslims together in the same village, getting along fine, no problem for centuries. And all of a sudden this group comes in and they tell us that we have a choice to make right here and right now, that we can either bow to ISIS and sign on to what their theology is so we can choose their theology at that moment, or we're welcome to leave our own home and they will occupy it. Or, uh, we can pay a tax. I don't even know if the tax was instituted by that time in ISIS, when they were making their way across this particular swath of Syria. And, of course, because it's my home. I don't want these people here, and I'm going to do whatever I can in order to protect my family and my my home but the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to tell them, get out. This is my house. You don't belong here. Only a couple of minutes later to see my brother's head rolling on the floor beside me, helped me make the decision that I was going to leave with the rest of my family because my life was worth more to me than staying in that home and almost wanting to be sick. When you hear this kind of a story where the ideology of ISIS comes and forces people to do things that are inhumane. Now I say that because I also want to make sure that I honor any of my Muslim brothers and sisters as brothers in humanity that might be listening to this, to say that these actions do not represent Islam, they represent an extremist form of Islam. And I hope I've set that up a little bit by talking about those classical schools and saying that there was one particular stream that had a much narrower interpretation, where they only used the Quran and they only used what they understand as the traditions of the prophet. And, and over the centuries, that was like 800 years ago when that was solidified. Over the centuries, they have had even more extremist and conservative interpretations, where it's developed into Wahhabism, which is the modern term that's used to understand the theology of the people who follow this very conservative form of interpretation of Islam. More and more interpretation comes out of power and control, and these forces change people's ideology, so much so that they're missing the main idea of what this is about. And that Islam. Now, if you talk to you, talk to scholars, you will understand that Islam is a is a difficult word, as many words within Islam are actually difficult to understand what their etymology and their background is, they've been borrowed from other languages or they've come in from other ideas. But one of the roots behind Islam is salam, which develops into the other cognate salam. Some people might be familiar with that word salam, which is also related as a Semitic language to the Hebrew word shalom, which people are more familiar with, meaning peace. And that is Islam in the minds of many people who are practicing Muslims, is a religion of peace and not a religion of war and not a religion of extremism. And yet, like Christianity, which is also understood by many as being a Christian, a religion of peace has also developed into places of extreme conflict. Easy for us to turn to the conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and what's gone on for centuries. So much conflict now that if you go to Ireland and you visit people and talk to them, they're some of the people will say, I don't even know what we're fighting about anymore. And this unfortunately, this happens with the human race. We get caught up in things. We lose our perspective. We miss the main idea because we're so focused in on trying to prove that we are right, that we're the holders of truth, and that we're the ones that get to decide who else is right and who else is in and going to other countries and learning about other cultures and languages and other faiths. All that's done for me is to expand my mind and help me realize that people live differently because they've been brought up in a different context, in a different place. Does that mean that what I believe or how I live my life is better than theirs? No, it just means that it's different. You know, I still have very firm beliefs of of spiritual value and nature, but I have come to the point where I respect and honor other people in the beliefs that they've chosen. And there is so much that we have in common between ourselves and the Muslim community. I would really encourage Christians, if they don't know Muslims, to go and seek one out and just say, hey, I've never met another Muslim before and and I'd like to I'd like to just meet one because I want to know more about Muslims. Why don't we want to know more about somebody? [01:00:40] Katie Dooley: Uh, Wes, one last question for you. Is there anything you want to promote? I know you have a business. I know you do some volunteer work that you alluded to. Where can people find you? Pitch yourself. [01:00:53] Wes Thiessen: Well, thanks for that opportunity, Katie. So I work as a mediator. I love to help people resolve their conflict. Uh, I work in all forms of conflict. Uh, especially love to work with couples that are struggling in their relationship, but they don't want to go down the road of divorce. Although I do do divorce mediation as well. Uh, I love to help couples figure out what their relational difficulties are and try to resolve those. I also work with organizational conflict. So if there are churches or even mosques where they have conflict within their organization and looking for somebody to facilitate something or help them untangle what the conflict means, they can always reach out to me. My my website is understandingtheother.com. Uh, and you can email me if somebody wants to send me an email. wes@understandingtheother.com. And I also mentioned my eyeglass ventures in eastern Turkey and northern Iraq. I might be making a trip to Tunisia this year, I'm not sure. Still in the planning stages and people in Iraq have invited me to come back again and maybe do an eyeglass clinic in the region of Mosul or the Sinjar, which is the region that ISIS came to and drove so many Yazidis out of that region. So I'm thinking about that as well. And if people are interested in what I do with eyeglasses and eyeglass distribution, they can find me on Instagram at 2020. So that's 2020. The word vision v-i-s-i-o-n and the number four and the word refugees @2020vision4refugees. That's my Instagram handle. People are welcome to connect with me there, follow or even send a message if they've got questions. [01:02:38] Katie Dooley: Awesome. Thanks, Dr. Wes and Preston, what about us? [01:02:42] Preston Meyer: Well, we've got a little bit of merch ourselves. I don't think we have eyeglasses on our list, but maybe one day we've got our Spreadshop. Uh, we've got a great online community on Discord, as well as Facebook and Instagram and Patreon. If you want to support our show, Patreon is the way to go and thanks for joining us! [01:03:06] Both Speakers: Peace be with you! | |||
| 15 Mar 2021 | Sikh and You Shall Find | 01:05:19 | |
Sikhism is one of the newest "World Religions," only about 800 years old. Sikhism was developed in the context of Islam and Hinduism. It is a monotheistic religion based on the teachings of 10 gurus. In this episode, we cover the history of the 10 gurus and the creation of the religion. From human gurus to book gurus we talk about the creation of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book. Did you know that the Guru Granth Sahib is considered to be a fully living and present guru? Sikhism is a panentheistic religion that takes elements of Hinduism and mixes it with elements of Islam. Sikhs worship in Gurdwaras and their gatherings are filled with hymn singing followed by a free vegetarian meal so that they can support all members of the community, not just their religious one. We also cover the 5 Ks of the Khalsa, a group within Sikhism of devout followers that hold themselves to a higher standard of beliefs and practices. Finally, Sikhism is becoming more popular amongst non-Indian groups and we chat about the future of this religion.
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Katie Dooley 00:12 Preston Meyer 00:13 Katie Dooley 00:17 Both Hosts 00:18 Katie Dooley 00:22 Preston Meyer 00:29 Katie Dooley 00:31 Preston Meyer 00:35 Katie Dooley 00:36 Preston Meyer 00:38 Katie Dooley 00:43 Preston Meyer 00:49 Katie Dooley 00:50 Preston Meyer 01:01 Katie Dooley 01:05 Preston Meyer 01:14 Katie Dooley 01:16 Preston Meyer 01:17 Katie Dooley 01:27 Preston Meyer 01:54 Katie Dooley 02:13 Preston Meyer 02:16 Katie Dooley 02:25 Preston Meyer 02:30 Katie Dooley 02:33 Preston Meyer 02:39 Katie Dooley 02:40 Preston Meyer 03:04 Katie Dooley 03:20 Preston Meyer 03:26 Katie Dooley 03:29 Preston Meyer 03:58 Katie Dooley 04:11 Preston Meyer 04:16 Katie Dooley 06:08 Preston Meyer 06:12 Katie Dooley 06:33 Preston Meyer 06:51 Katie Dooley 06:54 Preston Meyer 07:28 Katie Dooley 07:30 Preston Meyer 07:57 Katie Dooley 08:00 Preston Meyer 08:11 Katie Dooley 08:13 Preston Meyer 08:34 Katie Dooley 08:50 Preston Meyer 08:51 Katie Dooley 08:53 Preston Meyer 08:55 Katie Dooley 09:11 Preston Meyer 09:15 Katie Dooley 09:23 Preston Meyer 09:31 Katie Dooley 09:35 Preston Meyer 10:09 Katie Dooley 10:24 Preston Meyer 10:29 Katie Dooley 10:36 Preston Meyer 10:45 Katie Dooley 11:02 Preston Meyer 11:04 Katie Dooley 11:26 Preston Meyer 11:44 Katie Dooley 12:06 Preston Meyer 12:16 Katie Dooley 12:17 Preston Meyer 12:34 Katie Dooley 13:28 Preston Meyer 14:18 Katie Dooley 14:21 Preston Meyer 14:42 Katie Dooley 14:44 Preston Meyer 14:50 Katie Dooley 14:53 Preston Meyer 15:26 Katie Dooley 15:33 Preston Meyer 15:46 Katie Dooley 15:49 Preston Meyer 16:00 Katie Dooley 16:25 Preston Meyer 16:32 Katie Dooley 16:36 Preston Meyer 16:50 Katie Dooley 17:14 Preston Meyer 17:19 Katie Dooley 17:36 Preston Meyer 17:52 Katie Dooley 17:54 Preston Meyer 18:02 Katie Dooley 19:03 Preston Meyer 19:09 Katie Dooley 20:35 Preston Meyer 20:46 Katie Dooley 20:49 Preston Meyer 21:08 Katie Dooley 21:11 Preston Meyer 21:29 Katie Dooley 21:35 Preston Meyer 21:40 Katie Dooley 21:41 Preston Meyer 21:52 Katie Dooley 23:03 Preston Meyer 23:22 Katie Dooley 23:56 Preston Meyer 24:25 Katie Dooley 24:27 Preston Meyer 24:37 Katie Dooley 24:41 Preston Meyer 24:47 Katie Dooley 25:01 Preston Meyer 25:04 Katie Dooley 25:23 Preston Meyer 25:27 Katie Dooley 25:31 Preston Meyer 25:39 Katie Dooley 25:43 Preston Meyer 25:46 Katie Dooley 25:55 Preston Meyer 26:12 Katie Dooley 26:46 Preston Meyer 26:52 Katie Dooley 26:53 Preston Meyer 27:51 Katie Dooley 28:00 Preston Meyer 28:53 Katie Dooley 28:55 Preston Meyer 29:33 Katie Dooley 29:38 Preston Meyer 29:51 Katie Dooley 29:55 Preston Meyer 29:57 Katie Dooley 30:06 Preston Meyer 30:09 Katie Dooley 30:14 Preston Meyer 30:26 Katie Dooley 30:34 Preston Meyer 30:40 Katie Dooley 30:53 Preston Meyer 31:27 Katie Dooley 31:42 Preston Meyer 31:56 Katie Dooley 32:00 Preston Meyer 32:18 Katie Dooley 32:27 Preston Meyer 33:26 Katie Dooley 33:41 Preston Meyer 33:45 Katie Dooley 33:59 Preston Meyer 34:05 Katie Dooley 34:09 Preston Meyer 34:14 Katie Dooley 34:17 Preston Meyer 36:07 Katie Dooley 36:46 Preston Meyer 37:00 Katie Dooley 37:50 Preston Meyer 37:52 Katie Dooley 38:50 Preston Meyer 38:56 Katie Dooley 39:34 Preston Meyer 39:36 Katie Dooley 39:59 Preston Meyer 40:15 Katie Dooley 41:21 Preston Meyer 42:14 Katie Dooley 42:42 Preston Meyer 42:51 Katie Dooley 43:03 Preston Meyer 43:19 Katie Dooley 43:34 Preston Meyer 43:51 Katie Dooley 43:54 Preston Meyer 43:58 Katie Dooley 44:01 Preston Meyer 44:24 Katie Dooley 45:02 Preston Meyer 45:06 Katie Dooley 45:13 Preston Meyer 45:15 Katie Dooley 45:21 Preston Meyer 45:34 Katie Dooley 45:34 Preston Meyer 45:41 Katie Dooley 45:46 Preston Meyer 45:56 Katie Dooley 45:58 Preston Meyer 46:07 Katie Dooley 46:16 Preston Meyer 46:22 Katie Dooley 46:36 Preston Meyer 46:40 Katie Dooley 46:51 Preston Meyer 46:56 Katie Dooley 47:38 Preston Meyer 47:41 Katie Dooley 49:13 Preston Meyer 49:15 Katie Dooley 49:17 That's what I mean is they're not reasonable... Preston Meyer 49:19 Katie Dooley 50:36 Preston Meyer 51:25 Katie Dooley 51:34 Preston Meyer 51:41 Katie Dooley 52:13 Preston Meyer 52:14 Katie Dooley 52:14 Preston Meyer 52:23 Katie Dooley 53:23 Preston Meyer 53:42 Katie Dooley 53:51 Preston Meyer 53:55 Katie Dooley 55:16 Preston Meyer 55:30 Katie Dooley 55:32 Preston Meyer 55:44 Katie Dooley 55:58 Preston Meyer 56:29 Katie Dooley 58:14 Preston Meyer 58:17 Katie Dooley 58:18 No, I've seen a woman with a turban. I've never seen a female Sikh cover her hair in a way not a turban. Because they don't wear scarves don't wear hijabs. I either see them just own their long hair or wear a turban. Preston Meyer 58:33 Katie Dooley 59:05 Preston Meyer 59:08 Katie Dooley 59:09 Preston Meyer 59:10 Katie Dooley 59:28 Preston Meyer 59:37 Katie Dooley 1:00:09 Preston Meyer 1:00:52 Katie Dooley 1:00:54 Preston Meyer 1:01:12 Katie Dooley 1:01:13 Preston Meyer 1:01:21 Katie Dooley 1:01:24 Preston Meyer 1:01:27 Katie Dooley 1:01:38 Preston Meyer 1:01:58 Katie Dooley 1:02:06 Preston Meyer 1:02:46 Katie Dooley 1:02:47 Preston Meyer 1:02:52 Katie Dooley 1:03:40 Preston Meyer 1:03:49 Katie Dooley 1:03:50 Preston Meyer 1:03:53 Katie Dooley 1:04:03 Preston Meyer 1:04:06 Katie Dooley 1:04:10 Preston Meyer 1:04:29 Katie Dooley 1:04:38 Preston Meyer 1:04:39 Katie Dooley 1:04:42 Preston Meyer 1:04:43 Katie Dooley 1:04:46 Preston Meyer 1:04:46 Katie Dooley 1:04:49 Both Hosts 1:05:07 | |||
| 18 Jan 2021 | Messiah: Complex | 01:06:34 | |
Our second episode on the Abrahamic traditions is about Christianity, the most popular religion in the world. Katie and Preston give a high-level overview of the history, traditions, observances, and the handful of common beliefs that are found amongst all denominations.
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Episode Transcript Katie Dooley 00:00 Preston Meyer 00:10 Katie Dooley 00:12 Preston Meyer 00:13 Katie Dooley 00:19 Preston Meyer 00:21 Katie Dooley 00:28 Preston Meyer 00:31 Katie Dooley 00:34 Preston Meyer 00:37 Katie Dooley 00:38 Preston Meyer 00:41 Katie Dooley 00:51 Preston Meyer 00:54 Katie Dooley 00:54 Preston Meyer 01:06 Katie Dooley 01:07 Preston Meyer 01:11 Katie Dooley 01:16 Preston Meyer 01:19 Katie Dooley 01:56 Preston Meyer 02:04 Katie Dooley 02:04 Preston Meyer 02:12 Katie Dooley 02:13 Preston Meyer 02:49 Katie Dooley 02:59 Preston Meyer 03:05 Katie Dooley 03:05 Preston Meyer 03:10 Katie Dooley 03:14 Preston Meyer 03:15 Katie Dooley 03:19 Preston Meyer 03:27 Katie Dooley 03:28 Preston Meyer 03:32 Katie Dooley 03:56 Preston Meyer 03:57 Katie Dooley 05:06 Preston Meyer 05:07 Katie Dooley 06:47 Preston Meyer 06:50 Katie Dooley 08:05 Preston Meyer 08:12 Katie Dooley 09:28 Preston Meyer 09:30 Katie Dooley 09:33 Preston Meyer 09:35 Katie Dooley 09:50 Preston Meyer 09:56 Katie Dooley 10:45 Preston Meyer 11:27 Katie Dooley 11:37 Preston Meyer 11:42 Katie Dooley 11:45 Preston Meyer 11:48 Katie Dooley 13:50 Preston Meyer 13:53 Katie Dooley 13:54 Preston Meyer 13:58 Katie Dooley 14:00 Preston Meyer 14:02 Katie Dooley 14:27 Preston Meyer 14:33 Katie Dooley 14:34 Preston Meyer 14:41 Katie Dooley 14:41 Preston Meyer 15:01 Katie Dooley 15:02 Preston Meyer 15:53 Katie Dooley 16:10 Preston Meyer 16:11 Katie Dooley 16:57 Preston Meyer 17:00 Katie Dooley 18:15 Preston Meyer 18:18 Katie Dooley 18:20 Preston Meyer 18:45 Katie Dooley 18:51 Preston Meyer 19:07 Katie Dooley 19:25 Preston Meyer 19:26 Katie Dooley 19:33 Preston Meyer 19:35 Katie Dooley 20:05 Preston Meyer 20:08 Katie Dooley 20:45 Preston Meyer 20:46 Katie Dooley 21:09 Preston Meyer 21:13 Katie Dooley 21:34 Preston Meyer 21:36 Katie Dooley 22:10 Preston Meyer 23:29 Katie Dooley 23:33 Preston Meyer 23:49 Katie Dooley 24:28 Preston Meyer 24:29 Katie Dooley 25:42 Preston Meyer 25:43 Katie Dooley 25:52 Preston Meyer 25:56 Katie Dooley 26:24 Preston Meyer 26:26 Katie Dooley 27:44 Preston Meyer 27:48 Katie Dooley 28:43 Preston Meyer 28:47 Katie Dooley 29:31 Preston Meyer 29:34 I mean, it's easy to say that that's what the problem was. Katie Dooley 29:37 Preston Meyer 29:38 Katie Dooley 29:50 Preston Meyer 29:52 Katie Dooley 29:58 Preston Meyer 30:04 Katie Dooley 30:12 Preston Meyer 30:19 Katie Dooley 30:26 Preston Meyer 30:32 Katie Dooley 30:52 Preston Meyer 31:01 Katie Dooley 31:29 Preston Meyer 31:39 Katie Dooley 31:52 Preston Meyer 31:55 Katie Dooley 32:40 Preston Meyer 33:08 Katie Dooley 33:17 Preston Meyer 33:28 Katie Dooley 33:41 Preston Meyer 33:45 Katie Dooley 34:34 Preston Meyer 34:55 Katie Dooley 36:44 Preston Meyer 37:12 Katie Dooley 37:21 Preston Meyer 37:41 Katie Dooley 38:01 Preston Meyer 38:15 Katie Dooley 39:47 Preston Meyer 39:53 Katie Dooley 40:02 Preston Meyer 40:27 Katie Dooley 43:01 Preston Meyer 43:07 Katie Dooley 43:11 Preston Meyer 43:56 Katie Dooley 47:32 Preston Meyer 47:41 Katie Dooley 47:44 Preston Meyer 48:06 Katie Dooley 48:07 Preston Meyer 48:31 Katie Dooley 48:38 Preston Meyer 48:45 Katie Dooley 48:48 Preston Meyer 48:53 Katie Dooley 48:58 Preston Meyer 49:33 Katie Dooley 49:39 Preston Meyer 49:42 Katie Dooley 50:14 Preston Meyer 50:33 Katie Dooley 50:36 Preston Meyer 50:41 Katie Dooley 50:46 Preston Meyer 50:57 Katie Dooley 51:08 Preston Meyer 51:13 Katie Dooley 51:15 Preston Meyer 51:16 Katie Dooley 51:27 Preston Meyer 51:43 Katie Dooley 52:16 Preston Meyer 52:17 Katie Dooley 52:21 Preston Meyer 52:31 Katie Dooley 53:48 Preston Meyer 54:08 Katie Dooley 54:29 Preston Meyer 54:33 Katie Dooley 54:37 Preston Meyer 54:54 Katie Dooley 55:13 Preston Meyer 55:43 Katie Dooley 56:03 Preston Meyer 56:12 Katie Dooley 56:17 Preston Meyer 56:35 Katie Dooley 56:46 Preston Meyer 56:49 Katie Dooley 57:11 Preston Meyer 57:42 Katie Dooley 58:09 Preston Meyer 58:32 Katie Dooley 59:17 Preston Meyer 59:37 Katie Dooley 59:44 Preston Meyer 59:50 Katie Dooley 1:00:19 Preston Meyer 1:00:44 Katie Dooley 1:02:30 Preston Meyer 1:02:34 Katie Dooley 1:02:49 Preston Meyer 1:03:03 Katie Dooley 1:03:16 Preston Meyer 1:04:07 Katie Dooley 1:04:16 Preston Meyer 1:04:27 Katie Dooley 1:04:30 Preston Meyer 1:04:39 Katie Dooley 1:05:48 Preston Meyer 1:05:50 Katie Dooley 1:05:59 Preston Meyer 1:06:04 Both Hosts 1:06:17 | |||
| 12 Feb 2024 | How They Became Gods | 00:47:50 | |
Euhemerism is essentially the hypothesis that many of the gods who have been celebrated throughout history may not have been simple fabrications but real people around whom great myths developed and grew to legendary proportions. Euhemerus was a fellow who entertained and educated with tales of how the old gods of Hellenic (Greek) tradition were originally humans, mortals who lived mundane or occasionally exciting lives, and died, forever to decay into nothingness, who would have been forgotten if they hadn't become objects of institutionl veneration. Most of his hypotheses have been forgotten, but the principle remains, and naturally leads to interesting speculation. Was Odin a real man, or an amalgamation of wisened wanderers? Were the Aesir (Asgardians) Asian kings, or Germanic immigrants to Scandinavia, rather than simple legendary personifications of the elements and national ideals? We also discuss why Christianity isn't a good fit for this discussion on Euhemerism, but that maybe the Abrahamic religious origin could be. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 16 Aug 2021 | Apocalypse, Now? | 01:12:50 | |
We're discussing the Revelation of John in this episode. The Revelation is an end-of-the-world prophecy also known as the Revelation of John or the Apocalypse of John. The book is credited to John of Patmos in the first century, though scholars believe this is actually a composite work with many authors. When reading the Revelation, the content is supplemented from many other books in the Bible, especially the Old Testament Prophets. What does this prophecy mean for mankind? Should we take it literally or only as a metaphor? There are six different ways to read the Revelation, and we touch on each of them: historicism, preterism, amillennialism, post-millennialism, futurism and idealism/allegorical. We also discuss the symbolism in the book as well as Christian Zionism, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the Rapture. Tune in if you want to learn more about the end of the world! All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
*** Preston Meyer 00:09 atheist and agnostic of religion, but you're ready for the end of the world.
Katie Dooley 00:13 No, I'm not even a little bit prepared.
Preston Meyer 00:18 As ready as I was five years ago, Allah that
Katie Dooley 00:22 Were you prepared five years ago?
Preston Meyer 00:25 No, no?
Katie Dooley 00:28 Well, yeah, we're about to prepare you for the end of the world on the
Preston Meyer 00:34 holy watermelon podcast.
Katie Dooley 00:38 So this was a listener request. Thank you, Sarah for requesting the Revelation of John episode, which is why we talked about prophecy two weeks ago to segue into a more specific prophecy. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 00:54 this one's juicy.
Katie Dooley 00:59 That's a really odd way to put it. But I see where you're getting right. I thought it was really fucking weird, right?
Preston Meyer 01:09 I've mentioned before, and I'll bring it up again. It bugs me so much when people call it revelations. Especially since an awful lot of the people who call it revelations are people who are happy to tell you that they have read it. Just not the title. I guess not the title. Revelation,
Katie Dooley 01:35 and the philosophy rock? Sure.
Preston Meyer 01:40 The Revelation of John also sometimes called the Apocalypse of John, which not accurate. I mean, well, we've went and changed the definition of the word apocalypse, which is the real problem. The Greek word apocalypse means Revelation. But because the book describes what feels like the end of the world as we know it, we've
Katie Dooley 02:05 now associated Apocalypse with the end of the world. Yeah. Okay. And
Preston Meyer 02:09 that's, I'm gonna call it cultural illiteracy. Okay, if you hear a word used way too often, and you never actually learn what it means, you start applying it to this new context that you do firmly associated with the word immaculate.
Katie Dooley 02:28 We've done that with the word immaculate. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 02:31 in fact, I mean, that's how languages evolve, broadly speaking in general, but there's, there's a few cases where it's just super annoying. And, I mean, I've gotten used to people describing the end of the world as the apocalypse, fine, whatever, but it is technically wrong.
Katie Dooley 02:55 Okay. If you really want to know my Preston, hop onto our Discord and write revelations over and over again,
Preston Meyer 03:01 yeah, it's like when somebody wants to, quote, a psalm. They'll say Psalms 119, whatever, whatever. Like, no, no, no, no, it's a singular Psalm. It's, if you're referring to just one psalm drop that final s vivid is the book of the Psalms. And maybe that's why people do that with the revelation. Cuz the revelation is sometimes looked at as though it contains several separate revelations. But that's still wrong.
Katie Dooley 03:30 Well, it is kind of multiple we found in our research. I mean, I'm feel like you probably knew this before. But from Britannica, they said that it is a, it is a collection of separate units composed by multiple authors.
Preston Meyer 03:45 Yeah, the scholarship on this book is actually really fascinating. And there's an awful lot of scholars who feel very confident now that it is a large composite work.
Katie Dooley 03:56 I mean, we'll get into this further, but even just how much of the revelation is supplemented by other books of the Bible. I want to say it was grasping at straws, but it really feels like they were pulling from other places. The
Preston Meyer 04:13 revelation really relies heavily on a few of the Old Testament prophets, especially Ezekiel and Daniel. But there's also loads of other little ideas that get pulled from some, some imagery that gets used from Isaiah even as well.
Katie Dooley 04:30 Yeah, well, and I, you'll see, later on, I cited Matthew quite frequently for how to describe the end of the world. Because like, anyway, I went down a rabbit hole and it's terrifying. Do we do do do you know any research on who John was because I found I assumed it was done the impossible. And then I read that there was no indication that it was Jon Postel.
Preston Meyer 04:56 There's an awful lot of scholars who are I'm very confident that there's no possible way that John the Apostle could be John of Patmos, John of Patmos being the the identifier within the text for who wrote the Revelation. And it's kind of weird. They do have some similarities in their language. Both of them continue to use Aramaic words, instead of being smooth Greek. But other than that we have the same first name. And that's really kind of it. I mean, back then everyone was named on the Yohannan was a very popular name among the Hebrews among the, the Juday, and people and the diaspora.
Katie Dooley 05:47 But I actually found sources that said, Jon Postel, was exiled to Patmos and John of Patmos is done the impossible. Yeah. And then I found, like I said, on pretend Britannica says that there's no indication that there's the same person. So some of the more wild interpretations of Revelation, I really feel like they're just making shit up. Oh,
Preston Meyer 06:13 yeah. Identifying John is, is really tricky. There's loads of doubt. And there's some pretty good reasons for that doubt that they're the same person. There are some churches who will say explicitly, this is John, the apostle, is John the Revelator. They're the same person. And there are other churches that are a lot less committed to that idea, because they just tend to stick with the popular scholarly opinion, which makes perfectly good sense.
Katie Dooley 06:44 I mean, I agree with that. Right. So I found on Wikipedia is basically the different ways Christians interpret the revelation and I find this really interesting. So I think we should speak to those. Yeah. So there's six and try to count.
Preston Meyer 07:03 Yes, there are six different categories, six or category.
Katie Dooley 07:06 So number one is historicism, which sees the revelation as a broad view of history.
Preston Meyer 07:18 Basically, just kind of covering things up. We have the Four Horsemen are usually when looked at as historical representations. They're meant to cover the 4000 years leading up to that point in history where this book was written. So the
Katie Dooley 07:33 broad view of history is not a specific event. It's sort of a summary. Yeah. All the stuff that's happened in the world so far, yeah.
Preston Meyer 07:42 It's large loosey goosey. And when we talked about prophecy, a couple of weeks ago, he talked about how it was super obvious that the prophecy of the Pope's was a forgery, because it was super specific, up until the point of publication, and then vague and cryptic afterwards. Here in this text we have vague and cryptic for the history, if we want to go with this historic interpretation of the book. The
Katie Dooley 08:09 second one is Preterism. So this is where you believe revelation refers to the events of the first century, or at the latest, the fall of the Roman Empire is a very specific time in history, as opposed to a broad History of the World History. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 08:28 And that's it, that does fit pretty nicely with the broad use of apocalyptic literature, where it's, Hey, we're an oppressed people, but we're going to overcome our oppressors, and everything's gonna be great. And the fall of Rome, not in a terribly distant future for these people. The
Katie Dooley 08:46 next is a millennialism. So this rejects any sort of literal interpret interpretation of the revelation and is just sees it as symbolic, which I like, because it's gonna get weird. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 09:00 And they, they also reject the idea of there being 1000 year period of peace after all of this happens, which is explicitly mentioned within the text. So it gets a little bit tricky.
Katie Dooley 09:16 But I guess if it's all symbolic, then matter if you say something explicitly,
Preston Meyer 09:20 yeah, you could just say, Millennium hole he just means for a long time. Yeah. Like, anytime we talked about Moses in 40 years, probably was just, Oh,
Katie Dooley 09:32 thank goodness because to be lost in that desert for 40 years is unacceptable. Post millennialism rejects the literal interpretation as well. And sees the world becoming better and better with the entire world, eventually becoming Christianized makes sense well enough, I was gonna say, Where's your commentary Preston? That's, that's okay. I'm satisfied. Okay. futurism believes that the revelation disagree tribes future events, so an actual revelation. So this is also called millennialist.
Preston Meyer 10:06 Yeah, and that's probably most people who are concerned with the book of Revelation. This is where most of them seem to sit. Or they're looking forward to the end of the world as they know it in all of these cataclysmic events. And some of them are very fearful. And, yeah, futurism.
Katie Dooley 10:26 I'm just gonna say there's gonna be a point in this podcast where I don't know if I can be nice anymore. We'll see. We'll see. I'll try. And the last one is idealism or allegorical, which refers to the revelation as not an actual event, but an allegory of your spiritual journey. And this one I can get behind to. Some of them I can't get behind
Preston Meyer 10:49 some of the symbolism in there, it gets really specific alarming for a personal journey.
Katie Dooley 10:59 I just think it's an acid trip at some point. I don't even know if I call it alarming. Czar, like they did a few tabs of acid and we're like dragons.
Preston Meyer 11:11 All right. So what I think is really fascinating is the dragons that everybody draws in connection with this story. of Neil, we're talking like four limbs and an extra set of wings breathing fire. And that's, that's a much newer idea of what a dragon is. The dragon, as we have written in the biblical text, the word DragCon is a Greek word that means serpent. I usually a big sea serpent, something large that lives in the water, but and serpentine. But yeah, I feel very confident that its use here, though it may meant it may be meant to evoke images of the old Leviathan, I feel more like it's meant to evoke images of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, especially as this this adversary of humanity,
Katie Dooley 12:09 and it toys it all nicely back to the beginning. Right. I like that one of the theories that I read again, from our resource from the botanic website is that that is actually a contemporary piece for the first century that is supposed to help Christians get through the persecution from Rome at the time.
Preston Meyer 12:29 Yeah, absolutely. So the moral of the story is when you've read the whole letter, because it's it's written in an epistolary format, mostly, at the end of it, you're supposed to come out of it, having hope, with this message that we're going to overcome this Roman persecution. So yeah, absolutely. Supposed to help with that crisis of faith in a time when the Roman Empire is like, No, you need to worship our God Emperor is the only supreme god. And of course, Christians say, hey, we really don't want to do that.
Katie Dooley 13:04 As someone who has studied the Bible, this is a little off script. But is the revelation so we we believe it's written by multiple authors, or any of those authors, the same authors as other books of the Bible? Or is this like a total? I haven't made it this far. If anyone's listening, I haven't. One Samuel why every
Preston Meyer 13:21 scholar who believes that the book of Revelation was written by multiple authors will reject that any of them had anything to do with writing the base text to anything else in the New Testament, though editor's could certainly have been involved with multiple projects, including the Revelation of John.
Katie Dooley 13:45 Interesting. Yeah, it just feels like again, I haven't read the whole Bible yet. But it feels like such an out there, book, content and structure wise.
Preston Meyer 13:55 It's wildly different from everything else in the New Testament. But familiar enough if you've gone through some of the cooler parts of the Old Testament.
Katie Dooley 14:05 By getting to the cooler parts of the Old Testament, it'd be a little while.
Preston Meyer 14:08 You got to get through history before you get to the prophecy books.
Katie Dooley 14:14 Alright, I see you have some notes on Joel Osteen.
Preston Meyer 14:18 His name? Yes, I do. Name? Yes. So the interesting thing about the Revelation of John, and we've talked about how there's loads of doubt about the author, it was never in editing. Any time in human history. It was never popular in the lists of what counts as the Christian canon. And an awful lot of people have put an awful lot of time arguing against it for as long as it's been circulated. Also, I wanted to define the word canon because it comes up a fair bit in the discussion of this book. So canon means measuring stick or the standard against which other things are measured. So for Star Wars fans, none of the books ever are canon. At no point in history were the books canon. The films are the Canon against which you could judge if the books were truly part of the same continuity. In the same way, the huge amounts of Christian literature that have been created in the last 2000 years, like the words of Polycarp, and CS Lewis, and Joel Osteen. They're evaluated for their content relative to what is in the scriptural canon, which is selected by committees over the course of centuries, eventually bringing us the New Testament as we have it today. And so, centuries of arguing about what is really the foundational texts of our religion, it was super easy to adopt the four gospels that are sitting at the front of the New Testament, it was super easy to adopt the writings of Paul, broadly speaking, but it took a lot of work to figure out which ones were genuine Pauline epistles, and the Epistle to the Hebrews is still a mystery text. It was ascribed to Paul for a while by a bunch of people. And now it's generally rejected that definitely wasn't Paula wrote the epistle to the Hebrews, that kind of thing. So the history of this book of Revelation is flip flop back and forth, mostly. Dionysius, in the mid third century rejected the apostolic opera authorship of the book, but did admit that its author was inspired anything
Katie Dooley 16:38 so it was a revelation just not done the apostle. Right. Okay. And
Preston Meyer 16:42 then, about 100 years later, used to be as included the book in his list of accepted books, but also included in his list of rejected books. He waffled on this? Yeah, and we're not talking like decades apart or books apart, but like, in the same text,
Katie Dooley 17:04 so he had a stack of accepted and a stack of rejecting just switch back and forth
Preston Meyer 17:07 for it was an old stack simultaneously for this guy.
Katie Dooley 17:12 Can't decide today, like
Preston Meyer 17:14 when he wrote on, these are books that are good. And these are books that are bad in the same content lists. Like huge hand you up piece of paper, and on both sides of this piece of paper, one side, good, one side bad. It's on both sides. Because it's, it's, it's a problem for people. Yeah. The Council of Laodicea in 363, omitted the book from the canon, Council of Rome included it only 20 years later. And the Eastern Orthodox Council in trullo, in 692, omitted the book from the Canon as well. It's still rejected by many Christian groups today. When we say the Christian New Testament, it's, it's a lot more monolithic than the Old Testament. But there's, there's still some issues there. We have smaller Christian groups that don't use the same New Testament either. Well,
Katie Dooley 18:13 and then there's just like, how much stock you put in to the revelation, right? There's churches that are entirely based. There's one in the West Ed. It's called The End of Days church. Like it's entirely right, we get these fire and brimstone preachers that base their entire doctrine on the revelation. And then there's Summerlin, kids allegorical. Yeah, right. So
Preston Meyer 18:38 there's, there's an awful lot of freedom when deciding how you're going to use a book. And sure that makes sense.
Katie Dooley 18:46 I guess so.
Preston Meyer 18:49 i The problem comes when you start doing things that hurt people are ruined people's lives with this book that was written so long ago.
Katie Dooley 19:00 Like I said, we'll get into it. And we're tight a little bit before we pressed record. How much people like, put time and energy into this? And I mean, I know I'm coming at it from an atheist perspective, but it's kind of terrifying.
Preston Meyer 19:18 Yeah, there's some weird ways and using this book. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 19:21 there and at some we're gonna talk about Christian Zionism. Some dangerous ways people have used this book. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 19:27 One of my books there's, there's a lot of things I do like pointing out that are in this book to people who aren't as familiar with the faith that they like to lay it out on other people lay it on. And one of these I mentioned a month or two back when we were talking about Satanism, that the idea that Lucifer has to be this evil figure and anytime you ever talk about Lucifer, as a good thing, you're automatically a Satan worshiper. Nonsense. People like to throw that at Freemasons because there was a couple of Freemason authors a couple of centuries ago, that really liked to describe the philosophy of Freemasonry as Luciferian. And Lucifer means light bearer. And Lucifer is the poetic name of the Morning Star. In Latin, referring to Venus or occasionally mercury. Apparently, some people get that confused, I guess, mostly Venus. And the morning star. That symbol of us a five pointed star, whether inverted or not, in old is Christianity, referred to Jesus. And this is actually illustrated in the Revelation of John.
Katie Dooley 20:53 Well, it's it was interesting to me, because like Morningstar is not used a lot in the Bible, it's just twice and once it's for Lucifer, king of Babylon, and once it's for Jesus, yeah, like those are polar opposites. So I thought that was a really interesting choice of language of all the things and I mean, the revelation goes on to calm the lamb and the lion and whatever of all the things the only other reference in the Bible is to the devil, and you're calling him the morning star. And I know Lucifer is not the devil, but common perception is that Lucifer is a bad dude. Or a sexy Tom Ellis, if you're listening, I'd love to interview. That's sorry, I didn't hear you. Yeah, no, I,
Preston Meyer 21:36 I have to deny that Lucifer was ever used in the Bible to describe the adversary of God, except for the one situation where he describes the king of Babylon, and his self styled title, that is equivalent to the morning star. So that's, that's my little thing.
Katie Dooley 21:58 What other fun facts do you like to throw at people about the revelation?
Preston Meyer 22:03 The one of the things that came up last time I talked about this in Sunday school, cuz I'm a Sunday school teacher as well, is this business about the 144,000. Some churches, including the Jehovah's Witnesses, will say this is how many people get into heaven. Jehovah's Witnesses, cosmology and theology is super complicated. And it's, the problem I have with it is that's not a thing that can be fairly pulled out of this text. We have 144,000 elders, who go and do a particular work for the Lord in this text. And that's got nothing to do with who's going to heaven. That's not what this chapter addresses even where this 144,000 are mentioned. What's interesting to me, though, is that the 144,000 is 12,000, from each of 12 tribes in Israel. But that list, it gives us the 12 tribes of Israel is obviously written by either somebody who's not familiar with Israel, or has a specific reason to exclude one particular group. And that is still mysterious to me, because we have the list of the 12 tribes. And usually Levi is left out of any list of 12 tribes, because Levi's descendants never received any city inheritance really apart from where they had their altars, so they could perform priestly duties among all of the people of Israel across all of the tribes. But this list in Revelation includes Levi and excludes Dan for some reason. It includes Joseph, but excludes Ephraim but does have Manasa it's that's a weird replacement thing. And maybe the name Manasa is thrown in where Dan is supposed to belong. It's, it's all really fuzzy. But what's really weird is that people use this exclusion of Dan in this list to say the Danish people are evil.
Katie Dooley 24:30 I believe that
Preston Meyer 24:31 I'm Danish. So problems only for you. And the entire nation of Denmark out there atheist anyway, not all predominantly more than a lot of the way. But the idea of identifying this one little group out of the nation of Israel to equivalent to another nation. Then on the other end of Europe, that is also kind of little is nonsense
Katie Dooley 25:07 also because it didn't exist, presumably, when the Bible was written. I
Preston Meyer 25:12 don't know when the Kingdom of Denmark was organized, but I feel like the Danish people were probably up people around this. I mean, yeah,
Katie Dooley 25:21 but they were would have been all small tribes like we didn't really start to say weren't organized.
Preston Meyer 25:27 Yeah, yeah. Especially
Katie Dooley 25:29 in that part of Europe into like, the 1200s is when what we would call countries now start to farm. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 25:39 Did stretch all the way? Around this Europe pretty much
Katie Dooley 25:44 doesn't feel like you're back then. Is that weird to say?
Preston Meyer 25:48 It's not Europe as we know it. I mean, we had the Roman Empire along basically, everything in Europe, except for the northern bits, which was the Germanic tribes. And honestly, I feel like they were probably more organized than we give them credit for to
Katie Dooley 26:02 probably, let's skip Christian Zionism now and come back. All right, that shouldn't be there. But let's talk about the content, the actual guts of this book. Now, tell me if I'm wrong, but I listened to it one and a half times. And he didn't make it through the second recording. And then I mean, obviously did a whole bunch of research. And I watched some wild videos on the revelation. And from what I listened to read audiobook, versus the interpretations, I felt like, there was not a plot in the book, of which people would interpret into crazy things. Sorry, into elaborate things. So for example, like I know the Raptors from Revelation. I was like key. So where does it describe people being sucked up in their clubs being left behind and everyone else's suffer? And there's like two sentences. And it doesn't refer to any of those, like, how do we get this imagery of
Preston Meyer 27:12 Let Me Google that real quick. I
Katie Dooley 27:13 have it in my notes. Do chapter three, verse 10, is a revelation. Since you have kept My command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have that no one will take your crown. That's the rapture. That's what the entire Left Behind series is based on. Is those two sentences. No, that's not it at all. Okay, am I reading the wrong thing? No, that's what I read was we're actress chapter three.
Preston Meyer 27:48 So Matthew 24. That's not the revelation. Right. But that idea, it comes from Matthew 24. The whole left behind. titular idea. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 28:03 Right there. Yeah. The
Preston Meyer 28:05 book series expands and implements a lot of things taken from the revelation. But that idea that one person can be taken up and the person right next to him not, is from Matthew 24.
Katie Dooley 28:16 Okay, so then how does this work in like a Bible study context?
Preston Meyer 28:19 Oh, you have to lean heavily on what we call intertextuality. Where you go flip back and forth between several different books and string together all these different ideas can make up whatever story you want, if you're not extremely careful, yes. Okay. That's the wonderful thing about people who study books, I guess is, they will connect all kinds of ideas. I took a whole course on intertextuality with just different philosophic literature and books that people thought were supposed to be like deep philosophical dives, that when you read this book, and also read Kant or Freud, then this changes the way you understand the book. Yeah. And that is basically how most people read the Bible, because you've got a bunch of different prophets who say, little bits of information here and there. You have to string them together if you want a solid image and some people are really bad at that job and string together terrifying or awfully destructive images. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 29:37 I was I was like, expecting this but you know, having you know, heard of left behind and a season tonight. I was expecting, like revelation to be this big, scary book. And I was like, no. It talks about a really weird animal with bear paws, which we'll get to, but that's about it. But I'm like, oh, and then Nero, which we'll also talk about But like other than that, I was like, this is not nearly the traumatizing book I was expecting. So
Preston Meyer 30:09 cool. Yeah. It's there's an awful lot of ideas that because we're they're connected to the end of the world, we connect to the revelation. And some of it is just not there. And that includes the whole the the nitty gritty of the details of the rapture, the rapture, which is such a weird word. But yeah, it's intertextuality allows us to point to where in the timeline in Revelation, like it does give us a spot where if you understand that this thing is that thing, then that thing happens here in the story,
Katie Dooley 30:49 which is why when I told you I was reading the Bible, in order, you're like, that's not how it's dead.
Preston Meyer 30:56 In chronological order, yeah, that's, that's just not the way it happened. No, people put effort into it, but
Katie Dooley 31:05 oh, well, that's fine. I do. But so is the rapture, the rapture is linked to the Second Coming. Yes. Let's talk about the second Kami, do all Christians believe in the Second Coming?
Preston Meyer 31:17 Not all Christians, do you? Do I believe that Jesus is going to come back in a physical form, and people are actually gonna be able to notice that that is part of what I believe? Yes. Interesting.
Katie Dooley 31:28 All right, let's talk.
Preston Meyer 31:30 So the, the earliest point at which it was taught explicitly, was immediately after he left, and before the epistles were sent out to all the people by Paul before John wrote to his seven churches, anything like that. the Acts of the Apostles, written by a fellow named Lucas or Luke, as we commonly nominate lish, he tells the story of how, after Jesus spent 40 days after he died, hanging out with people showing them yeah, I'm alive again. Check out my holes, whatnot. And
Katie Dooley 32:14 phrasing, press
Preston Meyer 32:16 the holes in his hands, the holes in his side, okay, those five holes, seven, an odd number of holes. Phrasing. So he spent more than a month showing people and testifying that he truly was dead, buried, risen again. And then he ascends up into the sky. And Lucas tells us there was loads of witnesses. And the fact that the book is still around means that there's a lot of people who were like, yeah, no, I was I was there. I'm one of those witnesses. And we have no idea how many that would have taken to establish that, but we have it. And there's in that story, it tells us that there were also a couple of angels, messengers from heaven, who said, the same way you watch them go up, he's gonna come down the same way. And then that idea has persisted pretty strongly among the vast majority of Christians ever since.
Katie Dooley 33:28 Is, I feel like the Second Coming. And I guess this kind of falls in line with just how you take revelations, but I feel like revelation. This depends on how you take the revelation. I feel like some people take the second coming like super seriously. Yes. That's probably a spectrum thing as well. Yeah, I
Preston Meyer 33:52 think so. Like, I
Katie Dooley 33:53 remember going to my friend's youth group. And I remember them like talking about how they like can't wait for Jesus to come back. And like that they have to be prepared because it could happen at any time. And I'm like, does everyone live their life like this? Like is like is that in the forefront of your mind? No, all the time that like Jesus could come back tomorrow, no cakes. That's how they were talking. They're like, I hope Jesus comes back. So in my lifetime, but I have to admit that he might not
Preston Meyer 34:26 like we talked about in our last episode with prophets and a lot of people saying Jesus is coming right away. No warning, but also right away.
Katie Dooley 34:37 The rebel in laws kind
Preston Meyer 34:39 of all the time. So the Revelation of John actually lays out the this promise that you're going to have plenty of warning before Jesus shows up. Like we've got a seven year war. It's gonna be absolutely awful. And in Christ, we got weird animals. Yeah. And Jesus shows up after the seven You're so anybody says Jesus could show up any minute. I guess they believe that this seven year war is already happening. But you've also got loads of other warning signs. Like we have to have Christian prophets in Jerusalem for three and a half years. And then they die in the streets. And then you've still got a few years warning. So anybody like the fellow who said the world was going to end may 21 2011. The guy was seriously out to lunch.
Katie Dooley 35:41 Yeah, this is where your belief is founded. And then, yeah. Now, I was meant to talk about this later. But I feel like this is a good segue into Christian Zionism, which I think is terrible. Yeah. But that these Zionists are trying to force the second coming by making these things happen. I mean, it feels really yucky to me. And I feel like Jesus went like that. I feel like Jesus doesn't want to come back that bad that we can kill a whole bunch of people in Palestine to force the Second Coming to have right Am I Am I wrong?
Preston Meyer 36:18 See, I agree completely. Because the way that any good Christian should be preparing for the Second Coming would be the exact same way they prepare for the eventualities of their death of don't be a dick. And things are gonna be okay. Yeah, because you could get hit by a truck tomorrow, a lot more likely than Jesus coming in tomorrow. If we're committed to the seven year timeframe that the revelation gives us, as an awful lot of Christians are the be more worried about dying by surprise, then being caught by surprise by Jesus? Yeah.
Katie Dooley 36:56 So a lot of Christians believe that the Second Coming is about to happen because the Jews took control of Israel in 1968. So they took control of Israel a 96. Year, but there
Preston Meyer 37:10 was a British nation of Israel started
Katie Dooley 37:13 to form in the 40s, after the war, as a place for all the refugees to go. The United States is a huge funder and supporter of Israel, because they're trying to force the Second Coming. Which again, that's just like,
Preston Meyer 37:30 I mean, it's not only that, but it's definitely including that, well. I have a lot of faithful Jews, hoping to absolute from the nation as well. But it's not just one thing. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 37:42 One of the one of the stats I read is that Trump had voted that Israel was like the like Jerusalem for life to Israel to Palestine, in a un vote, and only nine other countries agreed with him. And the vast majority disagreed with him. And then of course, there were some non non committal country vote so well,
Preston Meyer 38:04 for the most part, the UN, while recognizing the plight of Palestine don't recognize Palestine as a nation. No, it's not an official nation. It's just like, there's no country in the world that officially recognizes that there are two Koreas every country in the world officially sees one Korea and a rebel state. And depending on which country and it depends which, which is the favorite, whether North or South. It's a similar but also wildly different thing. In the Near East.
Katie Dooley 38:49 Yeah, and you can do you can do tours of Jerusalem, and they'll take you and like show you where all the battles will happen.
Preston Meyer 38:58 It's a really weird thing.
Katie Dooley 39:00 Like, I feel like this is really weird and Christian, like Christian Zionism is like the best way I can describe it, like creepy, like the fact that you're willing to like kill people. And we'll get into other parts of revelations on like, this is just weird. And the fact that you're willing to kill people for or aid in the killing of people for it is super weird to me. Brian's sister, so they share a debt but not a mom. Her mom and her new husband like literally went to Israel to fight the crusade. Wow. Yeah. That's like to make it happen. alarming. Yeah. His sister was like, How do I get them back? Like she was like, trying to, you know, that they had like, gone too far. In, in their belief, and he's like, I'd need to get them back to Canada, but they wanted to be there. So I don't know you do. Anyway, that's an anecdote. I don't know if I want to leave that in.
Preston Meyer 39:56 Like so generally. And I don't feel like the contradicts it. But it complicates it. religion doesn't make people hurt other people. But an episode we're going to talk about but extremism and absolutism, which are more common in Christianity than in Buddhism. Absolutely cause people to hurt other people. And this is an excellent example of that.
Katie Dooley 40:31 Yeah, it just like feels super yucky. Yeah. All right, well, thanks for that. That was me bringing up the downer topic of Christian Zionism. We have a lot of other imagery and symbolism and visuals and in Revelation that just like, blew my mind.
Preston Meyer 40:53 Yeah, there's there's a lot of symbols and images in the book that it's weird how much the author or authors use Hebrew words instead of Greek words, like the idea that the author uses Har Megiddo. Instead of Orose mosquito. That's a little bit weird.
Katie Dooley 41:19 Can you elaborate for our listeners,
Preston Meyer 41:22 har is the Hebrew for Aramaic for mountain, or mount and otros being the Greek. It's just, there's a lot of little things in there that maybe they're deliberate evidence that the author was an Israelite, or a Jew rather than a Roman. Who knows, we can't say with any real certainty anymore. But there's also a lot of imagery that is really kind of obviously informed by the Greek and Roman traditions. We've got these terrifying angels that come up out of the Euphrates. And to not see a parallel with the Greek Titans being released from Tartarus. Seems like a serious educational oversight.
Katie Dooley 42:18 See, and this is where, like you said, I'm gonna have trouble being nice. This some of this imagery is fine, if you think it's an allegorical, or, you know, a metaphor, or whatever. But the people think this is literal. Like I just I like I lost me. Like when you think that there's a seven headed beast beast with 10 crowns, or 10 horns with 10 crowns, with feet of a bear mouth of a lion body of a leopard and powered by a dragon. Like, play.
Preston Meyer 43:00 Yeah, why? That's the idea that it's not just symbolic, is mind boggling. I'm not here to judge by it's just I am fully on the symbolic side of this argument for the Revelation of John. Yeah, and if it's good at all, it's symbolic. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 43:25 And then there's other ones that I found so like you said, the the demonic angels in the phrase and even like, the angel Michael coming to fight with its sexy angel armies, watching Lucifer. Just like, what? Like this is never I mean, again, I've only read six, seven books of the Bible, but like, nothing of this level of drama has ever happened before in the Bible. I'm pretty sure how often do dragons show up in the Bible?
Preston Meyer 43:57 Going through automated dragons never
Katie Dooley 43:59 right like it just you know on like, mon on Samuel one. So you know, I'm gonna have some good Bible stories under my belt. Like there's no angel armies. Oh, yeah, absolutely. When
Preston Meyer 44:13 the the Lord of hosts is a title that you've probably heard several times. That so that is hosts means armies, sees the God of angel armies.
Katie Dooley 44:24 When are they fighting?
Preston Meyer 44:27 I want to say that they show up mostly in prophetic literature later on ahead of where you're at. Okay, but I could swear that there's some in the Torah where they talked about the support from angel armies, but I might be making things up. I think you might have to look that up.
Katie Dooley 44:50 To feels like very dramatic in a way
Preston Meyer 44:54 it's a very familiar idea to his audience. 100%
Katie Dooley 44:57 angel armies Hi, you Yeah, but the bear leopard. No, that's Oh, that's new.
Preston Meyer 45:05 more familiar than it is entirely new. Interesting. Ezekiel and Daniel use some pretty weird imagery like this as well. You'll get there. I
Katie Dooley 45:16 don't know. I know. But my brains just going and people think this is real.
Preston Meyer 45:20 It's symbolic. It's meant to be symbolic 100%. At least, that's my position and
Katie Dooley 45:26 barefooted based at the door. It's a dog footed beast.
Preston Meyer 45:35 Very nice. Numbers in Revelation are kind of an interesting thing. Like the this seven heads and 10 horns, nonsense. 10 crowns on those 10 horns. Yeah. It's the idea that it's not symbolic. seems insane to me. But some people really want to see this monster. And so an awful lot of people has been an awful lot of time. Creating art eyes represent this monster and
Katie Dooley 46:03 good ones. And I really liked how they tried to make 10 horns fit on seven heads. I really appreciate the effort there.
Preston Meyer 46:09 Well, having two horns on one head is easy to crowns on a head. No, they put those rounds on the forum, of course, because of that way to hang
Katie Dooley 46:17 properly. Yeah, but I just liked that some of the heads just had like one unicorn horn. Yeah. And then some of the heads had some of the drawings. I saw that they had like two unicorn horns, vertically stacked, sideways, or sideways.
Preston Meyer 46:30 I mean, we have rhinos, saying they're vertically aligned isn't too wildly inappropriate for the animal kingdom.
Katie Dooley 46:39 Yeah, Todd Preston,
Preston Meyer 46:41 is just seeing them on anything other than a rhino just seems. I mean, fairness, so wild to me.
Katie Dooley 46:50 Do you understand what I'm saying? Oh, absolutely. I do.
Preston Meyer 46:53 Absolutely. What's interesting, though, is that seven plays really well into the theology of the audience. So the seven for the good team. Is the seven branch lampstand. Oh, yeah, the menorah of the tabernacle of the Temple of all of the temples of Israel.
Katie Dooley 47:17 My brain didn't figure out it was a menorah. Because it talks about a lamp Sam. Yeah. And listening to it in my brain never made the connection and some Nora, thank you. So what's
Preston Meyer 47:26 really annoying is that we often distract from that symbol by using candles. And though a lot of menorahs use candles, the one in the temple was an oil lamp with seven branches, okay. And so that's actually not that important. But it's annoying to me as a person who likes to look back, I guess.
Katie Dooley 47:52 Is that clear in the writings, because I find a lot of this stuff is not clear, unless you have a normal text tool.
Preston Meyer 48:00 The menorah is not super clear in this text to a reader who's not familiar with the context of the time. But on the other side of that we have the seven mountains or the seven hills of Rome, which also translates to your seven heads and all of the seven bad things are in direct opposition to the seven good things. You got the seven seals that are put in place by God, who is in charge of the seven branch Lampstand of the menorah? Yeah.
Katie Dooley 48:33 Was the number seven just picked arbitrarily or doesn't have a deeper meaning? Or are they giving it meaning by making it? They're doing seven years? Yeah.
Preston Meyer 48:44 There's an awful lot of writing of people saying that seven is this number of completion. And it's interesting that wrong at the time consisted of seven hills. But there's also a couple more Hills either laid added later to the city, officially, or they're just too small to be counted for a while, you know, whatever. It's just an interesting thing is this idea of completeness and this completeness, extending to the full Cosmos, and the totality of life as we know it.
Katie Dooley 49:24 Seven is my favorite number. If favorite numbers are a thing.
Preston Meyer 49:30 I don't know having favorite numbers seems kind of a weird position.
Katie Dooley 49:36 As a kid, I just like the number seven, I
Preston Meyer 49:39 can see how like a number would be a thing. Like if somebody said pick a number between one and 100 There's one number that you'll say more often than any other number. And but other
Katie Dooley 49:50 than that it's completely arbitrary, right?
Preston Meyer 49:54 Unless you have like synesthesia where numbers have a color and flavor to you, then And then it's perfectly reasonable, I guess. But for those of us who don't have that, it feels like a weird thing. Weird yeah I think we'll be just fine though. But numbers are kind of interesting and they they definitely have specific meanings there and the trick is that because we're so far removed from the author and his actual intended audience, it's really hard to say what these symbols actually meant at the time for some of the things
Katie Dooley 50:41 Yeah, I mean, I imagined numerology
Preston Meyer 50:47 garbage I was
Katie Dooley 50:48 gonna say numerology is already garbage and Church changed a lot in 2000 years. So well, we give meaning to now. Might not be what like give meaning to then
Preston Meyer 51:00 yeah, numerology isn't a call it an interesting art form. To read numerology into something into which it was not written, is what I will call stupid behavior.
Katie Dooley 51:12 Okay. I thought I was.
Preston Meyer 51:16 But there's loads of great things that have been written with the intent of numerological readings. And then that's cool. But to read numerology into a thing, where the author did not intend it, you're gonna have a bad time.
Katie Dooley 51:30 That feels like a good segue into something the author didn't tend 666
Preston Meyer 51:35 number of that be? Yeah, we've talked about this before. It's worth bringing up for this episode, though, that the number, almost every scholar, even the truly faithful Christian scholars who are just trying to understand the book, are willing to say yes, this number 666 refers to Nero. Because of numerology, and the values of the letters that make up his name in their mathematical system. 666 is also 616. And some versions of the text matching up with alternate spelling, because of linguistic differences for the same dude's name. You
Katie Dooley 52:18 can literally find this on Wikipedia. Yeah, it will break it down for you very nicely. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 52:22 it's really helpful and nice. For anyone who wants to Davos or for anyone who wants to learn more, go
Katie Dooley 52:30 yeah, go learn more instead. Right.
Preston Meyer 52:34 And, I mean, Nero was an example of an emperor who was terrible to the Christians. And so this figure is showing up in the text as the adversary makes perfect sense. Whether you're looking forward as long distant prophecy, or the immediate future and the things people are dealing with in the moment, as they're reading this text knew that's perfectly reasonable to include this figure that has recently died, people are afraid that somebody like him will come back or even he, some people knew himself could come back in their fears. And then, of course, we have the far opposite of reasonable interpretation of this number that's being imposed on the faithful and readily accepted by the heathens of people actually taking a number on themselves physically, to represent their new fidelity to this false god. And you were talking a little earlier about something you had found in your research is that well, that
Katie Dooley 53:46 is the Bible literalist that truly believe there is an antichrist and a beast coming. We talking about the microchip, yeah. Okay. So I was reading this video on YouTube, and it's, it's from 2018. So it's not even news. Yeah. Well, you know, part of me was like, oh, microchip, it must have to do with COVID But it's so old, hasn't like COVID pre COVID People are talking about so one of the this video, you can find it it's called the revelation explained. It says the Antichrist will give you the mark of the beast on your right hand and I believe that is in the Bible, that it's a right hand and mark, but the video was like it will be a microchip. Like we're in the goddamn Bible, does it see microchip and then he's like, you're gonna need it to buy fast food. I was like wearing the Bible doesn't mention McDonald's. It just makes me angry.
Preston Meyer 54:50 So this is a slight extension to what we call intertextuality where they take this idea and they apply it to the world that they're familiar with. So my bank card has a chip on it. I need it to make most of my purchases.
Katie Dooley 55:07 Correct. But if this is prophetic and liberal, there is no microchip. Correct if you're going to take it exactly, literally you believe a bear pod leopard is coming back. You don't get a microchip.
Preston Meyer 55:20 I agree. Agreed.
Katie Dooley 55:23 You don't get both. Yep. But sorry. So
Preston Meyer 55:31 it's it's interesting to watch people make these arguments. It's definitely a symbolic thing. Even the the, the mark on your hand or your forehead, and it's probably an end situation. So the the fair sake tradition had Jewish people wearing phylacteries on their foreheads and their arms, that's a bad word. So flattery is a little box. That's usually got a little piece of scripture. I've seen Jewish people. Yeah, exactly. So that's part of the Pharisee tradition that continued with the rabbis and as part of mainstream Judaism today. Well, more more conservatives and liberals, though, and you'll still see it all around. And
Katie Dooley 56:09 I think it's just just during prayer, like they don't walk around with it all
Preston Meyer 56:13 the time. No, not all the time. No. But so the audience of this book, and when it was first published, would have been very familiar with that symbol of having a mark for your God, on your forehead and on your hand. And so this idea that there would be a replacement forced upon you by this God Emperor and the new state religion, it's, it's not wildly outside of their understanding. But the way we interpret it without intertextuality and just putting it in a modern context, has definitely caused some problems.
Katie Dooley 56:56 Like he said, you just don't get both. No, that doesn't. That doesn't fly with no weird cameras
Preston Meyer 57:01 and microchips, it's gonna take the Bible, literally, then you don't get a microchip. Agreed 100%. But also, the idea of forcing people to get these microchips implanted in the more they can participate in society. Sounds ludicrous. How do you get the mainstream of the majority of population to get on board with we
Katie Dooley 57:27 just did it Preston with the COVID vaccine? Oh, no.
Preston Meyer 57:33 If you think there's microchips in the vaccines, we, we have bigger problems.
Katie Dooley 57:38 I mean, the entire population, the world has a cell phones. I
Preston Meyer 57:42 mean, you're awfully close to true. And, and
Katie Dooley 57:46 it's in my right hand, right now. Oh,
Preston Meyer 57:51 I keep my phone in my left pocket most of the time. So, oh, well, and
Katie Dooley 57:59 you need it to participate in society
Preston Meyer 58:01 at this point, if this is true. So now
Katie Dooley 58:05 just wait for the seven years where to start, and we're good to go.
Preston Meyer 58:08 I mean, there's an awful lot of the markers in this revelation, like we talked about with Nostradamus. There's a lot of things that if you reward them just right, they are things that have already happened. Oh,
Katie Dooley 58:21 absolutely. I mean, Hitler's, you know, an easy one for the Antichrist because he was persecuting Jews, right. Lots of people thought Trump was the Antichrist. A lot of people thought Trump was the Messiah. I'm pretty sure I've seen Justin Trudeau referred to as the Antichrist.
Preston Meyer 58:38 Honestly, at this point, any leader of any government is probably going to be called the Antichrist by somebody. And you can quote me on that and just check the news on a regular.
Katie Dooley 58:52 Right, so yeah, in that. Yeah, in that way, there's a lot of, you know, I'm sure there's other historical rollouts of things that might flicked like the microchip. vaccine or the market that we
Preston Meyer 59:07 start, we initiated the social insurance already. That yeah, ages ago, people freaked out about that. ever giving us numbers. Yeah, because we got 42 million John Smith's in the world. We can't just have them all. In the government. Yeah. That's
Katie Dooley 59:29 funny. Yeah. And I saw some crazy math on how the social insurance number related to the number of the beasts because it was divisible by six or like, I was like, you're really
Preston Meyer 59:42 stretching by nine digits.
Katie Dooley 59:46 But three groups of nine digits and three and nine is six in the middle.
Preston Meyer 59:54 just reminded me of Bowfinger with Eddie Murphy at the beginning of the movie, He's stressing out because he's he's an actor within this movie. And he got a script for this new show he's supposed to be in. And he counted all of the K's in the script. And it was perfectly divisible by three. And that's an outrage because obviously, Eddie Murphy is a black man.
Katie Dooley 1:00:20 That means the kk k, yeah.
Preston Meyer 1:00:23 It was a really funny scene and, like, bright way to throw shade at the way people read things into things that they shouldn't be reading into them. But it was great. Another thing that popped out to me fairly recently, actually, as I was going through the revelation is wormwood. It shows up a couple of times. And for a long time, it's just like, yeah, it's bitter. I've spent a lot of time looking at the Greek text of the New Testament. And only recently has a jumped out to me that the word that we're actually looking at is Absinthe.
Katie Dooley 1:01:01 Oh, interesting. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 1:01:04 I just thought that was a fun little thing to throw out there. That all of the waters into which this star that falls from heaven, fall turns into absence,
Katie Dooley 1:01:13 I get some sugar kind of wider.
Preston Meyer 1:01:18 It helps the absence go down. The Bottomless Pit is a symbol that we see in the Revelation. And fairly often throughout a lot of religious text. Actually, it's a mysterious and powerful symbol that based on those virtues alone, keep us from giving a better translation of what we see in the Greek text. In fact, it's an endless grave, which is spiritually speaking a much better symbol. Yeah, and you know, Christ is supposed to resurrect all of mankind, as it's laid out in this book. And so the endless grave is defeated. But the serpent is thrown into this endless grave. Some nifty symbology that's actually lost when we translated as bottomless pit instead of endless grave.
Katie Dooley 1:02:15 Right, that's a fun fact. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 1:02:16 I kind of there's honestly so much in this book that's actually fun to unpack. But that's not the focus of our show. And it would take so many episodes and hours to go through what's on this book, and it's not what the Holy watermelons about
Katie Dooley 1:02:34 that we do have our Bible study Patreon episodes, which eventually we'll get to Revelation where
Preston Meyer 1:02:39 we might take some slow time there and let it burn.
Katie Dooley 1:02:43 Yeah, you can fire and brimstone me.
Preston Meyer 1:02:48 Okay, shifty eyes make me wonder if you read something into that that I don't
Katie Dooley 1:02:52 say phrasing, Katie.
Preston Meyer 1:02:56 Yeah, it's so
Katie Dooley 1:02:57 I Yeah. I don't know if this conversations gonna go anywhere this question, but part of me wants to talk about the people who take this so seriously. And again, like creeped me out. Like, I feel like you should pull up the comments on this YouTube video, which again, I said, Revelation explained 2018, you took his phone hour and 45 minutes. Like when Lady was saying, like, she doesn't want to be microchipped. And she doesn't know if she's gonna be strong enough to say no. And like, she doesn't want to be beheaded. And then so it was like, yeah, it's gonna be really hard to watch your child starving and still say no to the microchip. Okay, Preston shaking his head. Like, my brain cannot expand that far to understand that. It's,
Preston Meyer 1:03:45 it just seems like a ludicrous thing, that so many people are genuinely afraid of that being our reality. And it just doesn't seem possible. At all, like beyond plausible, it seems like it could never happen, especially when we have a whole bunch of atheists who will actively prevent this from happening. Yes. And the the single biggest group of religions on this planet identify as Christian. So is it really going to be that bad? I'm gonna say no.
Katie Dooley 1:04:28 Well, and you say that but it's so interesting because someone so it's basically like a wall of like, I, John Smith, take Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Like, that's 95% of the comments and then there's like a few discussions and what are some common use like I would like really like to, you know, be raptured but I know I'm not worthy because I'm spending my time on YouTube instead of like, gospel rolling it up. I was like, I just don't. This leads probably better into our next step. So then into this episode, but like he said, My, I'm a pretty open minded person. And I also think I'm a pretty intelligent person and my brain cannot, it cannot go there. I
Preston Meyer 1:05:13 feel very confident in saying that if you are more concerned about the Second Coming than literally anything else, then, like, if that's the number one concern in your life, you're living your life wrong. If you are a Christian, then basing your life on any writings in the Bible other than the words of Jesus saying, live right with God and with your fellow man, love your neighbors, you're not doing it right. If you go out doing good in your community, and you're worried about all of these terrible things coming up, based on what you read in the Revelation of John, the New Testament also tells us, the faithful don't have anything to worry about, I just don't
Katie Dooley 1:06:07 see how that's healthy. It's not healthy.
Preston Meyer 1:06:11 The healthy choices going out and loving your neighbors being a good neighbor. But I guess a lot of people would rather focus on literally anything else, other than the need to be good to the people that they just can't stand. And way too many people use a handful of cultural elements of the Bible and the world from 4000 years ago, 3000 years ago, 2000 years ago, to make decisions on how they're gonna be a neighbor to the people around them. Nonsense.
Katie Dooley 1:06:53 Nonsense. He says.
Preston Meyer 1:06:57 It's, there's so many things that people want to say are more important in the Bible than the things that Jesus say. And that's weird.
Katie Dooley 1:07:08 I mean, that's an episode for another day. Yeah. But yeah, anyway, I really enjoyed learning about Revelation. Yet. It's a pretty interesting book. You're right, it is a lot to unpack. But the audiobook if anyone is interested is on YouTube. A great way to consume it. And then, yeah, do some digging on it, because there's a lot in there, including a barefooted leopard. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 1:07:33 It's, like Nostradamus, we talked about a couple of weeks ago. John incorporates a lot of elements from the culture in which he is immersed. But unlike Nostradamus, he actually does use those images to create new ideas that aren't found anywhere else. And an awful lot of people for the entirety of its history have said, You know what, this books pretty dubious. Maybe it doesn't belong in the Bible.
Katie Dooley 1:08:06 It's pretty wild.
Preston Meyer 1:08:09 Yeah, it is. It is wildly different from the books around. In the New Testament, it is unique. As far as whole books, we've got Matthew 24, and a couple other sections of the New Testament that are a little revelant revelation, revelatory, but not quite like this book is. But ultimately, the Apocalypse of John does not describe the end of the world, but instead promises a very rough transition into a long lasting paradise, which is really easy to forget, when you focus on all of the really cool images in the book.
Katie Dooley 1:08:53 I also I mean, I think that's a good summary, too, because I think that's accurate, regardless of what you believe, right? Where we have the most equitable, safest society globally that we've ever had. I'm not saying that there aren't problems our way. Yeah, two steps forward, one step back. And I know sometimes it's hard to remember that when we watch the news, but hey, we don't crucify people anymore. So that's cool. We
Preston Meyer 1:09:22 haven't beheaded anybody with a guillotine until or since shortly after Star Wars first came out. 77 was the last time that somebody was beheaded with a guillotine. I mean, we we still electrocute people to death. Oh, I know for fun. Tell me that. Nobody shows up to these electric chair executions in the audience.
Katie Dooley 1:09:46 It's happening. I believe that it's not fun for everyone. It's not fun
Preston Meyer 1:09:50 for everyone. executions have never been fun for the participants except for St. Lawrence.
Katie Dooley 1:09:58 Is that another saint? That shouldn't be a thing. I have
Preston Meyer 1:10:00 no issues with St. Lawrence based on the things I know about him right now. But his execution, he made a joke of it in the moment. All right, respect St. Lawrence as a champ. prophecies are an interesting thing. But just like we talked about last time, the last 112 Pope's, for the most Protestants, this revelation is describing the fall of Rome, and also the fall of the Roman Catholic Church. But since Frances the tolerable is not Peter, the Roman as we discussed before, the fall of the Roman church is not right away. And I mean, statistically speaking, Pope Francis has got what five years left? Pops. I
Katie Dooley 1:10:57 think he'll last longer. He might. I mean, badly, man, if he
Preston Meyer 1:11:00 lasts more than five years that makes him the second oldest Pope to die. Oh, really? Yeah.
Katie Dooley 1:11:05 I feel like he's got more more spunk in him than the last two. Yes,
Preston Meyer 1:11:10 I agree fully with that. So I feel like keel
Katie Dooley 1:11:13 over a long time. You know, who should be pope if you want a longtime Pope, somebody who's under 50? I mean, it's gonna take Queen Elizabeth. Is she never gonna pay?
Preston Meyer 1:11:25 It feels that way. Some days.
Katie Dooley 1:11:30 I will say In summary, do not be concerned about the end of the world.
Preston Meyer 1:11:34 Yeah, if you're stressing about the end of the world, you are focusing on all the wrong things. You could die tomorrow. Are you ready for that? I'm not I'm not. But I mean, the end of the world. I mean, maybe we'll get hit by a surprise meteorite. You never know what's going to happen in the future. Don't worry about it live right. Enjoy your life. Don't be like don't be a dick. And I think everything's gonna be fine. And
Katie Dooley 1:12:05 by buy Oh, we'll have a don't be a dick t shirt yet yet. But we do have other great merch on our Spreadshirt
Preston Meyer 1:12:16 Yeah, and check out our Discord where we have great discussions. We can talk about this further.
Katie Dooley 1:12:20 And we have a Patreon. Yes, so you can support us with a small monthly donation into the collection plates.
Preston Meyer 1:12:30 You get exclusive content, and you help support us and keep the show going for a long time, which is what we really want to do. Peace be with you. | |||
| 08 May 2023 | The Law of Displaced People | 01:01:57 | |
The Hebrew Bible is not the same thing as the Imperial Christian Old Testament (though it's very similar to the protestant version), but there are many different ways people draw value from these books. The Torah is not the same thing as the Old Testament: it is the 5 books classically attributed to Moses. For some who adhere to an Abrahamic faith, the Torah is the only scripture; for others, the testimonies of prophets and historians are also invaluable. The Hebrew Bible is often called the Tanakh, which isn't a word, but an acronym for Torah-Neviim-Ketuvim (Law, Prophets, and all the other writings). Calling it a bible is misleading; it's a library--a very small library of the greatest literature that defined a nation--a small Mediterranean nation that eventually influenced the entire world. To say that "the Bible" is the infallible word of God is to deny the obvious inconsistencies and material contradictions. To say that it is the complete word of God is to deny the obvious appeals to external authoritative texts. To say that it is the literal word of God is to deny the obvious editorial history and the skill of the genuine authors. We outline the various major textual traditions (the Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew Masoretic text), as well as the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Apocrypha (or Deuterocanon), and several pseudepigraphal writings. We look at rejected books that might hope to belong, and we cite books that were abridged into the biblical histories and have since been lost. All this and more... To witness Katie's first Bible Study (a mini-series), support us on Patreon You can find our merch on Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord | |||
| 29 Aug 2022 | Masonic Religion | 01:14:01 | |
Freemasonry, the oldest fraternal organization in the world, has some deeply rooted religious traits, and an odd don't-ask-don't-tell relationship with the Church of Rome. The national mythology of the whole democratic world celebrates men who have been initiated into its sacred rites, and countless exposés have been published, yet there's still an awful lot of secrecy and misinformation. Is Freemasonry a cult? Does it even qualify as a religion? The Grand Chaplain of the Grand Lodge of Alberta will help shed some light on the subject. Freemasonry is democratic all the way to the core, and only half of the legitimate Grand Lodges claim jurisdiction over entire countries; the other half stick to provincial and "state" boundaries. A friendly relationship exists between the vast majority of these Grand Lodges (as long as they have legitimate claim to authority in that region), but there is no global Masonic authority. Despite many centuries of rich Masonic history, the United Grand Lodge of England was established in 1813, and the earlier Grand Lodge from which it claims authority doesn't have much evidence of being founded in 1717.... All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
[00:00:13] Katie Dooley: Hi Preston! Are we starting this episode?
[00:00:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. We'll start.
[00:00:16] Katie Dooley: Okay. Hi, Preston.
[00:00:18] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie.
[00:00:19] Katie Dooley: Today. I mean, you're a subject matter. You're always a subject matter expert.
[00:00:23] Preston Meyer: I mean, we've talked a lot about a lot of things over the last couple of years that have been stuff that I know a lot from research rather than experience. Today is a lot more experienced stuff, a lot closer to home.
[00:00:38] Katie Dooley: I like it. What are we talking about today on.
[00:00:40] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast?
[00:00:44] Preston Meyer: Today we're talking about Freemasonry.
[00:00:46] Katie Dooley: But that's not a religion.
[00:00:48] Preston Meyer: Well, that depends on who you ask.
[00:00:50] Katie Dooley: That depends how you define religion.
[00:00:52] Preston Meyer: Yes
[00:00:52] Katie Dooley: Please see episode two.
[00:00:56] Preston Meyer: Ah, yeah. For a lot of people who don't know much on the subject, mostly, that's a fair label for those people. Freemasonry is not only a religion, but a dangerous cult.
[00:01:10] Katie Dooley: I was going to say it's a cult. It's a link to the Illuminati and the lizard people.
[00:01:15] Preston Meyer: I mean, half right. It is linked to the Illuminati, not to the lizard people.
[00:01:19] Katie Dooley: Is it because lizard people don't exist?
[00:01:21] Preston Meyer: Correct.
[00:01:22] Katie Dooley: Okay. I... Freemasonry is funny because anytime I've visited a lodge on. I mean, usually it's like an open house sort of thing. They're always very open about who they are, what they do.
[00:01:37] Preston Meyer: Right? The buildings are marked. It's not like we're some secret underground organization. The Square and Compass, the well-known icon for the organization, is on the outside of every building we own.
[00:01:50] Katie Dooley: Mhm. Yeah. If you go in at the right time, they'll tell them all about you.
[00:01:55] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:01:55] Katie Dooley: And they know how to party.
[00:01:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:01:59] Katie Dooley: Highly recommend.
[00:02:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah, especially for the annual communication every Grand Lodge has, where they have as many Masons as are willing to come to one central location within the jurisdiction. Chill out at a hotel, drink late into the night, whiskey connoisseurs everywhere, or Scotch or whatever. There's, you know, diverse people, diverse tastes, whatever.
[00:02:24] Katie Dooley: So if I want to learn more about whiskey, I gotta go to the Freemasons.
[00:02:28] Preston Meyer: I mean, it's not the only source, but guaranteed you'll find an expert, or at least somebody who thinks they are.
[00:02:36] Katie Dooley: Isn't that the truth? So Freemasonry is the oldest fraternal organization in the world. So we know what frats are. Fraternities?
[00:02:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah
[00:02:45] Katie Dooley: This isn't that far removed from that.
[00:02:47] Preston Meyer: No, not terribly far removed at all. In fact, a lot of the college frats, the Greek groups that you see all over the place, a lot of them were started by Freemasons.
[00:02:58] Katie Dooley: Interesting. I like that.
[00:03:01] Preston Meyer: Just a little no value detail there.
[00:03:05] Katie Dooley: I found it valuable Preston.
[00:03:07] Preston Meyer: All right.
[00:03:08] Katie Dooley: This is from... Taken right from the Freemason website. So again,
[00:03:12] Preston Meyer: Which Freemason website?
[00:03:14] Katie Dooley: I don't remember Freemasonry.com like there. Okay. It was like there.
[00:03:18] Preston Meyer: Most jurisdictions have their own.
[00:03:20] Katie Dooley: This is definitely like no this is definitely an umbrella.
[00:03:23] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:03:23] Katie Dooley: But freemasonry.org. I don't know, just the Freemasonry website.
[00:03:29] Preston Meyer: Okay. There's there's some nuance that makes that a flawed statement, but that's okay.
[00:03:37] Katie Dooley: Do I need to look it up right now for you?
[00:03:39] Preston Meyer: No, no. Let's go forward. All right. What's it say?
[00:03:41] Katie Dooley: Freemasonry or masonry, is the oldest fraternal organization in the world. Though its origins can be traced to the stonemasons and cathedral builders of medieval times. Freemasonry remains a vital force in the daily lives of millions of men across the globe. Through a series of degrees and ceremonies, the values of Freemasonry are passed from generation to generation, Mason to Mason, in a timeless and tireless effort to make good men better. These degrees provide a framework that affects every aspect of modern life and are based on the values of brotherly love, relief, and truth.
[00:04:13] Preston Meyer: Pretty solid. You're not going to find any Masonic jurisdiction that disagrees with that. That's a decent elevator pitch, and I've been involved with Freemasonry for about a decade now, and I've never actually put together my own good or even half-decent elevator pitch for Freemasonry, so...
[00:04:34] Katie Dooley: Now you don't have to.
[00:04:35] Preston Meyer: Sure, I could just quote somebody else.
[00:04:37] Katie Dooley: I like it.
[00:04:38] Preston Meyer: Sure. So we have talked a little bit about mystery schools over the last couple of years. It's come up as we talked a lot about some of the the older religions in Greece and Rome and Egypt, and Freemasonry is the source of my own real first-hand knowledge on the subject of mystery schools. Freemasonry is modelled after specifically the mysteries of Greece and Egypt mostly, but obviously Rome is kind of figures it's way in there pretty nicely too. And so the rituals hit many of the plot points that one might expect to see in the ancient cult narratives.
[00:05:15] Katie Dooley: Again, not danger cult, just cult.
[00:05:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah, like the old religions centred around a figure or a god, whatever. That very old definition of cult. Not the weird, spooky definition we throw on it now.
[00:05:29] Katie Dooley: We call danger cults on this podcast for that specific reason.
[00:05:33] Preston Meyer: Differentiation. Very important.
[00:05:35] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:05:36] Preston Meyer: We talk about the Hero's journey a little bit, made most famous primarily in popular culture through the work of George Lucas and Joseph Campbell. And so there's a lot of little points that you see along this path of the hero's journey, that figure into Masonic ritual pretty typically. In fact, I did a presentation for Masonic group about a year ago on that subject. It was actually kind of cool. I might adjust it a little bit and share it. We'll see.
[00:06:08] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's sounds like a good bonus episode!
[00:06:10] Preston Meyer: Right? Masonic ritual has the initiate emulate a laborer instead of emulating gods or warriors. So it's a lot different from what you might expect.
[00:06:20] Katie Dooley: Humbling.
[00:06:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah, this also reveals the origins of the order in the old stonemason guilds. The story is that when you would send your kid off to go to work at seven years old because you can't afford to feed them anymore, their grown up, seven years old, go to work.
[00:06:36] Katie Dooley: Labour, right?
[00:06:37] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:06:37] Katie Dooley: Mhm.
[00:06:38] Preston Meyer: And so these people who are out actually working now have to raise other people's kids because they're 7 or 8 years old. There's a real value in finding a good way to teach them. That's really going to stick with them. And so as they're learning the trade, they're also learning these little tricks and stories and all kinds of fun stuff. And this is, as far as we can tell, ultimately, where Freemasonry is actually born.
[00:07:07] Katie Dooley: Interesting. What I also think is interesting is to become a mason you have to believe in a higher power, but they don't care what that higher power is.
[00:07:17] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:07:17] Katie Dooley: And then that's also interesting to me because there's no checks or balances on that.
[00:07:22] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:07:22] Katie Dooley: See our episode on belief, right? I can say I believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster and they don't know if I come by that genuinely or ironically, or I don't even think they check what you believe in.
[00:07:33] Preston Meyer: You are asked, generally speaking, some jurisdictions more than others, but it's a question. At least...
[00:07:40] Katie Dooley: You still wouldn't know if someone came by again. Do you truly believe in jediism? Or are you just a big Star Wars nerd and wanted to put that on the census or in your Mason application in this case.
[00:07:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's it's a little interesting, I guess, that there's always in every part of Freemasonry is every time you're moving up a level or a degree, there's an obligation that you swear to God, whoever that God is. And if you don't believe in a God, then swearing to God is meaningless. Whether or not you have any value in what is being sworn. Swearing to God just doesn't make sense if you don't think he's there. That's that's the real trick there, and why it's so important that that still remains a part of the issue, though, um, in France, there's an awful lot of Masons had have set up their own organization that don't believe in God.
[00:08:37] Katie Dooley: Well, I was going to say we swear on not God for other things. Right? And in court houses. And I mean, we haven't ever had a nonreligious president, but I'm sure they have. You know, you can swear on whatever holy book you want.
[00:08:51] Preston Meyer: There's been loads of non-religious presidents that they varied greatly.
[00:08:56] Katie Dooley: Um, none that would present us an atheist.
[00:08:59] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:08:59] Katie Dooley: But yeah, because you could, when you're being sworn in, swear on whatever holy book you want. I'm sure they have plans for what they do eventually get someone who is openly an atheist in office. So that's just it's interesting to me because, like, we swear on not God.
[00:09:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Well, in the courthouse today, you can either swear on a book or you can just make an affirmation. Yes, I'm going to tell the truth. And if you don't believe in God, you can't make somebody swear to God because thankfully, we have that freedom.
[00:09:28] Katie Dooley: Because actually, that's lying.
[00:09:29] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:09:30] Katie Dooley: So if they're swearing to God and they're an atheist then they're already lying on the stand.
[00:09:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. If literally the first word.
[00:09:36] Katie Dooley: Perjury!
[00:09:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah, problems.
[00:09:41] Katie Dooley: And then so it's also interesting to me that like, again, you don't have to. I guess for that, I'm sure, like you said, that they ask you. But I'm sure in the general group it's nobody's business what you believe in.
[00:09:54] Preston Meyer: Pretty much.
[00:09:55] Katie Dooley: But a lot of the, I guess, references, or the ones I put on the notes allude to Abrahamic religion, like Job's Daughters, uh, the Red Cross of Constantine. Is that just because it started in England or?
[00:10:09] Preston Meyer: The bulk of the...
[00:10:10] Katie Dooley: I mean, when I went it was all white men, so I'm not surprised but...
[00:10:15] Preston Meyer: Uh, there's an awful lot of diversity in Freemasonry. And for the most part, it's it's pretty close to the demographic split of any given community.
[00:10:26] Katie Dooley: Whereever you are? Yeah.
[00:10:27] Preston Meyer: Skewing a little bit towards white just because that's the the group that's been there that has that tradition for a while but...
[00:10:35] Katie Dooley: I was trying to find statistics on like if there were statistics on race or religion within Freemasonry, I couldn't find anything. I don't know if that's more internal or if they even keep. I mean...
[00:10:46] Preston Meyer: We don't keep records like we every lodge.
[00:10:50] Katie Dooley: The information is there. It's just probably not ever like Censused.
[00:10:54] Preston Meyer: Right, every lodge in Alberta where I am a member of the Grand Lodge of Alberta, every lodge has paperwork where when a member petitions to join the lodge, they're asked what religious community do you belong to? And nobody collates this into a set of statistics or anything but the question is asked. It's there. The data is available.
[00:11:20] Katie Dooley: I think it'd be really interesting to do.
[00:11:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the question of race is not on the application and there's no census done for that. So it's actually also kind of tricky. You just kind of notice when you look around.
[00:11:32] Katie Dooley: To be fair I did go and Robbie Burns night, which doesn't get much whiter.
[00:11:35] Preston Meyer: It's a pretty solid Scottish tradition. It's yeah pretty white.
[00:11:41] Katie Dooley: Pretty white.
[00:11:41] Preston Meyer: Not exclusively white, but pretty white. And that's people are adopting the tradition as seeing it as a more Masonic thing. So it's slowly becoming more multicultural, but not rapidly. Oh, well, it's a lot of fun anyway. A lot of scotch, a lot of haggis. And if it's spiced properly, haggis is good.
[00:12:05] Katie Dooley: Haggis is not bad.
[00:12:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:12:06] Katie Dooley: Just don't think about it.
[00:12:09] Preston Meyer: And don't eat it cold. Yeah, but it is pretty tightly tied to the Christian tradition of its founders that the whole narrative within Masonic ritual is built around the construction of Solomon's Temple. So it's not exclusively Christian, but it is very obviously of the Abrahamic umbrella.
[00:12:35] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I would just be curious on stats specifically on what we call eastern traditions. You know how many Hindus or Sikhs, Buddhists you have in masonry? Because yeah, I'm sure Christians, Jews, even Muslims would be the majority. So just be curious. You know, I want to say fringe. That's not that's not right. But fringe in masonry kind of what the minor. I hope I'm making sense in that and not.
[00:13:01] Preston Meyer: Minority groups.
[00:13:02] Katie Dooley: Being offensive. Um. Right. That might not typically be seen at your average Canadian lodge. What kind of stats are there? Anyway, I hope that made sense, everyone.
[00:13:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's I know Sikh masons, Muslim masons, Jewish masons, Christian masons. There's a relatively small number of Mormon masons just because the Grand Lodge of Utah, where the bulk of Mormons were for such a long time, was very adamant that no Mormon could be made a mason in their jurisdiction.
[00:13:36] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:13:37] Preston Meyer: And that ended about the eight I want to say 83 or 84. So only about 40 years ago. And even though the rule is gone...
[00:13:48] Katie Dooley: Recovery and...
[00:13:49] Preston Meyer: The recovery from that tradition has been slow, which is kind of weird, because back in the days of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.
[00:13:58] Katie Dooley: He was heavily inspired by...
[00:14:00] Preston Meyer: Well, it was it was weird to be a man in the church and not a mason.
[00:14:04] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:14:05] Preston Meyer: It was expected people like Kimball would say that if if you're going to join the church, maybe consider joining a lodge first.
[00:14:13] Katie Dooley: So can you i know it's not in your notes, but can you speak to why the Mormon church said no masonry, or are we going to know later?
[00:14:20] Preston Meyer: It was it was the Grand Lodge of Utah, the Grand Lodge of Utah.
[00:14:23] Katie Dooley: Said no Mormons.
[00:14:24] Preston Meyer: Said no Mormons.
[00:14:25] Katie Dooley: Oh, interesting.
[00:14:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:14:26] Katie Dooley: Speak to that then or we'll get to that later?
[00:14:28] Preston Meyer: No, I can get to that now. Yeah.
[00:14:30] Katie Dooley: We have that spot later.
[00:14:31] Preston Meyer: There was this fear that what was going on inside the temples of the Latter Day Saints was clandestine masonry. And so they're like, well, if you guys are doing your own clandestine thing in in the temple, we don't want you because you're already breaking our rules, because you're sharing masonry with women and all kinds of other things, because they knew that women were in the temple.
[00:14:54] Katie Dooley: Women are...
[00:14:55] Preston Meyer: And all kinds of weird ideas. And then the God Makers book and film were published in the early 80s, and it was this huge exposé on what goes on inside Latter-Day Saint temples. And there's there's a little bit of exaggeration, a little bit of tone that misrepresents things. But most of the facts are pretty much right. And so when right after this was published, it took about a year for the Grand Lodge of Utah to say, well, now that we know what's going on in there, that's not clandestine Freemasonry. So our rule has no basis and is obviously discriminatory. So we're going to cut it. And so they've had Latter-Day Saint grandmasters in Utah or. Well I think it was one I don't think it's been more than one. My data might be out of date too. But there's there's a growing, slowly growing population of Latter-Day Saint Freemasons.
[00:15:55] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Cool. Yeah. Thank you for that aside.
[00:15:58] Preston Meyer: So it's I'm going to say, not generally speaking, incompatible with anybody's specific religion. As long as your religion believes that there is a creator that cares about us, that...
[00:16:15] Katie Dooley: So no deists.
[00:16:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Pretty much.
[00:16:17] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:16:18] Preston Meyer: That God does reveal things to us and that the human soul is immortal, which is where it gets a little bit tricky to be a Jehovah's Witness and a Freemason, because the permanent nature of the soul is a tricky discussion for Jehovah's Witnesses. But the other side of that is the average Jehovah's Witness will be shunned for joining a masonic lodge.
[00:16:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:16:43] Preston Meyer: So it's not a conflict that comes up very often.
[00:16:46] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So it's not really a problem?
[00:16:48] Preston Meyer: Right. I've never heard of a Satanist Freemason. Generally, if you are a theological Satanist, the idea of you joining a group that praises the creator wouldn't sit, right. It wouldn't make any sense. And of course, the other Satanists, the atheists Satanists have no value for the system either.
[00:17:11] Katie Dooley: Because, yeah, it's a satire at best. Yeah.
[00:17:15] Preston Meyer: Right. But it is. It is pretty religious organization. Generally speaking. It certainly wouldn't exist without religion. Everyone that built the organization, it was raised in the Western European Christian context. And I mean, if you know anything about Freemasonry, you know it's about Solomon's Temple. It's super obvious there's an influence there. Some people are really opposed, like just really hate Freemasonry. There's a very large number of people who are actively campaigning against Freemasonry out in the public sphere and do it in the name of their religion, which is really weird.
[00:17:59] Katie Dooley: I mean, is it though? So many religions don't like other religions, and if this is religion adjacent, then...
[00:18:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I don't know. Having lived it, Freemasonry is definitely more of an ally to religion rather than a religion in its own right. Depending on how you define it, define how you define religion,
[00:18:20] Katie Dooley: Right, because, I mean, we know anything can be religious, right?
[00:18:25] Preston Meyer: And we'll have to deal with that nebulous nature of it all for years to come.
[00:18:31] Katie Dooley: Correct.
[00:18:32] Preston Meyer: But Freemasonry is super old. Steer back into our history of it. We know for sure that King James was made a Freemason just a few years after he published his daemonologie, and a full decade before he authorized the publication of the The King James Bible in 1611.
[00:18:54] Katie Dooley: Nice.
[00:18:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:18:55] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:18:56] Preston Meyer: But there's little shreds of evidence that say it was old even when he joined. There is a manuscript called the Hallowell Manuscript. It contains the Regius Poem that was probably written reasonably close to 1400 CE. So a full couple hundred years before King James. And it's a really long poem. It goes through this whole legend of how Freemasonry came to be where it is at the time this poem was written.
[00:19:27] Katie Dooley: Oh, wow.
[00:19:28] Preston Meyer: And it's super hard to verify any of the details in it, but it claims that Freemasonry was brought to England during the reign of King Athelstan, who reigned in England from 924 to 939.
[00:19:43] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:19:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So we're talking more than a thousand years of Masonic history in England. Problem is, there's no scholar that really puts any stock into this, that this legend is probably most probably fiction.
[00:19:58] Katie Dooley: Okay to give it more weight.
[00:20:00] Preston Meyer: Right, but we are still looking back all the way to 1400 C.E., as this does exist here at this time. But adding an extra 400 years pretty dubious. There's also some dubious, dubious evidence that the first Grand Lodge was actually formed in Cologne, Germany, in 1250. So older than the Regius poem.
[00:20:26] Katie Dooley: Not 900.
[00:20:27] Preston Meyer: But not 900 CE um, it says that Rudolph, the first of Habsburg, who was king of Germany from 1273 to 1291, had joined the lodge of Saint Stephen while he was king. So it's kind of cool. Um, there's there's not a lot I haven't found, actually, any evidence backing up the claims of the scholar who brought this to my attention. His name is Henning Kloefkorn, but it's a cool. It's an idea that does make some sense with some of the vocabulary that we use in Freemasonry, but I haven't been able to find anything that really backs him up either. So our our most solid evidence of ancient existence of this organization only goes back to about 1400 CE.
[00:21:21] Katie Dooley: How much is Freemasonry changed in the last 600 Hundred years. Um, you know, just thinking how religions have changed in 600 years. I can't imagine it's all the same. But I also know it's rooted deeply in tradition.
[00:21:37] Preston Meyer: Right, so in about 1600, it was mostly still actual stone workers. There were people joining Freemasonry who weren't stone workers, but they were not in the majority, not even close. And then slowly, over the course of a couple of hundred years, by the time we get to about 1720, it's almost only the the enlightened folk and...
[00:22:08] No longer a guild for Masons.
[00:22:10] Preston Meyer: Right, and so that was a fairly slow transition. Presumably people were joining because they were curious about the mysteries that were held by these groups. And this just kind of kept growing and growing to the point where these thinkers outnumbered the workers. But the ritual always worried about the laborer. And even though we've abandoned the operative nature of Freemasonry, it's still very focused on be a good worker and perfect the spiritual temple within yourself and outside of yourself. It's a lot to it.
[00:22:51] Katie Dooley: Thanks. No, I appreciate that.
[00:22:53] Preston Meyer: Um, and also, there's an awful lot of people like to hype up. Oh, he's a 33rd degree Mason. He's so special. I mean, the the degree that is numbered 33 isn't just handed out willy nilly, but there are literally hundreds of Masonic degrees, and I already have more than 40.
[00:22:53] Preston Meyer: Wow. We got a 40 something of Mason in the house!
[00:23:17] But it's it's not that sort of impressive thing that a lot of people chalk it up to be.
[00:23:23] So, I don't know why. This reminds me. I don't know why I'm telling on the podcast, but I had a friend doing some genealogy research and she posted on Facebook that her 10th cousin was one of the women burned in the Salem witch trials. And I was like, like, that's not not interesting. But my husband is my 10th cousin. Like, 10th cousin is a distant, far away like, again, it's not that it's not cool, but like, Obama's my 10th cousin and my husband is my 10th cousin. It's really far away.
[00:23:54] It really is. So it's like nice, but not as impressive as you make it sound, right? Well, I should have. I posted on her, I commented it was on Facebook. I posted that Obama was my 10th cousin, but I really should have posted that my husband was my 10th cousin to be like, it's actually not, because that shocks people into realizing how not close at all it is.
[00:24:15] Preston Meyer: Right? So Freemasonry.
[00:24:17] Katie Dooley: Ding ding ding.
[00:24:18] Preston Meyer: There was a couple of degrees there. You've got the the degree of the apprentice. You've got this kid who just comes in to join your guild. He's got a make some obligations, learn a little bit of secrets for the work that he's going to do and spiritual implications that he'll be reminded of as he does that work. And then at some point, he becomes a fellow of the craft. He's able to travel around and and really work freely. And that's really where it stopped. And then there was another secret for somebody who could tell the fellows what to do.
[00:24:55] Preston Meyer: Superintendent.
[00:24:57] Preston Meyer: Pretty much. Yeah. And at the time that King James was made a Freemason, it was pretty much just the first two degrees and then the boss. And then after that time, at some point, presumably like the middle ish of the 1700s, they created the degree of the master mason that some say was the degree that was given to the overseers or or something else entirely. There's a bit there's still scholarly argument about all that history. But King James was never a master mason. He was a fellow craft. That's where he stopped as a dude who was super into all the things he was into. It would seem weird for him to stop there when there was more to experience. But by the time we get to the end of the 1700s, people have written all kinds of new degrees. There's all kinds of ways to make money. You got all these people who are just there for the enlightenment of Freemasonry. And so if you say, hey, I've got more light. Come and join my group, pay me 20 bucks and you're good to go. That's a great business. And it happened all over the place and people made a lot of money.
[00:26:16] Katie Dooley: When did it get regulated?
[00:26:17] Preston Meyer: It's a tricky thing. There's there's a lot of groups that have official sanctions from the actual Grand Lodge that runs just the first three degrees in most jurisdictions. There's some variation there, too, but there's a lot of groups that exist and just, oh, we're invitational. And if you're not super friendly to our being a group, we just won't advertise our existence. So it's it's tricky. And regulation is definitely a jurisdiction by jurisdiction thing.
[00:26:54] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:26:55] Preston Meyer: Some places are loosey goosey. Some places are super strict and say, you know, if you join this group, we're going to kick you out.
[00:27:02] Katie Dooley: Wow
[00:27:03] Preston Meyer: That's a thing. And other people are like, you're going to do what you're going to do. That's fine.
[00:27:09] Katie Dooley: So is Freemasonry a religion?
[00:27:12] Preston Meyer: Oh, that's that's tricky. There's there's a lot of people who use it as their religion, as a replacement for attending any congregational worship. And that's that's fine.
[00:27:26] Katie Dooley: The Freemasonry website...
[00:27:29] Preston Meyer: Whichever jurisdiction runs it.
[00:27:32] Katie Dooley: I... Now I need to find it like it's the main one.
[00:27:36] Preston Meyer: Um, there is no global Masonic authority. That's the trick.
[00:27:41] Katie Dooley: I'm Googling it!
[00:27:42] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:27:43] Katie Dooley: beafreemason.org.
[00:27:46] Preston Meyer: Okay. Which will be run by some sort of authority. So they're trying to be.
[00:27:53] Katie Dooley: beafreemason.org people. It's in the record now. Uh, Preston cannot find who it's run by, so I feel vindicated.
[00:28:01] Preston Meyer: There's no global Masonic authority. So I don't know whose authority they're operating under. But a lot of people like to look to the United Grand Lodge of England as the Mother Grand Lodge of all Freemasons in the world. That's very offensive to the older Grand Lodges of Scotland and Ireland.
[00:28:25] Katie Dooley: Anyway, so from this beafreemason.org website in their FAQs. Is Freemasonry a religion is one of the questions, so I've copy and pasted their answer. Freemasonry is not a religion or a substitute for religion. Freemasonry does not intrude on the religious beliefs of its members, although it does require that all members profess a belief in a supreme Being. All caps. Men of all faiths are represented in Freemasonry. Religion is not discussed at lodge meetings.
[00:28:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's actually written into all of our laws that anything that is likely to cause a serious disagreement between brothers is a forbidden topic of discussion. And that is, and specifically listed is religion and politics because partisan politics ruin everything.
[00:29:18] Katie Dooley: Yes, but you know, it doesn't ruin everything. The Holy Watermelon podcast.
[00:29:23] Preston Meyer: Right? So I mentioned the United Grand Lodge of England before, as not the Mother Grand Lodge of all Freemasons in the world, but generally well respected. And they take a more public voice whenever the opportunity comes up, especially the last few years. So in 1985, the United Grand Lodge of England published a statement that has been parodied by almost every Masonic jurisdiction authority.
[00:29:51] Katie Dooley: And you're not even going to read the first paragraph, because I just did.
[00:29:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But I like the way it goes on. It says the names used for the Supreme Being enable men of different faiths to join in prayer to God as they see him, without the terms of the prayer causing dissension among them. There is no Masonic God. A Freemason remains committed to the God of the religion he professes. Freemasons meet in common respect for the Supreme Being, but he remains supreme in their individual religions, and it is no part of Freemasonry to attempt to join religions together. There is therefore no composite Masonic God. An open volume of the Sacred Law is an essential part of every Masonic meeting. The volume of the Sacred Law to a Christian is the Bible to Freemasons of other faiths, it is the book held holy by them. Freemasonry is far from indifferent to religion without interfering in religious practice, it expects each member to follow his own faith and to place his duty to God, by whatever name he is known, above all other duties. Its moral teachings are acceptable to all religions. And I've yet to find a religion that finds fault with their moral teachings. But I mean, you might find one.
[00:31:11] Katie Dooley: There's a lot of religions.
[00:31:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So it's it's a pretty solid statement. It says we're not a religion. The Grand Lodge of Alberta goes on to inform petitioning candidates that it acknowledges a one and caring deity. Neither secular nor theological. Reverence for a supreme being is ever present in its ceremonials. The volume of the Sacred Law, appropriate to its members is open upon its altar whenever a lodge is in session.
[00:31:41] Katie Dooley: But that is heavily monotheistic.
[00:31:44] Preston Meyer: It definitely looks monotheistic, but it's not terribly unfavorable for groups that are polytheistic. As long as there is a recognition of a supreme or a creator among them.
[00:32:00] Katie Dooley: Like Brahma.
[00:32:01] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:32:02] Katie Dooley: In the case of Hindus.
[00:32:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And so you'll see. Hindu Freemasons.
[00:32:06] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:32:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:32:08] Katie Dooley: I buy that.
[00:32:09] Preston Meyer: Okay. Wolf Wolfensberger.
[00:32:12] Katie Dooley: Our favorite.
[00:32:13] Preston Meyer: We talked about him a little while ago. He's got a great quote that I think if you accept his framework, makes Freemasonry for sure a religion.
[00:32:25] Katie Dooley: Mhm. Okay.
[00:32:27] Preston Meyer: He says religion is any supra empirical or extra empirical belief or belief system or worldview. Accordingly, capitalism, communism, fascism, democracy with the hope that science or technology will save the world. And thousands of other beliefs are religions, including belief systems that have been formally defined as religions. In fact, epistemologists have made the convincing point that even atheism or deism, because it is too based on an assertion that can never be empirically disproven by appeal to the laws of nature. Insofar as every person capable of some thought holds to beliefs that are not empirically falsifiable. Each person has a religion. In fact, many people incoherently have several religions which, rather embarrassingly, are usually mutually exclusive.
[00:33:19] Katie Dooley: I like that.
[00:33:20] Preston Meyer: Yes, I like his perspective. I also love the name Wolf Wolfensberger, but he's a pretty great scholar.
[00:33:28] Katie Dooley: Nice.
[00:33:29] Preston Meyer: But not super well known. But I like his work.
[00:33:32] Katie Dooley: Who's John Sebastian Marlowe Ward before I read his quote.
[00:33:36] Preston Meyer: He's the author of a lot of books that you'll find in most Masonic libraries. He's just one of the the big Masonic thinkers. Back when, writing Freemasonry was very lucrative.
[00:33:50] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:33:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:33:51] Katie Dooley: So John Sebastian Marlowe Ward defines religion as a system of teaching moral truths, moral truths associated with a belief in God. And then he declares, I consider Freemasonry a sufficiently organized school of mysticism to be entitled to be called a religion. He goes on to say, I boldly averred that Freemasonry is a religion, yet in no way conflicts with any other religion, unless that religion holds that no one outside its portals can be saved. And that's from Freemasonry, its aims and ideas, your aims and ideals. Which is interesting to me because Christians think that.
[00:34:27] Preston Meyer: Yes, generally.
[00:34:29] Katie Dooley: And it's a Christian, predominantly Christian club.
[00:34:34] Preston Meyer: Yep.
[00:34:35] Katie Dooley: So I'm confused. You are too.
[00:34:39] Preston Meyer: It's a really interesting turn of phrase he uses. That there's an awful lot of Christians who insist that unless you join my church, you'll never be saved. And that sounds like a really negative way to run through the world and you probably wouldn't enjoy sharing a lodge with people who don't share your faith. But for an awful lot of Christians, there's a whole lot of mystery of can't say for sure who's going to be saved. So that fits nicely into his...
[00:35:12] Katie Dooley: Brotherly love everyone. So even if we're wrong, someone will vouch for us.
[00:35:17] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:35:17] Katie Dooley: I like that. Yeah.
[00:35:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So that. And he's an insider. He was a mason.
[00:35:26] Katie Dooley: Mhm. That's why I think it's so interesting.
[00:35:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But there's an awful lot of variety in the thought of Masonic writers. You get people like Albert Pike who as far as I can tell is just a garbage human being, but wrote an awful lot, is responsible for changing a huge chunk of what we call Scottish Rite Freemasonry, and is weirdly respected in a lot of circles, and wrote this huge book that some people like to think of as the Masonic Bible called Morals and Dogma. And it's I've had all kinds of people ask me about it. I'm like, haven't read it yet. And weird that you're reading it. I don't know why.
[00:36:08] Katie Dooley: I think it's part of your job now, Preston, to read it.
[00:36:10] Preston Meyer: I think so I've been meaning to get around to it for a while, but not liking its writer has really.
[00:36:17] Katie Dooley: Hindered that process.
[00:36:18] Preston Meyer: Slowed me down on that.
[00:36:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:36:21] Preston Meyer: But really, one can hardly deny the religious character of a Freemasons lodge ritual is focused tightly on events drawn straight out of religious traditions, especially the construction of King Solomon's Temple. We use the Bible in ritual. I don't know if religion is a unifying system of belief in a supernatural power, that's Freemasonry. But if you have a tighter definition on it, then maybe it doesn't fit in. But a lot of the times, the way we define religion omits Buddhism and Confucianism and sometimes even Shinto. It's... You need to draw your lines properly, and that gets really tricky.
[00:37:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah, several religious or Christian denominations do not let their congregants join Freemasonry.
[00:37:14] Preston Meyer: What?
[00:37:15] Katie Dooley: Most notably Catholics.
[00:37:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The popes over the centuries have issued several bulls saying no Freemasons shall be admitted to receive the communion.
[00:37:29] Katie Dooley: But I feel like you told me you had a Catholic...
[00:37:32] Preston Meyer: I know several Catholic Freemasons.
[00:37:36] Katie Dooley: So they're breaking the law! Breaking the law!
[00:37:40] Preston Meyer: It's weird that the Pope has this rule. And yet most people underneath that office just operate on a don't ask, don't tell kind of situation. Yeah, it's a little weird.
[00:37:54] Katie Dooley: Like abortion.
[00:37:56] Preston Meyer: I don't see a parallel there... I would say more like homosexuals serving in the military.
[00:38:01] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:38:02] Preston Meyer: Don't ask, don't tell.
[00:38:03] Katie Dooley: Catholic abortions where Catholic women statistically have more abortions.
[00:38:08] Preston Meyer: Fair enough. Okay. I see you.
[00:38:10] Katie Dooley: Yeah. That's where I was going.
[00:38:12] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:38:13] Katie Dooley: Thanks. Other ones include the Assemblies of God, Church of the Brethren, Church of the Nazarene, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod, the Methodist Church of the UK. This ones... They condemn it, but they don't prohibit it. It's decriminalized, but not illegal.
[00:38:31] Preston Meyer: Right. It's not wildly different, but it's not the same.
[00:38:36] Katie Dooley: The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church in America, and the Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers. All say, no freemasonry!
[00:38:45] Preston Meyer: Yep. And thanks to the weird ban of the Grand Lodge of Utah, it's depending on who you talk to. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, you're going to get some weird looks if you admit to being a Freemason.
[00:39:00] Katie Dooley: Have you gotten weird looks?
[00:39:01] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah.
[00:39:02] Katie Dooley: Oh, I mean...
[00:39:03] Preston Meyer: Loads.
[00:39:03] Katie Dooley: I was going to say something rude. You get weird looks regardless!
[00:39:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:39:08] Katie Dooley: Preston Preston's my favorite. I found it interesting that there I found a list of the eight major concerns that the Southern Baptist Convention had expressed about the teachings and practices of masonry. So I thought this was a good, like, point counterpoint.
[00:39:24] Preston Meyer: Sure. Yeah. Give it to me.
[00:39:26] Katie Dooley: All right. Preston. Freemasonry uses offensive, non-biblical, and blasphemous terms relating to God.
[00:39:32] Preston Meyer: Well, as a person who believes in God and feels pretty good about his relationship with God, I don't remember ever hearing a blasphemous term relating to God or an offensive term relating to God and the non-biblical issue... If you're going to limit your language to what was written in the Bible when there's no such thing as the Bible. Let's start there. You've got a problem, because you gotta argue about a book. But if you're going to limit your vocabulary to one book and its contents, you're going to have a bad time.
[00:40:12] Katie Dooley: I was going to say, I feel like most evangelical churches today, don't use biblical terms relating to God. They're pretty. They're pretty modern, which is why they do so well.
[00:40:21] Preston Meyer: Sure. It's a weird complaint.
[00:40:25] Katie Dooley: It is a very.... Specific complaint.
[00:40:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And, well, it's not that specific. If it was going to be specific, tell me which one offends you.
[00:40:36] Katie Dooley: All right. Number two, Freemasonry insists on the use of bloody oaths or obligations which are strictly forbidden by the Bible. Matthew 5:34-37.
[00:40:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's a weird one.
[00:40:49] Katie Dooley: Tell me about the bloody oaths. I'm sure it's.
[00:40:51] Preston Meyer: Broadly speaking...
[00:40:53] Katie Dooley: Because you can't tell us!
[00:40:55] Preston Meyer: No, I can't tell you the details of the obligations. But there's broadly speaking.
[00:41:00] Katie Dooley: Do you slice your hand open?
[00:41:02] Preston Meyer: No.
[00:41:03] Katie Dooley: Blood brothers?
[00:41:03] Preston Meyer: No.
[00:41:04] Katie Dooley: Hold my hand!
[00:41:07] Preston Meyer: Uh. Broadly speaking, there are promises that you would rather die than share the secrets that are shared with you.
[00:41:16] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:41:17] Preston Meyer: And... Yeah, that's that's that's enough. And it is contrary to the idea that you should never make an oath or make any promise. But I don't see an issue there. But their point is, I'm going to say mostly valid.
[00:41:40] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:41:41] Preston Meyer: I accept it, but it's not a problem for me.
[00:41:46] Katie Dooley: There you go. Well, you're a bad Southern Baptist.
[00:41:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:41:51] Katie Dooley: Number three, Freemason urges the occultic and or pagan readings be used. Oh, sorry. Urges that occultic or and/or pagan readings be used, and that their teachings be appropriated in interpreting such concepts as the Trinity. I was just going to say, I feel like they used a whole bunch of vocabulary words they don't know.
[00:42:10] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:42:11] Both Speakers: Specifically Occultic and pagan.
[00:42:13] Preston Meyer: Yes. Okay. Without doubt or equivocation, yes. That is a correct estimation of their statement. And it's a little embarrassing that they put it into writing. I've known one Mason who was really... You really should learn more about alchemy. One. It doesn't. As far as.
[00:42:40] Katie Dooley: Did he have a forge in his garage? I hope so.
[00:42:43] Preston Meyer: I doubt it, but I don't. I don't know the answer to that. But the idea that Freemasonry urges occultic or pagan readings to be used. That's that's never come up.
[00:42:57] Katie Dooley: Has anyone ever brought a doTERRA catalog? doTERRA is essential oils.
[00:43:01] Preston Meyer: Oh, no.
[00:43:03] Katie Dooley: Because that would be...
[00:43:04] Preston Meyer: I've never seen a man push the sale of essential oils. Not to say that this doesn't happen. I'm confident it has to happen somewhere, but I've never seen it.
[00:43:14] Katie Dooley: Okay. Because that would fall under occultic.
[00:43:17] Preston Meyer: Uh technically. Yeah.
[00:43:22] Katie Dooley: All right. Number four, Freemasonry includes the Bible as part of the air quotes furniture of the lodge, but only as an equal with non-Christian symbols and writings.
[00:43:33] Preston Meyer: Sigh, what a weird thing to complain about.
[00:43:37] Katie Dooley: I mean... what do you think it is in a hotel room, sir?
[00:43:43] Preston Meyer: Well, so their complaint is the idea that we refer to the Bible as part of the furniture is your bedroom. Even a bedroom without a bed in it? Is your toilet even...
[00:43:56] Katie Dooley: I would say it depends if you're selling your house. Because anything with windows and a closet can count as a bedroom.
[00:44:06] Preston Meyer: So now you're talking about intent.
[00:44:08] Katie Dooley: With legal egress.
[00:44:13] Preston Meyer: So that's the thing that if you're going to be offended by the idea that a lodge is not what we say it is without a Bible present, that's messed up. The Bible is an essential part of the lodge setup. That's why it's called the furniture.
[00:44:34] Katie Dooley: It's a church without a Bible.
[00:44:35] Preston Meyer: Right? If you have a church without a Bible, what are you doing?
[00:44:39] Katie Dooley: It's just a conference room at that point.
[00:44:41] Preston Meyer: Exactly. Whereas it's in our law, we cannot hold a lodge meeting without the volume of the sacred law, which is a term used simply to be more inclusive. You can have a lodge meeting without a Bible, but you have to have something else to take its place in a room with just Muslims. There's no need for a Bible.
[00:45:04] Katie Dooley: Right.
[00:45:04] Preston Meyer: You have the Quran instead. But I've never seen a masonic lodge room without the King James Bible specifically, which I mean, for me, it doesn't need to be King James Bible, but a lot of people get pretty uppy about it that if it's not King James, it's not even a real Bible.
[00:45:23] Katie Dooley: It's not even a real Bible.
[00:45:24] Preston Meyer: Which is also a weird thing to believe. But here we are.
[00:45:27] Katie Dooley: That's a different episode. We'll get to that eventually, yeah.
[00:45:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but also another part of their complaint is that it is. They say it's equal with non-Christian symbols and writings, and that's just not true. I... When I was invested as a chaplain. I was told it is the first great light in Freemasonry that nothing else compares to it. And then direct sequel, the next two are symbols that specifically illustrate the position of God as creator.
[00:46:03] Katie Dooley: I guess the only way I can see as equal with non-Christian symbols or writings is if you also had a Quran.
[00:46:09] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:46:10] Katie Dooley: Right? If you I'm sure there's a lodge out there that's like half, half or, you know, there's maybe.
[00:46:15] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:46:15] Katie Dooley: In that case, there...
[00:46:16] Preston Meyer: There are definitely lodges that are mostly Muslim for sure.
[00:46:20] Katie Dooley: So that's the only time I can be like, still not a valid complaint, but at least they're speaking the truth.
[00:46:27] Preston Meyer: Right. And we've talked about this before. If you can't prove with Beyond a shadow of a doubt your religious position, why should you lord it over somebody else?
[00:46:42] Katie Dooley: Burden of proof.
[00:46:44] Preston Meyer: So as far as making the Bible equal to the Quran, I mean, in my personal estimation that's not the reality, but in some lodges, sure, why not? I don't like this complaint that they have, but that's that's what they got.
[00:47:04] Katie Dooley: All right. I think this is number five. Freemasonry misuses the term light to refer to moral reformation as a means to salvation.
[00:47:13] Preston Meyer: I've never heard that said before outside of this context.
[00:47:17] Katie Dooley: Can we translate that? That feels like a lot of words in my brain where I'm like, I don't know what they're trying to say.
[00:47:23] Preston Meyer: So the accusation, because we're not even going to deal with what the reality is right now. The accusation is that Freemasonry uses the word light to refer to self-improvement as a path of salvation, which I've just I've never seen. Like, yes, we're meant to seek light, but light is almost always allegorical for information, understanding or divine providence that you are looking for blessings and knowledge and understanding. And I don't remember ever being told that this is the means of salvation, but I have to admit that the ritual of it varies from place to place. But I've I've never come up against that.
[00:48:12] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:48:14] Preston Meyer: And just taking what we have here, the idea that light being connected to moral reformation connects to salvation. Jesus said, repent or you cannot get into heaven. You must have reformation to make it. And if light is any connection to God's grace, that's super important to Christians too. So it's a weird complaint and I can't call it valid for many reasons.
[00:48:46] Katie Dooley: All right. Number six, Freemasonry teaches that salvation may be attained by good works and not through faith in Christ alone. I even have comments on this one, so.
[00:48:58] Preston Meyer: Go for it.
[00:48:59] Katie Dooley: Aren't there other Christian groups that think that too?
[00:49:02] Preston Meyer: Yes, but not not the Southern Baptist Convention.
[00:49:05] Katie Dooley: No fair but like and I guess they would say don't be part of those other Christian groups. But I mean, this is not just a Freemasonry thing.
[00:49:13] Preston Meyer: Right. But also in the Bible, it tells you faith alone is not enough. You have to do something with it.
[00:49:21] Katie Dooley: That's why God put atheists on the planet.
[00:49:24] Preston Meyer: Right? You act without faith, it can't be all that bad. Uh, anyway, I don't remember ever being told that my good works will be my salvation in lodge.
[00:49:37] Katie Dooley: As, I was going to say...
[00:49:38] Preston Meyer: Right. I don't I don't remember that being in Masonic ritual, and I've had to memorize an awful lot of ritual.
[00:49:45] Katie Dooley: He's done over 40 guys!
[00:49:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's...
[00:49:49] Katie Dooley: Maybe you're just not high enough yet.
[00:49:54] Preston Meyer: So to be the ultimate Masonic authority in a jurisdiction. Well, there is no ultimate Masonic authority. Every jurisdiction has its own grand master. And every grand Master is equal in authority for their jurisdiction. There's no one Grand Master lords over six of these or 100 of those. It's... The Grand Master is Grand Master of his jurisdiction. Alberta has one Grand master. Texas has one Grand Master.
[00:50:24] Katie Dooley: And they're all friends. They're all equal.
[00:50:26] Preston Meyer: They do actually get the opportunity to hang out there as a conference of grand masters of North America.
[00:50:30] Katie Dooley: Are you going to do that?
[00:50:31] Katie Dooley: Eventually.
[00:50:33] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:50:33] Preston Meyer: That's so far down the road for me. It costs a lot of money to do all of the things that go with that office, but.
[00:50:41] Katie Dooley: Sorry, we're on good works. And I distracted you.
[00:50:46] Preston Meyer: No, I lost the train. I don't know what I was saying.
[00:50:49] Katie Dooley: You've never been told that your good works in lodge...
[00:50:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I don't remember ever being told that that was going to be salvation in any Masonic ritual that I have ever gone through. And it's been a handful.
[00:51:01] Katie Dooley: Number seven. Freemasonry advocates in many of its writings the non-biblical teachings of universalism.
[00:51:13] Preston Meyer: Uh, I suppose.
[00:51:14] Katie Dooley: Again, do they even know what universalism is?
[00:51:16] Preston Meyer: I, I can't say for sure? But I've never heard universalism being preached in a masonic lodge. The the idea that all men are created equal. Very important to Freemasons. That varies from area to area too. For example, the Deep South has a real struggle with this idea, but in Canada we're very comfortable with it. But that doesn't mean that every religion is equal. It just means that we respect all brothers equally because we can't prove anything religion-wise.
[00:51:53] Katie Dooley: Is that something that's talked about? I guess you don't talk about religion.
[00:51:56] Preston Meyer: No, we just let it be.
[00:51:57] Katie Dooley: Is that a belief that most Masons share that kind of... I believe in it, but I respect that it can't be proven so... Because that's a pretty progressive.
[00:52:08] Preston Meyer: Most Masons are pretty respectful and grown up about it. There are some that aren't. And eventually it's just like, well, this isn't for you, so go enjoy your meat and potatoes somewhere else.
[00:52:23] Katie Dooley: Mmmmm Masonic meat.
[00:52:27] Preston Meyer: Eating is a big deal for Freemasons. If you're not eating together, it's you're missing a huge chunk of the fraternity.
[00:52:35] Katie Dooley: I'm literally going on the record. Preston, I always want to come to Robbie Burns night. In some of its lodges, freemasonry discriminates against non-whites, Preston.
[00:52:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I had alluded to this. It's weird that the Southern Convention complained about this.
[00:52:53] Katie Dooley: Shots fired.
[00:52:55] Preston Meyer: Um, yeah. It's true. There are Freemasons who have been super racist, including the well loved for no good reason, Albert Pike, who was a Confederate general fighting to keep slaves and all that terrible nonsense. It's a valid complaint because it is hypocrisy that some Freemasons do discriminate against non-whites. That sucks. But as a as a rule for all Freemasonry. No, that's not a thing.
[00:53:30] Katie Dooley: Just all Masons need to be better together.
[00:53:33] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:53:34] Katie Dooley: There is a solution for this one.
[00:53:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:53:37] Katie Dooley: And I mean, it's also a problem that the Southern Baptist Convention probably has and other groups. I'm not adding any one particular. It's just racism is a is a thing.
[00:53:48] Preston Meyer: Yes. Now, to be clear, Southern Baptist Convention, generally speaking, there's obviously exceptions and everything. Big fan of Donald J. Trump. And based on all these complaints, they clearly did not like George Washington very much.
[00:54:09] Katie Dooley: I love it.
[00:54:09] Preston Meyer: So here we go.
[00:54:12] Katie Dooley: Um, and I guess this is a bonus one because there's nine points. And I said there was eight. I don't know who researched this. It was me. Well, it is clear that some Christians, moral persons and outstanding government leaders have been and are members of the Free Masonic movement. Several points of the lodge's teachings are non-biblical and non-Christian.
[00:54:34] Preston Meyer: Oh no.
[00:54:36] Katie Dooley: This is. This is actually more of a summary. While Freemasonry encourages and supports charitable activities, it contains both multi-religious and exclusivistic teachings that are not Christian. They make that sound like it's a bad thing.
[00:54:49] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:54:50] Katie Dooley: Inclusive teachings are bad. That was I mean, I think that was a summary of the. So that's how I'm going to word it.
[00:54:58] Preston Meyer: So the idea of multi-religious communion is offensive to these people. I can't defend that position. If you're against social inclusion, fine. Don't join us. We're going to be better for it. And the idea that there's these that these teachings are not Christian, that's your personal flavor of Christianity. That's it.
[00:55:27] Katie Dooley: You know, flavor of Christianity that isn't? Jesus's.
[00:55:32] Preston Meyer: Right. No, Jesus would be kicked out of the vast majority of Christian churches. It's embarrassing.
[00:55:38] Katie Dooley: So we gotta have a conversation about this. Freemasons don't admit atheists, correct?
[00:55:46] Preston Meyer: Generally speaking, there are exceptions to that as well.
[00:55:50] Katie Dooley: Oh, I want to know how I can get in on this. I'm also a woman, so that's another point we're going to have to talk about. Um, so this was an interesting quote that I really didn't like. So this is why we're gonna have a conversation. The grand master of the Grand Lodge of New York. I don't know when this quote was, because I know the Grand Master is.
[00:56:07] Preston Meyer: Some past Grand master.
[00:56:08] Katie Dooley: Some past grand master. The reason we, I think, in the past, wanted somebody that had a belief in a supreme being is because we take certain obligations to be a good man, to support the fraternity. And if you don't have a belief in a supreme being, the obligation would mean nothing. Yes. So my marriage is void because I'm not religious and don't know how to make an obligation.
[00:56:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's not what he's saying. I don't love his wording. Here it is it does offer problematic wording.
[00:56:36] Katie Dooley: It basically says that because we have nothing holding us accountable, we have no reason to be accountable. That's how I read it. And I don't like it.
[00:56:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The obligations are sworn to the creator of the universe. And if you don't believe in him, you've already begun with a lie. That's the trick.
[00:57:02] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but okay. But that requires some inherent knowledge of what happens in Freemasonry, because he's, like you said, he's worded in a way that's like, oh, no one's holding you accountable. I guess you can't be accountable.
[00:57:17] Preston Meyer: Well, there's this inherent knowledge of Freemasonry. We've let people know more or less a little bit, what's going on inside before we ever initiate anybody. So it's not surprise you have to believe in God when you're half an hour into the ritual.
[00:57:33] Katie Dooley: What about the women thing?
[00:57:35] Preston Meyer: There are women Freemasons.
[00:57:37] Katie Dooley: Can I be one?
[00:57:39] Preston Meyer: You can't do it here because there are no lodges for women Freemasons here.
[00:57:46] Katie Dooley: And I'm an atheist.
[00:57:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:57:49] Katie Dooley: Wow. Two strikes against me.
[00:57:52] Preston Meyer: Yep.
[00:57:55] Katie Dooley: Old tradition.
[00:57:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's a very old tradition.
[00:57:59] Katie Dooley: I mean, I guess you can't, like, check, check, but, like what? What are they doing about non-binary or trans men? I guess trans, I mean, trans men, like, obviously you don't pull down someone's pants, but.
[00:58:12] Preston Meyer: Right. There's been a lot of Masonic jurisdictions that have come out and said, we don't care. Come and join. Lodges have said to the brothers who transitioned to female. We're not going to kick you out. So it's broadly speaking, a lot of jurisdictions are super inclusive, but not all of them. But the world changes slowly.
[00:58:39] Katie Dooley: Where you are in the world too, as opposed to the club you're a part of.
[00:58:42] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:58:43] Katie Dooley: Club is probably reducing it a bit, but.
[00:58:46] Preston Meyer: Kind of a lot.
[00:58:47] Katie Dooley: Kind of a lot. He says. It's club. No girls allowed on the front door.
[00:58:54] Preston Meyer: Sure. Why not?
[00:58:56] Katie Dooley: And it's in a tree house. That's why it's called a lodge.
[00:59:02] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:59:05] Katie Dooley: But is it a cult?
[00:59:07] Preston Meyer: Well, even if you accept the idea that Freemasonry is a religion, then we still have the problematic definition of cult.
[00:59:17] Katie Dooley: I mean, once we move past the problematic definition of religion.
[00:59:23] Preston Meyer: I mean, we've got a bunch of guys in a room together praying together to one specific, though not necessarily universally agreed upon God. Maybe that makes it a cult, but is it a danger cult? No. Remember, we've talked about before. Authoritarianism is the hallmark.
[00:59:46] Katie Dooley: The BITE Model of authoritarian control.
[00:59:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah and we just don't hit those points. It's a pretty free organization. You can stop showing up anytime you want, and people are going to reach out and say, hey, are you okay? Because generally you've joined a lodge and made friends or have joined people who are already your friends. So if you just drop off the face of the planet, people are going to go, what's up? But nobody is dragging you back to the lodge kicking and screaming, and nobody's...
[01:00:19] Katie Dooley: You can leave any time. We have a friend who's a former Mason. Amazing.
[01:00:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:00:22] Katie Dooley: Didn't keep it up, yeah.
[01:00:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And it's super democratic. Lodges elect their master. Every year, the Grand Lodge elects its master, grand master every year. It's... I mean, as far as we can tell, it's the home of modern democracy. Every nation that's had a major revolution there. I don't know of any that didn't have Freemasons involved in building their new government. Even in England, the parliament was figured out by Masons.
[01:01:01] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[01:01:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:01:02] Katie Dooley: I don't think they did a very good job. I'm not a fan of first past the post, but here we are.
[01:01:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it was what they thought of at the time. And for some reason we're like, it's the best there ever could be. Let's commit to it. We've come up with better ideas now and people are just not ready for it, apparently. The people in power know that it will lose them their power. That's the real trick.
[01:01:24] Katie Dooley: I don't want to digress too much, but I've any political discussion I try to start with, well, what is the purpose of government? And then what do you think of first past the post? Because this partisan fighting is really just a result of a) people not knowing what they want from their government and a shitty system.
[01:01:46] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[01:01:48] Katie Dooley: And most people have no idea what first past the post is.
[01:01:50] Preston Meyer: Correct.
[01:01:51] Katie Dooley: Because whenever I'm like whenever there's an election I'm like oh first past the post. And then people are like what's that. I'm like, that's really bad.
[01:01:58] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[01:01:58] Katie Dooley: Let me draw you diagrams on why it's so shitty.
[01:02:01] Preston Meyer: Right? Terrible terrible things.
[01:02:04] Katie Dooley: All right. So it's not really a cult. It's not really a religion but.
[01:02:10] Preston Meyer: Right. The closest we get to cult is that there is specific dress you are required to wear your apron. And thinking that associating that with cultiness is weird.
[01:02:21] Katie Dooley: I mean, when we think of cults, they totally do. So from the outside, I can see. But you know, my point in the notes is like I had to wear a specific uniform to dance class too.
[01:02:32] Preston Meyer: Right?
[01:02:33] Katie Dooley: You got to wear something to soccer. You got to wear something to work.
[01:02:36] Preston Meyer: Right? So, um, specific language is a lot different than language control. That's fine. We do have group rituals that could look culty, depending on the cult that you're expecting, I guess? There is a little bit of information control, but it's not like you don't get to know what we're up to. It's here's a secret that marks you as this class, which consists of basically words and handshakes. It's not like we're you have to wait until you get to be invited to this group before we can tell you how we rule the world, because it doesn't work that way.
[01:03:17] Katie Dooley: You know 44 different handshakes, then?
[01:03:19] Preston Meyer: No.
[01:03:21] Katie Dooley: Well that's disappointing. We should come up with our own Holy Watermelon handshake.
[01:03:28] Preston Meyer: God, that sounds like a lot of work.
[01:03:29] Katie Dooley: o. I'm ready. I'm on this.
[01:03:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:03:32] Katie Dooley: I'll I'll workshop. Okay. Okay, so it's not really a religion. Not really a cult. But is it a secret society?
[01:03:43] Preston Meyer: Ah, there's this kind of annoying catchphrase that I hear more often than I would like. That's why it's annoying that we're not a secret society. But we're a society with secrets.
[01:03:56] Katie Dooley: That's really bad PR.
[01:03:58] Preston Meyer: Right?
[01:03:58] Katie Dooley: It's terrible. It's real bad PR. Don't don't say that.
[01:04:02] Preston Meyer: Right?!
[01:04:03] Katie Dooley: Don't say that.
[01:04:05] Preston Meyer: So I also belong to a whole bunch of Masonic message boards and Masonic subreddits and whatnot. And every now and then, somebody would be like, I'm here and I want to learn more. And then somebody pipes up to be one. Ask one. No, sir, you're an idiot. They've already asked. You're saying it helped nothing. But yeah, this this behavior and phenomenon, it runs deep. But like any really organized group, you don't get to just walk in off the street and get to know all of the things. So in the same way, Ikea is a secret society, sure, but no one calls Ikea a secret society for a good reason. And I don't think Freemasonry is a secret society. It's a mystery school, but it's not a secret society.
[01:05:02] Katie Dooley: Yeah, that's boring.
[01:05:06] Preston Meyer: Sure, for a lot of people it doesn't appeal and that's fine, I love it.
[01:05:11] Katie Dooley: I just want it to be a secret society.
[01:05:14] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[01:05:14] Katie Dooley: I want to be part of a secret society.
[01:05:17] Preston Meyer: Somebody might reach out to you one day. Maybe you'll start getting emails from some new group claiming to be the Illuminati.
[01:05:22] Katie Dooley: You should, uh, have an arm of the San Lanatus's fellowship. That's a secret society. We'll give it a whole new name and send out secret invitations.
[01:05:33] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[01:05:33] Katie Dooley: Our Top tier Patreon members.
[01:05:36] Preston Meyer: I like it.
[01:05:38] Katie Dooley: Okay, okay, okay, so it's not really a religion. It's not really a cult. It's definitely not a secret society. But is it occult?
[01:05:45] Preston Meyer: Is it occult?
[01:05:46] Katie Dooley: Occult. Occult. Not a cult.
[01:05:49] Preston Meyer: I mean, we've talked about is anything really occult before? And there are a handful of things that are traditionally stored under that label. Is it satanic? No. Pretty anti-satanic. Is it super witchy? Not really. It's compatible with Wiccans.
[01:06:10] Katie Dooley: There might be a witch in the Lodge but...
[01:06:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah. There's.. I've met a good handful of Masonic Wiccans, but that's they don't define Freemasonry more than most other groups. Let's be real. Christianity does a pretty good job applying their mark to Freemasonry, but it's not to the point that witchcraft is really excluded because we don't let the Christians say, hey, you can't be a Wiccan, or at least we try really hard not to let that happen. But if what is occult is a search for hidden knowledge, sure, that's pretty much our bread and butter, maybe. That we we want to know more about the world around us. Why would you not want to? But is that really occult? I don't think so. I mean, it's part of the occult experience, but is that actually itself occult?
[01:07:10] Katie Dooley: I don't There is really an occult experience, but.
[01:07:14] Preston Meyer: The people who describe themselves as occultists are looking for greater understanding of the world around them. So I think it's fair to say that that is the occult experience, and that's about as all encompassing of a statement as you can make.
[01:07:30] Katie Dooley: Spooky woooky as it gets.
[01:07:33] Preston Meyer: Sure. It's... I don't know. There are some Masons who are super interested in what is traditionally called occult. I've known one, maybe two, who are really into alchemy or astrology, but it's as a group, not so much there.
[01:07:52] Katie Dooley: So for our listeners, we have an extra special opportunity here with Mr. Preston. Not only is he a mason, he is currently the Grand Chaplain of Alberta, so he's an extra religious mason is what I take from that.
[01:08:08] Preston Meyer: Sure. Yeah, I'm more or less the the chief devotional authority.
[01:08:13] Katie Dooley: Well, tell tell us more about this, Preston. I'll just. I'll just sit here quietly for once.
[01:08:20] Preston Meyer: So it's the care for the volume of the sacred law is reposed in me, that I have to make sure the Bible is present, or that we cannot hold a meeting. That's kind of a big deal. Of course, if I were not there to make sure the Bible is present, someone else would take care of that for me because it's in the box. The office of Masonic Chaplain is interesting. So I've I've served in the capacity of chaplain a few times now in my own lodge, in council, and it's come up a few times where they're like, hey, Preston, we think you'd be good for this job. And I said, sure, I'll do it. The title of chaplain traditionally refers to a minister operating in a private chapel. You'll see them in hospitals, prisons, whatever. Yeah. It's different than in a church. So while Masonic sanctuaries don't typically use the nomenclature of chapel or minister, we are an assembly of believers as diverse as we might be. The prohibition against theological discussion may seem at odds with the duties of a chaplain, generally speaking, but I found that the Ministry of Masonic Chaplain does not require the preaching of any particular divisive doctrine. It's mostly try and help people out. A chaplain leads in prayer and, when necessary, advises a brother, usually using things that are part of our shared experience, like the ritual that we use. The chaplain has unique responsibility to offer invocations and benedictions on behalf of the Lodge. A lot of times, if there's not a chaplain or depending on how your ritual is written, sometimes the Worshipful Master is the one who leads everybody in prayer. Some people get really uppity about that title to Worshipful Master. A lot of cities have have it in law that you will address the mayor as your worship. It's not terribly common in North America, especially not in the United States. But it happens, and it's not that weird.
[01:10:18] Katie Dooley: I don't think it's weird.
[01:10:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:10:19] Katie Dooley: Who am I?
[01:10:20] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but some people get really uppity about it. Oh. Well, uh, while many religions prescribe a particular method of prayer in the lodge, it's appropriate, especially to address the maker only in terms that are agreeable to everybody present. So using terms like the Great Architect of the universe is great, because it's an example of a title that is generally understood to appeal to the highest divine authority, regardless of what you want to name him. You're praying to the one who created the universe. Bam! Solid. It's non-denominational. It's great because we need to be inclusive. Some people want to get super selective on inclusivity, and that's annoying. Like what we saw with the Southern Baptist Convention. Whatever. Generally speaking, religious certainty is a comforter. It feels nice to feel sure about what you believe, but there's no place for that in our fraternity. We all have reasons to believe whatever specific things have crept into your faith. As we've talked about the nature of belief on this show before. You can have authoritative testimony to help you believe something, or just the way you perceive things is solid evidence for you to believe something. That's fine. You don't get to argue about it in Lodge. We share a common belief that we are creatures indebted to a creator who demands that we keep covenants with him and with one another, which virtue is rewarded with, at the very least, faithful, enduring friendships. I can't think of any better creed than that.
[01:11:58] Katie Dooley: I like that.
[01:12:00] Preston Meyer: And that's really what the heart of Freemasonry is.
[01:12:03] Katie Dooley: Thanks for sharing.
[01:12:04] Preston Meyer: So basically, the thesis of how to be a good mason is a lot like the thesis that we've been pounding out all the time that we've been doing this show.
[01:12:13] Katie Dooley: Pounding.
[01:12:13] Preston Meyer: Don't be a dick. Yeah.
[01:12:20] Katie Dooley: Good one. Preston. Ah yeah! Um, and you know what? Before we wrap up this episode, I know we have a lot of your Mason friends that listen. So I just want to say a personal hello to you guys.
[01:12:33] Preston Meyer: Thanks for listening, guys. Yeah.
[01:12:37] Katie Dooley: That was a long episode.
[01:12:40] Preston Meyer: We'll see how long it is after we edit it.
[01:12:43] Katie Dooley: Fair, but let's wrap this puppy up.
[01:12:45] Preston Meyer: All right. Be sure to join us on discord. Join the conversation. Ask questions. I'm happy to answer any question about Freemasonry.
[01:12:54] Katie Dooley: Except what the rituals are.
[01:12:56] Preston Meyer: The answer might be. I can't tell you the specific secret, but I'll answer every question.
[01:13:01] Katie Dooley: Okay, fair.
[01:13:04] Preston Meyer: Plus, we have great memes and just great people on our discord already. So join the conversation. We've got our Facebook, our Instagram. Check out all kinds of stuff you want to learn. Random stuff about religion that just doesn't take up a whole episode. We've got posts about it on our social.
[01:13:20] Katie Dooley: We've been publishing a lot more bonus episodes on our Patreon, so if you want a early access to our regular episodes and some extra content, be sure to subscribe to us on Patreon if the subscription model is not your thing. We also have a Spreadshirt shop where you can buy some sick Holy Watermelon merch.
[01:13:45] Preston Meyer: Oh yeah, good times. Thanks for joining us.
[01:13:48] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 27 Jan 2025 | Receiving Red Rope | 00:59:09 | |
Kabbalah isn't just another branch of Judaism--it's more mystical and personal. The idea is hat you really connect with the creator of the universe--but if you fail at that, there's always another shot with the benefits of reincarnation. Mystical concerns include finding hidden meaning (often in places where it ought not to be) through astrology or gematria (numerology). The Zohar adds depth to the Torah, though not everybody is interested in this newer interpretation of scripture. The Spanish Rabbi who gave us the Zohar is still under investigation for fraud.... The sefirot, and their tree of life illustration, are helpful for understanding how everything fits together in this cosmic theology. We also explore more mundane practices and misconceptions. All this and more... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 01 Jan 2024 | Priesthood to Parenthood - an Interview with Frank McMahon | 00:55:45 | |
Frank McMahon served in the VATICAN. Now, he's joining us to talk about his experience with Playboy, puberty, alcohol abuse, Buddhism, and the things he loved about his service with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, as well as why he left, and the things he hopes to see change in the church. We talk about Frank's favorite and least favorite saints, and about some of the mechanisms that drive the Roman Catholic Church, as well as practices he and many other Christians are adopting from Buddhist ideals. All this and more.... We're sorry that this interview doesn't have video on YouTube. This interview continues on Patreon
Find Holy Watermelon merch at Spreadshop Join the Community on Discord Get more great religion facts in your feed on Facebook and Instagram | |||
| 17 Jul 2023 | Check Out These Noods | 00:37:57 | |
The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is one of the best books of religious satire released this century, and maybe it will hold that status for a while--only time will tell. After a serious look at the most revered books on the planet, it's time to lighten things up with the Pastafarians and their book that contains approximately as many contradictions as the Christian Bible, but with a rock-solid explanation built into the preface. Even Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist-biologist, has good things to say about this Quill Award-winning religious text. For this movement that began in 2005, a book release only the next year might be a little quick compared to some traditions, but it's a little slow compared to some others. Bobby Henderson penned the bulk of the text, offering a wide variety of biblical parodies, but he also includes several essays from others who have joined the movement. The best of these parodies are rooted in the biblical books of Genesis and Exodus, but there is material based on more recent historic figures, too. Like the best religions, there are things to celebrate, and Pastafarians have several noodly holidays, many playing puns on some of the biggest holidays in the Judeo-Christian tradition. If you enjoy our show and don't take faith too seriously, you'll love The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster., and other books published by devotees of the movement. If you like the work that the Satanist churches are doing but find them too dark, try Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. Support us on Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram | |||
| 31 Jan 2022 | Bad Romance | 01:11:37 | |
The Roman way of looking at their neighbours has had a powerful effect on religious studies today. The cults who are responsible for these traditions are never part of the popular mythology we see in popular media today, but we're about to break that silence. Emulation is adoration. While the Romans borrowed and adapted many of the gods in their pantheon from the Greeks, the Ancient Romans developed mythology over and above what the Greeks had. We'll peek at some of the stolen gods, but also explore what was native to the Italian Peninsula. The old gods of Roman mythology have some great stories, but many of them were Etruscan gods, Italic gods, or even "Indo-European" gods. And half their stories were stolen in full from the Greeks. Is it cultural appropriation, plagiarism, or a genuine belief that the gods are universal, simply known by different names? In this episode, we'll compare and contrast the two! All this and more... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website You can say that again because I'm an atheist. But like, just like two people who are so different can come together and make something beautiful.
Preston Meyer 00:26 Right? Like Rome and Greece.
Katie Dooley 00:29 Oh, what a segue. Yeah, so this episode might sound a little bit similar to last week.
Preston Meyer 00:40 Because it is very similar in a lot of ways, but also materially different.
Katie Dooley 00:45 Yes, on...
Both Hosts 00:46 The holy watermelon podcast!
Katie Dooley 00:53 We already have the music. I don't know why I'm singing.
Preston Meyer 00:56 Because you got to feel it.
Katie Dooley 00:58 Yeah, President and I are in a mood tonight. I don't know why. But uh...
Preston Meyer 01:03 We just had a great meal and way too much sugar.
Katie Dooley 01:05 So here we are. Mormon drunk.
Preston Meyer 01:10 I mean, sure, maybe.
Katie Dooley 01:13 This episode we are talking about ancient Roman religion, which is just the grand baby of Greek religion. So some of this is gonna be a review.
Preston Meyer 01:24 Right? In much the same way that English is a weird pile of languages in a trench coat that went and beat up other languages in dark alleys... That's exactly what Roman religious tradition is to the rest of South Eastern Europe.
Katie Dooley 01:44 And eventually to its detriment. Which we'll get to in a few weeks. So the pantheon of gods in the Roman religion is very similar to the Greek tradition. But as we go on with this little series, we'll see that there are similarities with the Celtic and Norse pantheon as well to the Greek and the Roman. It's interesting to me that all these pantheons are so similar.
Preston Meyer 02:14 Yeah, we're gonna highlight some of the differences too. It's some pretty interesting stuff. I thought.
Katie Dooley 02:19 Well, yeah, this would be a boring episode if we just talked about how it's the same.
Preston Meyer 02:22 Just rerecord the exact same episode with different names.
Katie Dooley 02:26 Zeus is Jupiter. Hera is Minerva, is she? No, I have that backwards. Athena is Minerva. Good night, everyone.
Preston Meyer 02:39 But that's not why you listen to the Holy Watermelon.
Katie Dooley 02:44 So again, many aspects of the Roman tradition are based on the Greek tradition, but there is about 1000 years difference between when we really started to see the Roman tradition take hold.
Preston Meyer 02:57 Yeah, it's interesting that Romans did change everything to fit themselves. They adopted a lot of things that they found elsewhere that they liked. And it's kind of funky. On the surface, it looks like it's the same gods with different names. And it's easy, really easy to just assume they all are just the exact same thing. But there's, there's some important differences.
Katie Dooley 03:24 I think it's a interesting, sociological anthropological concept that they changed it to fit their culture, because you could probably argue that every I mean, I'm thinking the big ones Christianity and Islam have done that.
Preston Meyer 03:38 American Jesus is a lot different than, say, the Jesus that people still believe in in the Middle East.
Katie Dooley 03:44 Or if you look at, you know, people say Islam such a violent religion really after looking at places like Saudi Arabia or Qatar, then yeah, but if you look at countries like Indonesia, it's not the same Islam. So anyway, interesting parallel.
Preston Meyer 04:03 Romans were really into their religion. Like the Greeks were pretty religious as a general statement. The Romans were really into it.
Katie Dooley 04:14 I think the difference between Greek and Roman is that like Greek, as we talked about, was kind of like Shinto. It's just the way you lived your life. Whereas Roman from our research to me, it really feels like there was this belief to it. Like, they recognize there was worship, whereas Greeks was like, this is how you do your day.
Preston Meyer 04:35 Pretty much it became more of a actual religion enrollment looks like. Which is a weird thing to say, when we have a hard time defining religion. Yeah, it was commonly believed in the life of Rome, that everything was really tightly tied to their piety. Any failure to satisfy the gods would ruin the nation. And I mean, the decline of Rome and the rise of Christianity does illustrate that in a weird kind of way.
Katie Dooley 05:09 It does. And part of that too, is that they were happy to add to their pantheon. Kinda like Hinduism, which is funny that to Rome, it was their ultimate downfall and Hinduism it's like, meh.
Preston Meyer 05:21 They're still doing great. So the, the source of a lot of confusion in all of the study of what is Roman, the Roman gods, but also what's going on with their neighbors, is the Roman preference to see all foreign gods as manifestations of their own gods. Which is really frustrating to somebody who wants to try and figure out okay, but who was Minerva? And because they saw Athena, and other neighboring similar gods as the same thing as Minerva. All of the stories get jumbled together. And you have to really dig to find out who was Minerva before this was happening.
Katie Dooley 06:13 It's funny that you talked about this. I'm reading a historical fiction novel, but the author's clearly like, big into history, like, it's only a few steps away from being a historical novel, as opposed to historical fiction. And it's about Salisbury, and Stonehenge and what used to be called Sarum in England, and I'm at the part where Rome has now made its way to the British Isles, and exactly that there's like passages that where they're like, oh, well, they call this thing, but it's clearly. So that's where we get into Celtic and Norse gods, we'll see similarities because of exactly that. They're like, oh, this is their son, God, well, it's clearly Apollo.
Preston Meyer 07:01 We only have one son above us. And Apollo was a specific issue that does confuse that a bit we talked about in our last episode. Apollo is the second sun god, who kind of took over the role from Helios.
Katie Dooley 07:18 But the one thing about absorbing gods is that it's a great way to make friends.
Preston Meyer 07:23 Yeah, I belong to an organization that's all about focusing on our similarities. And that helps us be peaceable to each other. It's great. We make good brothers that way. But it's really hard to properly understand what's going on in a person's theology when you have even this kind of prejudice.
Katie Dooley 07:46 Yeah, and I mean, who knows how they felt 2000/4000 years ago. But like, if you did that today that just be really insensitive to someone. That's a very fascinating story. That sounds like one of my stories that I actually think is better.
Preston Meyer 08:07 Yeah, so we've, more than a year ago, now, we talked about various theological models. And I, I think we even said that the Roman Pantheon is, and the Roman tradition is a pretty polytheistic situation. But for a lot of people, it was more henotheistic, where you would have people just worship one God rather than offer at several altars over the course of their life. But of course, you did have to recognize that there were other gods, but you just didn't worship them. It's complicated. It's always complicated.
Katie Dooley 08:48 It's amazing. And we might actually have to add an episode for this. But it's amazing between this research and then again, this that I just happen to be reading this historical fiction book that the concept of monotheism was like mind boggling to these people. To the point where it's like a joke that you would believe in, when all powerful God so it's an interesting, again, now we're like, at least in the West, the concept of polytheism and multiple gods is, I don't want to say laughable, but I'm pretty sure for some people it is. It's defninitely unfamiliar.
Preston Meyer 09:22 When Christianity was just forming, and or even before that, when the Romans were talking about the people of Israel, they saw the God of Israel as just another manifestation of Jupiter, or sometimes one of the other gods, depending on who was talking and what similarities they saw in their features, in their aspects. And when Israel came around and said, No, there's only one God and the Christians were like, really aggressively saying, No, there's only one God. Yeah, that didn't make any sense to them at all. That's fascinating stuff.
Katie Dooley 09:58 So let's chat about all of these gods. So we had the 12 Olympians. But there's even more than that here. And I know there's more than 12 Olympians but...
Preston Meyer 10:09 So the Roman system is really complicated. There is no Mount Olympus, which of course, was an amalgamation of a lot of traditions to begin with as well. In Rome, there's so many different systems of the favored gods. It's kind of complicated.
Katie Dooley 10:31 It's actually far more complicated than Greek. And part of that, I wonder if it isn't because the Roman Empire spreads so far. And there was so many different cultures. I mean, you asked me, we'll get to research the afterlife, and I was like, I don't get it. There's too much, but sorry, carry on.
Preston Meyer 10:49 So let's start with the gods that had cults that were officially state supported cults, like the Church of England kind of state supported cults. There were a handful of high priests, or their fancy name is actually the flamines maiores, the major priests, these three great priests would serve the three most important gods to the Roman state, like going back before the Empire, even before the Republic, to the kingdom of Rome. And then, of course, this did continue into the Republic, and actually not so much into the empire. So these three gods were Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus. Before, a year ago, I'd never even heard of Quirinus.
Katie Dooley 11:47 I heard of him this week.
Preston Meyer 11:51 There are a handful of people, rulers who have taken a name similar to this that are based on this name. There's one even in the Bible, but it's actually not a popular God. People don't talk about him a whole lot. But he's one of the big three with Jupiter and Mars. Quirinus was an early Sabine God, who became the patron of the Roman state, one of the seven hills of Rome is named in his honor. So it's kind of a big deal, and yet so easily forgotten. Then, of course, we have Jove. Which is the Latin god of the sky. This name evolved into Jupiter with the title father added, becoming a little bit more familiar. And so that's why you often actually hear this interchangeable name Jove, Jupiter. The moons of Jupiter are usually called the Jovian moons, that kind of thing. It's just where the name comes from. It works out well that way. And so of course, he was revered by military commanders, they would pay homage to Jupiter, as he was the God that protected the Roman state. Kind of similar to what Ares did in the Greek tradition, but not quite the same. And so when the Romans received the stories of Zeus, they're like, well, obviously, this is Jupiter. So they just slapped the Jupiter sticker over the name of Zeus in all the books.
Katie Dooley 13:14 Did they not..? They must not have read all the stories.
Preston Meyer 13:18 Right? As far as I know, before the adoption of all the Zeus stories, Jupiter wasn't super rape-y
Katie Dooley 13:29 And then he became super rape-y.
Preston Meyer 13:32 Yeah, I guess the Romans just didn't have a problem with Zeus. I don't know. That's weird. And then of course, we have Mars or Mardi, depending on the situation, linguistically speaking. He was an agricultural guardian. And so in this role, he was revered by the defenders of Rome, which of course, easily moved him into the position of God of War. So we have a month in the spring named after him because of his agricultural role. His transformation into a war god gave him something to do in winter, which, of course is important, you gotta have something to do year round.
Katie Dooley 14:08 I have a winter hobby and a summer hobby.
Preston Meyer 14:10 Exactly. Interestingly enough, Mars is actually said to be the father of the founder of Rome, which we'll get into a little bit later.
Katie Dooley 14:19 Yes, yeah, I did that.
Preston Meyer 14:24 And so we've got those three major gods served by the the major flamens, which is of course a weird weird word for priest that we've just kind of preserved sometimes flamens/flamens I think flamens is more correct.
Katie Dooley 14:39 Like the sports equipment and agricultural equipment store?
Preston Meyer 14:44 Close to similar spelling, but not identical.
Katie Dooley 14:49 That's pretty godly that store.
Preston Meyer 14:51 Right? And then there were 12 Which still super important gods but they were served by the minor flamens.
Katie Dooley 15:02 Well ueah, 'cause after the 12 then we literally have hundreds. We're not gonna get in today, kids. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Preston Meyer 15:11 Right? We can only focus on the really important ones.
Katie Dooley 15:16 We start with Ceres She's the Latin Goddess of a agriculture. I said that weird. Latin goddess of agriculture. And the Romans decided that this was Demeter. Demeter stories were actually all about her. But they murdered her daughter's name to Proserpina.
Preston Meyer 15:38 Persephone was done dirty.
Katie Dooley 15:41 Persephone is a much better name. If you are looking for baby names, please and like going back and forth go with Persephone, not Proserpina. It's the Pina that gets me. I'm gonna recommend that to a friend. I have a friend that's pregnant. I'm going to see if she wants to name her baby Proserpina.
Preston Meyer 15:58 I like it. Next on our list, we have Val Tunis. He was the Etruscan god of the Tiber River, who was later replaced by the Roman Tiberinus makes perfect sense. New culture taken over, gets to name the river the way they want became the Tiber River. God with an appropriate name. I went looking for it and I couldn't actually find the Etruscan name for the river, just the Etruscan equivalent of the name to Tiberinus. It was kind of annoying. I looked for a while. I was like fine, I can't get it.
Katie Dooley 16:36 Then we have Falacer? Falacer?? Falacer. Don't be a dick. He's an old Italian God. Go figure.
Preston Meyer 16:50 The italic people are a subset of what is now modern day Italy, like the Latins and the Romans subsets.
Katie Dooley 16:58 And that's actually where the name italic font comes from. Anyway. There's very little known about Falacer today, but he lost all his popularity during the rise of the Roman Empire, which with the name like that, it's ironic to me
Preston Meyer 17:15 Rght? Because even back then they were drawing phallus. on everything. I don't know if it's even a coincidence. Or if he's deliberately named the God of Phalluses. I don't know what the deal is. I could find almost nothing on this guy. Which is better than some of these 12 unfortunately. Next on our list, we have Flora. But you can guess what she's the goddess of flora. Flora was the old Sabine Italian Goddess of flowers and the spring. Nice and simple.
Katie Dooley 17:52 Farina was an old Roman goddess of water.
Preston Meyer 17:58 Nice, broad category there.
Katie Dooley 18:00 What a great name too.
Preston Meyer 18:02 It's like the fury of bubbling water of rain, raging rapids and whatnot. That's kind of cool. Palatua was the patron god of Palatine Hill, who's cult did not survive the end of the Republic.
Katie Dooley 18:17 Never heard of him.
Preston Meyer 18:18 Right? And these were major gods in the Republic time, or at least at the beginning of the Republic. And nobody talks about them
Katie Dooley 18:25 As we get on, we'll hear more names that people are more familiar with. But yeah, these are not... these feel obscure.
Preston Meyer 18:31 But they were super important at one time.
Katie Dooley 18:34 Pomona was the goddess of fruit and may have originally been Umbrian.
Preston Meyer 18:42 Yeah, it's kind of kind of fuzzy there. But one of the regional neighbors brought over into the Roman idea. And I like the name Pomona. It's where we get the word pomme, which is the French word for apple. It used to be just the generic word for fruit but languages evolve now it's apple. Weird stuff.
Katie Dooley 19:04 Pomme de Terre. Apple of the earth
Preston Meyer 19:06 Exactly or fruit of the earth, depending on your preference for how you use the word..
Katie Dooley 19:11 Interesting I actually like fruit of the earth better for a potato. .
Preston Meyer 19:18 We got Portunus was the old Latin god of doors and keys
Katie Dooley 19:23 What an obscure thing to be a god of but...
Preston Meyer 19:25 It does sound kind of funky based on the way we feel needs for things that doesn't fit. But back then it was his role was important and people talked about it and used him. Of course, by the Imperial era, he had been almost completely replaced with the Roman Janus. And they both had two heads one facing either way. Gotta have doors and ports and all that fun
Katie Dooley 19:49 Comings and goings. Vulcan is the Sabine Roman god of fire.
Preston Meyer 19:55 Finally we get somebody that people were might likely be more familiar with.
Katie Dooley 20:00 If only because of Star Trek. Because its aspects are mirrored in the Greek Hephaestus? Hephaestus? Are mirrored in the Greek Hephaestus, they share a ton of stories with each other. But there are still a few stories that are unique to Vulcan, including a role in the foundation of Rome.
Preston Meyer 20:21 And next on this, we have Carmentis, the goddess of childbirth, prophecy and charms, which is how that name is built, was actually the adoption of the Greek Nicostrati. And she is also credited with inventing the Latin alphabet. So we managed to get through all this list without hitting any outright theft from Greece. Until Carmentis. And then, so that's only 10 of these 12. Church supported cults below the top, big, big three. And the other two, we actually just don't know who they are. They're fully lost to history.
Katie Dooley 21:09 That's kind of cool, sad, but kind of cool. There's not much that's a mystery anymore.
Preston Meyer 21:16 The tradition of having these church sanctioned deals, these priests who are basically on government payroll, did last into the Empire. And the Emperor did fill one of those slots. But that only fills one of the two slots that we don't know who they were.
Katie Dooley 21:37 Interesting. Cool.Now we have another round of gods.
Preston Meyer 21:43 There's so many. But there's, I still think they're interesting.
Katie Dooley 21:46 Oh, well, then let's talk about them. So let's talk about the era first.
Preston Meyer 21:53 All right, so these other guides that we're talking about are other important, pre-Imperial gods. And a lot of them did last into the Empire. Some of them not necessarily in the same form. Because of course, things kept evolving as they kept stealing stories from people.
Katie Dooley 22:13 I was gonna say, now we start getting into the Greek stealing. Yeah. Stealing from the Greeks or not stealing Greeks, plagiarizing.
Preston Meyer 22:22 That kind of language is why people confuse, who owned the Trojan horse before it was a gift. So let's start with the really primitive primal gods that they had, we had Sol the primitive male personification of the sun, and sacrifices, of course ensured his return. He was acquainted pretty fairly with the Greek Helios, just, that's the sun personified. A lot of the gods being counted as equal, really easy to argue. But I mean, the sun is the sun. That's the deal. Just like Luna, the female personification of the moon. Of course, her identity got really complicated as Roman traditions incorporated more gods and gave Moon duties to other people as well. Kind of like when Apollo took over some duties.
Katie Dooley 23:21 She is the one Sailor Moon!
Preston Meyer 23:30 So if you remember your Greek gods, Celine was the equivalent to Luna the sun goddess.
Katie Dooley 23:37 Then Artemis gets in there to eventually
Preston Meyer 23:41 Because of Apollo.
Katie Dooley 23:44 So Tellus or also known as Tara was the female and personification of the earth. And her Greek... counterpart was Caelus, the personification of the heavens. So in Greece, this would be Gaia and Ouranos.
Preston Meyer 24:03 Or if you like, butts, Uranus.
Katie Dooley 24:07 I love butts!
Preston Meyer 24:11 I went so long in my life before somebody told me no, no, it's pronounced Uranus. I'm like, that makes sense.
Katie Dooley 24:19 I feel like that's more appropriate.
Preston Meyer 24:25 And next we have Saturn, who was the god of the land that was later called Rome. He was the giver of all good gifts and actually the closest thing the Romans had to a monotheistic God, which is kind of interesting. Not that they were monotheistic but that he really did...
Katie Dooley 24:43 Close to all powerful.
Preston Meyer 24:45 More or less like he looked a lot like the way that the Israelites saw Jehovah.
Katie Dooley 24:52 I heard Jahweh recently and I was like, no...
Preston Meyer 24:55 No, no, that's not okay.
Katie Dooley 24:58 Don't like that. Jahweh? Excuse me, excuse yourself.
Preston Meyer 25:05 There there are a couple of pronunciations that I find perfectly acceptable. Jahweh is not one of them. I think it's really interesting that Saturn's day matches on the weekly calendar, where the Jewish Sabbath falls, Saturday. And that's just nifty to me. Course, his character changed completely when he was mapped onto the Greek Kronus. And he became just terrible, terrible, just kind of gross. Oddly enough, there was a near approximation to the Christian holy spirit in Genius. Oh, of course, Genius has actually evolved a lot over the course of Roman history, and barely survived into the Imperial era, during which time the word was simply applied to the soul of every man, or sometimes family or household. But not women. They were sent out of the spirit of Juno, which is kind of cool, because Juno is figure that actually survived.
Katie Dooley 26:18 I mean, yeah, that was good. Now Juno is the mother goddess. So Greek Hera would be the equivalent. She also I mean, filled a lot of roles as Rome evolved.
Preston Meyer 26:34 Yeah, we can't really say a whole lot more about Juno without contradicting some scholars. She was a complex figure that yeah, kind of a mess.... She wore a lot of hats.
Katie Dooley 26:51 Don't all women?
Preston Meyer 26:54 I mean, definitely an awful lot. I can't speak for all of any group.
Katie Dooley 27:00 Okay. Most women...
Preston Meyer 27:04 Sure. I'll accept.
Katie Dooley 27:06 Thank you.
Preston Meyer 27:09 lucre AI is kind of interesting. The god of money and trickery in ancient Rome,
Katie Dooley 27:16 Loki-i?
Preston Meyer 27:18 It does kind of sound like that. And it helps that they actually do match up on the trickery business. lucre i is kind of well it is where we get the word lucre which is just dirty money. And so, lucre I was fully replaced by Mercury, who was the Roman response to Hermes.
Katie Dooley 27:42 Who's the messenger. If you'll remember the messenger god.
Preston Meyer 27:47 Yeah. And his cult was actually mostly adopted from the Etruscan cult of Turms, who also shared several aspects.
Katie Dooley 27:55 There's like a lot of Gods happening in this one.
Preston Meyer 27:58 Remember when he talked about Hermeticism and HermesTrismegistus? Every character attached to Hermes/Mercury is basically a composite of what everybody in the neighborhood could think to say about this guy. It's really messy.
Katie Dooley 28:24 Just like they put up a whiteboard one day, and were like, let's brainstorm and not eliminate anything.
Preston Meyer 28:29 Yeah, it really feels like.
Katie Dooley 28:33 That's not how you brainstorm kids.
Preston Meyer 28:35 No, you do need to eliminate the bad ideas.
Katie Dooley 28:38 At the end of course.
Preston Meyer 28:40 Sure. I mean, yeah, if bad ideas too soon,
Katie Dooley 28:44 You might miss out on some good ideas but at the end... you definitely need to... Do you know what this podcast would be called iff we did not eliminate bad ideas?
Preston Meyer 28:52 Not something as good as the Holy Watermelon.
Katie Dooley 28:56 I think it's gonna be Katie and Preston Talk Religion.
Preston Meyer 29:00 I'm glad we settled on Holy Watermelon.
Katie Dooley 29:07 Orcus was worshipped by both the Romans and the Etruscans as the god of the underworld, until Greek influence turned him into Pluto.
Preston Meyer 29:18 Well fully replaced him with Pluto.
Katie Dooley 29:21 But the Greeks had Hades in the underworld.
Preston Meyer 29:25 If you remember last episode, we talked about how Pluto was the nickname given so you didn't accidentally gather his attention. What they usually said Pluton, depending on how it was used in a sentence, of course, funny business Pluto was a fully Greek name that the Romans just adopted. Weird business. Liber or Liber? Liber? Definitely Liber, no Liber. Liber was the god of wine and plebian freedom, which of course made him really easy to replace with a drunken Greek God. And we'll get into the details of that replacement later too
Katie Dooley 30:11 Neptune is one that you would probably be familiar with is the Roman adoption of Greek Poseidon
Preston Meyer 30:18 Fully adopted.
Katie Dooley 30:21 Who's Raymond Bloch?
Preston Meyer 30:23 Raymond Bloch is just one of a whole bunch of scholars who are really into this stuff. When I was trying to figure out where Neptune came from, I was actually really disappointed to see was just a straight across adoption. And so Raymond Bloch found an etymology for this name. Because there needs to be a reason why you rename something that you fully ripped off of somebody else. And Poseidon was perfectly reasonable name. Neptune means he who is moist. They could have called him the Wet Boy. They could have called him...
Katie Dooley 31:09 Aquaman!
Preston Meyer 31:10 They could have called them a lot of different things. They call them, He Who is Moist. According to Raymond Bloch.
Katie Dooley 31:19 I mean, who is He Who is Moist worse than He Who is Drippy?
Preston Meyer 31:25 Oh, I mean, we could have had a lot of fun. I know that out there in internet land. There are people who make constructed religions for all kinds of fictional universes. And I want to hear of one where the gods don't have good names. They're just the DrippyBoy. The the Gassy Boy, that kind of thing. It would be fantastic.
Katie Dooley 31:51 Tell everyone what you call Jesus.
Preston Meyer 31:54 Oily Josh. Josh perfectly reasonable interpretation of his given name. And Christ or Messiah means oily.
Katie Dooley 32:06 Oily Josh
Preston Meyer 32:09 Or one who has been anointed with oil
Katie Dooley 32:11 One who has been oilied. He who is Oily. Josh who is Oily Wow, we digress so quickly. Minerva, Minerva McGonigal? Kidding. Minerva was the personification of intelligence and the plan of the cosmos. And she was treated as a strategist and domestic protector. So very similar to Athena.
Preston Meyer 32:42 There's there's a reason Athena got mapped on to Minerva.
Katie Dooley 32:49 That's my mapping sound
Preston Meyer 32:50 Well, done. The hesitated clap. All right. Next on our list, we have Diana, again, reasonably well known, very complex Italian goddess. Her cult saw her as the perfect role model being a guardian of the wild while also a hunter. She was also associated with the moon a little later on, as well as a keeper of the dead and of crossroads. Also indistinct persons of Luna or Celine and Hecate. Diana was also part of a minor triad with Virbius and Egeria personifications of the woods and waters respectively.
Katie Dooley 33:33 Cool. Yeah. And that's with Artemis.
Preston Meyer 33:37 Exactly.
Katie Dooley 33:40 Vesta is the goddess of the hearth. And I even think their name sounds similar in Greek Hestia.
Preston Meyer 33:47 Well, especially if Vesta was ever pronounced "Westa". That's awfully close to Hestia.
Katie Dooley 33:54 She doesn't have a ton of stories about her, but it was called a virgin, which is also weird because there are ancient tales of her fire producing a penis to impregnate women. Fire penis!
Preston Meyer 34:09 Right? What a dramatic story to contradict the label of virgin.
Katie Dooley 34:17 She could teach Mary a thing or two.
Preston Meyer 34:24 Yeah, some interesting gods. Like I mentioned before, there's a little bit of an issue with Greek/Roman equivalents. Many Roman gods were effectively replaced by Greek gods, though they did keep the Roman names. Some Greek gods were just straight up adopted into the Roman tradition and were Romanized and blended with pre-existing gods, known among the Romans and their closer neighbors. And most Roman gods were distinct characters who happen to share a patronage. Some are lost forever, others are buried under Greek stories, which helps build a false analogy. Even in the fifth century, before the Common Era, scholars like Herodotus preferred to study the gods as though they all existed across cultures, known by different names. And unfortunately, this philosophy influenced the way Roman cult leaders and storytellers adapted Greek stories to their local gods, became common for writers to use the names of gods with similar aspects fully interchangeably. So that in the Christian Bible, for example, Mars Hill in Rome, is identified as Ares hill in the Greek text.
Katie Dooley 35:40 Even working on the Roman afterlife. Like, as I dug deeper, I'm like, but this is the Greek afterlife, I was like, am I wrong? Or is it just so similar? I can't see the forest for the trees.
Preston Meyer 35:54 It's messy and complicated to find the difference a little bit.There are a good handful of scholars. And it's kind of hard to contradict some of these ideas, who believe that these gods are evolved from proto-indo European prototypes. The problem with the hypothesis is that this denies the ability of cultures to create gods independently, like Sol and Helios could have just come from the same story from further east. But it also makes perfect sense they both looked up and said, "Hey, that sun's super important to us. Let's offer sacrifices."
Katie Dooley 36:36 Well, I mean, especially when you get into island nations, like, you know, like I've alluded to, we have the British Isles and Ireland, and they came up with their own sun God, and they were literally cut off from the rest of the world.
Preston Meyer 36:55 Yeah, so it's, it's a tricky position that in a lot of cases, it does look like this hypothesis does hold true. In a lot of other cases, this hypothesis doesn't look valid. And so it is, it's very much a case by case basis that we have to judge these on.
Katie Dooley 37:13 Rome doesn't have a Mount Olympus that's in Greece.
Preston Meyer 37:19 Right. But it does have seven hills.
Katie Dooley 37:22 That sounds boring. I got seven hills down the street, do you? I mean, there's definitely at least three in the park.
Preston Meyer 37:34 That's fair.
Katie Dooley 37:35 So I wouldn't have to go much further to find four more.
Preston Meyer 37:39 I think you're probably right. Of course, Rome has grown. This statement was even valid, but that's okay. But the seven hills of Rome figure very prominently into the Revelation of John at the end of the Christian Bible. And the seven horns, the crowns on the seven horns. Those are the hills of Rome. So instead of 12 Olympians, there is a triad enshrined as the hill gods, and this triad is Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. There's a tribute to Mount Olympus found in the Roman Forum, where the 12 Olympians are represented by their Roman counterparts, or straight up just themselves.
Katie Dooley 38:29 Juno and Minerva are under a hill.
Preston Meyer 38:31 No, no, no, no. They're on the hill.
Katie Dooley 38:35 On the Hill! Under Hill. This Mr. Underhill.
Preston Meyer 38:43 So looking at a few more of these gods that are definitely influenced and sometimes butchered because of Greek influence. There's some interesting stuff. Let's get Apollo out of the way first. He's an interesting case because his cult had actually spread from further east, to the Italian peninsula long before the Romans even started spreading their aggressive influence. He's one of the few Gods who's actually truly the same in the Roman and Greek traditions without even a different name.
Katie Dooley 39:17 What a guy!
Preston Meyer 39:18 Right? One thing I found was really interesting, though, I went, I went looking into this Pluton nonsense. So, Dis Pater, the father of riches was the god of mineral wealth. And due to the similar meaning in the Greek name, Pluton, they were really easy to combine. And the association with the underworld because of who Pluton was in the Greek tradition, just kind of forced its way into that synchronisation, which just straight up pushed Orcus out of the picture.
Katie Dooley 39:52 Poor Orcus.
Preston Meyer 39:55 So, sometimes, you know, let's see that There's no a different version of this god. Pluto is Hades. He's not the Roman version of Hades. He just is the Greek Hades living under Rome.
Katie Dooley 40:14 I mean, the underworld is probably pretty big so...
Preston Meyer 40:16 It would have to be there's been a lot of dead people in the course of history.
Katie Dooley 40:21 Then, of course, we have Mars, who is similar to Ares in the Greek tradition. So he was a force of agriculture, stability, military support and peace but he was later hopped on to Ares the God of brutal warfare. Therefore, Mars adopted Ares' stories and traditions.
Preston Meyer 40:45 Thanks to the Greek influence yeah.
Katie Dooley 40:47 Good ol' Greeks. Bacchus!
Preston Meyer 40:50 Bacchus is cool.
Katie Dooley 40:52 I swear to you that the Portuguese name for Bert is Bacchus in Sesame Street.
Preston Meyer 41:00 We got lots of benign figers named Dennis too.
Katie Dooley 41:03 I know but it's great watching it redubbed and I'm going Bacchus.
Preston Meyer 41:09 Sure. Bacchus was the Greek god who replaced the earlier Roman god Liber. He is also known as Dionysus. The name Bacchus was apparently more popular in Rome than Dionysus. And it's connected to the Greek word baccheia, which means a drunken frenzy, there's a little bit of argument back and forth on what which came first, that whether the mania was named after the figure, or vice versa. I'm leaning towards this new name for Dionysus coming from the drunken frenzy, but I'm sure there's loads of people happy to disagree with me. That's, that's what scholarship is. It's just like we found with Hades and Pluto, Bacchus is Dionysus. He just kind of stabbed Liber enough that Liber stopped being around. More or less.
Katie Dooley 42:12 And you know, who else suffered the same fate? Minerva. So Athena replaced an awful lot of local domestic goddesses. So the name Minerva still kicks around, but it's basically Athena.
Preston Meyer 42:31 Venus is kind of cool. Lots of reasons people would like her. The Roman Goddess of desire, love, sex and fertility, almost never illustrated with clothing.
Katie Dooley 42:43 Only hair.
Preston Meyer 42:46 So she was the one you would call on when you needed help seducing somebody. This is early on her major function. And because of that, she's fairly equal to the Greek Aphrodite apart from her older stories that would obviously distinguish them. And one of those is that she is said to be an ancestor of the Roman people after fleeing the Battle of Troy, from from Greek legend. Yeah. It's kind of an interesting connection there.
Katie Dooley 43:19 I mean, we talked about Hestia and Diana and Artemis.
Preston Meyer 43:23 Yeah, pretty much. They're just kind of replacing names for those fellows as well. And so the Roman Pantheon, of course, expanded to include way more Gods than I could even actually bother to count. Let's be real, it was a long way.
Katie Dooley 43:40 It goes on forever. If you want to hear more obscure gods, send us an email. Holywatermelonpod@gmail.com.
Preston Meyer 43:48 The list of Gods actually gets even longer when you just add all of the different names that individual gods can be known by. It's such a mess, because you know, a culture so rich and poetry and storytelling, very often you would see 10 different names used for a God in one body of work.
Katie Dooley 44:12 Like pet names, but...
Preston Meyer 44:14 Kind of, but sometimes they would be kind of mean. Sometimes they would just describe
Katie Dooley 44:21 Tubsy is still a pet name. It's not a nice pet name, but...
Preston Meyer 44:25 A lot of these names would describe their aspect and their relation to other things in the world or other gods in the cosmos. All kinds of things.
Katie Dooley 44:35 Tubsy.
Preston Meyer 44:35 Yeah. And so we did end up with a lot of gods that don't have a Greek equivalent as well, like, Janus, or the guy with two faces spirit of doorways and gates doesn't really have a Greek equivalent that that I'm aware of.
Katie Dooley 44:48 No. I mean, none with two faces. That's a very almost Hindu thing.
Preston Meyer 44:55 Yeah, it kind of is, isn't it?
Katie Dooley 45:00 So I don't even think the Greek tradition really has I meana little bit of an origin story with the Titans and Olympus but...
Preston Meyer 45:08 Yeah, you'd have some local stories about local things but I don't remember coming across a world origin story apart from Gaia, which is the world is the child of... what was it? Oh, no, I forgot.
Katie Dooley 45:28 It's fine. It's complicated. It's on the family bush. But Rome has a godly origin story, which I'm sure some of you are familiar with. So, Mars, the god of war, conceived a two twin boys Romulus and Remus with a Vestal virgin. Rhea Silvia. Obviously, she was not a virgin. I mean, it caused some problems. This conception.
Preston Meyer 45:58 So the trick here, so a virgin would be somebody who was never married. And it is usually culturally appropriate that they would also be a virgin the way we know the word. So probably up until this point, she was a virgin the way we know it.
Katie Dooley 46:16 Good ol' Mars what a scamp.
Preston Meyer 46:18 Vestal, of course, meaning that she was a servant of Vesta, who attend the fires.
Katie Dooley 46:25 Oh, she got a pen-- fire penis!
Preston Meyer 46:27 Not this time it was Mars.
Katie Dooley 46:29 Mars's real penis. So Rhea's dad was King Amulius, and didn't like that there were now total boys that might want the throne. So he chucked these kids into the river Tiber to die.
Preston Meyer 46:45 Better than eating them like Kronus
Katie Dooley 46:47 I guess so. They were saved by Tiberinus the God of the Tiber River in an area of what is that Rome. And Romulus and Remus were raised by a wolf so that's often why you know Remus Lupin is his name it's associated with wolves.
Preston Meyer 47:07 Wolfie McWolferson. If you weren't paying attention to the third book of Harry Potter that the Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers name is Wolfie McWolferson.
Katie Dooley 47:19 And he's a werewolf?! Who would've saw that coming?! So one of the brothers ends up in jail the other one rescues him then they fight over where to put the I think it's a temple on which one of the seven hills and then they have a fight and Romulus kills Remus, some Cain and Abel vibes going on here. I don't know which one came first actually quite curious. And Romulus went on to found Rome-ulus. So, Rome was founded by a demigod.
Preston Meyer 48:01 That's kind of cool story.
Katie Dooley 48:03 I like all right, but seriously, which one came first Cain and Abel. Like the story. I mean, obviously, chronologically, Cain and Abel would come first. But when was the story?
Preston Meyer 48:18 When was the story told as we know it in Genesis today is really hard to pin. Alright, so similar to the Greek tradition, the Romans built shrines and temples to their gods. As you would expect, if you paid any attention to the cool architecture in the worlds, this probably would have come up in your Googling, or your real genuine studies. They're different. Usually. Prayer appears to have been more common in the Roman tradition and Greek tradition. I believe that sacrifices wouldn't work without an accompanying prayer. Makes perfect sense. That's the tradition I grew up with too
Katie Dooley 49:02 Just 'cause anything without a purchase to barbecue. Of course, part of sacrifice was like we said, animal sacrifice, a barbecue. The holy barbecue. Human sacrifice was rare, but it definitely happened. Romans believed that human sacrifice was barbaric and inappropriate, except on the rare occasions when it was meaningful to have a ritualized execution of your enemies.
Preston Meyer 49:33 Yeah, I found one account of a couple of Celts being ritually buried under a statue, which is not the best way to go.
Katie Dooley 49:45 No, that's terrible. And I think I mean, I'd say like across the board all of these religions are groups that people think sacrifice humans do not sacrifice humans. I think it happens, but not nearly to the volume that people think it happens or happened.
Preston Meyer 50:02 Yeah. Even the people who would throw people into volcanoes the story and you know, throw a virgin and or volcano. Probably not. It was more likely throw your political enemies and criminals into a volcano, because why build a prison when you an throw them in a volcano?
Katie Dooley 50:22 Yeah, none of these overcrowded prisons, right?
Preston Meyer 50:27 Generally wild animals were considered to already belong to the gods so they could not be offered to the gods. Most of your offerings would have been your own livestock, or you also had the opportunity to buy livestock. Because sacrifice of money is pretty much equivalent to the things that if you would have if you didn't have money.
Katie Dooley 50:49 I was just reading about all this. It feels all so relevant.
Preston Meyer 50:54 Sure. What were you reading?
Katie Dooley 50:57 In Zealot they were talking you about buying... You have to buy a domesticated animal when you go to the temple?
Preston Meyer 51:03 Yeah because it was way cheaper to buy one at the temple, then take one with you from far away and feed it the whole trip. Yeah, it makes, it just makes good sense.
Katie Dooley 51:16 What a business! Right? Anyway.
Preston Meyer 51:20 Most offerings were eaten in a great feast. Sometimes it would be just the priests, but usually it would be a whole bunch of people would share in this animal, because an animal feeds a lot of people, and you want to eat it before it goes bad. Because refrigerators, not common. So of course, after the entrails were given to the gods, that's when you could eat. Just as we have seen in the cult of the Israelite tradition.
Katie Dooley 51:49 Like I just said!
Preston Meyer 51:51 Exactly. I thought was really cool that the flamens had great civil authority, like kind of a problem. They could pardon anybody convicted of a crime. Unless, of course, they were thrown into a volcano. If that was happening, then it was too late. But they were never permitted to hold political office. And they were also effectively banned from military leadership, sending a not an irritating son of a ruler to go off and become a flamen kept him from fighting for what he would have thought was his due as a son of a leader. So it's kind of nifty. And apparently this happened a lot. And if you pay any attention to say The Borgias, or just broadly speaking, Christian history, in the first 1000 years in Rome, you can see that this tradition has a strong influence on Christian Imperial power. And, like in any reasonable religious tradition, the priests had to be married. I think it would solve a lot of problem.
Katie Dooley 53:10 Didn't... haven't we talked about this? Where like, the Catholic Church had like a third party inquiry on how to stop sexual abuse. And the solution was like, let them have wives. And the Catholic like, "ya no, what's the next option?" They were like, "Let them have wives!" And they're like, "yeah, no"
Preston Meyer 53:33 Right. What a mess.
Katie Dooley 53:37 While some cults were devoutly pious priesthoods. Many were more similar to modern Freemasonry, Preston. Yeah. And I know, you don't know much about modern Freemason. But people generally believed in a divine power, but built rituals around stories that they didn't necessarily accept as historical fact, but instead has moral guidelines. So it's all very much a metaphor.
Preston Meyer 54:00 A lot of it really is.
Katie Dooley 54:01 I mean, I know you wouldn't understand. So I'm just trying to explain it to you in really simple terms.
Preston Meyer 54:07 Thank you. Yeah. I'm glad that we're on the same page now. Pretty much every cult, and nearly every god and goddess had a festival, which meant that Roman life was full of celebrations. Rome was a poppin place to be.
Katie Dooley 54:27 And Herculaneum and Pompeii were two party cities.
Preston Meyer 54:31 I mean, let's be real if you had any real commitment to the Roman life. City life was awesome. Apparently, if you go the runes of Herculaneum like they're literally dicks on walls. That doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah, I mean, we still do.
Katie Dooley 54:49 Humans haven't changed much in 2000 years.
Preston Meyer 54:52 Why do guys draw dicks? I don't know.
Katie Dooley 54:56 I draw dicks do not just say guys. Okay, I draw a lot of decks.
Preston Meyer 54:59 More men draw dicks than women do. I've, from a perfectly reasonable bout of research that I've done on this subject.
Katie Dooley 55:12 I feel like social media poll's gonna... happen.
Preston Meyer 55:17 We can poll our audience we do have actually really close to an even split between people who identify as male and people who identify as female.
Katie Dooley 55:27 Ladies, let me know if you draw dicks because I draw a lot of dicks. I think a lot of women draw a lot of dicks.
Preston Meyer 55:35 Please let us know.
Katie Dooley 55:36 Oh my goodness, there was a site. I don't even know if I could find it again. And it was like a drawing website and you'd like draw something. And it would morph into a penis, like no matter what you drew, it would turn into a penis. And then if you're on your phone, if you shook your phone, the penises would wiggle. It was the best thing ever.
Preston Meyer 55:56 That's fantastic.
Katie Dooley 55:58 And like, when I'd have to Google to find it again is not okay. But I might try... my friend sent to me and I was like, "Oh, that's cool." I like drew a smiley face and then all of a sudden I had three wiggling penises on my screen. It was great.
Preston Meyer 56:13 The God that you've already forgotten Falacer, would be proud.
Katie Dooley 56:22 So now the Roman afterlife is often a religious experience. And this was really hard to research. Preston, you gave me a hard section. Because it's so vast, like, every article I read, said something different.
Preston Meyer 56:40 That's frustrating. I did come across a similar kind of issue when looking it up for the last episode about the Greek perspective. But a lot of different writers would say a lot of different things.
Katie Dooley 56:51 So if you hear something that feels wrong, feel free to jump on in. So one of the reports I read said that Romans believe in something similar heaven if you're good, you go to a better place with the gods. And then I read another source that says yes, I believe in heaven, but it's only for God's. So a god would be in heaven, come down, do his business, and then go back up to heaven. So not meant for people at all.
Preston Meyer 57:21 That's pretty familiar. If we look back at the way the Shintos looked at heaven.
Katie Dooley 57:29 Again, we spoke a little bit about the underworld, and Ares. Yep, but what's the Roman equivalent? Pluto. Yeah. So he's heard a little bit about the underworld and Pluto. And I literally did all this research. And then when I like cross checked it, it all came up as Greek. Like, okay, I don't know if I'm correct in any of this. But Virgil added in, he was one of the writers where some of this is documented. He's like, the equivalent of Homer. So he added sections of the underworld or talked about sections of the underworld that were specific to infants, those who were falsely accused for crimes and people who had committed suicide. So different sections of the underworld, where, you know, you might be treated a little bit better based off of the circumstances of your death. And, and to that point, the Greek or, excuse me, the Romans also believed in a, essentially an equivalent to purgatory, which we'll get to in a second. So, immediately after you die, you're met by Mercury, who takes you across the River Styx, where you're delivered to Cheron. And this is all again I cross checked is all Greek so I was like, I don't know if I'm right or not. And then there are three gods that judge you entering the underworld. They are Minos, Aeacus and Rhadamanthus. And these are all kings of Crete.
Preston Meyer 59:12 What a weird place to pull all of the gods who judge the dead.
Katie Dooley 59:20 I think they were judgy kings. So when they died, they were like okay. Yeah, if you're a good noble, good and noble you go the field of Elysium. And if you're just a regular person, but good you go to the plane of Asphidel. Now if you're bad, you go to Tartarus for punishment, where you are tortured by furies, and a hydra guards Tartarus. Which is pretty badass.
Preston Meyer 59:50 That sounds like slightly better defense than a three headed dog named spot.
Katie Dooley 59:57 It was Fluffy.
Preston Meyer 1:00:00 I'm actually not talking about Harry Potter this time. Kerberos means spotted. Oh, so Hades named his dog spot.
Katie Dooley 1:00:11 That's adorable.
Preston Meyer 1:00:17 But a hydra a traditionally when you cut off on head and two take its place, which means the guard of Tartarus is a lot harder to beat and a lot more terrifying.
Katie Dooley 1:00:29 But Tartarus is like the Catholic purgatory, so you don't actually stay in Tartarus forever. You stay until your punishment is up. And then you move on to where you're supposed to go.
Preston Meyer 1:00:40 Interesting twist. I like it.
Katie Dooley 1:00:41 You know what? There's obviously like a lot of things I don't agree with in Catholicism, but I, you know, if we were trying to like correct people's behavior through religion, I like the ideas of purgatory or Tartarus. Where, like, we scare people, and traumatize them. But yeah, absolutely. Do I want to see Hitler get some comeupance? Yeah, that doesn't seem fair that we both get the same free pass. But, you know, I also don't think scaring kids into religious trauma syndrome is okay either. And then another aspect of the afterlife, I found are the demands, or demonds.
Preston Meyer 1:01:32 Demanes does map over onto the word demons pretty effectively.
Katie Dooley 1:01:38 And they're spirits of the underworld. And so again, I found two parts to this. So it is your spirit is a demanes when you pass and you join them when you die. And these spirits were worshipped at the Parentalia Festival, which was a nine day festival meant to honor your ancestors. So another Roman version.
Preston Meyer 1:02:02 Makes all of us who do the Day of the Dead thing for a day or two look like..
Katie Dooley 1:02:07 Pussies. But then I found sources that said that these demanes don't reside in the underworld, they reside on Earth.
Preston Meyer 1:02:21 All of the haunting stories that we've had throughout literally all of history. I mean, that makes sense.
Katie Dooley 1:02:30 Right, so I'd like find something and be like, Oh, cool. So they're underworld spirits. And then I google it and it'd be like, no, there earth spirits. I was like, Okay, I give up. They're around... somewhere. And then when Caesar was high priest, he said that there was no life after death.
Preston Meyer 1:02:48 Which Caesar?
Katie Dooley 1:02:49 I don't know. It just said Caesar.
Preston Meyer 1:02:52 Okay.
Katie Dooley 1:02:53 I assumed Julio.
Preston Meyer 1:02:54 Okay. I guess that's the way it goes. If they didn't tell you, I feel like that's a safe assumption. I could be very wrong.
Katie Dooley 1:03:03 But basically that life was suffering and death was release, so that there was nothing after it.
Preston Meyer 1:03:09 Was he secretly a Buddhist? Who knows? I mean, he clearly didn't believe that there was a Hades to go and visit if you said that there is no life after death.
Katie Dooley 1:03:23 So I mean, very broad scope of this everything from heaven to the underworld, to purgatory to nothing. So I hope none of you are confused.
Preston Meyer 1:03:34 Like we really tried to nail down in the previous episode about the Greek tradition. There isn't any monolithic thing in Roman religious tradition, though it is a better fit for the word religion than the Greek tradition was. It's still a lot of different cults and a lot of different beliefs existing and coexisting in the same place. It's not homogenous, it's a mess. It's like it's almost like Christianity, when you look at, say, the Baptists versus the Catholics versus the Latter Day Saints versus literally every other group. There's a fair bit of difference, but it's not actually a fair analogue either, because they all really highlight a specific god as this is the one that really earns our devoted worship. It's all funky stuff.
Katie Dooley 1:04:42 And I'll comes back to Katie's religious analogy of ice cream. It's all vanilla ice cream.
Preston Meyer 1:04:58 I'm gonna need you to...
Katie Dooley 1:04:59 Am I explained my... finally on air... my ice cream analogy of religion.
Preston Meyer 1:05:05 I think that would help now that you've brought it up.
Katie Dooley 1:05:06 Okay, Katie's ice cream analogy of religion. It's all ice cream. All of it. And some people don't like ice cream. Some people don't like okay, some people don't like ice cream. It's all okay. But then you get Christianity. Let's say Christianity isvanilla ice cream. And Latter Day Saints is vanilla with chocolate chips. And Jehovah's Witness is vanilla with Caramel Swirl and pick another an Anabaptist. They're vanilla with m&ms and right, it's all vanilla ice cream. Sure, at the end of the day. And then you got Islam, which is like chocolate ice cream, and you have your Sunnis and Shiites. And you got some rocky road in there and whatever. And then got Buddhism, which is strawberry, and maybe you throw somesomething in there. Anyway, it's all ice cream, and have all your flavors and you have your base layer, and then you have your mixings. And then this is where it's a great analogy is my problem. And why I do this is that some people only try vanilla ice cream and they say vanilla ice cream is the best. It's the best flavor period and I go but have you tried chocolate? And then why would I ever try chocolate? That's stupid. And that's why I have sampled every flavor and then decided I don't like ice cream.
Preston Meyer 1:06:41 But have you really sampled the flavors?
Katie Dooley 1:06:43 I mean, I think I've sampled more than the average bear.
Preston Meyer 1:06:46 I think you have read the ingredients list. And haven't tasted them.
Katie Dooley 1:06:55 Oh elaborate.
Preston Meyer 1:06:58 To really experience the ice cream is to taste it. And I can't say with confidence you've gone and experienced any one religion.
Katie Dooley 1:07:11 Wow. What would I have to do to experience an ice cream cone?
Preston Meyer 1:07:18 It's a little bit more than visiting a church. That's a trick.
Katie Dooley 1:07:21 But I still think I've had more dabblings and ice cream than the average person.
Preston Meyer 1:07:28 I think that you are far more familiar with the ingredients list than the average ice cream eater
Katie Dooley 1:07:37 Even though I don't eat ice cream. Wow.
Preston Meyer 1:07:43 I like this analogy. I just don't think that is
Katie Dooley 1:07:47 Some people get upset about chocolate and they haven't even read the ingredients list. And that bothers me.
Preston Meyer 1:07:52 Yeah. That is absolutely the reality and that does suck. Hopefully as we share this understanding of what is in the ice cream with the world. People stop being dicks about it.
Katie Dooley 1:08:06 See, I feel like you know when they give you that like little spoon to see if you like, like, I feel like that is like going to a church service of something that's not yours. I'm not saying I've had a whole bowl or a call. I'm just saying I've had like a little
Preston Meyer 1:08:21 You've had a little taste without the full experience. Not even enough to fill your mouth. No, just that little wooden scoop that you still remember the way the scoop tastes.
Katie Dooley 1:08:33 Literally my mouth tastes like wood now. Right because I mean, you're right. Like I definitely do not have a full experience of a lot of religions. But I think to anyone to step out of their comfort zone and to go to a place of worship that is not their own is a pretty bold move. And I'd like to do more of it. But if anyone's out there wanting to try ice cream. I think they need to know that that's a bold move and to be proud of yourself for taking that little sample stick and going. So give me at least a sample stay. Okay, okay. And lots of ingredients list, a handful of sample sticks, no bowls of ice cream for me.
Preston Meyer 1:09:20 I'm on board. Okay.
Katie Dooley 1:09:22 I feel like that's a mini episode. I'm Katie's ice cream analogy of religion. So I guess we should like quickly summarize the Roman religion
Preston Meyer 1:09:36 Roman religious traditions, hella-complicated a whole lot of cults, a whole lot of Gods basically, more or less peacefully coexisting, that you've gotten neighborhoods of people who are happy to celebrate the feasts of multiple gods and maybe they don't necessarily actually believe that there is a personified sun that's not a problem. You still go on living the life and offering your sacrifices to really need the sun to keep coming back every spring and every morning.
Katie Dooley 1:10:12 Don't we al. Alright, well, you can follow us on our social media: Facebook, Instagram, Discord.
Preston Meyer 1:10:26 We've got Patreon, where we've got a good handful of exclusive content. We've got a stop a stop, we've got a shop where you can buy merch and, and
Katie Dooley 1:10:41 I'm just gonna put on there if you can give us a review on iTunes, leave us five stars. Follow us on Spotify. Subscribe to us on iTunes that helps the algorithm so much to get us found. So that would be huge. If you're listening get us some growth this year. One of our resolutions for 2022 is to grow this puppy so any little bit you can do is huge for us.
Preston Meyer 1:11:06 Share us with your friends.
Katie Dooley 1:11:07 Yes that's give it to your bigoted ol' grandma.
Preston Meyer 1:11:16 I mean, maybe she needs it.
Katie Dooley 1:11:18 She probably does
Both Hosts 1:11:21 Peace be with you | |||
| 20 Jun 2022 | Hermetic Appeal | 01:04:13 | |
After a brief look at the occult last fall, we're taking a closer look at the Hermetic tradition, including some of the most popular literature on hermeticism and a survey of some of the sources behind the mythical figure of Hermes Trismegistus. We explore some of the pseudepigraphical writings like the Emerald Tablet, the Corpus Hermeticum, and the Perfect Sermon, and the wild figure of William Walker Atkinson (AKA Magus Incognito, Yogi Ramacharaka, and many other names), who had some professional connections with the Freemasons. Hermeticism is more than alchemy and astrology, and even these aspects have allegorical utility in addition to their physical scientific claims. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
[00:00:16] Preston Meyer: Kermit the Frog.
[00:00:18] Katie Dooley: Hi ho! Kermit the Frog here.
[00:00:20] Preston Meyer: I was actually just reading a thing earlier today that every time somebody does an interview with the Muppets, they always forget the Muppets aren't people.
[00:00:29] Katie Dooley: You know what I'm going to tell you that like, it was far too late in my life when I realized how Muppets work. Because, like, I knew they weren't real, but I didn't know how they were not real. You know what I mean?
[00:00:43] Preston Meyer: No. You're gonna have to tell me more.
[00:00:45] Katie Dooley: Like like I was like, it's clearly a puppet, but I can see his legs and he's talking, and he's sitting in a chair with Stephen Colbert. So where is the puppet master. I was just, like, always very. I was like, I recognize they can't be, but how are they not.
[00:01:09] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:01:11] Katie Dooley: And then I looked up how Muppets work.
[00:01:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I think it's funny when they put the microphone on the Muppet instead of on the person providing the voice, and then wonder why the sound is bad.
[00:01:24] Katie Dooley: So you gotta get the Muppet a fake mic.
[00:01:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah. For sure.
[00:01:29] Katie Dooley: Uh. Suspend disbelief. Yes. And then put one on. Frank Oz. Frank Oz is dead. But whoever it is now.
[00:01:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:01:40] Katie Dooley: Muppets, man, I fucking love a good Muppet.
[00:01:42] Preston Meyer: Mhm or when they're recording an ad and the director shouts at the puppet instead of redirecting the voice at the person controlling the puppet.
[00:01:54] Katie Dooley: Right. I also think I would have been a very good puppeteer.
[00:01:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Have you done a lot of puppeteering?
[00:02:01] Katie Dooley: No. But from what I have done, I think I'm quite good.
[00:02:04] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:02:05] Katie Dooley: I think with some practice and some lessons, I could have been a great puppeteer.
[00:02:09] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:02:10] Preston Meyer: Because I'm dramatic, but I don't like being the center of attention. So I could live vicariously through my puppet.
[00:02:16] Preston Meyer: I get you. I mean, that's I feel like that is very much the way Grover lived his life. Or the person underneath Grover.
[00:02:27] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Anyway, we're not talking about Muppets today.
[00:02:31] Preston Meyer: No Kermiticism. Better pronounces Hermeticism.
[00:02:35] Katie Dooley: Hermeticism, oh, man. Is Bryant going to elave the entire preamble about me and the Muppets?
[00:02:42] Preston Meyer: I'm okay with that.
[00:02:44] Katie Dooley: I kind of am, too. Yes. So we talked briefly about Hermeticism in our Occult episode, but we actually think it deserves an entire episode on today's.
[00:02:57] Holy Watermelon podcast.
[00:03:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's there's a lot more to it than our very brief gloss back in. What was it, October?
[00:03:08] Katie Dooley: Yes, Spooktober.
[00:03:11] Preston Meyer: Our Cursed Occultism Episode that took several takes.
[00:03:15] Katie Dooley: Far too many takes.
[00:03:17] Preston Meyer: Before we could actually have a saved product that was shareable. It's not that we screwed up over and over again in the performance, but.
[00:03:29] Katie Dooley: The Devils took the audio.
[00:03:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the audio files just kept getting corrupted or lost or whatever.
[00:03:35] Katie Dooley: We're better now.
[00:03:37] Preston Meyer: We've we've grown.
[00:03:39] Katie Dooley: Yes. Hermeticism is also known as Hermeticism or Hermetics. And I mean, all of that comes from the Greek god Hermes.
[00:03:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The the phrase hermetically sealed As much as it doesn't sound like it should come from this, it does. Not even Hermes could get through to the hermit is a handy little reminder of what it means that something is fully airtight, which is tighter than watertight. For those of you who may not have to deal a lot with containers.
[00:04:21] Katie Dooley: For those of you who don't own Tupperware.
[00:04:25] Preston Meyer: But it's actually a really important process in making the Philosopher's Stone, which of course is something that is lost to history. We just we don't know how to make the Philosopher's Stone anymore. Katie's shaking her head at me. It's not real. There's no evidence that the Philosopher's Stone is real, but an awful lot of stories like to use it in their in their narrative.
[00:04:53] Katie Dooley: Fair.
[00:04:54] Preston Meyer: Harry Potter went after it. Indiana Jones went after.
[00:04:57] Katie Dooley: Notably, Indiana Jones went after.
[00:05:01] Preston Meyer: From a much smaller audience.
[00:05:03] Katie Dooley: Right. While Hermetic philosophy has wormed its way into monotheistic traditions. Old Hermeticism is pantheistic. God is the ultimate reality and is itself all.
[00:05:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. While also the creator of all. It's it's a weird well...
[00:05:26] Katie Dooley: Self-fertilizing.
[00:05:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's kind of like what we talked about with Ra back in our Egyptology episode, or it's a really common way of looking at God in that part of the world. This is a pretty standard stoic theological declaration that God is all but also the creator of all. Which is a tricky thing to wrap your head around.
[00:05:54] Katie Dooley: The Nag Hammadi library is that the one that was found because of a murder where the Gnostic Gospels were found? Okay, that's a wild story.
[00:06:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So they just found a whole bunch of books in Nag Hammadi in modern-day Egypt, and calling it a library is a little bit weird. It was a collection of books in a space that was purpose-built. So it is kind of a library.
[00:06:24] Katie Dooley: They were found in like ceramic massive, like terracotta jars and buried. If this is the same one I'm thinking of.
[00:06:34] Preston Meyer: The Dead Sea Scrolls also fit that description.
[00:06:36] Katie Dooley: Oh, interesting.
[00:06:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:06:37] Katie Dooley: No, I read Elaine Pagels Gnostic Gospels and she says how they were found. And I think it's Nag Hammadi.
[00:06:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah and so they were discovered back in 1945. So relatively recent history. This is like after the Second World War.
[00:06:54] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So a huge breakthrough in theological and religious studies, but a whole bunch of them were destroyed. Because of the murder that they were related to when being found. We'll, do a whole episode on that.
[00:07:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:07:13] Katie Dooley: Basically, someone murdered someone and they had found the Gnostic gospels, and so they were burning them to hide the fact that they had murdered, like, they didn't want proof that they had put them at the scene of the crime. Except these are super valuable it's a historical text, anyway.
[00:07:33] Preston Meyer: Anyway, all of the things that we have found in the Nag Hammadi library basically take up a decent-sized book on the shelf. I've had them on my shelf for years and years now, And it's roughly the size of a Bible, which of course the Bible more or less means the books. It is also a library. The Nag Hammadi library is a lot more, I want to say, contentious. There's there's a lot more arguing about whether or not it's worth reading the texts from the Nag Hammadi library, or at least there used to be. Nowadays, there's a handful of people who find them valuable, and everyone else is like, meh, don't care.
[00:08:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and I mean, we're not here to talk about Gnostic gospels or rejected Christian gospels, but I think that was a big part of it, is that they didn't make the Bible. So now we have to get rid of them or hide them or whatever.
[00:08:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah, well.
[00:08:37] Katie Dooley: Because for whatever reason, we've chosen these records to not be the ones we want people to listen to anyway.
[00:08:45] Preston Meyer: It's more of a system of deciding which are authoritative and then just kind of not worrying about the rest. Once you get into the point of banning a specific book, that does help make it more popular, unless you're really good at that first job.
[00:09:01] Katie Dooley: I hope our podcast gets banned.
[00:09:04] Preston Meyer: That'd be all right.
[00:09:05] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Mm. Anyway, so importantly, they found, um, hermetic writings in the Nag Hammadi library before we had this digression.
[00:09:17] Preston Meyer: Not very many, but they did find a few. A couple specifically attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a very important figure in the Hermetic tradition.
[00:09:28] Katie Dooley: What?!
[00:09:29] Preston Meyer: If you couldn't have guessed by his name.
[00:09:32] Katie Dooley: We now know that Hermes Trismegistus is a fictional amalgamation of Hermes, the Greek Hermes, and the Egyptian Thoth with other elements that have been added throughout history.
[00:09:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we pointed out in our Egyptian theology episode that the Greeks had just automatically assumed that Thoth and Hermes were equivalent, because that's that is how they looked at the world.
[00:09:56] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but no.
[00:09:58] Preston Meyer: That's that's not how any of this works. Um, and then, of course, as years went on, aspects of both Imhotep and Amenhotep also ended up getting fuzed in making the character a little bit more rounded and other aspects of whatever people found valuable at a given time also got thrown in.
[00:10:22] Katie Dooley: Trismegistus is important in some Muslim traditions, especially in Sufism, which is the mystical tradition. He is often equated with the prophet Idris as well, or the biblical Enoch.
[00:10:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the creator of writing and the Jewish tradition makes sense to be equated with.
[00:10:43] Katie Dooley: Thoth in particular, yup.
[00:10:44] Preston Meyer: The Egyptian equivalent.
[00:10:47] Katie Dooley: People who invented writing.
[00:10:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, stories lining up even kind of closely make it really easy for people who don't like thinking about complicated things to combine the figures.
[00:11:03] Katie Dooley: Preston likes pizza and I like pizza ergo, wear the same person.
[00:11:08] Preston Meyer: Right? It's like when the Pope decided that three different Mary's and somebody else who goes fully unnamed in the New Testament are all the same person.
[00:11:18] Katie Dooley: Well. You don't want to put that much effort into it. He thought, there are too many Bible characters.
[00:11:27] Preston Meyer: You know, these stories that take place in the real world have too large of a cast.
[00:11:35] Katie Dooley: So eliminating three of literally thousands of characters is.
[00:11:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah that's And simplified things. So sure, it happened anyway.
[00:11:46] Katie Dooley: Back to the Muslim tradition. Muhammad is said to have encountered.
[00:11:51] Preston Meyer: Trismegistus.
[00:11:52] Katie Dooley: Trismegistus. I was like, which him are we referring to in the fourth Heaven.
[00:11:59] Preston Meyer: Or Idris, I think is probably the name that it showed up now that I'm thinking back. Having written these notes, I'm going off of memory now because clearly I just I put him anyway. Also, there's a lot of Christian thinkers that thought Hermes Trismegistus was a pagan prophet who foretold the rise of Christianity.
[00:12:24] Katie Dooley: Interesting, like a Nostradamus.
[00:12:28] Preston Meyer: Kind of. Yeah, there's there's a lot of people in Christendom that have decided. Well, yeah, if they were real prophets at all, and they jumped on the bandwagon saying Hermes was. Then obviously they would know that Christianity is coming because we're committed to it. It's kind of weird. There's also within this group of Christians who really like Hermes, there's a subset that are fully committed to the idea of the Trismegistus as a name means that he was fully committed to the Trinity, that he praised the three rather than what the name actually means.
[00:13:13] Katie Dooley: He's thrice great. Yeah. Not that the Trinity is great.
[00:13:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Yeah. The name Trismegistus is taken from Thoth. The great, the great, the great. Uh, which should be understood as the greatest among the greatest of the great. So this dude is the absolute top.
[00:13:35] Katie Dooley: He's the bee's knees.
[00:13:36] Preston Meyer: Exactly. It's kind of like how we see the convention in the Middle Eastern languages. How they talk of the Holy of Holies, or the sanctum sanctorum is the holiest of the holy places. So easy enough to get on board with simple language for a simpler time.
[00:13:59] Katie Dooley: Not particularly quantifiable, but.
[00:14:03] Preston Meyer: Right. But.
[00:14:06] Katie Dooley: But we get there. I pick it up what they're laying down.
[00:14:08] Preston Meyer: Now you're talking about qualities.
[00:14:10] Katie Dooley: Quality, not quantity.
[00:14:14] Preston Meyer: Uh, it's like the name Megan, which I think you should never name your child Megan.
[00:14:19] Katie Dooley: I was supposed to be a Megan.
[00:14:20] Preston Meyer: Unless she is more than 8 pounds at birth or more than 22in long at birth. Because the name Megan means big or great, but great really, to be fair, means big.
[00:14:39] Katie Dooley: I don't know how big I was when I was born, but I didn't get named Megan, and I was supposed to be named Megan. So I had big feet when I was born. Yeah. First thing the doctor said.
[00:14:50] Preston Meyer: Oh, those big old Wiley coyote feet.
[00:14:52] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Basically. You got a clown, baby, ma'am!
[00:14:58] Preston Meyer: That's great.
[00:15:01] Katie Dooley: There's also a theory that Hermes Trismegistus may have been a real king. What is that term again?
[00:15:09] Preston Meyer: Hermeneutics?
[00:15:11] Katie Dooley: No, no.
[00:15:12] Preston Meyer: That's something different entirely. Why is the word... Euhemerism!
[00:15:16] Katie Dooley: That's okay. That's what I thought.
[00:15:18] Preston Meyer: I don't know why. I'm just going through words in my head.
[00:15:21] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So euhemerism where they believe he may have been a real king with the amalgamation of these gods associated with him, because there are writings attributed to him. So how? But we also know that he's the amalgamation of two gods, so the chances of him being a real person with these gods slom.. Glommed on to him later is.
[00:15:45] Preston Meyer: It's possible, but my bets are against it.
[00:15:48] Katie Dooley: Then who wrote the stuff?
[00:15:50] Preston Meyer: Well, there's an awful lot of strong traditions all over this area, geographically and historically, where people like writing and publishing a book under somebody else's name. Egypt and Greece and all over the Middle East. Actually, it's.
[00:16:10] Katie Dooley: Another Middle Eastern religion.
[00:16:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, Egypt isn't strictly Middle East, it's Northern Africa. But culturally they're well connected to Greece and the Levant. Yeah. So that's it's a thing that we see. And so my inclination is that literally all of the writings credited to Hermes Trismegistus are what we call Pseudepigraphical, which means written under a false name.
[00:16:41] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's a great word!
[00:16:44] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:16:45] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:16:46] Preston Meyer: It looks long in writing. And the only reason I could say it in one go like that is because I've said it many times before.
[00:16:56] Katie Dooley: All I saw was the word pig.
[00:16:58] Preston Meyer: Sure. Right in the middle. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. You can put lipstick on a pig, but.
[00:17:06] Katie Dooley: You can't pseudepigraphical a pig.
[00:17:10] Preston Meyer: Sure you could
[00:17:11] Katie Dooley: I guess.
[00:17:13] Preston Meyer: And this book was written by Babe, the pig in the city.
[00:17:18] Katie Dooley: It's autobiographical. So because of these god-like associations, Hermes Trismegistus, if I guess, if you're a Hermetic is considered to be the founder of science, math, philosophy and more.
[00:17:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. What a pitch! I like it.
[00:17:42] Katie Dooley: Run! Don't walk to your nearest Hermetical society.
[00:17:47] Preston Meyer: Sure. Uh, yeah. So among the writings that were found in Nag Hammadi, there is one hermetic text that talks about the Egyptian mystery schools and the nature of the great mysteries of God. I thought it was kind of interesting. Uh, basically, mystery schools are an Asiatic traditions that offer a knowledge that's secret for some reason or another, and a little bit at a time given by degree to their priests or magi or whatever they want to call the members of their order as they rise through the ranks of that order. And there's usually a mythological narrative wrapped around all of that. This is pretty familiar to people in the temple of Set, I want to say, the Church of Satan, and Freemasons, a couple of Christian churches, um, not any of the mainstream ones though, and shows up kind of sort of in the Latter-Day Saint tradition as well, but not really in the same way, but it's kind of nifty. Secret knowledge is, in most mystery schools, more of a distinction between classes than a reason for different classes. Just kind of a deliberate here's separations between the orders.
[00:19:09] Katie Dooley: Okay
[00:19:10] Preston Meyer: makes people feel special.
[00:19:12] Katie Dooley: Unless you're not in any of them.
[00:19:14] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:19:17] Katie Dooley: Hermetic writings got really popular during the Renaissance, and until Isaac Casaubon published that he could find no evidence that any of the texts dated before the second century CE. So this is super frustrating to the Christians who thought that Hermes was a real person, contemporary of Moses or even older.
[00:19:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:19:40] Katie Dooley: This is interesting to me that I mean, now I don't think anyone well, I shouldn't say that's unfair. We did our episode on Greeks, but very few people think anyone in the Greek pantheon was actually real, and very few people think that they're still real. So it's interesting to me that Christians, one God, were like disappointed that another God didn't exist.
[00:20:05] Preston Meyer: So for Christian Hermetics, Hermes Trismegistus wasn't a god or god combo figure, but he was just, that was the name given to a triply great prophet.
[00:20:20] Katie Dooley: That triply loved the Trinity.
[00:20:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Before Moses.
[00:20:24] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:20:25] Preston Meyer: Most Hermetic philosophical writings are based on the ideas of Platonists and Stoicism combined into traditional Egyptian wisdom, and fairly often there's little sprinklings of Persian and Jewish ideas thrown in there, too, just to make it look exotic to whoever is reading.
[00:20:45] Katie Dooley: Oh, I love that. Ooh. So there's two categories. There are two categories of writing. They're either technical or philosophical or religious. Technical is how to do magic things. So alchemy, medicine, astrology, that kind of stuff.
[00:21:04] Preston Meyer: The things that you get to do, yeah.
[00:21:07] Katie Dooley: Practice and then the philosophical is how we think about the world to gain power over it. And this also includes things like anthropology and theology.
[00:21:18] Preston Meyer: Understanding people, understanding God, all tricky nonsense. And so as much as you can you can argue all you want against the technical stuff of I tried this alchemy process a hundred times, never worked. It's a lot harder to argue against the philosophical writings in a concrete way. You can say, yeah, I disagree with that, or no, that this idea has no value, but more discussion.
[00:21:49] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I mean, it's literally what we do here every other week. And, uh, ties in with our belief episode. Like, you can think you know, someone you never really know, someone.
[00:22:02] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:22:03] Katie Dooley: Or how their beliefs come out or that's a rabbit hole. I'm not willing to go down right now.
[00:22:13] Preston Meyer: There's some pretty cool texts in the Hermetic tradition, though. The Emerald Tablet is a nifty thing. It's attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. It's basically lost to time whether or not there ever was actually an emerald tablet. We have no way of knowing.
[00:22:32] Katie Dooley: I was very confused when I was researching it, because there's quotes that will be familiar to our listeners that come from the Emerald Tablet. But I couldn't actually find if it existed or not.
[00:22:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The oldest reproduction of the text is an Arabic manuscript, dating to around 800 CE. And if it's a copy of text that somebody had carved into the Emerald tablet, or just something that somebody wrote down and...
[00:23:04] Katie Dooley: Said it came from an Emerald tablet, yeah.
[00:23:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we we don't know. But there's a bunch of different interpretations that came out as it has been translated into Latin by different editors in different places at different times. Unfortunately, at this point, we don't really have the authoritative text of the Emerald Tablet. Of course, the question of did it ever exist? But it's kind of cool.
[00:23:32] Katie Dooley: It is a revered document, but I guess it's a tablet.
[00:23:38] Preston Meyer: I mean, at this point, it's a document.
[00:23:39] Katie Dooley: It's a document. It's revered by alchemists. It's supposed to be part of the finding the philosopher. It's a piece of the Philosopher's Stone puzzle. And it's where we get the popular phrase "as above, so below". And the full quote of that. Again, this is where I was like, is this real? Because it says from the Emerald Tablet, but clearly it's from the reproduction is "that which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above". And it gets abbreviated to the much more common as above, so below.
[00:24:12] Preston Meyer: Because it's way easier to remember four words without screwing it up than that whole line.
[00:24:17] Katie Dooley: But what the heck does that even mean, Preston?!
[00:24:20] Preston Meyer: It basically means that the world that we know is more or less a facsimile of what we see in the heavens and the world beyond that we can't actually see. But also in that same way, what we see in the heavens is, what we can see in the heavens is a great way of understanding the little things. This helps... This seems more valid when we compare the atomic model to the heliocentric model of our solar system, that we've got a thing in the middle and a whole bunch of stuff whizzing around it real quick.
[00:25:00] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:25:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah, so that's basically it. If you can understand yourself, you can understand the bigger concepts like spirituality, the universe, physics, everything's connected.
[00:25:17] Katie Dooley: This kind of gave me gave me some Buddhist vibes.
[00:25:20] Preston Meyer: That's fair.
[00:25:22] Katie Dooley: I mean this part of it. We'll get into other principles of Hermeticism in a moment, but this particular one where they're, you know, understanding the self is understanding God. I was like, that's given me eastern tradition vibes, Buddhism in particular, but a little bit of Hinduism.
[00:25:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that seems pretty fair to me.
[00:25:42] Katie Dooley: Anyway, just interesting how everything works together.
[00:25:47] Preston Meyer: Right. Well, and something else that is a common idea in Hermeticism is the idea that there is a true theology that is presented in some sort of flawed way in every religion around the world. And so it does basically pull everything really tightly together or less tightly if you're a little more off the beaten path.
[00:26:17] Katie Dooley: Unless you're a jerk.
[00:26:19] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:26:21] Katie Dooley: We haven't said, don't be a dick in a long time, so...
[00:26:24] Preston Meyer: So don't be a dick.
[00:26:25] Katie Dooley: Just a gentle reminder, dear listener. Don't be a dick.
[00:26:34] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Uh, the Emerald Tablet also contains the three disciplines taught by Trismegistus. Alchemy, astrology and theurgy. We get a little bit more into that later on, but these are the three important wisdoms of the universe.
[00:26:52] Katie Dooley: And this is where. And we're we'll we'll chat about this. But the lines I don't want to say the lines blur, but when we in our... This is why Hermeticism came up in our Occult episode because of these practices. Honestly, digging deeper into Hermeticism, I think the Occult is just a bunch of hooey. Like, I don't think. I think you asked anyone to, you know, people who are scared of the occult and were like, don't read Harry Potter because of the occult, couldn't actually explain to you what the occult is.
[00:27:25] Preston Meyer: For sure.
[00:27:26] Katie Dooley: Right? Anyway
[00:27:28] Preston Meyer: Unless they very often the default is it's magic and magic is bad, I guess.
[00:27:39] Katie Dooley: Which this makes the next point interesting to me. Again, especially when you get the people who are whatever scared of Harry Potter or fill in the blank. The Emerald tablet appeared in The Eternals and now I actually need to go back and watch it.
[00:27:57] Preston Meyer: I only watched the movie once, and I'm gonna be honest, I did not jump out at me.
[00:28:00] Katie Dooley: No, it was like. It was like in I when I was doing the research, it was in passing that I know Druig was involved, but I don't know if he said it or was like the recipient, but someone was like, where did you get that cool Emerald tablet is basically the where'd you pick that up? Was sort of the reference. And so I don't know if it'll be important later or if it was just like a this is cute.
[00:28:24] Preston Meyer: Sure. I mean, pretty often when it shows up in any narrative, it's a big deal. It shows up in Dark, show on Netflix it's a time traveler thriller, and it's a dude's got a tattooed on his back. It shows up on a door. Both of these images are actually taken from a drawing of somebody's impression of what the Emerald Tablet probably looks like. The dude had it drawn into a book about 800 years after the stone was supposedly lost or more. Kind of tricky.
[00:29:04] Katie Dooley: But back to my point, and we can elaborate on it when we wrap up the episode. But again, these people get all mad about Harry Potter and the occult. It's like A) did you even notice it in The Eternals? B) do you know what it means? And C) like, do you care?
[00:29:22] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:29:24] Katie Dooley: Like there's and when we get into the seven principles, like there's so much Hermeticism just in our everyday lives that if you equate Hermeticism with the occult and again, I think most people can't actually define the occult because we had a hell of a time doing it. Um, like, I, I don't know what my final point of that was. My brain stopped.
[00:29:48] Preston Meyer: Don't slam a thing you don't understand.
[00:29:51] Katie Dooley: Thank you.
[00:29:51] Preston Meyer: Don't be a dick.
[00:29:52] Katie Dooley: Don't.... Thank you. It just. I don't think people realize how much of our stuff comes from non-Christian places, especially in the West.
[00:29:59] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:02] Katie Dooley: I'll just step down from my soapbox.
[00:30:05] Preston Meyer: All right. Uh, next text we have on our list is the is the corpus hermeticum, which I think is kind of nifty.
[00:30:14] Katie Dooley: I just thought the first fact was nifty because I am an art history nerd. If you are like me and an art history nerd, you'll appreciate that Cosimo de Medici had the Corpus Hermeticum translated into Latin from Greek.
[00:30:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's kind of funny that Cosimo had paid a couple of translators to do a whole bunch of work of translating the works of Plato, but as soon as they got their hands on the corpus hermeticum, they dropped that.
[00:30:47] Katie Dooley: Like, stop that shit.
[00:30:48] Preston Meyer: We got to do this. This is way more important.
[00:30:51] Katie Dooley: So if you're not an art history nerd, I'm not going to spend like, two seconds on the Medicis. So the Medicis were the first family of influence that didn't have a royal... they weren't royals. They just had a ton of money. They were bankers when usury was still a thing. So they got a lot of wealth and power from just being bankers. Um, to the point where one of the Medicis became pope. But Cosimo in particular, he paid for so much art in Florence, like some of the best things that you go and see and learn about in school were paid for by Cosimo, including Donatello's David and the Duomo, the big dome in Florence. Um, and a whole bunch of other crazy cool art stuff. So. But he had...
[00:31:39] Preston Meyer: I've never even heard of Donatello's David.
[00:31:41] Katie Dooley: What? Oh
[00:31:42] Preston Meyer: I've heard of Michelangelo's David.
[00:31:45] Katie Dooley: Oh, no. Yeah. No. Yeah. No, it's Donatello's David. It's like a little boy.
[00:31:50] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:31:51] Katie Dooley: Um. And he's, like, naked and holding a sling. Okay. Donatello was also a raging homosexual so.
[00:31:57] Preston Meyer: As opposed to a normal homosexual?
[00:32:02] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:32:03] Preston Meyer: He was just a very angry fella.
[00:32:05] Katie Dooley: I mean, yes, I don't know.
[00:32:09] Preston Meyer: This would have made a lot of people in the church very uncomfortable.
[00:32:12] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And I'll show you Donatello's David.
[00:32:14] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:32:15] Katie Dooley: Afterwards, and it would have made a lot of people in the church uncomfortable. Very different.
[00:32:20] Preston Meyer: A lot of people in the church are uncomfortable with Michelangelo's David. Just because.
[00:32:24] Katie Dooley: Did you know? I think we talked about this in an episode where they chipped off all the penises, and it's someone's job to now match the penises with the statues.
[00:32:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we talked about that.
[00:32:32] Katie Dooley: Yeah we did. Anyway, so that's why Cosmo is interesting. We're not an art history podcast, but if you like that stuff. The Medici's are bitchin.
[00:32:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah. For me, Donatello is a ninja turtle. And I know that all of the Ninja Turtles are.
[00:32:48] Both Speakers: Renaissance artists.
[00:32:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but no, for me, Donatello is just the turtle with the stick.
[00:32:55] Katie Dooley: Okay. Anyway, so the Corpus Hermeticum is the theological and philosophical text, and the name suggests that it is a collected writings on the subject when it is just actually a very small collection of treatises, kind of like the Bible.
[00:33:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's not the whole of everything. It's just a handful. The first in the collection is Pomandres. There's a lot of different ways this word is pronounced depending on...
[00:33:28] Katie Dooley: Pomandries!
[00:33:28] Preston Meyer: Who you studied with, really. Um, and the great thing is that no matter how you're saying it, you're saying it wrong. It's actually a butchered remnant of an old Egyptian name that translates to the knowledge of Ra. Poimandres is the Greek name that's generally accepted, and it means man shepherd when it's forced into that Greek pronunciation. But that's just not what it is. It's the knowledge of RA, which makes perfect sense considering the subject matter. We're talking about the theology in Egypt. So that's what it is. Anyway, that's struggles, language, things. I nerd out over the language bits.
[00:34:27] Katie Dooley: And I nerd out over art history.
[00:34:29] Preston Meyer: But like a lot of hermetic writings, the Corpus Hermeticum is basically mostly a dialogue between Hermes and various others. In fact, another great text is the dialogue between Hermes Trismegistus and Asclepius.
[00:34:50] Katie Dooley: What a great name.
[00:34:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the book is sometimes called the Perfect Sermon, or sometimes just Asclepius, because this is who Hermes is talking to. Asclepius, if you don't remember, is the Greek god of medicine, and the rod of Asclepius is a fairly common symbol, with medicine of the snake around the stick different than the caduceus, which is.
[00:35:16] Katie Dooley: Two snakes.
[00:35:16] Preston Meyer: Two snakes wrapped around a stick with wings. But they're both pretty well used around the world. So Asclepius is another god that Hermes, a god, is talking to.
[00:35:28] Katie Dooley: Cool.
[00:35:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And this is part or at least part of it survived into the library. And so I've read it, and it is a trip. It's fairly apocalyptic.
[00:35:44] Katie Dooley: Cool.
[00:35:45] Preston Meyer: Um, it talks about how Egypt will one day be a desert. So here's the problem. The book was written after Egypt had been a desert for a long time.
[00:35:57] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say, hasn't it always been a desert?
[00:36:00] Preston Meyer: There are about 10,000 years ago it was in the monsoon path and so it was actually.
[00:36:06] Katie Dooley: Quite lush,
[00:36:06] Preston Meyer: Fairly green and nice. But it's been a desert for more than 4000 years. And these writings are not that old. They're not.
[00:36:18] Katie Dooley: What a prophet!
[00:36:20] Preston Meyer: Uh, but it's a great way of making it look old and presenting a prophecy that has already been fulfilled. So obviously, the next prophecies are going to be great. It talks about how the Nile will run with more blood than water.
[00:36:37] Katie Dooley: Don't like that.
[00:36:38] Preston Meyer: Right. That's gross. Some people will see this as being fulfilled in the days of Moses or in our just in future. You got options. And then, of course, there's this weird statement that says that when atheism pervades, the air will be unbreathable.
[00:36:56] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:36:58] Preston Meyer: I mean, atheism is getting more popular and we are working really hard to make our air unbreathable, but I don't think we're there.
[00:37:05] Katie Dooley: Causation does not equal correlation! Wait, correlation does not equal causation!
[00:37:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's an interesting prediction.
[00:37:14] Katie Dooley: I feel attacked!
[00:37:15] Preston Meyer: It's an interesting prediction. But yeah correlation causation tricky nonsense. Yeah. What I found is really interesting is when I cracked open my book yesterday to go through and read Asclepius again, it starts with a talk about sex.
[00:37:33] Katie Dooley: What kind of talk about sex? Like birds and the bees or like porn?
[00:37:38] Preston Meyer: More birds and bees than porn. But he's, like, very serious about sharing fluids and sharing strength while sharing fluids and don't have sex in front of people who haven't had sex yet.
[00:37:52] Katie Dooley: Don't have sex in front of people, generally.
[00:37:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's a weird talk.
[00:37:58] Katie Dooley: Can you please read it to your future child when it comes time?
[00:38:02] Preston Meyer: Uh, sure. I can say that that is a plan. And whether or not that happens, we'll see.
[00:38:10] Katie Dooley: Perfect. If not, I'll. I'll take on the role as Auntie Katie and be like, sit down, son. We're gonna have a talk about the birds and the bees.
[00:38:20] Preston Meyer: Well, and I mean, the way it's worded does actually make it fit as a perfectly reasonable text to read from when you want to have that first chat about the birds and the bees, even though it feels a little bit weird. Read it yourself before you read it to your kids.
[00:38:40] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:38:40] Preston Meyer: I think, but I think it's not wildly inappropriate to share with a ten-year-old. That's fine.
[00:38:47] Katie Dooley: Okay. Okay. All right. Um, and then the last book we're going to talk about today is The Kybalion. It was originally published in 1908, and it conveys the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus.
[00:39:02] Preston Meyer: As much as anything does.
[00:39:04] Katie Dooley: As much as anything does. It is published with the author credit to three initiates, but it looks like it was written by William Walker Atkinson, a prolific occultist writer known to have written under the false name under false names like Magus Incognito and Yogi Ramacharaka.
[00:39:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:39:27] Katie Dooley: Charaka. Excuse me. I got too excited. Yogi. Ramacharaka. Charaka. Ramacharaka.
[00:39:35] Preston Meyer: Charaka.
[00:39:36] Katie Dooley: Ramacharaka. I just I'm making it worse. Look at the audio on me trying to say it. Oh, boy.
[00:39:44] Preston Meyer: Uh, yeah. Good old Bill used a lot of false names to write a lot of different books. Kind of interesting. Uh, Yogi Ramacharaka is one of his more popular names. And Magus Incognito is my favorite.
[00:40:03] Katie Dooley: That's a great name.
[00:40:05] Preston Meyer: Right? Just the priest that doesn't want to be known.
[00:40:08] Katie Dooley: I love it. It also sounds like a really weird detective from the 1920s. Sure. Like, I want to write a novel about Magnus Incognito.
[00:40:18] Preston Meyer: Mhm. I thought it was nifty. The Kybalion on the title page says that its publisher's home base, the Masonic Temple in Chicago. So I couldn't find whether or not he was a Freemason or just well-connected in that community. I don't think it makes a big difference, but it's kind of nifty. And William Walker Atkinson was also really into Hinduism and yoga in particular, which we've talked about a couple of times already in our podcast as well. And this dude was a lawyer, that he passed the bar in Chicago and served as a lawyer all over Illinois while also writing a lot of books.
[00:41:05] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Good for him. Good for him.
[00:41:07] Preston Meyer: I don't think he was quite as prolific as, say, L Ron Hubbard or.
[00:41:11] Katie Dooley: R.L. Stine.
[00:41:12] Preston Meyer: Right but...
[00:41:15] Katie Dooley: We're big fans of Goosebumps here.
[00:41:19] Preston Meyer: I did read a lot of Goosebumps as a kid.
[00:41:21] Katie Dooley: Didn't we all?
[00:41:24] Preston Meyer: But he's got more than 100 titles under his belt.
[00:41:27] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:41:28] Preston Meyer: Most of which are still in circulation in collected works today, which is kind of cool.
[00:41:33] Katie Dooley: It was really cool. The Kybalion is where we get the condensed seven principles of Hermeticism.
[00:41:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's interesting that people are so scared of the occult. If you read self-help or life coaching books, these concepts are going to show up. That's kind of The Secret. That was a big thing, what, ten, 15, 20 years ago?
[00:41:57] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean, it's still they're still reprinting it.
[00:42:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:42:01] Katie Dooley: With updated stories from like a belief standpoint. As the resident atheist, I don't hate this.
[00:42:09] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:42:10] Katie Dooley: And, you know, Bill was an occult writer, and we talked about astrology and alchemy and theurgy, but from, uh, occult perspective, this doesn't have anything to do with that. They talk about energy, which will chat about. And, you know, I don't really believe in crystals or Reiki, but we do scientifically know everything is made of energy. So I think there and when we get to the points, there is some truth to all of these points. But there's probably I mean, any religion, there's some truth to all the points. That's how they get you.
[00:42:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The things that we have in this book, they're not strictly classically hermetic ideas, but it adds to Hermeticism for anyone who's interested in them. And they have they've wormed their way into most modern hermetic thinking.
[00:43:09] Katie Dooley: So principle number one is essentially visualization. Or like Preston mentioned, The Secret. If you focus on wherever you set your focus to, you can manifest things into being. There's been a ton of research done on visualization. So while there are some wild stories in The Secret, there's one about a man who, like, willed his eyes to be better, to be 20/20. I'm like, ehhhh, there has. You know, there's lots of benefits if you're an athlete or a performer or goal setting to go through some visualization practices.
[00:43:48] Preston Meyer: This idea fits kind of nicely into Scientology, too. And Neil Gaiman, who I didn't know was a Scientologist until you told me he was, at least for a little while. He incorporates this idea into the creation and how gods come to be. In his book, American Gods, which I just finished reading and really, really loved.
[00:44:12] Katie Dooley: Nice. I think some of this like from a, I mean, lots of people, lots of coaches and things like that. Like Tony Robbins talks about visualization. There's also the I forget what it's called your something activating system in your brain. So when you buy a red car, all of a sudden everyone owns a red car.
[00:44:35] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah yeah.
[00:44:36] Katie Dooley: Right. There's actually something I forget what it's called. Someone's gonna like at me for this. But there's something in your brain that, like, when you're focused on it now, you see it everywhere. So I think that plays. And it's an actual part of your brain that plays into this as well, right? Like if you focus on, you know, my friend always says she gets rock star parking all the time. She probably doesn't because she focuses on all the time. She's gotten rock star parking. Now she always thinks she gets rock star parking. She probably gets rock star parking more often because of it. Rock star parking being like, right outside the store. Yeah. Minus the handicap stalls.
[00:45:13] Preston Meyer: I get ya, because those handicap spots are always empty.
[00:45:18] Katie Dooley: Well, and you can't. Those are not rock star spots. Just to be clear.
[00:45:23] Preston Meyer: I mean, they are, if you want them to be.
[00:45:27] Katie Dooley: Wow. Preston, what are we to say? Like three minutes ago about being a dick.
[00:45:31] Preston Meyer: Don't be a dick.
[00:45:32] Katie Dooley: Yes. Thank you. Number two, please.
[00:45:36] Preston Meyer: Uh, correspondence. This is the whole as above, so below concept that the world is the same thing on different levels.
[00:45:46] Katie Dooley: That was an easy one.
[00:45:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I mean, we've talked about it so we can move on to the next one.
[00:45:51] Katie Dooley: All right. Number three is vibration. So good vibes. If you have a coffee mug or a notepad that says good vibes on it. And you're a devout Christian scared of the occult, you better smash and or burn it because it is a hermetic. It is a hermetic thing. Good vibes. So everything is energy. We know scientifically, everything is energy, which is where again, I find Hermeticism super interesting.
[00:46:15] Preston Meyer: But smashing the coffee mug that says good vibes is bad vibes.
[00:46:21] Katie Dooley: Fair. Maybe donate it if it's a problem in your world. Um, and everything is moving constantly. Like we know atoms are always moving, some faster than others, some looser or tighter than others. So the idea is that if you want to resonate at a higher frequency, you surround yourself with higher vibration things. So from like a practical perspective, like we all have that friend that's Eeyore and you never feel good after spending time with Eeyore. As cute as Eeyore is or your Eeyore friend. Um, so that's the idea, right? We like hanging out with people that are fun and positive and whatever. And when you hang out with those people, you feel more fun and positive and energetic. That's the concept there.
[00:47:09] Preston Meyer: Not that you should never hang out with Eeyore, but...
[00:47:12] Katie Dooley: You set boundaries around Eeyore.
[00:47:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah, Eeyore needs boundaries.
[00:47:15] Katie Dooley: Eeyore needs a lot of boundaries and your need personally needs therapy. You need to set boundaries around Eeyore. And Eeyore needs to see a therapist.
[00:47:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah. For sure. Anyway, next on our list.
[00:47:33] Katie Dooley: Oh, this episode, Muppets and Winnie the Pooh.
[00:47:38] Preston Meyer: At least Winnie he is in the public domain now.
[00:47:41] Katie Dooley: Ah heck yeah.
[00:47:42] Preston Meyer: I don't know if I'm sure Eeyore was in those first books.
[00:47:47] Katie Dooley: I don't know.
[00:47:48] Preston Meyer: I could be wrong.
[00:47:49] Katie Dooley: I don't think we're going to get sued for saying Eeyore.
[00:47:51] Preston Meyer: We're not going to get any trouble for saying it. No.
[00:47:54] Katie Dooley: Eeyore!
[00:47:56] Preston Meyer: But...
[00:47:57] Katie Dooley: Eeyore is gonna sue us for defamation. I don't need therapy.
[00:48:03] Preston Meyer: Ah. Truth is a perfect defense. Anyway, fourth on the list of these seven principles is polarity. That everything is the same thing, just on varying degree. A really obvious example of this is temperature. Both hot and cold are temperatures. Cold is just a lot less warm than heat is, but that's more or less the the basics of it. Everything's the same. There's also this idea that comes up the the phrasing is all truths are but half truths. Feels a little bit weird, but when you think about trying to communicate with somebody, you can present facts and you can present truths. And if you're trying to accomplish one over the other, the words you use are different. And there's... It's hard to present a thing in a way that encompasses all of the truth of a thing.
[00:49:06] Katie Dooley: I mean, this is kind of like the the phrase there's, you know, three sides to every argument his, hers and the truth.
[00:49:11] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah.
[00:49:13] Katie Dooley: That's what I think of immediately.
[00:49:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Actually, going back to Neil Gaiman, he describes in American Gods, I think it was in the appendix or at the very end of the book, how if you want a perfectly accurate map, the only way to do that is to have the land itself, which, if you're looking for a map is functionally useless. So truth is a tricky thing.
[00:49:46] Katie Dooley: Number five is rhythm. So there, the idea is that there's an ebb and flow to life, and you can work with those ebb and flows to reduce the dramatic fluctuations of your life. So basically accepting that sometimes things will be awesome, sometimes things will not be so awesome. Sometimes it's summer, sometimes it's winter in Canada. If you're in Florida or something, lucky you. Uh, but to accept that, uh, waning and waxing will make your life much easier.
[00:50:24] Preston Meyer: And happier.
[00:50:25] Katie Dooley: And happier. So you can be a high-vibe person. Mhm.
[00:50:29] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Uh, next on our list, point number six is cause and effect that everything has a cause and an effect. Every cause has an effect. Every effect has a cause. And it's actually really important that these principles are laid out in that way, that nothing just happens out of nothing. Which is weird when you look at the theology of Hermeticism, that the God that is all, but also created all actually doesn't have a cause, but is the cause.
[00:51:07] Katie Dooley: Mhm.
[00:51:08] Preston Meyer: It's tricky.
[00:51:09] Katie Dooley: I like it.
[00:51:10] Preston Meyer: It's so tricky.
[00:51:10] Katie Dooley: I like it.
[00:51:12] Preston Meyer: But you can either be active and make things happen, or you can just be a vessel that is acted upon and that's going to not work out for you.
[00:51:23] Katie Dooley: Yes. So Hermeticism encourages that you are the cause in your life as opposed to being the effect of your life.
[00:51:30] Preston Meyer: And I've, I've heard a few religions use this as well that you need to be the agent, the actor, the one making things happen rather than being passive and receptive.
[00:51:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And number seven is gender. So I reworded this. But basically it's regardless of your genitalia or your gender identity. We both have masculine and feminine energies within us. This kind of ties into polarity and even rhythm, and that the goal is to find a healthy balance between your masculine and feminine energies.
[00:52:06] Preston Meyer: I'm pretty comfortable with my current balance. Not that nobody needs a little bit of adjustment, but I'm comfortable.
[00:52:15] Katie Dooley: You're not toxically masculine, so that's good.
[00:52:18] Preston Meyer: Right? Uh, yes. Toxic masculinity. The perfect red flag for somebody who is naturally a lot more feminine than they want to admit.
[00:52:30] Katie Dooley: Just embrace it. You'll be so be so much happier, right? You'll vibe higher. We don't have an episode name at the time I'm saying this, but I feel like it should be like good vibes and bloody tears. I'm kidding. That's a reference.
[00:52:49] Preston Meyer: Uh, Blue Jeans and Bloody Tears is a weird song.
[00:52:53] Katie Dooley: It is one of my favorites.
[00:52:55] Preston Meyer: I feel weird about it being one of your favorites, but I do have to go back to it fairly often.
[00:53:01] Katie Dooley: There's two great key changes and I just get way too excited every time.
[00:53:05] Preston Meyer: Man. Machines. A great evidence of some sort of alchemy.
[00:53:12] Katie Dooley: I like it. Speaking of alchemy, Preston.
[00:53:16] Preston Meyer: Yes. The three parts of the Wisdom of the universe that we talked about briefly before. Instead, we talk about later. Alchemy is the first. It's basically chemistry, but fancier. It has more power than the chemistry that we're familiar with. Alchemy is the power to change small things in the material world. Turning mercury or quicksilver into gold or lead into gold or mercury into silver.
[00:53:47] Katie Dooley: Iron into gold. I just read a book about that.
[00:53:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah, you've got honestly an awful lot of options. If your alchemy practices are legit, then you can turn base metals into precious metals, and that's kind of cool in theory.
[00:54:03] Katie Dooley: In practice...
[00:54:04] Preston Meyer: In practice, the heat that would be produced by changing atoms would be devastating. Not that it's impossible. We've proven that you can change one element to another. It takes a lot more effort than alchemy suggests.
[00:54:28] Katie Dooley: You can't get it hot enough.
[00:54:31] Preston Meyer: Uh, I mean, I don't know if you can produce the pressure to turn lead into gold. It's a little more complicated than that. There's also a nice little allegorical value to the principles of alchemy that if you are sensitive and thoughtful, you have the power to change a weak man into a strong one. There's some good value there. That turning yourself from lead into gold is the real goal.
[00:55:06] Katie Dooley: Steve Rogers. Mhm.
[00:55:10] Preston Meyer: The golden boy.
[00:55:14] Katie Dooley: Then we have astrology, which is of course the power to read the stars as the handiwork and message board of the gods. Um, so yeah, being able to predict the future and learn things about people based off of the stars.
[00:55:33] Preston Meyer: Not a thing I'm on board with there. I don't I don't even find allegorical value in it. But it's interesting to see that people have been studying the stars for so long and have put so much value into it.
[00:55:45] Katie Dooley: Um, astronomy, on the other hand...
[00:55:49] Preston Meyer: Astronomy is super cool and a lot of people get the two confused. It doesn't help that astrology is a word that means the study of the stars, and astronomy is the study of the stars for a different purpose.
[00:56:05] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:56:06] Preston Meyer: It's frustrating.
[00:56:08] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:56:10] Preston Meyer: And so many of the genuinely accepted sciences and with -ology, biology.
[00:56:20] Katie Dooley: Chemology.
[00:56:21] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:56:22] Katie Dooley: Physicology.
[00:56:23] Preston Meyer: Thank you for pointing out the perfect flaw in my scheme.
[00:56:28] Katie Dooley: Botanology. Yep. All my favorites end in -ology. You are correct.
[00:56:34] Preston Meyer: There's a lot of sciences that do end with ology. And thanks to you, I'm blanking on any of them.
[00:56:40] Katie Dooley: Herbology is a real science. Um, animal husbandology is a science.
[00:56:50] Preston Meyer: Astrology is legit as Scientology and that's where I'm stuck now.
[00:56:57] Katie Dooley: Oh, poor Preston, if you can think of an ology, that's a real science, because I sure can't post it in our Discord.
[00:57:05] Preston Meyer: Uh, well, that's what we get. When preparing for this, I didn't think I would need a list of legit sciences that end in -ology.
[00:57:15] Katie Dooley: You didn't think Katie was so smart on her science? Eh?
[00:57:23] Preston Meyer: Let's just move on.
[00:57:24] Katie Dooley: Human sexology. Medicineology. Sorry, I gotta stop. Uh, kinesiology!
[00:57:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That's real.
[00:57:39] Katie Dooley: There you go. Sorry. Theurgy.
[00:57:44] Preston Meyer: Uh, I feel bad that the only one that could come to my mind right away was biology. But anyway. Next on our list of the three parts of the wisdom of the universe, we have theurgy, which relies a little bit on alchemy and astrology, but is the powerful acts of God in the universe that is, a power that even people can actually wield, in theory, by union with benevolent spirits that grant this power to man, as opposed to making a deal with the devil and having a totally different power, which is still a reality within the principles of Hermeticism. Theurgy is a rather complicated bit because it's having the power of God, which is, of course, the dream for literally anybody who's really into Hermeticism, or even people who just aren't satisfied with their personal power, in this life, whatever your religious tradition is. But getting that power is a pretty tricky business. And that's part of the the pursuit of alchemy and astrology is to be able to understand and prepare yourself to wield that power, which is kind of cool. Like many other religious traditions, Hermetic Theology states that humanity has fallen from perfection and will live through cycles of reincarnation until the cycle is broken by obtaining and applying the wisdom of the universe. It's a pretty decent goal, a decent understanding that explains why people are so terrible to each other because we're fallen. It's a fairly common statement among religious traditions, especially from the west side or no, the east side of the Mediterranean Sea.
[00:59:47] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:59:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I don't know why I got my directions mixed up, but it is the east side of the Mediterranean Sea where this idea is really an important principle of religion.
[00:59:56] Katie Dooley: Yeah. To wrap up, I just kind of want to talk about how it connects to the occult. Do we think it's occult, especially when there's so much of it, I guess, hidden in plain sight in our everyday lives. What are your thoughts?
[01:00:12] Preston Meyer: I think that's a weird question. Okay.
[01:00:15] Katie Dooley: Um, did I word it weird?
[01:00:18] Preston Meyer: Maybe. Maybe that's the that's the problem. Um, generally when we use the word occult, we're talking about knowledge or power that needs to be hidden from the masses. And even though the literature of Hermeticism is fairly available, there's still secrets that are very effectively hidden. And so that makes it pretty easy to say that it is occult. And is alchemy fitting into that category of pseudosciences that is more, more recently applied to what we consider occult? I think fairly so. Astrology? Yes. 100%. But a lot of people look at occult as, oh that's dangerous.
[01:01:10] Katie Dooley: Right.
[01:01:10] Preston Meyer: Don't touch that and...
[01:01:14] Katie Dooley: Good vibes is pretty positive.
[01:01:16] Preston Meyer: I mean, I don't see any danger in Hermeticism. So if that's how you describe what is occult, I'm going to say no. But needing to have a conversation about definitions before talking about a thing is it's annoying... But it's a very real and necessary part of having religious discussions.
[01:01:43] Katie Dooley: Especially in this worlds. Yes. Um, when people toss around a whole bunch of things that are just wrong.
[01:01:53] Preston Meyer: Right? Like, you can have somebody say something to you and go, yes, all of those words that you have used in that order make a true statement. But the idea that you have behind those words and ideas is false. Or sometimes you have the the opposite, where it's like, I know that what you're thinking is right, but what you said is dumb. And there's everything in between those two extremes too.
[01:02:22] Katie Dooley: I love it. So Hermeticism, fascinating, influential and not dangerous.
[01:02:30] Preston Meyer: I think so. I think it's fascinating. Not that I've put in enough study to have a stronger grasp on it than I have, but I think it's cool.
[01:02:40] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[01:02:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:02:42] Katie Dooley: Sweet.
[01:02:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Speaking of alchemy, you should get your hands on some Holy Watermelon merch.
[01:02:49] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[01:02:51] Preston Meyer: It's not a great segway.
[01:02:53] Katie Dooley: No, it was really bad, but I'll. I'll accept it. He means it because it's like it will transform you from that lesser man to a greater man. If you wear a Holy Watermelon t-shirt.
[01:03:07] Preston Meyer: Oh, it'll make you. It'll take you from your current state into a billboard for the Holy Watermelon.
[01:03:13] Katie Dooley: A higher state.
[01:03:15] Preston Meyer: I like it.
[01:03:15] Katie Dooley: You will vibe higher. Wearing a Holy Watermelon t-shirt, oh boy.
[01:03:21] Preston Meyer: We've also got all kinds of other merch. You should check out our shop.
[01:03:25] Katie Dooley: Or if you. That's if you want to support us on an ongoing basis we also have a Patreon where for a small monthly fee, you can get early access and bonus episodes.
[01:03:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we're having some good fun with our bonus episodes.
[01:03:40] Katie Dooley: Yes! Also, check us out on Discord. We're building a great community and having some awesome conversations about religious studies, which is nice to see and have and questions and challenges.
[01:03:53] Preston Meyer: And our meme game is fantastic.
[01:03:56] Katie Dooley: Our mean game is chef's kiss. Mwah!
[01:03:58] Preston Meyer: Thank you for joining us.
[01:04:00] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 07 Nov 2022 | Theocracy of Zion | 01:16:01 | |
Is there any truth to the anti-semitic conspiracy theories that Kanye and your weird uncle have been muttering for years? Probably not, but let's take a look at the seed that grew into such an ugly tree. Israel hasn't enjoyed its current form for very long, but there was a not-so-secret plan in place long before the Allied Forces established the nation of Israel after the Holocaust. Join us as we examine the accusation of fascism within one of the groups that suffered the most under its heel. We take a look at Baron Walter Rothschild, the Russian emigration to the Ottoman Empire, the current conflict and the measures to preserve peace, and everything in between. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has done an incredible amount of harm to the Jewish Community, and the Anti-Defamation League has done lots of work to counter the decades of trouble caused by the hoax and the countless loud voices who repeat that nonsense. Anti-Semitism has no place in a civilized society. Zionism is a movement not isolated to Judaism--in fact, while many Jewish people are not Zionists, many Christians are. In addition to a survey of the history of Eretz-Israel, we critically examine the claim of fascism, comparing reality to Umberto Eco's 1995 checklist of fascist red flags. The conflict in Gaza and the West Bank are only recent developments, and Hamas is a powerful group causing troubles in already contentious situations. Israel is having a hard time looking like the good guy, too, so it's important to know the history here. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord | |||
| 01 Feb 2021 | You Mecca Me Believe | 01:14:58 | |
The last in the triumvirate of large Abrahamic traditions, Islam began in 609CE with the prophet Muhammed's revelations from the angel Gabriel. Now the second largest religion in the world, Islam has contributed to arts and science over the centuries. In this episode, we cover the history of Islam, the observances as well as the controversies of 9/11 and the Charlie Hebdo attacks. The last in the triumvirate of large Abrahamic traditions, Islam began in 609CE with the prophet Muhammed's revelations from the angel Gabriel. Now the second largest religion in the world, Islam has contributed to arts and science over the centuries. In this episode, we talk about Muhammad’s revelation from the angel Gabriel and how this revelation became an entirely new religion. Muhammad is unique; he was surrounded by polytheists, whereas Moses and Jesus were really reformers of religions that people were very familiar with. Muhammad added to the Abrahamic faith, but he also had to convince the people around him to worship Yahweh instead of the large number of deities they were worshiping. Muhammad’s revelation became the Quran, and Muhammad’s sayings and wisdom became the Hadiths. The only true form of the Quran is in Arabic, but we talk about textual variants and about the translations that exist. There are 5 universally accepted pillars of Islam that we will discuss:
As well we discuss the unofficial sixth pillar of Islam, jihad, and some other controversial (but not actually that scary) topics like Sharia Law and Fatwas. Like most religious groups Muslims have unique practices that separate them from non-believers. This includes following rules for clothing, food, and daily practices that are either Halal (permissible) or Haram (non-permissible). For more great resources check out Karen Armstrong's book, A Short History of Islam; and the 8-part podcast by History & WNYC Studios, Blindspot: The Road to 9/11.
Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram
Preston Meyer 0:00 Katie Dooley 0:03 Intro Song Katie Dooley 0:21 Preston Meyer 0:25 Katie Dooley 0:26 Both Hosts 0:27 Preston Meyer 0:31 Katie Dooley 0:47 Preston Meyer 0:49 Katie Dooley 0:54 Preston Meyer 0:57 Katie Dooley 1:16 Preston Meyer 1:26 Katie Dooley 1:32 Preston Meyer 1:41 Katie Dooley 1:54 Preston Meyer 2:00 Katie Dooley 2:19 Preston Meyer 2:19 Katie Dooley 2:28 Preston Meyer 2:31 Katie Dooley 2:33 Preston Meyer 2:34 Katie Dooley 3:35 Preston Meyer 4:05 Katie Dooley 4:25 Preston Meyer 4:27 Katie Dooley 5:15 Preston Meyer 5:35 Katie Dooley 5:38 Preston Meyer 5:41 Katie Dooley Preston Meyer Katie Dooley 6:25 Preston Meyer 7:01 Katie Dooley 7:08 Preston Meyer 7:09 Katie Dooley 7:32 Preston Meyer 7:54 Katie Dooley 7:55 Preston Meyer 8:07 Katie Dooley 8:25 Preston Meyer 8:30 Katie Dooley 8:59 Preston Meyer 9:11 Katie Dooley 9:48 Preston Meyer 10:13 Katie Dooley 10:14 Preston Meyer 10:14 Katie Dooley 10:23 Preston Meyer 10:27 Katie Dooley 10:37 Preston Meyer 10:56 Katie Dooley 10:57 Preston Meyer 10:59 Katie Dooley 11:00 Preston Meyer 11:04 Katie Dooley 11:15 Preston Meyer 11:21 Katie Dooley 11:23 Preston Meyer 11:27 Katie Dooley 11:49 Preston Meyer 11:49 Katie Dooley 11:55 Preston Meyer 11:58 Katie Dooley 12:32 Preston Meyer 12:48 Katie Dooley 12:49 Preston Meyer 13:16 Katie Dooley 13:27 Preston Meyer 13:28 Katie Dooley 13:37 Preston Meyer 13:48 Katie Dooley 14:07 Preston Meyer 14:18 Katie Dooley 14:25 Preston Meyer 14:45 Katie Dooley 14:48 Preston Meyer 15:06 Katie Dooley 15:43 Preston Meyer 16:09 Katie Dooley 16:36 Preston Meyer 16:39 Katie Dooley 16:47 Preston Meyer 17:04 Katie Dooley 17:50 Preston Meyer 17:56 Katie Dooley 17:57 Preston Meyer 18:03 Katie Dooley 18:09 Preston Meyer 18:15 Katie Dooley 18:23 Preston Meyer 18:26 Katie Dooley 18:31 Preston Meyer 18:34 Katie Dooley 18:41 Preston Meyer 19:18 Katie Dooley 19:20 Preston Meyer 19:27 Katie Dooley 19:32 Preston Meyer 19:35 Katie Dooley 19:44 Preston Meyer 19:47 Katie Dooley 20:17 Preston Meyer 20:20 Katie Dooley 20:29 Preston Meyer 20:35 Katie Dooley 20:39 Preston Meyer 20:47 Katie Dooley 20:55 Preston Meyer 20:56 Katie Dooley 20:59 Preston Meyer 21:04 Katie Dooley 21:07 Preston Meyer 21:14 Katie Dooley 21:28 The other thing people people should know, the other thing about Ramadan is that it changes every year because Muslims follow a lunar calendar, so their months are shorter. So Ramadan changes, goes I think it goes back a week, every year. And if you're in North America, that can suck when Ramadan in the summer and our days are really long, because you are fasting from sunrise to sunset it's a lot easier in the winter, like right now where our days are very, very short. Preston Meyer 22:02 Katie Dooley 22:07 Preston Meyer 22:10 Katie Dooley 22:40 Preston Meyer 22:58 Katie Dooley 22:59 Preston Meyer 23:25 Katie Dooley 23:27 Preston Meyer 23:41 Katie Dooley 23:47 Preston Meyer 23:50 Katie Dooley 23:54 In a big black box and you are supposed to circle it seven times Preston Meyer 24:01 Katie Dooley 24:25 Preston Meyer 24:26 Katie Dooley 24:37 Preston Meyer 25:32 Katie Dooley 25:33 Preston Meyer 26:14 Katie Dooley 26:18 Preston Meyer 26:21 Katie Dooley 26:58 Preston Meyer 27:50 Katie Dooley 27:52 Preston Meyer 28:29 Katie Dooley 28:33 Both Hosts 28:36 Preston Meyer 28:39 Katie Dooley 28:50 Preston Meyer 29:26 Katie Dooley 29:28 Preston Meyer 29:40 Katie Dooley 29:45 Preston Meyer 29:59 Katie Dooley 30:19 Yeah. And like I said, it's not like there aren't, you know, absolutely. It mentions stoning. But you need four witnesses before you can stone someone and it's her, you know, heinous crimes, you know, Preston Meyer 30:29 Katie Dooley 30:44 Preston Meyer 30:45 Katie Dooley 30:49 Preston Meyer 30:49 Katie Dooley 31:38 Preston Meyer 31:40 Katie Dooley 32:26 Preston Meyer 32:41 Katie Dooley 32:42 Preston Meyer 32:56 Katie Dooley 33:02 Preston Meyer 34:11 Katie Dooley 34:15 Preston Meyer 34:23 Katie Dooley 34:55 Preston Meyer 35:11 Katie Dooley 35:17 Preston Meyer 35:30 Katie Dooley 35:36 Preston Meyer 35:49 Katie Dooley 35:51 Preston Meyer 35:53 Katie Dooley 35:54 Preston Meyer 35:55 Katie Dooley Preston Meyer Katie Dooley 36:15 Preston Meyer 36:27 Katie Dooley 36:43 Preston Meyer 37:09 Katie Dooley 37:34 Preston Meyer 37:55 Katie Dooley 37:59 Preston Meyer 38:07 Katie Dooley 38:27 Preston Meyer 38:32 Katie Dooley 38:34 Preston Meyer 39:04 Katie Dooley 39:14 Preston Meyer 39:38 Katie Dooley 39:43 Preston Meyer 39:48 Katie Dooley 39:51 Preston Meyer 40:30 Katie Dooley 40:34 Preston Meyer 40:39 Katie Dooley 40:41 Preston Meyer 40:43 Katie Dooley 40:44 Preston Meyer 41:03 Katie Dooley Preston Meyer Katie Dooley 42:42 Preston Meyer 42:43 Katie Dooley 43:00 Preston Meyer 43:19 Katie Dooley 43:21 Preston Meyer 44:24 Katie Dooley 44:48 Preston Meyer 45:15 Katie Dooley 45:17 Preston Meyer 45:23 Katie Dooley 45:33 Preston Meyer 46:37 Katie Dooley 46:48 Preston Meyer 46:56 Katie Dooley 47:00 Preston Meyer 47:04 Katie Dooley 49:08 Preston Meyer 49:30 Katie Dooley 49:37 Preston Meyer 49:40 Katie Dooley 49:54 Preston Meyer 49:57 Katie Dooley 50:16 Preston Meyer 50:18 Katie Dooley 50:23 Preston Meyer 50:25 Katie Dooley 50:37 Preston Meyer 50:41 Katie Dooley 50:43 Preston Meyer 50:45 Katie Dooley 50:48 Preston Meyer 51:06 Katie Dooley 51:29 Preston Meyer 51:35 Katie Dooley 51:40 Preston Meyer 51:43 Katie Dooley 54:34 Preston Meyer 54:41 Katie Dooley 54:46 Preston Meyer 54:48 Katie Dooley 54:49 Preston Meyer 54:54 Katie Dooley 55:01 Preston Meyer 55:09 Katie Dooley 55:12 Preston Meyer 55:15 Katie Dooley 55:18 Preston Meyer 55:31 Katie Dooley 55:57 Preston Meyer 56:01 Katie Dooley 56:07 Preston Meyer 56:16 Katie Dooley 56:22 Preston Meyer 56:26 Katie Dooley 56:27 Preston Meyer 56:33 Katie Dooley 56:35 Preston Meyer 56:39 Katie Dooley 58:14 Preston Meyer 58:27 Katie Dooley 58:29 Preston Meyer 58:57 Katie Dooley 1:00:01 Preston Meyer 1:00:21 Katie Dooley 1:00:46 Preston Meyer 1:00:48 Katie Dooley 1:01:49 Preston Meyer 1:02:13 Katie Dooley 1:02:17 Preston Meyer 1:03:00 Katie Dooley 1:03:34 Preston Meyer 1:04:02 Katie Dooley 1:04:30 Preston Meyer 1:04:31 Katie Dooley 1:04:36 Preston Meyer 1:04:38 Katie Dooley 1:04:40 Preston Meyer 1:05:12 Katie Dooley 1:05:13 Preston Meyer 1:05:53 Katie Dooley 1:05:59 Preston Meyer 1:06:58 Katie Dooley 1:07:09 Preston Meyer 1:07:17 Katie Dooley 1:08:11 Preston Meyer 1:08:23 Katie Dooley 1:08:25 Preston Meyer 1:08:30 Katie Dooley 1:08:55 Preston Meyer 1:08:58 Katie Dooley 1:09:03 Preston Meyer 1:09:43 Katie Dooley 1:09:46 Preston Meyer 1:10:12 Katie Dooley 1:10:49 Preston Meyer 1:10:57 Katie Dooley 1:11:00 Preston Meyer 1:11:17 Katie Dooley 1:12:15 Preston Meyer 1:12:20 Katie Dooley 1:12:22 Preston Meyer 1:12:43 Katie Dooley 1:12:48 Preston Meyer 1:12:54 Katie Dooley 1:12:55 Preston Meyer 1:12:57 Katie Dooley 1:12:58 Preston Meyer 1:13:47 Katie Dooley 1:13:52 Preston Meyer 1:14:05 Katie Dooley 1:14:06 Preston Meyer 1:14:21 Katie Dooley 1:14:24 Preston Meyer 1:14:36 Both Hosts 1:14:37
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| 19 Jul 2021 | And It Was Good? | 01:14:44 | |
Religion and morality are so intertwined. Many people believe we get our morals from the heavens. How do we know what is good and what is evil? Morality is the line between good and evil. For a lot of people, morality is informed by their religious philosophies. However, we know that while it plays a part, it is not the only way that people learn morals. There are 4 types of morals:
In this episode, we also discuss the arguments of morals being from religion, or a humanist source for morals. Morals from Religion Have non-religious people just absorbed their morals from the religious people around them? A lot of laws and rules in North America come from the Protestant tradition, like monogamy. Some people say morals from the gods. The God of the Abrahamic tradition is meant to be seen as a righteous figure. However, there are some actions that don’t align with today’s morals. Religion is useful to humanity up to this point; it helps us organize our place in the world. Morality has been there every step of the way.
Humanist Morals There is basically a consensus that we don’t get our morals from religion. A lot of smart people have done writing on morals and we talk about the different stages of morality. A great question to ask yourself is “What if everybody did this all the time?” Another argument against religious morals is that our interpretation of Holy Books has changed as our morals have. We interpret things differently or ignore passages altogether.
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*** Preston Meyer 00:09 atheist and agnostic Oh man, I'm looking forward to today's episode we've kind of nudged chatted a little bit a couple of times.
Katie Dooley 00:19 I'm excited to I think this will be a lot like our don't stop believing episode.
Preston Meyer 00:27 Yeah, a little bit over this time, we're talking about morality on the holy watermelon podcast.
Katie Dooley 00:34 We're again, philosophical. again today, guys. And we're not philosophers. So I
Preston Meyer 00:43 think we've argued in the past, particularly in don't stop believing that we are a philosopher, anyone can be a philosopher, if you have an opinion about philosophy, some people argue that's enough to be a philosopher. Well,
Katie Dooley 00:57 also like our don't stop believing episode, I don't know how close to an answer we're gonna get.
Preston Meyer 01:05 Morality is a tricky thing. A lot of people like to look at morality as a thing where you judge the world based on what your personal morality is. And it's basically black white with some gray in there. And everything else is either Okay, or not. Okay. People don't think a lot about how other people have different systems of morality.
Katie Dooley 01:32 Yes. Morals are hard to because? I mean, yeah. Because what's good to one person is not good to another person. And then how do you make laws and rules and decisions that benefit the group?
Preston Meyer 01:55 Yeah, it's complicated and tricky. And in almost every case, somebody gets offended. Absolutely.
Katie Dooley 02:04 And actually pair this episode with don't stop believing if you haven't listened to yet, because I think, you know, you mentioned somebody people getting offended, this comes down to what you believe and why you believe it. So we're already getting into the weeds.
Preston Meyer 02:21 And I mean, morality, and ethics, which, depending on how you talk about them are synonymous. Sometimes they're not synonymous, depending on how you use them.
Katie Dooley 02:33 I purposely pulled out the definition of ethics to not muddy the waters perfect. Morality today.
Preston Meyer 02:40 Excellent. So it's, it's already is too complicated, but we're gonna dive in and see what we can get anyway. And so generally, morality is the the line between good and evil, more or less, but that gets tricky too. And for a lot of people in the world, their morality is informed specifically by their religious philosophies, but very often not.
Katie Dooley 03:14 It's interesting. So in doing the research for this, I was actually expecting far more. Far more articles and, and thoughts on this, the side that we do get our morals from religion, I thought it'd be more 5050. But from what I found, there's basically a consensus that we don't get our morals from religion, which is really interesting, because 84% of the world's population are religious. But still, even with that, there's a consensus that we don't get our morals from religion, which we'll get into the different sides right away here. But
Preston Meyer 03:54 it's, it's interesting that one of the last classes I had when I was finishing up my degree, was looking at the modern philosophies of religion, and just how religion works from the outside looking in, and specifically part of the course looked at its effects on the government in our country, and a lot of our laws and our cultural norms. And the morality that we adopt because of living in this nation that's run this way, comes from the Protestant faith tradition, where things like monogamy being the only acceptable form of marriage in this country. Is that a moral decision? Those it coming from a religious background who think that the only proper form of marriage can be monogamy is usually informed by the Christian tradition of no polygamy. But there there's A small handful of Christian groups that think polygamy is okay. The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible says that polygamy is okay. Muslims believe polygamy is okay. But Catholics and Protestants are like no polygamy.
Katie Dooley 05:14 It's funny, you mentioned this and this in the notes or anything, but on an episode of Qi, which is quite interesting, it's a British, for those of you who might not know is a British celebrity trivia show. It's ridiculous. I highly recommend watching it. But the host, Stephen Fry whom I don't know how it comes up, because they just go off the rails sometimes. But he mentions in an episode of Qi, he says, It blows my mind that polygamy is legal, when it's, you know, as long as it's consenting adults, but adultery isn't illegal. And there that's not consensual. So just something to think about is I'm not saying polygamy is for everyone, but I you know, if you're a consenting adult, and you know, you're getting into a polygamist or open or whatever, you're polyamorous, whatever you want to call it, relationship, then all the power to you. Right?
Preston Meyer 06:08 And it's it's weird how often people need to be reminded that what is legal, and what is moral, don't necessarily overlap in every case. Oh, well, we're
Katie Dooley 06:20 gonna get to a quote, I don't know if you saw the quote, I
Preston Meyer 06:24 did see, I look forward to that coming.
Katie Dooley 06:28 Preemptive trigger warning, I'll wear it again when we get to it. But this is a very good example of what is moral is not always legal, and how vastly different morals can be and what it looks like when they're informed by different things anyway, yeah. Foreshadowing.
Preston Meyer 06:48 Generally, when we think about morality, in modern West, typically pretty standardly, people like to bring up the golden rule. And I like that it's, it's pretty solid.
Katie Dooley 07:01 It's a great rule. I saw your note on it. And I actually cited, just because I don't want people coming back being like, see, we do get our morality from Christianity.
Preston Meyer 07:12 The golden rule is a little older than Christianity.
Katie Dooley 07:16 So the first instance of the golden rule is from 1800 BCE in Egypt. So the yes, the Old Testament might have been around, but this is not a Christian tradition. Well, the Old Testament wouldn't even be around at this point. Really? I thought it was about 5000 years, so Oh, no, no, no.
Preston Meyer 07:33 It's the Old Testaments, a lot newer than that.
Katie Dooley 07:37 It says, due to the doer to cause that he do. Which,
Preston Meyer 07:42 I mean, that's a really poetic translation. I like it. But I could see why a lot of people would fumble with that phrase.
Katie Dooley 07:53 It sounds like a dope, doge meme to the doer to cause that he do. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 08:01 I like it. But basically, it's due to others as you would have them do
Katie Dooley 08:05 unto you. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, and we'll get into it. But yeah, I think it's a good thing. If you're confused about the morals or the situation, the golden rule is actually a great reference point, to talk about somewhere else situations that would apply to you. But the first one that comes to mind is gay marriage. Well, if you're going to restrict someone's right to marry, how would you feel if they restricted your right to marry? And I think that's a good lens to look through things.
Preston Meyer 08:36 It's such a weird, and we've talked about gay marriage before. And that as a, as a moral example, I think is really interesting that a lot of people want to argue that marriage is a religious right. And yet, it's governed by the state, which is not a religious body. Therefore, your argument falls flat. It's dead. Marriage is not a religious, right.
Katie Dooley 09:03 No. And then the I mean, same thing, even looking at countries that are predominantly atheists like skin, Scandinavian countries, they still get married there. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 09:10 I mean, there's still plenty of faithful people in Oh, definitely predominantly atheist. Now. It's kind of weird to look at, but not a terrible thing.
Katie Dooley 09:23 Do you want to run through the four types of moral Yeah,
Preston Meyer 09:28 let's do it. So there are a good handful of views on the nature of evil and they tend to fall into four categories as Katie number. The first is moral absolutism. This is really common in specifically monotheistic traditions, but can come up in some polytheistic traditions as well. That good and evil are fixed concepts established by a deity or deities and that is It's all just kind of figured. And sometimes it's observable in nature or you're meant to deduce them from common sense. So it's it's kind of nebulous but there is an absolute this is this is good. This is evil. Marlon, and there's there's not usually a lot of gray in there. But I mean, depending on who you talk to, there's, the less absolutist you are, the more gray there is. And then you've got a moralism, which is some tricky stuff, where you outright deny the existence of a true good or a true evil that everything is great, kind of the exact opposite of moral absolutism. Some atheists will fall into this category, it's a lot easier for atheists and theists to be a moralists.
Katie Dooley 10:57 There's reasons a moralism resonates with me, which we're sure we can dive into after we get through the four types. But yeah, there's definitely an argument for for
Preston Meyer 11:07 it. Yeah. If this definitely jives really nicely with nihilism, if nothing matters, then what is morality? Why is it even a thing to talk about? And then somewhere in between those we have moral relativism, that holds the standards of good and evil are only products of local culture, customer prejudice, and in many instances are things that ought to be adjusted. Especially as people become more aware of groups outside their own. And then the idea of moral universalism. That's some tricky stuff, but it's the attempt to find a compromise between absolutist sense morality and the relativist view. Universalism claims that morality is only flexible to a degree, and that what is truly good or evil can be determined by examining what is commonly considered to be evil amongst all humans.
Katie Dooley 12:07 And because you read that word for word, I'll say that one's from Wikipedia. Yeah. No plagiarism here.
Preston Meyer 12:16 What you're doing copying straight from Wikipedia.
Katie Dooley 12:20 I copied a lot for this episode, not from Wikipedia, from everywhere, all sorts of places, just because some of the quotes I found from people speaking about morality, I found were good conversation starters. Right? As opposed to me putting all my thoughts down. I thought we could dive into some of these quotes about moralism from all sides. Have a conversation.
Preston Meyer 12:43 It is really well worded though I liked it.
Katie Dooley 12:45 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, good, good word grabbing a copy Ctrl C ctrl v.
Preston Meyer 12:52 So my wife and I have been watching for a little while the good place. First shut up and NBC but we've been watching on Netflix, because we don't have cable. And the show does a great job of exploring morality. Don't want to spoil too much of the plot for those of you who might feel interested in watching it later on. But one of the main characters Chiti is a moral philosopher, he did all of his work in university for his entire adult life, studying ethics and moral philosophy, and teaches it to the rest of the the ensemble cast in the show, on and off throughout. And, unfortunately, because he's, he knows so much about moral philosophy, he suffers from absolute intellectual paralysis, when it comes time to making any sort of decision about literally anything funny, he is frozen, by the fear, any sort of decision paralyzes him because he's afraid of making a decision that can have a negative moral or ethical impact, I guess. Which is really frustrating literally
Katie Dooley 14:04 doesn't do anything, right.
Preston Meyer 14:07 Like, this, literally is what killed him. And so so the good play starts, everybody's dead. And when you're dead, you're the points that determine whether you would go to the good place or the bad place. They're frozen. They don't impact you any further at this point in the narrative, but he's still paralyzed by the fear of doing something morally negative for guy and it's it's really interesting show. I love it. i That's one aspect of the show. There's plenty of depth to the characters that make it absolutely lovable. And I'm just focused on that one bit because that's what applies to our subject at hand. But good stuff.
Katie Dooley 14:54 One interesting while we're still talking about what our morals before we get into the two sides of it, one of the things I found her Interesting is the high faith doesn't believe that evil exists. Behind is a very interesting religion. It's a very inclusive religion. If you look at their temples, there's the Star of David and crosses and the Islamic moons. So it's very inclusive, but it is its own entity. We should do an episode on behind, but so they don't believe that evil even exists. It's just the lack of good. So they talk about how cold is the lack of heat and darkness is the lack of light. They don't exist. I don't know, I guess it goes back to your experience, right? If I'm sitting in a dark room, I don't go this darkness doesn't exist, right? It's dark. But it's an interesting,
Preston Meyer 15:50 it's an absence of light. Yeah. And that's actually a really useful response to the issue of how can there be evil if God is good and powerful? And they say that there is no evil, there's just an absence of goodness, because people either are good, or they're not. I
Katie Dooley 16:12 also like in the sense of, you know, giving people second chances, right, as anyone inherently evil. I mean, we can probably get into some of those arguments today. But I think most people have a lapse in judgment. Absolutely. So, you know, Hitler, Ted Bundy, probably are actually evil. But I think your average, you know, person in the present system, just, you know, circumstances and poor judgment got to them to where they're for sure. So, yeah,
Preston Meyer 16:52 yeah, it's, it's challenging, especially if you're looking at morality as a reason to demonize a person, you're gonna have a hard time.
Katie Dooley 17:03 But yes, that yeah, my brain already hurts thinking about. Because people will think I think most people think what they do with moral Oh, absolutely. Just like most people, when people believe what people believe they believe is correct. You don't believe something? Because you think it's wrong.
Preston Meyer 17:26 That's nonsense.
Katie Dooley 17:29 So probably, let's say 85% of what people do they believe is moral. Have I done things that hurt people that I regret? Absolutely, that I would look back and say that was immoral? Have you Katie, but day to day, I think I live morally. So it is absolutely hard to demonize Psalm one, when they think they're doing the right thing, or they're doing the best they can. And, you know, some ones terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, you know, right. Literally, Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist until there was like a benefit concert for him. And then he became a freedom fighter. So great marketing campaign. And absolutely apartheid should have was supposed to end but the global perspective of Nelson Mandela, up until his benefit concert was that he was a terrorist. Yeah, so
Preston Meyer 18:18 even Mahatma Gandhi was a terrorist. Now this, it's a little easier to show how he objectively may have been a scary terrorist. But he was also fighting for good things, and then started fighting for better things.
Katie Dooley 18:34 Bobby Sands, no nonviolent iron IRA. I mean, still today, you could ask someone about depending on who you asked about Bobby Sands, you'd get two completely different insurance. If you're an Irish republican, he's a freedom fighter, if you're Irish Protestant, he's a terrorist. So how do you? How do you decide?
Preston Meyer 18:57 One sense of morality is definitely tightly tied to one's philosophy, how they see the world and what things have value. And it's it only gets more complicated, the more you look at it. One can argue for a lifetime, whether something has real value or not, and whether that value is worth defending, and how much you're willing to fight to preserve any given thing is a question of morality as much as is a question of philosophy.
Katie Dooley 19:31 Absolutely. I mean, we could just go back and start talking about murder. Right? Yeah. Like capital punishment, murder versus capital punishment. What's, what's
Preston Meyer 19:41 the difference? Different one is that you feel like there is a moral benefit to it when it's capital punishment. Where I mean, some people argue that there's a moral advantage to murder. I
Katie Dooley 19:54 was gonna see I imagine if you spoke to each murder story Some of them might not have a good reason for it, but some of them probably did. Yeah. I think of Charlize Theron, the actress, her mom killed her dad in self defense, and she didn't go to jail. They moved from South Africa to America. But the judge said, yeah, it's self defense. But I mean, it is, you know, objectively murder.
Preston Meyer 20:22 Yeah, that's, it's interesting. The, the line between culpability and responsibility, you know? Yeah. Yeah, she if she's defending her family, she is responsible for the death. But is she legally culpable for that death when it is? Protecting her family? The court said, No.
Katie Dooley 20:49 We need to get a lawyer now. So
Preston Meyer 20:51 I have been reading the news lately and have got some frustrating feelings about some courts lately. Okay. Did you hear about Bill Cosby? Yes. Yeah. And the reason that they decided, yeah, he's should never have been in jail in the first place, is it's not even want to say it's immoral altogether. The whole decision making process has been made public that he was, according to these judges, the majority of the judges on this panel said, yeah, he never should have been tried at all, because the predecessor of the prosecutor, who was in charge of this trial, promised not to charge Cosby. And apparently, these judges, the majority of them are like, well, your predecessors promises. You have to hold them up. So you should never have charged him. So Cosby goes free, gross, morally, I think that's terrible. And some of the judges on that panel agree with me. Some of them find their morality in a different philosophy that I don't know how to define yet. John,
Katie Dooley 22:10 Well, John, Les Mis, their rule of law doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. Rule
Preston Meyer 22:15 of Law go to jail for stealing a piece of bread because you literally need to serve to survive. And yeah, that's, that's a skewed philosophy morality.
Katie Dooley 22:27 Um, do we want to get into these two sides of morals? Let's do anything else, you want to solve them? So I have two headings in our show notes. So where morals come from the pro religion, that's world's religion, and then we have a humanist? side. And I actually, like I said, I had trouble finding more in favor of religion than I thought I would. Sure.
Preston Meyer 22:56 So some people say that morals straight up are taught by the gods or God. And I don't know if you've been paying attention to some of my commentary in the past about Hellenism. But the father of the gods, the king of the gods, good old Zeus, does not teach morality, in fact, is a terrible example of a moral figure. And
Katie Dooley 23:21 there are other I mean, there are other gods in that Pantheon that aren't great either. This is particular Are there any
Preston Meyer 23:26 that are really I mean, like Stand Up Guys or girls based on our morality right now. Like off the top of my head? I don't remember a lot about Artemis, but I think she's all right.
Katie Dooley 23:41 I mean, she was my favorite when we learned about it in grade six. So they sent her a lot but she was like the goddess of the hunt and the moon and animals and nature. I can't think
Preston Meyer 23:54 straight up was a rapist.
Katie Dooley 23:56 Yeah, Dianne, ISIS was a drunkard, Aphrodite, and free love is probably a little more moral these days than she 300 years ago. Her morality
Preston Meyer 24:05 is definitely not as problematic as Zeus is I don't think she was ever hate rape is cool, because it's sex. That's not I don't think it was ever a thing. So I think we're still on pretty solid ground with Aphrodite unless there's something I've forgotten
Katie Dooley 24:25 when we do our Greek pantheon episode.
Preston Meyer 24:32 But for, let's say, specifically Christians, Muslims, Jews, the god of these traditions is meant to be seen as a righteous figure. And some of the stories don't reflect to the same morality that is common today. But overall, he is meant to be seen as the pillar of moral rectitude,
Katie Dooley 24:56 well, and even from the Hebrew Bible to the Christian Bible to the core On the differences in flavors draft shifts drastically So, and we'll get more on to that. But I found a quote that I'm going to read, go for it. The view that non religious individuals are morally dubious is deeply embedded in American society. Atheists and Gnostics are considered less trust trustworthy, even a moral, which explains why people don't believe in God are unlikely to be elected to high political office, such as President of the United States. Which
Preston Meyer 25:35 is why so many elected officials pretend to go to church way more often than they ever do. Which is a problem. Because if you're catching somebody in that kind of lie, it should make them harder to trust. And yet for some reason, the the whole of the public doesn't seem to have an issue with this. What
Katie Dooley 25:58 are the reasons you think that's the case? I need to word that question people
Preston Meyer 26:06 make choices about what to believe sometimes, we've talked about how sometimes you can choose to believe things, sometimes you believe a thing because you believe it. But sometimes when you have information like what this President is probably not as religious as he is showing off, and you can kind of tell by looking at him. Some people choose to believe that there's a narrative that is favorable, and they're going to go with it just because it's convenient to them. Like, I want to believe that he is as good as I want him to be kind of thing. And because
Katie Dooley 26:47 he's religious, it's more likely, I guess, because like you said, we have proof that morals don't come from religion, right? So it shouldn't matter. But apparently, it matters like a ton.
Preston Meyer 27:04 Yeah. An awful lot of people. And I've heard it several times, believe that if you don't believe in a God, then you have no reason to be moral. Which there's loads of problems with that argument.
Katie Dooley 27:22 On the humanist side of things, but you're absolutely right. We have talked about it in the past, I think it was like way back in the beginning, that episode, where we talked about religion being genetic, and, arguably, therefore morals, no morals are genetic. Kidding. It's the debate on whether religion is genetic or not, or what benefit it has, and how being religious is beneficial to people. And I think that ties in with morality, absolutely. In your what you think is moral? Am I making any sense?
Preston Meyer 28:04 I think so. Okay, so we're saying that religion is is useful for humanity up to this point in our social evolution, that it helps us to organize our place in the world, and the world around us in a way that we can understand it. And morality absolutely has been there all along every step of the way. It helps us navigate our relationships with other people and the world around us at large. And I think that's, that falls into what you were saying pretty, pretty, fairly.
Katie Dooley 28:41 Another quote, again, I just found all these great, quote, talking points that again, was for religion, as our source of moral says, one answer. Yeah, one answer to this is that moral values comes from religion, transmitted through sacred texts and religious authorities, and that even the values of non religious people have been absorbed from the religious history around them. And I'll interject and say that makes sense if 84% of the world is religious, that the remaining 16% Very well likely, as the minority could absorb their morals.
Preston Meyer 29:15 Like I said, you some of your morality has been the product of the Protestant faith tradition that's kind of helped and formed the colonization of North America. And
Katie Dooley 29:28 you know, as someone who's an atheist, but married and monogamous, I can't disagree. Some people this back to the code, everyone, some people worry that a general move away from religious faiths will will bring about some kind of moral breakdown in society. But humans, humanists will argue that moral values are not dependent on religion, and it is a potentially damaging idea in an increasingly secular society, society to start that there.
Preston Meyer 29:55 For sure. I don't see any issue there. One
Katie Dooley 29:59 of the The the notes I made too is that part of the problem with discussing religion and morality is that both terms are basically undefinable.
Preston Meyer 30:10 Morality is a lot easier to define than religion. But I mean, define what is moral? Well, and I mean, that's the problem is your art. It's you're arguing what is good and what is bad against, usually somebody who disagrees and says, No, this is fine. And this is perfectly acceptable and your sense of good and bad or wrong, which is complicated and frustrating for most people that have the argument.
Katie Dooley 30:41 I also remember we talked about in I think it was in the beginning episode, about morals coming from religion, and humans always being religious. Is it fair? Like we talked about Protestant values influencing us, but where did Protestant morals and values come from? Like how far back? Right we can say we're whatever, Christian society or we need a Christian God or the Abrahamic God to dictate our morals, but those morals came from somewhere. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 31:14 and I think it is interesting to look into that some of it is due directly to their connection to the Catholic tradition. And some of it is due to recognizing errors in the Catholic philosophical tradition of how people are meant to be towards each other. Especially the idea that you're teaching a thing. I don't believe it, I want to be free to believe what I believe that's, that's the big energy of Protestantism. And what led to the way that North America was colonized by Protestants. And so the whole believe what you believe in secret, don't shout it out too much. That is a Protestant, specific kind of philosophy. And it's kind of nifty to see how all that evolves out of the Catholic tradition that I mean, monogamy that we were talking about. The Christians when they first spread out from Jerusalem, baptizing the world. They were a polygamous people. And then the Romans were like, polygamy bad. You can have one wife only do what you want. It's okay to have sex with the boys and girls down the street. To the man not not the women. And footnote. It's not. But this was the Roman tradition. And that the it's weird to say that it was important to them that you were monogamous, but it didn't matter who you had sex with was the moral standard. And the Catholic tradition that came up out of that Roman Christian tradition? said, Well, okay, yeah, monogamy. Now, that had been our thing for a while, because the state said, so that's fine. But stop touching little boys and girls. And as well as it stuck, it is a immoral improvement.
Katie Dooley 33:27 Well, it's interesting that you say the States made the law because we see that even now. Where I mean, you said earlier, right? Where polygamy is allowed, if not encouraged, and other religious books, but you will not see it anywhere in Canada. And often these religious groups change their tune to follow the laws of the country. Yeah. All right. In fact,
Preston Meyer 33:46 every secular state on this planet says that polygamy is illegal, with one exception that I'm aware of who, Australia, Australia will not permit you to enter a polygamous marriage. But they will honor pre existing marriages that are done outside of Australia. Interesting.
Katie Dooley 34:10 Yeah. And I I'd be curious, you probably won't go to jail and Australia then if you're a polygamist. No, cuz you can be arrested. I know in the States, you can be arrested for polygamy.
Preston Meyer 34:20 Yes. The United States of America is a lot more anti polygamy than most in Canada. I don't think anybody has gone to jail for for polygamy lately. The people who have been pulling us in have gone to jail have been because of other abuses. Yes. And that's part of the the problem that is most visible when people talk about polygamy is we're talking about marrying children and other abuses. Yes.
Katie Dooley 34:49 That's why well, you'd like you're consenting adults, and you know what you're getting into, right, all the power to
Preston Meyer 34:56 you. And so, to me, it's weird that we have laws against polygamy. When if you just say, Mary children forced these other abusive, these laws against abuse, then we're going to be okay.
Katie Dooley 35:11 You made a point that I wanted to go back to Oh, yeah. When you said people believe what they want to believe and have the freedom to believe what they want to believe. I think this is actually a argument against morals and religion. Because if we look at Christianity, and all its denominations and what they believe, and what they believe, is moral. So the note I made is, you have Westboro Baptist Church, which I think is probably the least moral group in supposedly small groups in North America,
Preston Meyer 35:41 so easy to just paint them as our, our typical, these are the bad Christians, because
Katie Dooley 35:47 they're the worst of the worst. But you can take elements of that right like they are adamantly against homosexuality is the big one. I think they're the only one that pickets dead soldiers graves, I don't think that's common in any other denomination, but I hope not.
Preston Meyer 36:05 Right.
Katie Dooley 36:06 So you have them who, again, you know, hate the gays. And then we have our Lutheran pastor, we talked about first transgender leader in the Lutheran church, those are two very different morals in the same religion. So for getting our morals from religion, someone's reading the book wrong. And those are two extremes. Of course, I don't think Megan, Reverend Megan, is that extreme, based off of bio morals, but those are poorly polar opposites. And there's a whole bunch in between and there might be even scary, you know, more a bigger spectrum, then than that. But
Preston Meyer 36:52 yeah, I think religion has a part to play in forming a person's individual sense of morality. But I don't think it's reasonable to say that religion is fully responsible for any person, any person's individual sense of morality.
Katie Dooley 37:09 Absolutely. Because you still have school and family and jessamy Street. And I mean, I make that as a bit of a joke. But yeah, it's the thing that we learn, you know, they talk about sharing and all sorts of other things, spent a long time since I was just
Preston Meyer 37:26 living in a community has an effect on your sense of morality. And that's why you'll notice that people behave differently in big cities than they do in little towns. Absolutely. Because the way they relate to their neighbors
Katie Dooley 37:43 is different. Yeah. And, you know, I think of small town, Alberta, where we are, the types of people in rural Alberta are not that different. Right? You're predominantly white, you're probably Christian, you're probably conservative. So that exposure that may change your morality to someone who's different from you. If you've never had exposure to a Muslim person, then maybe that's something you're fearful of just because you don't know. And then you think, you know, Sharia law, and jobs are immoral, but it's just lack of exposure, and understanding, and most people don't want to go on the internet and Google that stuff. Which is why you should share the holy watermelon podcast with them.
Preston Meyer 38:30 Absolutely. All right.
Katie Dooley 38:35 Are we gonna read this horrible quote, I think it's so bad. It's so bad. So this is absolute moralism. This is that black and white, your morals are dictated by God and there is no gray area. This is cool.
Preston Meyer 38:56 It's so hard to read. I'm glad I read it before going into this trigger warning.
Katie Dooley 39:01 Shut it off if you don't like any sort of sexual abuse. So this is an interview with the honorable Reverend Father Simon Lococo, a Ugandan Minister of ethics and integrity. So he's a father. So he's, I'm Catholic, I presume.
Preston Meyer 39:21 So, already at this point. I know I'm, like I got this far before knowing that I wasn't going to like what I seek is
Katie Dooley 39:28 Ugandan and Catholic at the same time. Well,
Preston Meyer 39:31 okay, that's, that's a complicated combination of things. You and I went to go see the bookmark musical together, takes place in Uganda. And the interesting thing about that is that it said Uganda, because it's such a weird place. culturally speaking, it's very again, I'm gonna say abrasive, I
Katie Dooley 39:54 guess I was gonna say, very it's very First Century, it's very. So in Uganda, it's still it's very much illegal to be gay. There's still hundreds of countries around the world where it's illegal to promote lots of countries, there's only 200 countries in the world. So hundreds is inaccurate. But there's lots of countries, the majority of countries around the world, being homosexual is still illegal. But you can actually be stoned to death in Uganda for being gay or being accused of being gay. So So
Preston Meyer 40:25 relative to the Book of Mormon musical, it's interesting that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints last I checked, has no presence in Uganda, very in most of Africa, and certainly pretty much everywhere else in the world is a handful of Muslim states where they're not really actively present in Uganda as a place where they straight up avoided for a little while. Yeah, this is a culturally different than you're used to place. Yes. All right. Let's get back into Simon Makoto, the Honorable reverend.
Katie Dooley 41:01 Honorable reverend. So again, this is a country where homosexuality is illegal. He's obviously Catholic, where I think even Pope Francis is warming up to gay marriage, but I think it's still discouraged. So he viewed the heterosexual rape of young girls as preferable to homosexuality to consensual homosexuality. So he prefers that adult males sexually abused little girls to two men, consensually, having sex with each other. So the koto says, I say, let them do it, but the right way.
Preston Meyer 41:42 The interviewer says, Oh, let them do it the right way. Let them rape children the right way. What are you talking about?
Katie Dooley 41:50 And the color says no, I'm saying at least it's the natural way of desiring sex. So gross. And so this is someone who gets his morals from religion and moral absolutism from lynchin. And there is a problem with this.
Preston Meyer 42:13 But it's not just religion, having he certainly influenced background, but it's just the way he sees the world to validate saying this. And this is the Ugandan Minister of ethics and integrity and integrity.
Katie Dooley 42:33 What do you think? Do you think he'll get sainted? I'm kidding. I hope not.
Preston Meyer 42:39 I mean, who do we talk about that did get st. We talked about some terrible people. So we'll see.
Katie Dooley 42:47 Yeah, so that's really gross. And I think it's a great argument for your and you're right, there are cultural factors, but even the term natural way of desiring sex, where does that come from? Right.
Preston Meyer 43:02 I mean, what if you're born with it? It's natural, right? So again, he's having a philosophical argument, which is not a popular argument right now. The way he's coming at it is
Katie Dooley 43:18 pretty terrible. And then a trigger trigger warning off for now, so now we're gonna dive into the, the humanist side of where do we actually get our morals from, if not from religion? And how to atheists like me live a half decent life?
Preston Meyer 43:39 How do you do?
Katie Dooley 43:40 I mean, you know? Yeah, so one of the challenges with morals not coming from religion is that non religious people can't explain where morals come from. If not from God, well,
Preston Meyer 43:58 you say can't and people have tried and people have come with some pretty great explanations.
Katie Dooley 44:03 It's yeah, so the best I found is that it's emotional and genetic is that and we talked to we've talked about this before where if you're immoral if you're killing and stealing and whatever the chances of you having offspring are lowered?
Preston Meyer 44:18 Well, yeah, especially back in history where you would have been stoned for that activity. We have rules as a society and that has an effect on morality. I don't want to say though, they're directly connected one leads to the other directly immediately but they there's an effect that one has on the other both ways I think. It's It's not simple.
Katie Dooley 44:48 Why is having a hard conversation saying so? You got a thing. I have a thing and I just can't I don't know if I mean The note on here. I didn't make a note, but it was a Richard Dawkins talk, I believe and the question of, you know, oh, hell, if you don't believe in God, how can be a good person? And so he said, so he asked people to come up with something bad that a religious person could do or has done. And then to give an example of something good that an atheist could perform, because, and so we can think of lots of things that religious people have done that are bad, but we can't think of anything that an atheist couldn't do. Right.
Preston Meyer 45:41 That's an interesting way to illustrate that. I like that.
Katie Dooley 45:44 I thought it's pretty good. Because I mean, like you said, there's, there's obviously lots of examples of atheist behaving poorly. Yeah, there's, I'm not saying because you're religious, you're bad, but it's an easier, right. Like, what? What can you do? That I couldn't do? That's a good moral thing. Right?
Preston Meyer 46:05 I don't think there's anything on that list. Okay. I don't think that's how that works.
Katie Dooley 46:09 Well, then, there we go. Yeah, some notes.
Preston Meyer 46:14 I do have some notes. I found Lawrence Kohlberg model of moral development, pretty useful. The first stage is oriented around obedience for fear of punishment.
Katie Dooley 46:26 So this is like the primal reads like you need to be
Preston Meyer 46:29 good base reason of why not to be a dick, is because you're going to get beat for hurting somebody else. Basic fear punishment leads you to this basest form of morality. The second stage is essentially oriented around the reward for good behavior. Oh, don't just don't be bad, but also do a good thing. And I can get some sort of reward. Kind of nice. Yeah. And then the third stage of morality centers on making your tribe happy, and maybe even bringing a little bit of pride to yourself.
Katie Dooley 47:10 I like that, right? Because you do things to make your friends and family and pets happy. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 47:17 The fourth stage is about doing your duty, upholding the law so that you can expect the same of others. That's we're getting to some pretty strong morality of building a good community where you can feel safe, because you're doing the things that you need to do and expecting others around you to do the same.
Katie Dooley 47:38 I don't want to interject you to mention a topic. I forget who I was talking to, but we were talking about COVID. And things are opening up and people are still debating masks and vaccines. And I don't know how I was talking to you, if you're listening, let me know and I'll show you out. But he said, you know we've gotten so caught up in what is our rights as citizens that we've forgotten what our responsibilities are as citizens and you know, often rights and responsibilities. And that's what this reminds me of and we're obviously left leaning people so we've both been vaccine have masks and and we look at people who are choosing not to as immoral because this is a good example. They're not holding up their responsibility to society and general following. Well, especially
Preston Meyer 48:32 like not all people who don't get the right
Katie Dooley 48:36 reasons. Broad.
Preston Meyer 48:39 But broad stroking it. Yeah, it's certainly morally questionable to go without a vaccine when you can get it.
Katie Dooley 48:50 Fifth stage.
Preston Meyer 48:52 Yeah, the fifth stage. Now we're getting into the, the more the more evolved sense of morality, I guess. The fifth stage is centered around the consensus of thoughtful men. That's the phrase that Kohlberg used and I like it. It's doing what is right according to your society, to preserve your pride and the pride of others that other other people place in you and thinking about what is an effective good
Katie Dooley 49:26 and doing it this is that when your parents sit you down and they say I'm not angry, I'm disappointed a little bit yet but that's
Preston Meyer 49:33 that's a lot of what that is.
Katie Dooley 49:37 Not Andrew Preston. I'm just disappointed. Right. And for that hurts so much more. You're like, I mean, yell at me,
Preston Meyer 49:44 but you have some people who aren't so philosophically more morally evolved, that that expression doesn't work on them. And that's frustrating.
Katie Dooley 49:54 Now you're entering the world of narcissism.
Preston Meyer 49:59 Narcissism As a dangerous beast when it comes to morality,
Katie Dooley 50:02 we're not going to test. We're skipping that. And
Preston Meyer 50:06 the sixth and final stage on Colbert's model is pretty much the basis of the Golden Rule examining the morality of your actions through the lens of what if everybody did this all the time? So why is male rape immoral? Imagine suffering, being on the suffering end of that all the time. Obviously, it's a bad thing. Morality got real easy there.
Katie Dooley 50:35 Um, I like that. And I think it's a good segue into something that friends do. While he's a Dutch primatologist, I have a few points by him. But, you know, he says, if we made our decisions based, I'm paraphrasing, but if we made our decisions based off of a religious book, then we would open that book every time we were struggling with a decision.
Preston Meyer 51:00 There are lots of Christians that I've seen do that, really, and it's, it's really frustrating. especially
Katie Dooley 51:06 frustrating, because you can just find a passage that fits what you want to do.
Preston Meyer 51:11 Absolutely. You can
51:12 air go, Hey, I'm doing well.
Preston Meyer 51:16 So I've mentioned how the story of lightness to daughters is I found people who think that that's meant to be a moral story of good behavior. That an awful lot of people have been longing inside their homes for the last year and a half. I really hope that nobody is looking to this passage for guidance on how they should be behaving right now. Gross. I feel very confident I'm right, that nobody's doing that. But I have to admit that there's one in a billion chance that I'm wrong. And I really hope it's only that small.
Katie Dooley 51:52 So, since we are talking about friends to wall, alright, it's like I say he's a primatologist, he studies primates. And it's interesting because he says that primates have a moral code. And they show no signs of religion. You know, there's so you monkeys worshipping, or making sacrifices or having prayer circles, but they do have a moral code. And there's lots of other animals that have moral codes. Crows will hold grudges.
Preston Meyer 52:23 Actually, back to primates, I think I think it was baboons. It might have been different primates, but I think it was baboons. They had a whole population where all of the men, the male baboons, were killed off and they were gone. I was just females. And then they had males born and they were raised in a far less violent society, because in primates, the females aren't nearly as violent as the males. We're just like humans. There's a lot less art, there's a lot less evidence that you're wrong, then there's that you're right. Human men tend to be more of
Katie Dooley 53:08 a weird way that I was like, you
Preston Meyer 53:10 know, not trying to be tricky. And so with these baboons, when the men, the men, the male baboons grew up, they were taught to be less violent. And when they were they were beaten, and, and caused, they were beat. Yeah, they were, they were taught to be less violent, and they became less violent. And then when outsider males would come, the same thing that would be taught to be less violent, forcefully, sometimes. And that, I think it's a really good example of that morality that's being taught within this population of beings that we definitely count as less intelligent than ourselves when they seem to have morality figured it out better than many of us.
Katie Dooley 54:00 I mean, even I mean, this is a sad example. But like an abused dog. You know, I have a friend who has a dog that better now but was abused by men and was scared of men, right? So it's a learned behavior, and it obviously did not like being abused. And you know, kind of like cross holding grudges. It had an idea of who was dangerous and so if there were no no morals, it just be like, Okay, I guess I deserve this.
Preston Meyer 54:30 Oh, can you imagine living in a world where everything that you experience is because you deserve it?
Katie Dooley 54:38 There's a TV show there.
Preston Meyer 54:39 I guess. Like that instant karma idea is I find peace knowing that I don't deserve everything that comes to me. Good or bad. But can you imagine if you deserved every like you get a flat tire on your way to someplace and you're on a time sensitive chedule the feeling that you deserve this bad thing happening to you, that would ruin a lot of people. And there's far worse things happening to people who are far too young to deserve bad things. That
Katie Dooley 55:16 Wow. Topical discussion.
Preston Meyer 55:19 The world is a dark, scary philosophical place.
Katie Dooley 55:24 I like this quote by Richard Dawkins and I think it brings up a good talking point. He says that there is a moral Zeitgeist that is continually evolving in society, generally progressing towards more liberal ideas. And as it progresses, moral consensus influences how religious leaders interpret their holy writings. Morality, therefore does not originate from the Bible, rather, our moral progress informed put parts of the Bible Christian accept and what they now dismissed. Absolutely. Yeah, it just makes if you think of things that even 20 years ago, you know, precedent or both office fam, I honestly don't think if the office premiered today,
Preston Meyer 56:08 it would fly. All the second episode would have ruined the show. Absolutely.
Katie Dooley 56:13 Like, go back and laugh at it, but it's like this different context. Whereas now, it would not. And I mean, you know, I didn't watch a lot of friends. But I know Seinfeld for sure. Same thing. And these are not that old. Like Seinfeld. 40 years old.
Preston Meyer 56:30 How old? He is 40 years in the 80s. Did it really start in the 80s? Yeah, I
Katie Dooley 56:34 mean, friends started in 1994. That sounds right. Yeah. So almost Seinfeld's, probably five to 10 years. I
Preston Meyer 56:40 remember it was on the air when I was watching TV as a kid with
Katie Dooley 56:45 my dad all the time, but it's from the 80s. Okay.
Preston Meyer 56:49 Wow, time flies,
Katie Dooley 56:51 like 40 years ago, like, you can look back to the 50s, where like, we didn't have gay people, because they couldn't even we had
Preston Meyer 57:03 the hyperbole. They weren't super visible on every TV program. No.
Katie Dooley 57:08 And we go back to you know, sanatoriums and how we dealt with neurodivergent people and, and then you go back hundreds of years, and what we thought was moral. Versus now, in the Bible, if I'm not mistaken, hasn't changed a lot in?
Preston Meyer 57:27 Well, it depends on who you ask. You've got people who say the Bible was perfect, when it was published in 1611, under the authorization of King James, and no other version of the Bible, in any language is any good. Which I mean, that's a philosophical problem that is completely indefensible. But yeah, the the Bible largely doesn't change a whole lot. But the way people use it absolutely changes from decade to decade, and more rapidly lately than, say, 200 years ago. But yeah. I think it's interesting that the Bible, as when we talk about the parts of it, that include laws and not worry about so much about the testimonies and prophecies and whatnot, the legal codes in the Bible. They're more and more recently being recognized as, oh, yeah, this was an evolving text written by people based on the needs of their nation as time went on, rather than Yeah, God gave it in its perfect entirety. And that's why it never changes. So now people are finding it easier to say, Oh, well, this thing that seems super sketchy and morally kind of problematic, it's easier to recognize that this was the product of the people rather than the God they worshiped.
Katie Dooley 58:56 Now, while we're talking about rules and laws, what are your thoughts on people who say, I need religion to be a good person? It keeps me good.
Preston Meyer 59:08 Those are the people that can't be trusted.
Katie Dooley 59:13 Ran for far and fast.
Preston Meyer 59:15 If so, imagine, I am only moral because I am committed to my faith tradition to my congregation. And something causes me to stop believing that this congregation is worth my time worth the the energy of mind that it becomes a lot easier to shed the morals of that group and do the things that I wanted to do but didn't because of my faith, morality. That's a huge, scary problem.
Katie Dooley 59:48 This actually happened in real life. Absolutely.
Preston Meyer 59:51 It has happened a lot.
Katie Dooley 59:53 There was some metal guy, some metal musician, like fairly famous. I could grab his name If we're so interested, but take a second do it. Okay. Totally worth it. The guy who put a hit on his way after he left Christianity wow all right. So Tim lamb pieces from As I Lay Dying, was a devout Christian. And then I don't I don't know fully what happened to him, but I think he like got into drugs. Like he had some schism in his own personal life, and he left Christianity and that he put a hit out on his wife shouldn't be really nothing mattered. And so he decided to kill his wife with a hitman. He didn't do it himself. Can't keep his hands clean.
Preston Meyer 1:00:44 I guess there's that?
Katie Dooley 1:00:47 Well, so that's why we're on fire and run fast from people who say they need religion. Right?
Preston Meyer 1:00:54 Right. It's scary stuff. The relationship between religion and morality is a weird one. Like we look at, say, St. Teresa of Calcutta. We talked about her a little while ago. And I've I just I couldn't not bring her up again. Now that I know more about her. She's a great example for the question of morality. Either you agree with her religious philosophy that causing sick people to suffer is the thing that makes the world better. Or that tricking people and to religious rights is noble. Or maybe or maybe more interested in the more modern secular morality and believe that Teresa is a monstrous monstrous hypocrite, who deliberately acted deceitfully betraying the trust of those in our care and defrauding a global community of donors. All depends on what your philosophy is. Some still praise her because to them baptizing people is what gets you into heaven. Catholic tradition also states that liars thieves and traders go to hell.
Katie Dooley 1:02:07 Confusing, I'm confused. So
Preston Meyer 1:02:10 the real question is, which has the greater value positive or negative, which which means more to her moral status?
Katie Dooley 1:02:21 In the Catholic Church, it was the money that she brought it,
Preston Meyer 1:02:24 I would say sainted are they seeing the clutter on the fast track to sainthood? Yeah, so that's where the church stands on that.
Katie Dooley 1:02:34 I added this, like literally hours before you showed up. But there is a and again, I don't want to sound like I'm broad stroking anyone. But there was a study done in 2015, with kids across six different countries. And it was a it was a mix of religious and non religious and it was across religions. The their biggest groups were Christian and Muslim. But they had Hindu Sikhs, not enough of the those other ones other than Christian Muslim to get comparisons across anything other than Christian, Muslim and atheist. But it was a diverse sampling. And I pulled a few articles to read. And they're all worded differently. Everything from our they are religious kids are more selfish. They're meaner, or, or non religious kids are more generous. So the experiment is kids were given a sheet of 30 stickers. And they got to pick their favorite 10. And then they were told afterwards, they're like, oh, sorry, there aren't enough stickers to call around. Do you mind giving some of your stickers to the other kids. And statistically nonreligious kids gave about 50% of their stickers away. And religious kids only give about 40% of their stickers way. So that keep more for themselves. And again, I thought all everything from meaner to selfish to whatever. But it was pretty standard. And as kids got older, their let's say their generosity level became more pronounced. So as religious kids got older, they gave away fewer. And as as atheist kids, they give away more. So that's
Preston Meyer 1:04:25 interesting. Yeah. And it's that same sort of behavior is absolutely visible in, in politics here in North America. People like to talk a lot about the religious right, because most conservative conservatives identify that way because of their religious associations. And yet, nobody talks about the religious left where people like to save the Democrats are godless people, and the Liberals here artistically
Katie Dooley 1:04:56 impossible in the United States. because there's, I mean, just in the last election, it was pretty close to 5050. And more than 50% of America is religious. So some but some Democrats are not godless one
Preston Meyer 1:05:11 awful lot of people lean left because of their faith. What's interesting is that the godless liberals certainly outnumber vastly, of a godless conservatives, which tells you a little bit about morality and the need to take care of your neighbors.
Katie Dooley 1:05:32 One theory from this study is that, you know, religious people put in their time they They filled their moral cup on Sunday or Thursday or Friday. So they don't need to be the rest of Kenny to be as generous outside of that. It's also researchers are also also conclude that non religious kids make decisions more from reason and logic. Whereas religious kids go back to that absolute moralism of black and white decision making laws and codes and doctrine.
Preston Meyer 1:06:08 It's frustrating how tribal humanity is, even in this age of globalization, we still look at tribes. And if you're a church, going person, whatever your faith tradition is, if you're meeting with your community, your faith community on a regular basis, you're going to look at them as your tribe that they get your your charity. And everybody outside. Maybe they've got some but not nearly as much.
Katie Dooley 1:06:40 Yeah, huge. I don't I guess it's not a problem. If you're religious, there's a moral question. But it's potentially a huge problem. I'm just getting within your own community, right.
Preston Meyer 1:06:52 And for those people who don't have a faith community that they attend on a weekly basis, they're a lot more likely to see the larger civic community as their that group that needs their attention and their help. And it's worthy of giving. It's weird to watch.
Katie Dooley 1:07:11 While there are so many examples of it. I don't want to get too political. But there's a lot happening in the world right now that are good examples of that. Absolutely. I, you know, I think about the Indigenous kids, we've been finding across Canada. And I've talked to a few people, and they're just like shocked and appalled, which is, is great. I mean, that should be your response. But like, I'm not shocked. I'm sad, right? But I but we knew about it, right? And it's just an part of me is like you just haven't been listening for the years and years and years that our First Nations have said, this was horrible. I
Preston Meyer 1:07:52 have family who still denies that our nation has been hurting the First Nations people. Right. And
Katie Dooley 1:07:59 this is where and I don't I don't want to sound all you know, high and mighty. But this is, you know, we we've been told for years, we have a good friend of ours who you know, she's said don't celebrate candidate, I don't celebrate candidate, don't celebrate candidate. And now this is the year that everyone's like, we're not celebrating Canada. And I'm like, Yeah, this is like, I mean, it's still late for us as as white settlers. But we've, you know, kind of laid though for the last three or four years for Canada Day.
Preston Meyer 1:08:30 immigration status is an interesting thing. So for more Elson, well, even just is more simple than morally speaking. Like loads of people just like to say all white people are settlers. I mean, if I go back to Saskatchewan, I'm not a settler. My family bought the land that they live on. And I was born there. I am a native Saskatchewan, right. However, where I am now, bam, all over all over again. I'm a settler.
Katie Dooley 1:09:03 I mean, your white washing history.
Preston Meyer 1:09:07 I don't think white washing is the right word for it. But it's definitely a view that a lot of people are way more committed to saying I deserve to be here. Because I said so. And I mean, as a people, the white people came in and destroyed people's lives and livelihoods, their homes, their families, and that's super screwed up. And the morality behind downplaying it and not fixing the system that's caused all this damage. hugely problematic. Yes.
Katie Dooley 1:09:45 Any final thoughts? Or at the end of our notes? Yeah, I'm hot for Oh.
Preston Meyer 1:09:52 I think the big thesis that that I threw together at the end of our notes is it's a good solid way to finish this off. religious piety and zeal are not reliable predictors for ethical behavior. Way too many religious people are absolutely awful way too many atheists are actually good neighbors who take care of each other and aren't bad people.
Katie Dooley 1:10:20 Yes, religion
Preston Meyer 1:10:21 and ethics and morality? Sure, you can argue for a long time that they have gone together in the development of human culture. But somebody going to church every week or every day when that's an option, doesn't mean they're going to behave ethically or morally. Oh, at least not in a way that. Okay. Like we say to them, I'm sure that they think they're acting ethically or morally. If you were to ask them, they would say so. That doesn't mean they're acting according to the ethics of our community.
Katie Dooley 1:10:59 Not following Kohlberg. Model of moral development. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 1:11:04 that sixth stage of What if everybody did this all the time, really should help you navigate morality? It's solid rule. And it's, I like his wording. Like, it's basically the golden rule, but the way he words it is
Katie Dooley 1:11:21 reflective. Yeah, you're asking yourself a question. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 1:11:25 And it's important to be able to think about it to come up with an answer. And the way he adds all the time is actually really helpful.
Katie Dooley 1:11:35 Right? Because you might, you might go, oh, what's what's me stealing a candy bar from the convenience store? But if that happened to the store owner, all the time, right, it's the it's the idea of the few records for the many. Yeah, we've all been affected by a shitty store, or business policy, because the few have, right. I mean, I updated my business policies policies a couple of weeks ago, because I had a shitty customer. And if that happened all the time, I wouldn't be out of business. Yeah, so I agree. I think that's a good way to, you know, every customer that came into that convenience store stole a bar candy. I mean, potentially could have huge ripple effects. The the convenience store would go out of business. But if Aptera convenience store, Nestle would go out of business, which would be okay. They just seem more ethical chocolate practices.
Preston Meyer 1:12:28 It's not just their chocolate. They've got many ethical issues.
Katie Dooley 1:12:33 Hershey's dairy milk is Hershey's is dairy milk, Hershey's. I don't know, let's take an ethical chocolate brand. Fill in your ethical chocolate brand.
Preston Meyer 1:12:43 I like that people are paying more attention to ethical business practices than they have been in the past. Absolutely.
Katie Dooley 1:12:50 I think we're about to see a big change.
Preston Meyer 1:12:53 I think you're right. I hope you're right.
Katie Dooley 1:12:55 I think I don't, this might not go on the episode. But I think think the problem is that you can't you can't emotionally care about too many things. Like I'm not saying don't worry about anything. That's everything. You're right. It'd be Iraq. Right. And I mean, again, we I mean, just go on Instagram, and between Israel, Palestine and our first nations like, again, I'm not saying don't care, but it's hard to care about ever. You can't care about everything. Pick two or three and go hard on those. And if everyone pick two or three things that they really care about, we change the planet.
Preston Meyer 1:13:34 Yeah. And well, okay, I want to add a caveat to that, that's. Pick a few things you really care about. And also, don't just ignore the people who care about other things that you can recognize as important even if you're not just going to if you're not going to join the fight. That doesn't mean you shouldn't acknowledge that there is the worry is worth it. Cool.
Katie Dooley 1:14:01 If you disagree with us, or agree with us? This is a great episode to jump on to our Discord link is in the show notes. We'd love to hear your thoughts on morality and what you think is moral and where you get your, your morality from.
Preston Meyer 1:14:19 And if you've liked listening to us and want to help us keep this show alive into the years of the future, help support us on Patreon. Peace be with you. | |||
| 26 Sep 2022 | Who Loves Lucy? | 00:42:45 | |
We've explored the fallacy of pagans and atheists bowing to Satan, and outlined some of the "Satanist" groups that don't believe he's a real personality. Now let's look at the real deal: the folks who genuinely worship a living Satan. Even with these groups, it's probably not what you would expect. Most of these groups grow out of a resentment for the Christian establishment. Some of these groups are terribly anti-semitic, and in wonderfully odd ways; others have a troubling history of domestic abuse. The Order of the Nine Angles and the Joy of Satan Ministries get to join the list with the Temple of Set and the Luciferians on this new look at the spooky traditions that are growing in the world around us. We also talk about Freemasons again, and the Leo Taxil hoax of the 1890s. Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website | |||
| 18 Nov 2024 | Let's Get Dao to Business | 00:58:55 | |
Daoism (formerly called Taosim) is the more prominent indigenous religion of China. Daoism incorporates philosophical writings from ancient scholars, and mystic divination based on a variety of fascinating methods. The Dao-de-jing (or Tao Te Ching) is one of the most famous classics, along with the Yi Jing (I Ching). In this episode we explore the mysterious figure of Laozi (Lao Tsu), and the complexities of the Wuxing. The systems of hexagrams, trigrams, and binary code are significant today to everyone living their best digital life, and the systems of heavenly stems and earthly branches affect the lives of all those who learn to understand them. Understanding the Dao and Qi are sure ways to improve your life. All this and more... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 22 Mar 2024 | The Alien Escape | 00:53:18 | |
Bonnie Lu Nettles and Marshall Herff Applewhite, Jr. founded what is known today as Heaven's Gate, a fantastic group of UFO enthusiasts and religious believers. Though they both came from a Christian background in Texas, the mystery of Area 51 affected their daily lives to the very end. Nettles was a nurse, and Applewhite was a pastor, but they shared a willingness to adjust their cosmology (and theology) with new information. Before the end, they had biblical arrangement of seer and spokesman, but they were a lot more extreme about sexual abstinence than even your most annoying Christian friend. Bonnie and Marshall adopted new names about as often as you might change your shoes--something that Nike would prefer not to talk about. While the evidence suggests that Nettles and Applewhite were true believers, going so far as to offer financial support to those who decided their commune wasn't right for them, thing proved dangerous at the end, when Applewhite decided that the spirit of a long deceased Nettles was on a spaceship tailing the Hale-Bopp Comet, which would pass by the Earth in 1997. Fearing an unprovoked Waco-style massacre, and believing the next stage of human evolution was achievable through suicide, the cult of Heaven's Gate willingly took their own lives with pudding/apple sauce mixed with phenobarbital. We explore the realities surrounding brainwashing, and the various pseudonyms taken on by everybody involved, and the fantastic range of names adopted by the church before settleing on Heaven's Gate (Anonymous Sexaholics Celibate Church; Human Individual Metamorphosis; Total Overcomers Anonymous). All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 06 Jun 2022 | Celibacy & Scandal | 00:56:33 | |
There's some misunderstanding surrounding celibacy, so we're going to explore why it's such a prominent part of the Imperial Christian Priesthood, and we'll take a look at some of the damage that the policy has caused. We've made a point of keeping the trauma-triggers to the later portion of the show, so everybody can enjoy the more interesting bits of history before we get to the more sensitive content. We explore some of the history of the celibacy policy, as well as other rules that have been ignored over time. Chastity and celibacy are not the same thing, and they're not mutually assured, but they're not mutually exclusive either. We also take a peek at the work of Vincent Doyle and Coping International. Trigger-Warning: Halfway through (with deliberate break and warning), we talk about priestly sex scandals around the world. Catholicism has taken a few hits since the priestly diddlers hit the news, but it turns out that antidisestablishmentarianism is still strong in the American federal government. After the trigger warning, learn more about the statistics around the Catholic sex abuse scandal, and some of the profiling of those priests who have been identified. It turns out an awful lot of external reports encourage the Catholic church to let their priests marry, with good reason. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be for this episode.
[00:00:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's some things that I'm not excited to talk about, but it's important.
[00:00:18] Katie Dooley: I mean, we try to laugh here on...
[00:00:21] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[00:00:23] Katie Dooley: But this episode is no laughing matter.
[00:00:27] Preston Meyer: No, not so much.
[00:00:29] Katie Dooley: Uh, trigger warning. We're talking about the Catholic Church.
[00:00:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we're gonna keep it light for a little while. We'll let you know when you should duck out. If that's a thing you feel the need to do.
[00:00:44] Katie Dooley: But we are talking about the Catholic Church.
[00:00:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:00:48] Katie Dooley: So I hope that's enough said.
[00:00:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit about the the foundation for the problem.
[00:00:57] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:00:58] Preston Meyer: Which is how I built most of my notes in trying to figure out how to put this all together.
[00:01:03] Katie Dooley: Yes, it is such a big thing, it is very hard to make it. I mean, it's hard to make it digestible for a few reasons. One, because it is terrible.
[00:01:12] Preston Meyer: Indigestible,
[00:01:13] Katie Dooley: Indigestible and then it's just...
[00:01:15] Preston Meyer: It's unpalatable.
[00:01:17] Katie Dooley: Yes. And then it's just so it's so big. Like, where do you start and finish?
[00:01:23] Preston Meyer: And yeah.
[00:01:24] Katie Dooley: You don't.
[00:01:25] Preston Meyer: So anyway.
[00:01:26] Katie Dooley: Sorry. Yes. Preamble, this is preamble.
[00:01:30] Preston Meyer: This whole preamble, we actually haven't said anything meaningful, but let's get into it. Celibacy, that thing that a lot of people are familiar with the word. And a lot of people misuse this word a lot of the time. Celibacy is not going without sex. I don't care what version of the dictionary you use. If it says it's going without sex, it's incorrect.
[00:01:55] Katie Dooley: That's abstinence.
[00:01:57] Preston Meyer: Well, abstinence is a big umbrella term. And celibacy is a kind of abstinence. But going without sex is chastity. Chastity is voluntarily refraining from participating in extramarital sex. According to some definitions, or all sex in general, depending on your dictionary, extramarital chastity is explicitly demanded in both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and most other religious traditions as well. Celibacy is voluntarily choosing not to get married. Sex has nothing to do with it. Self-described incels aren't celibate. They're just assholes. An awful lot of people think that celibacy means abstinence from sex, because that's how they see most priests. And at this point, it makes sense, because most priests, at least in the Catholic tradition are also supposed to be chaste. Even a lot of priests misdefined celibacy because of the long tradition of how the word just gets used. They don't bother looking it up to see what the word actually means. They just use it and hope that they're using it right. I think everybody knows somebody who does that with words.
[00:03:21] Katie Dooley: Yes, I've definitely made up words before.
[00:03:26] Preston Meyer: But even if you have a weird uncle that goes around having sex every weekend with total strangers but refuses to ever get married, he is also celibate. He just isn't chaste. Chastity is expected in every tradition that places any value in the biblical law, and so priests are supposed to be both. In the Catholic tradition, both chaste and celibate so people can get confused by this issue. There's no reason they should though.
[00:04:02] Katie Dooley: But I do not equal sign.
[00:04:03] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:04:05] Katie Dooley: Between those two words.
[00:04:06] Preston Meyer: Yes. Bible-believingIf you're going to be a quote unquote good Bible-believing Christian, then you're not going to be having sex outside of marriage. That's chastity.
[00:04:19] Katie Dooley: But you will probably get married.
[00:04:22] Preston Meyer: Probably.
[00:04:23] Katie Dooley: So you're not celibate.
[00:04:24] Preston Meyer: Right. So this is a tradition that we see in the Catholic Church, especially that the Church of Rome does not allow any clergyman to marry except deacons. There are exceptions to that, of course. Any converts from other churches, like an Anglican priest, for example, can convert to Catholicism and stay married.
[00:04:48] Katie Dooley: Right.
[00:04:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they can stay married and actually still serve as serve as priests as long as the right permissions are signed. It's it's a.. I don't want to say common exception, but it happens.
[00:05:01] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:05:02] Preston Meyer: And it's it's legitimate. Which of course raises the question over and over again and more and more often, why won't they let the regular Roman Catholic priests marry? We're going to get into that.
[00:05:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:05:20] Preston Meyer: It's it's weird to see how strict the Latin Church is about marriage, like straight up banning it for priests, but also turns out they're really not worried about sex. That and of course, there's the Orthodox tradition, which is like Catholic. They're both the old ones that split apart from each other. In the Orthodox tradition, priests cannot get married, but there's no actual problem allowing somebody who is married to become a priest and stay married.
[00:05:52] Katie Dooley: So I feel like a lot of people do that first.
[00:05:55] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah.
[00:05:55] Katie Dooley: And then go to seminary.
[00:05:56] Preston Meyer: For sure. In fact, there's a nice tradition in some parts of the world where there's a family tradition of raising priests. Like I served as a priest. And so my son's going to do the same, but he's going to get married first. That's that's normal.
[00:06:17] Katie Dooley: Sounds even healthy!
[00:06:19] Preston Meyer: Right? It really is. What's interesting, though, is that if you're a priest and you have been widowed, you're not allowed to remarry. Even in the Orthodox tradition, they don't allow priests to marry. You got to be married first, and then that's just the way it goes.
[00:06:37] Katie Dooley: I think women outlive men more times than not.
[00:06:41] Preston Meyer: Right? So both churches, both the Orthodox and Catholic churches, claim that these are necessary Sees and they acknowledge that they're not any sort of dogmatic law. It's not that we believe this law came from God. It's just over thousands of years we've noticed this is a policy that we're pretty committed to.
[00:07:02] Katie Dooley: Ehhhh....
[00:07:03] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:07:04] Katie Dooley: There might be a few of those episodes.
[00:07:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's there's good reasons to reconsider, at least. And we'll get into.
[00:07:12] Katie Dooley: I can think of like 200,000 good reasons to reconsider but...
[00:07:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:07:18] Katie Dooley: We'll get to that statistic later. It's as sad as you think it is.
[00:07:22] Preston Meyer: Yes. On the flip side, Protestants generally encourage clergy to be married, even their bishops, which is straight up unheard of in the imperial traditions further east.
[00:07:34] Katie Dooley: Yeah and Protestantism, it's almost weird if you're a pastor isn't married.
[00:07:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:07:41] Katie Dooley: 'Cause you gotta be repping the good Christian family.
[00:07:44] Preston Meyer: Right, family is a huge deal, just like it was in the Jewish tradition that all of this comes out of. Yeah, you know, innovations and new decisions and claims of revelation. Weird things happen sometimes. It's it's kind of interesting, though, that within the Protestant tradition, clerical celibacy is recognized as fully antithetical to good theology and obviously harmful in the real world. We'll get into that later. And to add another layer to that, a lot of Protestant churches will not allow divorced people to serve in the clergy. So you need to be married and never get divorced.
[00:08:30] Katie Dooley: Yes. And then, I mean, divorce is still frowned upon in most Christian groups. Even if it's allowed, it's still, I think even outside of Christianity, it's still pretty frowned upon just societally.
[00:08:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:08:44] Katie Dooley: It shouldn't be, but...
[00:08:46] Preston Meyer: It's generally, broadly speaking, divorce is a broken promise, but ruining both people's lives within the community because one of them broke the promise is a pretty crappy thing to do.
[00:09:04] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:09:05] Preston Meyer: So the stigma of divorce is a little ridiculous.
[00:09:10] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Don't stay with anyone you don't want to be with.
[00:09:13] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:09:14] Katie Dooley: It's my. It's my PSA for the day and don't be alone with the priest. Uh.
[00:09:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:09:23] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:09:27] Preston Meyer: Terrible. Terrible things.
[00:09:29] Katie Dooley: We're gonna try and keep it light-hearted.
[00:09:31] Preston Meyer: But at least until we have to get into the the bad stuff. I mentioned a little bit the the history of marriage in the priesthood. Super important in the Israelite and Jewish tradition that the priests of Israel and Judah were expected to be married. Their whole deal was that the priesthood duties were assigned by families for a couple of weeks of the year. The priesthood in general was a very patriarchal lineal family thing.
[00:10:04] Katie Dooley: Aren't there aren't there gospels that say Jesus would have had to have been married because it was weird to have a Jewish priest that wasn't married?
[00:10:11] Preston Meyer: I've never heard of any that say that Jesus was a priest.
[00:10:15] Katie Dooley: Prophet Person.
[00:10:17] Preston Meyer: Um, as a rabbi.
[00:10:18] Katie Dooley: Rabbi, thank you.
[00:10:20] Preston Meyer: It would have been weird for him to not be married. Yeah. And Jesus was a very popular and well-known rabbi. Not that they use that exact verbiage for that role during his lifetime. The traditional rabbinical system that we're familiar with today started just a little bit after he died. But that's basically the role he filled.
[00:10:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah,
[00:10:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah, anyway, yeah, the Levites were very family-oriented. In fact, the entire Israelite religion, religious tradition was very family-oriented. And the only thing to really take away from that into the tradition that we see in the Catholic tradition, is the idea that you were not allowed to work in the temple or visit the temple if as a man, if you had ejaculated since the last sunset, and only then if they had had a bath before sunset as well, which sounds a little bit weird, but they have some really strict laws about cleanliness. If you're on your period, no visiting the temple, all kinds of things like that. If you're dumping fluids, you're unclean.
[00:11:35] Katie Dooley: How do they know?
[00:11:36] Preston Meyer: It's all self-discipline business. If you want to break the rule, you can break the rule.
[00:11:43] Katie Dooley: You'll be smoted, though.
[00:11:46] Preston Meyer: Sure and then, of course, we have Paul the Apostle. His writings are relied on very heavily. In fact, Paul is far more important in the Catholic tradition than any other writer, which feels really weird to me. But he did write the bulk of the New Testament, or at least what got accepted into what we now call the New Testament. But he asked temporary, full-time ministers to keep it in their pants while travelling abroad, but also specifically encouraged bishops to follow the Roman law of having only one wife, as opposed to the Hebrew tradition of allowing multiple wives, which means that there was a time in the Christian tradition before Catholicism destroyed everything and took power and monopolized Christianity, that priests and bishops would be married and sometimes with more than one wife.
[00:12:44] Katie Dooley: Wow. Lucky guy.
[00:12:46] Preston Meyer: If that's the way it goes.
[00:12:50] Katie Dooley: I feel like more than one wife would be difficult to manage. I know how hard I am to manage.
[00:12:56] Preston Meyer: Sure, but that's not the only time the Catholic Church has deviated from the biblical standard.
[00:13:05] Katie Dooley: No.
[00:13:07] Preston Meyer: Jesus said that if you can't look at a woman without breaking the law, cut out your eyes and your balls.
[00:13:13] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:13:14] Preston Meyer: Jesus was very straightforward about this. And there's a lot of people who argue that he was just being figurative. No, no. Some of the stories are figurative. When you have a man giving advice to an audience, he means exactly what he says.
[00:13:33] Katie Dooley: Gouge out your eyes, sir.
[00:13:35] Preston Meyer: Right. Of course. The first ecumenical council in AD 325 strictly forbids following Jesus advice in this way. Mystifying.
[00:13:47] Katie Dooley: I mean, people are really easily can ignore the whole love your neighbor stuff too, from Jesus so...
[00:13:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but nobody's preaching against love your neighbor. There's a big difference between.
[00:13:58] Katie Dooley: Fair.
[00:13:58] Preston Meyer: Failing to follow the rules and preaching against good doctrine.
[00:14:04] Katie Dooley: Cutting off your own balls..
[00:14:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:14:06] Katie Dooley: I like that you call that good doctrine.
[00:14:08] Preston Meyer: Well, I was being more general, but I'm comfortable including that specific statement in the doctrine under the umbrella.
[00:14:16] Katie Dooley: I would like to see a pastor make his congregants follow through with that.
[00:14:23] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, if you got somebody who keeps shouting, you can't let her wear that because it makes me have dirty thoughts. Fix your own problem, buddy. Don't mess with her. Deal with your own business.
[00:14:39] Katie Dooley: And just hands over a pair of scissors.
[00:14:41] Preston Meyer: Right. Keep it simple.
[00:14:45] Katie Dooley: Oh. That's terrible.
[00:14:47] Preston Meyer: People think a little harder before they shout about somebody else's problems. And the way you dress is nobody else's problem.
[00:14:58] Katie Dooley: No it's not.
[00:15:00] Preston Meyer: In fact, speaking about councils, the records of the Council of Elvira, which is in Spain in the early fourth century of the Christian era, the records of this council are the oldest written records that require priests to be celibate. It also banned the married ones from having sex with their wives at all.
[00:15:21] Katie Dooley: That's horrible. And then they couldn't get divorced. Because this is the fourth century.
[00:15:26] Preston Meyer: Right? It's terrible. The logic behind it, of course, is that rule about the Levites of if you have mass every day, Then you can't be messing around.
[00:15:38] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it's too bad they can't come up with, like, a, like a schedule or something.
[00:15:43] Preston Meyer: Quick, off the top of my head. Morning mass, have sex with your wife in the afternoon, have a shower before sunset. You're good to go for the next day.
[00:15:50] Katie Dooley: I'm just thinking like maybe Bob does it Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. And you do Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Like...
[00:15:57] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:15:59] Katie Dooley: We're really overcomplicating it here, right?
[00:16:02] Preston Meyer: Well, the number of priests to a parish would have to double for your scheme, wouldn't it? So.
[00:16:09] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:16:11] Preston Meyer: And the church doesn't want to have to take care of twice as many mouths, especially when they're having a hard time finding volunteers. It's not the perfect solution. I like it, but it's not the perfect solution.
[00:16:23] Katie Dooley: Yours is pretty elegant too, I will say.
[00:16:26] Preston Meyer: Morning mass, have sex with your wife, have a shower all before sunset.
[00:16:31] Katie Dooley: Get back to work.
[00:16:32] Preston Meyer: And just keeping your pants overnight.
[00:16:34] Katie Dooley: Wash, Rinse, repeat.
[00:16:36] Preston Meyer: Exactly.
[00:16:39] Katie Dooley: Ha ha. Oh. I'm terrible.
[00:16:41] Preston Meyer: So the the exact line that we have here is from Canon 33, from the Council of Elvira. It says it is decided that marriage be altogether prohibited to bishops, priests and deacons, or to all clerics placed in the ministry, and that they keep away from their wives and not beget children. Whoever does this shall be deprived of the honor of the clerical office. So we're going to get into this a little bit more later. Having kids will you will be deprived from the clerical office is how that ended. This rule is very poorly enforced.
[00:17:17] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:17:19] Preston Meyer: There are some scholars who think that this is meant to reinforce an older policy or practice that had previously been ignored by many. The the way it reads doesn't really indicate that. It's kind of ambiguous whether or not that's the case from the wording that we have here, but that's what a lot of people believe, and it's pretty hard to change their minds. But this same council of Elvira had some other really great rules. I wrote down a bunch of them.
[00:17:50] Katie Dooley: It looks like we ignore all of them.
[00:17:53] Preston Meyer: Almost. So number 34 was don't burn candles in cemeteries during the day. It feels weird. The context for that is witches do it, so we don't want to catch you doing it.
[00:18:06] Katie Dooley: Okay. It's a candle.
[00:18:10] Preston Meyer: Right? 36 was don't paint icons or pictures on the church walls.
[00:18:17] Katie Dooley: Uh oh. Who's gonna who's gonna let Francis know? Who's gonna tell Francis?
[00:18:23] Preston Meyer: Well, I'm just thinking of Michelangelo. And this huge Sistine Chapel.
[00:18:28] Katie Dooley: Exactly, literally the entire pope's residence is shit painted on the walls.
[00:18:33] Preston Meyer: Right? But here we are. Number 50 was don't share meals with Jews. I'm sorry. I rather enjoy the handful of Jewish men that I share meals with occasionally. But also, I'm not Catholic, so I have to live by this rule.
[00:18:51] Katie Dooley: Jew. David.
[00:18:54] Preston Meyer: Yes, he is Jewish.
[00:18:56] Katie Dooley: It's funny for a multiple... It's on multiple levels funny?
[00:19:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, another one that actually bothered me was canon 59, which says that watching a pagan offer a sacrifice makes you guilty of the same. Yeah, there's ten years penance just for learning about your neighbors, which is antithetical to our whole Holy Watermelon deal.
[00:19:20] Katie Dooley: Wouldn't that be great if they applied that guilt by association to their greater problem that we're about to talk about?
[00:19:26] Preston Meyer: That'd be so great. Canon, 60, says that being killed for smashing an idol does not make you a martyr.
[00:19:37] Katie Dooley: Wow. Okay.
[00:19:38] Preston Meyer: I looked into it because it says that there's no scriptural background for it, and there's some apocryphal stories about Abraham smashing a whole bunch of idols, which contradicts their statement that there's no scriptural or patriarchal figure who has done this. Of course, he didn't get killed, so maybe that's the detail they're missing. Number 62, I felt was really weird. Don't baptize race car drivers or actors. Actually, it says pantomimes or chariot drivers but.
[00:20:11] Katie Dooley: Let's bring it into the 21st century.
[00:20:13] Preston Meyer: Right, obviously, we need to be updating policies for modern verbiage. So don't baptize race car drivers or actors.
[00:20:20] Katie Dooley: Oh... Who's going to tell Mel Gibson?
[00:20:23] Preston Meyer: Right. On the flip side of that, article 44 was baptized prostitutes without delay.
[00:20:32] Katie Dooley: Do not wait. Run! Don't walk to your baptism.
[00:20:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I felt a little bit weird, uh, juxtaposing those two. But,
[00:20:42] Katie Dooley: I mean...
[00:20:42] Preston Meyer: That's what we get.
[00:20:44] Katie Dooley: We got Tom Cruise on one hand and pretty, Pretty Woman on the other.
[00:20:49] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:20:49] Katie Dooley: I see why we pick Julia Roberts.
[00:20:53] Preston Meyer: Sure. Cannon in 81 was a woman cannot receive mail of her own at all.
[00:21:00] Katie Dooley: Fuck.
[00:21:00] Preston Meyer: It must be addressed to the household, the head of household and and wife.
[00:21:08] Katie Dooley: Is that why it's still a thing? It's still very much a thing.
[00:21:11] Preston Meyer: Probably.
[00:21:13] Katie Dooley: I so... I didn't take my husband's last name, but I so often get Mr. and Mrs. Bryant last name.
[00:21:21] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. Strict rule from the Council of Elvira.
[00:21:27] Katie Dooley: I just got a check made out to Katie Bryant's last name, and I was like, I don't know if I can deposit this check because that person doesn't exist.
[00:21:35] Preston Meyer: Right? You pop into the bank and say, this was up,
[00:21:37] Katie Dooley: Please!
[00:21:39] Preston Meyer: Can I have my money?
[00:21:40] Katie Dooley: Monies?
[00:21:40] Preston Meyer: Uh, another weird rule for women. Um. Canon 67 says women must not associate with hairdressers or men with long hair.
[00:21:53] Katie Dooley: Double fuck. For those of you who don't know my husband, he has long hair.
[00:22:00] Preston Meyer: Uh, it's just. I'm thinking of the whole world that we live in.
[00:22:06] Katie Dooley: Didn't Jesus have long hair?
[00:22:08] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:22:09] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:22:09] Preston Meyer: Well, okay. So there's there's a debate about what counts as long hair.
[00:22:13] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:22:14] Preston Meyer: Is a man's hair truly long? If it only just rests on his shoulders? That's that's the line where a lot of people put it.
[00:22:22] Katie Dooley: I feel like if you can put it into a ponytail, it's long hair. And Jesus could definitely do a man bun for sure.
[00:22:30] Preston Meyer: Sure. Why not? Yeah. So those are some of the really weird ones. And then another couple that that bothered me, canon 63 and 68, basically point out that killing a living child by smothering is far more favorable for your church situation than having an abortion.
[00:22:51] Katie Dooley: So it's better to birth a child and then stuff a pillow down his throat? Yeah, okay.
[00:22:55] Preston Meyer: According to the Catholic Church and the Council of Elvira 1800 years ago or 1700 years ago or whatever.
[00:23:02] Katie Dooley: Let's not listen to that one.
[00:23:03] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:23:04] Katie Dooley: Let's not listen to most of these.
[00:23:08] Preston Meyer: I mean, the vast majority of these have been solidly ignored for a while, and...
[00:23:14] Katie Dooley: Including this one.
[00:23:15] Preston Meyer: Including this one, canon 71. Those who sexually abuse boys may not receive communion even when death approaches. That means permanent end to your fellowship in the church, permanent end to your clerical status. We're not going to get into that yet there's...
[00:23:35] Katie Dooley: Still more groundwork we're going to frame a bit.
[00:23:39] Preston Meyer: There's more good things before we lose people. Hopefully. Uh, yeah. The Catholic Church leaned really hard into this no ejaculation that it's unclean. Even though Peter had received a vision that can be fairly said to abolish that whole principle. And it's recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, where all of the Catholic priests ought to be reading on the regular. Anyway, that's the way it goes. They decided that since mass is every day no sex for the man in the dress. But there's exceptions, or rather failures on the part of the clerical superiors. Did a little bit of digging in the news, and I found that a few years ago, a priest knocked up a 17-year-old girl in Pennsylvania. This is not really that far out of the norm, unfortunately. The weird thing is that this priest went ahead and forged the signature of his boss to let them get married or forge a signature on their marriage certificate. And then, just a few months later, divorced the girl. And everybody found out about it. And he wasn't able to continue working in that parish in Pennsylvania. And but a priest somewhere out of state said, hey, come to my parish, come in this little town.
[00:25:13] Katie Dooley: What? They just shuffled them around?
[00:25:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:25:16] Katie Dooley: Wow. Foreshadowing.
[00:25:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:25:21] Katie Dooley: In 2012, Kevin Lee, a priest in Australia, revealed that he had been secretly married for a year and that the church leaders knew about his marriage, but disregarded the celibacy policy and he stayed on as a priest. This one I'm like, not so bad. Not as bad as the other one. But he also lied about it.
[00:25:40] Preston Meyer: I mean, is secretly married really that much better than forging your bishop's signature? I don't know.
[00:25:49] Katie Dooley: I mean, it's better if. As long as he was. I'm assuming there's no context here that he was happily married. It's better than knocking up an underage girl and then divorcing her.
[00:26:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:26:04] Katie Dooley: Presumably after the baby was born. So it wouldn't be a bastard. Not that that matters anymore, but if you were a priest, it probably does. And...
[00:26:12] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:26:13] Katie Dooley: Anyway.
[00:26:16] Preston Meyer: Such a weird world we live in.
[00:26:18] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I just wonder why there are these rules at all.
[00:26:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah, hopefully we've laid some groundwork to understand at least part of the explanation. Whether or not we agree is an entirely separate matter.
[00:26:34] Katie Dooley: Fair. I will let it.
[00:26:37] Preston Meyer: So looking into this wide world of people who are born to priests, I found this fella named Vincent Doyle, and he's kind of an interesting fella. He was born to a Catholic priest named John Doyle way back in the 80s, the early 80s. And interestingly enough, John wanted to care for the child. And so John and Vincent grew close, and I guess I couldn't find whether Vincent's last name was always Doyle. But I have, from what I found, I've just been assuming that which should have been a handy flag that says, hey, there's a family relationship between these two people. Could be. And really, that's a lot of how John was involved in Vincent's life is like a really close, loving uncle. Vincent thought he was his godfather, which may or may not have been a legit on paper thing.
[00:27:38] Katie Dooley: I mean, he was a god... father! Ah!
[00:27:43] Preston Meyer: Very nice.
[00:27:44] Katie Dooley: Thank you.
[00:27:46] Preston Meyer: Anyway, the priest, John, died in 1995, when Vincent was 12 years old. And then years later, when reading some of the things that the priest had written, Vincent found out, much later, in 2011, 16 years later, that the priest was his real father.
[00:28:09] Katie Dooley: Daddy!
[00:28:11] Preston Meyer: He's he's not really okay with it as he realizes this. This really sucks.
[00:28:18] Katie Dooley: No, surprise parents are never good for anyone.
[00:28:23] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah. So anyway, Vincent launched Coping International just a few years later, but chose not to promote it. His plan was to see how many people would find it on their own, through search engines, to see how big his problem was in the world. After two and a half years, 13,500 people from 175 countries found his site just by googling phrases like "children of priests", "dad is a priest", "pregnant with priest's baby". Yeah, more than 13,000 people just stumbled across his website by trying to find somebody out there that had something in common with them. This is a very large problem.
[00:29:09] Katie Dooley: They definitely weren't all podcast researchers, that's for sure.
[00:29:13] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:29:14] Katie Dooley: But we found them through podcasts. No one here is pregnant with a priest, baby, I think.
[00:29:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, I am one of the Google hits, but...
[00:29:24] Katie Dooley: I literally thought you were gonna say I am pregnant with the priest's baby.
[00:29:31] Preston Meyer: Oh, you got me.
[00:29:33] Katie Dooley: Congratulations, Preston.
[00:29:36] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah. So today, Vincent is a psychotherapist. He leads a sort of international support group through Coping International, where he has shared documents published by the church on the subject. And very recently, just in late 2020, he published a book called Our Fathers, a phenomenon of children of Catholic Priests and Religious. I don't love the title because it really feels like there needs to be another word after religious.
[00:30:05] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:30:05] Preston Meyer: Somebody called him on this and he's explained religious refers to priests and nuns who belong to religious orders as opposed to a diocese. It doesn't fix it for me, but I accept that he's committed to what looks like a misprint.
[00:30:24] Katie Dooley: Yes, usually it's an adjective. And then here he's used it as a noun, which I see why it's not incorrect. The religious, But you're right it does. It doesn't roll off the tongue like it should. Right.
[00:30:36] Preston Meyer: It feels like there should be another word. But anyway.
[00:30:38] Katie Dooley: Sorry.
[00:30:39] Preston Meyer: Um, it's doing well as a book. Um, it tells his own story. It tells the history of Coping International. And it also offers advice and explanations of canon law. The Church of Rome has responded directly to Coping International about the whole situation and the book, and they just call the phenomenon inevitable. It's not, if you let priests marry, then this whole situation would be solved.
[00:31:09] Katie Dooley: It goes poof. I mean, the children, random children is solved. The next part is not necessarily solved, but probably greatly improved.
[00:31:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah, so fun fact the Scottish name McTaggart means son of the priest.
[00:31:27] Katie Dooley: Oh.
[00:31:29] Preston Meyer: All right. For those of you who, uh, might want to get off the train, now is the time. We're going to get into some of the really the grosser details, and...
[00:31:41] Katie Dooley: We're gonna be less funny.
[00:31:42] Preston Meyer: Now. Yeah, we'll just catch you next time. Thanks.
[00:31:45] Katie Dooley: Bye.
[00:31:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:31:48] Katie Dooley: So, fun fact the Catholic Church has a long, dark history of sexual abuse.
[00:31:56] Preston Meyer: I don't know if that counts as a fun fact, but it.
[00:31:58] Both Speakers: Is a fact.
[00:32:00] Katie Dooley: So, as Preston mentioned, the Catholic Church holds its clergymen to outdated standards of sex and gender. The celibacy, chastity and having an all-male clergy still. There are records of sexual abuse and sexual misconduct that go back as far as the 16th century.
[00:32:21] Preston Meyer: And that's just records of sexual abuse. It'd be weird if it was a new thing in the 1500s.
[00:32:28] Katie Dooley: Yeah, this is just when we actually wrote things down.
[00:32:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah. With the Protestant Reformation, it just, I guess, better record keeping? Maybe, I don't know.
[00:32:39] Katie Dooley: Probably a more educated public? Than that, where it wasn't just the priests keeping records.
[00:32:43] Preston Meyer: Generally speaking, I think you're right.
[00:32:45] Katie Dooley: The priests wouldn't keep those records.
[00:32:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:32:50] Katie Dooley: So many of the victims at the time were young women who, of course, weren't often believed. And disclosing abuse to an authority would be dangerous for them. And the authority was often the church. This is different from the modern crisis where the majority of victims are young boys. In 1622, Pope Gregory the 15th, he denounced solicitation. So asking these young women for the sexual favors. So at least they knew it was wrong then, what?
[00:33:22] Preston Meyer: I mean, it's like it's weird that that's noteworthy when, like, regularly speaking, if there's a problem in the community, somebody brings it up and says, hey, fix it. Soliciting anybody for sex in.. At any point or position within the Catholic Church is inappropriate. Unless you're already married.
[00:33:44] Katie Dooley: And it's your wife you're soliciting.
[00:33:45] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:33:46] Preston Meyer: Or husband.
[00:33:47] Katie Dooley: Very important detail. Yeah.
[00:33:48] Katie Dooley: Just 'cause you're married doesn't mean you get to solicit.
[00:33:50] Preston Meyer: Correct.
[00:33:51] Katie Dooley: So a lot of these solicitations would happen, of course, during confession. And, like, I was reading a whole bunch on, like, the mechanics of confession, they're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be able to see the people just obviously not hear what they're saying to protect exactly this from happening.
[00:34:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So gross.
[00:34:14] Katie Dooley: So records show it was cracked down on. But internally only, of course, which we will see more of. So during the Inquisition, heretics were publicly exposed and shamed. But in contrast, those charged with solicitation were dealt with privately. So I mean, this just it's basically never stopped.
[00:34:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It was counted as a smaller problem. A problem one worth talking about, but not one worth fixing. Apparently?
[00:34:45] Katie Dooley: No. And then more modernly, so, like you said, there's been the shift from young women to and we'll talk more about reasons they think it's happening and reasons we can "fix it". But one of the things the modern crisis of, again, it being young boys is there's a blame on the air quotes "gay subculture of the Catholic clergy".
[00:35:11] Preston Meyer: I mean, it makes sense that in a religious institution where your feelings make you have to wear the label of evil so very often, which is a gross thing for any group to do that the best way for them to solve it while still staying in the community they value is go and join the priesthood. And then it doesn't matter who I want to have sex with, because then I don't get to have sex. But then.
[00:35:40] Katie Dooley: Yes. So I just want to be clear that pedophile does not equal homosexual and vice versa. Not that there aren't.
[00:35:49] Preston Meyer: But they're not equivalent.
[00:35:50] Katie Dooley: They're not equivalent because the correlation does not equal causation in this case. So yes, Preston's right. Because you can't get married in the Catholic Church. If you're a gay man, it's a sin to have sex with a man. And if you love your faith and want to stay with your family, then yeah, joining the clergy isn't a terrible thing. Secrets of the Vatican is a great PBS documentary, which you might watch for movie night. And it actually does address the gay subculture of the church. But the content of the documentary is consenting adult male priests getting it on with each other.
[00:36:23] Preston Meyer: I mean, that just sounds like a whole popular subgenre of gay porn probably.
[00:36:31] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean, they could probably make a bunch of money on it.
[00:36:36] Preston Meyer: I mean, the church has money issues thanks to related problems.
[00:36:42] Katie Dooley: So and then, you know, again, when I'm saying correlation does not equal causation, it's also what these abusers have access to. So if you're in a seminary with a bunch of young boys and you're an abuser, it really doesn't matter if that's what you have access to.
[00:36:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:36:58] Katie Dooley: I hate even saying it. That's what you're gonna seek out?
[00:37:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Take advantage of what you got. Like prison and drama school.
[00:37:07] Katie Dooley: Right? But worse because these are children.
[00:37:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So much worse.
[00:37:14] Katie Dooley: But I gay for the stay is a pretty good analogy.
[00:37:17] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:37:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:37:21] Preston Meyer: Ah. Smoke em if you got em, is what they say. And it's so much worse in this context.
[00:37:26] Katie Dooley: So bad. So while some reports go back as far as the 1950s, we know that survivors often feel shame about what has happened to them. So cases really started to gain media attention in the 1980s in North America. And by the 2000, the Catholic Church was facing a global crisis.
[00:37:45] Preston Meyer: Hmm. Yeah. And of course, they just shuffled the priests around. We mentioned that one specific case before, and that's just one case of the whole phenomenon that we see worldwide. There's some really awful statistics, and we've managed to pull a few from a few different countries. We don't have global stats. That gets really tricky, but we tried. We got some numbers for you.
[00:38:12] Katie Dooley: I'm sure the church's global statistics that they don't want to publish.
[00:38:15] Preston Meyer: I'm very confident that that's the case. Since 1950, over 200,000 children in France were sexually abused by clergy members.
[00:38:28] Katie Dooley: There was some number related to that. I think it was something like 2000 or 3000 pedophiles in the French Catholic Church. To get to those numbers.
[00:38:39] Preston Meyer: That's awful.
[00:38:40] Katie Dooley: Still, a lot of kids I don't even know say it.
[00:38:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:38:45] Katie Dooley: One statistic that I found incredibly staggering. And this, to be fair, this is higher than the global average. But since 1950 7% of Australian clergymen have had an allegation against them. And most of most of these accusations happen in the church. So the global rate is 2% of clergy. This is higher. But I always think about.
[00:39:10] Preston Meyer: It's weird. It's weird that Australia is that much worse than the rest of the world. That seems unlikely. I could see Australia being twice as bad as the global average.
[00:39:24] Katie Dooley: There's probably countries that haven't disclosed nearly as much as it could. I don't want to say Western countries, but if you think there's probably countries that haven't disclosed. And yeah.
[00:39:35] Preston Meyer: Um, Vincent Doyle found stats that he saw very regular hits on his website coming from Africa and that it was not as it wasn't the exact same as the Western world, but comparable just for Africa.
[00:39:55] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I can see. Yeah, the 7% of Australian clergymen always bothers me. Because if you think of your child's school and imagine there's 50 staff members, that means four of them are child abusers. And I'm just like, if I knew that, I would not. I don't have children, but I would not send my child to school anymore. Yet we still send kids to church.
[00:40:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Usually, though, parents are with their kids at church, or at least for mass, that kind of thing.
[00:40:31] Katie Dooley: I was going to say.
[00:40:31] Preston Meyer: There's there's an awful lot of opportunities to get the kids alone.
[00:40:35] Katie Dooley: There's 200,000 and I don't want to say negligent parents. That's unfair but instances.
[00:40:39] Preston Meyer: Some tricky situations. Bad, bad bad things.
[00:40:44] Katie Dooley: Between 1975 and 2018, 314 minors, mostly boys under the age of 14, were sexually abused in Cologne, Germany. That's just Cologne, not Germany.
[00:40:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Yeah. An investigation of the whole country of Germany found that 1670 clergymen had committed some kind of sexual attack against more than 3600 minors. Boys, mostly under 13. Yeah, between 1946 and 2014. That's staggering numbers. The official report says that this is certainly an underestimation. So the news does not get better.
[00:41:33] Katie Dooley: No. Ireland is one of the worst offenders. So an investigation found that 150. Excuse me, 15,000 victims were sexually abused between 1970 and 1990. So in only 20 years. And that since that time, the church has been so obsessively or has so obsessively concealed the abuse, they couldn't get any reliable stats.
[00:41:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah. If you remember our last episode, Ireland and the Catholic Church are real tight.
[00:42:05] Katie Dooley: It is interesting. The more, let's say conservative or devout a country is, the scarier the numbers per capita are.
[00:42:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's not that people behave better in an ultra-conservative environment, it's just that they hide their issues more.
[00:42:23] Katie Dooley: Yeah, because your air quotes are supposed to be better, yeah.
[00:42:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah and hiding things often makes the problem worse. Yeah. Terrible, terrible things. In the USA, a little closer to home. More than 11,000 victims have come forward, and the church has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements just to get those people to go away.
[00:42:48] Katie Dooley: Yes, very few of these ever actually go to, like, the police level of anything.
[00:42:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:42:54] Katie Dooley: At best to just get dismissed by the Catholic Church.
[00:42:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah. There's there's no jail time happening. Uh, there's a report, um, of 11,000 names. Not the exact same 11,000 that I just cited for the USA. But the John Jay report goes through 11,000 allegations, and they found that of the ones that they investigated, 81% of the victims were male. That's a huge problem considering the relationship the church has with the queer community and homosexuality. 22% of victims were younger than age ten, 51 were 51% were between the ages of 11 and 14, and 27% were between the ages of 15 and 17. Of course, we're only counting abuse of minors in all of this. Yeah. These ages are really gross. But of course, during the pandemic in 2020, the US government gave the church $1.4 billion.
[00:44:08] Katie Dooley: Is this not a violation of the separation of church and state?
[00:44:12] Preston Meyer: I believe that it is.
[00:44:13] Katie Dooley: I told my dad and he didn't believe me. He was like, is that from a reputable website? And I was like, yeah. And I like pulled up Forbes and CBC and CNN. And I was like, look.
[00:44:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the First Amendment to the American Constitution has this fancy establishment clause that prohibits the government from making any law respecting an establishment of religion. And this. So giving a billion and a half dollars to the church isn't a law, but it falls into this category that forbids the government from taking any actions that favor one religion over another. It was it was designed with the with the express intent of preventing the tax dollars of any citizen from going to any church to which they do not belong.
[00:44:57] Katie Dooley: Perfect. I'm surprised more people weren't outraged by this.
[00:45:02] Preston Meyer: So when this was written, an awful lot of Catholics and Non-Anglican Protestants were fed up with their taxes supporting the Church of England specifically. Of course, the state of Maryland was specifically Catholic for a little while before it... That changed around, and a lot of states had their own state religion. But federally, and this 1.4 billion was federal money. Federally, there is no state support for churches, or at least that's supposed to be the case. But the church was really hurting because they lost all their money paying off the families of the victims of these diddlers. And so the government's like, here's some money.
[00:45:46] Katie Dooley: No, we just need to let these organizations collapse. It's fine.
[00:45:53] Preston Meyer: Well, they still have a lot of money left over from Saint Teresa of Calcutta.
[00:46:01] Katie Dooley: Yeah. If it's such a big like if your parishioners feel so passionately about it, they'll keep you afloat.
[00:46:07] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:46:08] Katie Dooley: I'm not saying that's a good thing, but like.
[00:46:10] Preston Meyer: That is the reality. That's how a fair market works.
[00:46:13] Katie Dooley: Yeah. You can't have them tax-exempt and then give them money.
[00:46:18] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah. It's all a terrible mess. So I also did a little bit of digging into the the profiling of the priests who are responsible for all this nonsense. Yeah, it's it's gross. By 2002, more than half in the United States, more than half of cases are full on statutory rape, which, let's not confuse. It is not different than rape. The median age for the first act of alleged abuse was 35.
[00:46:56] Katie Dooley: By the priest.
[00:46:57] Preston Meyer: Right. The a full half of all of the priests who have touched kids. Their first time was before the age of 35 or at the age of 35. So we're not talking about a bunch of dirty old guys, though there are some. We're a lot of young men, which when you're trying to convince a minor to have sex, I guess it helps if you're younger. I don't know. Terrible. Only 19% of priests had a substance abuse problem at the time of their first infraction. This number may have grown for more. Hard to say. Only about 7% were reported to have actually been under the influence of intoxicants.
[00:47:48] Katie Dooley: They all knew what they were doing. This is not something you can put on to something else.
[00:47:52] Preston Meyer: Right? 59% were accused of only a single allegation, which, I mean, it's still a problem, but that means only 41% have done this more than once. That we know about.
[00:48:07] Katie Dooley: That means they've done it a lot. Because how do you get those kind of numbers?
[00:48:11] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:48:14] Katie Dooley: Oh, I don't like this episode.
[00:48:16] Preston Meyer: Gross. We're almost done with the terrible, terrible things. Uh, just under 3% of priests were the subject of ten or more allegations. They have in this stats everything collected by 2002, which is unfortunately, 20 years ago. 149 priests had more than ten allegations against them and accounted for just shy of 3000 attacks.
[00:48:49] Katie Dooley: That's terrible.
[00:48:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:48:53] Katie Dooley: In the 1940s, an American priest founded an organization to treat Catholic priests who struggled with drug and sex addictions. After only a few years dealing with the priests, he wrote to the Pope warning him that sexual abuse offenders were unlikely to change and should not be returned to the ministry. The Vatican didn't want any reports of misconduct before 2001, so everything was handled in-house.
[00:49:20] Preston Meyer: Which, as we mentioned before, was just shuffling them around.
[00:49:25] Katie Dooley: Don't do that again there, Father Bob.
[00:49:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:49:30] Katie Dooley: That doesn't work.
[00:49:31] Preston Meyer: No, it doesn't solve the problem at all. It just means that somebody in a different community is going to get hurt.
[00:49:36] Katie Dooley: I didn't open this can of worms because I emotionally couldn't open this can of worms, but it probably should be. An episode in the future is that nuns were also abused by priests. Horrible stories for that. But nuns were also abusers. Most notable notable high-profile cases: residential schools in Canada. We didn't talk about residential schools and sexual abuse.
[00:50:05] Preston Meyer: It just fits into the category, right?
[00:50:10] Katie Dooley: There's a whole chunk of time.
[00:50:12] Preston Meyer: Terrible things.
[00:50:13] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And then the Magdalene Laundries is where they would, like, look after young mothers. But they wouldn't. They would just abuse them.
[00:50:22] Preston Meyer: So nice.
[00:50:23] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So, yes, we talk about priests, but there's.
[00:50:29] Preston Meyer: It's not just the priests.
[00:50:30] Katie Dooley: We talked about rpiests and young boys, but it's everywhere.
[00:50:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The problem is bigger than just the priests.
[00:50:39] Katie Dooley: Yes. So what causes this? How do we fix it? We are not meant... that Francis needs to fix it.
[00:50:49] Preston Meyer: We don't have the power to make the change.
[00:50:51] Katie Dooley: I'm an atheist. They don't even look at me.
[00:50:54] Preston Meyer: Uh, and the Catholic Church has no interest in me either. But somebody with a little bit more pull, I guess somebody who is seen as more authoritative than you and me. In Australia, there was a public inquiry back in 2015 that came back with some results on how to prevent child sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Yeah, it's unbelievable because they said you need to let the priests get married.
[00:51:21] Katie Dooley: What?
[00:51:24] Preston Meyer: They say this is likely the number one cause of rampant sex abuse within the church. But we also know the Catholic Church isn't the only institution with an abuse problem. That's not a good defence.
[00:51:38] Katie Dooley: No, but, yeah, I mean, if you let priests get married, you could. I mean, obviously we wanted to drop by more, but even if it dropped by 10% because people got to get married, it'd be amazing. And then if you let people gay.
[00:51:50] Preston Meyer: I mean, that's a really conservative estimate.
[00:51:54] Katie Dooley: Well, because some people are just actually horrible people.
[00:51:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah that's true.
[00:51:57] Katie Dooley: And will abuse regardless of whether they're married or not.
[00:52:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah, Josh Duggar.
[00:52:02] Katie Dooley: Right. I hope his kids are out of that house. And then I would even say opening up the clergy to other people, women, married men, because then you get to pull from a better pool of people.
[00:52:18] Preston Meyer: One can hope. Some argue that we didn't know enough about abusers and thought that they were cured after some psychological, psychological treatment, and they were sent back to work. But, I mean, I just read to you an excerpt from a letter decades ago warning, hey, this doesn't work.
[00:52:39] Katie Dooley: It doesn't work. There's a shortage of priests. So this causes problems from everything from, you know, there's just too many people for one person to serve. So things are... Checks and balances are gone. But that also means they're desperate for anyone who's willing to be a priest. And so checks and balances on the seminary side of things are obviously not happening. And then oversight. The entire Catholic hierarchical pyramid is short on people. The the shortage of priests, interestingly enough, the number of priests hasn't decreased. The population of Catholic people has doubled since 1970. And that always surprises me because a) I mean, just doctrinally, it's a very traditional religion. And then I can't believe people didn't leave in droves as we got some of these stats and numbers. But that's just me. That's just me being judgy.
[00:53:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's just crazy.
[00:53:48] Katie Dooley: So in the 1980s, there was about a priest per 1900 every 1900 Catholics, and now it's well over 3000 Catholics per priest.
[00:53:58] Preston Meyer: Could you imagine if all of the Catholics went to church on a regular basis?
[00:54:02] Katie Dooley: Well, there's. And then there's some parishes that I forget. There's some number like tens of thousands of parishes don't have priests.
[00:54:09] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:54:09] Katie Dooley: That are just are unserved.
[00:54:11] Preston Meyer: Huh. That's make for some pretty big congregations.
[00:54:16] Katie Dooley: Mega churches, if they wanted.
[00:54:18] Preston Meyer: Oh, man, I gotta get...
[00:54:19] Preston Meyer: That's a tradition that needs to stop.
[00:54:22] Katie Dooley: Their hymns hopping before they can have a mega church.
[00:54:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we'll talk about mega churches another time. Yeah, a lot of writers are pretty sure that the celibacy policy was put in place so the church wouldn't have to pay to support the families of priests. I've heard this a few times growing up. If that was the only issue, wave that against the legal expenses.
[00:54:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I mean, there's like billions of dollars spent in legal expenses. It doesn't take $1 billion to raise a family.
[00:54:51] Preston Meyer: Right? It's.
[00:54:53] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but then they don't like contraceptives, too. So a priest could have a really big family.
[00:54:58] Preston Meyer: Well, lots of people have big families.
[00:55:00] Katie Dooley: But still, having a big family is way better than our current alternative.
[00:55:07] Preston Meyer: Right? I'm trying to think of a way to brighten this up before we close off. And, I mean, this has been dark and crappy and kind of a weird thing to to dive into and see what's going on.
[00:55:26] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it didn't do anything for my mental health this week.
[00:55:30] Preston Meyer: Go listen to something fun as soon as possible.
[00:55:34] Katie Dooley: Maybe we'll put a happy playlist on there. Link to Katie's Spotify. I mean, we'll do that. Happy songs.
[00:55:41] Preston Meyer: You can find some good laughs on Discord. We've got all kinds of great memes. In fact, we've had a nice little sprint of them lately.
[00:55:51] Katie Dooley: Yes, you can always check out our Instagram or Facebook for more learning. And of course, our spreadshirt for some hilarious merch that'll put a smile on your face.
[00:56:03] Preston Meyer: Or, if you want to support us without filling your closet with clothes and whatnot, you can always pop onto our Patreon. All the links for all of these will be in our show notes.
[00:56:14] Katie Dooley: Hold your religious leaders accountable, everyone.
[00:56:17] Preston Meyer: Please.Thanks for joining us.
[00:56:21] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 22 May 2023 | Imperial Influence on Scripture | 01:08:31 | |
The Christian New Testament is a tiny collection of letters, and a small handful of modestly interdependent testimonies of a personal Jesus from a small town in the unnamed northern province (now known as Galilee). The outliers are almost as valuable as the more orthodox materials. The Bible consists of four biographies, some of which show more interest in symbolic teaching than in historical accuracy. Two of these rely heavily on another for their production, while a much later fourth comes to establish a slightly different path. One of these biographies gets a sequel, but when the hero leaves at the end of the prologue, the story shifts to a stranger: Saul of Tarsus. After the biographies (aka "Gospels"), written by mortal men who were happy to testify of what they had seen/heard, we have an assortment of letters from several of Jesus' Apostles to various parts of the church under direct Imperial rule, mostly from Paul. Because we've already talked about the Revelation of John at length (see Apocalypse, Now?), we only briefly cover it in this episode. To say that "the Bible" is the infallible word of God is to deny the obvious inconsistencies and material contradictions. To say that it is the complete word of God is to deny the obvious appeals to missing authoritative texts. To say that it is the literal word of God is to deny the obvious editorial history and the skill of the genuine authors. We address the various literary genres found in this tiny collection, we look at rejected books that might hope to belong, and we cite texts that were certainly authoritative but have since been lost--some with popular forgeries. With scores of translations of various textforms, there is no single Bible, but we do what we can to keep it accessible. All this and more... To witness Katie's first Bible Study (a mini-series), support us on Patreon You can find our merch on Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord | |||
| 14 Mar 2022 | Going in Ra | 00:51:40 | |
The Kemetic people of ancient Egypt had a fascinating theology that developed from a variety of sources, much like their Greek and Roman neighbors across the sea. Join us as we explore the Egyptian gods, from the animist origins of Anubis, to the cosmic origins of Ra. Egypt's ancient mystery schools were a magical realm of literary development and ritual emulation, more familiar to modern Freemasonry than to Protestant or Imperial Christianity. Need to know more about the theological background behind Marvel's Moon Knight, look no further. We discuss the Ennead, Ra, Osiris, Isis, Pharaoh-worship and the imperial cultus, including Tutankhamun and Imhotep. Next time, we'll have to talk about The Mummy, and more about the Pyramid constructions. Egyptology is all about the ancient nations of Masr, Ptah, and Kemet; and the cities of Memphis, Cairo. Other gods we explore are Horus, Thoth, and Set. May the Chaos Monsters of the Desert leave you in peace, as you prepare for Duat. Join us for more about ancient Egyptian mythology. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website -----
[00:00:12] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie.
[00:00:13] Katie Dooley: How are you today?
[00:00:14] Preston Meyer: I'm doing pretty well. We're finishing up the beer religions. Remember, I definitely brought this up a month ago when we transitioned from the wine religions to the beer religions.
[00:00:26] Katie Dooley: You did.
[00:00:27] Preston Meyer: And we didn't really follow it up a whole lot within the episodes at all. But beer is one of those important drinks for the Egyptians, just like it was for the Celts and for the Norse.
[00:00:39] Katie Dooley: And can we blame them? I can't, you might be able to.
[00:00:42] Preston Meyer: I hate the taste of beer so much.
[00:00:44] Katie Dooley: So good. You're drinking the wrong beer. He's not drinking beer at all, folks, if your Bishop's listening, he's not drinking beer at all.
[00:00:51] Preston Meyer: Uh, lately this is true. I have had sips occasionally over the years. Actually, it's been a really long time, but I just never like the taste.
[00:01:03] Katie Dooley: I mean, like I said, then you're drinking the wrong ones. But we should stop talking about beer and introduce what we're talking about on today's episode of...
[00:01:11] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast!
[00:01:14] Katie Dooley: Because we'll just talk beer for hours.
[00:01:16] Preston Meyer: I mean, I couldn't keep a beer conversation going for more than ten minutes, I think.
[00:01:23] Katie Dooley: Fair enough.
[00:01:24] Preston Meyer: I just don't have the knowledge or the palate for it. All right, so we're talking about Egypt this week, which is a nice little shift of direction. We've been mostly talking about white folks for the last couple of months and that's not the case today. Egypt is in Africa and for most of their history, they were predominantly a black population. There were times where they were ruled by white folks, but, that's really not the subject that we're on today.
[00:02:00] Katie Dooley: So words guy, you have a great little paragraph on the names of Egypt. Let's start there.
[00:02:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So Egypt has been known by a good handful of names. Nobody who lives there calls it Egypt on a regular basis, and that's never actually been the case. Egypt is a foreign name dumped on the country. It's derived from the Latin Aegyptus, which comes from an Egyptian word, Hikuptah, which actually means home of the soul of Ptah, which was the name of the city that is today known as Memphis.
[00:02:37] Katie Dooley: Memphis, Egypt?
[00:02:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:02:39] Katie Dooley: Oh.
[00:02:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So it was not terribly uncommon, like, say, the Babylonian Empire. Babylon was the capital city, not actually the nation. And so the same sort of deal was happening in Egypt.
[00:02:52] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:02:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, the country is known today to locals as Masr, which is more or less what the Jews and Babylonians called it anciently as well. Anciently, it was known among its own people as Kemet or sometimes, some scholars will say Kumat problem there is that their language doesn't record vowels in the way that we find useful, but usually you'll see it written as Kemet, which is also the name of a popular board game that I think is quite enjoyable.
[00:03:24] Katie Dooley: Also, isn't it a character in Mario Party? There's a board that's like Kemet's... That's the Egyptian board.
[00:03:33] Preston Meyer: I believe you. That makes sense. I don't actually know.
[00:03:36] Katie Dooley: It's literally all I can think about, but I never actually looked it up while I was doing the research. I was like, isn't that a board in Mario Party?
[00:03:43] Preston Meyer: That makes sense. So the name Kemet means black, which a lot of people first hear it and I see your eyebrows go up - has nothing to do with the color of the people, but the color of the very rich soil along the banks of the River Nile. That was just "we will populate this Kemet land" instead of the desert, which is trash. You can't grow anything in the desert.
[00:04:08] Katie Dooley: Sadness.
[00:04:10] Preston Meyer: Sure, sadness can grow very plentifully in the desert. Yeah, so that's that's the name Kemet, anciently. Masr today and honestly, for the last few thousand years by people who speak Semitic languages and Aegyptus is the white folk name.
[00:04:29] Katie Dooley: The White folk name, just like you say, just like Germany.
[00:04:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah. We have a really strong tradition of just renaming other people's stuff.
[00:04:41] Katie Dooley: Well, we don't like that you call it Deutschland, so we're gonna call it Germany.
[00:04:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah. For no good reason at all.
[00:04:48] Katie Dooley: Because we can't say Deutschland.
[00:04:49] Preston Meyer: So if you pop into, um, the preface to the King James Version of the Bible, it does refer to the German people as the Deusch people, which is still a terrible mispronunciation of their proper name. But there's evidence that they tried and then apparently they gave up on it. Like, we can't call you douches anymore, you're Germany.
[00:05:12] Katie Dooley: The just had a stroke and couldn't say it properly.
[00:05:14] Preston Meyer: I guess.
[00:05:16] Katie Dooley: So by the time they were a unified kingdom, the Kemetic peoples of the Nile had several different cults from all over the region. Each of these cults focused on surviving the chaos of the desert, violent storms and unreliable rains, and lots and lots of sand in places you don't want sand.
[00:05:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Scorpions.
[00:05:39] Katie Dooley: I've stepped on a scorpion.
[00:05:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:05:41] Katie Dooley: Have I..?
[00:05:42] Preston Meyer: How'd that go?
[00:05:43] Katie Dooley: I was okay, but I could have not been okay.
[00:05:45] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah, that seems like a high-risk activity.
[00:05:50] Katie Dooley: Well, it was completely accidental. Sidebar! I don't know if I'm gonna keep this in, but. Yeah, it was when I was in Guatemala, and I was at a water cooler and I step back and I like I heard this crunch and I was like, oh, I stepped on something and I lifted up my foot and it was a scorpion and I, like, stepped on it like perfectly head to tail with the length of my foot. But had I stepped on it any other way could have been bad news bears.
[00:06:14] Preston Meyer: Well, yeah. If it has the time to freak out and lash out with its tail.
[00:06:18] Katie Dooley: Yeah. If I stepped on like perpendicular our viewers can't see me. Then it could have gone. Our viewers can't see me. No, our listeners can't see me.
[00:06:30] Preston Meyer: We have no viewers.
[00:06:30] Katie Dooley: We have no viewers. That would be weird, because I'm literally always wrapped in a blanket with a dog. And I am an old lady talking about religion. Anyways, so they believe that the best bet to preserve order on earth was to preserve order in heaven by keeping the gods happy with offerings and performing rituals.
[00:06:51] Preston Meyer: That's pretty standard for the people we've been talking about. Maybe not a perfect overlap, but pretty close.
[00:06:58] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Like the Greeks, their cults supported mystery schools that trained mages who operated not only with the secret knowledge of the gods, but with powers of illusion.
[00:07:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the magic tricks that are so... Popular is not the right word. Most people don't look at magicians and go, yeah, that's awesome. Most of us like a trick here and there, but if somebody says, hey, I'm a magician, you don't go, oh, you're cool. Even though what they do is kind of cool.
[00:07:34] Katie Dooley: Yes, I think Neil Patrick Harris is a cool magician. He's like part of the Magicians Guild in Hollywood. Which you actually, like, need to be good to get into.
[00:07:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, sure. I like Penn and Teller. They're a lot of fun. And so this, this tradition of illusory magic tricks does come from Egypt. As far as I've been able to find.
[00:07:59] Katie Dooley: That's amazing.
[00:07:59] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:08:00] Katie Dooley: Hey, Preston, here's a coin.
[00:08:03] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:08:04] Katie Dooley: There's no coin.
[00:08:05] Preston Meyer: No, that's that's one of the the cheaper illusions, but it's one that most people are familiar with because every grandpa learns to do it for their kids. Their grandkids. Like the old traditions that we've been talking about for the last couple of months. The Egyptians didn't have any unified, authoritative scripture, but like the Greeks, they did have a lot of writings that help us understand what they believed and how things had changed over time and also space. Things weren't always the same from one region to the next. So it's kind of cool and diverse and like we've mentioned before, complicates the study of the tradition. Like we see in modern magical groups, the Egyptians preserved their magical spells on paper, and they actually kept pretty great libraries in their temples where people could study all of these collected spells that people had been doing for generations, which is pretty cool. They had a I don't want to say a monastic tradition, but their magicians did spend a lot of time in these libraries just studying, and they had a decent scholarly tradition.
[00:09:18] Katie Dooley: Well, I mean, if we compare it to the other religions since we've been talking about. This one's very old.
[00:09:25] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:09:26] Katie Dooley: And we do actually have quite good records between their hieroglyphics and their papyri and everything that's been dug up. So it is actually I mean, it's not perfect. It's still 5000 years old. But in comparison, we have a pretty good record compared to some of the Norse stuff that we were trying to piece together and the Celtic.
[00:09:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah, this one's a lot easier to get robust information on. They also had a really rich poetic tradition. They kept volumes of hymns for worship services and initiatic rituals as well, which is really interesting that we only have a time to get into a little bit. And some cults were really interested in oracles, kind of like what we saw in Greece and Rome and as the kingdom formed, eventually a state organization was put in place to keep the various religious groups friendly and cohesive, much like we saw in Rome, where there was just a lot of effort to keep the peace. And not that there was a lot of conflict between cults, but, a unified national identity always helps. And of course, the most important state cult was built around the pharaoh, kind of like we saw in the Roman Empire.
[00:10:43] Katie Dooley: But they take pharaohs to, like, a whole new level.
[00:10:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Really intense.
[00:10:50] Katie Dooley: So I... Most people have heard of the divine right of kings. Right? Right up until I don't even. I couldn't actually find record on it, although I found a little bit of record on it. But do we still still think Elizabeth is divinely appointed, or are we beyond that now?
[00:11:06] Preston Meyer: I think mostly we're beyond that, but there's definitely somebody out there who's fully on board still.
[00:11:11] Katie Dooley: So my record said that people that sort of fall off the tracks in about the 1600s was the divine right of kings. And the divine right of kings basically states that your're king because God wants you to be king.
[00:11:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, it makes a lot of sense that monarchs would say, of course, I have the divine right to my title.
[00:11:33] Katie Dooley: Right and that was common across all monarchies is this idea of divine right of kings. But ancient Egyptians, for the most part, believed that their Pharaoh was a god on earth. Not just divinely blessed with being a pharaoh. Nope. They are a god on earth. A god on earth. So they weren't so you know, blind that they didn't realize that he could get sick and die. But other than that, they thought he was as close to the gods as you can get and acted as an intermediary for humans and their large pantheon.
[00:12:15] Preston Meyer: I mean, it's not a far leap to say that a lot of people, even today, still worship their civil leaders. This is just another step beyond.
[00:12:28] Katie Dooley: Right. And I mean, we've had these conversations over the last year and a half now about, you know, some people worship George Washington as a god, but this is next level, sort of, I guess, day to day. And you're right. Again, it comes into how do you define worship? Are we going down that rabbit hole today, Preston?
[00:12:45] Preston Meyer: No, we don't have time for that. We've done it before and we don't have time today.
[00:12:51] Katie Dooley: Specifically, the king was seen as a direct representation of Horus and Horus in the pantheon is the son of Ra. So the king was also seen as the son of Ra. After the king dies or the Pharaoh dies, he becomes associated with Osiris and Ra and was fully deified.
[00:13:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The King's role was to set order in place. Order in this tradition is called Maat. And I don't know if that's terribly useful information, but I like it.
[00:13:23] Katie Dooley: Well, say I put maat a lot in the notes.
[00:13:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So as we refer to it, we're talking about the order of the universe as well as civil order locally as order in every aspect of order.
[00:13:37] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And I put in our notes if you'll remember, kind of like Dharma in Hinduism. It's like this is what you're supposed to do. This is the way things are. And when we do all of that, things are good.
[00:13:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah and that's really the main focus of religious life is keeping everything organized, because there's so much possibility where things can go wrong. When you're surrounded by desert that can wake up, that can whip up terrible sandstorms, that destroy stuff.
[00:14:13] Katie Dooley: Yeah and I mean, just any sort of organization of a society of who does what and how do things happen.
[00:14:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah. All right, let's take a look at these gods.
[00:14:25] Katie Dooley: Are you ready to talk about ejaculation, Preston?
[00:14:29] Preston Meyer: I'm ready. Go for it.
[00:14:31] Katie Dooley: So the first, uh, the first big deity is Amun. He is considered the king of the gods and has a hidden name. He has a ton of characteristics that we will eventually see in monotheistic religions, one of those being the hidden name. But he is also omnipresent and all-powerful. So this is something we haven't really seen in the other old religions, is someone who has it all together, if you will. And he's unknowable to the rest of the pantheon. He has many other names, but my personal favorite is Bull who ejaculates Nun. And that's N-U-N. It's a name, not a lady in a habit.
[00:15:20] Preston Meyer: I figured just going on the sound of it, you could also interpret that as the bull who doesn't ejaculate, but that's not the deal.
[00:15:29] Katie Dooley: No, it's Bull who ejaculates nun. Formal name. So I have a quick story, and then I know we have a bigger story later, but yeah, just to explain this ejaculation, the universe was born from the waters of Nun. And from these waters emerged eight gods that would create the rest of the world. So because Amun was around before these gods and before the waters of Nun, Amun is technically his own father.
[00:16:03] Preston Meyer: What a mess.
[00:16:03] Katie Dooley: Bringing the world into being. One of the records I read is that he's self-generating.
[00:16:09] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that makes sense within this own tradition, not within the world of chemistry and science.
[00:16:19] Katie Dooley: Yes, so he ejaculated the waters of Nun from where the rest of everything came from.
[00:16:30] Preston Meyer: What a mess.
[00:16:31] Katie Dooley: Wow, right? That makes me feel really dirty about this world.
[00:16:36] Preston Meyer: Don't think too much about where you actually came from then.
[00:16:43] Katie Dooley: Amun was often combined with other gods, most commonly Ra, Amun-Ra is, you know, I've heard. I heard of it before.
[00:16:51] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:16:53] Katie Dooley: As they share many similarities to the point where I was like, Ra is hard to write about because it's basically Amun.
[00:17:00] Preston Meyer: Basically.
[00:17:03] Katie Dooley: His popularity grew from a small local deity to king of the gods as he absorbed other gods and got more popular. So these other small regional traditions started to co-mingle everyone was like, oh, that's Amun and he just got stronger and more powerful by absorbing other myths.
[00:17:25] Preston Meyer: Good deal.
[00:17:26] Katie Dooley: Which means he's identified as the sun god, the wind God, the creator of the universe, the protector of kings, etc. so he has a lot of attributes to him.
[00:17:35] Preston Meyer: Nice.
[00:17:36] Katie Dooley: He was also the God of the city of Thebes and only took on his role of High God after Thebes rebelled against the Hyksos when he was combined with Ra.
[00:17:48] Preston Meyer: Which is another name for Atum, which I'll get into a little bit later.
[00:17:54] Katie Dooley: When his fancy new hat made him famous outside of Egypt, he was equated with Zeus.
[00:18:00] Both Speakers: Yeah.
[00:18:02] Katie Dooley: And he has the head of a ram in some depictions, especially when he's combined with Zeus. So you'll see as we go through these, all of these are anthropomorphic, not all of them 95% of them.
[00:18:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah, an awful lot of them. Yeah.
[00:18:21] Katie Dooley: It's like two that don't.
[00:18:23] Preston Meyer: It's usually if they if they don't have an animal figure attached to them, they're women. There are some men in that case, but mostly they're women that don't have animal associations. I thought that was kind of interesting. All right, let's take a second to look at Ra, the god of the sun and the moon. One of the oldest gods. He's sometimes considered the creator. Or he was created right after the universe.
[00:18:54] Katie Dooley: In the waters of Nun.
[00:18:55] Preston Meyer: Exactly. Usually, though, he's equated with Atum which is another name for the the original creator based on another tradition. Kind of fancy, complicated stuff because old things get complicated. He also had a lot of other gods assimilated into his character as the Egyptian religion spread, just like we saw with Amun. Ra had a solar boat, not a solar-powered boat, but one that would sail on the sun and drag the sun across the sky, so he's usually depicted with the head of a falcon because his power to fly across the sky and falcons are just great, powerful birds. He's also believed to have a secret name, and makes it kind of obvious why he would have been easy to combine with Amun. And I think there's a good reason to suspect that the secret name of both Ra and Amun is Atum, which is the head of the Osirian Aeneid, which I'll get into a little bit later.
[00:20:09] Katie Dooley: [00:20:09]Nice story, eh? [00:20:11] so then we have Osiris. He is the god of the underworld, and we'll talk more about the afterlife a little later on and he would pass judgment on who was worthy of reincarnation. He is often shown as a partially wrapped, mummified king, and any of his exposed skin is either green or black, which represents the cycle of nature, life, and death. So green for plants, life.
[00:20:36] Preston Meyer: Or just gangrenous flesh.
[00:20:40] Katie Dooley: But what I read is that it's about nature and rebirth and all that fun stuff.
[00:20:44] Preston Meyer: It's definitely meant to be more positive than gross.
[00:20:47] Katie Dooley: Preston's taking this to another level. Of course, then they would mash up your brains and pull them through your nose, so who knows?
[00:20:54] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:20:56] Katie Dooley: He carries a crook and a flail. These are those very Egyptian looking tools. If you Google it, you'll know what I'm talking about.
[00:21:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:21:04] Katie Dooley: He marries his sister and then took his sister as a lover which...
[00:21:08] Preston Meyer: It makes a lot more sense when you realize how small the population is.
[00:21:12] Katie Dooley: Small population and then gotta keep that godly bloodline godly. So. But I think taking your other sister as a lover is excessive.
[00:21:23] Preston Meyer: Not when there's no other options.
[00:21:25] Katie Dooley: You're married, though. You don't need to have an affair.
[00:21:28] Preston Meyer: What?
[00:21:29] Katie Dooley: He marries one sister and then has an affair with his other sister.
[00:21:31] Preston Meyer: That depends on which sources you look at but okay.
[00:21:35] Katie Dooley: So one is enough one is definitely enough. So Egyptians believed that the body and soul were two separate entities, which is still a common belief today. And if you led a good life, you would be reunited with your body in the underworld, which is partially where mummification comes from, is to preserve your body so you can get it back. If you were not so good, though, you would be removed from existence by a beast with the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion and a hippo butt. And I thought this was really interesting when we talk about the beast in the revelation, which is just this weird hodgepodge, and I was wondering if there's any.
[00:22:20] Preston Meyer: This to me sounds more like just the traditional Mediterranean creature known as the Chimera. It just happens to have a slightly more Egyptian flavor than the Greek one that we've seen.
[00:22:33] Katie Dooley: It's got a hippo butt.
[00:22:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah because hippos are a very scary creature that live in the Nile.
[00:22:39] Katie Dooley: It said the haunches of a hippo. And I was like, I'm writing hippo butt. We know that he was worshiped in the first dynasty, but probably even earlier. It seems that much of his importance is derived from connecting him to Horus. The Greeks put a lot of work into replacing Osiris with Serapis. A weird construct that mirrored Pluto.
[00:23:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah, what a mess and Osiris' cult to actually manage to last into the fifth century of the common era.
[00:23:11] Katie Dooley: Very old.
[00:23:13] Preston Meyer: I mean, yeah, from potentially prehistory until only about 1500 years ago.
[00:23:20] Katie Dooley: That's pretty good.
[00:23:21] Preston Meyer: That's a good chunk of world history.
[00:23:24] Katie Dooley: Especially surviving Christianity in the Middle East. Huge. Yeah. And then eventually Islam too.
[00:23:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah. All right, next on our list, we have Isis, the wife of Osiris. She is the goddess of healing and compassion. And she's known as a loyal wife and mother. She is almost always depicted in human form, which, like we mentioned before, not very common. She's one of the longest-lasting Egyptian gods. Isis cult still exists today, although they're not very big numbers, but that's pretty impressive after all of the efforts Christians have put into putting those down.
[00:24:03] Katie Dooley: And the records I read is that it's almost continuous. Not none of this. I mean, it is. You would look at these and we'll talk about the cult of Isis now, um, neopaganism. But to have an almost unbroken worship of Isis in 5000 years is pretty impressive.
[00:24:20] Preston Meyer: Right? Images of the Virgin Mary definitely have a little bit of debt to this figure of Isis, the way that she is worshiped as a goddess among some parts of Christianity, like the Catholic Church, for example, is really borrowing some aspects of Isis's power and there's a lot of statues and images of Isis breastfeeding Horus and some people want to say this idea is directly stolen from Isis for the Mary and Jesus image. It makes sense to me that, you know, a motherly figure would do that in art, but there's definitely some strong connections between these two. Later on, as she grew more popular, Isis took over some of Hathor's traits. Just Hathor lost popularity. Her aspect had to go somewhere. Isis is the natural destination for that. Her cult was officially supported by the Roman state when they took over, which I thought was kind of interesting. And it's also really important to note right now that ISIS, the jihadist group, has no connection or interest in the Egyptian goddess.
[00:25:35] Katie Dooley: I also was reading how the name Isis has dropped massively in popularity. I mean... Nothing to do with the Egyptian goddess. Everything to do with ISIL or Daesh. Um. My friend's daughter is named Isis.
[00:25:53] Preston Meyer: It's a rough time.
[00:25:53] Katie Dooley: Now it is, yeah.
[00:25:54] Preston Meyer: I mean, we don't talk about ISIS in the news anymore. So five years from now, I'm sure it'll be fine.
[00:26:01] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but her daughter is a teenager, so there was a rough time.
[00:26:05] Preston Meyer: Five years ago or whatever. That was rough.
[00:26:07] Katie Dooley: It was a rough time to be named... Yeah. Sorry, that was a digression. Has nothing to do with Egyptian. Then we have Horus. He is the son of Osiris and Isis. Ancient Egyptians believed he had several forms, um, as well as being both young and old at the same time. And he can also take the form of a falcon. He is usually depicted with his falcon head. Horus is known to have been worshiped in Kemet before recorded history, so he is very old and under Greek influence, Horus was eventually equated with Apollo, and again he is the king god.
[00:26:51] Both Speakers: Yeah, he's one of the most important. And his story is something we'll get into a little bit later, too.
[00:26:57] Both Speakers: Okay. I'm excited.
[00:27:00] Preston Meyer: Anubis.
[00:27:01] Katie Dooley: Nay! That's not the sound a jackal makes.
[00:27:07] Preston Meyer: Anubis is one of the oldest, most popular Egyptian gods. He was originally the god of the dead until Osiris and Isis became more popular. But he is also the god of mummification. Anubis has a human body, but a jackal's head and tail, in most depictions. He is capable of shapeshifting, however, and there are records of him turning into a lizard. Fancy stuff. His father is Osiris and his brother is Horus. In a lot of versions, because of course, things change from one place to another. When his role changed to the God of mummification, he became the escort to take people to the afterlife. The jackal head is symbolic of him being the keeper of the dead, as wild jackals would dig up shallow graves dug in the desert. So kind of an interesting connection.
[00:28:03] Katie Dooley: I like it.
[00:28:04] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, before the first dynasty, Anubis was represented as fully animal. He used to be fully independent of the Osirian Aeneid but eventually became the son of Isis. In the Nubian tradition, Anubis was the son and second husband of Nepthys. Yeah... Marrying your son is never a good thing. Even when you have a limited breeding pool.
[00:28:32] Katie Dooley: Oedipus.
[00:28:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:28:34] Katie Dooley: This pre-Oedipus, isn't it?
[00:28:36] Preston Meyer: It is pre-Oedipus. Yeah, what a mess. Yeah, well, speaking of Oedipus, under the Greek influence, Anubis was merged with Hermes.
[00:28:47] Katie Dooley: Oedipus.
[00:28:48] Preston Meyer: Definitely Hermes. Mostly because of the whole psychopomp deal carrying the dead around.
[00:28:58] Katie Dooley: Don't marry your mother's, listeners.
[00:29:02] Preston Meyer: I really think that the people that are on the level to listen to us aren't worried about that possibility.
[00:29:07] Katie Dooley: I just want all our bases covered. Then we have Thoth. I really like Thoth. He felt like a bit of a standalone.
[00:29:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, he was.
[00:29:18] Katie Dooley: He's meant to be a standalone. He's the god of medicine, science, wisdom and magic. He invented writing.
[00:29:25] Preston Meyer: I mean, there's a lot of people that claim that. But here we are.
[00:29:28] Katie Dooley: Here we are. He did it, guys. He invented writing. He often played the role of advisor and messenger for the gods. He plays a big role in enforcing maat, or order, and has been depicted both as an executioner and as a diplomat. Toth was the leader of the Eight Gods of Hermopolis, and he's usually depicted with the head of an ibis, but sometimes a baboon. I prefer the ibis.
[00:29:56] Preston Meyer: Baboons... most apes don't qualify as pretty creatures. Birds very often do, so I definitely understand the preference.
[00:30:05] Katie Dooley: I love the personality of a moderately domesticated ibis.
[00:30:09] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:30:13] Katie Dooley: Thoth was also equated with Hermes because of his writing power.
[00:30:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and also Hermes Trismegistus that we talked about a while back Thoth that is an important element of all of that.
[00:30:26] Katie Dooley: Of the threefold.
[00:30:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. All right, so story time, I got a couple stories that I really enjoyed.
[00:30:36] Katie Dooley: All right, I'm ready.
[00:30:37] Preston Meyer: The world was first in the form of expansive waters called Nun, as we had mentioned earlier, which came to be personified in four pairs of primordial gods, each bearing an aspect of the dark waters. According to a Hermopolis text, they were named Kek and Kauket, the god and goddess of darkness. Amun and Amunet, the god and goddess of invisibility. Heh and Hauhet God and goddess of infinity and Nun and Naunet, God and goddess of water. From these waters, Atum emerged by saying his own name. Quite the power.
[00:31:16] Katie Dooley: Wow. Katie!
[00:31:20] Preston Meyer: Pyramid texts say that Atum emerged in the form of a Bennu bird, which is like a heron, then flew to the place that would become Heliopolis, where he built a nest on top of an obelisk and subsequently caught fire and died.
[00:31:36] Katie Dooley: Oh, dear. That was quick.
[00:31:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Luckily, he's able to command himself into existence. So he came back from the dead like a phoenix.
[00:31:44] Katie Dooley: Katie!
[00:31:47] Preston Meyer: Presumably in the form of a bird, Atum started making children all by his lonesome. I suspect they were like in eggs because the bird thing. But this is mostly me making things up in this little detail. But it makes sense, right? A bird pushes out eggs. Bam! Now you got children.
[00:32:08] Katie Dooley: Could come out of his penis live birth. There's a horrifying webcomic of that. I might send that to you. I feel like I have to.
[00:32:16] Preston Meyer: No, but you're going to have to.
[00:32:17] Katie Dooley: I'm going to have to. Yes. It's horrifying.
[00:32:20] Preston Meyer: Well, anyway, his two children were Shu and Tefnut. Shu was the god of dry air and later on, the god of peace. And Tefnut was the goddess of moisture and rain. These two had two more kids, Geb and Nut. Geb is the god of the earth. Nut is the goddess of heaven, the firmament of heaven. Not air or in the clouds or anything like the dome of the sky. So after Geb was born, there was dry land where Ra could finally land on firm ground. Ra is the name they put on Atum's cup at Starbucks every morning. They're the same person in most forms of the tradition that his name changes throughout the day, depending on...
[00:33:10] Katie Dooley: What starbucks he goes to.
[00:33:12] Preston Meyer: Sure. Exactly.
[00:33:14] Katie Dooley: We've all been there.
[00:33:16] Preston Meyer: So Geb and Nut had four children. Osiris, god of order and fertility. Isis, the goddess of healing, Set the god of chaos and later on, storms in the desert in general. And Nephthys, the goddess of darkness. One day Atum's eye popped out for a wander and didn't come back. Shu and Tefnut went looking for it and like any good game of Quidditch, when they found the eye, it put up a fight. The eye ended up shedding a few tears, and from that moisture, humanity was born. When the humans rebelled, Atum turned into the forceful lion goddess, Sekhmet, and after the humans decided to behave, Sekhmet turned into the benevolent cow goddess Hathor. Atum is always referred to as masculine, but everything he does is fully feminine, as far as I can tell. But he can't command himself into existence, so gender persistence and conformity really aren't important to him. Later on, Hathor mates with Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris. So that's kind of weird.
[00:34:27] Katie Dooley: You know what? It's not as weird as Loki turning into a female horse and bearing a child, so I can't even be upset.
[00:34:34] Preston Meyer: Sure. One thing that I thought was really interesting, going through the aspects of these gods and goddesses, is that a lot of them are the opposite gender of their Greek equivalents.
[00:34:46] Katie Dooley: Counterpart, yeah.
[00:34:46] Preston Meyer: In Greek, Gaia is Mother Earth and Uranus is the the father heaven. And the exact opposite is what we have here in Egypt, with Geb being the God earth and Nut being the goddess heaven. That's kind of nifty stuff.
[00:35:04] Katie Dooley: They were trying not to plagiarize you, just like, reverse the order of things.
[00:35:09] Preston Meyer: So I'm pretty sure we've talked about this before, that there's a lot of thought that goes into that. Maybe all of these came from a common source, and something that is so consistently different has to have come from a unique source. I think.
[00:35:30] Katie Dooley: Interesting, I like that.
[00:35:33] Preston Meyer: That this isn't plagiarism that's been adjusted. It's a fully unique set of gods and perception of the universe. I've got another story. If you got the patience.
[00:35:45] Katie Dooley: Do I have the time for you, Preston?
[00:35:47] Preston Meyer: The patience?
[00:35:48] Katie Dooley: I'm locked in this room until we're done. So. Yes, please. I'm kidding. I have freewill.
[00:35:54] Preston Meyer: So the even more important to Egyptians than this origin story, which definitely varies from place to place.
[00:36:01] Katie Dooley: Than the Ejaculation of Nun? More important than the Ejaculation of Nun?
[00:36:03] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah. For sure. The most important story that everyone agrees is the most important story is the story of Osiris. That most stories seem to at least refer to this pretty regularly. It actually, oddly bears a little bit of similarities to the story of Persephone in some tellings of the story. Where there's passage to the underworld, that's not usually an important part of the story, but interesting anyway and it's it looks to me like this story is actually a sacred rite in the old mystery schools. Which is pretty interesting, but varies a lot from one group to the next. Osiris was probably a real guy, as his story begins with him as the King of Kemet. His brother Set kills him, embodying the struggle between order and chaos. And then the details are pretty fuzzy because the Kemetic people were way into verbal magic, and speaking about the murder was liable to send the world into chaos. Since, you know, we're talking about killing the God of order, kind of a big deal. Cults all over the kingdom claimed that a portion of Osiris body had fallen in their neighborhood. Which is kind of interesting. Many of them would say just his body fell here, but because everybody was saying it, it had to be a part of his body. But all of that kind of weird because when they found his body, they found his body.
[00:37:45] Katie Dooley: Ew, David.
[00:37:49] Preston Meyer: So Set takes over in the power vacuum while the sisters Isis and Nephthys go looking for Osiris' body. When they find him, with the help of various gods, depending on the cult telling the story, sometimes it's Thoth, sometimes it's other gods that are local to the area. They embalm Osiris to keep his body from decaying. Some even say that this practice reverses the decay, which is kind of interesting. Though chemically doesn't make a lot of sense. Then Isis goes ahead and breathes life into Osiris and immediately jumps his bone to conceive Osiris baby, a boy named Horus.
[00:38:28] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:38:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:38:30] Katie Dooley: Wasting no time.
[00:38:31] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah. Of course, Osiris dies right after the surprise necrophilia.
[00:38:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah!
[00:38:40] Preston Meyer: Because she could heal things, but she couldn't permanently breathe life back into somebody.
[00:38:47] Katie Dooley: So she literally did it just to make a baby. Wow.
[00:38:53] Preston Meyer: So Isis has to hide her pregnancy from Set because the whole persecuted baby messiah trope that we've talked about before and the boy grows up in secrecy until he's old enough to challenge Set. He pleads his case to the more senior of the gods, then ends up having a wild variety of sexually abusive conflicts with his uncle.
[00:39:15] Katie Dooley: Oh. Trigger warning.
[00:39:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and the details vary by sources, of course, but sexual abuse is definitely almost always part of this story. And at some point Horus loses his eye, and its restoration, which also varies by source, marks the restoration of the moon's light cycle. In some versions, they're reconciled by agreeing to split the kingdom, usually leaving Set to rule the desert, while Horus rules the habitable lands of the Nile. Other versions have Set fully exiled, or sometimes even actually destroyed/vanquished. Either way, Osiris is avenged, and from that point forward is never really mentioned as anything other than the king of the Duat. The Kemetic heaven.
[00:40:04] Katie Dooley: Interesting. So we're gonna talk about afterlife. We know that the Egyptians have a huge funerary process of mummification, which we're not gonna talk too too much about the physical aspect, more the religious/spiritual aspect of the afterlife. So the ancient Egyptians first and foremost believed in immortality. People would sacrifice to the gods with the intent of having the shortest possible interruption between death and rebirth. Again, as I mentioned, bodies were mummified so that they would stay intact for the soul to return, and part of this involved the opening of the mouth ceremony, which was how they would prepare dead bodies for the journey to the underworld, involved anointing the body and touching it with the ritual objects to return the five senses to it.
[00:41:00] Preston Meyer: Fancy.
[00:41:00] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Then, there was the weighing of the heart ceremony. So now you're in the underworld. And this is performed by Osiris and recorded by Thoth. The recently deceased would plead their case for innocence in front of 42 divine judges. Next, your heart was weighed, which recorded all the good and bad things you did throughout your life. Your heart was weighed against the feather representing maat or order, and if the scales balanced, you moved on to the afterlife. You kept order, and if they did not, you were met by the crocolionputt-putt puttpus... I made that up.
[00:41:52] Preston Meyer: I can tell. I like it, though.
[00:41:56] Katie Dooley: Thank you. The crocoliontomus.
[00:41:59] Preston Meyer: The Egyptian chimera.
[00:42:00] Katie Dooley: The crocodile, lion, hippo butt. The afterlife is a reflection of the real world. Um, if you're a fan of Stranger Things that, but more pleasant.
[00:42:13] Preston Meyer: I like to think of it more. Like very similar to what we see in the fields of Elysium. Yeah. In fact, like the Greeks, there was talk of a heavenly land for the dead out to the West. Usually people talked about it being underneath as the underworld, but there was a little bit of talk of it being out west, which I thought was conspicuous, that some royal crypts had cocaine residue in them, which is native to the Americas.
[00:42:41] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:42:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:42:42] Katie Dooley: Fascinating.
[00:42:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's weird. And there is a lot of people who are like, did they travel all the way to the Americas? Was there a trade there or did they actually have cocaine in Africa? And then just like the Romans and the whole birth control plant, just eat it into extinction. That's the question.
[00:43:09] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:43:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah and the pyramids. Well, everyone's always,"What's the pyramids for?" And it's kind of nifty, that part of the symbolism of the pyramid. And they got really big in Giza for some reason. It's meant to mirror that final or that first landing point when Atum landed on the top of an obelisk, when there was first or before there was land to land on. And that was the point from which magic could send them off into the afterlife. In a little bit of a Stargate kind of way.
[00:43:54] Both Speakers: Nice.
[00:43:55] Katie Dooley: Did you know? Fun fact. Random fact that I'm just gonna throw over here that the pyramids weren't built by slaves?
[00:44:01] Preston Meyer: I did know that. People love that part of the story so much. Especially if you grew up watching the Prince of Egypt. That's not the way it goes.
[00:44:08] Katie Dooley: Now, again don't get me wrong, I don't think they were treated very well. They definitely didn't work eight hours a day and get long weekends, but they were paid. So fun fact for all of you at your next family dinner. What does this look like in the 21st century? It's actually called Kemetism.
[00:44:29] Preston Meyer: I wonder where they got that.
[00:44:30] Katie Dooley: I wonder where they got that name from, which is the modern name for Egyptian neopaganism. Which is also acceptable. People would know what you were talking about. Just like the Celtic religion, these range from eclectic spiritualism to reconstructionist and everything in between. But there's three main categories. We have Kemetic orthodoxy, syncretism and reconstructed Kemeticism. And they're all very... They're all really weird. This is the first one. I was like, these websites are really weird. Clear your browser history. Anyway.
[00:45:10] Preston Meyer: I like that you went to their own website.
[00:45:12] Preston Meyer: I did, and I just at some point, I had to call it quits.
[00:45:17] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:45:20] Katie Dooley: We're very tolerant here. Please don't get me wrong. Kemetic orthodoxy is not the Reconstructionist branch of Egyptian neopaganism, though it claims to be. I had to do some digging on this one. So it was founded in 1988, in the United States. So, very new. Just as old as Preston.
[00:45:40] Preston Meyer: Almost. Oh.
[00:45:42] Katie Dooley: You're. No. You're. Wait.
[00:45:44] Preston Meyer: I was born in 89. This is older than me.
[00:45:48] Katie Dooley: The main temple is in Illinois, of all places. And the current pharaoh and founder, Tamara Sweda incorporates rites invented by her and from traditional African religions. So this is where it's not reconstructionist because she's making her own stuff up, which is fine.
[00:46:04] Preston Meyer: I'm a little disappointed they weren't started in, say, Memphis, Tennessee.
[00:46:10] Katie Dooley: Right?
[00:46:12] Preston Meyer: Or, wait. No, there's a Cairo in Illinois.
[00:46:16] Katie Dooley: They don't say. They don't pronounce it Cairo.
[00:46:18] Preston Meyer: No, it's Cairo.
[00:46:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah, Americans. I'm kidding. We love our American listeners. So they have five tenants. They have the number one belief in upholding Maat. Cool. Belief in Netjer or a supreme being. Aku, or ancestor worship or veneration. Participation in and respect for the community, nice, and acknowledgment of the founder as the Nysut. Uh Nysut is like a generic Egyptian name for a lady in power.
[00:46:57] Preston Meyer: Well, that's fine then. It's pretty. I thought you were going to say like this founder who just started the religion out of nowhere is like this specific goddess.
[00:47:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So the new stuff is actually like a Christ figure. No it's not. It's just like a it's like Dame Maggie Smith.
[00:47:12] Preston Meyer: Okay. I accept. Yeah.
[00:47:15] Katie Dooley: Members of the faith are known as Shemsu.
[00:47:19] Preston Meyer: Mm.
[00:47:20] Katie Dooley: So that's Kemetic orthodoxy, which, though it claims to be Reconstructionist, is not reconstructionist. Then we have an example of a syncretic Kemetism, which is the fellowship of Isis. Uh huh. Mhm. This one was founded in Ireland in the 70s. It's just really weird to me that none of these were founded anywhere near Egypt. Like at least Greek neopaganism has an actual Greek movement. Anyway. This one is like really hippie dippy, um, and it's syncretic and it says it's syncretic. I don't even know if I would give it that much credit. It just believes in the divine feminine. And they worship all goddesses across all religions and cultures. Like that's their jam. So it's not even...
[00:48:11] Preston Meyer: That sounds syncretic.
[00:48:12] Katie Dooley: I guess so.
[00:48:13] Preston Meyer: It's loosey goosey for sure.
[00:48:14] Katie Dooley: It's very loosey goosey. It's like, oh, you like Athena? Come join us. Um, and then they have no regard for any of the other pantheon, from what I can tell. So very hippie dippy. And then for the Reconstructionist movement. They have three temples again in the United States. There's the Kemetic Temple of San Francisco, the Temple of Ra Sacramento, and the Per Akhet Temple in Denver. While they try to be as true as possible to original rights and practices, they also do not feel compelled to follow them to the letter. They actually wrote a great article on their website that they are fully aware that they are citizens in the 21st century, and not everything from 3000 BCE applies to them.
[00:48:59] Preston Meyer: You know what? I'm on board with that.
[00:49:01] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but they do believe in the pantheon as what rules the heavens.
[00:49:08] Preston Meyer: Cool.
[00:49:08] Katie Dooley: So those are three examples of Kemeticism. There's a lot of groups, though. Like a lot, a lot of groups, which was surprising compared to like the Greek reconstructionists. There's like 2 or 3, but there's a lot of these. And they like I said, they fall on that spectrum of everything from Orthodoxy to reconstructionist to syncretic hippie dippy.
[00:49:35] Preston Meyer: Cool, cool. There's a lot more to the Egyptian religion, just like there's a lot more to all of the religions we've been talking about for the last couple months. Lots of gods that we never listed and didn't have the time to explain, and what we usually try to stick to an hour for you guys.
[00:49:52] Katie Dooley: I was just going to throw in there if there is a detail or a god, if any of these last five episodes that you'd like us to do something more in-depth on, please shoot us an email or post on our Discord, or send us a DM on our social media because we're happy to do it.
[00:50:09] Preston Meyer: And if we've only inspired you to go and do your own research, I count that as a win, too.
[00:50:14] Katie Dooley: I count that as a win too. Post your findings on our discord. Do you see where I'm getting at, Preston?
[00:50:19] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. Discord is a place where you have great discussions and share some wonderful memes.
[00:50:26] Katie Dooley: So many good religious memes.
[00:50:28] Preston Meyer: We've got Facebook, we've got Instagram, we've got...
[00:50:32] Katie Dooley: Patreon!
[00:50:33] Preston Meyer: Patreon. We've got a shop run by Spreadshirt right now, and we've got a YouTube channel. We got all kinds of things going on.
[00:50:42] Katie Dooley: Find us literally anywhere you want to find us, except hopefully in our own homes but please get involved in the community and send us some love and some supports that we can keep doing this great podcast and share. Share this episode with a friend right now.
[00:51:01] Preston Meyer: That would be great. Before you forget.
[00:51:03] Katie Dooley: Right now, copy the link. Say Hey, Barbara Sue, I listen to this and thought of you.
[00:51:12] Preston Meyer: I like that. It sounds real poetic.
[00:51:14] Katie Dooley: Thank you. We're going to shift gears next episode talking about why these are all mostly dead religions.
[00:51:20] Preston Meyer: And it's not just because of Christianity, though they definitely played a role.
[00:51:25] Both Speakers: Peace be with you! | |||
| 10 Oct 2022 | Leviathan to Lovecraft | 00:51:15 | |
Monsters play a huge role in most of the old religions. From Jormungandr to Leviathan, monsters can embody chaos, or they can protect sacred ground. Generally, they are used to instill obedience in people, but sometimes they simply help to explain why the world is a mess. Join us as we dive into the realm of religious traditions surrounding chaos monsters. Monsters serve to *demonstrate* or reveal the evil within the hearts of a people--or, that's the theory, anyway. They delineate the realm of chaos from the orderly cosmos, and they preserve that boundary. Also, we talk about Cthulhu and the outer gods, and the risk of insanity that comes with knowing the unknowable. From the Litani River, to the Jordan River, to the Norwegian Sea, the great sea monster is a foe of the gods of thunder and lightning. Whether Tiamat or Typhon, the king of the gods will preserve order by putting chaos in it's place. Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website | |||
| 18 Dec 2023 | Some Santas that You Used to Know | 00:53:01 | |
St. Nicholas' Day has passed, but we're not done with Christmas visitors yet. Santa has taken a few different forms over the centuries, and he's got an army of companions and alternates, too. Santa Claus takes inspiration from a variety of European folk traditions, and many of these old traditions have survived with modifications in the Christian era. In this episode we talk about a lot of our historically celebrated holiday gift bearers: - the Krampus of Central Europe; - the Ded Moroz of Russian winters; - the Icelandic Jolasveinar (Yule Trolls), the 13 hungry brothers who each stay a fortnight in the darkest part of the winter; - the truly monstrous Joulupukki (Yule Goat) of Finnish tradition, thankfully he's softened up over the years; - Mos Gerila, the Romanian Communist holiday hunk; - the sloppy Christmas poop-log known as Tio de Nadal; - Germany's less celebrated Belsnickel was made famous by The Office's Dwight Schrute; - Italy's own Befana, the guide for the three magi; - and we certainly can't leave out the controversial Black Pete, but we're pleased to report that his image is getting a favourable update. All these get a special moment in the spotlight in addition to the time we spend exploring the real and imaginary histories of jolly old Saint Nicholas who eventually came to be known as Sinterklaas, or Santa Claus. Naturally, this must include a discussion of the history of Chris Kringle (lit: "the Christ Child"). All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 28 Mar 2025 | Sufi-Caliph-Rajah-Mystic-expialidocious | 01:03:11 | |
Tasawwuf is the old word for dressing in wool, the typical identifier for a monk, ascetic, and mystic. Today, we pronounce it Sufi. The Sufi tradition dates back to the foundation of Islam, though both adherents and opponents have claimed that it's even older than Islam--certainly some of the ideas are.... The Goal is Tawhid, the perfect union with Allah (the God of the Hebrew Bible). The Prophet Muhammad is also revered as a god because of his achievement in this pursuit. The most well regarded traditions have master-apprentice chains that can be traced as far back as the best hadiths, and can be compared to the Jedi--or, we try, anyway. We explore some Sufi poetry, and note that Rumi is the most popular poet in the world. Rumi is also the founder of a Sufi tradition known as the Whirling Dervishes--a phrase coopted by insensitive parents in the 80s and 90s. Sufis, like many other groups, have been the object of abuse and even terrorism around the world. All this and more... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 26 Aug 2024 | Mayan'd Your Business | 00:46:07 | |
Latin America has managed to preserve some of its pre-Columbian religious heritage, so we're going to explore the traditions of the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inca nations. We explore cocaine, purification rituals, human sacrifice, gods from throughout history, and Catholic syncretism. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 17 Jan 2022 | It's All Greek to Me! | 01:18:48 | |
The first in a mini-series on ancient religions, let's start with Ancient Hellenism, also known as Greek Paganism. There's a lot to Greek mythology, but the lives of the people who brought us these legends often get swept under the rug. We're here to dig up the dirt on the cults that changed the world be sharing their stories of the gods, and why they were important to the Greeks of millennia past. The gods behind the drama of Percy Jackson are a lot of fun to explore, but not half as fun as the parties hosted by the cult of Dionysus. Some of the old gods came from the island of Crete, others are amalgamated figures. Some gods carried their own torch into Rome, while others were replaced. If you liked Disney's Hercules as a kid.... Well, we're here to blow it out of the water for you. Find out what the ancient Greeks believed in, the problem with Zeus, and about Hellenic Revivalism on this episode of the Holy Watermelon Podcast. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
** Katie Dooley 00:12 Katie feels like it's been a minute since we've been here for our listeners. It's just been two weeks. But
Preston Meyer 00:17 right time, what a trip time.
Katie Dooley 00:21 That weird week between Christmas and New Years where all you do is eat cheese.
Preston Meyer 00:25 Right? Oh. All right. So are you saying that a good suggestion is that maybe we shouldn't be exercising? What we listen to our podcast?
Katie Dooley 00:36 No, I definitely think that would make you sound a lot like breath. you're happier.
Preston Meyer 00:42 No, no, not while I'm while I'm recording. Oh, it would be terrible when I'm listening to
Katie Dooley 00:46 the podcast. And work out love it will help you achieve your New Year's resolutions on the
Preston Meyer 00:55 holy watermelon podcast. Speaking of time, we're
Katie Dooley 00:59 looking way back on the Wayback Machine.
Preston Meyer 01:04 We're gonna look at what is generally called the ancient Greek religion. But I mean, there's some serious problems with that label.
Katie Dooley 01:12 And it has some other names as well, which we'll get into but we are starting, I guess, like a little little series of dead religions.
Preston Meyer 01:23 Yeah, most of them have been revived in interesting ways. Because they, but they did solidly, fully die disappear.
Katie Dooley 01:34 Yes, because people there's definitely Neo revival of these. But But yes, they were definitely put to rest almost completely at one point or another.
Preston Meyer 01:49 I think broadly, we can call this this whole series for the these ancient religions as the victims of Christianity. Oh, actually,
Katie Dooley 01:59 I like that
Preston Meyer 02:00 there's a couple of exceptions, or at least at least one looking forward in my memory. But broadly speaking, they're the victims of Christianity.
Katie Dooley 02:10 And we will we're going to do a full wrap up episode on what constitutes a dead religion. Why religion science? So we'll get more into that in a few, I guess, a few months time, because I think we're covering about six of these, something
Preston Meyer 02:22 like that. Yeah. So we do plan ahead. Plan ahead,
Katie Dooley 02:28 even though sometimes it doesn't.
Preston Meyer 02:34 Yeah, so we talked about how Shinto was kind of a weird case where it wasn't really looked at as a religion, but just kind of a folk tradition.
Katie Dooley 02:46 It's kind of what it means to be Japanese for a very specific period of time, right, less so recently, as we've kind of globalized, but it was centuries where that's just what it was to be a
Preston Meyer 02:59 nice kind of the same thing with being Greek. polytheism lends itself well to this sort of issue where it's just how you exist in the community. It's kind of weird.
Katie Dooley 03:14 I also think it's, we see this in Shintoism, when you have deities for very specific reasons. It makes it I guess, easier to explain or justify, which is sort of this thing we see with the Abrahamic God where, you know, people, we see the argument all the time, where we say, He's a loving God, but then how did the Holocaust happen? Or, you know, this is God's will, but how, you know, why are there dead babies like, and that gets hard to explain. But when you have a polytheistic model, you can say, well, this is this one's fault, because they are one of the God of War, chaos or death. And in this transaction, they whatever they want, right,
Preston Meyer 03:59 yeah, that the most common solution for that problem in polytheism, is that Gods are almost never seen as almighty, it's just kind of, they can influence certain things. And sometimes they get to do their thing unchecked. It's kind of nifty and interesting stuff.
Katie Dooley 04:20 Again, similar to Shintoism. There's no there was no overarching body governing this religion, which is kind of part of the reason it doesn't. I mean, still falls under religion, by our definition, but not like a religion we see today. And no real texts
Preston Meyer 04:38 at all. Yeah, there was no the pope of all of the Greeks that wasn't a thing. And there was no holy book. Not really no, you had a lot of traditions, and some of which obviously got repeated more than others for being stories that were either better told or more relatable or more useful for a particular scenario. But there was no Oh, scriptural canon at all, really. If
Katie Dooley 05:04 you've taken the classics in university, you would have Devon dove divided into Devon Read, read, you want to read? Yeah, Odyssey and the Iliad by Homer, which is kind of as close as we get to analyze texts as. But I think most people know that we're writing down stories, pretty much are writing down this oral tradition,
Preston Meyer 05:28 a lot of what we have in, let's say, the Hebrew Bible, for example, is canonized, simply because they were really popular texts. And they became part of the cultural literary canon, kind of like Charles Dickens for English people. Homer is exactly that. And very useful when looking at the traditions around the gods, because that's what he was talking about an awful lot of the time. It's kind of nifty. Yeah. All
Katie Dooley 05:56 right, words, die. Words, fella.
Preston Meyer 06:01 Which word are you looking at? helenus mo so in this most Yeah, it's basically just a fancy word for Hellenistic paganism. Hellenism. And Helene, basically meaning Greek, Greece. Why we call them Greek and English, is just really weird. It's like India. It's like why do we call Germany German when that's not what they call themselves? Yeah. It's a weird thing. That's where it goes. So very often, when people talk about the Olympians, and everything that surrounds that worldview, Hellenism Hellenist. Most is the word that gets used.
Katie Dooley 06:48 And just a note on the Hellenistic paganism. This is not sort of the witchy paganism that we associated this just means not Christian. The paganism, yes, paganism, the term Hellenistic paganism, it just means not Christian,
Preston Meyer 07:05 or Hellenistic paganism does specifically mean Greek flavor, right?
Katie Dooley 07:09 I just don't mean the witchy version of veganism that we've sort of adopted. Yeah. Clarifying. I'm doing Perfect. All right, I think I'm with you're with me, okay. Are you with me listener?
Preston Meyer 07:26 All right, the interesting thing that we really have to emphasize, and we'll probably say it a few times, there is nothing monolithic about the Hellenic traditions. There's, it's not one organized religion. That's not the reality at all. It's a whole bunch of traditions of a whole bunch of subgroups that happen to fit together in a semi cohesive fashion. That was reinforced by the state for peace reasons.
Katie Dooley 08:00 And it's all centered around family bush. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 08:03 what a bush.
Katie Dooley 08:06 Which we'll get into. That's what you mean, semi cohesive, right, where you're like, they're all inbred.
Preston Meyer 08:14 I mean, inbreeding helps with cohesion a little bit.
Katie Dooley 08:18 Really makes the solid family unit with Uncle Grandpa.
Preston Meyer 08:25 My old grandma got old Zeus. Nothing's good about Zeus. So
Katie Dooley 08:33 we could do actually, we should do an entire episode on Zeus. We could, there's a lot to talk about, which we will not cover all today. But I
Preston Meyer 08:43 mean, if you want a very brief overview, Wikipedia will scratch that edge. So you don't have to let him Zeus is all about his own satisfaction, and not so worried about consent. Yeah. Also, not strictly limited to humans. This dude was all over the place. He had an itch to scratch and he led everything scratch we're getting.
Katie Dooley 09:14 Let's get back to this cult tradition.
Preston Meyer 09:20 And then we'll get so each of the gods that we're going to focus on all of the Olympian 12, and even 12 is a problematic detail. Each of these Olympian 12, had a position as the focus of at least one smaller occult tradition. Before they were lumped into the Olympian pantheon. Some of them had multiple cults, some of them it's kind of weird to look at them as having a distinct cult, but there was a cultic reverence for them and
Katie Dooley 09:59 I just want to clarify danger called just a small grassroots religious.
Preston Meyer 10:04 Yeah, yeah, we've, we've talked about cults before. And this is a good time to emphasize because the word is going to be used a lot when you if you were to go reading into scholarly articles on this cult is the word that is used to describe the group of people who are organized, worshipping a figure. And, yeah, so this is the way we look at these gods, the primordial deities of Hellenism, we don't actually see a lot of cults built up around them. But we see a lot around the Olympian 12,
Katie Dooley 10:42 which we'll dive right into. Yeah. And of course, the Greek religion, spread beyond the borders to Greece, and then stay put to some of the neighboring islands. And of course, it spread to Italy. Yeah, which we will talk about in next episode, I believe is our roman one. And there are tons of parallels, which we'll talk more about next week. There are numerous gods and goddesses. Oh, my hands are
Preston Meyer 11:13 so many
Katie Dooley 11:14 so many. And like we said before, these gods are mortal, but they're not necessarily all powerful or benevolent. Again, I mean, obviously, there's contradictions to this in the Abrahamic faith, but generally it is assume that God is all loving, forgiving. A benevolent God, not the case, right? With rapey Zeus, or there's some others too, but
Preston Meyer 11:40 there was a wonderful fun film put out by Disney feels like forever ago. Like, I think it was the mid 90s. Yeah, Hercules. Yeah. And there's one figure in the whole movie that lines up with the way they ought to have been, according to the mythology that's existed for these people for millennia. Is it the Saturn is Phil. Phil is the only one who's reasonable. And actually, he's not even that close because you never see Phil's Wang.
Katie Dooley 12:21 They have to censor some stuff, narcissists.
Preston Meyer 12:23 narcissist was pretty much what you would expect him to be. Everything else is either missing important defining characteristics, or is fully the opposite of who they really are.
Katie Dooley 12:41 And I guess sort of to that point, Gods can interact and meet with humans. A perfect example is Herrick Lee's or Hercules?
Preston Meyer 12:50 Yeah, Harry pleases the Greek one. Hercules is the Latin name. So having Hercules is the son of Zeus and Hera is fully wrong. But Zeus had a son named Herrick Lise, who was not Harrahs son. This is an important part of that figures story. I actually love it. The name Herrick Lee's was given to him it's the name means calls on Hara. So it's supposed to appease a very angry Hara, who is constantly suffering because her husband is constantly cheating on her in very aggressive fashion. I
Katie Dooley 13:34 mean, we're gonna get this, but I think that's what you get when you marry your brother.
Preston Meyer 13:40 It's, it shouldn't be a risk, but I get it.
Katie Dooley 13:44 It should be a risk when you marry your brother because what Brother wants to marry his sister, of course, it's gonna sleep around.
Preston Meyer 13:52 I mean, is a situation where he was forced to marry your sister because his sister wanted to marry your brother. Oh, that part of the story is a little fuzzy.
Katie Dooley 14:07 This is like a soap opera, and we just keep getting sucked into their love life.
Preston Meyer 14:11 I mean, there's so much literature on these people because people feel exactly that way.
Katie Dooley 14:17 So let us back up the boat and talk about who these Olympians are, where the name comes from, why we care about them and who the 12 are and then we'll get into some of their dirt. There are 12 asterisk, kind of 13 Olympian gods and they're named thus because they reside on Mount Olympus. And this is sort of the I won't say the one but this is kind of core across this religion is that's kind of all agreed upon. Everything else kind of I won't say I will change depending on your culture or tradition or location or story you heard, but the fact that these 12 Asterix first Do you live on Mount Olympus? And are a little family bushes? Generally? Tan? Yeah,
Preston Meyer 15:08 it looks like the Olympic union of this set of Gods is mostly a product of people deliberately trying to keep a nation unified, which I think is really interesting. The king of the gods, the all father, as he is often called, is just an absolute pervert. He is the God of the sky and of thunder. He's the God of law and order. I thought it was really interesting
Katie Dooley 15:43 to do so you haven't said Zeus yet? You just started talking? Oh, yeah, I
Preston Meyer 15:49 thought I said. Okay, so Zeus is actually mentioned in the Hindu Rig Veda, Oh, yeah. Zeus is called Deus pita. Which, if you're really into Latin and Roman mythology, more than Greek, it should sound like Jupiter. And that's not an accident. The name is derived from the generic word Dios meaning God, and the specific Latin. Jupiter makes this combination, and it becomes sky Daddy. Yes. pedo. Being father, as you see in most of proto indo European languages, it's kind of nifty. So Zeus is the sky daddy.
Katie Dooley 16:36 Yeah, he is. And he likes to be called Daddy to Yes.
Preston Meyer 16:41 Like, he's the father. Even if you're not a natural descendant of Zeus, it is expected that you refer to him as father. This, you see this through all the old classical literature that they all the gods referred to him as father, even when that's not
Katie Dooley 16:58 the case. Call me daddy. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 17:02 He is one of the original Mycenaean gods, originally from the island of Crete, which I thought was kind of nifty. There. Is talking some old sources of him having a tomb on the island of Crete.
Katie Dooley 17:16 Oh, interesting. Yeah, I would be really curious about that. Because we talked about this a long time ago that a lot of gods and deities are based off of real people. Yeah. So I wonder if there was Zeus. That yeah, that's into this. I'd be concerned with there was. All these stories are horrible. But yeah,
Preston Meyer 17:37 I'm curious how many of them are outright fiction and how many are based on real people?
Katie Dooley 17:42 No more fiction. I hope. Number two of the 12 is here. She's the goddess of marriage, women and childbirth. She is this his wife, and sister. And like Preston said, contrary to see what to what you see in Disney, she's not the mother of Hercules. Heracles Hercules Hercules, Hercules is so so named to make Hara love the child
Preston Meyer 18:15 didn't work out didn't work out.
Katie Dooley 18:16 Hara may have been the first of the Greek gods to receive a covered temple and seems to be the first of the Olympian gods to receive such a structure on Mount Olympus. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 18:27 I thought that was kind of cool. That's a thing I don't have a lot more information on. And as I was kind of rushed to put hair together in my notes, but I thought that was kind of nifty.
Katie Dooley 18:39 I think it's great.
Preston Meyer 18:42 Poseidon is really interesting. of the big three that people like to talk about. In Greek mythology. Poseidon is the big wet brother have to do. He is the God of the seas and earthquakes and storms and horses. He's Zeus, his brother, he's the middle brother. Hades was the the oldest brother, but after being ripped out of Cronus his guts are being puked out. Hades became the youngest but besides straight up all across the board the middle brother awesome.
Katie Dooley 19:19 The least loved brother. Maybe Yeah, likes the middle.
Preston Meyer 19:25 I don't know what the relationships were with their mother but their father hated all the children so well.
Katie Dooley 19:30 We'll get to that
Preston Meyer 19:32 you could have lost out worse. I I still feel weird about Poseidon being called an Olympian. Being more of a ocean fellow he
Katie Dooley 19:42 does definitely doesn't resign. Because I lived in the water. I've
Preston Meyer 19:46 never thought of him being a resident of Olympus. But Dionysus is also not really a resident of Olympus, but he's an Olympian kind of. It's weird. But Poseidon rules the sea just like Zeus rules the air and Hades rules the underground to the Earth is the common ground between all of them. So they're all welcome on Olympus unless there's unless they're specifically exiled from it. Hades not usually welcome even though he's not a bad guy, anyway, discussion for another time. Or at least later on in the episode. So I thought it was really interesting that Poseidon was one of the major Peloponnesian gods before he joined the Olympians interesting. And some versions of the story have him as a horse. That makes
Katie Dooley 20:41 sense. I the images in my brain is him riding a horse in the waves? Yeah. Yeah, image. Yeah. But I liked that he is an actual horse. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 20:54 may in fact, in Arcadia, there's a tradition that he and Demeter are a married pair of horses. And that's, that's kind of nifty. Oh, yeah. That's cute, right.
Katie Dooley 21:07 Which brings us to Demeter, who is the goddess of harvest fertility, nature and the seasons. She has a secret cult festival called decimal foria. And only women are allowed to participate. No Boys Allowed to sign up on the door. So
Preston Meyer 21:25 much of a secret anymore, but when it was happening on the regular, it was pretty top secret.
Katie Dooley 21:30 She was one of the Mycenaean goddess initiated tradition and Eleusis focused on the story of Hades and Persephone. Which Persephone doesn't even fall under these 12 She's
Preston Meyer 21:41 one of them. No, she's one of the minor.
Katie Dooley 21:43 I know. But I'm just there's so many names. I'm not going to get to Yeah. And in the Arcadia story that Preston was referring to Demeter has a mean of snakes kind of like Medusa.
Preston Meyer 21:54 Yeah, scary horse, you would not want to try and jump on the back of this horse. Yeah, what a really interesting set of gods. Next on our list, we have Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare. And naturally, the patron Goddess of Athens. Most traditions have ever been born from Zeus is forehead without sex, which is extremely weird for the extremely rapey Zeus. hessayon says that her mother is metus and that meet us actually gave birth to Athena inside Zeus. And that's how she popped out of Zeus forehead. It's a mess. It sounds super growth.
Katie Dooley 22:43 I wish you could see the face. I'm giving precedent.
Preston Meyer 22:49 Yeah, the Greeks had some really interesting stories. In fact, if there's anything that you could say is universally Greek, it's the telling of epic stories. Yes, that's true. Everything else is a lot less universal.
Katie Dooley 23:04 Great food.
Preston Meyer 23:06 fair. That's fair. Okay, there's there's probably a few things that are broadly. So Athena is the perpetual version. This is actually really helpful as a symbol of a protected city, because she is originally an Aegean Palace Goddess, and existed in identical forms in different cities under different names. Until the name Athena one out with the rise of Athenian power and the spread of the Attic dialect. That's interesting. A badass absolutely, I
Katie Dooley 23:40 actually will say, like, in more modern and I mean, particularly the Abrahamic tradition that can be quite misogynistic. There's definitely an equal, if not more female. Gods and they're all badass. Yeah. What really, really interested 12 rather, yeah, obviously, I'm sure if you get down to the nitty gritty, I don't know what the statistics are male to female, but of the 12 Olympians, I think it's pretty much
Preston Meyer 24:11 pretty close to balanced. And Athena being a goddess of warfare. She actually specializes in military strategy, which differentiates her from the next guy on our list. Well, I feel like that falls into the wisdom piece. Yeah, it does.
Katie Dooley 24:30 Aries is our next guy, the god of war, bloodshed, and manly virtue,
Preston Meyer 24:36 strength and courage, but muscles, but issues.
Katie Dooley 24:42 So he is the son of Zeus and Hera. And instead of the military strategy, which is a Theano, as Preston mentioned, areas is rough and brutal. He is a common personification of the strength of war, but At this specific version originates in the Mycenean despite the raw power that he is meant to represent most stories leave him embarrassed.
Preston Meyer 25:10 Yeah, think back to him being on the Troy side, the Trojan side of the Trojan War. Yeah, things actually very seldom go well for areas when he's part of the story. Even though he's, you know, say the more recent stories like in DC Comics, for example, where he is a truly epic and powerful dude. I mean, yeah, he's powerful, but he always gets his butt kicked by a non God you
Katie Dooley 25:46 most sacrifices to areas were offered after victorious battles through a practice of young men sacrificing dogs.
Preston Meyer 25:52 Yeah, it's a little gross and sad. Before a
Katie Dooley 25:57 man hood fight was adopted from the cult of an alias. Did I say it right? And cults, two areas were not that common unless you were a military group. But they did exist. Making the neighbors uncomfortable Preston would think so. Now just want people sacrificing dogs and having manly man Fight Club fights in your neighborhood. Well, even just I assume it's like Fight Club. Just imagine
Preston Meyer 26:28 knowing that just just knowing that your neighbor worshipped Ares, the god of war. Wouldn't that make you feel a little bit weird about that neighbor?
Katie Dooley 26:39 In present day? Yes. I don't know about past day. But yeah, probably we saw weird like nationalist truck on our irons. Sounds like this makes me uncomfortable. So yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 26:52 it's that guy. Like it's, it's perfectly fine to recognize that Oh, in a nation that is very often at war. Having reverence for Aries is perfectly valid. But belonging to a cult specifically dedicated to them is a little bit different.
Katie Dooley 27:13 It's different. It goes beyond just the sacrifice before a battle. It's like a different level. It is creepy. Yeah. Fair enough.
Preston Meyer 27:20 Next journalists, we have Apollo, the god of light truth art's the son, manly beauty medicine, and honestly, a terribly long list of other things. Anything that's good. Apollo is connected to it in some way. Really.
Katie Dooley 27:38 He's a good guy, good guy, Apollo.
Preston Meyer 27:41 Yeah, basically, he is the son of Zeus and Leto. And he actually wasn't fully completed with this, like didn't become a son. God wasn't completed with Helios until very late in history, which I thought was interesting. Apollo's cult is most interested in prophecy, you'll hear a little bit about Delphic Oracle is when you dive into Greek mythology. And this is tightly attached to Apollo. He's also one of the oldest gods in the pantheon, and may have even been part of the cultic traditions of the pre Hellenic people before they were divided into groups more familiar to us. As you know, humans spread out further west into Europe, which I thought was really interesting. He has also called the most Greek for a few reasons. He is the ideal of manliness. And so this is definitely informing this choice a little bit. He is also recognized throughout the Hellenic territory by more or less the same name, give or take, you know, accent and a linguistic evolution. But yeah, it's like some vowel shifts here and there, but broadly speaking, more or less the same name for a really long time backwards in history, which I thought was really nifty. And so he is the patron of two rival cults, both fully established before any religious history was recorded in the area, which I thought was also
Katie Dooley 29:12 Artemis. Did you know Artemis is my favorite? No.
Preston Meyer 29:17 Why is Artemis your favorite?
Katie Dooley 29:19 I don't know. I just like liked her as a kid when we did Greek and I think it was grade six, like cuz she was the moon, and the hunt and archery.
Preston Meyer 29:27 So I think her being associated with the moon is a deliberate parallel to Apollo and the sun. Celine is generally the moon if I'm recalling correctly, and not mixing up my mythologies. And when Apollo became conflated with Helios, Artemis was at more or less the same time connected to the moon. Yes, and
Katie Dooley 29:53 that is because she is the twin sister of Apollo. Same parents, Zeus and Leto Artemis was the protector of forests throughout Greece and like little hippie Katie really like that. And she had several local cults and was very important Sparta specifically. Her first club was likely established on the island of Delos. And her temple in Ephesus is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Preston Meyer 30:22 So kudos for Artemis.
Katie Dooley 30:25 Oddly enough, she is the per Artemis is a perpetual virgin but also associated with childbirth.
Preston Meyer 30:32 Yes, I thought that was kind of a she's like a situation.
Katie Dooley 30:35 Yes.
Preston Meyer 30:36 That's there's a story that she helped with the delivery of her twin brother. I feel like I've heard that. And mechanically that sounds like literally, totally fantastic. But there's also I'm looking to a parallel in the Hebrew Scriptures where there was twin brothers and the younger brother came out with his hand wrapped around the ankle of his older brother. And so it just kind of pulled out. And that actually makes it kind of easy to believe that this story could have been based on a baby girl who pulled who would just happened to be holding brother's ankle on the way out conceal and ended up baby brother came out right after with that tug around the ankle. Who knows?
Katie Dooley 31:24 I'm not an obstetrician. No, me neither.
Preston Meyer 31:30 But it it as much as it sounds weird in the basic story of Baby help deliver a baby there are other stories. Yeah, there's, there's weirder stories,
Katie Dooley 31:41 weird stories like a whole virgin birth,
Preston Meyer 31:45 which we have talked about pretty recently. After Aphrodite is next on our list, so she's the goddess of love, pleasure, protection, last sex. And also motherhood is on that list in a lot of places too.
Katie Dooley 32:02 And she's the one coming up the clamshell Renaissance painting. Yes, girl.
Preston Meyer 32:08 Wasn't that Venus? Oh, it
Katie Dooley 32:10 was but they're the same. I mean
Preston Meyer 32:12 to a lot of people they are exactly. According to Homer, she Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and the Titan Diani
Katie Dooley 32:22 said sex with exam.
Preston Meyer 32:26 Yeah, I mean, Zeus had sex with almost everybody that he could. There's not a lot of stories of him having sex with men. That you know what, now that I'm saying that, I probably need to go back and look. Probably then there's there's probably I'm thinking of the list of all the people he's had sex with who there was a child that made the story noteworthy. There's there's probably a separate list that I just didn't look
Katie Dooley 32:57 at just as conquest. Right. And not just in his bed frame.
Preston Meyer 33:01 Exactly. Because homosexuality was not an issue in Greece. That was the problem. It was day to day life for the average person. Just casual sex all the time.
Katie Dooley 33:13 Plato's the sexes actually places homosexual men is like, the apex because they've chosen to give up family. So if you were to like rank people, it was like homosexual men, heterosexual and then lesbians. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 33:34 interesting.
Katie Dooley 33:36 Lesbians are the worst. I'm kidding. I know personally, that's what the sexist says. We have no problem with lesbians here at enthusiasts, we cannot
Preston Meyer 33:54 go for it. But I saw the pause and knew you wanted me to say it and I wasn't ready, but here we are, anyway.
Katie Dooley 34:01 Oh, see if that makes sense. So tell me about your anus.
Preston Meyer 34:07 Oh, yeah. So according to Homer, Zeus and Gianni are the parents of Aphrodite. But according to hesed, Aphrodite was formed from the foam that leaked into the sea from Uranus is severed genitals after he was castrated by Cronus. Wow. So we have very different origin stories. And we can't say that one of them is more authoritative than the other. Because we still have the vast majority of humanity saying this is fiction anyway. But what a weird story castrates your NS throws this junk out into the Mediterranean Sea as far as we can expect.
Katie Dooley 34:55 You can see what I'm doing
Preston Meyer 34:59 and The White foamy juice that comes out of those nuts. seafoam This is how we get Aphrodite.
Katie Dooley 35:12 This is how we get an explicit rating.
Preston Meyer 35:18 That's the way it goes. So Aphrodite is cult was primarily a synchronisation of very similar cults to other mother Goddesses from further east. And it actually looks like Aphrodite basically is the same figure as Ishtar as evolution brought it further east or further west rather face this
Katie Dooley 35:39 is and this is what I actually haven't heard of like we have these two we'll get to that are kind of like they get swapped in and out. But I've never heard of a faceless so anyway. Here's the god of fire the forge, blacksmiths and volcanoes have faced is the sun up here. And the cuckold husband of Aphrodite. Homer says they have faced this was thrown down from Olympus for defending his mother from Zeus is sexual advantage the advances kind of like our boy Ganesha from the Hindu tradition. basis, a basis is crippled after a poorly executed superhero land. So that was superhero pose that we see everyone do. Yeah, maybe
Preston Meyer 36:26 poor guy could not handle that kind of toss.
Katie Dooley 36:31 You in another version of Asus is born crippled. And that's why he's thrown down from Olympus. His identity as a crippled Smith is commonly attributed to the ancient memory of millworkers, who suffered from arsenic poisoning due to working with cheap bronze.
Preston Meyer 36:46 Gross.
Katie Dooley 36:49 History really has like crippled a whole bunch of people. Yeah. It's weird, not knowing what you're working with. Right?
Preston Meyer 36:58 It's kind of interesting, looking back through history that there is this kind of, it looks like just a narrative trope that the blacksmith is a cripple in some way or another. But it actually makes sense that if you look at the work they do, and the things they're dealing with arsenic will straight up give you cancer. And there's loads of opportunity to hurt yourself when you're messing around with hot metal light.
Katie Dooley 37:23 Yeah. So there isn't much for calls for her face notice more of general reference from metal workers, blacksmith and trying to him we're typically attached to other trends or to Hermes
Preston Meyer 37:39 is next on our list, and the last of the Olympians that everyone agrees Yes, he's an Olympian
Katie Dooley 37:46 1112 is debated. Yes,
Preston Meyer 37:50 there's issues. We'll deal with that in a minute. So Hermes is the messenger of the gods. He's the God of communication, travel, diplomacy, games, all kinds of stuff. He is the son of Zeus and the plaid, Maya, cuz Zeus begetting around. He's a trickster, which I thought was interesting. But we don't usually actually emphasize that detail of his character. But he's a prankster and messes around with things. And his visits are not very often good visits. So occasionally, he'll come in to bring you news, like Gabriel or whatever. But he also leads the souls of the dead to the underworld, which sounds like a problem when you know, he's a trickster.
Katie Dooley 38:40 Oops, JK.
Preston Meyer 38:41 Right. Here's a practical joke. It went wrong guess you're going down to Haiti? Problem. Yeah, things could go pretty rough. For anybody who meets Hermes, you never really know. Hermes is also incredibly old predating the Hellenic tradition. Some scholars see him as coming from further east with Aphrodite, and that he was specifically her messenger. But of course, things evolve and change as we tell more and more stories about things. His cults were mostly in small rural communities. You didn't see a lot of cults to Hermes in the city until later on in history. And he is now thought to be a variant of pan. The good old Seder God. Of course, when I say good, I mean, fun and interesting, not righteous and just
Katie Dooley 39:38 say they're so not known for that. No. So we come to our first there's a word that I don't have, but it's undisputed. Yeah, that's a good way to come to our first disputed Yeah, god of the Olympians,
Preston Meyer 39:53 there's, everyone seems to agree that there's there's 12 Olympians, but depending on who you Talk to you get different lists.
Katie Dooley 40:01 And literally just like these two that we're about to talk about gets swapped out. Yeah. That's it. So easy enough to know. Yeah. So nobody like doubts that Aphrodite is part of this. It's literally these two. Yeah. So the first one's Hestia, the goddess of health and domesticity. She is a virgin goddess, which is surprising because she's Zeus, his sister, we know how much he likes his sisters, right? That is impressive. She doesn't have much of an individual cult, but she was respected anywhere a fire would burn. There are two known temples attributed to Hestia. And they don't bear any depiction of her.
Preston Meyer 40:39 Yes, I thought was really interesting that you will almost always find great paintings or some sort of iconography, saying this is who you're looking at and dealing with, whether it's a carvings are full on sculptures, or just something. And that's not the case with Hestia. You see writing and whatnot. But there's no faces in the two temples that we know over her
Katie Dooley 41:09 sacrifices, and we'll get more into sacrifices as a practice a little bit later on. were offered primarily in the home by mothers or in public buildings offered by civil authorities. And one of the ones I read his pet, you just like, give some of your dinner, test it to make sure that which makes sense, right, domesticity and health that give her a scoop of your potato salad? I assume the potato salad in ancient Greece? Probably not. I don't think Mayo was the thing.
Preston Meyer 41:38 Does that mean you can have a different kind of potato? Potatoes? I mean, my experience with potatoes with Greek food is fully limited to the restaurant experience.
Katie Dooley 41:50 That's true. Is it dinnertime at our house probably you give her whatever your skill your and that's your offering to her so I can see that being kind of a daily or weekly practice
Preston Meyer 42:07 absolutely daily several times a day any sacrifice was being offered, whether it was to Zeus or Poseidon or Hermes, or what if you're offering to any god, it is proper form to offer first to Hestia testing that and she's the only one who gets to eat before Zeus.
Katie Dooley 42:28 She was the older sister then. I don't know. But But um, the only thing I
Preston Meyer 42:31 can deduce was the baby. He was the last of all of Cronus has children. And Hades I think was the oldest and but they all came out in reverse order when Cronus spewed them back out again after eating them. Okay,
Katie Dooley 42:47 really good. We'll get to that. Who's our number 13
Preston Meyer 42:54 Dennis, good old Dionysus or Stanley Tucci, as we've pointed out before, cuz some of our audience I'm sure is fully aware of Percy Jackson and his family situation with the Olympians and get old Dionysus was played by Stanley Tucci, and Stanley Tucci.
Katie Dooley 43:16 Stanley Tucci. If you're listening when you please be a guest.
Preston Meyer 43:20 Yeah, it would be wonderful.
Katie Dooley 43:23 They haven't come back yet. But they will one day one
Preston Meyer 43:24 day. Yeah. So Dionysus is the god of wine, fertility and frivolity. Because he is the god of Epiphany, especially, especially opioid epiphanies. He is often called an outsider and a foreigner. Though history shows him being one of the oldest gods in the area he is he's not really an outsider, but he brings us outside knowledge in a format very different from her.
Katie Dooley 43:54 Yes, and I can see why people might be wary of that,
Preston Meyer 43:59 right. I mean, a lot of these gods actually do have strong connections with the poppy. And definitely that means opium in at least some of the situations. And that is the case with Dionysus. He actually isn't the God of drunkenness with wine. They're the cult of Dionysus always encourage moderation when it comes to drunkenness. But definitely also love to hand out opium.
Katie Dooley 44:28 So you take a sip of your wine, chase it with your opium Exactly. As you take your opium and chase it with your wine isn't sure I don't drink enough.
Preston Meyer 44:39 I'm not part of the drinking culture.
Katie Dooley 44:43 That's an episode one.
Preston Meyer 44:44 Sure. Dennis, I like I love calling him Dennis. Just because that's that is the English form of the name Dionysus. Dionysus has
Katie Dooley 44:56 Dennis. The Menace. Yes. Oh, Oh,
Preston Meyer 45:02 he has several calls, all of whom hosted fantastic festivals. And according to a bunch of scholars that I've been reading lately, the modern theatre is credited as developing from their practices. Cool. Yeah. Love that.
Katie Dooley 45:19 So this dispute. So Hestia is admitted in favor of Dionysus by people who don't think has the counts as a goddess.
Preston Meyer 45:28 Yeah, it's kind of sketchy. But that's the deal, I guess, when she's the only one who gets to eat or drink before Zeus. That's a bold claim, bold
Katie Dooley 45:38 claim. And then Dionysus is emitted and appear Hestia by people who count on ISIS as a foreign wandering God, which
Preston Meyer 45:48 is a position that's easier to defend, but is tricky. I think I put it in my notes later on, actually, that there is some talk that Dionysus is actually not, not his main persona, that Dionysus is actually Hades. Oh. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Well,
Katie Dooley 46:17 let's jump to Hades and come back to that point, because Hadees is actually a big omission. I think you did a Family Feud of name, mainly. Olympians.
Preston Meyer 46:31 A lot of people would say Haiti, even though he's technically not on the list,
Katie Dooley 46:35 he's not awful.
Preston Meyer 46:36 I think he should be. And if you say that he is diagnosis, and the diagnosis belongs on the list, then bam, Hades
Katie Dooley 46:46 very roundabout way of getting someone into a club, right? Let's talk about he's because he is, again, he's not one of the 12 Olympians, even in our disputed categories, not one of them. But he's a big player, brother of Zeus.
Preston Meyer 47:03 Yeah. And it's weird that he is usually treated as an outcast. He's the King of the Underworld, and God of the dead, not to be confused with the god of death. That is Thanatos. But Europe it is. One of the old classic writers actually disagrees and says that Fana toasts and Hades are the same figure. But he's wrong. And he's dead and he can suck it. Wow,
Katie Dooley 47:34 hot takes on Preston.
Preston Meyer 47:38 So myth tells us that He is the oldest son of Cronus. And which made him the last to be thrown up. As we mentioned, twice or three times now at this point, is kind of a big deal for the mythology is where these people came from. Hades is not the bad guy. Everything, everything you learned from Disney's Hercules is wrong. Everything Hadees is a good guy. For the most part at the worst, he's cold and just kind of distant. Compared with all of the other gods of Olympus. The Hadees, illustrated in myth is the best fit for a Christian or secular idea of morality and justice. So kind of turns the way we look at things all on its head, Zeus, who in the Disney version is more or less, kind of forced to transform into the Judeo Christian God ends up being painted like Trump and gross spray tan Orange is the worst version of a role model. Hate to use is actually much better. A lot of people try to avoid saying the name of Hades, because you don't want to attract the attention of the dude associated with death. So you get all kinds of nicknames given to him, which was really a very popular tradition. anciently across a lot of tradition, a lot across a lot of cultures. So because precious minerals come from under the ground, Hades was called pluton, which basically just means rich, which became a very popular name, and used instead of his proper name. And actually, is the source of the name Pluto that we have for the same figure more or less in the Roman tradition. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So offerings that were made to Hades weren't typically burned on an altar the way you see a lot of other gods offerings being received. Instead, they were dropped to and dropped into a hole in the ground, which is oddly more familiar in Mesoamerica. Right. Yeah. But offerings to the underworld obviously need to go under the ground. But now you always got to be looking away because you don't want to look at them. Right? That would be bad. Sure, I mean death comes to those who see Hades or has already come to those who see Hades. So you got to be looking away, which means this whole isn't just a little hole in the ground, because you don't want to miss when you're looking
Katie Dooley 50:22 to keep doing it over and over again,
Preston Meyer 50:24 you've been wasting a lot of food, a lot of food and wine. But I thought that was really interesting. And that some scholars will say that he is Dionysus. And that's how he kind of sneaks into an Olympian status sometimes. Good. That is where I had the note. And the orphic cult, which is also tightly tied to done it, Dionysus actually flips that and says no, Hades is actually another persona of the Zeus, that they're kind of coexisting in two different aspects. The Orphan cult is a pretty good example of how you can see that the Greek tradition is not homogenous, it's not monolithic. It's a whole bunch of different traditions that kind of just loosely fit together.
Katie Dooley 51:22 Like Christianity.
Preston Meyer 51:26 Christianity has become pretty well organized.
Katie Dooley 51:28 Yes, but if you look from denomination to denomination beliefs vary widely, wildly. Yes,
Preston Meyer 51:33 they do. In fact, that's mostly why they are different groups is arguments about details.
Katie Dooley 51:41 So before we move on to what I guess the day to day ritual, religious practice looks like I just want to talk about the Olympians because Zeus is not the first God. He's not a creator god like we have in the other. In other religions. The Olympians are actually third and fourth generation immortals. So how the hell did third and fourth generation mortals become top dogs?
Preston Meyer 52:10 By killing everyone who came before them? Yeah, that
Katie Dooley 52:18 word is not shouted as tight, no tied to no Mackie. Tight I just I feel like our listener Huhtamaki. By just shouting it may not have been as clear which the myth is that it was a 10 year God war in Thessaly. And the Olympians fought with the Titans and the Olympians won. So the Titans would be the previous generations, which I just want to say make sealed Olympic Games that look fucking cooler than sorry, if you're an Olympic athlete. Let's be real shot. But
Preston Meyer 52:57 I mean, if you're imagining the shot, put ball, the shot that you are putting, as, say, the head of a Titan. It's pretty now it was a little imagination. It
Katie Dooley 53:09 does get pretty epic. I'm gonna watch the Olympics through a whole new lens when they want to bring on new sports. If I can't see how it would fit into a titan omake eyes I'm mixing it. I mean, because they wanted to get rid of judo, which is like the OG Olympic sport and very useful in a 10 year God war, right?
Preston Meyer 53:29 Whereas men's ribbon gymnastics. Men's Women's Gymnastics is a real thing. Thank you. And if you're using it as a celebration after the battle, that makes more sense. When you're just messing around with the entrails of a disemboweled Titan. It's looking kind of gross, but here we are.
Katie Dooley 53:58 I like it. Synchronized swimming. How does that one work? And I've got four. We've derailed. We have so funny to explain synchronized swimming and awkward to me.
Preston Meyer 54:09 Oh, well, there, there was a titan of the sea that Poseidon was definitely very useful.
Katie Dooley 54:14 So it's like a war drill.
Preston Meyer 54:16 I just gotta be perfect.
Katie Dooley 54:18 It can stay. Yeah, I will call the Olympic commission and there is a sort of to our point about Zeus being really rapey and like three and four generations of immortals. There is a very good but very confusing family bush on Wikipedia.
Preston Meyer 54:35 Yeah. And I found that on Wikipedia after I saw it, you posted it in our notes, and I've found a less exhaustive but easier to follow family trees all over the country. Yeah, it's a bush. There's so much intertwining, honestly because Zeus has sex with about a quarter of all of the People in the tree. There's a lot of crossing of lines. It's a mess. But it is actually pretty nifty to see how all of this is connected. And we'll talk a little bit more on what that might actually mean towards the end of the episode. Does this mean Zeus did it with Poseidon? No, no, that's listing them as brothers. Oh, no, you're
Katie Dooley 55:24 right. I don't see here. Okay, so let's see Zeus and Demeter Zeus and Leto, Zeus and Hera, Zeus and Manuel Mizzou. Many medicine do and
Preston Meyer 55:43 so, so many, so want
Katie Dooley 55:48 to be a practitioner air quotes, because this was just day to day life of the ancient Greek religion, which we also know is a misnomer.
Preston Meyer 55:56 Yeah, there wasn't one really well, using the word religion just feels weird. Honestly, it probably looks like your average person today, apart from the nature of their employment, farmers would go out work in the farms, and they'd make the occasional sacrifice, just like the UK, the average farmer will go to church on Sunday. Yeah, it's not wildly different, really. Which is kind of nice. Humanity is really pretty much the same all the time. We,
Katie Dooley 56:29 I mean, we definitely haven't changed a lot in the last 1000 years, like our how our brains are made, right? Like we haven't changed at all, which is kind of scary. But the Greek religion was focused much more on practices and rituals than beliefs. So if you could walk the walk, nobody really cared much. If you believed in it, there was none of this come to Christ moment. Right? Born Again, Christian stuff. These are just, this is just what you do. It's your how you brush your teeth, you give a sacrifice to your God, it's what you do to get through your day.
Preston Meyer 57:06 Yeah, there were altars and temples erected both in the home, and larger temples like the Parthenon. And you were meant to leave offerings to the god or goddess of your choice. If you are traveling abroad, it was the correct thing to do to make an offering to the God of the place you were visiting. And in a polytheistic system, where you recognize that there are more gods and the one you worship, that's not even weird. No, you just do it. Which is why people were so pissed off at the Christians who refuse to do it.
Katie Dooley 57:41 It's also an we'll get more into this in our episode, wrap up in a couple months, but it's also outside, but that's one of the reasons that it died out because they were happy to accept on their end another guy. Okay. But that obviously wasn't reciprocated. So it's really easy for them to start believing in an Abrahamic God. And but then also very easy to, for them for Christians to start stripping them of their other
Preston Meyer 58:08 gods. Yeah, it's a little messy.
Katie Dooley 58:13 So this is just kind of classic worship stuff. You leave a sacrifice for your God, they'll do something for you in return. Sacrifices libation was very popular. So you pour wine, or going out for the homies or one out for the homies, one for you, one for me raise the class. We're recording this on the day of Betty White's death
Preston Meyer 58:32 ban. I will raise I was very disappointed to read that this morning.
Katie Dooley 58:35 Yep. So she'll get a libation tonight. Exactly that honey and milk. Also commonly Batian. It can be a separate sacrifice could be something small, like you said, a portion of your dinnertime meal to Hestia. Or it can be something large, like a cow or a person.
Preston Meyer 58:51 Yeah, human sacrifice was never common in Greece. There are a few old writers who talk about it as a thing that was more common anciently like before the time of the old old writers that we're reading now. And even then it's starting to look like that's probably not the case read a
Katie Dooley 59:16 little bit about scapegoats was mean, which is a term we still have today. Yeah, that they'd have some sort of outsider and they'd like put all this bad juju on them, and then they would sacrifice them or stone them to death. But again, I even in my readings, it didn't sound like it was as common as some people would think. Yeah. heathens don't sacrifice humans nearly as much do you think we do, right? We definitely do, but not nearly as much.
Preston Meyer 59:48 I feel pretty confident that a lot of the throwing folks into volcanoes was probably more capital punishment than sacrifice. Do you Oh,
Katie Dooley 1:00:00 well I just can't. Like I can't I can't see it because we have examples like North Korea, were scaring someone into compliance.
Preston Meyer 1:00:08 I mean works.
Katie Dooley 1:00:11 But the origin of religion was to organize a society that can function so if you have people living in fear that they're going to be the next scapegoat, my work but I'm actually saying it might not like long term it's not it's not constructing exactly so sure the occasional Why not but it's not nearly as we should look as taxing because that because that's a big belief without texting because that they in my hands they would be head and play soccer with your skull. I don't know if that's on our list. But that's when that also gets a big throwing virgins into volcanoes wrap
Preston Meyer 1:00:50 a few like using a skull for their sports would actually have made life so much easier. Because they're playing with those really heavy medicine balls, right? Like a scholar so much lighter. That would have been actually okay.
Katie Dooley 1:01:06 I think I we're we're digressing a bit but the especially the Central American religions, I bet a lot of that is just pure racism.
Preston Meyer 1:01:17 Oh, there was definitely a lot of
Katie Dooley 1:01:21 talk about voodoo being this big. It's not a scary religion. It's just people villainize it because they're anti black. So I bet if we dug into the Central American religions,
Preston Meyer 1:01:33 they're not Christian. So they're terrible. Baby. Yeah, yay, for all of the things. There's so much wrong with the way people talk about other people historically, right.
Katie Dooley 1:01:49 Back to the Greek stuff. Sin is not a thing, particularly really, it's not. And if you read about Pompeii, or Herculaneum, there were two cities. And I know Pompeii wasn't I think it's Herculaneum. They were just like the Las Vegas so their time Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. So morals in ancient Greece. I wouldn't say they're bad. They were just really loved. hedonistic, let's call it hedonism
Preston Meyer 1:02:17 was definitely more or less the way things were operated. There was kind of a universal law of moderation. But that's kind of it there were there were some places where failure to be moderate was actually punished, but not really a lot in most places. If you
Katie Dooley 1:02:43 I'm pretty sure Turkey millennium. I'm pretty sure if you go Herculaneum, there's like, runes with dicks.
Preston Meyer 1:02:48 I mean, that's pretty much humans everywhere.
Katie Dooley 1:02:52 Everywhere through all time, they do ancient decks on the wall.
Preston Meyer 1:02:56 Once we got civilized enough to not be worried about our survival from week to week, we predict something. Yeah, it's, I don't know why.
Katie Dooley 1:03:09 I definitely have a dick. But on my fridge now, thanks to Preston. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 1:03:18 Because we talked about it. One thing that I think is really nifty though, okay. One thing I think is really nifty, is that there is one I want to call it the deadly sin from this should be a familiar idea in the English speaking world, is hubris. This is more than just the sin of pride. This is the extreme height of pride. This is what brought Icarus to fly too close to the Sun kind of level of pride. And that's the only reason that Gods would smack down people other than for their own entertainment, which was also a real life problem. But yeah, hubris, big, bad thing.
Katie Dooley 1:04:01 Basically, they don't want you thinking you're on par with them. Right?
Preston Meyer 1:04:04 Gods will occasionally elevate people, especially heroes, but for you to say, I'm like the gods bad time is coming your way.
Katie Dooley 1:04:17 Zeus is gonna turn into a goose and
Preston Meyer 1:04:20 have his way make his way up inside you.
Katie Dooley 1:04:25 Which is written facts. There are stories.
Preston Meyer 1:04:28 Yeah, there's it's a historical start literary detail. Yeah, what a mess, right. A few of the gods especially Hara and Demeter are associated with the poppy. And we already talked about how Dionysus is really into the poppy. There's no shortage of scholars who are very confident that of opium was very popular. Each of the gods had things that they would bless people for doing some of these acts might offend another god, though, there is no unity among the gods of Olympus, or of all of the gods of the Greeks. And that's just kind of the deal. As I mentioned before, the the greatest tradition of Greece is storytelling. And I mean, this kind of a big deal around the world. And the Greeks have a story for everything. Spiders are awful. There's a story for that. They exist because of a curse put on a girl who would weave better than the goddess of weaving. So bam, now you're a spider. Now we have spiders. Wow. Yeah, I like the Pleiades look real pretty in the night sky. There's a story for that. They're the children of the Titan Atlas and the nymph planning story suite. It's kind of nifty. And there's stories for literally everything in the world. And what's
Katie Dooley 1:06:00 their story for Canadians?
Preston Meyer 1:06:04 Oh, that's easy. History took care of that. I'm pretty sure that it's not in their elementary school curriculum. Okay. But history takes care of that.
Katie Dooley 1:06:17 I just want to hear the ancient Greek story you said for everything. I'm just being sassy. Get your like.
Preston Meyer 1:06:28 Clearly wasn't that good? Canada isn't ancient. So there's no ancient Greek story for Canada?
Katie Dooley 1:06:37 Do you want to do the Hellenic afterlife? Do I want to do the Hellenic afterlife? Of course. So generally, there's a single place for dead spirits. In the Greek tradition, unlike in the Abrahamic faiths, where you go up or down, and this is underground, which makes perfect sense because we, for the most part barrier did. Eventually a few cults start exploring the reality that when men die, they are not equal in virtue. So the truly awful you segregate to the darkest corners of the realm of Hades called Tartarus. Men of greater virtue were said to live the noble life in the fields of Elysium, especially those who were a family of gods and heroes.
Preston Meyer 1:07:19 Makes sense, I guess, pretty easy to get on board with
Katie Dooley 1:07:24 the aisles of the blessed were conceptually identical to Elysium. And so they had quickly become conflated. Those islands are to the far west of Europe, so potentially the America Yeah, we're
Preston Meyer 1:07:36 living in heaven. Canada is now recovered.
Katie Dooley 1:07:43 Descriptions of legally seen fields vary with every classic author, but it's traditionally admitted that each resident might see differently as they might lead to different lives they're doing as they please. I feel like the leasing fields were mentioning Gladiator. Absolutely, they were. So I watched gladiator when I was foreign to you and watch Gladiator. And it disturbed me because it was so gory, and I've never watched it.
Preston Meyer 1:08:05 Yeah, you're gonna want to go back
Katie Dooley 1:08:09 and go back. It's really I remember being very gory. There was Tico, in particular, to like this day, and I saw it, probably 20 years ago. So it's
Preston Meyer 1:08:21 a classic, but it's not required for being a cultured human being. Back, sorry,
Katie Dooley 1:08:27 back to the Hellenic afterlife. Usually, the talk of the dead was about embodied spirits. But there are a few stories that all heroes have been taken to their immortal home in their flesh suits.
Preston Meyer 1:08:41 It sounds alright,
Katie Dooley 1:08:43 I know I can keep up my flesh suit.
Preston Meyer 1:08:45 Yeah, there's not a lot of discussion of physical resurrection in Greek literature classically. But there are a few that actually talked about reincarnation as well, though, that's not actually a popular theory back then. But it was a thing that some classic Greek writers were talking about,
Katie Dooley 1:09:05 well, they better hold on to their hats because they're about to get a resurrection story that's gonna blow their minds right.
Preston Meyer 1:09:14 And ruin their religion and
Katie Dooley 1:09:15 ruin basically everything Oh.
Preston Meyer 1:09:21 But because we're talking about a polytheistic world, all these cults that we talked about earlier, live together in the same cities. They accepted each other's practices. When they traveled. Like I said, they offer sacrifices to local gods and each other's Gods without complaining about their own God not being respected in any particular temple. The idea of one true God as is very commonly understood in the world today because monotheistic religions are the vast majority of people's faiths in the world. The all of this was completely full Until these people, it just wouldn't even wouldn't have even made sense.
Katie Dooley 1:10:04 How could one person do all of this? I don't get it, right. So we mentioned earlier that this is a series on air quotes, dead religions. But all of these religions have been revived because people of course, we could debate on how much people believe just like we talked about Jedi ism versus this is just something cool to be a part of. But there are active Hellenic revivalist groups, mostly in Greece. So the reign of Constantine the second in the fourth century is where most historians point to the sharp decline of Hellenistic paganism. Though I'm sure for centuries afterwards, you could find the odd person,
Preston Meyer 1:10:54 definitely more likely in rural areas in cities, there would have been a lot more force to hey, you're gonna be a
Katie Dooley 1:11:01 Christian and we need force. Yeah, Christian. Yeah. So basically, it died out, the Supreme Council of ethnic boy helenus was established in 1997. And they have revived these practices, they do perform sacrifice, as we, you know, food and in wine and milk, for the most part, I have not heard any cases of human sacrifice.
Preston Meyer 1:11:31 Because that's a cry. That's correct.
Katie Dooley 1:11:35 And they sing hymns to their preferred gods, an advice video that I watched, they actually had a lot of problems, because the Greek government didn't actually recognize it as a religion until just 2017. So just four years ago, five years ago, so they couldn't actually like worship properly, because all of these temples are like, tourist sites. And it's still actually a bit of a point of contention. No kidding. Because you can't just like be pouring milk on a tourist attraction. Hi, Stonehenge, the male.
Preston Meyer 1:12:14 Yeah, that might be probably
Katie Dooley 1:12:16 are like petitioning to, like, hold stuff at the Parthenon. And they're like, No, you really can't do that. But they spoke in this little vise, you can find this face, many, you know, there many documentaries, they talked to the Minister of religion, he's like, as long as you're not everyone, you can do whatever you want. But we also have to protect our historic landmark. So there is obviously freedom of religion in Greece. There are other groups around the world. But again, it's predominantly Greek. In Greece, and there's just like before, there's no central body. And many of these practices and traditions come from the study of what happened historically. There are other groups, in addition to the Supreme Council of ethnic boy helenus. That's just one of many. And one point I found really interesting in the documentary was that in smart of them is, well, on the surface, it seems nationalistic, they are very much separating themselves from right wing nationals that every country seems to have a problem with. So it's not it is not that and I just want to be clear about that. So while it is very, like Greek centric, obviously a Greek religion, it is not that it's
Preston Meyer 1:13:37 not the problem,
Katie Dooley 1:13:38 not the problem. It's people literally dressing in togas and singing songs about their favorite God, or goddess, which sounds pretty all right, right. I love a good toga, right. It's like a moo, moo, like,
Preston Meyer 1:13:53 but more flattering. Depending on your personal body type. I want to talk a little bit about you hammer ism before we close out, wrap up this demo. So you have Maurice was this fella who was basically at this way, way back, talked about how some of the gods were actually real people. And so you hammer ism is the study of mythology from a historical approach,
Katie Dooley 1:14:30 which was anthropological where you're trying to
Preston Meyer 1:14:34 almost solve it. Yeah, it's, it's kind of tricky, like, a lot of the gods we know are just personification of natural phenomena. Apollo, yeah. But some of the gods throughout history across various cultures. Some of them were people. And so the trick is figuring out which ones actually were and the tomb of Zeus on Crete. is one of those things that is kind of the backup for the argument that maybe Zeus actually was a real person that he was a Minoan and that maybe his name, or at least he is called commonly in this area volcanoes, which is kind of interesting. And honestly, I think the the whole idea of you hammer ism is fascinating. Unfortunately, there is a severe shortage of historical records to really support any of the fun hypotheses was Oosa king who deposed another king and conquered the hearts and minds of Greece, or maybe not, who knows, or maybe the story of Zeus killing Cronus is an allegory for the cult of Zeus supplanting the cult of Cronus. We don't have a cult of Cronus we don't actually have any evidence that there was a cult of Cronus. But because of the story that we have, that might be an allegorical representation of a cultural movement.
Katie Dooley 1:16:03 Well, and then we also get into I forget his name, but from hermeticism, where you're an amalgamation of like Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes Trismegistus, where you are an amalgamation of I mean, Hermes, tres, Manish this was an amalgamation of deities, but you could potentially use this as an argument for Jesus as well, or you're an amalgamation of people who were real, smushed together. So now you're fictitious, but you're based, in fact. So there's also that which I'm sure falls into this as well.
Preston Meyer 1:16:37 It's definitely connected studies. Yeah, it's all really complicated. And really interesting.
Katie Dooley 1:16:44 I mean, as an atheist, I think it's a really good explanation to how a lot of this developed or didn't think at all, this has gone way, way back to our episode on why people believe what they believe, but even just wanting to be part of something bigger, and if you can rally around someone and make them bigger and better. based in truth, maybe not that they did. That's been something that's kind of easy to rally behind. Sure. This is interesting. I feel like maybe we do a whole episode on this too.
Preston Meyer 1:17:19 I think we definitely could, we should.
Katie Dooley 1:17:23 Yeah, before we forget.
Preston Meyer 1:17:26 Well, that's more or less what we can fit in the time.
Katie Dooley 1:17:33 But as always, feel free to pop onto our social media or a discord with recommendations or suggestions for episodes. Do you want to hear more about Apollo? We'll do a whole episode on polar for you, you let us know. So that is Instagram, Facebook and discord.
Preston Meyer 1:17:50 And, and Patreon. Don't forget Patreon. We would love to get a little extra support. If we got enough support, we could put out a new episode every week. That'd be fantastic. And if subscriptions aren't really your thing, maybe we could sell you a shirt or a tote. We got so many options on Spreadshirt and so many options to just be our friend and give us money. Join a community
Katie Dooley 1:18:21 ask questions learn more. Everything's on our website. Now.
Preston Meyer 1:18:24 Man, we're getting organized and we
Katie Dooley 1:18:28 are moving on up in this world. So yeah, but your support means everything to us. By the late Middle Ages | |||
| 10 Apr 2023 | Eostre & the Bunny | 01:00:17 | |
Every spring, we celebrate the return of greenery and migratory birds, and the blooming of flowers; most animals celebrate by having lots of sex. Some of us get really religious about it. Easter is the celebration of fertility and renewed life, and every part of the secular observance reflects this. Several gods through a wide variety of traditions enjoy individual worship in this time, many of them have a name that sounds vaguely like "Easter," including Eostre, Ostara, and Ishtar. They have been asociated for millennia with fertility, and in some cases, eggs. At the same time, Christians reflect on the paschal sacrifice of Jesus the Christ, and the promise of renewed life. Under the influence of Imperial Christianity, efforts were made to associate the symbols so often seen during this holy season with Jesus and his mother. A lot of these combinations don't immediately make sense, but we'll dig up the details. The accusation that Christian Easter is ripping off the "pagan" polytheistic tradition is far from true, instead it comes from Judaism in every ancient aspect--but modern traditions have incorporated ill-fitting cultural aspects of the people who celebrate it around the world. Remembering when Easter will be two years from now is tricky, but there is a scheme to it, and the dates are predicted more than a century ahead of time. Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon after the vernal equinox (northern hemisphere). However, even among groups that stick to this scheme, there are some who don't observe the astronomical equinox, but instead rely on an ill-timed liturgy. The Springtime Lent also has a lot of tradition around it--especially around the beginning. The time for fasting is biblical, though the practices vary from one group to the next. All this and more... Support us on Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram
[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: Hi, everyone.
[00:00:13] Preston Meyer: Hi.
[00:00:14] Katie Dooley: My name's Katie.
[00:00:15] Preston Meyer: And I'm Preston,
[00:00:16] Katie Dooley: And we're the hosts of...
[00:00:18] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[00:00:21] Katie Dooley: Thought we hadn't introduced ourselves in a while,
[00:00:23] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, it's not much of an introduction. You said your name, I said mine.
[00:00:27] Katie Dooley: Is that not what an intro is?
[00:00:30] Preston Meyer: It depends on who you talk to.
[00:00:31] Katie Dooley: Okay, well,
[00:00:34] Preston Meyer: I have a degree in religious studies,
[00:00:36] Katie Dooley: And I don't.
[00:00:40] Preston Meyer: And together we make a fun show.
[00:00:44] Katie Dooley: Together we fight crime.
[00:00:46] Preston Meyer: We fight hate crimes. I mean, not in a terribly vigilante-style way, but.
[00:00:54] Katie Dooley: Maybe we could.
[00:00:55] Preston Meyer: Maybe we reduce hate crimes.
[00:00:57] Katie Dooley: I like that. Why aren't we talking about today? It's topical.
[00:01:03] Preston Meyer: Easter.
[00:01:04] Katie Dooley: Easter!
[00:01:05] Preston Meyer: And rabbits.
[00:01:06] Katie Dooley: And bunnies.
[00:01:07] Preston Meyer: And why anybody would ever combine the two?
[00:01:11] Katie Dooley: Also, bunnies and eggs. Also, weird.
[00:01:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:01:15] Katie Dooley: Weird combo.
[00:01:16] Preston Meyer: Right? That's... Who decided that rabbits lay eggs? Chicken eggs.
[00:01:24] Katie Dooley: The Germans.
[00:01:26] Preston Meyer: We get to blame a lot of things on the Germans.
[00:01:28] Katie Dooley: Yeah, they're a pretty good scapegoat.
[00:01:31] Preston Meyer: Christmas is the way it is because of the Germans. Okay, okay.
[00:01:31] Katie Dooley: Yes. This episode will take a similar format to rebranding the holidays. Our Christmas episode on the pagan origins of Christmas. We're going to talk about the pagan origins of Easter. Preston actually said before we started recording that he thinks Easter is just a pagan holiday, which is a pretty powerful statement from a Christian.
[00:01:57] Preston Meyer: We'll explore that in greater detail.
[00:02:00] Katie Dooley: That's a good starter for you. So, Easter was originally a pagan celebration of the spring equinox and has since morphed into the most important holiday in the Christian calendar.
[00:02:14] Preston Meyer: I don't know if morph is the right word, but here we are. It is. It is the thing. It is both of those things.
[00:02:20] Katie Dooley: What verb would you use?
[00:02:22] Preston Meyer: I don't know. Syncretism feels close, but obviously that's not technically a verb. Syncretized would be the verb form. But that's not really exactly it either. It's a little bit. You'll see what I mean.
[00:02:41] Katie Dooley: All right. Well.
[00:02:42] Preston Meyer: So, there are a lot of spring traditions that celebrate rebirth after a long, dark, cold winter. When we start to see plants and animals emerging from their slumber. Everything turns green. And the rabbits, especially more than everything else, are visibly getting busy.
[00:02:58] Katie Dooley: Huh huh huh huh huh huh huh. I imagine that's the same rabbits making just small and adorable and fast.
[00:03:05] Preston Meyer: Rabbits are fast. Yeah. It's it's a sight. Had rabbits for a little while when I was a teenager.
[00:03:16] Katie Dooley: Nice. I have some friends that own rabbits. Yeah, yeah. This idea of rebirth will eventually be tied into the resurrection of Jesus.
[00:03:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it seems like it should be a natural sort of transition, and yet it really never ended up being any reasonable, sensible transition. We just still have the old tradition and the new one.
[00:03:25] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it doesn't blend quite as nicely as Christmas did.
[00:03:45] Preston Meyer: No, not at all. There was there was so much about Christmas that it's like, well, okay, let's look at the symbol. What can this symbol mean to Christians? Cool. Let's bank on that. They did try with Easter. Well, let's take a look.
[00:04:06] Katie Dooley: All right, so pagan things that are associated with Easter. Easter starts with Eostre, the Germanic goddess of the dawn or the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility and spring. This is all happening in the same part of the world, with different names and stuff.
[00:04:24] Preston Meyer: I mean to say the Anglo-Saxons are fully separate from the Germanic peoples is not quite right.
[00:04:30] Katie Dooley: No, it's not but I did see both.
[00:04:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah, as they evolved separately, their theology changed, their cultural meanings changed but...
[00:04:40] Katie Dooley: It's like Roman, Roman and Greek gods.
[00:04:43] Preston Meyer: Pretty much.
[00:04:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Records of Eostre are spotty at best to the point where people thought she was made up by Saint Bede.
[00:04:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Good old Bede.
[00:04:56] Katie Dooley: Uh, Bede Beedee, Bidet
[00:04:56] Preston Meyer: He wrote a lot. Saint Bidet that's gonna stick. He was an English fella. So, the way we say it in English is pretty authoritative, but bidet is now my favorite way to say that name.
[00:04:56] Katie Dooley: For our listeners, it's spelled B-E-D-E. Yeah. So, I guess Bede is appropriate.
[00:05:22] Preston Meyer: Bede is the way.
[00:05:24] Katie Dooley: Saint Bidet. So, most people thought she was made up by Saint Bede, BD, BD.
[00:05:32] Preston Meyer: It's kind of a weird accusation that a Christian would just make up foreign gods. But yeah, you're right.
[00:05:43] Katie Dooley: I mean, yeah, there's even finding where people actually found out about her is it's not great. But we do have relics from that range from the fifth, first to the fifth century, in this part of the world that have inscriptions that would let us believe that she was a worshiped goddess.
[00:06:04] Preston Meyer: So, Saint Bede wasn't making it up.
[00:06:08] Katie Dooley: Other than that, we have Deutsche mythology by Jacob Grimm. Yes, of the Brothers Grimm, where Eostre is connected with the hare as her sacred animal.
[00:06:21] Preston Meyer: So, we've got a Oster bunny.
[00:06:23] Katie Dooley: Or Osterhase! It's a Osterhase
[00:06:23] Preston Meyer: Right, because it's a hare, not a bunny.
[00:06:30] Katie Dooley: It's hare, not a bunny and it lays eggs, but we'll get to that.
[00:06:36] Preston Meyer: Yes, a lot of people connect Ishtar to Easter. The name similarity makes it seem like, oh, of course! It's unfortunately not to be. A lot of people have proposed it, and a lot of people have spent a lot of time arguing against this idea.
[00:06:54] Katie Dooley: Also, a lot of time you'll see memes on this. It's not true. That's where most of this.
[00:07:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. They've been memeing it really hard. Yeah. Mostly it comes from a poor argument by Alexander Hislop, a Protestant minister who originally made the argument because they sound the same. It is just that simple. I guess he just didn't like Easter? We'll talk later about more Christians that pretty much feel the same way.
[00:07:22] Katie Dooley: And he didn't have a good understanding of ancient Sumerian religion either.
[00:07:26] Preston Meyer: To be fair, most of us don't know.
[00:07:29] Katie Dooley: That's true. I definitely do not. Ishtar was a fertility goddess that, like, kind of gave her some...
[00:07:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's not like something wildly separate. But to say that it's connected isn't entirely fair.
[00:07:44] Katie Dooley: Etymologically, it's not connected at all.
[00:07:49] Preston Meyer: Pretty much. Yeah, it starts from a different part of the world from where we get the word Easter. There could be a really distant etymological connection, just like the words, the way they're built. But culturally, we're talking about two different ideas.
[00:08:07] Katie Dooley: But the idea of eggs are actually associated with Ishtar. So, I mean, maybe we get the Easter egg tradition from her, but again, she's a fertility goddess and eggs and fertility are.
[00:08:21] Preston Meyer: Well, Christianity was born in the Fertile Crescent near Mesopotamia, where these gods were talked about. And so, the whole eggs thing, it could just be that simple of an adoption.
[00:08:35] Katie Dooley: So, this idea of eggs and Ishtar actually comes from ancient Babylonians and their fertility goddess Astarte. So again, this is, like we mentioned earlier, kind of the Greek and Roman thing where we have.
[00:08:50] Preston Meyer: Neighbors that talk.
[00:08:51] Katie Dooley: You know, we have. I was going to say Thor and Zeus, but it's not the... its...
[00:08:57] Preston Meyer: So, Thor and Zeus are you know, God's the same thing from very different cultures.
[00:09:03] Katie Dooley: The Greek and Roman would be Jupiter and Zeus. So, Astarte, Ishtar to two sides of the same coin.
[00:09:12] Preston Meyer: Pretty much.
[00:09:13] Katie Dooley: And her story was that she actually hatched from an egg that fell from heaven into the Euphrates.
[00:09:19] Preston Meyer: I mean, if you're gonna be ripping through our atmosphere, protective dome is a great way to come.
[00:09:24] Katie Dooley: Maybe she's an alien.
[00:09:27] Preston Meyer: Could be.
[00:09:27] Katie Dooley: That'd be a cool way... yeah!
[00:09:30] Preston Meyer: I mean, isn't that the whole premise of the entire Stargate series? All the foreign gods are just aliens.
[00:09:38] Katie Dooley: Oh, I don't know anything about Stargate.
[00:09:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they come in with great power to travel the stars, and so obviously they must be worshiped as Gods. When actually, they're just long-lived aliens. Yeah. Very often or almost always on parasites. I'm trying to remember. It's been a while since I watched Stargate. I might need to get back on that.
[00:10:01] Katie Dooley: There are a few ideas behind why eggs are such a highlight of this holiday. Not just Astarte/Ishtar. Eggs were actually prohibited during the Lenten season for your fasting, so Easter to get an egg and your Easter basket was a was a treat. Sure, there's also the idea that a long time ago, we didn't have industrial egg production where.
[00:10:27] Preston Meyer: They're pretty easy to come by.
[00:10:28] Katie Dooley: Now they're pretty easy to come by. So, eggs would be scarce up until the spring season. So, ta da! Eggs, Easter, spring.
[00:10:35] Preston Meyer: Celebrating the renewal of life.
[00:10:37] Katie Dooley: Renewal of life.
[00:10:38] Preston Meyer: You know, skipping over the obvious thing of here's new baby, new life, new spring. It's kind of cool. Easter eggs were decorated. Historically, for a long time, they've been dyed. Christians have been doing it since at least the 13th century. The egg has been used to symbolize the resurrection. In Orthodox traditions, they may paint one or all of their eggs red specifically to represent the blood of Jesus. Differing traditions thereof one red one. All the rest are white. As you know, this is the blood that's going to wash over, clean the rest and the others is the blood of Christ covers everything. Not that they're competing ideas, but they are different manifestations of that idea.
[00:11:24] Katie Dooley: Oh, and I have even more information for you on that.
[00:11:26] Preston Meyer: Tell me more.
[00:11:28] Katie Dooley: So, my mom was raised Ukrainian Orthodox.
[00:11:30] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Pysankys are real work.
[00:11:33] Katie Dooley: Pysanka is huge work, and she was very good at it and so was my Baba. So, Katie story time. Buckle up. My baba had five kids, three daughters. My mom is the youngest of all kids and the youngest of the daughters. Yes, I know, the first two daughters learned how to make pierogies, but not pysanka. And then my mom learned how to make pysanka, but not pierogies. So, all of them are only like, half decent Ukrainian wives. And Baba knew how to do it all because she was amazing.
[00:12:06] Preston Meyer: Is that why your mom couldn't get a Ukrainian husband?
[00:12:10] Katie Dooley: Probably. Probably.
[00:12:13] Preston Meyer: Or came to a market where there was more options?
[00:12:16] Katie Dooley: Probably that. Uh. So, I have all of my Baba's egg books, though, and I've done it. I've never got as good as my mom or my baba, but so there is the red egg, but there's also a whole bunch of others that, if you're a good Ukrainian woman, will be in your Easter basket, representing, I think, different parts of the passion.
[00:12:36] Preston Meyer: So, all kinds of patterns.
[00:12:37] Katie Dooley: All kinds of patterns.
[00:12:39] Preston Meyer: It's pretty intense stuff. We'll have some really cool pictures in our Discord.
[00:12:42] Katie Dooley: I'll dig up the books and put them in Discord. And then you give eggs to bless people or to receive blessings. So, for example, the year Gito died Baba mean a whole bunch of eggs and would give them to people and say would say, say a prayer for Gito this year.
[00:12:59] Preston Meyer: Nice.
[00:13:00] Katie Dooley: So, and there's a myth that as long as Easter eggs are made, that good will prevail.
[00:13:07] Preston Meyer: I like it.
[00:13:09] Katie Dooley: It's kind of cute. It's about as religious as I get.
[00:13:13] Preston Meyer: Fair enough. The Catholic Church did officially adopt the Easter egg as a real symbol of the resurrection of Jesus in 1610, the year before the King James Bible was published.
[00:13:26] Katie Dooley: Oh, eggs have been around longer than the Bible. That's what I'm hearing. I mean, I guess, yeah.
[00:13:33] Preston Meyer: Longer than the authorized Bible of the Church of England.
[00:13:38] Katie Dooley: Which came first, Preston? The chicken or the Bible?
[00:13:43] Preston Meyer: No. Easy. The chicken. Of course, these eggs are laid by bunnies. So, the chicken question isn't even important? Because there's nothing more fertile than a bunny. That's probably not true, but it's a very important symbol all around the world,
[00:14:07] Katie Dooley: I think mice might be a little more prolific. But it's definitely a rodent. And definitely small rodents can just crank them out.
[00:14:15] Preston Meyer: Rabbits and hares are not rodents.
[00:14:18] Katie Dooley: I don't know where my phone is. Uh, are rabbits rodents?
[00:14:24] Preston Meyer: Pulling up the power of Google.
[00:14:26] Katie Dooley: Huh!
[00:14:29] Preston Meyer: They are close relatives to rodents, but they are not.
[00:14:32] Katie Dooley: Rodentia is a really weird word.
[00:14:34] Preston Meyer: It's the Latin rodent.
[00:14:35] Katie Dooley: Sounds like something oral. Rodentia does not include rabbits. Rabbits differ from rodents in having an extra pair of incisors and in other skeletal features. Moles and hedgehogs are also not rodents. I just learned something new. Huh! Sorry carry on.
[00:14:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So, rabbits and hares are lagomorphs. Which, if you're really into biology, is a thing you know about. And if you're not, Google it. But yeah, they're not rodents, but they're nifty. They breed crazy fast. They can have babies every month. And it's not just one at a time.
[00:15:14] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Their gestational period is like 30 days.
[00:15:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's crazy. So, they became associated with the festival of Eostre because of fertility. That's her thing, so it just seems natural.
[00:15:31] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Having that many babies is supernatural. Pew pew pew pew pew. Pew pew pew.
[00:15:38] Preston Meyer: And of course, there was a lady who gave birth to baby rabbits.
[00:15:42] Katie Dooley: Oh, right. I remember hearing about that!
[00:15:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, it was all a sham.
[00:15:46] Katie Dooley: Yeah, she literally put rabbits up her vagina, Those poor things.
[00:15:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And then squirt them back out again in front of an audience, yeah.
[00:15:54] Katie Dooley: Poor rabbits.
[00:15:55] Preston Meyer: Right? There's a lot of hygiene issues I have with this. In addition to, all of the other things.
[00:16:03] Katie Dooley: Animal cruelty.
[00:16:04] Preston Meyer: I just... Like if you're not worried about the feelings of animals and animal cruelty, how do you get to the point where you're also just comfortable doing that? Yeah.
[00:16:18] Katie Dooley: Let's go back to the Easter Bunny.
[00:16:20] Preston Meyer: So, before we get to that, okay, I want to say that everything we've talked about so far is the Easter that we know and is entirely based on other non-Christian celebrations. It's what we call the pagan stuff, except for the Easter Bunny, which you'd think just is straight up just a continuation of this idea of bunnies and eggs. But there's more. And it's just so ridiculous. The Easter Bunny was invented like the in-house Christmas tree by German Lutherans about 400 years ago.
[00:16:56] Katie Dooley: Were they just bored about 400 years ago?
[00:16:59] Preston Meyer: They had to distinguish themselves from the Catholics, I guess. So, this is a little while after the time of Martin Luther. And they just really got onto this idea of the Easter Hare, because culture doesn't die when you change national religions. Everything that is the pagan Easter stayed with the northern Germanic people, the Anglo-Saxons. Everything it's just, was still around. So, they decided, well, we've got Sinterklaas and he comes through in the winter. And of course, we can't forget Krampus, who also, in addition to blessing the good children, beats the bad ones, so Osterhase. The Easter Hare was basically springtime Santa Claus, judging children and offering colored eggs and toys to the homes of the good children while they were sleeping.
[00:17:51] Katie Dooley: I guess. Yeah, the Easter Bunny shows up when you are asleep.
[00:17:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah, because you wake up and the eggs are there.
[00:17:55] Katie Dooley: My parents just give me a basket now. I forgot about that.
[00:17:56] Preston Meyer: That was most of my Easter's with one-half of my family.
[00:18:02] Katie Dooley: We used to have to hunt. Then I moved out. And they're like, here's a basket of candy and I say thank you.
[00:18:09] Preston Meyer: Right. I have done a few Easter egg hunts. Um, some of my siblings will remember that we found chocolate eggs months after Easter.
[00:18:20] Katie Dooley: Oh, we have to. We have I there's a picture frame in my kitchen and it was like months later and I was like, sitting at breakfast and I was like, huh?
[00:18:31] Preston Meyer: So, we used to have this, um, brass unicorn in our living room next to the fireplace.
[00:18:38] Katie Dooley: That sounds amazing.
[00:18:39] Preston Meyer: It was cool. It was. It was big. It would like, take up my whole lap. It adds an adult today. It felt bigger when I was a kid. And at some point, it stopped having a horn. But there was this little divot in the head. And my either my dad or my stepmom put a little gold-wrapped egg on his forehead, and we did not see it for a long time. We looked everywhere. All around it. Parents were laughing like it's right in front of you. Well, it took forever.
[00:19:09] Katie Dooley: I believe it.
[00:19:11] Preston Meyer: So, Easter egg hunts. Definitely a part of our history. I don't know how this was the point where I got sidetracked from.
[00:19:17] Katie Dooley: It's fine. It was a good story. I told my family Easter story. Now you can tell yours.
[00:19:21] Preston Meyer: So yeah, Easter Bunny would come drop off colored eggs while the kids were asleep. It's kind of interesting, hares were often incorporated into Christian art of the medieval period. I think it's a little bit weird, but I guess a lot of people think it's perfectly normal. Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, and a whole bunch of other of the really big thinkers, kind of the guys who pushed science to start as we know it today. They were convinced that hares were hermaphroditic, just as a species. This is the way they are. This is really not typical for any mammal.
[00:19:58] Katie Dooley: I want to say something inappropriate, but I'm not. I'm not going to.
[00:20:02] Preston Meyer: Okay, and because self-fertilization doesn't take away your virginity. The hares get to be associated with Mary and so they just are often depicted in art with Mary and baby Jesus.
[00:20:18] Katie Dooley: Did you just call Mary a hermaphrodite? I think you did.
[00:20:22] Preston Meyer: There are a lot of people who think that maybe she was. And if you're leaning really hard onto some sort of scientific explanation for a virgin birth. This does it. I guess, it's tricky, but some people are satisfied with this argument, and we're not here to poop on anybody's faith.
[00:20:49] Katie Dooley: Have you listened to some of our episodes? Because we definitely have.
[00:20:52] Preston Meyer: We poop on scam artists. It's a little bit different.
[00:20:58] Katie Dooley: And Christian nationalist.
[00:21:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That's not pooping on their face. That's pooping on...
[00:21:03] Katie Dooley: Them, as people.
[00:21:11] Preston Meyer: Anyway, the Easter bunny. Is a Christian innovation. Out of all of this preexisting non-Christian cultural phenomenon. But within Christianity, it's kind of weird.
[00:21:27] Katie Dooley: It is weird. Now moving on to more religious or Christian things. I guess pagan is a religion.
[00:21:34] Preston Meyer: Sure is. Well, okay, kind of. It's religious.
[00:21:39] Katie Dooley: We've talked about this before. We're not going to dive in.
[00:21:42] Preston Meyer: Pagan is not a religion, but it is a religious category.
[00:21:47] Katie Dooley: The date of Easter is controversial.
[00:21:51] Preston Meyer: I have to Google it every year.
[00:21:53] Katie Dooley: I know how it's calculated, but that doesn't mean I know when it is. But I'll get into that. So, like with Christmas, Christianity grew in popularity and Emperor Constantine eventually converted to Christianity. And they knew they wouldn't be able to stop these pagan celebrations outright, so they just kind of absorbed them and created Easter.
[00:22:17] Preston Meyer: Kind of I mean, a lot of this is kind of.
[00:22:23] Katie Dooley: Easter's date is not only confusing, like Preston said, but controversial.
[00:22:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it took a lot of arguing. And I mean, we still have disagreements today on when and how we should calculate the date of Easter. It's kind of interesting.
[00:22:41] Katie Dooley: The first debate was whether Easter should always be on a Sunday or on the 14th of Nisan. Am I saying that right?
[00:22:49] Preston Meyer: That's a fair enough pronunciation in English.
[00:22:50] Katie Dooley: So, this is the first day in the Jewish lunar calendar where the Paschal lamb is slaughtered for Passover.
[00:22:59] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's a lot of people anciently, modernly, who really don't like the idea of Passover being the same day that we celebrate Easter. I don't know why that is.
[00:23:12] Katie Dooley: I don't know enough about Passover. That will have to be this time next year.
[00:23:16] Preston Meyer: We'll talk about it a little bit more. Okay. But there's a lot of people who think that's actually a really nice idea, very convenient and easy to track on a calendar that doesn't have the same fluctuations that we're currently experiencing with calculating Easter.
[00:23:33] Katie Dooley: So, Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This was determined at the Council of Nicaea. And Easter can therefore then range between March 22nd and April 25th in any given year.
[00:23:53] Preston Meyer: I don't see the problem. If you observe the equinox and look up to notice the full moon. Easy.
[00:24:01] Preston Meyer: It's just like such a month. It's the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. It's a lot like a lot of boxes you got to check before...
[00:24:11] Preston Meyer: The beauty of the message of the soldiers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!
[00:24:18] Katie Dooley: Wow. This is the first time you've sang Broadway on our podcast and I'm quite pleased. So, the controversies, the dispute was how the first full moon after the spring equinox was determined. So, people agreed.
[00:24:41] Preston Meyer: Do you just not look up and see?
[00:24:43] Katie Dooley: I don't know, um, but there's some days where it's like gray area.
[00:24:47] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:24:49] Katie Dooley: Anyway.
[00:24:49] Preston Meyer: But if you're looking at like the first Sunday.
[00:24:51] Katie Dooley: I guess, yeah.
[00:24:52] Preston Meyer: Is it close enough or are we going to put it off a week? It's close enough.
[00:24:56] Katie Dooley: So, I, I just I guess people way back then had trouble calculating it, but it was more or less solved by eighth century. Yeah.
[00:25:02] Preston Meyer: We've been doing it for a while.
[00:25:04] Preston Meyer: Yeah, so people just like didn't like how it was calculated. But the Council of Nicaea was in the three hundreds, I believe.
[00:25:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah, 325.
[00:25:11] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So, we agreed since then that it was the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the spring equinox, but it was just how it was calculated. People didn't like how it was being calculated with the date to add extra layers of confusion. The Julian um, calendar, which is held by Eastern Orthodox churches, have it later, just like Christmas.
[00:25:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but so to make it more confusing. Julian, Christmas is two weeks after Gregorian Christmas. But Julian Easter is almost always one week after Gregorian Easter.
[00:25:47] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it's always later. And you're right, it's about a week.
[00:25:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and that's because they still follow the same scheme, but their calendar makes it funky.
[00:25:57] Katie Dooley: Because the spring equinox and the moon doesn't change.
[00:26:00] Preston Meyer: You see, you'd think so. But liturgically speaking, there is an official liturgical equinox day that is not necessarily matched with the astronomical equinox. Yeah, it's frustrating.
[00:26:13] Katie Dooley: And confusing. And controversial.
[00:26:16] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:26:17] Katie Dooley: How many times can I say controversial in this episode?
[00:26:22] Preston Meyer: Uh, we've talked about this a couple of times. We probably do need to have an episode about calendars. I think people listen.
[00:26:28] Katie Dooley: Maybe it's a bonus episode because it's not actually religious, but we talk about it a lot.
[00:26:33] Preston Meyer: That's fair.
[00:26:34] Katie Dooley: If you're listening, drop a line in our discord or on our social media if you want an episode on calendars, if you want a bonus episode on calendars. Let us know.
[00:26:43] Preston Meyer: We'll get it figured out.
[00:26:47] Katie Dooley: So, what does Easter look like as a Christian holiday if not bunnies and eggs?
[00:26:51] Preston Meyer: Well, that depends a lot on the various denominations. Most non-imperial Protestant traditions really minimize what Easter is. Just have the Good Friday/Easter Sunday thing. Recognize the death, recognize the resurrection, celebrate that he suffered for sins and that's what Easter is. That is the heart of Easter. And then it gets complicated because we find ways to celebrate things in fancy, fancy ways.
[00:27:21] Katie Dooley: Yes. So, the Eastertide season can, if you wanted to be celebrated for up to three months.
[00:27:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The liturgical churches, the imperial tradition churches, they've got a whole big thing. The first thing that I am able to find on regular religious parareligious calendars is Fat Thursday a full week almost before Ash Wednesday, which I'll get into a little bit later.
[00:27:52] Katie Dooley: We're going to go chronologically.
[00:27:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's observed in Poland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and places where people who have left those countries have emigrated to. In Syria, they call it Drunkard's Thursday. Basically, it's a great time to really dig in and celebrate that. You can eat before this month-long, fast.
[00:28:17] Katie Dooley: And it's fattening yourself up for a hibernation.
[00:28:20] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's basically the same thing with, uh, Lundi Gras and Mardi Gras.
[00:28:25] Katie Dooley: Which literally translates to Fat Monday and Fat Tuesday.
[00:28:28] Preston Meyer: Exactly. Um, some places you'll hear it called Shrove Monday and Shrove Tuesday and basically, yeah, continuation the very last days before you have to swear off all the things you love for lent.
[00:28:42] Katie Dooley: And I mean, I think most people are familiar with the New Orleans celebration of Mardi Gras as the biggest, most recognizable in the world. But yeah, you're supposed to just be bad and then you're supposed to be really good.
[00:28:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah, in England, they actually have a couple of very precise traditions. There's Collopy Monday. It's a day for bacon because you don't get bacon during lent.
[00:29:07] Katie Dooley: I feel like you would like Collopy Monday.
[00:29:10] Preston Meyer: I have had a Collopy Monday.
[00:29:12] Katie Dooley: I know you have. I know you have.
[00:29:17] Preston Meyer: Uh, that was not a great choice. But eh?
[00:29:23] Katie Dooley: Would you do it again?
[00:29:24] Preston Meyer: Long term? Would I do it again? Probably not. It may. Well, okay. I can't say it's contributed to specific health issues, but it might in the future.
[00:29:35] Katie Dooley: So, I'll remind me you were, like, gifted a bunch of bacon and needed to be cooked and eaten immediately.
[00:29:41] Preston Meyer: Oh, almost. Yeah. I waited till what was basically the end of the window before really committing to a thing, and it came time where I just didn't have anybody to come help me eat that bacon.
[00:29:54] Katie Dooley: I'm proud of. You.
[00:29:55] Preston Meyer: It was great. I, I believe it. And in East Cornwall this is like really localized. Uh, they do Peasen Monday where it's just pea soup.
[00:30:08] Katie Dooley: I could give up pea soup for lent, no problem. It's good, but it's not great.
[00:30:15] Preston Meyer: Uh, my first stepdad. Liked pea soup, and the whole house just smelled terrible when he made it. Oh, that's in the past. I will never be nearby when somebody makes pea soup again. If I can help it. I don't know why anybody would make pea soup today.
[00:30:39] Katie Dooley: Pea soup is not bad, but it's not like, again, I wouldn't gorge myself and then be upset I didn't have it for 40 days. My mom makes a really good bacon pea soup. Okay, bacon pea soup.
[00:30:50] Preston Meyer: I mean, this. I could give it another shot. It's been a while. It does have negative memories attached, but maybe I can get over that.
[00:30:59] Katie Dooley: Okay. I'm just saying it's a thing people eat, and that's fine, but not so much that you need a whole day.
[00:31:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I'm willing to recognize that. Sometimes you need to try a thing a second time from a second cook and sometimes admit that, yeah, you were right. It was bad the first time, but it's the chef's fault.
[00:31:24] Katie Dooley: Following Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday is Ash Wednesday. This is the first day of Lent, and you'll often see folks with marks of crosses on their foreheads done in ashes. These ashes are collected from palm leaves burned from Palm Sunday the previous year. I also I couldn't find any record of this, but I remember I didn't grow up religious, but I grew up Irish dancing, and there's a lot of Catholics in Irish dance. And so, I remember going to dance class on Ash Wednesday and everyone would have crosses on their forehead and then they sweat them off. But I remember one of the dancers and again, this is like decades ago, telling me that when you're not supposed to like, wipe it off when it comes off, then you have been forgiven of your sins.
[00:32:14] Preston Meyer: That feels weird,
[00:32:16] Katie Dooley: But I didn't see any record of it. But I distinctly remember that conversation because I went looking for it, so I don't know.
[00:32:23] Preston Meyer: It feels like a thing that people would say, I don't know. It's also not a thing I've heard before.
[00:32:29] Katie Dooley: If you're Catholic and listening, let me know.
[00:32:32] Preston Meyer: Every year, without fail, I am always a little surprised to see somebody with a smudge on their forehead. I always lose track of the fact that it's Ash Wednesday that day, and then you see people with a mess on their forehead and I was going to a Catholic university a couple years ago. Right. So, I was surrounded by people with this ash cross on their forehead. And there was even one year where I had completely forgotten that Ash Wednesday was a thing at all. And like, what's going on? And then slowly, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is a thing. Because, you know, didn't grow up doing the Catholic thing. I went to Catholic school for a couple of years as a kid, but the Ash cross isn't usually done to elementary school kids.
[00:33:21] Katie Dooley: I was going to say I didn't know about it until, well, then I went to secular school. I went to public school. Uh, yeah. I didn't know about it until I was dancing with kids who went to Catholic school at all. I mean, I still, I mean, I guess I work from home, but I still don't see it that often out in public, except for, like I said, the handful of times dance class would fall on a Wednesday.
[00:33:42] Preston Meyer: Well, there's a very good chance you're going to see it more in public in coming years. There's this growing movement of taking the priests out of their parishes. I don't know why that was a hard thing to remember and the priests leave and don't only do this ash forehead thing in church, they do it in town squares, transit stations. They're doing it all over the place. They're calling it Ashes to Go.
[00:34:14] Katie Dooley: I saw something about that.
[00:34:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And it's getting more and more popular because everyone's so rushed to get everything done that it sure would be handy if I could get my ash cross while you wait for the train. It's convenient.
[00:34:29] Katie Dooley: I guess so. Then of course, Ash Wednesday starts Lent. Imperial tradition Christians observe Lent as a time to try really hard to be good Christians to make up for the rest of the year, like kids in Santa Claus.
[00:34:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it does feel that way because you got to get those eggs on Easter.
[00:34:50] Katie Dooley: Got to get those eggs. It's a 40 day fast, and it is modeled after Jesus's 40-day fast in synoptic gospels.
[00:34:58] Preston Meyer: I thought it was really interesting. I've been wondering for a while, though. Never enough to look it up until recently for you, dear audience, I needed to know finally had the time dedicated to it, the word lent is just the Dutch word for the spring season.
[00:35:15] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's anticlimactic.
[00:35:17] Preston Meyer: Right? So, it was the same meaning in Old English. It's just almost completely fallen out of our language, apart from the people who celebrated as a religious thing. So that's kind of nifty in other languages. Most people call it the fasting season or the 40th. For those 40 days, 40th feels weird, but that's what I was told is it's not just the 40, but the 40th. Yeah, I'm sure there's probably a language out there where they just say the 40, but most seem to be the 40th. And nobody can really say without controversy when the Lent tradition as we know it today began. But it was definitely firmly in place by the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE.
[00:36:02] Katie Dooley: All right. That brings us to Palm Sunday. This is Jesus has seven days left, guys. No, five days left.
[00:36:10] Preston Meyer: Math is hard. Five is the magic number.
[00:36:13] Katie Dooley: Five is magical. He's got five days left. Clock is ticking. Commemorates his arrival in Jerusalem. And it's called Palm Sunday because his followers laid palm leaves on the ground to welcome him into the city.
[00:36:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:36:25] Katie Dooley: And these are the palm leaves that then get burnt. Yeah.
[00:36:27] Preston Meyer: You save them for a while.
[00:36:29] Katie Dooley: For, like, a whole year to dry out.
[00:36:30] Preston Meyer: Exactly. Yeah. Because you don't want to burn something that's not ready to burn to ashes. Way too smoky. There are a few other minor days in between. So, the next big part of this week is Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday. The celebration of Jesus Last Supper. There have been a lot of papers that I've read that argue, like, was it really a Thursday? Does the math add up?
[00:36:59] Katie Dooley: Well, I read something that said that he was almost definitely crucified on a Wednesday. I don't again, I don't know how you'd figure that out with any definitive answer, but much like his birth. Sorry, I interrupted.
[00:37:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So, this the day of the Last Supper. Then he goes to trial that night and the following morning, and then he gets crucified on Good Friday. Skipped over what Maundy actually means. It refers to the ceremonial washing of feet of a poor person in commemoration of Jesus washing his apostles' feet, which a lot of churches are happy to reenact. Usually, you'll see the Pope go and wash somebody's feet that day. Just an interesting tradition and the word Maundy comes from the Latin word for command, because he commanded people to go and serve and.
[00:37:51] Katie Dooley: And look after those different and less fortunate than you.
[00:37:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Which is a pretty great tradition.
[00:37:59] Katie Dooley: That lots of Christians choose not to do.
[00:38:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That's not the subject of today's discussion, but it is a thing that is real. Good Friday is a pretty good day.
[00:38:12] Katie Dooley: What? Well, I was I had to Google this. I always wondered, and much like Preston wondering about lent and never knowing, I was wondering why it was called Good Friday. What makes it so good?
[00:38:26] Preston Meyer: Well, there's a few things. It's good that Jesus suffered for us rather than suffering generally, that he did this great act for us. And so, this idea of piety is really important rather than, oh, yeah, good thing he died.
[00:38:46] Katie Dooley: Yes. And this good means pious as opposed to. Or the other word I saw was holy good as in holy or good as in pious as opposed to like, glad he's gone!
[00:38:58] Preston Meyer: We could just flip a couple of Friday's names. Maybe this could be Black Friday, the day the sky went dark when he died versus the Good Friday when everything's on sale after Thanksgiving.
[00:39:08] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I like it. I don't know who you got to pitch that to, but.
[00:39:12] Preston Meyer: Oh, I got to sell it to the whole world all at once. Everybody's got to be in on it, or it won't work.
[00:39:18] Katie Dooley: Okay. Share on Facebook.
[00:39:19] Preston Meyer: Like communism, it doesn't work if not, everybody's committed to the idea.
[00:39:24] Katie Dooley: Okay, I like rant, went on a mini rant and then Preston didn't explain it to me, so then it is followed by Easter Sunday. Easter Sunday is the day he is resurrected. This is what we celebrate, but other records say he was resurrected three days later. So, let's say he died on a Friday afternoon.
[00:39:49] Preston Meyer: See, so the error you've already made is the assumption that the important basis for this timeline is the date of death. So, everything should be calculated from what we know is the day he was raised from the dead because the Bible does explicitly tell us on the first day of the week, they showed up to an empty tomb, which is Sunday.
[00:40:11] Katie Dooley: Correct? So? So, then he wasn't.
[00:40:13] Preston Meyer: Friday could be the problem. It could have been a Thursday.
[00:40:16] Katie Dooley: Maybe that's why I saw that he had to be crucified on Wednesday. It still doesn't math right.
[00:40:23] Preston Meyer: So, the people who argue for a Wednesday crucifixion are looking for three complete, clear days in between the crucifixion and raising from the dead.
[00:40:34] Katie Dooley: And I have no problem with them saying Sunday, but then ditch the three days.
[00:40:38] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:40:39] Katie Dooley: Because now we have Easter Monday, which I'm pretty sure is just a bank holiday.
[00:40:43] Preston Meyer: It is. Easter Monday is only a bank holiday, and we've talked about this before. The religion of our banking system. Very powerful, but not actually important to the faith community of Christianity.
[00:40:58] Katie Dooley: So, my question goes unanswered.
[00:41:02] Preston Meyer: Repose your question.
[00:41:04] Katie Dooley: When did he die and when was he resurrected?
[00:41:07] Preston Meyer: Okay, so he definitely was resurrected either right at the beginning of Sunday morning or at the end of that night before Sunday morning, somewhere in that.
[00:41:18] Katie Dooley: So that they could find an empty tomb on a Sunday.
[00:41:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So, there's a lot of arguing among every kind of scholar in this field on what day would have been the correct date of crucifixion.
[00:41:36] Katie Dooley: And is it, you know, numbers in the Bible. That's probably an entire episode for us. But are they just saying three because three is so symbolic in the Bible, even though it makes all of these dates very screwed up?
[00:41:50] Preston Meyer: That's an interesting question. Generally, it was expected in Judaism at the time that if somebody were to hit their head and go into a minor coma. A couple of days, they could get back up and you'd think maybe they're dead, but you give them a few days to know for sure. After three days. I mean, you need water in that time, or you'll die. So, it was basically the three days is enough to know that somebody is dead. And if they get up after that,
[00:42:23] Both Speakers: It's a miracle.
[00:42:25] Katie Dooley: Okay, so, uh, what I'm hearing is that the three is mostly symbolic.
[00:42:30] Preston Meyer: No, it's for what they had of science at the time. It was pretty scientific,
[00:42:36] Katie Dooley: But I mean... Or one of these is a lie, though, is what I'm saying, right? Either he wasn't crucified on a Friday, or he wasn't resurrected after three days, or he wasn't raised on a Sunday because the math doesn't work. I just want to know which ones the lie, Preston.
[00:42:51] Preston Meyer: That's a really tricky thing. We're very sure. The Bible says he was found at the empty tomb on Sunday.
[00:43:02] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:43:02] Preston Meyer: The rest is fuzzy. And like there's even arguments about how to interpret the way they describe what would typically look like a Friday. Paraskevi is the word for preparation, which is the name for Friday in Old Greek. He was crucified on Paraskevi, but from the Jewish perspective, this could be the traditional day of preparation for the Sabbath. Or it could have been the preparation for a special Sabbath, because Passover does that. It's tricky business.
[00:43:39] Katie Dooley: Okay, as long as I'm not misunderstanding anything, we just don't know.
[00:43:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, a lot of people are going to be. Of course, this is the sure thing, but there is so much scholarship that says it's too complicated to know with real certainty. It's very frustrating.
[00:43:59] Katie Dooley: As long as my math is right that Monday is three days after Friday.
[00:44:04] Preston Meyer: Yeah, okay. The math adds up. Monday is three days after Friday.
[00:44:08] Katie Dooley: Not crazy. Not being gaslit.
[00:44:11] Preston Meyer: Right. But like there's the question, does it need to be three clear full days in between plus the half day on either side or is it the whole 72 hours is enough kind of funny business. It's all up to interpretation.
[00:44:30] Katie Dooley: So again, we said Easter Monday is just the main colony.
[00:44:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but it's nice to have that holiday.
[00:44:35] Katie Dooley: It's nice to have the holiday. And then the last celebration is Pentecost Sunday, also known as Whit Sunday. And this takes place 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus.
[00:44:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah, so like Passover, Pentecost is not an originally Christian idea. I mean, very little of Christianity is original to Christianity, but so Passover celebrates the idea that God delivered Israel and by connection and extension, all of his covenant peoples in the eyes of the Christian interpretation of Scripture. And so, this idea is not just saving the covenant people from slavery in Egypt, but slavery to the devil and sin and negativity in general around the world through all time. And so, Christianity is really happy with this idea. It works really nicely. It suits it. And then Pentecost is seven weeks later and another Jewish holiday. It's about the giving of the law in the desert and a little bit of we're still in the desert.
[00:45:50] Katie Dooley: That's Shavout.
[00:45:51] Preston Meyer: It is Shavout. Well done.
[00:45:53] Katie Dooley: Thank you.
[00:45:53] Preston Meyer: Because you're not even reading it?
[00:45:55] Katie Dooley: No, I just know things now, Preston.
[00:45:57] Preston Meyer: The Christian use of Pentecost celebrates the day that Jesus ascended into the heavens, leaving the apostles to lead the church on their own. And there's an important part of the story that an awful lot of Christians forget, and we'll use, well, the absence of this passage in their personal theology to say why this fella named Jesus is actually Jesus reborn and is the Messiah. So, the passage in the book of Acts has Jesus going up into the heavens, like just ascending.
[00:46:35] Katie Dooley: Pew! That's the visual in my brain.
[00:46:38] Preston Meyer: But not that fast. It's a spectacle to see him elevated into heaven. But without the hum of an elevator. And then a couple of angels are talking to the people nearby. Like, see that? That's how he's going to come back. It's in the Bible. If you believe the Bible is authoritative, you don't get to believe that a baby is Jesus come back.
[00:47:03] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:47:04] Preston Meyer: But it happens all the time. And then as after he's ascended, then there's a great outpouring of gifts of the spirit that the Holy Ghost has been bestowed upon the church. And they're speaking in tongues, not like weird gibberish like you'll see in a lot of modern evangelical traditions.
[00:47:27] Katie Dooley: This is where we get the term Pentecostal Christians, because the gifts of the Holy Spirit are on these Christians and no one else.
[00:47:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So, if you read the story, which you'll get to in our Bible study soon, these people are like speaking in Greek and every other language under the sun to all of the people who happen to be visiting the city at the time. And so, everyone's like, this dude's speaking my language, wouldn't have expected that. That's almost exactly what it says in the book.
[00:47:58] Katie Dooley: Like in Quantummania?
[00:48:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and so it's weird how this really important passage for Christian theology gets ignored by an awful lot of Christians.
[00:48:14] Katie Dooley: I want to say something mean.
[00:48:17] Preston Meyer: Some people are bad at the things that they think are important.
[00:48:22] Katie Dooley: I was just.... So, speaking in tongues is made up is what I want to say.
[00:48:28] Preston Meyer: I mean, Shamala Hamala oh yeah.
[00:48:31] Katie Dooley: As we see it today.
[00:48:33] Preston Meyer: That's Eastertide. It's a few months, really.
[00:48:37] Katie Dooley: 90 days if you go from the beginning of Lent to...
[00:48:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah, 40 days before, 50 days after. It's convenient round numbers. We like that.
[00:48:46] Katie Dooley: I love a good number in religious studies. Um, can I get 90 days off of work?
[00:48:52] Preston Meyer: That'll be tricky. Okay. Most of these 90 days are not their own holiday. But you can try. You are your own boss.
[00:49:01] Katie Dooley: I am, but can anyone get 90 days off?
[00:49:05] Preston Meyer: Oh, it's tricky. I would say try it. And if you can do the three months without work, the other nine months might be more work.
[00:49:16] Katie Dooley: Don't lose your job because of us.
[00:49:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there are Christian groups that don't celebrate very much of what we've described as at all. Famously, I would say the Jehovah's Witnesses are pretty prominent in this list of groups that don't do that. They do a special Saturday mass that they call Passover. It's the one day where they pass around the emblems of Christ's atonement, the bread and the wine. And I mean, that's basically the deal. Most Evangelicals, Restorationists, Adventists don't really do the whole liturgical deal. It's just here's our Easter Sunday thing or Saturday and some of the Adventist groups like the Seventh Day Adventists, I guess specifically. A lot of these churches that refuse to do an Easter and they'll call it Passover, to avoid any confusion, is because they do see Easter as a strictly pagan holiday. And I mean, to be fair, after everything that we've talked about today, it feels like they're not wrong.
[00:50:29] Katie Dooley: I mean again, like you mentioned at the top of the episode, it is a very distinct split between secular and religious for Easter. And I'm sure people some people do it both, but Christmas is a much nicer blend of things.
[00:50:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I well, I think it's funny that our secular Easter really leans hard on the pagan Easter. And yet the only real difference is that we don't send kids out with the hope that they're thinking of being genetically prolific.
[00:51:10] Katie Dooley: Now, I don't know. Okay. I mean, I guess you were kind of raised non-religious, too.
[00:51:17] Preston Meyer: For a long time, yeah.
[00:51:19] Katie Dooley: And so, I think of, like, I'm thinking of Charlie Brown.
[00:51:22] Preston Meyer: Okay. I don't remember the Charlie Brown Easter.
[00:51:25] Katie Dooley: So, there's Charlie Brown Christmas and at the very end, Linus quotes passages from the Bible. But it's all about making this tree nice and stuff. But it is like a. I'm pretty good blend of secular and religious.
[00:51:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:51:41] Katie Dooley: And we can even see that in something. An old secular novel like Charles Dickens, uh, Christmas Carol is mostly a secular story, but there's little bits of Christian stuff in there.
[00:51:54] Preston Meyer: Just a little bit though.
[00:51:55] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and so we have that. And then it's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown. Is the Easter one. And it's I mean, Snoopy's the Easter Beagle. They're waiting for the Easter Beagle to show up.
[00:52:06] Preston Meyer: That's fantastic.
[00:52:07] Katie Dooley: And there's zero religion in it.
[00:52:10] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:52:11] Katie Dooley: And is it? I remember when I first learned about the crucifixion of Jesus. I was 11 and it traumatized the fuck out of me.
[00:52:21] Preston Meyer: I mean, that's pretty gruesome part of history.
[00:52:23] Katie Dooley: And I think and so I wonder if that's part of the reason it's so separated, because the religious Easter, like we said with our friend Jack, is not a happy story. Whereas the birth of a little baby is.
[00:52:39] Preston Meyer: It's a happy story.
[00:52:41] Katie Dooley: Right? And so, I wonder if that's not part of the reason that we have such a like, how do you blend a crucifixion in a little bunny?
[00:52:50] Preston Meyer: Well, you don't. It doesn't make you it doesn't even make sense to try.
[00:52:54] Katie Dooley: That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying is that that's why we have this hard line. Because it almost can't be. It can't be. I'm doing a thing with my hands.
[00:53:04] Preston Meyer: They can't be meshed.
[00:53:05] Katie Dooley: They can't be meshed.
[00:53:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's I think it's really interesting that over hundreds of years of the imperial tradition church trying so hard to crush so many ideas, the Easter Bunny made it through. Well, okay, the Easter Bunny came after.
[00:53:25] Katie Dooley: Relatively new.
[00:53:25] Preston Meyer: The Easter Bunny as the Easter Bunny is a Lutheran invention which feels so weird.
[00:53:32] Katie Dooley: They were weird people. I'm kidding.
[00:53:33] Preston Meyer: But the Osterhase the Easter season's special Bunny
[00:53:41] Katie Dooley: Hare.
[00:53:41] Preston Meyer: Hare is such an old idea that we've just always had, and we could never get rid of it. And then eventually some new group came and made it full on official.
[00:53:53] Katie Dooley: Yeah. It is an interesting holiday. Well, I hope you all got lots of chocolate.
[00:54:00] Preston Meyer: Right. Maybe a little bit of some good healthy egg protein.
[00:54:05] Katie Dooley: Um.
[00:54:09] Preston Meyer: I think it's really interesting. I remember a lady that I used to visit occasionally when I lived in New Jersey. It was the tradition to have cold ham on Easter. Now, this was strictly forbidden in the Passover tradition. And all of the people who celebrated Passover anciently, because ham is not known to eat. But it was kind of this idea that you don't cook during Easter, so you'd get a cured ham and dice it up and mix it into a salad or something, or...
[00:54:40] Katie Dooley: I should have talked to my mom before this, but yeah, like they like her mom was an immigrant to Canada from Ukraine and they like very much observed Ukrainian Easter and Ukrainian Christmas. And yeah, they used it. I won't say weird traditions, but they were strict about, like, what you were allowed to eat. And remember, fish was a big thing. m. Yeah, they were very strict. And like I said, their Easter baskets, they were really strict on what you had to give the priest. Um, my mom knows Ukrainian enough to pray in Ukrainian and to thank a priest for an egg. And that's kind of all she knows. But enough that it was that traditional but...
[00:55:27] Preston Meyer: Right and I think...
[00:55:29] Katie Dooley: There's a lot of ritual around Easter.
[00:55:31] Preston Meyer: Sure. So, after I got back home and spent holidays with my family again, I noticed that we pretty often have ham for Easter, and I think that's a pretty common tradition that it's not a bird or a beef roast. It's a ham, very, very often.
[00:55:48] Katie Dooley: I'm going to talk to him. We have turkey at Easter. Yeah, okay.
[00:55:52] Preston Meyer: I mean, I'm not saying everybody does because my family does. That's a perfectly good reason.
[00:55:58] Katie Dooley: We don't Like ham.
[00:56:00] Preston Meyer: But it reminds me that there was a vision that Peter had. That makes sense. Connecting the ham to Easter a little bit, that Peter had this vision that Jesus came to him with a sheet full of all these animals that weren't supposed to be eaten pig, lobster, whatever. And Peter's like, no, no, no, don't eat that. That's gross. That's dirty. And Jesus said, no, no, I cleaned it. It's good to go. And three times Peter's like, no, no, no, not for me.
[00:56:33] Katie Dooley: Peter's really good at denying things three times!
[00:56:38] Preston Meyer: You could say that. And eventually, he's like, okay, I'll eat. And then ham is officially fine for Christians to eat.
[00:56:50] Katie Dooley: I think pork gives me nightmares.
[00:56:54] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah. Tell me more.
[00:56:56] Katie Dooley: I've had some incredibly violent dreams. And then when I wake up, every time I've had pork the night before for dinner. And the first time, the first two times, I thought it was because you can't. You can eat all Alberta pork not well done
[00:57:16] Preston Meyer: Right? Cause we're super clean.
[00:57:17] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So, the first two times they were not well-done pork. And I thought it was just because it wasn't well-done pork. I don't I don't know how your brain works with the food you digest, but I literally had pork this week, and I had a very violent dream. And Bryant, my husband, our sound guy, is like, maybe it's because you think every time you eat pork, you're gonna have a nightmare. And I was like, no, I didn't even think about it until I woke up from the nightmare, huh? And was like, oh, I had pork for dinner.
[00:57:50] Preston Meyer: Well, now I'm curious if anybody else has had this experience.
[00:57:54] Katie Dooley: It might not be pork, but I'm pretty sure your food can give you nightmares.
[00:57:57] Preston Meyer: I know that there is this weird connection between your brain and your stomach. I do know that much. Do I know anything enough about it to explain it. No. I'm a religion dude, not a biology dude.
[00:58:09] Katie Dooley: And so, I don't mind a good pork chop or a pork tenderloin, but now I don't. I don't like nightmares.
[00:58:15] Preston Meyer: I need more data.
[00:58:18] Katie Dooley: Like what? Kind of like, do you need me to eat more pork?
[00:58:21] Preston Meyer: Oh, okay. So, more data from you is good. But I want to hear from our audience. If any of you have any comparable experience with pork, I need to know.
[00:58:31] Katie Dooley: Or I just want to know any food-related nightmares.
[00:58:34] Preston Meyer: Sure. Yeah. Let's open it up. I need data.
[00:58:36] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:58:38] Preston Meyer: This is a thing I want to know more about.
[00:58:40] Katie Dooley: Okay. This has turned into.
[00:58:41] Preston Meyer: Could you imagine if there was? It wasn't the whole pigs are dirty because they sleep in their own...
[00:58:49] Katie Dooley: But because everyone.
[00:58:50] Preston Meyer: But because they become violent when they eat ham. Could you imagine if that was a thing back then that they noticed.
[00:58:55] Katie Dooley: Maybe we feel like you're like a demon because you're getting bad visions?
[00:59:01] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:59:02] Katie Dooley: Like, literally one of my dreams a lady was stoned to death, and I was like, that's fucked up.
[00:59:07] Preston Meyer: Sure, I need to know more.
[00:59:12] Katie Dooley: All right, you got very passionate about that.
[00:59:16] Preston Meyer: I'm very curious.
[00:59:18] Katie Dooley: The end of our Easter episode again. I hope none of you have pork nightmares and you all get some Easter candy, whether you observe it or not. Thank you to our patron, Lisa. Follow us on all our social media and be sure to DM us or post in our discord about some of the questions we've asked today. So, DM us on Facebook or Instagram. If you want to support the podcast monetarily, which we would love. Um, you can join our Patreon. We have a bonus episode here and we have our book club tier. And if you know, like any of that, which I don't know why you wouldn't, we also have our Spreadshop where you can buy some sweet, sweet, Holy Watermelon merch.
[00:59:59] Preston Meyer: And all the links are in our show notes. Thanks for joining us.
[01:00:04] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 20 May 2024 | Stop Hitting Yourself | 01:11:37 | |
If sin were ugly, the world would be a paradise. Sin has a lot of faces in religious traditions around the world, some more consequential than others. Hamartiology is the study of sin, and it looks like some folk only want to define the line so they know how close they can stand. Sin is simply the misstep or error that divides people. Some people are more interested in listing sins than in uniting people. Ther principle that defines sin even exists in atheist philosophy, when appropriately defined. Buddhist thinkers differ on the value of discussing sin, some deny the principle altogether, others recognize that harm begets harm. In Shinto doctrine, sin (or tsumi) is the idea that bad things have lingering effects, this even includes personal ugliness in cultural manifestation. Harae is the process of cleaning up those things that get in our way. Thinking about karma too much is bad, but doing bad things gives you more bad karma, so that's even worse. The Decalogue (Ten Commandments) is a terrible misnomer, built on the cultural obsession with round numbers. There are in fact 14 individual commandments in the decalogue, that's why different traditions give different lists. The Torah actually lists 613 commandments, but they don't have the weight of the decalogue, not being written by the finger of God. The Seven Deadly Sins are great, but poorly understood by many, we'll give you the short version. As the Doctor says, "Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many." The sacrifice of Christ as taught by most Christians was a lot more than a rough weekend of not being alive, it included intense suffering beyond the comprehension of most, all to empower his demand that we orgive one another, just as we need forgiveness. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 15 Jul 2024 | Don't Skip the Good Ones | 00:36:21 | |
After ragging on people who surely don't deserve the veneration they receive from faithful Christians around the world, for their questionable morality, or even dubious historicity, it's time for us to look at a heptad of saints who are genuinely good role models--at least on the surface.... For these saints (as opposed to Teresa of Calcutta), poverty was an obstacle to be overcome, rather than a virtue to perpetuate. We preach power through education, and so did these seven reasonably good saints. Angela Merici was a Venecian with no recorded miracles, but people insisted that she was a saint because of the work she did to support the public education of young people. Elizabeth Seton was a big fan of public education, and used her great fortune to support young people in their pursuit to better their lives. Seton was the first American Saint. Vincent de Paul has a wild story of slavery and alchemy, and he went on to do everything he could to raise people out of poverty, and support young people to get vocational training. Father Damien (Jozef de Veuster) was a servant of the people in a Hawaiian leper colony, where he gave his life in service of his fellow men. Katharine Drexel, the second American Saint, spent her fortune setting up schools for BIPOC students all over the United States of America. Elizabeth of Hungary was a princess with some wild and dubious miracles, but she spent her short life in her own hospital where she cared for the poor and the sick. John Bosco wrote an awful lot, but he also worked with young men to help get them reliable and profitable work. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 25 Sep 2023 | Story and Ceremony - an Interview with Cheryl Whiskeyjack | 01:04:03 | |
Canada's National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is right around the corner, and we've decided to interrupt our regular programming in favour of an interview with Cheryl Whiskeyjack from Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society, and some important First Nations Stories. Canada's name is derived from an old word for village, making us the nation of villages. We discuss the role of storytelling, and the place for newcomers and women within indigenous tradition, as well as the power of ceremonial tradition in day-to-day life. Cheryl teaches us a little bit about her religious background, some of the great mythology of Turtle Island, and how she learned the traditions of her current faith, and the power of womanhood. Cheryl also discusses things like cultural misappropriation, the legacy of residential schools, and the path to healing for Canada's First Nations Peoples and all Canadians. All this and more.... You can WATCH this interview on YouTube Connect with Cheryl on Facebook, or check out Bent Arrow on Facebook
Find Holy Watermelon merch at Spreadshirt Join the Holy Watermelon Community on Discord Get more great religion facts in your feed on Facebook and Instagram by following us. | |||
| 25 Apr 2022 | You Want a Piece of Me? | 01:11:07 | |
Everybody collects something; but for the Imperial Tradition Christian churches, that collection has some really weird stuff. Not just the bones of saints and a handful of miraculous statues, but enough "holy prepuce" to fill your cereal bowl, and the miraculous rehydrating blood of the saints of Naples can help wash all that down. This isn't your regular daily mass - join us to see what other strange relics the Catholic Church has been collecting. Learn more about John the Baptist, Hiram McDaniels (from Welcome to Night Vale), St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the rose petals of St. Catherine, the shroud of Turin, Mary's milk, the True Cross, the Bones of the Magi, the official classification of holy relics, and the veneration (WORSHIP!) of saints. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: It feels like it's been a long time since we've been here, but it really hasn't. We recorded last week.
[00:00:17] Preston Meyer: We did record last week, but you know where it is a while since we've been in this place talking about weird things in Christianity.
[00:00:28] Katie Dooley: Yes. If you liked our Saints episode, you're gonna love this episode of
[00:00:34] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[00:00:38] Katie Dooley: So what are we talking about today? That's...
[00:00:40] Preston Meyer: Well, we're looking at holy relics. There's a lot of relics of a lot of different religious traditions. Today, we've decided to focus on just Christian relics. I think it's interesting, most people really hate comparing churches to Ripley's Believe It or Not! Exhibits.
[00:00:58] Katie Dooley: What? No!
[00:00:58] Preston Meyer: This whole... Because we all know Ripley's Believe It or Not! Is mostly nonsense and weird things pushed together to make cool things to look at. And sometimes religion is a little bit that way. But the parallels go deeper than the inclination to doubt the veracity of outrageous claims. We also do have jars filled with human body parts.
[00:01:21] Katie Dooley: So many jars, so many body parts, so many body parts from the same person?
[00:01:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:01:26] Katie Dooley: When you should only have one.
[00:01:28] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. It's it's really crazy. We've got saints that according to the evidence of if you can call it that, of the claims of various churches around the world, the saint had two full bodies and extra legs and arms.
[00:01:49] Katie Dooley: Yep. So man... And Saint Bernard is gonna appear again just briefly but...
[00:01:56] Preston Meyer: Good times.
[00:01:57] Katie Dooley: If you're a fan of Saint Bernard, our our Discord family sure likes Saint Bernard. So, yeah, there's a relic just for him.
[00:02:08] Preston Meyer: Yep. Uh, relics of religious importance come in all shapes and sizes and a variety of classifications. As I was looking into this, I thought it was kind of cool that the imperial tradition Christians, mainly talking about Catholics and Orthodox Christians, and that tradition that survives a little bit in Lutheranism and a handful of other Protestant groups, the old Protestant groups like the Church of England, um, there's three classes, more or less strictly this three classifications is the Catholic, Roman Catholic tradition, but it's observed a little bit by others as well.
[00:02:46] Katie Dooley: It's also just a nice classification system.
[00:02:48] Preston Meyer: It's handy.
[00:02:49] Katie Dooley: I saw it come up in some of my research.
[00:02:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So the first class is literally anything directly connected to Jesus, or in addition to that, the earthly remains of a saint. Their body parts, pretty much.
[00:03:06] Katie Dooley: Their body parts.
[00:03:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, the second class is any object associated directly with a saint. Uh, like something they touch, something they owned, something that was theirs. Um, and these first two classes are officially "the sacred things". And then the third class is just devotional. It's pretty much anything that has touched anything in the first two categories.
[00:03:30] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:03:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. If you put Saint John's head's plate on your table, bam! Your table is now a third-class relic.
[00:03:41] Katie Dooley: I'm like, can we get this done?
[00:03:44] Preston Meyer: In theory, yes. In practice, complicated. These things are well-guarded. Well. Kind of. You'd think they're a lot better guarded than they are. We're going to talk about a lot of things that have gone missing.
[00:03:57] Katie Dooley: So what we need to do this actually is probably not as hard as we think. It's just going to take time. So you need to finish your doctorate.
[00:04:04] Preston Meyer: Yep.
[00:04:05] Katie Dooley: And then you got to get a research position studying something in one of these areas. And then I will bring you like my laptop. And you'll just be like "bink" and no one needs to know. No one needs to know. Except I do want people to know I have a third-class relic in my house, so.
[00:04:21] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:04:23] Katie Dooley: I'm terrible.
[00:04:27] Preston Meyer: Well, what's really clever, there are opportunities where you could take a handkerchief and you have in locker room, you whip people with a wet handkerchief. You know what I'm talking about?
[00:04:38] Katie Dooley: I do, but it's such a man thing.
[00:04:40] Preston Meyer: Not exclusively, but maybe more than women, I don't know, I don't spend a lot of time in the ladies locker room.
[00:04:45] Katie Dooley: Good. Good, from the sounds of it.
[00:04:48] Preston Meyer: So you take your handkerchief and you do exactly that at a relic in a church. Bam! You've got yourself a holy relic of the third class.
[00:04:56] Katie Dooley: Oh, yeah. Okay, let's go to Italy. Let's go to Italy.
[00:05:00] Preston Meyer: I should not advocate this behavior that would cause over time. Probably not a lot of time. The destruction of these relics. Yes.
[00:05:10] Katie Dooley: And if you get caught, you'd get in a lot of trouble.
[00:05:13] Preston Meyer: Oh, for sure I would because it definitely sounds like some serious disrespect. Just whipping John the Baptist's head.
[00:05:24] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say, once we get to John the Baptist's head, you have at least a five in six chance of not being disrespectful. Anyway. Anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves. We're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start with the bones of the Magi.
[00:05:41] Preston Meyer: The first on my list is. Honestly, really? I don't know how they ever thought that these were the three Magi.
[00:05:49] Katie Dooley: We don't even know there were three!
[00:05:51] Preston Meyer: Right? So in Germany, there is a shrine in Cologne to the three wise men that we hear talked about in Matthew's gospel. Now, if you go back to Josh and the Wise Guys, our Christmas episode from last year, talk a little bit about more how there might these people might not even have existed.
[00:06:11] Katie Dooley: And again, there's no way that we didn't know if it was 1 or 3 or 7 or 45.
[00:06:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The scriptural account doesn't give us a number of people, just a number of gifts. And so we've leaned really hard into this tradition of three wise men. So the bones that are currently enshrined in Cologne, in this shrine to the three wise men, their bones have been moved around a lot. It's said that they were exhumed in Constantinople in 1164. So midway between here and the time they would have lived, why they would have been buried in Constantinople is a mystery. It's just...
[00:06:51] Katie Dooley: Because they were from the East. I'm trying to like, picture my geography, so that doesn't make any sense.
[00:06:57] Preston Meyer: It doesn't make any sense at all. It's really weird because.
[00:07:01] Katie Dooley: I'm like, Turkey's northwest of Israel, am I right?
[00:07:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:07:07] Katie Dooley: So yeah, they're from the east.
[00:07:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's like they couldn't return home when they fled Herod, which they had no reason to do in real life. It's just it seems really weird. And it's, uh, it's called the shrine of the Three Kings. Usually when we talk about it, which helps build up the English tradition of calling them kings when we don't know the story we have in Matthew gives us no reason to call them kings. No, they were mages, Magi,
[00:07:40] Katie Dooley: Priests.
[00:07:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah, it's. The whole thing is super weird. But we have bones of.
[00:07:48] Katie Dooley: Some guys.
[00:07:49] Preston Meyer: Three. We believe they're three guys, but because of how poorly we have been taking care of bones throughout history, it could be composites of more people. It's it's a little bit weird, but people go there all the time. They report healings. It's it's kind of cool as far as a tradition goes. But it... I don't believe that we really have any grounds to call it legitimate, but it has decent pilgrimages from year to year.
[00:08:25] Katie Dooley: We'll say that a lot.
[00:08:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's only going to get worse.
[00:08:28] Katie Dooley: Yeah. All right. So are we gonna jump into this big one next?
[00:08:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Let's do it.
[00:08:34] Katie Dooley: All right, so pieces of the True Cross is another holy relic. So the true Cross being the cross on which Jesus was crucified. And you can find pieces of it all over the place. So the hunt, the hunt for the cross began with Emperor Constantine, which we know from our two previous episodes where we were talking about the death of religion is that he was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. So one... The story around this claims that Constantine's mother, Saint Helena, traveled to Jerusalem to find the true cross, and she found a pagan temple, a destroyed pagan temple. Or no, she destroyed the pagan temple. Excuse me. She found three crosses. So reflecting the story that Jesus was crucified with two thieves.
[00:09:24] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:09:26] Katie Dooley: And so she got all excited that there were these three crosses that she had found. And so they found a dying woman, brought her out to this site.
[00:09:34] Preston Meyer: I mean, in the story, I don't think it would have been that hard to find somebody who was dying. They had just destroyed a temple. They that included a fight, for sure.
[00:09:44] Katie Dooley: Fair. And I mean, you can find a dying person in any city. You just gotta ask around.
[00:09:50] Preston Meyer: Right? I think that in this particular situation, there was one a lot more convenient than one would hope.
[00:09:55] Katie Dooley: Oh, no. So they found this dying woman, and they asked her to touch these three crosses, and she touched one and was healed. So this is the true cross. Um, then Helena chopped it up into pieces. Which feels really blasphemous to me, even though, I mean, so whatever. I'm the atheist. I don't think she found the true cross at all. But like, if you thought it was the true cross, you're like, you know what? The thing to do is chop it up.
[00:10:26] Preston Meyer: See, that doesn't seem so blasphemous to me.
[00:10:28] Katie Dooley: I mean I guess it's hard to transport, but, like.
[00:10:30] Preston Meyer: Well, yeah, a full crucifix and actually not that huge of a burden to transport. You pull it out of the ground, it's just a giant beam of wood but to say that such an artifact should be preserved because it killed our God feels really weird.
[00:10:50] Katie Dooley: I mean, I'm also. This is why I like the Latter Day Saints church and where the cross isn't prominent because it was a torture device. Yeah. And I mean, there's also that great meme on our discord. Why are they worshiping crosses? Why would they think I would like a cross?
[00:11:06] Preston Meyer: What about my story? Makes you think I'm into this?
[00:11:11] Katie Dooley: Okay, fair. No, that's a good take on it. So I in in my research, I read one thing. And then when I was in religious studies, I had heard another thing. So my religious studies professor had said that there's so many pieces of the cross out there that you could actually make more than one cross. Like there's like three. Like you can make 3 or 4 full crosses with the amount of pieces of the cross relics around there. I also read one that said there's actually not enough pieces of the cross to make a full cross, which to me a little more believable, especially if it was chopped up and sent all over the place.
[00:11:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, john Calvin famously said that there was enough pieces of the cross to build a ship.
[00:11:54] Katie Dooley: John Calvin hated relics, and we've actually quoted him a lot. Um, we'll do a whole episode on Calvinism, but, uh, yeah, he's got some good zingers.
[00:12:06] Preston Meyer: Right? The problem with, uh, with this great sounding statement is that only about 40 years ago, they actually the Church of Rome took an account of all of the chunks of the cross that were officially documented, and they found that it adds up to a little less than 4 pounds of wood. So like you had said, not enough to build a whole cross.
[00:12:30] Katie Dooley: But again, that I mean, that's like there's pieces of the Berlin Wall. It's not enough to make a wall anymore because. Anyway, uh, there is much debate about what type of wood the cross was made out of. And there's a whole bunch of scientists have studied and carbon dated and tested, so dogwood comes up frequently. Dogwood has religious connotations. The other two that I found in our research is that is pine and olive wood. However, some historians argue that it wouldn't be made of olive wood because olive trees were an important. Olive trees were an important food crop. So you wouldn't waste it on crucifying people.
[00:13:10] Preston Meyer: Unless, of course, your olive tree was no longer fruitful. Like there's an argument that says that it's possible but...
[00:13:16] Katie Dooley: Had too many criminals.
[00:13:19] Preston Meyer: Sometimes you had to crucify an awful lot of people. You would just take the wood that was available to you. Yeah, sure. Why not?
[00:13:26] Katie Dooley: Yeah. What else did you find, Preston? Because at some point, I had to tap out of this one.
[00:13:30] Preston Meyer: So in addition to these chunks of wood, we also got a lot of chunks of iron. The Catholic Church acknowledges that there are at least 30 nails that claim to be the tools of the crucifixion. But since there weren't more than four, that we've got a little bit of a math problem here.
[00:13:50] Katie Dooley: What?
[00:13:51] Preston Meyer: But the Catholic Church has an explanation for this as well. In their encyclopedia, they say officially probably the majority began by professing to be facsimiles which had touched or contained filings from some other nail whose claim was more ancient, without conscious fraud on the part of anyone. It is very easy for imitations in this way to come in a very brief space of time, to be reputed originals. Basically, it's them saying we don't know.
[00:14:22] Katie Dooley: And I mean, the thing is, it's like we obviously have artifacts far older than 2000 years. So absolutely, you could have a nail in carbon dating and have it be 2000 years old. It doesn't mean it's used on Jesus. So especially when we know how much crucifixion was happening at that time.
[00:14:38] Preston Meyer: The Romans loved crucifying people.
[00:14:41] Katie Dooley: Loved it. Um, so it could just be. Yeah, absolutely. You can find a nail from 30 BCE and. Yeah, sure. Probably was.
[00:14:54] Preston Meyer: But like you mentioned before, the veneration of an implement of torture seems a little psychotic.
[00:15:01] Katie Dooley: I mean, I mean, I don't know if we want to dive into this one, but, I mean, lots of Christians wear cross necklaces and have cross tattoos. And so.
[00:15:08] Preston Meyer: And generally speaking...
[00:15:09] Katie Dooley: It's obviously broader, a broader topic than relics. But.
[00:15:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah, recognizing the cross as the symbol that unifies Christianity as the worshipers of Christ is a thing I can get my head around. A symbol that unifies us. Fine.
[00:15:26] Katie Dooley: To actually own a own a piece, to.
[00:15:29] Preston Meyer: To own it and celebrate its ownership and venerate the item and invite people to come and bring their worship to this item.
[00:15:37] Katie Dooley: I guess it's like owning a gun that killed your mother.
[00:15:42] Preston Meyer: A little bit, but like, not just owning it, but like putting it on display in your home.
[00:15:46] Katie Dooley: Guys, look at this thing.
[00:15:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's.
[00:15:49] Katie Dooley: I see it.
[00:15:49] Preston Meyer: That feels a little psychotic.
[00:15:50] Katie Dooley: I can see the. Yeah. Okay.
[00:15:53] Preston Meyer: That's my feelings on it anyway.
[00:15:56] Katie Dooley: Oh, our first of many heads.
[00:16:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:16:02] Katie Dooley: So we have the head of Saint Catherine. So Catherine was born. Cathy. Thanks, Preston. Cathy was born in 1347, in Siena, Italy. She was one of the great mystical and spiritual writers of the church at the time, and is honored with the title of church doctor since 1970.
[00:16:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it took a long time for the popes to give her that honor, but that's okay, because they did eventually.
[00:16:28] Katie Dooley: Oh, I like this next fact about her. She famously referred to the Pope as is Babbo, the Italian equivalent for daddy instead of Your Highness. I like that level of sass and confidence that she's got.
[00:16:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but her story gets a little bit weird. At age 21, she married Jesus. She claims Jesus came to visit her and engage in a spiritual marriage. Because, of course, Jesus had been dead and gone for a thousand years. No big deal. She had been a nun, but Jesus told her to go out into the world, which, okay, that seems like decent advice, go out into the world if you want to spread the message. That's how you do that.
[00:17:12] Katie Dooley: Is this where consecrated virgins come from?
[00:17:15] Preston Meyer: No, no, that's an old,
[00:17:16] Katie Dooley: Even older than...
[00:17:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Rome was interested in consecrated virgins long before...
[00:17:20] Katie Dooley: Catherine. Okay, interesting.
[00:17:22] Preston Meyer: That's like Vesta.
[00:17:25] Katie Dooley: Oh, okay.
[00:17:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah. So the weird thing about this new relationship that Catherine had with Jesus is that when he gave her a wedding ring, it was his foreskin. Uh, we're going to talk a lot more about Jesus' foreskin later, but this is...
[00:17:43] Katie Dooley: Buckle up.
[00:17:44] Preston Meyer: Her story.
[00:17:45] Katie Dooley: Buckle up, guys. We're going to talk about Jesus's foreskin. Oh, boy. Uh, yeah. Because, um, I mean, yeah, with Vesta. But like, consecrated virgins are recognized in the Catholic Church.
[00:17:59] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Just because Rome has a hard time actually changing their traditions.
[00:18:04] Katie Dooley: Okay. Fair. Um, I want to do a whole episode on consecrated virgins and nuns. I keep on saying versions. Virgins and nuns.
[00:18:14] Preston Meyer: Gotta go in there with a hard j g. Sure, but it's making a J sound.
[00:18:20] Katie Dooley: Wow. All right, Pres-gon. Get going.
[00:18:28] Preston Meyer: Another interesting thing about Saint Catherine and these we've talked about weird saints. This doesn't... It's not even that crazy. She's not one of our bad saints that we like to talk about. But she also received the stigmata when she was 28, which, of course, was something that was invented by Francis of Assisi.
[00:18:48] Katie Dooley: I like that you put invented. And just if you haven't heard the term, the stigmata are the holes in your hands.
[00:18:53] Preston Meyer: Or head or feet.
[00:18:54] Katie Dooley: Oh, interesting.
[00:18:55] Preston Meyer: Anything that any hole in your body that would bleed in a place where Jesus would have been bleeding when he was hanging from the cross, counts as a stigmata.
[00:19:04] Katie Dooley: Pope Pius, the one before John Paul, had stigmata too. Which he was never let a doctor test.
[00:19:10] Preston Meyer: I wonder why. Uh, yeah. So good old Catherine. She wasn't from Rome, but that's where she died. And the Pope insisted on keeping her body there. It just made him happy.
[00:19:26] Katie Dooley: Daddy!
[00:19:27] Preston Meyer: Right. This. I'm suspicious, but I don't want to make accusations, you know?
[00:19:33] Katie Dooley: I don't know what you're talking about, Preston.
[00:19:38] Preston Meyer: Uh, anyway, her community back in Siena thought it would be really great to bring her body back home. And they were having a hard time convincing anyone to let them do that. So they prayed to Katherine. Because Catholics do pray to saints, and they needed the help to get it done. They got this idea that since we can't smuggle her whole body out, that's too hard. Let's cut off her head, drop it in somebody's lunch bag and carry that past the guards. Then it almost didn't work. The guards are like, hey, what you got in the bag? They opened it up. No head, just a pile of rose petals.
[00:20:20] Katie Dooley: You know what? I couldn't get into Canadian Tire with a bag today. They made me take it back to my car.
[00:20:25] Preston Meyer: Rude.
[00:20:26] Katie Dooley: Yeah. We should have turned into rose petals then.
[00:20:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's so having this head turn into rose petals. Scientifically. Nonsense. Theologically. Why?
[00:20:46] Katie Dooley: It's a miracle, Preston.
[00:20:47] Preston Meyer: I guess so. Just, you gotta have faith building miracles, I guess.
[00:20:52] Katie Dooley: Absolutely.
[00:20:52] Preston Meyer: Most of her body is still in Rome, but since her head was carried off, a few other body parts have also wandered off around the world.
[00:21:01] Katie Dooley: Like on their own accord. Or more smugglers?
[00:21:03] Preston Meyer: Have been taken...
[00:21:05] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:21:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:21:09] Katie Dooley: Nice.
[00:21:09] Preston Meyer: Not wandering off on their own. That would be alarming.
[00:21:12] Katie Dooley: I mean, is any of this not alarming?
[00:21:16] Preston Meyer: Well, okay, so let's imagine this: her... She's got a leg off somewhere. I can't remember where off the top of my head right now. And I didn't write it in the notes. But to know for sure that it's Catherine's leg, someone has to testify that this thing hopping off on its own is legitimate. If you have just a leg, show up somewhere, that's a lot harder to confirm a source.
[00:21:41] Katie Dooley: Fair. I stole it.
[00:21:45] Preston Meyer: And we're gonna see some cases of where stolen things complicate claims of authenticity.
[00:21:54] Katie Dooley: We're talking about John the Baptist already. Or more.
[00:21:57] Preston Meyer: More. But, I mean, that's it's not one relic that has this as part of its story. That's a lot of relics are stolen goods.
[00:22:06] Katie Dooley: I mean, museums are filled with stolen goods, so...
[00:22:09] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:22:11] Katie Dooley: Now on to I'm so sorry. This this episode is literally me gagging.
[00:22:17] Preston Meyer: We are talking about a lot of gross body parts.
[00:22:19] Katie Dooley: I feel like we should have put a trigger warning in the beginning. Maybe we'll record a trigger warning at the end to put on the beginning.
[00:22:25] Preston Meyer: That's not a bad idea.
[00:22:26] Katie Dooley: Because even though I'm, like, crawling out of my skin, I don't like gory things. So for our listeners, I don't like gory things. All right, so with that being said, let's talk about the blood of Saint Januarius.
[00:22:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Good old Gennaro, as he's known in Italy. There's a fancy bottle shaped kind of like a baby's rattle. All of the containers that hold these relics are, well, not all of them, the vast majority of the containers that hold these relics are weird shapes and really often have a handle underneath them in, like, a baby's rattle kind of situation.
[00:23:03] Katie Dooley: Like a maraca
[00:23:04] Preston Meyer: So you can hold them up so people can see them. Yeah, yeah. So this is why there's a fancy word for it. And I didn't use it because I wanted to keep the language simple. But I should say the word. It's a reliquary.
[00:23:19] Katie Dooley: Oh, wow. Yeah.
[00:23:20] Preston Meyer: And reliquaries come in a lot of fancy shapes.
[00:23:23] Katie Dooley: Oh, I think that's a good word. I'm surprised words guy over here didn't put it in the notes, reliquary.
[00:23:28] Preston Meyer: It just thing holds relic - reliquary. So this fancy bottle that holds a couple of vials is said to hold a bunch of the dried up blood of Saint Gennaro, who died in the 14th century CE. The blood is said to have been taken by a slave named Eusebia right after Gennaro died, and he kept it until he could take it to Naples with the remains of the martyr, and it was kept in Naples in Italy for a good long time, until today. It liquefies a couple of times every year. This is weird.
[00:24:10] Katie Dooley: Like is there, is there, like video or photo evidence?
[00:24:14] Preston Meyer: There's thousands of witnesses. Okay. Like it's a thing that happens so consistently but not perfectly consistently. There's there's a big ritual celebration, and they present the blood so everyone can see it. And so one of them is on San Gennaro's feast day, September 19th, September 19th, and then again on December 16th, which is the day of the Archdiocese of Naples, with Saint Gennaro as their patron saint. And it almost always liquefies on both of these dates. Sometimes it will liquefy on other days as well. Sometimes it fails to liquefy on these dates. And those are notable exceptions. Like somebody has got a list of dates where it has failed to liquefy.
[00:25:03] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:25:04] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's it's really weird because if it was blood, scientifically, all the experiments that we've ever run say, once you liquefy dried blood, it will never dry up again. So we've got ourselves a some miracle or it's not blood.
[00:25:23] Katie Dooley: Well, you have more notes on this than I'm intrigued.
[00:25:26] Preston Meyer: So there are times where it takes longer to liquefy than other times there's no set sure amount of time, and it doesn't correlate with the temperature of the room or anything like that. It's really weird. What's really interesting is that the times when it fails to liquefy it coincides with occasions that might preoccupy the local priests, which is really easy to say, oh, somebody's being sneaky and getting in there and, and doing something so that it will liquefy beforehand. But it is strictly forbidden and strictly guarded that you don't get to open the container that the two tiny vials are in. Nobody has access to these things. It's really weird. And weirder that sometimes they'll liquefy off schedule. I mean, all all of it is really weird.
[00:26:22] Katie Dooley: See, I think it's more weirder that it liquefies on a schedule, right? Because if it's an unstable substance, then to be to not have a schedule makes sense. But to.
[00:26:31] Preston Meyer: All of it's weird.
[00:26:32] Katie Dooley: I assume they pick the days based off of the blood liquefaction, not the blood, knowing it's the saint's day while.
[00:26:38] Preston Meyer: Well, blood doesn't know things.
[00:26:40] Katie Dooley: That's what I mean.
[00:26:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's. It's really weird.
[00:26:47] Katie Dooley: Blood doesn't know things. Thank you. Preston.
[00:26:50] Preston Meyer: So they they've run a special kind of test. Spectroscopy is a thing that they can do where they just shine light through it and measure how the light reflects, refracts through it. It's a thing we did when I was in high school. So I've got an idea of how it's kind of a thing that can be reliable in some things. It's how we know what elements are in the sun and things like that. And it matches hemoglobin according to the people who are doing the tests, but it doesn't behave like hemoglobin. Honestly, the scientific method is really frustrating for this whole thing because it doesn't behave perfectly predictably. Really annoying.
[00:27:34] Katie Dooley: And they can't test it in a way that they would want to test it.
[00:27:37] Preston Meyer: Right, you can't open it up and say, oh yeah, it's blood, because you would be destroying the relic to do that. Which, when a thing has religious significance, means you're going to have a bad day in that argument. So some scientists have suggested that the vials contain hydrated iron oxide, which is a component in blood, more or less. Um, it would have been available centuries ago. It looks like blood. It rusts in the right color.
[00:28:05] Katie Dooley: Iron... Iron oxide will come up later for the Shroud of Turin as well.
[00:28:08] Preston Meyer: Right? Sure. So again, if it was just iron oxide, hydrated, it would usually behave in a reliable, predictable way. Weird that this blood doesn't. The problem I have with it is that theologically, why would this be a thing that God would bother messing with? I don't get it. That's that doesn't jive with my usefulness for God in the universe, I guess.
[00:28:39] Katie Dooley: I mean, yeah, there's a lot of other things he could be doing, right?
[00:28:43] Preston Meyer: Another weird thing is that this phenomenon is fully unique to the area surrounding Naples. There are about 20 other saints whose preserved blood occasionally liquefies. And even though John the Baptist is on this list, it's at a shrine in the Naples area. This thing of liquefying blood is specific to one little part of Italy.
[00:29:11] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:29:12] Preston Meyer: Nowhere else in the world does this is happening. Yeah, it's very weird.
[00:29:18] Katie Dooley: I kind of like this one because it's like there's no answer to it.
[00:29:21] Preston Meyer: I mean, there's there is. We just don't have.
[00:29:23] Katie Dooley: We don't have access to fair. Whereas like, we know. Right? There's enough records that we know Catherine's head was probably actually stolen and taken somewhere. John the Baptist, a little more complicated. Don't know that one. And then a piece of the cross. You know, it's...
[00:29:37] Preston Meyer: Probably fraud.
[00:29:38] Katie Dooley: Probably frauds for the most part.
[00:29:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:29:41] Katie Dooley: For as many pieces of the cross. And we'll get to same with John the Baptist for as many pieces of the cross are sure. Maybe one is real, but we'll never know, right? And, uh, what was the other one? Oh, the magi we know is not true. Even a little bit.
[00:29:53] Preston Meyer: Well, I mean, we we can't say with 100% certainty that there's no truth to it, but with an awful lot of heavy confidence. Yes. So my suspicion with this thing about the liquefying blood being specifically focused in Naples, out of the whole world, and all the cool relics that we find, I'm very confident that there's one weird little priestly magic tradition.
[00:30:19] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say some sort of roadside attraction from.
[00:30:24] Preston Meyer: Some dude.
[00:30:25] Katie Dooley: Figured it out.
[00:30:26] Preston Meyer: Started it... Probably taught it to a couple other dudes and said, hey, this is a thing that we're going to do because this is going to get people's attention forever. And it worked. That's my suspicion. That's the way it feels to me.
[00:30:41] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Another, I guess, first degree.
[00:30:48] Preston Meyer: This one's directly connected.
[00:30:50] Katie Dooley: To JC.
[00:30:50] Preston Meyer: A big deal.
[00:30:51] Katie Dooley: So this is the Shroud of Turin, which is believed to be Jesus's burial shroud. It is 14ft. It is 14 foot length of linen, depicting the image of a man in negative. And the man has crucifixion and scourging wounds, which we'll get to. But what? Say it.
[00:31:16] Preston Meyer: Before we even talk. About what the Shroud of Turin like, what the artifact is, the story of how it would have come to be the way it is feels a little bit weird.
[00:31:27] Katie Dooley: Well, you should dive into that. The theological Christian.
[00:31:31] Preston Meyer: So for the Shroud of Turin to be real and look the way it does. Spoiler warning, I don't think it's legit.
[00:31:41] Katie Dooley: No, we'll talk about that. Yeah.
[00:31:43] Preston Meyer: For it to be real and have the appearance it has, it would have to be like the body of Jesus When his spirit came to reoccupy the dead body again, that he would have been almost on fire.
[00:32:01] Katie Dooley: Mhm. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:32:04] Preston Meyer: Which feels a little weird.
[00:32:05] Katie Dooley: Definitely. If you're listening to this and you're probably on your phone, pull this one up. It's really interesting. Um, so the first appearance of the Shroud of Turin was in 1354, and no one from, like, religious higher ups have taken an official position on it. Pope Francis says it is an icon of a man scourged and crucified. That's all he'll say on it.
[00:32:30] Preston Meyer: No responsibility statement.
[00:32:33] Katie Dooley: Yes, it has been carbon dated, which puts it squarely in the Middle Ages. And any attempts to challenge that have been disproved using the scientific method. Of course, even though it is, it is a forgery. Um, many people dispute that and we still don't know how the person made it. Um, and there's been tons of research on the on how this image got onto this fabric with no definitive answers. It is actually one of the most heavily studied artifacts of all time.
[00:33:10] Preston Meyer: The great thing about that is the idea that, yeah, everyone. Well, not everyone. An awful lot of people think it's important, but not so important that we can't run tests on it.
[00:33:20] Katie Dooley: Right? So they have tested this browning color that is supposed to be blood, and there's no definitive proof that it's blood. And so these blood patterns, air quotes have actually been tested. They actually had human volunteers and mannequins. And so what they did was they put in essentially blood drips that the mannequin had the scourging blood drips. And then these people had crucifixion blood drips, and they laid them out and see how your blood would flow had you these injuries. And it's not this pattern at all. It's like, honestly, the shroud is like very neat for someone who has just lost all their blood.
[00:33:57] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:33:59] Katie Dooley: It's like, I feel like it looks like a little paper cuts. It's like. Mhm. It would be soaked in blood.
[00:34:04] Preston Meyer: Um. Uh. I love that they did this experiment right.
[00:34:09] Katie Dooley: I'm like, I don't know if I'd volunteer for that. But we also know that my stomach is queasy just talking about it.
[00:34:14] Preston Meyer: And even just what we see from the filming of The Passion of the Christ, faithful people are willing to go to great lengths to know stuff.
[00:34:22] Katie Dooley: Oh, when that movie came out. And even around Easter. Well, we don't have cable now, so it's not so bad. But like, I would turn the TV off when the trailer came on, so I've never even seen the trailer for it. I imagine the trailer is not bad because it's very like public viewing, but even then I would turn it off and then I would like avoid television around Easter.
[00:34:41] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:34:42] Katie Dooley: Because it's just like I've put this on the Discord. This is like this makes my skin crawl.
[00:34:48] Preston Meyer: I mean, watching somebody be tortured isn't a thing that should bring you comfort.
[00:34:51] Katie Dooley: No, that's true. But, like, you know, I've watched some gory movies. Anyway, I digress. Only the Pope can declare a public viewing of the shroud. And it doesn't happen very often, even if it is only 700 years old, it is still very delicate. The next showing everyone is in 2025 and this was declared by Pope John Paul. So this is declared a long time ago because Francis and we had Francis and Benedict too. Um, it happens in Turin, Italy, the Shroud of Turin. The shroud has its own website, the shroud.com, where you can, like, keep tabs on this. So if you have any moderate interest.
[00:35:36] Preston Meyer: Um, sign up now.
[00:35:37] Katie Dooley: In seeing this puppy, stay on it because it will be jam-packed with pilgrims to, um, to go see it. So if you want to see it for a religious reason, stay on it. If you want to see it for interest sake, there'll be tons of pilgrims. I'm not saying don't see it. Just prepare yourself.
[00:35:58] Preston Meyer: And go in knowing that it's definitely a fraud.
[00:36:05] Katie Dooley: Oh, boy. Yeah. There's like, yeah, there's literally nothing that makes sense. But it is cool that we don't know how it was made.
[00:36:17] Preston Meyer: I was just seeing what's next. All right. Next on our list we have the heads of Saint John the Baptist.
[00:36:25] Katie Dooley: That's right.
[00:36:26] Preston Meyer: We got, like, a Zaphod Beeblebrox situation. There's more than one head.
[00:36:31] Katie Dooley: I know, I was telling Bryant. He's like, was was Saint John a hydra?
[00:36:36] Preston Meyer: Cut one off. Two more take its place. Well, there's... If you trust the church, there's some evidence that he was. Even though the biblical account says, nah, this bro was dead when they cut off his head the first time.
[00:36:52] Katie Dooley: I was like, the church says he's a hydra. What did I miss?
[00:36:55] Preston Meyer: The church says he's got three heads. We got that.
[00:36:58] Katie Dooley: And we got... I found records of at least six, so.
[00:37:01] Preston Meyer: Oh dang, that's past what I found, so that's great. I mean.
[00:37:06] Katie Dooley: Unless some of these have been moved from one to another. But I found one, two, three, four, five, at least five.
[00:37:13] Preston Meyer: That's fantastic.
[00:37:14] Katie Dooley: Yeah, he's got a ton of heads. So Saint John the Baptist was beheaded by Herod Antipas sometime before the crucifixion of Jesus. And he was supposedly buried somewhere in Palestine. Today, his tomb is in Nabi Yahya mosque, Nabi Yahya mosque and Mosque of the Prophet John is what that translates to, in Northwest Palestine. The problem is, Preston, is that several places claim to have his head simultaneously.
[00:37:47] Preston Meyer: So I'm on board with the idea that somebody was happy to have his head. The story says that that's the case that we have in the New Testament. But at what point was this head collected from somebody who had no faith in Jesus or John the Baptist, and started being trafficked by faithful Christians? That's a mystery still.
[00:38:12] Katie Dooley: I am also upset for whoever the other 4 to 5 heads are.
[00:38:17] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:38:18] Katie Dooley: So this is a great one because we know at least five of them are lying. Maybe all six. So yeah. So there is a head at Amiens Cathedral in France. The Knights Templar had possession of the head in France during the Inquisition. At least that's what it said.
[00:38:36] Preston Meyer: So that head was there anyway? Yes.
[00:38:39] Katie Dooley: Someone's head was there. And they're saying it's John the Baptist. The eastern. Okay. Okay, so I guess this technically isn't the head.. Eastern? The Eastern Orthodox Church in Jerusalem is supposed to have a piece of his skull.
[00:38:52] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:38:52] Katie Dooley: Which is weird when there's full heads on display
[00:38:57] Preston Meyer: Right? Some of them even have their skin on without evidence of part of a skull being taken.
[00:39:01] Katie Dooley: Right, that's what I mean. So technically not a full head. Don't at me. But a piece of a head. The Basilica of San Silvestro in Rome, or this is Saint Sylvester. It was brought to Rome by Greek monks in this version. And some researchers suggest that it's the head of a local martyr who happens to be named John.
[00:39:27] Preston Meyer: But the head is fully visible, which I thought was worth noting. That a lot of them aren't. They're wrapped up. This one, we can see the head. We can see the face. And obviously, because it's hella old, it's hella gross.
[00:39:43] Katie Dooley: Hella gross. And like, it doesn't look like John anymore, for sure. Not as we used to know.
[00:39:48] Preston Meyer: Not in his prime, anyway.
[00:39:50] Katie Dooley: We're terrible people. Uh, there's one in the Residenz Museum in Munich. This one is wrapped in cloth and heavily bedazzled.
[00:39:59] Preston Meyer: Mhmm It's fancy.
[00:40:02] Katie Dooley: And then the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus has the head of John the Baptist. This one is also wrapped in cloth. And not that this verifies anything, but Pope John Paul did visit the mosque on a trip to Syria in 2001. So not, again, that doesn't give it any validity there's also one in Rome where the Pope lives, but worthwhile enough for the Pope to make the trip. So there is also a rumor that the head might be held at a Romanian monastic community called Skete Prodromos at the Great Lavra monastery. So that's one, two, three, four, five and a skull chunk, five heads in a skull chunk.
[00:40:52] Preston Meyer: That can't all be legit, because I feel like somebody would have told us if John was a hydra.
[00:40:59] Katie Dooley: I really feel like that would have been heavily featured in the Bible, if only because people didn't have last names, So just to clarify who someone is, John of the Five Heads, then you'd know exactly who.
[00:41:14] Preston Meyer: Right? You're describing somebody by their profession, handy in a lot of situations.
[00:41:18] Katie Dooley: Son of. Son of. Son of, wordy. But.
[00:41:20] Preston Meyer: Right? But if a dude has a major defining personal feature that gets called out.
[00:41:27] Katie Dooley: Right? Oh, dear. Like five heads. Oh, boy, oh, boy.
[00:41:35] Preston Meyer: Oh, what was his name? Hiram McDaniels.
[00:41:38] Katie Dooley: Hiram the dragon with the five heads.
[00:41:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah. Hiram McDaniels. Not a biblical figure. Unless you want to.
[00:41:45] Katie Dooley: Hiram is a biblical name, though.
[00:41:47] Preston Meyer: It is. It sure is. McDaniels, not a very biblical surname, though.
[00:41:51] Katie Dooley: No. Hiram, son of John the Baptist.
[00:41:59] Preston Meyer: For those of you who know Nightvale, you know Hiram McDaniels.
[00:42:02] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Welcome to Night Vale is a fabulous podcast. Um, yeah.
[00:42:07] Preston Meyer: They don't need our support.
[00:42:08] Katie Dooley: They don't need our support, but we need their support.
[00:42:11] Preston Meyer: That'd be great. Next on our list, and Saint Bernard's a happy guy. Every time we bring it up, mother Mary's milk.
[00:42:22] Katie Dooley: Yum.
[00:42:24] Preston Meyer: That's a very popular relic during the Middle Ages and still has a little popularity today. Kind of weird. There is a milk grotto in Bethlehem where Mary is said to have breastfed Jesus. So far, makes sense story wise. Somehow her milk made it onto the walls? Now the story got weird. What's going on?
[00:42:45] Katie Dooley: I mean, neither of us are breastfeeding mothers, so I don't know how far breast milk can shoot.
[00:42:52] Preston Meyer: I mean, if you're committed, you can fire it. That's a thing that can happen.
[00:42:56] Katie Dooley: Also. I just don't know why you would waste it either.
[00:42:58] Preston Meyer: Right? But especially when we have every reason to believe they were poor.
[00:43:02] Katie Dooley: If you're a mom and want to let us know why you would squirt or waste your breast milk, please let me know in our Discord.
[00:43:10] Preston Meyer: Well, anyway, the story goes, some made it onto the wall, which is where they scraped it from to put it into vials. When? Who? What?
[00:43:21] Katie Dooley: Creepy. And again, Jesus isn't any. Well, I guess they were the Magi coming, but like he Jesus isn't anyone yet. Really,
[00:43:30] Preston Meyer: Right,
[00:43:31] Katie Dooley: You know? So it is extra weird.
[00:43:32] Preston Meyer: Well, and most interpretations of the story have the Magi coming a long time after the birth. Yeah, like when they weren't living in Bethlehem anymore. Of course there's some versions of this, some interpretations of the story have them staying in Bethlehem instead of being in Nazareth to avoid the killing of children. But also the story says that they went down to Egypt for this escape. We got weird bits of story that make this particular relic really unlikely to be authentic.
[00:44:07] Katie Dooley: Keep going, Preston.
[00:44:08] Preston Meyer: So anyway, they scraped the dried residue of milk into vials. Um, her milk had turned the rocks of the grotto white, which makes it seem like that was an awful lot of milk.
[00:44:23] Katie Dooley: Or the entire one little squirty squirt turned the entire grotto into milk rocks.
[00:44:30] Preston Meyer: Now, are we saying.
[00:44:31] Katie Dooley: It's just chalk...
[00:44:33] Preston Meyer: So either this is a massive sexual event or, t's absolute nonsense..
[00:44:45] Katie Dooley: Or it's a massive miracle that was not covered in any of the books of the Bible.
[00:44:49] Preston Meyer: Right. That's the alternative.
[00:44:52] Katie Dooley: Here's the atheist being like, have some suspended disbelief here. And you're like, um, ew no.
[00:44:59] Preston Meyer: As somebody who believes this is a thing that I'm just I'm not on this wagon. Uh, anyway, the the residue that was collected from the walls that were turned white with the mass quantities of milk or magic or whatever. Uh, this residue is said to have healing powers, which is a thing that a lot of people testify to over the centuries.
[00:45:29] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So new mothers or women who are trying to conceive will visit the milk grotto, and they'll mix the milk walls (chalk) with their food, which is supposed to increase chances of pregnancy if you are in those categories and are curious, you can't actually order this residue online. You have to go to the grotto itself. But you can you can go today and get...
[00:45:58] Preston Meyer: Scrape a little bit off for yourself.
[00:45:58] Katie Dooley: A little bit and put it in your milkshake and get pregnant.
[00:46:02] Preston Meyer: Uh, if only pregnancy worked that way. So 90 churches claim to have or have claimed to have vials of Mary's milk, either a liquid or powdered form. That's right. Not just powder from the walls, but liquid. You know, mixing chalk with water will give you something that looks a lot like skim milk.
[00:46:22] Katie Dooley: Powdered milk is a thing. Preston.
[00:46:24] Preston Meyer: It is.
[00:46:25] Katie Dooley: You can rehydrate milk.
[00:46:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's not as good, but. I mean, you're. One would say you shouldn't drink it, but that is the goal for these people.
[00:46:33] Katie Dooley: For this 2000 year old milk. Yeah. Oh, I didn't think this one would make me gag. Uh, no. Um.
[00:46:42] Preston Meyer: Here we are.
[00:46:42] Katie Dooley: I licked the pop filter doing that to you. Oh, Yeah. You shouldn't drink it. But who am I?
[00:46:50] Preston Meyer: So John Calvin again really didn't like these relics.
[00:46:55] Katie Dooley: He's so sassy. I love this one so much.
[00:46:58] Preston Meyer: He says even if she had been a cow her whole life, she could not have produced such a quantity of milk. Now 90 bottles. Does that seems actually pretty achievable, doesn't it?
[00:47:11] Katie Dooley: I mean, I'm not a mother and have no intention to be, but if you pumped a couple bottles a day, 180 days is only half a year. Yeah, that seems reasonable, right? Some people breastfeed for far too long.
[00:47:27] Preston Meyer: Right? And we're not talking full bottles. We're. What we're looking at here is little vials in these churches.
[00:47:33] Katie Dooley: And just to be clear, I mean, like when you're breastfeeding to like, ten years old, that's too long.
[00:47:39] Preston Meyer: 100%. Agreed.
[00:47:41] Katie Dooley: I'm not here to be, like, you breastfed for, like, a year and a half. Ew. I mean, like when they can talk back to you and just, like, walk up to you and latch on. That's too long.
[00:47:51] Preston Meyer: I was definitely having what counts as sexual thoughts about boobs long before I was ten years old. So yeah, that bar needs to not be at ten.
[00:48:00] Katie Dooley: Yeah. If your kid can say, hey, mom, can I have a drink? That's too old. Anyway. Uh, here you go, Preston. The one you've been waiting for.
[00:48:13] Preston Meyer: Uh, we warned you we were going to talk about foreskins again. And, man, have we got a lot to say about Jesus' turtleneck. Oh, I don't know why anyone would have this. It's it... I don't get it.
[00:48:30] Katie Dooley: Then I commented in the notes. I don't know why anyone would have any of these, but I see your point, Preston.
[00:48:36] Preston Meyer: Of all of the things like having the milk doesn't actually make sense. Claiming that this is the grotto that she breastfed in and turned the walls white with her milk. That feels crazy, but this is a whole 'nother level of crazy. The Holy Prepuce is the fancy name.
[00:49:00] Katie Dooley: For a foreskin.
[00:49:01] Preston Meyer: For Jesus.
[00:49:03] Katie Dooley: Calamari ring.
[00:49:06] Preston Meyer: And there's... I can't get behind any explanation on why this is a thing that anyone would possess, much less with certainty that it belonged to Jesus. But there is an old...
[00:49:21] Katie Dooley: Someone just owns a random foreskin! How many foreskins are out there in the world?
[00:49:25] Preston Meyer: Huh? About as many as there are humans.
[00:49:28] Katie Dooley: No, I mean of Jesus's foreskin.
[00:49:30] Preston Meyer: Uh, I don't know the number.
[00:49:32] Katie Dooley: I'm gonna Google that while you talk.
[00:49:34] Preston Meyer: It's terrible.
[00:49:36] Katie Dooley: I actually, actually, I was like, I was gonna Google it. And then I realized, I don't want to type How many Jesus foreskins are there in my phone?
[00:49:45] Preston Meyer: Uh, France has at least 11, so we've there's a lot.
[00:49:51] Katie Dooley: Okay. I don't need to Google that. I just need to know if there's more than one.
[00:49:54] Preston Meyer: So going back to the Saint John Hydra thing. Jesus, apparently, based on the existing evidence of the Catholic tradition, uh, Jesus just really didn't want to be circumcised, even though the story is that he's the one who started all of this way back in the days of Abraham. Because if it keeps growing back and he's got he has the power.
[00:50:21] Katie Dooley: I'm clenching and I don't even have a penis.
[00:50:24] Preston Meyer: Anyway, so as much as I can't think of any reason why anyone would both possess it and genuinely believe that it's the genuine relic, there is an old Arabic infancy gospel that says when the time of his circumcision came on the eighth day, when the law commanded the child should be circumcised, they circumcised him in a cave. That's a weird choice of location, but fine, let's move on.
[00:50:50] Katie Dooley: Unhygienic.
[00:50:50] Preston Meyer: Okay. And the old Hebrew woman took the foreskin and kept it in an alabaster box with old spikenard oil. Okay. Weird thing to do, but the biblical story does say that people recognize Jesus as being special from birth, so...
[00:51:07] Katie Dooley: Okay, we'll keep suspending disbelief.
[00:51:09] Preston Meyer: That's that's the story, okay. Uh, so this lady, the text goes on to say she had a son who was a druggist. That's that's the word I found in the version of the text I was using.
[00:51:23] Katie Dooley: That seems very modern.
[00:51:25] Preston Meyer: It does. Pharmacists feels a little too modern, though, so I let it stick with the word druggist. It's a dude who makes drugs.
[00:51:35] Katie Dooley: I know, but I feel like herbalist or something would have been historically accurate.
[00:51:39] Preston Meyer: Herbalist is fair. So she had a son who was a herbalist. She told him, do not sell this alabaster box of spikenard ointment even when you are offered 300 denarii for it. Now, this is the same alabaster box that the sinner Mary obtained and poured its ointment on the head and feet of our Lord Jesus Christ, and wiped it with her hair.
[00:52:01] Katie Dooley: Like Mary Magdalene?
[00:52:03] Preston Meyer: A lot of people say that that was Mary Magdalene. The Bible does not say that it's Mary Magdalene. Okay. It's Mary the sinner. Okay. There's Miriam was a very common name in Israel at the time. And we've we've talked about this before. There was one pope who said, there's too many people in the Bible. If they have the same name, they're the same person now, which is obviously a problem.
[00:52:27] Katie Dooley: Considering Mary's mom and Mary Magdalene are two very different people.
[00:52:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. He took the list of several Marys down to 2 or 3, something like that. It was ridiculous because obviously Mary Magdalene is not Mary, Jesus's mother, but we got what we got. So this story tells us how the foreskin was preserved. Now that last verse, though, this is the same alabaster box that the Sister Mary obtained. I feel really weird about this. Like the coincidence feels unnecessary for this, for that to be part of the story. But also, if I end up buying a box that's got some spikenard oil in it, because that's what I'm after and I see some dude's foreskin that's probably going to hit the trash. At least the foreskin. Maybe the whole box, depending how I'm feeling that day.
[00:53:31] Katie Dooley: Did... And would Jesus have known it was his foreskin?
[00:53:34] Preston Meyer: Because there's.
[00:53:35] Katie Dooley: This is a this is the context that we have. 'Cause if I was like, "hey, Preston, I'm gonna pour this oil on your hands and feet. Don't mind that there's a foreskin in it."
[00:53:45] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:53:46] Katie Dooley: Would you be like, "ooh, can we get another? Can we get another container?" Or. But. And then. Okay. And then what if I was like, hey.
[00:53:52] Preston Meyer: Mary would be like, oh. And it's don't worry about it's yours.
[00:53:55] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say and then... Don't worry. Even if it was, if it was yours, would you be like, okay, go ahead. Or would you be like, ew no, that's like 30 years old, right?
[00:54:05] Preston Meyer: Okay, this thing's got to be gangrenous. Maybe not gangrenous. That I think that's more complicated. It would. Well, it would be preserved in the oil.
[00:54:13] Katie Dooley: I mean, I'm not Google. I'm not googling it.
[00:54:16] Preston Meyer: A loose foreskin in the oil, to me makes the oil not usable in a human application.
[00:54:22] Katie Dooley: Okay. And then it says she wiped her hair with it or wiped it with her hair, wiped the foreskin,
[00:54:27] Preston Meyer: Wiped His feet.
[00:54:29] Katie Dooley: With her hair.
[00:54:29] Preston Meyer: With her hair. Okay. Yeah.
[00:54:31] Katie Dooley: Okay. Yeah. Still gross. Because there was a foreskin in it. If it was just oily hair on feet, if it was just oily hair on feet. Still not my thing, but not so bad. But foreskin oil makes it worse.
[00:54:47] Preston Meyer: So what we what we get from this story in the Arabic infancy gospel is somebody decided to preserve the foreskin, told son, don't sell it, not even for 300 denarii. And then he sold it anyway. Meaning that we've got a problem with the record of the foreskin.
[00:55:10] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Or maybe this Hebrew woman. This was like her thing. Kind of like a serial killer.
[00:55:20] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:55:20] Katie Dooley: And maybe all they...
[00:55:22] Preston Meyer: Put it on a necklace though?
[00:55:23] Katie Dooley: I don't know, maybe all her son sold was foreskin oil.
[00:55:26] Preston Meyer: I don't know. But you remember Saint Catherine also received the gift of the foreskin wedding ring from the special personal revelation of Jesus' appearance.
[00:55:40] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but Jesus gave that to her. That's different. That's mystical.
[00:55:43] Preston Meyer: Right? But I forgot to add that to the list of all the foreskins that we're going to cover now.
[00:55:48] Katie Dooley: I'm dying.
[00:55:51] Preston Meyer: So in addition to that, several groups have simultaneously claimed to have the Savior's turtleneck.
[00:55:59] Calamari ring. I like calamari ring.
[00:56:01] Katie Dooley: Sure, the cheese toque.
[00:56:08] Katie Dooley: I did like cheese toque. Oh, boy.
[00:56:12] Preston Meyer: So anyway, one of them, the one that's considered most highly, most valued among all of them, was a gift from Charlemagne to Pope Leo the Third, after he was made emperor in 800 CE. On Christmas, old Charles said that it was given to him by an angel. So basically it's I don't have to explain where I got this foreskin. I got it from an angel. The angel gave it to him when he was visiting the place where Jesus is thought to have been buried, not the cave where he was thought to have been circumcised, according to the old Arabic tradition. It's just a weird place to receive this gift, but whatever. That's the... That's the story. This was allegedly confirmed when Bridget of Sweden received a vision confirming that the foreskin was in Rome, which, of course, this miracle got her sainted.
[00:57:08] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:57:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, weirdly enough, the the foreskin was stolen when Rome was sacked in 1527. The German who stole it was allegedly caught a little bit north of Rome, in the village of Calcata. Not Kolkata, not Calcutta, but Calcata, in Rome or in Italy, where the foreskin remained until 1983, when it was again reported stolen.
[00:57:39] Katie Dooley: 1983. That's very recent. Yeah. You think you'd look after your foreskins better.
[00:57:45] Preston Meyer: Right? So for a little over 400 years after being in Rome for a long time, it just chilled out in this smaller village for all kinds of pilgrimages. So went missing in 1983. That's a problem. That's... Here's where it gets a little bit twisty, though. Is the container, the reliquary that was supposed to house this foreskin was also counted among Vatican assets in 1905. So did somebody just. Well, not somebod, everybody, just failed to notice for 80 years that it wasn't in Calcata anymore? I don't know.
[00:58:30] Katie Dooley: Calcata was just like taking in the money from the pilgrims and just, like, not saying anything.
[00:58:34] Preston Meyer: I don't know. Uh, or maybe the Calcata skin ring was a fraud from the start.
[00:58:41] Katie Dooley: No! None of these are frauds, Preston. How dare you?
[00:58:47] Preston Meyer: Right. But the weird thing is that it's been reported stolen and everything, and nobody's gone back to this list and said, oh, and gone through all the boxes of things and actually grabbed the purported foreskin reliquary from 120 years ago. Uh, decisions in Rome, outside my power. I think I'd be more helpful if I was over there.
[00:59:19] Katie Dooley: Well, we can do that. But first you have to convert.
[00:59:22] Preston Meyer: Which I just have no interest in doing.
[00:59:24] Katie Dooley: And then you gotta go to seminary.
[00:59:25] Preston Meyer: I mean, I've done that, but not a Catholic seminary. So that's that.
[00:59:29] Katie Dooley: You gotta divorce your wife.
[00:59:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The Catholic tradition just isn't for me.
[00:59:35] Katie Dooley: Because Amanda's so cute.
[00:59:37] Preston Meyer: She's pretty cute.
[00:59:38] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:59:39] Preston Meyer: All right. Well, anyway, uh, there are several other claimants. There's one in Spain. There's one in Belgium, in Antwerp, there's one in Germany. Antwerp's holy cheese toque was a gift from King Baldwin of Jerusalem in 1100 CE. And they built a cathedral specifically to house this relic. But it was also stolen in 1566. So, like reasonably shortly after, the one was stolen from Rome and then found in Calcata.
[01:00:10] Katie Dooley: So there was definitely, like a foreskin thief. Yeah.
[01:00:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah, for sure.
[01:00:16] Katie Dooley: For sure. Foreskin.
[01:00:21] Preston Meyer: Uh. It's a weird place and time anyway, but like I mentioned before, France has at least 11 distinct claimants to the title of the Divine Turtleneck. There's an abbey in Charroux that claims Charlemagne gave them the foreskin that he got from the angel. So this directly conflicts with the details we have about the one from Rome and Calcata. They offered to let Pope Innocent the Third inspect its authenticity, but he didn't really want to admit to being an expert on the subject, so he just said, no. You guys say what you want. I'm not going to inspect it. Uh, it went missing at some point. Yeah, because, like we said, somebody going around stealing these things.
[01:01:08] Katie Dooley: That's so weird. I want to know who this person is.
[01:01:12] Preston Meyer: Uh, but it was found again, or maybe replaced, in 1856 when a worker allegedly found it hidden inside a wall. Why? Why are you putting chunks of someone's finger in the wall?
[01:01:27] Katie Dooley: When you put it that way.. When you put it that way.
[01:01:32] Preston Meyer: Um. Most of France's huge collection of dickskin was lost by the time of the French Revolution, though.
[01:01:38] Katie Dooley: So good. I don't I don't know how I feel about this. I feel like it's probably for the best to get rid of. We do not need this many foreskins, um, at all.
[01:01:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but. Interesting. So we've we've got like 15, at least separate ones that I've been able to research on. But since the theft of the most popular foreskin in 1983, the one from Calcata, claims of possessing the foreskin have been awfully quiet. There have been a few documentary quests to find the holy foreskin, which to me feels about as ridiculous as looking for the Holy Grail.
[01:02:15] Katie Dooley: I'm gonna. I'm gonna say it's actually more ridiculous than looking for the Holy Grail.
[01:02:20] Preston Meyer: That's fair.
[01:02:22] Katie Dooley: At least it's a cup.
[01:02:26] Preston Meyer: Right?
[01:02:26] Katie Dooley: And not a chunk of skin!
[01:02:30] Preston Meyer: Well, see, looking for a part of the body of Christ, legitimate or not, feels roughly on par to a generic cup. That was definitely one of many at what just happens to be a dinner that Jesus participated in. Jesus drank from a lot of cups over the course of his lifetime. The one that was the first official Jesus, the host of the Passover that we recognize in biblical tradition, doesn't make the cup any more special. To me anyway, I know that thousands of people disagree, and that's okay. But yeah, we've got a serious issue with the foreskin and all of these claims, nobody's stepping up to say, oh, yeah, I got the foreskin because nobody wants to be in trouble and on the hook for the crime of the theft of the foreskin 40 years ago.
[01:03:30] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Yeah. So there's just some foreskin pervert out there.
[01:03:34] Preston Meyer: There. I mean, that's always been the case.
[01:03:36] Katie Dooley: Could you... Okay. Right. Could you imagine, like, hypothetically, of course, but, like, cleaning up your grandpa's stuff and just finding a foreskin? Like, what would you do? Like, clearly they stole it.
[01:03:51] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[01:03:52] Katie Dooley: So do you admit to me like I found this in my grandpa's things? Or do you just be like. That's gross grandpa. You're a weird dude. And just chuck it.
[01:04:00] Preston Meyer: So the great thing about this is that realistically, realistically, if you're going to find the foreskin, you would find it in a reliquary. Nobody's just letting...
[01:04:13] Katie Dooley: I like I picture like an Altoids tin with a foreskin in it. Like, that's actually what I yeaah, that's what I'm actually picturing. Like, literally nothing. Even the oil, I'm like, oh, it's like an Altoids tin filled with oil.
[01:04:28] Preston Meyer: Well, I mean, the alabaster box story leads to that really nicely.
[01:04:33] Katie Dooley: It's entirely what I've been thinking the entire time.
[01:04:35] Preston Meyer: The reliquary that the the big, important, most popular foreskin was in was shaped pretty much like a cross. So you had a handle you could wave it around with, of course. And it was really conspicuous with jewels and gold or silver. And you would notice this in somebody's junk drawer or attic. This is a thing that would become really conspicuous. And you, you would take it to the church and go, hey, I got a thing. I think you take it to somebody to get it evaluated if you didn't know what it was.
[01:05:12] Katie Dooley: Oh, I looked up pictures, but I regret that I definitely did holy prepuce to like.
[01:05:20] Preston Meyer: So you didn't get any foreskin?
[01:05:22] Katie Dooley: Um, but I still regret googling that. So yeah, that was fun.
[01:05:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So generally, there's no good reason to believe that somebody saved Jesus foreskin, in my opinion, from the number of claimants. There's plenty of reasons to be suspicious of any.
[01:05:44] Katie Dooley: Just like the head of Saint John the Baptist. Just a different kind of head, right?
[01:05:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, thanks for that.
[01:05:52] Katie Dooley: You're welcome. If you can't laugh. If I can't laugh at this, I'll just cry.
[01:05:57] Preston Meyer: That's fair. Uh, anyway, there's there's loads of more relics in in all of the religious traditions of the world, we've only picked on a few that we thought would be interesting for you and have you participate in this conversation. In the Imperial Christian tradition, there's a tendency to use the Bible to defend the veneration of relics, which is really weird considering the practice doesn't have a strong biblical basis. We have the story of Jesus healing a woman who would only touch his clothes in a crowded street. We have a story of a dead body being thrown into the tomb of the prophet Elisha, and being revived as soon as he touched Elisha's bones. And there are a handful of more healing stories of things kind of in that calibre. And these stories are used to validate the trafficking of relics. But theologically speaking, there's no real good reason that God would withhold blessings from somebody for not visiting the mortal remains of a non-God. That's not the covenant any of us have made. It's just I get the appeal of being connected to history. But some of these are really freaking weird.
[01:07:16] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I mean, there's the history piece, and then, I mean, I hate to sort of dumb it down, but like this idea of celebrity or being close to greatness that all humans get sucked into, whether that's your love of a celebrity or a singer or Jesus. This idea of whatever, something bigger than ourselves or see our worship episode. Right?
[01:07:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's all complicated. The Bible very clearly lays out laws against worshiping sculptures and figurines, as well as anything that isn't the God of the covenant. But as we said before, even though veneration and worship are linguistically, intellectually, and morally indistinguishable, the Church of Rome still insists, hey, they're different. You can pray to the saints, you can go visit the relics and you can pray to them. And it's not worship because you don't recognize them as gods, but you treat them as gods and that makes it worship. Anyway, in 787 CE, the Second Council of Nicaea decided that veneration of relics is different than idolatry, because bones and bags of loose wood don't fit either don't fit their religiously motivated definition of inanimate. So we end up with a culture of prayer that looks an awful lot like hey saint, such and such. I spent a lot of time and money traveling to your severed arm and skull. Would you mind putting in a good word for me at the Heavenly Help desk? Which sounds like worship to me. But as long as people have been collecting relics, there have always been counterfeits. Always. Because there's money to be made. Hey, you're after this thing, I got it.
[01:09:04] Katie Dooley: Preston just opened up this trench coat. So weird. Guys.
[01:09:09] Preston Meyer: Uh, and it should be super obvious that counterfeits are a real problem just from the cases that we've cited already. It's it's a real problem. And John Calvin really pointed out how ridiculous it was, even though his exact wording really exaggerated how many counterfeits there are. It does point out that it is a real problem. Yeah.
[01:09:35] Katie Dooley: Oh, John Calvin, what a sassy man. Yeah. I mean, this was a fun, fun dive into relics. And, uh, in our research, we found some from other religions. Obviously, Judaism is not a relic religion. But there are some in Islam and Buddhism. So we'll probably do another one. Or if there's more Christian relics you want us to talk about, because there are tons. We can do that as well. You can message us on our social media, on our Discord. You can send us an email.
[01:10:12] Preston Meyer: Or you could buy a Holy Watermelon relic on our Spreadshop.
[01:10:16] Katie Dooley: Yeah, they're much cheaper and much more accessible than seeing the Shroud of Turin. It's like 20 bucks and it gets shipped straight to your door.
[01:10:27] Preston Meyer: It's great.
[01:10:28] Katie Dooley: Great.
[01:10:28] Preston Meyer: Super convenient. It's like Amazon, but not evil.
[01:10:33] Katie Dooley: Holy, even.
[01:10:35] Preston Meyer: Right?
[01:10:37] Katie Dooley: And if you are interesting, interested in providing ongoing support for the podcast, we have our Patreon. We do early releases of all our episodes. If you can't wait for the next one, and we are doing more bonus episodes this year, so be sure to check that out as well.
[01:10:54] Both Speakers: Peace be with you! | |||
| 23 May 2022 | The Troubles of Two Irelands | 01:06:57 | |
Looking again to Katie's Irish roots, the Troubles of Northern Ireland are a fascinating example of how religion gets tied to conflict. But is it really a religious conflict? What are the prerequisites for such a label. How much is religion really a part of the problem. Join us for an exploration of the history behind the Troubles, and the people who motivate them. It's easy to take sides, but solving the problem is a lot more complicated than agreeing to a cease-fire. Centuries of nationalism and colonialism have caused deep scars.... We take a look at the unionist "planters" who came from Great Britain to colonize Ireland, and follow through the Williamite Wars, and the Battle of the Boyne. We talk about Bobby Sands, and the assassination of Lord Mountbatten, and the Incredible Hulk's alter-ego, Bruce Banner. The Orange Order has some interesting history, not all of it good. Colonial nationalism and defensive patriotic nationalism are all that's left behind when you strip away the religious labels, but is it really that simple? All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
[00:00:10] Preston Meyer: Ah! Time to get back into the Irish. Have we ever been?
[00:00:17] Katie Dooley: Oh, I was like, have we ever been into the Irish? We did Celtic religion.
[00:00:21] Preston Meyer: We sure did.
[00:00:23] Katie Dooley: Fair, fair.
[00:00:25] Preston Meyer: So it's time for another episode of...
[00:00:28] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon podcast!
[00:00:33] Katie Dooley: What the heck are we talking about today? If not potatoes or Morrigan.
[00:00:39] Preston Meyer: The green and orange.
[00:00:41] Katie Dooley: Oh, no. Very controversial topic,
[00:00:46] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:00:47] Katie Dooley: Still.
[00:00:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's... Ireland is a country that's had a really hard time for so long. And it's, relatively speaking, in a pretty good point in its history right now.
[00:01:07] Katie Dooley: It is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are many examples of countries that have been divided by religion. I'd say probably most famously, is Israel and Palestine.
[00:01:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:01:20] Katie Dooley: And this is one conflict that I, that most people aren't even aware of is still to some extent, happening today. Like you said, it's better than it's always been. But there is a religious...? We'll get into that conflict in Ireland and Northern Ireland against the Catholics and the Protestants.
[00:01:43] Preston Meyer: Between the Catholics and the Protestants,
[00:01:46] Katie Dooley: Between the Catholics and the Protestants.
[00:01:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah...
[00:01:50] Katie Dooley: It's Catholics against Protestants.
[00:01:53] Preston Meyer: Yes, and Protestants against Catholics. There's an awful lot of violence coming from both sides, and it's super easy to say, obviously, this is a religious conflict because one half is Catholic and the adversaries are Protestants. But we'll get into the details. It's not that simple.
[00:02:15] Katie Dooley: Well absolutely not. It's morphed over the centuries that it's happened, and I think it's a good conflict to look at and extrapolate information to other conflicts around the world, to really see if it is a religious conflict or not. This one's always blown my mind because they're both Christian.
[00:02:40] Preston Meyer: Well, and they're not like just Christian. We're looking at Catholics versus the Protestants, which are mostly Anglicans. There's a few other groups thrown in there too, but mostly Anglicans, the Church of England or the Anglican Church of Ireland, I guess would be more accurate. And like the Anglican Church is basically basically Catholic light. If you look back in history, they're like...
[00:03:11] Katie Dooley: As far as Protestantism goes. Yeah, it's a pretty let's say traditional. It's probably not the best word. Traditional Protestantism.
[00:03:22] Preston Meyer: It's only a couple of steps away from the good old imperial religious tradition of Christianity, because it's just like the king wanted to start his own thing, but didn't come up with a whole bunch of new stuff. It's just like, I want to be able to divorce my wife. And other than that, I like Catholic doctrine, and things did slowly evolve a little bit. They're not exactly Catholic light anymore, but it's not a big step.
[00:03:52] Katie Dooley: Oh, the singsong. Singsongy voice is really, um, so why don't we run through what the differences are between Catholicism and Protestantism? Not Jesus. That's not a difference.
[00:04:06] Preston Meyer: So Catholicism isn't one monolithic thing. You've got a handful of of subsets. You've got the Roman Catholic tradition, which actually, over the course of history isn't strictly Roman either. There was a time where it was almost dead everywhere except for a couple of little places, one of them being the British Isles, which I thought was an interesting thing to learn. Um, but you've also got Ukrainian, Catholic and those groups that you would expect to be Orthodox with Catholic Orthodox split about a thousand years ago. But they aren't Orthodox, they're Catholic. They're part of the Catholic communion. Kind of funky. Protestantism a lot more broad. It's basically anybody who said, hey, this Catholic thing isn't quite where we want to be, so we're going to protest that make some changes become our own...
[00:05:05] Katie Dooley: Protestantism.
[00:05:07] Preston Meyer: Exactly. I'm glad you picked up on that.
[00:05:11] Katie Dooley: Thank you. I it didn't come out very good, but I think everyone got the point.
[00:05:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And of course, you've got a really good bush of what Protestantism is. You've got Episcopalian where that the idea is that there's a bishop at the head of the church versus Presbyterian, where you've got a council of elders as the head of the church. And of course, all of this subdivides even crazier.
[00:05:46] Katie Dooley: Baptists, anabaptists, evangelicals. Those all fall under the Protestant.
[00:05:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's there's very few churches that can't be classified as Protestant or a lot of, I'm going to say, the imperial tradition, Christians, where you can safely lump together the Catholic and the Orthodox, who are so different in a lot of ways, too, that they definitely deserve their separate labels, even though neither of them really deserves the exact label they have taken upon themselves.
[00:06:24] Katie Dooley: That's a different episode from the sounds of it. But. So, I mean, Protestantism started with the Reformation and Martin Luther.
[00:06:34] Preston Meyer: Pretty much.
[00:06:35] Katie Dooley: Who was a German guy who didn't like what the church was doing. As Preston mentioned, we have this little bush, a little bush. It's a big bush.
[00:06:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's a large, diverse bush.
[00:06:47] Katie Dooley: Hundreds of Hundreds of denominations. But the biggest difference is, especially at the time of the Reformation, was getting English or local language Bibles and services. The Catholic Church at the time only had Latin.
[00:07:02] Preston Meyer: Well, the Catholic Church was killing people to prevent the publication of the Bible in any language to the common masses, and especially in any language other than Latin.
[00:07:14] Katie Dooley: Now, my religious studies professor said that it got so bad that, like, priests didn't even know Latin. They just like stand up there and be like fettuccine bikini marscapone. And nobody knew, including the priest. Because...
[00:07:32] Preston Meyer: That's embarrassing.
[00:07:33] Katie Dooley: And I mean, it's a good argument for reformation if no one knows what you're saying, no one's reaping any benefit from it.
[00:07:38] Preston Meyer: Right? Which is why the Second Vatican Council, only like 60 years ago, helped introduce a little bit more of the the common everyday language of the people. That was a good move.
[00:07:53] Katie Dooley: Yes, it was because everyone was falling asleep or going next door to the Anglican church.
[00:07:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I it was funny because when I would tell people what I was studying in school and you need a language credit to get your Bachelor of Arts, it's like "you're studying Latin?" No, totally without any value in my field of study. Because I was basically a biblical studies was part of my thing. It was also my profession before school. So Greek was useful. Hebrew was useful. I studied those in university. Latin got no use for me.
[00:08:32] Katie Dooley: File it under G
[00:08:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah, even. Well, that tells you a little bit about how I connected to the the ritual tradition of the Catholic Church. One visit, at least using Latin anyway.
[00:08:51] Katie Dooley: A couple other big differences are clergyman in Catholicism have, I guess, more authority. They are believed to have God's authority over parishioners or congregants. And you have to be a man and you have to be celibate in Catholicism.
[00:09:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah, mostly there's exceptions to that, too. The Ukrainian Catholic Church is actually very comfortable with having their priests be married and some other places. If you're previously married before you get ordained, or if you've been an Anglican minister, for example, can become a Catholic priest and remain married. It's funky. It's weird.
[00:09:35] Katie Dooley: Very few exceptions to the rule.
[00:09:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but there are exceptions.
[00:09:39] Katie Dooley: Yes. And then there's that documentary where they show a bunch of priests having gay sex.
[00:09:46] Preston Meyer: That sounds a lot more like a porno not a documentary.
[00:09:51] Katie Dooley: There's I... Well, maybe we'll do a movie night. Um, no, it was, um. It was. I forget what it was called Inside the Vatican or the Vatican Scandals. And like, a reporter, like, went clubbing with a bunch of priests. And then he went home with one of the priests, and.
[00:10:10] Preston Meyer: Lucky him, I guess.
[00:10:12] Katie Dooley: Good for him. Um, but that would. That's not an exception to the rule. That's breaking the rule. Anyway, I digress. And then, then in Protestantism, you can be a woman, and it's like much more casual, like it's just a vocation as opposed to something divinely bestowed upon you.
[00:10:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:10:34] Katie Dooley: And then we've talked about lots in the past, Catholics venerating.
[00:10:40] Preston Meyer: Saints!
[00:10:42] Katie Dooley: Or things related to saints.
[00:10:44] Preston Meyer: Relics! Oh man, we had some fun talking about relics a couple weeks ago.
[00:10:47] Katie Dooley: Yeah, whereas there's basically none of that in Protestantism.
[00:10:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah, like there's there's a little bit of the saints business and relics in, in the older. Yeah. Like the Church of England, the Lutheran church, they, they do pay attention to saints. Relics are still kind of cool to them. I mean, let's be real, people who aren't Christian find Christian relics to be at least a little bit cool. Sometimes.
[00:11:20] Katie Dooley: I'd see the Shroud of Turin if I didn't have to see it with all the pilgrims.
[00:11:24] Preston Meyer: Sure. But I mean, with how infrequently that's public...
[00:11:29] Katie Dooley: That... My wish of not seeing it without the pilgrims will never happen. I'll have to elbow my way in there. So those are in a very short nutshell. Small nutshell.
[00:11:43] Preston Meyer: Some of the important differences.
[00:11:45] Katie Dooley: But other than that, they both believe in Jesus and the Trinity and Adam and Hell, but for different reasons.
[00:11:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the Bible is still hugely important to their tradition. They're very close cousins, only recently separated like 500 years or so.
[00:12:07] Katie Dooley: That's pretty recent. That's pretty recent...
[00:12:08] Preston Meyer: For a religion.
[00:12:11] Katie Dooley: So this is not a framework for the conflict in Ireland, which has been going on for a long ass time I mean almost.
[00:12:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah. About 400 years. Yeah, kind of crazy. It's been that long. And maybe this peace is actually going to finally settle. Maybe we'll see.
[00:12:37] Katie Dooley: We have our final thoughts on that.
[00:12:40] Preston Meyer: So about 400 years ago, there was this pretty decent relationship, I guess, kind of between Ireland and the United Kingdom of England and Scotland. And when land would default to the King because there was no heirs to take over the land, then the king would be like, all right, let's, uh, let's go send some Scottish people and a handful of English to go and populate this land. Not that Ireland had any population problems. The King was being a bit of a dick.
[00:13:21] Katie Dooley: It's called nepotism.
[00:13:22] Preston Meyer: Sure. I mean, they were colonizing Canada and, well, basically all of the Americas at this point, all of Europe was colonizing all of the Americas, way more land. Ireland, pretty small spot of land, relatively speaking, but it's closer, so it's more convenient. Not a good reason, but they called these people planters. They would go and plant the Irish lands that had defaulted to the Crown. And naturally, the native Irish folk didn't really like this passive aggressive colonization is what it was. And this is basically the seeds of all of the troubles... Is the king is being a dick, we need this to stop.
[00:14:14] Katie Dooley: Yes. So the native Irish. So at this point in history, they're all still one country.
[00:14:22] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:14:23] Katie Dooley: The native Irish to the island of Ireland are predominantly Catholic. And the people the king is planting are Protestant.
[00:14:32] Preston Meyer: Well, because if you're faithful to the to the king at all, you'll be in his church.
[00:14:38] Katie Dooley: Right? And the king's not gonna... Yeah, exactly. Especially this is at a time when, like, we're burning heretics still. So the king is not going to plant someone that is Catholic.
[00:14:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, he's going to show favour to the people who are faithful to him. Yes. Which is not great when he also really just wants to have vice grip control over all of the land in his power, which yeah, no good.
[00:15:12] Katie Dooley: If only they knew what this would cause.
[00:15:14] Preston Meyer: Right? It's ridiculous.
[00:15:17] Katie Dooley: So starting in the mid 1600s, the Catholic Irish decided to fight against their new neighbors and their Protestant king. But the Protestants won a lot.
[00:15:30] Preston Meyer: Every single war, every time the Protestants won because they had the British Empire backing them up instead of just the local Irish fighters.
[00:15:43] Katie Dooley: And some sheep. I can say that as an Irish person.
[00:15:48] Preston Meyer: Sheep aren't great fighters there's a reason they fill the role they do in our society.
[00:15:52] Katie Dooley: I mean, that's what I'm. That's what I'm saying, preston.
[00:15:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:15:57] Katie Dooley: And as with any war, the Crown would penalize anybody who didn't conform to the Anglican Church of Ireland afterwards.
[00:16:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they had some pretty terrible laws put in place. And even though the laws ended up being worded as we will penalize the Catholics, the reason for that, as I've gone and studied into this, is because you can't just say, oh, Irish nationalists can't can do this and that, because you can't legally define that in the time. It doesn't work. But it's so much easier to go, oh, you're on this list of people who belong to this parish. All right. Now, you can't own land anymore. Which really sucks.
[00:16:51] Katie Dooley: Yes. This is the start of a whole bunch of sectarianism.
[00:16:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, non-Anglicans. So not just Catholics, but basically anybody who didn't have an Anglican baptismal certificate was forbidden from sending their children abroad for school, which would have been really nice. Say, oh, yeah, our family is being oppressed because of what we believe. We believe in Irish nationalism, that we want to be our own people and we happen to be Catholic. It would be really nice to kind of to become a refugee, head off to Europe somewhere. France is friendly right now. Kind of. Sometimes.
[00:17:34] Katie Dooley: Things flip-flop for a really long time.
[00:17:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, it would be nice to head off to Europe. And King says no, no, no. You are our subjects, and you will be punished. No sending children abroad for school. The Catholic clergy was actually banished from Ireland for a little while. Not a really long time, but for a little while. So I think it was about 30 years or something. Something like that. In 1704, that idea was replaced with a strict probation for priests. All the Catholic priests had to be examined on a pretty regular basis, and they're constantly watched. It was terrible. Non-anglicans were forced to subdivide their property between their heirs instead of just giving it to it to the oldest son.
[00:18:28] Katie Dooley: Therefore losing power because lots of land equals lots of power.
[00:18:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Now, I... it sounds a little bit weird because today this is generally speaking, you give out your stuff to all your son, all your children, more or less evenly. Unless you happen to have a large land holding. That would obviously have to go to one person. That practice was outright forbidden for non-Anglicans. Yeah. Losing power, deliberately undermining the whole Irish nation. And of course this made it a lot easier for land to default back to the crown because very often people would die without heirs if you subdivided it. That really raises your probability of this happening. Really crappy.
[00:19:20] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah it is.
[00:19:22] Preston Meyer: And of course, Catholics were barred from voting in parliamentary elections for a long time.
[00:19:27] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Like centuries.
[00:19:28] Preston Meyer: This is a big deal that lasted. It's weird how favorably people look at the English system when it was deeply messed up for a long time.
[00:19:41] Katie Dooley: We'll get into, you know, more violence. And, you know, no one is innocent in this conflict. But there were definitely things put in place to make it worse for certain people.
[00:19:57] Preston Meyer: Yes. For sure. Yeah, so the king claimed ultimate authority, of course, being the head of the church, basically claiming divine authority, which, as we've seen in the Anglican tradition, especially with King James a little bit later on, if you don't conform to exactly what the King wants. You can be burned as a witch. This is pretty gross.
[00:20:29] Katie Dooley: He burned a lot of people.
[00:20:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and not only for being witches, they would come up with all kinds of reasons,
[00:20:36] Katie Dooley: All kinds of crazy things to burn you but...
[00:20:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and the king just exercised more and more authority as time went over. I'm feeling pretty good about the Queen right now, relatively speaking. There's some grossness in that family, but relatively speaking, things are a lot better off.
[00:20:56] Katie Dooley: Yes, she's definitely the most normal that we've probably had. Maybe her dad was pretty normal, but his dad wasn't.
[00:21:09] Preston Meyer: No.
[00:21:13] Katie Dooley: So fast forward, but not very far to 1690 and the Battle of the Boyne. This is wild.
[00:21:25] Preston Meyer: So the Boyne is a river in Ireland. And so the battle of the Boyne was one of many battles of the Williamite War, but fought on the basically on the river banks.
[00:21:38] Katie Dooley: Yep. I've been there.
[00:21:40] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah. Nice.
[00:21:42] Katie Dooley: It is. It was a battle. Okay, guys, stay with me. It was a battle between a Catholic king and a Protestant king. One was Dutch. One was English. In Ireland. Got that?
[00:21:58] Preston Meyer: It's weird.
[00:21:59] Katie Dooley: It's very weird.
[00:22:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. William of Orange, the Dutch one.
[00:22:02] Katie Dooley: The Dutch one. So they're fighting for the English crown in Ireland. And like, that's why everyone hates each other to this day. They were fighting for the English crown on Irish land. And everyone hates each other to this day.
[00:22:18] Preston Meyer: What a bunch of dicks.
[00:22:20] Katie Dooley: That's like. That's like me punching out Preston on your property and you fighting with your family for the rest of your life. Because I punched Preston on your property.
[00:22:34] Preston Meyer: I mean, it is more than that.
[00:22:36] Katie Dooley: I know, but, like...
[00:22:37] Preston Meyer: We've we've laid a solid foundation already. But this did not make things better.
[00:22:43] Katie Dooley: No. And it's just. What? It doesn't make things better. You're right. But it's like the Protestants still celebrate the victory today. And I'm like. But you didn't do anything.
[00:22:54] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:22:54] Katie Dooley: Like Protestant Irish because it was an English battle.
[00:22:57] Preston Meyer: Well, and it's it's kind of funny that the Protestants won this small battle because it was relatively small. And the day before, the Protestants had actually lost a huge naval battle on the other side of England, but in the time that has passed since then, a good three hundred years. The naval battle loss has really basically counted for nothing. And this Battle of the Boyne has just contributed to more problems.
[00:23:38] Katie Dooley: So, as Preston said, William was the Dutch king. He was William of Orange, which is why the color of the Netherlands is orange. And it's also why Protestants around the world represent themselves with orange. And so the orange and the green and the Irish flag is because of this king. He was also the King of England at the time, and the battle was King James the Second, a Catholic king. He was trying to win back the throne from William and bring Catholicism back to the United Kingdom and Ireland.
[00:24:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's so weird to see people fighting over the throne because for so long in our history recently speaking, there hasn't been fights for the crown because honestly, there's pretty limited power in the crown anyway. And you can be rich and be a prince and everything's fine.
[00:24:35] Katie Dooley: We can thank the Medici for that.
[00:24:37] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:24:37] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So this is where the Irish Catholic population gets invested because if James won, it would mean an end to the sectarian abuse and rules that they've lived with at this point for about 80/90 years.
[00:24:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. What a mess. Restoring peace would have been nice, but it didn't work out.
[00:25:02] Katie Dooley: I mean, we can what if. Would it have restored peace? It just would have made the Irish Catholics happy. But the Irish Protestants unhappy.
[00:25:12] Preston Meyer: At this point in history, it would have been easy enough to deport the Protestants.
[00:25:18] Katie Dooley: Or burn them, yes.
[00:25:19] Preston Meyer: Right, but it would have been easy enough to do a good old Saint Patrick and just get rid of the people that aren't going to...
[00:25:29] Katie Dooley: Get rid. Wink, wink. I'm kidding. Don't burn someone.
[00:25:34] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:25:34] Katie Dooley: I don't condone that.
[00:25:35] Preston Meyer: No, but based on what was going on at the time, it's. That would have been in character. Anyway, that would have been terrible. Okay.
[00:25:49] Katie Dooley: Unfortunately.
[00:25:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Unfortunately for the Catholics, William won the battle and retained his control of a very Protestant United Kingdom and Ireland. Things haven't... Things go a long time before they get better.
[00:26:06] Katie Dooley: Now, without getting too historical, this is a religion podcast, and this could be could be a whole history episode. But in the early 1920s, Ireland divided into two. So at this point, Ireland and United Kingdom are one country where the Isle of Ireland being predominantly Catholic and the rest being predominantly Protestant. But there are a lot of Protestants in Northern Ireland, which is where we see the current divide between Great Britain and Ireland on the island.
[00:26:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah, a handful of counties that were mostly Protestant basically got fenced off from the rest.
[00:26:44] Katie Dooley: Yes. The 12th. This is the what is the day is called the 12th.
[00:26:51] Preston Meyer: The 12th of July.
[00:26:52] Katie Dooley: It's the 12th of July is a day that commemorates the battle of the Boyne to this day, 200 years later. The Protestants are still celebrating.
[00:27:04] Preston Meyer: The Protestants are still being dicks about it.
[00:27:07] Katie Dooley: So this is. This is an interesting issue. It's an incredibly controversial celebration because they will hold orange marches. That's what they're called. And it basically rubs in the face of the Catholics and the Protestants. And the orange is typically held by an orange order or a chapter of an Orange Order, which is a Protestant fraternity. They generally, especially in more recent years, try to stick to Protestant neighborhoods. But some marches are purposely antagonistic and walk through Catholic neighborhoods.
[00:27:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's been happening a lot less in the last, I say ten years. Realistically, it should have been happening a lot less 20 years ago when the Troubles officially, legally speaking, ended. But mostly the last ten years have been nicer.
[00:28:03] Katie Dooley: So in 2013, I was in Northern Ireland. I left like two days before July 12th. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen in my life. Yeah?
[00:28:18] Preston Meyer: It was the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life.
[00:28:22] Katie Dooley: And why is that? So I got off a train in Belfast. As a Canadian, I don't know. Disclaimer as a Canadian atheist, like I wasn't concerned. I can see why if you are a Catholic Irish person, you would be. But I ended up in a Protestant neighborhood and they had painted the sidewalks like the the curb. So you know how sidewalks have the lines in them for expansion and contraction. So every chunk was painted red, white or blue. They went all down the curbs. And then there were Union Jacks between all the houses and Union Jacks on all the doors. It was like you knew immediately where you were. And then I'll post a picture in the Discord. I only saw a small one, but they also light massive bonfires, and I have a picture of myself by one and their pallets. And it was taller than me. It was easily 15ft tall, but there are ones that are like stories tall.
[00:29:27] Preston Meyer: That's alarming.
[00:29:27] Katie Dooley: And it was like... And the best way I can describe it is like a Best Buy parking lot is where this was. It was like in the middle of Belfast city, like, imagine going to the local shopping center and just having a 15-foot pallet that they're going to burn. It was yeah, and this is 2013. So not even ten years ago. So yeah, that's what they do. And you know again hopefully they're sticking to Protestant or Unionist... These they're not quite interchangeable... Neighbourhoods, but I think it we'll get into this conversation. But like it means people can't let it go.
[00:30:11] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:30:12] Katie Dooley: And if they can't let it go then they're going to be Catholics or Republicans that can't let it go either because it makes them angry.
[00:30:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, what a mess.
[00:30:25] Katie Dooley: Also, just a fun fact for your dinner conversation. Police in the United Kingdom do not carry guns except in Northern Ireland.
[00:30:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that would make sense. Northern Ireland is the the home of the troubles.
[00:30:41] Katie Dooley: Oh, it's it's super interesting, mildly frightening.
[00:30:47] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:30:49] Katie Dooley: I'll leave it at that. I'll interject more stories as we go.
[00:30:52] Preston Meyer: All right.
[00:30:54] Katie Dooley: So, yes, they still to summarize: they still celebrate the winning of the Battle of the Boyne today. Sometimes by being dicks.
[00:31:04] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:31:05] Katie Dooley: So and actually that's quickly I'll just say many unionists believe it's their historical right to celebrate.
[00:31:05] Preston Meyer: Right. Because they won the war. Gross.
[00:31:17] Katie Dooley: I mean, is it grosser than Canada Day or...
[00:31:22] Preston Meyer: Canada Day having organized a nation is, I guess, the real celebration?
[00:31:31] Katie Dooley: Yeah, we're not celebrating specifically a massacre.
[00:31:34] Preston Meyer: Right now if we were celebrating the dates where treaties were forcibly signed.
[00:31:41] Katie Dooley: The 60s Scoop. Yeah,
[00:31:42] Preston Meyer: Sure. There's an awful lot of things that are not celebrated that are part of Canada's history.
[00:31:51] Katie Dooley: Fair.
[00:31:51] Preston Meyer: At least not celebrated among people that I care for. Anyway, in 1798, there was an Irish rebellion. Why is this news? Because it failed. It was one of many disastrous attempts to try and free Ireland from the Empire. Big bummer. Lots of people died. But the Irish Rebellion of 1798 was the big one, because obviously there have been lots of attempts before and since. Yeah. Politics, religion and economics were all super intertwined and more or less stayed that way ever since.
[00:32:39] Katie Dooley: To literally present day.
[00:32:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah. What a mess.
[00:32:45] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So basically, even 100 years later, after the battle of the Boyne, they're still trying to get independence.
[00:32:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah. There came to be an interesting nickname thrown up for the Republicans. And the name is Fenian, which when I initially found it, they didn't explain where this name comes from or anything. I had to go digging. But basically it's connected to the fictional hero Finn McCool and his legendary Irish warriors. Fenian is basically a really shortened form of Fianna Éireann I don't..
[00:33:25] Katie Dooley: Éireann
[00:33:25] Preston Meyer: Sure that's there's too many letters there for that to just be Éireann
[00:33:32] Katie Dooley: The Irish are very good at that.
[00:33:34] Preston Meyer: Okay. Well thank you. The Fianna Éireann, uh. So Fenians, basically Finn's soldiers or Finn's Irishmen,
[00:33:44] Katie Dooley: Dumbledore's Army.
[00:33:45] Preston Meyer: Kinda, yeah and the the name Fenian is used as a slur against pretty much anybody who is Irish. Traditionally Irish by anybody who is a fierce loyalist to the Crown.
[00:34:03] Katie Dooley: So we're going to again, because this is not a history podcast. We're going to fast forward about 120 more years to when Ireland becomes its own country in 1922. And this is the geography we have today, where Ireland is a country. There's the Isle of Ireland, and part of that island belongs to United Kingdom in the form of Northern Ireland.
[00:34:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Ireland has an unfavorable hat.
[00:34:35] Katie Dooley: Yes. So, Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom. Bojo's their prime minister. They use the pound. They use kilometers. Whereas when you cross the border, they use miles, they use the euro and they have their own president.
[00:34:53] Preston Meyer: They use miles?
[00:34:54] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:34:55] Preston Meyer: What the hell is wrong with this country?
[00:34:57] Katie Dooley: I, I forget which, but the signs change. I'm pretty sure England uses kilometers because we use kilometers?
[00:35:03] Preston Meyer: They should all use kilometers. Everyone in Europe should be using the European standard. That's just weird.
[00:35:09] Katie Dooley: I'm pretty sure anyway. But yes, there's all these differences. There is no like customs border. You can just drive over the border. They don't monitor that. But everything changes. So if you're going from, you know, Dublin to Belfast, you need to change your currency, but no one's going to stop you.
[00:35:26] Preston Meyer: Right. Uh, if you're Northern Irish, you can actually get an Irish passport as well. If you really want to cross the border permanently.
[00:35:37] Katie Dooley: Totally. And you can work. They have commuter trains between Belfast and Dublin, so you can live in Dublin and work in Belfast or vice versa. You can work in an entirely different country.
[00:35:46] Preston Meyer: I mean, most of the European Union's that loosey goosey too. It's kind of nice.
[00:35:50] Katie Dooley: So I will say and I don't we don't need to keep this in. I thought it was really weird because when you go from Ireland to Northern Ireland, you don't have to have your passport checked. But when I went from Northern Ireland to Scotland, both the United Kingdom, they checked my passport. I thought that was really weird.
[00:36:05] Preston Meyer: That does feel a little odd. Did you plane it or take a ferry?
[00:36:10] Katie Dooley: I took a ferry.
[00:36:11] Preston Meyer: Okay. That'd be a long ferry ride.
[00:36:14] Katie Dooley: I don't remember, but it was great. It was, uh, it was, uh, rail and sail. So you got dropped off. So I took a cab to the ferry, and then I took the ferry over to... I don't even know where it docks in Scotland. And then you got a rail pass to take you from the dock to Glasgow.
[00:36:33] Preston Meyer: That's cool.
[00:36:34] Katie Dooley: It was great.
[00:36:35] Preston Meyer: Sounds like a nice adventure.
[00:36:37] Katie Dooley: It was a nice adventure. But back to geography. So at this point they are two very separate countries. But there are some people who want it to be one country.
[00:36:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:36:53] Katie Dooley: On both sides, funnily enough.
[00:36:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, it's so much easier when there's not two Ireland's problem is there's a lot of strong feelings...
[00:37:06] Katie Dooley: On which way to go. Enter the IRA.
[00:37:12] Preston Meyer: But not the Internal Revenue Agency but the Irish Republican Army.
[00:37:19] Katie Dooley: And it basically what it sounds like it was a paramilitary group, is a paramilitary group that wanted to unite the Isle of Ireland to the Republic, which would be "predominantly" Catholic. But now we're entering the 1960s and things get way more complicated.
[00:37:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Over the course of the 40 years between the foundation of an independent Republic of Republic of Ireland and the really terrible time when the Troubles really pick up. The IRA actually splits up into a few different groups, and going digging into this was tricky. It's way more complicated than even Wikipedia is really on top of, but it does a really good job of summarizing more or less the big groups, the big players. So that's kind of cool. But the provisional IRA is the the big scary militant group.
[00:38:24] Katie Dooley: The one that will blow up your car.
[00:38:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah. What a mess.
[00:38:29] Katie Dooley: Yes. And then there's also Sinn Fein, which is the political arm. Sure. It still exists today. And they again, I mean, they have the same goal, but they do it through, you know, Parliament and voting instead of car bombs and kneeling cappings.
[00:38:29] Preston Meyer: It's pretty easy to pick a favorite. Yeah, but generally there's one goal unite all of Ireland in, at least for the IRA, a socialist republic. It's all right. I mean, so far it's easy enough to be on board, or at least to accept the idea.
[00:39:08] Katie Dooley: Yeah. At this point, there's still, you know, a lot of have and have nots between Catholic and Protestant or Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. You know, there's until Sinn Fein shows up, there's no representation in Parliament for Ireland. There's still a lot of problems and it escalates to violence. Fun fact not so fun fact the IRA participate a lot in guerrilla warfare. Like you said, car bombs were a popular thing. Um, the Taliban learned a lot from the IRA.
[00:39:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Honestly, the CIA, the real CIA that you're aware of in the United States. And this IRA, the two biggest influences on the Taliban. It's kind of gross. Luckily, the IRA did actually officially disband in 2005 after a cease fire of, like, eight years.
[00:40:11] Katie Dooley: That would be the Good Friday Agreement. I believe you're referring. Yeah. Did you know that Brexit actually breaks the Good Friday Agreement and they're quite concerned about the ramifications?
[00:40:25] Preston Meyer: I... There's so much that I don't know about Brexit. All I know is it has been terribly mismanaged in a lot of ways for a lot of reasons.
[00:40:37] Katie Dooley: But yeah, it breaks the Good Friday Agreement, which is the ceasefire essentially with the IRA and everyone else.
[00:40:45] Preston Meyer: Well. That's exciting.
[00:40:49] Katie Dooley: A key figure of the IRA. And this is in the late 70s or early 80s, was Bobby Sands.
[00:40:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:40:57] Katie Dooley: I didn't know his real name.
[00:40:59] Preston Meyer: His. Well, his Irish name is Roibeard O'Shaughnessy,
[00:41:05] Katie Dooley: Not Bobby Sands.
[00:41:07] Preston Meyer: And, like, it's not like he came up with this new name, Bobby Sands. His parents were Sands as well. They just. Apparently there was a need to have a very different English name. Yeah. But, yeah. Roibeard O'Shaughnessy.
[00:41:24] Katie Dooley: So he was a member of the provisional IRA, and he was connected to bombings, uh, to a bombing of a furniture company in Dunmurry in 1976. And he was arrested after a gunfight with police.
[00:41:39] Preston Meyer: Makes sense. What's weird to me is that the charge that he was arrested for was just having a gun?
[00:41:47] Katie Dooley: Yeah, they did a lot of that too. So he was sent to Maze Prison, also called H block, uh, with a whole bunch of other IRA members and everything from, like, silly, I won't say possession of firearms, silly, but minor to murder, IRA members. And he and a bunch of other people went on a hunger strike, and he eventually died of hunger after 66 days. And.
[00:42:20] Preston Meyer: But you're missing the best part of... During this hunger strike. He was a member of parliament.
[00:42:28] Katie Dooley: Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Yes, he was elected to Parliament while he was in prison.
[00:42:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:42:34] Katie Dooley: And then he went on hunger strike.
[00:42:38] Preston Meyer: Uh, yeah. Margaret Thatcher was not a fan. But I mean, they they act, they both did their job and Margaret Thatcher pulled no punches when it was time to celebrate his death.
[00:42:54] Katie Dooley: And the interesting thing about his this is interesting, this martyrdom and causes this all becomes very interesting. So Bobby Sands died again. He was in jail. He was blown up things so arguably not a good person. And again, there were other hunger strikers who died, who had committed murder the day Bobby Sands died, not that I want to dox us, but he was on the front page of our local newspaper here in Canada. He made front pages worldwide, and most people were like, "what the fuck? How could you let him die, you monsters!"
[00:43:34] Preston Meyer: Force feeding somebody doesn't count as not torture. So there's that.
[00:43:41] Katie Dooley: I mean, they could have given... So he was on hunger strike because he did have demands that he wanted met and were not met, so he died.
[00:43:49] Preston Meyer: You're choosing not to eat like it's like a child throwing a fit, except for a really good reason. It's frustrating and it sucks.
[00:44:00] Katie Dooley: So this led to IRA recruitment going up.
[00:44:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I went looking into his story a little bit more. Like that's that's the really cool part of his story action-wise if you want to make a movie. But there's some parts of his story that are actually they make sense on why he would be doing what he's doing. He went to go get a job down south, and he I think it was train cars. I'm going for memory now, building things because he wanted to have a real job, make something good of himself. And every day he showed up. Sorry. He showed up for work regularly for a while. And then one day, all the guys are like. We don't want none of you stinking Fenians around here. If you come back, we'll kill you. So all of a sudden, these unionists become the villain in his life. A couple years later, they attack his parents in their home. He has a reason to become an extremist. So it's. There's an awful lot of violence on both sides of this. It's super gross.
[00:45:16] Katie Dooley: Oh absolutely yeah. I was talking to an Irish friend, and he. He said that. I mean, I don't think there was any love lost for Margaret Thatcher, but one of the problems is, while Bobby Sands was dying in prison, again by choice as Preston said, Margaret Thatcher's son went missing and it was like would, like anything they could do to find him. And, you know, he was like but then she let 13 people sons die in prison.
[00:45:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it sucks.
[00:45:51] Katie Dooley: And it's hard and it's complicated and. Yeah, but he, Bobby Sands got a lot of sympathy for the Republican cause worldwide. Yeah. Very bad luck for the British government.
[00:46:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So a little bit before that, this was this idea that was launched. It was Operation Banner. I love this name because of my own personal biases. And I'm going to tell you my version of why this is named Operation Banner instead of the true version.
[00:46:27] Katie Dooley: And then will you tell us the true version?
[00:46:29] Preston Meyer: No.
[00:46:30] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:46:32] Preston Meyer: So the British armed forces kept the peace in Northern Ireland, kept the peace in air quotes because they were incredibly violent at the slightest provocation. It was a mess, not always, but really often. And the whole goal was to keep the Green monster the Catholics, from causing too much damage and protect the mild-mannered Bruce Banner of the civilized Protestant population.
[00:47:06] Katie Dooley: I like it because it's green,
[00:47:08] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah. So Operation Banner was destroy the green Hulk, protect Bruce Banner. So that's not where the name comes from. I actually couldn't find where the name comes from. If I had to guess, it would be. Let's fly the banner of the Union.
[00:47:31] Katie Dooley: I like Bruce Banner better.
[00:47:32] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:47:35] Katie Dooley: One of the events that happened, speaking of keeping the peace during Operation Banner was Bloody Sunday.
[00:47:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So Ireland has more than one Bloody Sunday. There's three of them within 100 years and they're all connected to the same conflict.
[00:47:54] Katie Dooley: This one is the most recent?
[00:47:55] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:47:57] Katie Dooley: Um, yeah. It's terrible. It happened on January 30th, 1972, on a Sunday in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
[00:48:11] Preston Meyer: Is it known by both names?
[00:48:12] Katie Dooley: It's okay. I'll have a digression. So Derry is the Catholic name and Londonderry is the Protestant name so...
[00:48:20] Preston Meyer: That makes sense.
[00:48:21] Katie Dooley: Most people call it Derry/Londonderry to, like, not stir any shit up. You'll know immediately if someone's Catholic or Protestant based off of what they call it. They also call it. So we call this punctuation a slash in North America, they call it a stroke. So a lot of people call it Stroke City too.
[00:48:39] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:48:40] Katie Dooley: Instead Derry/Londonderry. So that's why I'm saying Derry/Londonderry.
[00:48:43] Preston Meyer: Stroke City sounds like a name you would give to a geriatric facility.
[00:48:48] Katie Dooley: I know that's why I said they call it a stroke over there, we call it a slash over here. Slash city doesn't sound much better.
[00:48:54] Katie Dooley: No, that's Murderville,
[00:48:56] Preston Meyer: That's Murdersville. Um, so yes, it happened in Derry Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and for literally decades it was like a who shot first scenario. 26 civilians were killed by British forces, and the British forces claimed that they had rocks and debris thrown at them, which instigated the shooting. These protesters were violent, and the Catholic Derry marchers always maintained that the British forces shot unprovoked. Preston, it was in 2010 that the report of the investigation, nearly 40 years later. Exactly, yeah, nearly 40 years later, came out saying that the British forces were attacked unprovoked. And I forget which Prime Minister had to apologize, but he did.
[00:49:48] Katie Dooley: The British forces attacked unprovoked.
[00:49:51] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:49:51] Katie Dooley: Yeah. That sucks. We've seen who the Prime Minister was at the time, but it's he he did issue an apology in the city.
[00:50:01] Preston Meyer: Right. We've seen a lot of that here. Just only two years ago with a lot of the Black Lives Matters protests. That's... We see an awful lot of people get real gun happy when given the opportunity.
[00:50:18] Katie Dooley: And this is where, like, you know, we talk about the Battle of Boyne 300 years ago. This is all still very just under the under the surface, especially if you're from Derry or Belfast.
[00:50:30] Preston Meyer: Well, if you live there, you're going to be constantly reminded of it.
[00:50:33] Katie Dooley: So I did a tour in Derry. It's called a Bogside tour. This is where a lot of the Bogside is a neighborhood where a lot of the conflict happened. And my tour guide was the son of someone who was killed on Bloody Sunday.
[00:50:51] Preston Meyer: Dang.
[00:50:52] Katie Dooley: So, like, it's still... You think he liked the British and the unionists?
[00:50:58] Preston Meyer: The wounds are too fresh.
[00:50:59] Katie Dooley: Right? He grew up without a father. Like we go this... You know, when you and I go it's 300 years ago.
[00:51:07] Preston Meyer: It's not.
[00:51:08] Katie Dooley: It's not.
[00:51:09] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That sucks.
[00:51:11] Katie Dooley: But we have a IRA murder that was quite prominent, too, during this time. I guess I'm telling that story as well,
[00:51:21] Preston Meyer: I guess.
[00:51:21] Katie Dooley: So if you're a fan of the royal family. William and Kate, then you probably already know that Lord Mountbatten, so this is Prince Philip's father, Prince Charles's grandfather was assassinated by the IRA in 1978. The statement released by the IRA, they owned it. They were happy to kill someone from the royal family. It does point out the continued sectarianism in the country. Not that this justifies the murder, but the statement they released says the IRA claimed responsibility for the execution of Lord Louis Mountbatten. This operation is one of the discriminate ways we can bring attention of the English people, the continuing occupation of our country. The death of Mountbatten and the tributes paid to him will be seen in sharp contrast to the apathy of the British government and the English people, to the deaths of over 300 British soldiers and the deaths of Irish men, women and children at the hands of their forces. So yeah, it got a lot of media attention because it was Lord Mountbatten,
[00:52:28] Preston Meyer: Kind of a big deal.
[00:52:29] Katie Dooley: And it was sad. Six years prior, 26 people were killed and no one would take ownership of it. Eh!
[00:52:38] Preston Meyer: Right. Yeah. So that's one of the things that I like about the IRA is that when they do a thing, they take ownership of it. There was an attempt that I thought was kind of interesting to frame the IRA. That really got my attention. Actually, my wife pointed it out to me and said, you need to include this.
[00:53:02] Katie Dooley: I've never even heard of this. And I think I'm like, I mean, I'm far from an expert, but I have read quite a bit.
[00:53:07] Preston Meyer: Right. So arguably the biggest band in the country, the Miami Showband, was touring all over the place until 1975, when about half the band was murdered.
[00:53:22] Katie Dooley: Oops.
[00:53:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah. They were driving back home to Dublin in their band van after a show in Banbridge in Northern Ireland, and they were stopped by a bunch of guys in British Army uniforms. They're like, well, we're going to do as we're told. We're going to play this safe, we're going to get home, everything's going to be fine. Turns out they weren't just British Army, they were part of the Ulster Loyalist Army, and they were here to do some damage. So they lined up the band on the side of the road. They had a couple of guys take a big old bomb, put it in the van, and they were going to execute the whole band. Bomb went off as they were putting it in the van, instead of at the border crossing, where they were planning to have it go off, and only three of the band members were actually killed. The other two managed to survive the wounds in all of this confusion. Huge mess, disaster, because the loyalists just fumbled everything.
[00:54:30] Katie Dooley: They didn't have the same bombing prowess as the IRA.
[00:54:34] Preston Meyer: Right? But they really wanted it to look like an IRA attack at the border. Kind of embarrassing.
[00:54:41] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:54:42] Preston Meyer: And it actually took a long time before people could really nail down what was going on here. Who was in charge. Fingerprint evidence in the last ten years have actually identified. Yeah. No, the guy in charge of this was high up in the.
[00:55:00] Katie Dooley: Ulster loyalist. British?
[00:55:02] Preston Meyer: The British.
[00:55:03] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:55:04] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Why is the word the British Armed Forces. A director or something like that. It was crazy.
[00:55:11] Katie Dooley: That is crazy.
[00:55:12] Preston Meyer: The fact that fingerprint evidence 30 years after the fact proved helpful is really cool. Yeah, but yeah, the IRA, they take ownership, they say, what's up? None of this sneaky nonsense. When somebody doesn't take ownership in the Troubles, expect that it was loyalists.
[00:55:35] Katie Dooley: Another fun, fun? story I was told when I was in Belfast was there was a Deutsche Bank and it was robbed, I want to say, in the early 2000 by the IRA for like I was told, millions of pounds and I used to work at a bank, I was like, you should never have millions of pounds or dollars on hand. But apparently they did.
[00:55:58] Preston Meyer: Different practices. No biggie.
[00:56:00] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and no charges were laid because the cost of the money stolen was less than the ramifications of breaking the Good Friday Agreement and pressing charges against the IRA. They were like, okay, It's cheaper to just let that money go.
[00:56:19] Preston Meyer: Well, and every bank has insurance, that sucks. Huh?
[00:56:29] Katie Dooley: So Northern Ireland today, new IRA is still sporadically active, with most the most recent report reported incident being in April of 2021. About a year ago, a bomb was discovered behind a police vehicle in Northern Ireland. There were no casualties, fortunately, but it was traced back to the IRA and that was just last year. Preston is right in that these are becoming less frequent, which is good, and the IRA activity cycles with the economy. Funnily enough, when Celtic Tiger was happening, there was hardly any violence. And when the economy gets bad, it starts to bubble up again.
[00:57:13] Preston Meyer: Oh, you mean it's an economic conflict?
[00:57:16] Katie Dooley: We're gonna get into that, Preston, in a second. Let me wrap up, please. The Orange Order still exists, and...
[00:57:26] Preston Meyer: We have some here in the city here.
[00:57:29] Katie Dooley: Just interrupting me. Well, it's an international organization. The Canadian arm is the Grand Orange Lodge of Canada, and it's the Imperial Orange Council in the USA. So, yeah.
[00:57:40] Preston Meyer: So are they properly united or are they distinct but friendly to each other?
[00:57:44] Katie Dooley: Um, they all stem from the Orange Order in Ireland, so but I...
[00:57:48] Preston Meyer: But Freemasonry is like that too, where they stem from a common home and then are separate but communicate.
[00:57:56] Katie Dooley: I feel I didn't look into it, but that would be my guess. They do march and all their regular orange things so...
[00:58:04] Preston Meyer: Cool. So I don't know a lot about the Orange Order other than we're loyal Protestants.
[00:58:10] Katie Dooley: We're loyal Protestants to get old William of Orange. Now the part Preston's chomping at the bit to get to. It's is. Is this a religious conflict? Is it a socioeconomic conflict? What role does discrimination against other religions play? Does religion make it worse? Does religion make it better?
[00:58:35] Preston Meyer: It's complicated and juicy.
[00:58:37] Katie Dooley: Okay, that's a good political answer. Very good.
[00:58:41] Preston Meyer: Obviously, it's super easy to say. Obviously it's a religious deal because one side is Catholic, one side is Protestant. If it were that simple, then it could have been solved in the churches, I think? Right?
[00:58:59] Katie Dooley: Well, see, I, I see what you're saying and absolutely like you said, with Celtic Tiger, socio economic historically Catholics were have nots and Protestants were haves because they were gifted Lifted stuff from the king.
[00:59:12] Preston Meyer: Royal favour goes a long way.
[00:59:14] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. But if the people within the conflict see it as Catholic versus Protestant, then is it? You know what I mean.
[00:59:24] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:59:25] Katie Dooley: If you're raised to hate Catholics or hate Protestants, depending on the side, then you might not even see the socioeconomic issues. And therefore, do the socioeconomic issues matter unless you're an outsider trying to fix it. But if you're in it, it probably is religious conflict.
[00:59:43] Preston Meyer: So I'm going to dig into that a little bit more. When you're taught to hate somebody, you're going to be told why. When people in the South say, you got to hate anyone who is not white. There's a reason white people are better. That's obviously deeply flawed logic, but that's what they got. That's what they go with. And so when people say, hey, you need to hate the Protestants when you're living in Ireland. The reason why? Pretty easy to get on board with. They have been ruining our lives for 400 years. And unfortunately, the Protestants have a similar thing thrown at them of we hate the Catholics because they are tearing our country apart, even though that's not really the deal.
[01:00:35] Katie Dooley: It is quite easy in this conflict to be sympathetic towards the Catholics.
[01:00:40] Preston Meyer: It really is.
[01:00:41] Katie Dooley: I try not to be. I try to be neutral, but it's tough.
[01:00:45] Preston Meyer: Well, the history shows us that the Catholics are just systematically picked on. They are the victims in all of this. Not to say that they're innocent, because an awful lot of damage has been done by both sides, not by every person on both sides, but by both sides as wholes. It's a mess. And as it would be, it would be really nice and easy to say. Yeah. Religion is the problem here. But if Ireland was never Catholic, if they were just happy more Protestants, they would still be nationalists trying to protect what was theirs. Unfortunately, nationalism looks an awful lot like a religion too. And arguably by many scholars and even the subject of my last paper before I graduated. Nationalism is a religion. It's not the same sort of thing.
[01:01:54] Katie Dooley: Okay, well, then I still kind of disagree.
[01:01:57] Preston Meyer: That's fine,
[01:01:58] Katie Dooley: Because I think if the people think it's a religious conflict, then it is a religious conflict. Perception is reality. Not that there aren't socio economic and political parts moving parts to it. Does religion make it worse? You're turning a regular conflict into a holy war.
[01:02:15] Preston Meyer: Every conflict that lasted a while. Religion comes into it. Even the Cold War. Religion came into it with the good old Christian. America needs to defeat those godless communists.
[01:02:31] Katie Dooley: Godless communists!
[01:02:33] Preston Meyer: Which I mean, really weird way to spin it. But it's a great way to convince people that you're right. If you can convince people that God is on your side in a conflict, you don't have to worry about it anymore. You've got their help through to the very end, which is pretty gross. People lean on religion for utilitarian purposes that get really nasty all the time. The conflict in the Middle East has nothing to do with religion. It never had anything to do with religion, but people use religion as a great way to other the other side as a perfectly valid victim for all of the bullets. And that sucks.
[01:03:29] Katie Dooley: So you should all just become atheists! I'm kidding.
[01:03:35] Preston Meyer: Pluralism doesn't do any harm. And yet, for some reason, all of the great powers of America really lean away from that as you need to join this. Be one with us. Be just like us, or you're the bad guy. And it was the same way in Ireland, on both sides. It's been that way for most of human history.
[01:04:05] Katie Dooley: Here's another big question. Can this be solved? Will this ever end?
[01:04:12] Preston Meyer: I believe it will. I believe it can be solved. And it's a lot more complicated than just saying, oh, guys, stop being dicks to each other. It's a lot more complicated than just putting up walls in between neighborhoods like they've been doing. It's a lot more complicated than simple deportation or execution. You need to actually fix the problem, which nobody wants to do, because nobody can agree on what the problem is for some reason.
[01:04:50] Katie Dooley: Part of it. I have some ideas on how to fix it, but first I just want to say if you do want to learn more about the Troubles, there are a lot of great books and books and movies on the topic. I listed some historical fiction ones here, but there are obviously scholarly nonfiction books. Belfast by Kenneth Branagh. That was just an Oscar nominee. It was exactly about this. There's a movie called '71, which takes place in.
[01:05:17] Both Speakers: 1971.
[01:05:19] Katie Dooley: The Crying Game, Patriot Games, and Trinity are all great pieces of historical fiction.
[01:05:26] Preston Meyer: Historical fiction is a pretty great tool.
[01:05:28] Katie Dooley: I think it's good. You know how I'd solve this Northern Ireland problem?
[01:05:33] Preston Meyer: How would you solve this problem?
[01:05:35] Katie Dooley: I'd make everyone listen to the Holy Watermelon Podcast, and I'd make everyone follow us on our social media. That's Facebook, Instagram and Discord. And to show that you're a true believer, I would get people to purchase merchandise and subscribe to our Patreon. Because when you have a comprehensive religious education. Preston's not taking me seriously. I'm not even taking me seriously. When you have a comprehensive religious education, you can solve global issues.
[01:06:12] Preston Meyer: Well, okay. At the very least, you can recognize when something is a genuine religion problem or if it's something entirely different. At the very least, you'll get that far.
[01:06:25] Katie Dooley: Yes. Thank you for minimizing my pitch.
[01:06:30] Preston Meyer: But yeah, we are grateful that you have joined us for as long as you have. And we're going to keep doing this, and we hope you'll keep joining us,
[01:06:41] Katie Dooley: And especially this episode,
[01:06:41] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 06 May 2024 | Let's Build a Church | 00:34:00 | |
What is a church? How does a religious society really differentiate itself from any other kind of society? What does it take to become a priest of the Holy Watermelon? Some people join self-help groups without realizing they've been trapped in a cult. We'll be up front about it: this is a church. How can we be a church while also being secular and academic? Easy, the rules that define religion are extremely soft. Emile Durkheim and Clifford Geertz weigh in with their definitions, which are variably useless; James Martineaux is just wrong about what counts as religion when we look beyond the walls of the Abrahamic tradition; Friedrich Schleiermacher makes some sense of the matter, but it's hard to agree with him, too, even to the point that we have to agree with Sigmund Freud in pointing out the obvious flaws in his reasoning.... Church, worship, piety, and reverence each get a little bit of attention in this pursuit of useful definitions, too. Ultimately, the San Lanatus Fellowship stands for humanity, education, and critical curiosity, welcoming people of all spiritual inclinations under the banner of undefined agnosticism. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 11 Apr 2022 | Growing Up in a Cult - an Interview with Sarah Snyder | 01:09:09 | |
Our first interview episode, with the lovely and talented Sarah Snyder. She grew up in a cult, but has escaped. She isn't just surviving, she's thriving. We're proud to call her a friend, and grateful for her willingness to share her story and her advice. The traditions that revere Jesus are diverse, and some of them are so far off the mark that they are hard to recognize as Christian. Some even abhor the Christian label, hoping to stand out as different -- It's easy to agree, when they lean into authoritarianism. All this and more.... Trigger Warning: SA You can also watch this interview on YouTube.
Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
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[00:00:13] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie. We're doing things a little different today, aren't we?
[00:00:17] Katie Dooley: Oh, you sure are.
[00:00:19] Preston Meyer: We're recording through Zoom instead of all of our really nice software.
[00:00:24] Katie Dooley: I know, I miss you.
[00:00:26] Preston Meyer: Right? It's so weird. You're so far away.
[00:00:28] Katie Dooley: I know.
[00:00:30] Sarah Snyder: It's very nice here. I'm going to throw up in my mouth a little bit.
[00:00:33] Katie Dooley: I know, I actually think some of our listeners probably think Preston and I are married, but we're not. Definitely not.
[00:00:43] Preston Meyer: Um, I mean, a few too many people have called you the other wife.
[00:00:47] Katie Dooley: I know you say Preston is actually my second husband, not my first. So, um. Yeah.
[00:00:52] Sarah Snyder: There's a line up, right?
[00:00:56] Katie Dooley: Uh, so we're doing things differently for good reason today on the.
[00:01:01] Preston Meyer: Holy Watermelon Podcast. It feels weird not saying it synchronized.
[00:01:07] Katie Dooley: I know, because we're on Zoom. We can't. So today we have the amazing Sarah as our guest today. And Sarah is a publicist. And she's not a very good one because she didn't send us her bio. So I'm literally winging this. I'm kidding. She's one of she's the best publicist I've ever met. She has a brain I am always in envy of. And she's on our show today because she was raised in a cult.
[00:01:38] Sarah Snyder: It's true. Thank you. Except for... Except for the publicist part. It's one of those things where you. People say like the mechanic doesn't want to fix his own car. Same thing here. I'm a publicist, but I didn't want to write my own bio. That's all it is.
[00:01:51] Katie Dooley: I had that conversation about my industry like two hours ago with someone. I was like, I don't do my own stuff.
[00:01:59] Preston Meyer: But it's tricky to write your own bio like unless you know exactly who you're pitching to and exactly what they want, you're either going to overshare or undershare.
[00:02:09] Sarah Snyder: That's why people pay me. It's great. I'm like, I'll take care of this for you.
[00:02:14] Katie Dooley: So yes, after you hear Sarah's amazing story today, pay her lots of money to do publicity.
[00:02:22] Sarah Snyder: Not related, but okay, cool.
[00:02:24] Katie Dooley: Absolutely unrelated, but you may as well get something out of it.
[00:02:28] Preston Meyer: Could work out, you don't know.
[00:02:29] Sarah Snyder: That's true. You never know.
[00:02:31] Katie Dooley: You don't know who's listening. And I'll also add that Sarah's joining us from the States. We have a handful of American listeners, mostly Canadian, but maybe we'll get a few more Americans.
[00:02:42] Preston Meyer: According to Spotify Analytics, more than a third of our listeners are American.
[00:02:47] Katie Dooley: That means two-thirds are Canadian, though.
[00:02:50] Preston Meyer: No, it's not two-thirds. We've got a nice diverse bundle. We're just over half Canadian. Yeah, I pay attention to this bit.
[00:02:58] Katie Dooley: Yeah, apparently. Let's get started instead of all this preamble. So I mean, Sarah we'll take turns asking questions, like I said. And if anything, we think of anything we'd like to know more about, we'll ask you. Obviously, you don't have to answer anything you don't want to answer. And I'll put a trigger warning on this for our listeners. Sarah's not going to talk about anything she's uncomfortable with, but she will probably talk about some things that make people uncomfortable. So.
[00:03:28] Sarah Snyder: That's true. Thank you.
[00:03:30] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. So you were raised in what we would call a Christian cult. You believed and believe in Jesus and the resurrection, but they don't consider themselves Christian. Can you elaborate? Because that I'm making mind blowing gestures for our listeners.
[00:03:48] Sarah Snyder: So there's there's a few things. One, they definitely don't consider themselves a cult, and two, they do not consider themselves Christians a.
[00:03:57] Nd the reason they don't consider themselves Christians is this Christian is a worldly term, and they want to remain separate from the world. And so they don't use that term. They do believe in Jesus. They do believe that he died on the cross. Um, but they do not believe in the Trinity. Uh, they don't believe that the Holy Spirit is active and present today. They don't believe you go to heaven when you die. They don't believe you go to hell when you die. There's a lot of differences between them and the traditional, uh, Christian religion. So, uh, that that's that's hence the separation.
[00:04:29] Preston Meyer: Quite a list of really prominent differences.
[00:04:33] Sarah Snyder: That's a short list I could go on.
[00:04:37] Preston Meyer: And a lot of these. Oh, sorry. A lot of these are really quite different from what we do consider mainstream Christianity.
[00:04:45] Sarah Snyder: Yeah. And that's one of their, their big things, right? Is like there's, it's one of those things where you like a discernment of the truth. Right? And they're like some of the things that there's like so close, but then it not quite. And so they believe they funnel everything they believe through two founders, um, who founded the religion in the 1850s, I think. And so everything is funneled through those two men, essentially, and they use those two men to interpret the scriptures. And so everything is based on what those two guys wrote and believed and has kind of continued on.
[00:05:24] Katie Dooley: I have a follow up question. I guess what inspired these two founders, or I guess like to what benefit was this new sect or cult developing? Right. So, you know, we have the Protestant Reformation as an example. It was because we didn't want priests in the Latin and this separation between God and the people. So is there an obvious, you know, I guess, reason for them branching off on their own?
[00:05:54] Sarah Snyder: So. This is where it gets a little tricky for me because I don't obviously believe what they believe anymore. So I don't subscribe to that theory. And those beliefs, they believe that the men had, uh, somehow the help of God, uh, and what they've created and what they've written to interpret the scripture. I'm not sure what the overall benefit was as far as, like a societal context. Um, I do know that some of the works that these two men wrote were actually plagiarized. And so, Katie, I had sent you some of that a long time ago where they plagiarized some of it. And so I know that that kind of plays into it. I think these two men obviously benefited personally greatly, right from, from what they created and what they wrote. And so that's kind of my take on what happened. But the people who I was raised with would probably tell you very differently. They believe these two men found, and I quote "the truth". And so that's their stance is that is the truth. It is the only way to salvation. That's how it has to be. Um, and so they'll tell you that, right? That that's the benefit to society and people.
[00:07:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's kind of tricky. Any new church that starts up, you have people that are going to benefit, uh, whether or not they benefit financially through the sales of books. That's sometimes that's a goal. But really, everybody who starts a religion, whether that's their goal or not, ends up having a lot of social power. And that's a really interesting and kind of scary thing that can happen sometimes, depending on who wields that power. And when we have these guys just plagiarizing stuff, that's you add a kind of obvious looking fraud on top of that. It doesn't make things trickier really when once it's identified.
[00:07:52] Sarah Snyder: It is. Okay. So this is the thing though, right? So when you're outside of it and you're looking in it's like all of that makes sense, right? And so you're right it is beneficial. But when you're inside of it it's a totally different story. Uh, it's so I don't think unless you're raised into an environment like that, you can ever understand what it's like to be in that and then to just step out of it. Right, and then be like, oh, oh, oh, it just changes, uh, but it takes time to, to get there and to work through some of the things.
[00:08:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, we've, we've talked about the BITE model. I guess it was like a year ago, um, on all the different kinds of control that we see in authoritarian groups, the word cult is something that we shouldn't overuse, but an authoritarian group likes to control information and to what you had just said, if you don't have a frame of reference to recognize the issues, that's information control. That's a really gross thing sometimes.
[00:08:55] Sarah Snyder: Yeah. And it's interesting how sometimes people will say, well, Sarah, were you raised on a, on a compound like what? You know? And I'm like, nope, sure wasn't. But it was very much... You have to live life a very certain way and follow very strict guidelines and very strict doctrine. And, you know, it was like wear a hat when you go to church and women don't speak and you have to wear a skirt and you have to do this and you have to do that. And, um, the way that Scripture was used to manipulate people is, is what that kind of scares me. Right? And it terrifies me for them more really than I think anything else. Um, there are people. It's funny because. So I'll give you a little of a history, if that's okay. There's about 50,000 over what they say. There's about 50,000 of the whole broad group across the world who believe what and how I was raised. But then there's been a lot of division. So there's a lot of what we call subsects, right? And so there's little divisions throughout the world, too. Um, and the one that I was raised in has probably 300, 350 maybe believers right now total. Uh, and so and most of them, I probably say half are biologically related to me or, you know, or through marriage related to me. Right? And like I said, like, there's no compound. But now they're all buying land next to each other, right? And so things like that that are just like, hmmm, and so, um, yeah, it's it's, uh, it was weird going to school sometimes and... Because I was allowed to go to public school, and my father actually encouraged me to go to college. And my father actually got a lot of flack for that from some of the other people in the religion, because they were scared of exactly what happened, that I was going to go to college and meet more people who were not believers of this particular religion. And then all of a sudden, like leave, which is essentially what happened. Uh, funny enough. So they were, I guess, right in some respects to be worried, but it's it's yeah.
[00:11:05] Preston Meyer: I'm curious and you can feel free to not answer and we can always cut the question. Um, has your leaving this tradition affected your relationship with your family a lot?
[00:11:19] Sarah Snyder: Yes. Uh, yes. So my family still talks to me most. Okay, let me let me take that back. Most of my family still talks to me. My biological relatives still talk to me. Uh, but it's a lot of times under the guise of they want me to come back. So they think by having a relationship with me, they can talk me into coming back to the truth and they can talk me into rejoining. Um, and so that is the vast majority of how they work and how they base things off of. When I left in my early 20s. Um, the funny thing is, I, I had to write a letter to leave, so, um, I had stopped going. And okay, I'm trying. I'm trying to figure out how much background information to give you guys. I'm sorry, but I was in my early 20s. I was in college. I met some people, you know, friends made friends, whatever. And they were like, Sarah, the things you believe are a little weird, right? And so we started talking. I started talking, and some of them were Christian. Some of them were atheists. Some of them were agnostic, right? The whole. But they were all all of them agreed that what I believed was weird and I was like, oh. And so, uh, anyway, so at in time and working with them and talking to them and just having friends, right, who were in the world and talking to them, I was like, this, okay, something's off. Right? So eventually I stopped going to church as much because I was in college and I was working, and honestly, I was drinking on the weekends, right? So I was like, not wanting to get up Sunday morning and go to church. Uh, and it was a bit of a drive and it was out in the country. And I was just like, ugh, so, um, I ended up more and more when I talked to my friends, and the more and more honestly I was going to therapy, the more and more I want to start going to therapy. I was like, something is just not right. And so, um, some of the brethren of the they call it Ecclesias, not churches. So some of the brethren of the Ecclesia came and talked to me and said, hey, like you're not coming to church, basically, quote unquote lovingly. We're like, you need to get your act together. You'd be showing up for church because they believe one of the things for salvation is you have to attend church pretty much every single Sunday and break bread and I think you guys call it communion, right? Have fellowship together. So, uh, so we go through this process and of course, I'm sitting there talking to him i'm like, "oh yeah, I'll start showing up", you know, you know, whatever. Right in the back of my mind, I'm like, this is just weird. This is just weird. And so I ended up making the decision to leave. Um, and funny enough, I had to write a letter to say that I wanted to leave. So I wrote that letter and mailed it and said, I want to leave. I want to be done. And then, uh. I'm not allowed to leave, though. So you're not actually allowed to leave. You have to be essentially kicked out. So I sent the letter, and then they had a meeting and agreed that I needed to be kicked out because I wasn't going to be showing up anymore. And so they did. They call it disfellowship. So they disfellowshipped me, right. So then I wasn't a member of the ecclesia anymore, a member of the body anymore. And that was hard. So they still I mean, people still love me in that group. I know they do. I know they still care about me, but it changes things really drastically when, like I used to play the piano for church on Sundays. Right? I taught Sunday school for a long time within the group. I had a I don't want to say I had a lot of esteem, but as a woman, you don't have a whole lot of esteem in that group. And as a woman, I actually had quite a bit of esteem right in the group. And so when I left, I lost all that. I lost that esteem I had within that group. I lost that identity. I lost who I thought, I thought I knew God at the time I didn't. But you know, I lost that piece of my relationship with God. I lost, um, I did lose some friends. I did lose some family. And so it was a big, a big change in my life. Did that answer your question?
[00:11:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I was like, that was a lot of info.
[00:15:00] Sarah Snyder: I'm sorry. I never know how much to say and how much not to say it. I'm like, how much is too much? I just, I don't know.
[00:15:06] Katie Dooley: It's perfect. I'm like looking at our questions and I'm like, oh, she's answering them all. Where do we go from here? Um, that's where my pause is because you did so well.
[00:15:18] Sarah Snyder: I, uh, what I,
[00:15:20] Katie Dooley: I can go on if you want. Or I could shut up, you know. Is there any anything coming to your mind, Preston, that you want her to address specifically?
[00:15:29] Preston Meyer: I'm curious. So I come from the Latter-Day Saint tradition, where there's, like, highly centralized. And it's if you want to leave, it's a pretty formal situation, kind of like yours, where you, you have to formally say, hey, here's a letter. I withdraw my membership kind of thing. And then it's basically, yeah, once that's gone through, you are kicked out. Um, but it's more of a like everybody who goes to church is always registered, and you're asking to be removed from the list so that you don't have the missionaries keep reaching out to you and say, "hey, are you ready to come back yet?" Which of course is super annoying. And there are places, communities within the church that are more culty than others that are, you see families be more authoritarian and sometimes it's bigger than the family. Sometimes the whole community is kind of authoritarian. And would you say there's any diversity in that range of authoritarianism in the ecclesia, or is it all so pretty authoritarian?
[00:16:38] Sarah Snyder: I would say it's pretty all most of it is authoritarian. But you will see different ecclesias because each ecclesia is run by its own host of brethren. And so everybody follows the works of the two founders. But there's some discretion as to how the brethren run each ecclesia, right? And so, um, there's actually a board like they don't have a priest or a pastor for each ecclesia. It is really run by a board of men, essentially. And then they all take turns praying and preaching and, and whatever. Um, and so there is some humanness right in that process. And I would say there's also differences within families. So sometimes people will say, oh, they this particular family, well they, they came from the world. So in other words like that means they're not really as strict, right? As someone who is like myself essentially who was born into it. Right? And so you kind of give them some grace because maybe they don't understand. I'll give you an example. I was a kid. I was like, I don't know, 8 or 9. And we had some people come visit us from another ecclesia and they came to visit us and they had kids, right. And their kids said something about going to church. We're going to go to church tomorrow on Sunday. And I was I was like, oh, I was horrified because we don't say you go to church on Sunday. That's not something you say, right? Because that's a worldly term. We say you go to meeting on Sunday. Right? And so to differentiate ourselves. So we meet together on Sunday. We don't go to church. And so you know there's nuances like that too. And so that's that's kind of my answer there.
[00:18:07] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:18:07] Katie Dooley: I think that's interesting because even controlling the language that would fall under probably behavior control for the BITE model, right? Is that like we speak differently than other people. Um. And just for our listeners, like if your organization checks off 1 or 2 boxes of the BITE model, you're fine. Uh, when it starts to check off more. Um, it becomes a problem. So, uh, you know, if you use your own work lingo, you're not in a cult. But, uh, this is a good example of how you know Sarah,for you, it was. It sounds like they curated every detail of your life.
[00:18:48] Preston Meyer: It did. And and, you know, this goes into two. Like I as a kid wasn't allowed to celebrate Christmas. I wasn't allowed to celebrate Easter. I wasn't allowed to spread any. No, no, quote unquote, pagan holidays were celebrated. But there were other kids and other ecclesias who were allowed to have a Christmas tree, you know, and that was, you know, horrifying to my family, right? But they were allowed to have a Christmas tree, but they were taught, you know, it was pagan holiday and it shouldn't be. But but they were allowed to have it. And so there's things like that where I can see where my particular core biological family was also a lot stricter than I think than some other families, and the same too with the subsect. So there are some other sects of this particular group where that's not such a big deal, and it's more commonly practiced versus how I was raised where that was not, you know, that we didn't do any of that. So.
[00:19:39] Katie Dooley: But none of them would consider themselves Christian. Like globally or would.
[00:19:47] Sarah Snyder: You know what? That's a good question.
[00:19:48] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:19:50] Sarah Snyder: The very, very broad group. Maybe, as I would say, loose enough. They might they might style themselves Christians. But it would be surprising. I've also been I mean, I'm 40 now, so I've been removed for 20 years. So even though I still hear things, I still get information. You know, my family is still very much involved, right? And so I and I still get talked to about different things, but so, you know, but I've also tried to distance myself from some of that. And I know that there are some kind of loosening up, I think as it's, as it's gone along. And so I mean, the people who I know would be horrified if you called them Christians, but I can't say that that's across the board for, for, you know, all 50,000 people.
[00:20:38] Katie Dooley: Right. You said that in a text you sent me the other day, and I said, right. Oh, you know what? Yeah. I said, tell me about Christian. You're like, no.
[00:20:48] Sarah Snyder: I was like, no, no, those are not words they would use. Thank you.
[00:20:54] Preston Meyer: You go. You didn't grow up on a on a commune, as a lot of people like to imagine cults. And you'd mention that. So you grew up going to school with kids of different faiths, right?
[00:21:04] Sarah Snyder: Yes.
[00:21:04] Preston Meyer: Did the discussion of church or ecclesia ever come up with other kids when you were growing up?
[00:21:14] Sarah Snyder: I have had some people from school who I'm Facebook friends with now who I keep a contact veto text to keep contact with, keep on social media who have um commented to me. They were like, so something was always different about you. We knew you were a little weird, but we couldn't figure out, like, what was weird about you or what was different about you. I remember one time I was on a school, I was, I was little, I was on a school bus, and, um, I must have been, like, first grade or something. And I got off the school bus, and I told my mom I had told one of the little boys, uh, that there's any kids listening. You need to stop this right now. But. But I told the little boy on the school bus that there was no Santa Claus, and I told him that it was because the Bible said there was no Santa Claus, right? And so I got home and I told my mom, I said, yeah, I told so and so that the Bible says there's no Santa Claus because he thinks there's a Santa Claus, and that's not right. And so my mom was like, okay, two things. One, quit telling the kids that. And two, riht, Like the Bible doesn't actually say there's no Santa Claus. So, you know, we had to have a conversation about that. But I think those were the things that came up, right? That I was like, oh, this is a little different. Or maybe the other kids noticed, right? Why wouldn't you believe in Santa Claus? Or why wouldn't you have a Christmas tree? Or why wouldn't you do this, that or the other? Um, I mean, I had a lot of friends who, like, didn't go to church and that kind of stuff. And so to them, it was weird, right, that I was going to church on Wednesday night and I was going to church on Sunday, and I was going to church sometimes on Saturday. And then I was going to these things called gatherings, right? They're like, you gotta gatherings. Why don't you go to vacations? Like we're going to Disney or we're going to, you know, wherever, and you're doing what? So that would come up from time to time. Well, I was a fairly intelligent kid and so there's also this piece of like kind of blending in, right, that I was able to do to, to make it through. And even though my father is, is pretty, pretty strict in the religion now in his old age. Um, he is actually, uh, he actually came in later in life. So he was not born and raised in it like my mother was. And so I think this is my hypothesis. I could be wrong, but there were some things, I think, where my father was like, no, like, our kids need to go out and have real-life experiences where my mother would have been more like, no, they need to be 100% in sheltered right in, in the house. And so, um, that allowed me to have some, some. Like I listen to ACDC in the car with my dad, right? So, there are some experiences like that that I talk about. Sometimes people are like you did and well, yeah, but you know, my dad listened to ADC growing up. So to him listening in the car, right. There's some there's some nuances there too that happen.
[00:23:54] Katie Dooley: So did kid Sarah know you were different, or did you think everyone else was different?
[00:23:59] Sarah Snyder: I thought everyone else was in error and was going to die.
[00:24:05] Preston Meyer: That makes perfect sense. That's what you were taught, right?
[00:24:07] Sarah Snyder: Right. I mean, that's it. Do you want to touch on the trauma piece, or do you not want to touch on the trauma piece?
[00:24:14] Katie Dooley: I mean, if you're wanting to touch on the trauma piece and actually one of, I mean, one of my questions, and we've had this conversation, and you don't need to tell this specific story, but, um. You know, I think of the posts we made for Samhain with the bonfire.
[00:24:14] Sarah Snyder: Oh, yeah.
[00:24:31] Katie Dooley: And how, although it was about, um, I think well, it's about solving so Wicca or Celtic paganism that that was actually something that really bothered you. So if you're willing to share that story, I'd love for you to. And I mean, anything you want, want to share. This is your your moment.
[00:24:50] Sarah Snyder: I think that no, I think that there's some there was a lot of fear in how I was raised. So in other words, a big piece. But when I saw that post that you made on Instagram, it was on Instagram, it that honestly triggered me and triggered a lot of fear in me because I was like, oh my goodness. Because I was taught that people were going to come after us and kill us and torture us and do that kind of stuff to us, right? And so when I saw that, it was just like, oh, and then I had to like, calm myself down and be like, wait a minute, right? Like, I don't think anyone's going to come to my house today and take my Bible from me and torture me and burn me at the stake, right? I think I'm okay. Uh, but I mean, that said, I mean, there are Christians who are persecuted right around the world. So but it was a different there was so fear based. Everything was fear even to be afraid of God, like God wasn't a loving, kind, patient like I talked to him in the Bible that love is patient. Love is kind. You know? Love never ends, right? And that was not the God that I knew. I knew a God who was angry and judgmental and was going to come after me. And even to the point where, you know, most Christians will tell you, generally speaking, that once you, depending on the part of Christianity you are, once you accept Christ or once you're baptized or whatever, right that you have salvation. Um, I was raised to believe that, um, it is not at all not no, no guarantee at all, right? So you do all these things, you follow these lists, you follow these rules. Uh, when I was baptized, I had to be examined. I had to go through an examination process before I could, you know, was allowed to be baptized. So I went through this examination. It was like, two hours long. And then I was an hour, two hours long. And then I was baptized, right? But even after being baptized, then it was this thing of like, you're still not guaranteed salvation. And so you have to be very careful and walk on eggshells and do all these things right. Even the way I prayed had to be a certain way. I had to end the prayer a certain way. Right? Or God might be upset with me for not saying the prayer the right way, and then and not hear my prayer right, and then be upset with me because I prayed wrong. And so that makes you afraid to even talk to God, right? So now I'm terrified to have a conversation with God. Uh, and then and then, um, I forget where I was going with that. Anyway, so there's all these little things and nuances right in the background that are, like, really hard. It made me really afraid of God and made me really, really terrified. So the other piece. So that's that that's the Instagram piece. Right, that you and I talked about that the trigger me. But Katie knows a lot about this a lot about my background. But I was actually sexually abused throughout pretty much the entirety of my childhood. There was like a couple year gap there where I wasn't being, but it was pretty much that throughout from. I mean, I don't know, as young as you can probably imagine until I was like 12 or 13, I think. And so. No. Well, yeah. And so, um, one of the things that happened. Right, and this is a, uh, an example I give sometimes where, when I outcried, um, I was told I was, I was 12 and I outcried and I said, hey, this is going on. I don't like it. I want it to stop. Um, and the adults that I outcried to said, well, you need to follow Matthew 18 and Matthew 18 talks about how when you're upset with, uh, or there's a conflict in the church, you go one-on-one first, right to the other believer. You talk to him one-on-one, and then if that doesn't go well, then you bring other members of the church, right? And you have a conversation. And if that doesn't goes, they go, well, then you bring it, I think, to the whole church is how Matthew 18 is phrased and so I'm 12 I outcry, I say being sexually abused. Somebody please help me. And I get told well you have to follow Matthew 18. So that meant that I went essentially by myself to my abuser, to the man who was abusing me, right? And uh, I was too scared to tell him face to face. So I actually wrote a letter and, uh, I gave him a letter, and I was like, hey, like, you know, like, stop. I know what you're doing. Stop it. But that's one of those things where. Uh, it was awful. I don't wish it on anyone ever, right? But I now, as an adult, can look back. And honestly, I 10,000% believe God protected me because that man could have done anything to me. Because when I outcried, the people who I had outcried to actually lived in one in another country and one in another state, and because we were together when I outcried. So then I came back to my home where this was happening and, and I said this right, and told him to stop. He... anything could happen to me, right? And so I'm able to look back at that kind of stuff and be like, like, thanks God. You know, thanks for having my back. Right? Because that could have been real bad. And later on in life, when more people essentially found out about what had happened, some were of the opinion that it was wrong, that, you know, I should have, you know, adults should have done something to help me. Right? Some people were upset about it, but some people said, well, some people said, well, what was wrong was that you weren't actually baptized and in fellowship, yet you were still in Sunday School. So that's if you'd been baptized, then that would have been an appropriate use of that verse. And so I shouldn't I don't know, I shouldn't be laughing, but I have to laugh about it, right? Because we're gonna do? But that's the stuff now that it's, it's absolutely ridiculous. So. I can give tons of scriptural examples like that. Tons. I actually messaged Katie the other day I was reading the Bible. Something about Romans in it. It came up right. It was the same thing and it just it's like a trauma trigger, right? Immediately I'm like a kid again and I'm, you know, because I was sexually abused. As I learned about the Bible, I was sexually abused, you know, through lots of stuff. And I listened to these men talk and preach about God and,and so, you know, in my head, right, there's so much trauma and intertwinedness and junk. So when we talk about me leaving to circle, back when we talk about me leaving in my 20s, uh, when I left in my 20s, I was just like. I was so angry and so mad, and I had all these horrible nightmares about how Christ is going to return to the earth and judge everyone. And I had these horrible nightmares about how Christ is going to come and judge me, and I was going to be found unfavorable. Right? And, I mean, it was just this whole muck of stuff. And so, to this day, people in that religion believe I left because I was mad about the abuse that had happened. And and they're like, well, you should you should forgive and forget and in fact, I had to write. I had to write a basically a dissertation, uh, when I was a teenager, about how forgiveness and forgetting were not the same thing and how the founders of the original religion didn't believe that forgiveness and forgetting were the same thing, because they wouldn't let off of it. They're like, you literally have to just forget and be around these men and be okay with it. And this is your problem and you need to deal with it. So I say all that to say, right when I left, I was, I, I hated God and I was like, I am, I'm agnostic. And I went through a short little phase where I was like, I think I'm atheist. Like, how could how could evil like this ever happen in the world, right? Katie's like, praise the Lord. And I was like, how could how could evil like this happen in the world, right? What is wrong with people? And I tried to explore at various times. I tried to explore various religions. So I went to different churches and I went to different places because I was like, wait a minute, that, you know, agnostic and one minute trying to try and find a church and one minute I'm trying to do this honest to goodness every time it was a trigger. And people in, in my friends didn't understand, people in the churches didn't understand, right? And every time I went, I just I couldn't right and I couldn't. And, um, can I talk about where I'm at today or do you want me to.
[00:32:27] Katie Dooley: Yeah. That was gonna be my next. That's. Yeah, absolutely. What's life like now? And even more details about your religious journey if you want.
[00:32:37] Sarah Snyder: Yeah. So where am I today? So a couple years ago, I met someone I and I had done I had done therapy, done the whole nine yards. But a couple years ago I met a woman who is a trauma specialist professional, and she started working through some of the trauma with me in a much deeper way than I had ever been able to do before. I'd actually been told by people that in order to work through the trauma that I had been through, uh, that I would need to be institutionalized in a mental hospital for at least I think it was two months or three months. And they were like, there's no guarantee that we can actually put you back together. But they're like, we got to get you to a... And I was super successful. I had a great career, right? But I was just constantly in this state of trauma. And so the professionals were like, the only way you're going to heal is if we lock you up for 2 to 3 months, we really break you down, and then we can't guarantee that we can actually get you put back together. So I was on tons of psych meds. Like I was just trying to make it through life, essentially. Anyway, so two years ago, three years ago, I met this trauma professional. And, uh, so I met her and we started working together. And, uh, thankfully, she was able to help me work through some things. Like I said, I hadn't been able to work through before. Uh, she's just kind of a different bird and works in a little bit of a different way. And it was effective for me, right? And that was what I needed in my life. And one of the things that we had started talking about was the religious trauma, which I had not really touched on before. And but I also had people in my life around that time who were Christians, who were letting me ask them some questions, kind of about Jesus and kind of about God and why do they believe. Questions that I hadn't really been able to explore asked before in that way. And I had finally worked through the trauma enough to where I could get to a point where I could have some of these discussions and some of these conversations. And so I finally came to the conclusion... Was in September October of like 2020, I did actually pray and I asked God to Jesus to come into my heart and guide my life. And and it was so funny because I did it by myself in my room, like I just really felt that I had misunderstood God, and I wanted him to really guide my life. And I was like, no, this is something something's been off, right? I and so I did that. And it was funny because the next day I made a I told a friend of mine the next day that, you know, that I had had that conversation and asked God to do that. And, uh, her comment to me was like, "oh, good, well I'll see you in heaven". And she's a Christian, so she made that comment. And I remember I was like, that's not why. That's not why I did it. Like, I didn't I didn't do it to go to heaven because honestly, I'm still in some of my, some of my mind thinking as a kid, right? Like, there's no heaven. There's no hell. Like, why would I what what what? No. Like I just did it because I want a relationship with Jesus. Like, I just want a relationship with God. I want him to help me. And, uh, anyway, so I say that because, uh, very quickly, my life started to change after that. So I was in Texas at the time. I took off, sold all my stuff, became a digital nomad, uh, started living in other countries. I lived in Aruba for a couple of months. I lived in Costa Rica for a couple months. And then, uh, I was traveling around and doing what I wanted to do, and I came back. I met a woman online. We do business, we do business online, and I do a lot of work online writing in the various marketing groups, Facebook groups. And I met a woman online through business. And, uh, I made a post and we became Facebook friends, even though we were just business associates, because she was following my journeys and following my travels. And I made a post in March of 2021 about how I hadn't realized that human love between people, friends, relationships, whatever. Uh, I did not realize up until that point that healthy love was not transactional. So in other words, like if I'm dating someone and we're in a relationship and I don't take the trash out, I literally thought they didn't love me as much that day. Like I thought I had to, like, refill the bucket. And, uh, I actually sometimes my friends would be like, Sarah, why do you ask us all the time if we still love you? Like, of course we do. But in the back of my mind, because everything I thought about God was transactional, everything, a lot of stuff in my family was transactional as far as love went, so I carried that into adulthood, into all my relationships, romantic, friendship, all of it. And it's it's so funny because I finally came to that realization right in March of 2021, that healthy love is not transactional, right? And I was like, oh my goodness. And I actually reached out to an ex of mine and I was like, "hey, so when I took the trash out, did you love me more?" They were like, they were like, no.
[00:37:24] Katie Dooley: I'm pretty sure you asked me. And I was like, no. Yes.
[00:37:29] Sarah Snyder: What blew my I'm 39 years old and it blew my mind at the time, right? So I made a post on Facebook about it, uh, because I try and be as honest and authentic and real on social media as I can, because I think there's too much fake social media in the news. So, uh, I posted about it on Facebook. And this woman, who I was a business acquaintance of mine, I've been doing business with online, she, uh, she commented privately to me. She said, "hey, like, I'm just going to throw this out there. But do you know that God's love isn't transactional either? Like he just loves you." And, uh. I was like, that's interesting. But here's the thing. Here's the thing about her. She didn't shove it down my throat. She wasn't like, hey, you're wrong. She wasn't none of that. Which is what I had expected because that's how I had been raised. She was just like, hey, like, I really love God and Jesus, and I just assume everyone else will love God and Jesus because I do. And so, hey, like, here you go. And, um, there was no there was no judgment. There was no... It was just like an open comment. And I was like, maybe she's safe. I could ask her questions. And so I started kind of putting my toe in the water. Can I ask you some questions? And so she and I started doing Bible study together, essentially as I'm living in Costa Rica and she's here in Florida. And so we started doing Bible study together, uh, every, every week. And then eventually I came back to the US to get supplies, and I was going to go back out because I was going to go live in Grenada. So that was that was the next place on my list. I got totally blocked. I couldn't get back out of the country. I tried, Katie knows I tried, I tried to go to Grenada, to the Dominican Republic. I was like, I'm going to Albania, like, just let me out.
[00:37:29] Katie Dooley: Africa was on the list for a while. Yeah.
[00:39:13] Sarah Snyder: I was like, whatever I need to do, let me back out of this victory. Uh, but now I believe that God did that. Like, God really, really blocked it. And because I feel like this is where I'm supposed to be here for it and now, right? And so anyway, I could go on and on and on. But essentially what happened is I ended up living here in Florida and being here near, uh, that particular person and her family. And there's a nondenominational Bible church I go to now that she and her family attend. But even when and so I've been here about eight months now, and I do consider myself a Christian. I do think you have to accept Jesus in your heart to be saved. I do read the Bible just about every day. I do ask the Holy Spirit to help me, I do pray. That was one of the things I was really weird was when this this particular woman, she pointed out to me, she was like, Sarah, she says, you ask a lot of questions. It's really good. But she said, you also know you can read the Bible and ask God to help you understand it without asking everybody else what they think the Bible means first. Shocked me. I was like, I can? I thought I had to like, read like C.S. Lewis and ask you and like, follow Francis Chan. And she's like, no, that's not how this works. And so there are learning curves right now I'm 40. There are learning curves like that that I'm still going through based on how I was raised, right? And I'm like, oh, this makes so much more sense now. Thank you for explaining it to me. So anyway, all that to say, I haven't been on any psych meds in two three years now. I think meds have their time and place, please know that. But I was on meds, you know, from the time I was essentially like 15/16 until I was like 37, I think. And I was on tons of meds and they just couldn't. I, I did try and take my own life. Um, at one point in my life, I struggled so bad with all kinds of depression and mental health. And it's not that life's perfect today because it's not because I still struggle. I still have my ups and downs. If I ever feel like I need to go back on meds, I will, right? But I don't. But I believe a lot of that has been one, the healing journey I've been on, but two, it's been God working in my life, right? And him making the difference and him helping me heal, and him putting me in environments where I could heal, right? Like swimming with the turtles in Aruba, right? That was a beautiful experience for me. Life there was amazing. And so that allowed me to see beauty in the world that I hadn't really experienced or seen before. And like the church here, the Bible church I go to, I don't think anybody at that church knows except for this, my friend maybe, or my friend and her family. Um, but I would go to church when I first got here on Sundays and Wednesdays, almost every time. Not quite, but almost every time I would walk out and, like, ready to hyperventilate. Because inevitably, right, the preacher has preached about a Bible verse, right? That I'd been molested while I was learning about or he's preached about a, you know, a verse that I was manipulated with or he's preached but, right? And so the only, I mean, honest to goodness, the only reason I was able to make it through was because my friend, for the longest time, she would sit by me and I don't know how she did it. I honestly think it's the Holy Spirit because I don't know, but she could just kind of tell when I start to get riled up and she would just kind of touch my shoulder. And no one, nobody else in the church knew it, right? But she just kind of touched my shoulder and she'd be like, are you okay? And I'd be like, I gotta breathe, right? Or I would take my shoes off and rub my... There's a grounding technique when you have trauma, right? You take your shoes off and ground, you breathe, you you're... I would rub my feet on the carpet, right? Okay. Back in the room, like we're we're good to go. And then she would honestly, she would let me process after, right? And and he's like, this is what happened. And let me kind of talk through it and talk about it. But even with me feeling like God wanted me to stay and all that. I don't think I'd have been able to if I wouldn't have had that support, because the trauma was so intense and, um. So I'm thankful, right? And I look at the people in my life who let me for years, like ask them questions. And, I don't know, I was pretty judgmental. And let me be judgmental, right? Let me ask some questions and, uh, let me say things like, I really hate God today, right? And now I read the Psalms, right? And I read David, and he's... so he never says he hates God, I don't think, but he gets up and down, right? He gets mad and he's he goes through these emotions and I can identify with that. Right? And I'm like, oh, okay, somebody else like me. Cool. And then, uh, like I read Paul, right? And Paul says, you know, it's by the grace of God that I am what I am. And his grace to me is not without effect. And I read that and I'm like, okay, cool. So like, we're on the same page here. All right, Paul, like, if you did what you did and I've done what I've done and you're okay, then maybe there's a chance for me and I'm okay, right? And so anyway, that's. It's time to stop talking again.
[00:43:57] Preston Meyer: It's great to hear your transition from a place where God brings you pain to a place where God is peace and love for you.
[00:44:06] Katie Dooley: It's been a it has been a huge shift. Um, and part of it, too, was I didn't think you could be angry at God. Like, I thought that if I got mad at God, he was going to, like, strike me dead. And so, uh, at one point, someone did point out to me, uh, throughout this process, they're like, Sarah, like you, you can tell God you're mad at him. And I was like, no, you can't. And they were like, Sarah. They're like, he knows your thoughts. He knows what you're thinking. You might as well just tell him. Uh, which I ended up with me writing. Like I don't even know enough 5 or 6 page rage letter to God about how much I hated him. And then I started. I wrote it, and I was so emotionally exhausted. I started to fall asleep. And then I woke back up and I was like, wait a minute. And it clicked. I was like, it was, man, that did these things to me, not God. A man did this. And so then I wrote an apology letter to God, and I was like, hey, I'm really sorry. Like, I just don't know who to be mad at anymore, right? And, um, so I did that, and then I started to fall asleep. And then I woke back up and I was like, I had already accepted Christ, but I was like, I really want to be baptized. Like I had been wanting to be baptized, but there were all these issues with me traveling and not being able to do it. And I was like, this is really important to me. Like, I really want to be baptized and show my faith publicly. So then I was able to be baptized here in Florida, which was really, uh, an amazing experience for me. So that was really cool. But I think, too, if I talk about this, I, I, I was also really angry with my parents because I felt like they didn't support me. They didn't protect me, they didn't advocate for me. The fact that I had to remain around those men for years, even after they knew about... The abuse had ended, right? But I still had to be around them and see them and be at church with them all the time and hang out. You know, I was so mad and I was so mad, um, at the two men, right. These two like two different men. I should clarify that. So I was mad right? At those two men. I was just so angry and people didn't always realize it, right? Because I was real good about keeping a cool and calm exterior. But inside, I was just eating up with this anger. And people tell you... And this upsets me when people are like, we just need to forgive. Do you know how hard that is? Do you know how much therapy I did, you know much, right? Like I couldn't forgive for anything. Uh, until I started, honestly, I started praying and I was like, God, please help me, please help me. Because I have done everything as a human that I know how to do. I have done all the therapy, I have done all the coaching, I have done all the writing, I've done all the journaling, I have done everything. And I am just eating up with this anger. And, um, there's about 6 or 7 months ago I started praying and praying and praying and then, um. I don't know. Funny enough, 3 or 4 months in I actually got to a point where I was like, oh. I'm not so mad like what they did was wrong. It is wrong. But I'm not so angry. I was like, huh? And then I started looking at like, what good can come from this, right? Not that what happened was good. I want to be very clear it was not good. But what good can I make out of my life? What good can I make out of it? Right? What could have I made out of it? And what good can I make out of it? And then I, I do not always advise this. I don't advise this for other survivors. Just know that. But I felt very strongly like God was calling me to call the one of the men who abused me, he's dead. The other one is still alive, and I felt like God was calling me to call him and tell him that I forgave him, and that the reason I was able to forgive him was because of God and because I felt like God had worked a miracle in my life and because I had accepted Christ. And so about two months ago, I did, andl I hadn't talked to that man in years. Um, and I called him and, uh, he answered, and we had a conversation, and I told him that, um, which ended up being a healing experience for me, um, thankfully. And so. That's the pieces of the puzzle that I don't know how to explain. And so sometimes, you know, Katie and other atheist friends, I have lots of friends who are atheist and agnostic. So they're like, how do you how do you know there's a god? Or why do you believe in God or what? Right? I don't know how else to explain it, right? Like those experiences, I have tons more, right? But I couldn't get there as a human being on my own. And it wasn't until I started asking God to help in my life and do things in my life. Not that I think he'll do everything I ask him, I don't, but it's through those experiences and I'm like, there's got to be something like, he's got. He's got to be there. He's, you know.
[00:48:31] Katie Dooley: Yeah. You have an amazing story and I, I love I mean, I love Sarah, period. But Sarah is also just an amazing example of like putting so much work into yourself, right? You've never, ever given up in 40 years, which is admirable, to say the least.
[00:48:51] Sarah Snyder: Thanks. I try.
[00:48:54] Preston Meyer: It sounds like a rough journey. But it looks like you've come out so far. Great. And I can only hope it gets better from here.
[00:49:04] Sarah Snyder: It's one of those things where I'm like, I know it will. I know it's only going to continue to get better because even even through the rough, this is what someone said to me after I was baptized. They said to me, they said, hey, Sarah said, you know that basically like this doesn't necessarily mean that things are going to be easy, right? Like these. Even though you even though you've got God, sometimes this can make life more challenging. And my immediate thought was, my life has been so hard without God that nothing could ever come in my way. That will be as hard as not having him in my life as long as I mean, he's been present in my life, right? But as long as I have a relationship with him and I'm secure with him there, like, no matter how bad things get, it's okay because he loves me and he's got me and he'll use whatever for good. And that's what I'm that's what I firmly believe. And I've been through some rough patches since then I've had some tough times come up, and it's so different when you have that that faith and that walk and that belief. It it... I don't know how to explain it. It's just like, no, like I we're okay, I'm okay.
[00:50:12] Preston Meyer: So I've got an idea that kind of poking at me a little bit. I've. We all have people with varying degrees of similarity and differences from ourselves, and sometimes you come across a person that you notice that they agree with you on something and you reflexively go, wait. If you agree, should I should I agree with you on this? You ever find that sort of situation where, um, as you develop this new, warmer relationship with God that you're talking with somebody and feel like there's maybe a little too much similarity to something from before that just doesn't feel right until you reframe it.
[00:51:00] Sarah Snyder: Can you give me an example? I'm not trying to be dense, but, like, give me a give me a...
[00:51:06] Preston Meyer: Like i'm trying to think of an example church-wise, and I've got nothing. Um.
[00:51:12] Sarah Snyder: You mean that there's... Do I feel like the church I go to now? Like, does it have similarities to how I was raised? Is that what you're asking?
[00:51:19] Preston Meyer: Is there anything that jumps out at you or that you hear that sounds familiar or similar, but is... It makes you think of something that you used to believe, and either is the same, but reframed in a better way, or something that is jarring when you realize it. Is that a thing that comes up?
[00:51:40] Sarah Snyder: If I understand your question right, I can talk about the God piece. So in other words, like I was raised right to be very fearful of God. And I mean, the pastor of the church I go to talks about how we should be fearful of God, right? And so but the reframe for me, right is that God is't just out to get me. He created because he loves me, right? So he's not just out to get me and punish me. And yes, like, I mean, uh, who is? I can't think of the guy's name who kills like tens of thousands of people in the Bible, right? Like God is a vengeful God. Sometimes God does. Right? There is stuff like that. But. I'm able to see now more it's like a healthy a I'm like, I'm a I'm gonna make sure I put this word healthy. It is like a healthy parent, right, versus somebody who's just mad and vengeful and beating their kid and whatever. God is actually a healthy parent where he comes in and he's like, hey, you need a little bit of discipline here because you're super way off track. So I'm going to discipline you and kind of push you back right to the path you need to be on. But honestly, when I'm sitting in the church and the pastor's talking about, you know, a vengeful god or whatever, right? I get where I'm like, wait a minute, what is this? Is this are we talking about the same thing? And then I get scared, right? And then I have to work through that, you know, either on my own or in the Bible or in talking with people, right? And I'm like, okay, this is what he actually means, right? He doesn't actually mean what I started to get he means that, yeah, like sometimes parents, parents discipline their kids, right? God's the same way, right? And so, um, if that's what you're asking, there's some like there's some reframe there. And the other thing that I'm learning about is the difference between a healthy community and an unhealthy community. And so I have been very much like, I'm independent. I don't need no one. I don't need nobody. Katie can tell you I get I would freak. So I was traveling the world, right? And Katie and I are friends and I would get freaked out. I'm like, I'm too dependent on Katie. I don't need friends. I don't need anybody. I don't need you. Right? And I do this very unhealthy push-pull in my relationships, uh, even my friendships where I'm like, I get close to people. And then I'm like, wait a minute. This is too close. You're going to hurt me. I'm gonna leave now because this is this. We can't do this anymore. And so one of the terrifying things for me here has been to go to the same church every Sunday, see the same people and be like, oh my goodness, I'm in a community, right? Like, what is this? Uh, and and so I think that honestly, is probably the most terrifying thing that is the most familiar to me that it mimics, right, how I was raised. But I have to remember, I can go to the church two doors down if I want to go right, and I if I take off and move to Grenada now or somewhere else, these people will still love me. They'll still care about me. Like their opinion doesn't change, right? They want the best for me. I texted one of the ladies at church. Go ahead Katie,
[00:54:30] Katie Dooley: I was just going to say so what you're saying is I'm a saint.
[00:54:34] Sarah Snyder: You?
[00:54:34] Katie Dooley: Yeah. For putting up with you. For putting up with you.
[00:54:34] Sarah Snyder: Yes.
[00:54:42] Katie Dooley: So I'm the good guy here? No.
[00:54:45] Sarah Snyder: Once for once, you could claim the good guy badge. Yes.
[00:54:49] Katie Dooley: Uh, sorry. This lady at church.
[00:54:52] Sarah Snyder: So, uh, today, today, I was feeling a little nervous about doing this podcast, and so, uh, I was feeling anxious about it, and I was like, man, I really need a home-cooked meal. And so there's a lady at the church who's a little bit older than me, uh, wiser in years than me, as I like to say. And so I texted her and I was like, Will you please make me beef stew is my favorite meal in the world. And I was like, Will you please make me some stew and/or soup? It doesn't have to be right away. But could you do that sometime? And she texted me back. She said, of course I would love to, right? She's like, let's schedule a time, right? Then you come over and have dinner, right? And uh, or whatever. And that I have to remember like that's healthy, right? That it's healthy to have that support. It's healthy to have that. She doesn't know I'm doing this podcast. But but she still wanted like, hey, like, yeah, I'll cook dinner for you, come over whatever. And I have to remember that's okay. Like that. That's not a bad thing to have in life because I have told you two, three, 4 or 5 years ago that was a that was terrifying thing, right? That was maybe not a good thing to have in life. And now I'm like, oh no, it's okay, right? This this is good. This is healthy. And I still have my ability to think independently. The pastor here at the church, he I couldn't when I first got to the church, he stood up on that stage and he said that it was okay to disagree with him. And he said, if you disagree with him to come have a conversation with him. And he was like, and bring the Bible right, and we'll talk it through together. And I was like, what is that like, did you really just say that from like the stage that like, we could disagree with you? Are you insane? So things like that, right where I'm like, oh, I still get to have autonomy of thought, right? I still get the think through... Like, we I don't even agree with my friend here on some things. Or I'm like, wait a minute, I'm not sure I agree with you on this. And and it's fine. We talk it through. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree. But that's a huge difference. We don't have to have the same exact 100% aligned belief, right? And um, being able to read the Bible for myself, that that man that just is so different without having to use someone else or something else to translate, you know, to essentially to explain what it says. Does that answer your question? Did I get there eventually?
[00:57:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's great.
[00:57:05] Sarah Snyder: It's funny, as a publicist, I coach people right on how to do media interviews and how to have your background and how not to say, um, too much and how to be prepared for questions. But as someone who goes out and does interviews sometimes for business or about this kind of stuff, I please, if you're my client, do as I say, not as I do. That's.
[00:57:20] Katie Dooley: Always that's a good rule.
[00:57:23] Sarah Snyder: So like, yeah.
[00:57:26] Preston Meyer: There's a big difference between an imperfect person and an actual hypocrite. We can give advice and we can try to follow it if we believe it, it's going to show. It's when we really just say, you know, I'm not going to worry about it, but I need you to keep doing it. That's that's the hypocrisy.
[00:57:47] Sarah Snyder: I definitely worry about it. I'm just like, eh.
[00:57:53] Preston Meyer: It's all right.
[00:57:54] Katie Dooley: Again, we're all friends here.
[00:57:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:57:57] Katie Dooley: We're pretty. We're a pretty casual podcast.
[00:58:00] Sarah Snyder: What's nice is We're on Zoom. It's just I don't, I guess the listeners only we're actually on zoom. And it was actually nice to see your face Preston because I've heard you on the podcast, but I was like, oh, that's what his face looks like.
[00:58:10] Preston Meyer: Right? Katie's been talking about you for a long time, and now I have a face to go with the name.
[00:58:15] Katie Dooley: You come up in a lot of conversations because of what you've just told everyone.
[00:58:21] Sarah Snyder: Yeah.
[00:58:22] Katie Dooley: Um, so we're at close to the hour mark. Um, I mean, I'm still enjoying this conversation, but do you have any advice or thoughts for someone who might be in a danger cult?
[00:58:34] Sarah Snyder: Uh, so a couple things. When you're starting to question things. Be careful who you trust with what you're questioning. And so. That I think was very difficult because when I was not allowed to question things, right? And the second you start to question things within that environment, right. You're you're immediately bombarded. And so, um, if you're questioning things, that's that's okay. That's good. That's healthy, right? But be careful who you're talking to and who has your ear and whose wisdom you're listening to. Some, some very authoritarian religions, right, are even more controlling than how I was raised. And so I always encourage, if you're in an especially scary situation, please make sure you have a safety plan right. Please make sure you have friends that you can trust, right? Who are outside of that environment, right? Who you know have your safety plan, who know what's going on, who you can you can lean on for support and dependance. Um, please know that it's hard leaving, but it's worth it because once you kind of get through that and get over that. Life just blossoms and opens up. Um, and then also, know it's okay. I had the hardest time in the world asking for support and asking for help. And I want to encourage people it is 10,000% okay to say, hey, whether it's a friend, whether it's a therapist, whether it's a coach, whether it's a, I don't know, a spouse, whoever like it is okay to say, hey, I need, I need help and can you help me with X? Right. Whether that's leaving, whether that's understanding, whether that's whatever, right? Like and if the first person can't help you, that's fine. Ask the next person and keep asking until you get the help you need.
[01:00:17] Preston Meyer: I think that's great advice.
[01:00:19] Sarah Snyder: Thank you.
[01:00:20] Katie Dooley: And I mean, we did our cult episode, which Sarah hasn't listened to.
[01:00:24] Sarah Snyder: I didn't because we talked about that. I wanted to, but I was like, man, if this triggers me and then I'm up and then I can't, I don't know,
[01:00:30] Katie Dooley: I understand it's totally okay. But we write. We gave some advice, but neither of us have lived it. So it's great to, you know, hear from someone who has lived it and is thriving afterwards.
[01:00:43] Sarah Snyder: There's a mental transition, like a shift in your brain, that has to happen to understand that you are okay, and at least for me, right, that I was okay and I had value outside of that environment, that I was lovable outside of that environment. And but it's worth it when you get there. So just keep doing the work.
[01:01:06] Katie Dooley: Sarah, I love you so much.
[01:01:08] Sarah Snyder: Thank you. I love you too.
[01:01:12] Katie Dooley: Anything else you want to touch on, Preston, or Sarah is there any other stories you want to share?
[01:01:19] Preston Meyer: There's this idea that everybody wants to help somebody when they see that they're in a cult. But. There's a line that people are going to cross. Most of the time when you say, hey, I want to help you out of this cult where the people on the inside who are experiencing it feel that the person offering help is an oppressor.
[01:01:47] Sarah Snyder: Correct.
[01:01:48] Preston Meyer: Like almost all the time.
[01:01:50] Sarah Snyder: Yes.
[01:01:52] Preston Meyer: And and there's loads of different words for, for how that perception plays out. But that's the that's the trick. And having never had to live through that experience in any functional or successful way, my inclination is to expect that maybe saying, I'm here to help you out if you need out, but I'm not going to pull you out. Is that even a statement that would encourage somebody who's on the inside?
[01:02:24] Preston Meyer: So here's here's my suggestion. From my own experience, I don't even know, honestly, that I'd say that. I'd say, hey, I enjoy and appreciate being your friend. Let's go have coffee or hey, like, let's sit and chit chat and and not to be friends, to manipulate. Not at all. But literally just to sit and have a conversation and listen to the person and, um. So I have a license as a counselor. Right? It's a little piece of my counseling background comes into play, even though I don't practice anymore. People miss the value of that. The value of friendship, the value of eye contact, the value of of we're doing this online, right? But like I said, my friend here, like. I wasn't obviously involved anymore, but the way she approached me was so non-judgmental, right? It was just so open-ended, like, hey, I'm here if you want to have a conversation. But, you know, and, um, people forget the little acts of kindness go so, I mean, the the, the smile, the hey, like, I care about you, the I mean this is terrible, right? But my friend being like, when I'm in college and I'm still involved, right. My friends being like, dude, you were so weird, but you can come room with us anyway, right? Like whatever. Or like, dude, they would kind of tease me a little bit, right? Which I'm pretty good-natured most of the time. Right? I have a good sense of humor most of the time, so they would kind of tease me a little bit. They'd be like, dude, like, really? And then they'd be like, come on, come have a beer with us. Right? Come on, right? Come on. And but they were not like, oh my goodness, you're crazy. You have to get out. We have to help you leave, right? Blah blah blah. It was more of just like a hey, like, come experience life with us. Come see that life can be a little bit different. And, um, it was a little bit of that little bits of that, little bits of that, right? And I say it takes a village. I mean, for me it's like a village, right? And it took a village of experiences like that. And so if you're going into somebody and you're like, I'm going to save this person, I can be this person's savior. I'm sorry, which you have the sincerely the wrong perspective on it. It's I really don't think it's going to happen. I think you have to go in with with the friendship, with the love, with the non-judgment. And then if it gets to the point where you feel like you've developed that relationship where you can say, hey, like, if you ever wanted to leave, I'm happy to help you out or figure that, right? Okay, cool. Or if they ask you, which is honestly 10,000% better if they're able to come to you, and say, I do think I want to leave, right? And which is kind of what happened with me. Right? I got to a point. I was like, I do think I want to leave, but now I'm scared because I don't know what happens next. Right? And then I had that conversations with my friends and with my therapist, right? And we went from there. That was a long time ago. But it's a, it's a calling from that place of love is patient, love is kind, right? Like, uh, even if you're not a Christian. Right? Coming from that place is a perspective of working with something and understand that their mindset is so, so different, right? And so trying to, I guess, understand that in their perspective and their views on life and meet them where they're at, still have your own boundaries, still keep yourself safe, have your boundaries, right? But, uh, I think that's the way to go about it.
[01:05:31] Katie Dooley: Don't join the cult.
[01:05:33] Sarah Snyder: Oh, please. No, no, don't.
[01:05:36] Katie Dooley: Don't do that basis because of friendship.
[01:05:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It could turn like prisons that you can bust through the wall and be inside to help somebody out. It it's there's not a long list of success stories in that way.
[01:05:51] Katie Dooley: No. That was that was a really good question and an even better answer. Sarah.
[01:05:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It was. Thank you.
[01:05:55] Sarah Snyder: Thank you.
[01:05:57] Katie Dooley: I mean, it kind of speaks to almost, you know, the entire point of Holy Watermelon is just, like, better understanding of the people around us, and. Whatever. What is it? What is it? Building bridges. Not. What is that saying?
[01:06:09] Preston Meyer: Not building walls.
[01:06:11] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
[01:06:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:06:14] Katie Dooley: That's why Preston's my co-host. So I can I get halfway there and he gets me the rest of the way.
[01:06:20] Preston Meyer: Sometimes we finish each other's sandwiches.
[01:06:22] Katie Dooley: Sentence's. Oh.
[01:06:26] Preston Meyer: Uh, that gag just doesn't work on Zoom. There's too much delay.
[01:06:30] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Zoom, zoom. mutes you so we can't talk at the same time. Sarah, is there anything you want to rep? You want to shout anything out? You want to?
[01:06:44] Sarah Snyder: No, that's the thing. I do interviews for my business, right? And I'll rep my business for those. But for these particular podcasts, we're talking about my background, my past and God and religion. I don't I don't do it. This is what people don't understand. Sometimes I'm like, I don't do it to promote anything. I'm not a coach. I don't have a book. I don't... None of that. I literally just do it because I'm hopeful it's helpful to someone, somewhere, sometime, someplace. And and that's it. Eventually if I put up a website, I'll, I'll have you put it in the show notes but for now, no, I just hope it's helpful to someone, somewhere. And that's all.
[01:07:18] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say. When you write your book, we'll add that in the show notes.
[01:07:21] Sarah Snyder: There you go. Thank you.
[01:07:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That's great. Thank you so much for joining us. It's great to meet you. And it's been a great conversation.
[01:07:32] Sarah Snyder: Awesome. Thank you.
[01:07:34] Katie Dooley: Sarah is yeah Sarah is one of my favorite people. And we chat religion not nearly as often as Preston I do, but, um, it's nice to have another person that, you know, we can ask questions of each other and have some good conversations, like you said, without judgment and just pure curiosity. So thank you, thank you, thank you. We've talked about this for a long time, so I'm glad it's finally happened.
[01:07:57] Sarah Snyder: Me too.
[01:08:00] Katie Dooley: Preston, what should our listeners do now?
[01:08:03] Preston Meyer: Oh, you definitely need to join us on Discord. See the great memes we share. Uh, we've got some great infographics for some of our latest episodes. Uh, we've got Patreon where you can help us make this into a bigger project, maybe do this full-time with more regular episodes. That'd be great. Uh, we also have a handful of Patreon exclusive releases, so that's always cool, right?
[01:08:32] Katie Dooley: And of course, we have our Spreadshirt. So if the subscription model isn't for you, you can buy some merch from us and rep the Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[01:08:43] Sarah Snyder: Do I get a shirt now?
[01:08:44] Katie Dooley: Do you want a shirt now?
[01:08:46] Sarah Snyder: I want a shirt.
[01:08:47] Preston Meyer: We can line that up.
[01:08:48] Katie Dooley: Well, we'll line it up for you.
[01:08:50] Sarah Snyder: Awesome, thank you.
[01:08:52] Katie Dooley: I guess that's all for this episode.
[01:08:56] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 17 Jun 2024 | Don't Fear the Reaper | 00:38:07 | |
Gods of the underworld are not the same as gods of death, nor are the guides the same--not even the Grim Reaper. Hades is the minder of the subterrestrial realm, just as Zeus and Poseidon are the minders of the Mountain (... and the sky) and the Sea (tough to argue for pluralizing those realms). Pluto is the same figure, adopted by the Romans AFTER he got his new stage-name. Osiris is the keeper of the dead in Kemetic (Egyptian) lore, and one of the judges at the table. Hel is the Norse keeper of the dead, though she was a giant, and not a typical god. The Grim Reaper is a psychopomp: a guide for the recently deceased. The Valkyrie, and the Shinigami are old variants on this idea. Yama was the first to meet death, and after finding heaven, has made it his mission to guide others. Anubis, anciently a simple jackal, has morphed into the commanding protector of the dead in Egypt. Xolotl is the Aztec guardian of the freshly entombed, symbolizing the dog to guide people into the afterlife. Mercury is the Roman response to the Greek Hermes, and he is said to guide the dead to the docks where they should find Karon, the ferryman. The Etruscan version of Karon is perhaps a little less friendly. Vanth is a more benevolent guide to the Etruscans, though you might not guess it from her appearance. Personifications of death--the true gods of death, if there can be any--are simply named "death" in the various tongues of the ancient world: Thanatos, Mors, Mot, etc. They may be among the most anciently feared gods in human history. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 02 Nov 2020 | Who Let the Dogma Out? | 00:41:15 | |
Now that we (sorta) know what a god is, what qualifies as religion? If almost anything can be a god... can anything be a religion?! In this episode, we discuss what religion is. Does there need to be a God to worship? Well, it’s a tricky thing to explain. There are many religions like Buddhism and Confucianism that, while they have one founder, aren’t directly worshiped like we see in the Abrahamic religions. The foundation of the word religion (ligaments) means to be connected to something. We go over a couple of accepted definitions for religion, break them down into their parts and identify their flaws. Is it a unified system of belief? Often there are differences within the same group. Or is religion a metaphysical moral vision? With groups looking for tax-exempt status from the CRA and the IRS, we discuss how important it is for people to be aware of what actually counts as a religion. And finally, is Katie actually religious? With these definitions, you might be surprised!
A good sequel to this episode is #16 Abide with Me, where we talk about parody religions.
Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram
** Katie Dooley 00:11 Welcome back to the latest and greatest episode of The Holy watermelon Podcast. I'm Katie.
Preston Meyer 00:16 And I'm Preston.
Katie Dooley 00:17 And today we are having another big roundabout episode on what is religion? Do
Preston Meyer 00:24 you have an answer for that question? I don't you want to make a stab at it?
Katie Dooley 00:30 Yes, it is a belief system, a commonly shared belief system by a group of people that worship of God, please see episode two, what is a God to know how good that definition was?
Preston Meyer 00:52 Does it have to have a God? It could have multiple gods but a minimum of one.
Katie Dooley 00:57 I would say yes. But again, we know how big a god is. So we can have the church of mom and dad.
Preston Meyer 01:03 What about Buddhism?
Katie Dooley 01:06 Do they not worship the Buddha?
Preston Meyer 01:08 So that's the trick is, though Tallis Buddhism, specifically believe in a pretty cool cosmology. But there's multiple statements from Dalai Lama and whoever else that any theological study is a distraction and a waste of time, because there is no god for Buddhism
Katie Dooley 01:34 and philosophies of the person, right.
Preston Meyer 01:36 And the Buddha, of course, is a figure who is revered but not a Judeo Christian defined God, even though according to some of the definitions we came up with last time, it's not unfair to call him a god.
Katie Dooley 01:55 So we're off to a great start. Right?
Preston Meyer 01:57 All right, yeah. Not only is God tricky, but religion is tricky. And we're gonna dive into that a little bit, I
Katie Dooley 02:05 think we're gonna have another round about a PSA that will hopefully clarify more than confused.
Preston Meyer 02:13 If nothing else, you'll have something to discuss with your friends. And that's all we want at the end of this, isn't it? So there are competing schools of thoughts, of course, like in literally any other subject worth discussing. So question is, how do you define religion? I want to read to you a couple of definitions that I've got here from some well respected scholars. First is Emile Durkheim. So he defined religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices, relative to sacred things, which is super broad, but also closes things in reasonably well, I think I
Katie Dooley 02:56 feel like the word sacred is actually a problematic word in that sentence, because then we get into what does sacred mean, the definition of sacred, just like we had the definition of worship and definition of a god. I think everyone probably hold something different, sacred. I also don't like the word sacred. And maybe this is a tangent. But I think is now's a good time to dive into that. I don't like the word sacred, in general, because it means it can't be questioned. I think that's why religion today has so many problems is because you can't talk or question things that are sacred. And, yeah, it breeds a lot of problems in with power and corruption. Because you can't question your church or your priests because it's a sacred institution. And we probably should be questioning justice. Thanks.
Preston Meyer 03:55 Always question authority.
Katie Dooley 03:59 So dismantle the patriarchy.
Preston Meyer 04:03 There are different definitions of sacred even most people that I've talked to say that sacred is completely synonymous with holy. They're probably people that I haven't talked to who are happy to say, no, no, no, those are two very different things,
Katie Dooley 04:19 I would actually fall into that category. Okay.
Preston Meyer 04:22 How would you describe holy,
Katie Dooley 04:26 I would add the magical element to Holy, okay. Whereas, I can see and almost agree with, you know, that marriage to an extent is sacred, right. I'm all for divorce. And, you know, in some ways, I think it's pure, but I can see why someone call marriage sacred. But I don't think that totally in any way, shape or form. Because you can have marriages very separate from church. Your look like
Preston Meyer 04:59 you I'm listening and I have ideas. Okay, I'm letting you go.
Katie Dooley 05:04 Yeah, I really feel like holy has that magical mystical as the words and religious size mystical element to it that it's like a squares or rectangles or a rectangle isn't a square. That's how I feel holy things are sacred, but also because holy can help you much more than that. It's okay.
Preston Meyer 05:28 Yeah, so sacred is kind of tricky. In most contexts, it is things that like, don't don't approach that thing. In the Old Testament, and, by natural continuation of things, the New Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures have the word sacred or holy. In most translations, they seem to be used pretty interchangeably. But it's a thing that's set apart, set aside, the Levites, were always a sacred group, not because they shouldn't ever be questioned, but because they were set aside and separated from the rest of Israel. All the rest of Israel got this cool inheritance of the land is Levites got a handful of cities and altars to offer sacrifice on so they were made separate. Then you got the NAZA rights, who, like myself, I'm gonna make a little statement right here, that sounds super terrible. But I am even more holy. Because I set myself apart slightly further by being an azurite. Doesn't mean I'm above questioning or anything else like that. I'm just a little different, until I can slough off this mantle of being an azurite, which is coming up soon. Oh, yes, the holier than thou. Right? It's a phrase that came out this just the other day. And when most people say, you know that this person has a holier than thou attitude, or somebody says, I'm holy back off, that's usually holy is the wrong word. Usually, that's with the sense of self righteousness, I'm so much better than you because I do this thing that you aren't doing, or I'm not doing these things that you do, which is just a terrible way to operate running through life, you alienate pretty much everybody, which is never good.
Katie Dooley 07:22 No, it's not.
Preston Meyer 07:24 There's a huge difference between righteousness and holiness. And I
Katie Dooley 07:29 don't think a truly holy person would ever describe themselves as holy.
Preston Meyer 07:35 I can't agree completely.
Katie Dooley 07:37 It's one of those. I'm trying to think of a real world example of like, the nicest, kindest people would never acknowledge how nice and tight or generous people, right BOSU. Now
Preston Meyer 07:51 you're talking about humility, I guess, which is safer to connect to righteousness than necessarily to holiness. Holiness and sacredness is definitely about being separated from what is not in that same category. literally anybody and everybody should be interested in being humble to some degree. Some people may be a little too humble for their own good. Some people definitely need to be humbled, maybe have that thrust upon them for Sibley. Righteousness is very different from that righteousness, in the biblical sense, is a matter of being a just person. And everybody should seek after being just, and it's super easy to see when somebody is terribly unjust. And that's also getting tricky to police properly, I guess, but also forcing somebody to meet any criteria of righteousness, that don't demanding somebody meet your standards of righteousness? If they're not already committed to that is obscene. Yes,
Katie Dooley 09:13 and this is probably an episode for another day. We're talking about righteousness and standards of righteousness. This literally comes down to how you interpret your holy text. And there's everyone interprets differently. It doesn't matter if you're the same denomination. It's a mess people.
Preston Meyer 09:32 I mean, even the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, the law that's given, some of it is written as received from God as divine law. And then a huge swath of the content is stuff that was added later on a case by case basis of oh, we need to codify this. And the stuff that we have in the Torah that is in the Written Torah, but now Not the Oral Torah is just the stuff that was codified earlier before they said, Yeah, we're not going to add to this anymore.
Katie Dooley 10:08 All right, so that was a big wormhole. Yeah, give us another definition. So
Preston Meyer 10:14 we looked at Durham's definition of religion and then took a hard left her into secret. So unified system of belief is what Durkheim said. And I mean, if you look within any religious group, there's usually varying opinions, unless your group is way too small. And even then you got somebody who's gotten a varying opinion, who just isn't saying something a little different from that is max Stackhouse, he defined religion as a comprehensive worldview or metaphysical moral vision that is accepted as binding because it is held to be in itself, basically true. And just even if all dimensions of it cannot either be fully confirmed or refuted. So basically, even though I kind of like it, it is way too broad.
Katie Dooley 11:05 It is very wordy, but there are definitely parts of it that I really like. Should we break
Preston Meyer 11:12 that down a little bit and examine the parts of it. So comprehensive worldview?
Katie Dooley 11:17 I like that.
Preston Meyer 11:20 So far, incredibly broad. If you want to run through your life with thinking nothing about anything big and just considering how dogs are pretty cool, and objectively better than cats, and there are people who hold this opinion. That's that's a worldview that may be completely comprehensive if you decide that nothing else is worth thinking about. Next is a metaphysical moral vision.
Katie Dooley 11:54 I like the metaphysical. And why? Because? Because I think the world's most popular religions have that metaphysical aspect. Obviously, we're gonna come across ones that don't. But I think that encompasses the Judeo Christian God without, you know, offending them. And, you know, all the way to the breadth of into Gods and Goddesses. Yeah, metaphysical, and it, you know, it encompasses some bad ones, too. I'm thinking it was Scientology that compasses that as well. Because yeah, every metaphysical is a broad term, it's, you know, I like it.
Preston Meyer 12:47 So I've said before, I believe you to be a religious person, and every time you laugh, and think that that's nonsense, but I know that you have a metaphysical moral vision. Do you believe in love?
Katie Dooley 13:02 Yeah.
Preston Meyer 13:05 And that to a degree, one, one degree or another, that love should more or less be spread out to more than your immediate community of the four people in his house or your family or your next door neighbor's? That's a metaphysical moral vision, where we get into humanism, which is according to stack house, or at least my interpretation of this definition, Stackhouse offers a religious position
Katie Dooley 13:38 well, let's let's keep going. Yeah, hearing I'm hearing him talking Off mic brands like, let's keep going. And I think he narrows it down a bit more though. Yes,
Preston Meyer 13:49 he does. There's there's definitely more so this metaphysical moral vision must be accepted as binding. If somebody says Love isn't important, you can treat your neighbors like dirt. Would you feel that that person has breached a moral contract or a social contract?
Katie Dooley 14:09 I mean, I think they were in Dec but I
Preston Meyer 14:13 don't think that's different from what I just said I get hurt from I like your words better and I use them often Off mic.
Katie Dooley 14:21 But I don't have a contract with these people.
Preston Meyer 14:25 Not a written contract but
Katie Dooley 14:28 yeah, I was like It's not like I kicked them out my house but I probably would if your back so Okay, carry on. All right.
Preston Meyer 14:38 So metaphysical moral vision that is accepted as binding, because it is held to be in itself basically true or unjust. So the basically to makes me giggle. Just true at its deepest level of in this example, loving your neighbors and your community.
Katie Dooley 15:01 is like I read that as like, basically true because we can't prove otherwise,
Preston Meyer 15:06 which is definitely the way he finished that with cannot either be fully confirmed or refuted. But
Katie Dooley 15:13 which follows on like in my brain, it's like red flag, red flag because you can create anything based off that. And I mean, we'll get more into how, you know things like tax exemption, anything can be tax exempt with these definitions. Yes. It's
Preston Meyer 15:38 as much as you see people in the scholarly world have a hard time to find religion. Legislators straight up avoid it most of the time. Well
Katie Dooley 15:47 imagine, I obviously they would be specialists in the area, but the IRS and the CRA. Like they're not religious scholars, they're just trying to do their job. And like said, yes, they would be specialized in the area of religious organizations. But at some point, they must just shake their head and go fine.
Preston Meyer 16:06 Stamp 711 not a church move.
Katie Dooley 16:10 I mean, I mean, 711 every Sunday morning, sure. To get gas
Preston Meyer 16:15 to seven women sell gas, the
Katie Dooley 16:18 one by replace, that's okay. That's nice.
Preston Meyer 16:22 It seems like more and more similar ones are moving away to just being a convenience store. But that's, I'm moving away from the topic of discussion. So, in between those two examples we have of Durkheim and Stackhouse, we have a wide variety of different interpretations on what qualifies as a religion based on however you wanted to find it. The idea of having a god as you had said before, Confucianism is something that doesn't fit into that at all. Confucius barely qualifies as a God according to the definitions we came up with before. He still kind of does. Like the Buddha, but twist, slightly less divine position, but still is he's revered as a God as a great teacher. And as many great teachers were deified, but it's, it's super complicated. If you want to have a broad definition of religion, you're gonna start including things you didn't want to include in your list of gods. Wayne Gretzky or Eric Clapton. These people are Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee these people are revered as gods by an awful lot of people Michael Jackson,
Katie Dooley 17:49 King of Pop, he even has the the monarchy on it.
Preston Meyer 17:55 There's there's all kinds of people who have huge followings have the great big gatherings that churches or the government like to see in churches and whatnot.
Katie Dooley 18:06 And on regular basis. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 18:09 there's definitely rules and standards that fan clubs will expect people to meet. I brought a huge paper on this very subject a little less than a year ago. And there's, there's so much that has a religious following around these people that are basically heroes that become deified because of our worship of them. And they look like religions, when you see the way people behave, just the way you have a priest throw on his robe and his scarf, every mass, you'll have all these hockey fans throw on their jerseys on their face paint and all these very similar things. And so they can go and perform their rituals. That looks awfully religious, but it doesn't fit into what we want religion to be defined as.
Katie Dooley 19:14 Do you think if these Eric Clapton like push for it, he could get tax exempt status?
Preston Meyer 19:22 I really doubt it. And
Katie Dooley 19:26 which we're gonna do an episode on.
Preston Meyer 19:29 Depends on how he goes about it, I suppose. Like if he says, I'm starting the church of Eric Clapton, the guitar God, then that's all there is to it. And somebody has given tax exempt status. I mean, you just keep applying to applying in different jurisdictions, and somebody's going to grant it. And so with all these different religions are all kinds of different acts of worship like we're dressing a certain way, reading certain texts, texts, color Think baseball cards is not wildly different from collecting different religious books. In the actual act of collection, what you do with them is also not terribly different. For an awful lot of people, they'll collect their baseball cards and never read them with a lot of people in their Bibles, while others are way into the stats that they can find on their baseball cards, and they studied them and try and figure things out. There are people who have made games around baseball cards, which sounds kind of cool, from my perspective as a game designer, as well. And you've got people who are way into their scriptures that want to learn every little detail. And there's everything in between. And that's a sort of religious worship, in both cases, with the baseball cards and with the holy books. So what is religious? Anything? But there's more to it. Often enough, you'll have people who are spiritual but not religious is a super common phrase. Yes. You'll hear that a lot in interviews of celebrities in Hollywood, that if you ask them about their spirituality be like, Yeah, I'm spiritual but not religious. There's, I got Ron Perlman coming to mind, I can't think of why. But you must have been cited it in one of my classes. But what does that phrase even me?
Katie Dooley 21:40 I mean, it's funny, especially when we started talking about me, because arguably, I'm spiritual, but not religious. But I wouldn't even consider myself that. So. Everyone is spiritual, but not religious, especially with these definitions we have of religion, I think the most common if you ask someone who said that what they're all right. That the verb they want to give it a pause for, right? If you ask someone, what their definition was, I think spiritual presidents who blame God but not in organized religion?
Preston Meyer 22:21 I think that's pretty standard. I think I agree with you that most people would make that distinction when they've used that phrase, which
Katie Dooley 22:27 just blows this whole thing up and are they tax exempt? Can you be individually tax exempt for being spiritual, not religious?
Preston Meyer 22:38 See, the New Testament, there's, Oh, I feel bad that I I don't want to misquote it. I need to get my bad. I got my phone. Oh, it says in the New Testament, your body is a temple. If your body is a temple, it's not wildly different from a church, you should be tax exempt.
Katie Dooley 23:01 care right now and be like that my body's a pimple,
Preston Meyer 23:05 right? I'm there for I should be tax exempt. So spiritual, and that spiritual, but not religious. Let's examine spiritual what does that mean?
Katie Dooley 23:18 I think that's even broader. Because
Preston Meyer 23:22 do you have to believe in a God to be spiritual? No,
Katie Dooley 23:25 I don't think so. And Katie's controversial in it would be this is like all we worry, I was what I would call it. So if you're spiritual, and you do right here, if you're spiritual, and you do sound therapy, or for spiritual and take a bunch of LSD and go to Shambhala, like that, I would categorize that all under spiritual, I would also categorize someone who's a Christian doesn't go to church, or belong to a particular denomination, because they have problems with whatever, whether it's tithing or controversies in the church, or just they don't want to get up and go. Every Sunday, I would also put them into categories spiritual. But yeah, I would put a lot of worry under spirituality as well, that I wouldn't. And these people would probably disagree. I wouldn't put that under religion. Like I wouldn't put Reiki or taro under religion, but I would absolutely put under spiritual and people who practice these things are probably shaking their fists. I mean, going it's my religion. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 24:41 Okay,
Katie Dooley 24:41 do you have any comments on my definition of groupings?
Preston Meyer 24:47 I like and it's it's not terribly different from one of the my notes like you kind of got it. There's the if you're spiritual, not religious, oftentimes because there's the whole have some sort of faith without being connected to a group worship at home or Reiki or Tarot or whatever, is usually a lot less group oriented, which when we talked about religion, religion, this nonsense word that appears to have left my mind.
Katie Dooley 25:18 Tire podcast is about Yeah,
Preston Meyer 25:21 we I think we talked before in previous episodes that religion usually is a thing that binds people together. Yeah. Yeah. And if your spiritual not religious, it's usually you feel that way because you're not part of a faith community. Not always the case. But definitely often enough that I feel comfortable saying usually without having done any proper surveys.
Katie Dooley 25:45 Definitely, I'd say kind of sound like my mother, it's definitely more loosey goosey. Yeah, I know women who participate in circles and some go all the time and some go some of the time and some of them try it once. Whereas if you're a good practitioner of Judeo Christian religion, you go every week, whatever your day happens to be. Some
Preston Meyer 26:07 Christians would go to Mass every day. Usually these are retirees but not exclusively. But
Katie Dooley 26:15 I'd say a good minimum of once a week whereas I mean Moon circles
Preston Meyer 26:22 every night know when
Katie Dooley 26:23 circles happen monthly and I said just from five never been to one maybe we should go to one Preston. I don't know if you're allowed to that's for for women. Oh, that's an excellent point. Identifying people. But my the feeling I've gotten I've seen women go is that some will drop in some wool, when when they need it kind of thing as opposed to make
Preston Meyer 26:46 sense. A lot of people are like that was church. Feel like I needed add on needed. I'd rather go golfing today, you got a full spectrum of group engagement, warm summer
Katie Dooley 26:58 day in Canada, you don't pass those up, right?
Preston Meyer 27:03 Another Lord will understand
Katie Dooley 27:05 that wasn't very Canadian. That was more Irish.
Preston Meyer 27:09 You also mentioned those people who believe in God while avoiding say, definitely faulty human authority. So spiritual, I actually read a great book by a Catholic priest, Ronald Brule. Heiser, I imagine some of the people listening might if you're into this kind of podcast, you've probably been made aware of him before. He's done a lot of writing. And his book called The Holy longing goes into very deeply what is spirituality in the pursuit of another goal, but the, the passionate pursuit of life is spirituality. According to him. Oh, interesting. Janis Joplin is an example he uses. Who you look Janis Joplin, you don't think oh, yeah, that's a that's a religious person. And some people based on their own definition of spirituality probably wouldn't even think she's spiritual, but real hazards like, No, this is a very spiritual. And I can disagree. His definition of being passionately engaged in celebrating life is a pretty good definition for me for spirituality. And he doesn't have it tied to any belief in immortality or anything like that. It's the passionate pursuit of celebrating life, which is pretty cool, but also very broad, very
Katie Dooley 28:47 broad. Because by that definition, I'm spiritual but not religious.
Preston Meyer 28:52 Right? Or maybe you are religious to?
Katie Dooley 28:57 Is this the ultimate goal for the podcast that I turn you into an atheist to determine a religious person?
Preston Meyer 29:02 Well see, I'm not even throwing theology. You're saying, but you are some sort of religious.
Katie Dooley 29:12 And where was I going with this? But I still wouldn't call myself that, but maybe we'll do an episode on the self identification. Sure, we can look into that. But yeah, that's a very everyone's spiritual but not religious definition.
Preston Meyer 29:30 Okay. So I've got you spiritual, according to roll Heiser, and I've got your religious according to Stackhouse. So, looking at what is religion? I personally think that the fundamental basics of the word, the etymology of it, bring us to being connected to something ligature, for example, connects things. That's a big part of the word religious, or religion. And so you can either be concerned about being connected to a god, or being connected to a community or being connected to one person, you got a lot of freedom there is being connected, you can be concerned about connecting the universe together just in understanding it, not in any sort of metaphysical way, but in a very physical way of just understanding the universe almost fits into religion. And we talked before about how science can be kind of religious. But then we're getting too into a field that opens up religion a little too broad.
Katie Dooley 30:49 How about this on the defensive point? Do you think these definitions need to be more specific? Do we need to narrow them down? I'm thinking quite specifically as for tax exemption, but even you know, we're talking about I'm a spiritual and religious atheist. You know, what do I put on my senses? Do people need to be more aware of these definitions? And I mean, by maybe another link, does it even matter?
Preston Meyer 31:24 At the CS degree question, if you're way into dogs, doesn't matter what a Maine Coon is. I mean, your focus is, wherever your focus is going to be, you don't need to know about big cats, if you just straight up bar, dog person,
Katie Dooley 31:39 dogs their life.
Preston Meyer 31:42 So the idea of finding an answer to this question has its purpose perplexed an awful lot of scholars, and an awful lot of them straight up, don't care enough to put the time into it. They'd rather look more at the manifest manifestations of spiritual behavior, how people congregate, rather than why they congregate maybe.
Katie Dooley 32:13 So it's really just a very specific area of sociology and anthropology. Absolutely. I know from your schooling, you've touched on things like sports is religion, and science is religion. So as you see, well, if you don't know what a religion is, how do you know it's study religious scholar, but you clearly have studied and all so
Preston Meyer 32:35 it's actually really, really complicated. Even though I mean, it shouldn't be. Like, if you say, that train of thought, it's gone, we can scrub this part of the eye, knowing what religion is like, somebody says, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever. You think, religion. That's a religion. And it's part of a lived experience, and you just have been around it, you by osmosis, you just have grown to categorize things this way, because you just keep observing it without knowing exactly what what's what, for example, your understanding of color, wildly different from my understanding of color. I know that there's between this wavelength and this wavelength, I can see different colors. I would count six different colors in the the various wavelengths. I know you see way more colors than that. Yeah, and some people would count fewer than six. Yeah. And the study of color is a fascinating thing that the when you see green versus blue, you have different words for them. Whereas in some parts of the world, I've been told that the there them together. Yeah, there are personal it's green through Blue is one color, orange and red. That's red. And there's yellow in the middle. And that's the deal. Purple usually isn't lumped in with blue, but I bet you there's somebody out there who does
Katie Dooley 34:20 some crazy person, send us an email, if that's you. Right.
Preston Meyer 34:25 I want to learn more about that too.
Katie Dooley 34:27 I want to learn more about your world. I'm really curious about the tax exemption question and the definition of religion because
Preston Meyer 34:37 what qualifies you for being tax exempt
Katie Dooley 34:39 and we are going to touch I don't want to get too too deep into this episode because we're going to actually talk about it next episode, but John Oliver talks about the IRS tax exemption in one of his episodes of Last Week Tonight. And he actually gets Last Week Tonight, tax exempt under their definition of religion and And that's fine for Last Week Tonight, because it was basically a big joke. And they donated all their money to I believe Doctors Without Borders that we have cases like, specifically I'm thinking the Church of Scientology has, I want to save billions of dollars of real estate holdings. And they're tax exempt, and they had to fight for tax exemption for a really long time. But I would argue that that's probably one that should have been caught.
Preston Meyer 35:35 But it's a religion, isn't it? Most of the people involved genuinely believe in the spiritual or metaphysical or whatever it is that's going on that is taught in that very militaristic group.
Katie Dooley 35:55 So, Katie, controversial opinion, I need the same time for this. What if churches just weren't tax exempt? That I honestly think would be that
Preston Meyer 36:10 it would simplify things a lot?
Katie Dooley 36:13 Because, I mean, I don't pay tax in the States. But obviously, there is churches Scientology here in Canada, to Catholic Church has a ton of money. And as a taxpayer, yeah, that kind of sucks. So they are tax free. And it could be contributed a lot to I mean, people in other ways that aren't their parishioners. I know one of the big sticking points for the Church of Scientology is with other churches, you have to prove that the money that you save in taxes going back to your parishioners to help them in some way. And from my understanding, there's no proof in the Church of Scientology, that their money that they save is going back to their parishioners, especially because those people pay for all of their courses.
Preston Meyer 37:05 So that devil's advocate on that specific detail. No, I'd love to, I don't want anybody to confuse me with a defender of Scientology. But I, from what I understand, an awful lot of Scientologists get to live on property owned by the Church of Scientology, which might just be enough for the government to say yes, they're benefiting.
Katie Dooley 37:29 I've heard the empty. So maybe that's what nobody actually lives.
Preston Meyer 37:37 That could be true. I am standing here as a person who knows not nearly enough about Scientology's mechanical working is to discuss them properly.
Katie Dooley 37:47 Mike Rinder if you're listening, we'd love to interview because he would be able to answer that question. Yes, as an atheist, that is my solution. No tax exemption for churches.
Preston Meyer 38:03 It seems simple enough to accomplish it would make an awful lot of people more comfortable with what's going on, especially since there's an awful lot of abuse in church systems. Well,
Katie Dooley 38:17 and that's that's sort of my point in getting this definition more specific is how do we avoid people just becoming churches for tax exemption? And again, we're gonna talk about this next episode, in addition to the John Oliver, when there was a fantastic Bob's Burgers episode, where they do just that to save an aquarium, they may think, obviously, Bob's Burgers is fiction. Spoilers. So they wrote that storyline where it's John Oliver did it in real life. They made the aquarium at church to save it from being shut down. So how do you how is this Can we get tax exemption for the Holy watermelon podcast? Because we meet here, bi weekly. And Taylor growing our congregations growing and you join us every two weeks, and we worship the sound God Bryant, like that. I mean, part of me wants to try hard. He doesn't want to fight this era. But any final thoughts? I love to pause if it's not a final class, you can cut out for it final.
Preston Meyer 39:34 What else haven't we covered?
Katie Dooley 39:35 I mean, we got to tie this on a nice bow even though we really didn't answer the question because we knew this was another big broad episode on what is religion
Preston Meyer 39:45 is super complicated. Just like what is it can be super broad or super narrow. If you narrow it in too much. You're gonna be cutting people out. If you say it has to have a God. Then you've cut out most Buddhists and all kinds humanists unless of course, you go with a far too broad definition of God. It's super complicated. I enjoy talking about it. And you should definitely talk to your friends about it.
Katie Dooley 40:15 If you Yes, you have any questions, you should shoot us an email at Holy watermelon@gmail.com. And we'd love to hear any episode ideas or talking points you'd like us to address.
Preston Meyer 40:30 Send us your questions, comments, complaints. If you have hate mail for us, we'll read it will read it for sure. I think it'll be fun.
Katie Dooley 40:39 I think we'll do fall hate mail episodes because we're talking about religion and people don't like to talk about this thing, right.
Preston Meyer 40:49 And so that's it for this week. Peace be with you.
Katie Dooley 40:54 Settle down. That's all for this week. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review and five stars. And until next time, peace
Preston Meyer 41:04 be with you. | |||
| 09 Oct 2023 | San Lanatus Fellowship Anniversary | 00:48:50 | |
We've really enjoyed doing this show together, and we've learned a lot. It's time to reflect on the foundation we've built. The natures of knowledge and belief are tricky philosophical concepts, and the motives any person might have for believing anything or claiming knowledge are as varied as anything else in human behaviour. We answer audience questions, and we have questions for each other, too; but if you want to hear the religiously-themed FMK suggested by one of our listeners, you'll find that on Patreon. This one's a little more fun than most of our previous episodes, but any good celebration should be. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshirt. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 28 Feb 2022 | She Doesn't LOOK Druish | 00:51:47 | |
Join us as we explore Katie's Irish roots, and the ancient religious traditions of the Western European Celts. We talk a little about the religious sites that Katie has visited, and the ancestral gods and druidic arts that too few remember today. We look at Julius Caesar's report about the Wicker Man, and discuss the musical magic of the Bards, Fili, and Druids. Some strong D&D vibes here. Wicca finds some natural appeal in the Celtic tradition, but this tradition is more directed toward the goddesses like Brigid, Epona, and Morrigan. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
[00:00:12] Katie Dooley: Hi, Preston.
[00:00:13] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie.
[00:00:15] Katie Dooley: I sounded very exasperated. I mean, hi, Preston.
[00:00:20] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie.
[00:00:23] Katie Dooley: I'm really excited about this episode.
[00:00:25] Preston Meyer: So I thought of a name for this episode before we even started throwing content together.
[00:00:29] Katie Dooley: Okay, well, lay it on me.
[00:00:32] Preston Meyer: Well, she doesn't look Druish. Good old Spaceballs. I'm still waiting for the search for more money.
[00:00:43] Katie Dooley: Well, we're gonna find out why she doesn't look Druish on today's episode of.
[00:00:48] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[00:00:55] Katie Dooley: Oh, boy.
[00:00:58] Preston Meyer: That's a great way to start.
[00:00:59] Katie Dooley: Right? Uh, we're doing another ancient religion. Today we are talking about ancient Celtic religion, which I was excited by having grown up as an Irish dancer. But it's also way more complicated than I'd say almost any of the ones we have looked at because it...
[00:01:24] Preston Meyer: They're all complicated.
[00:01:25] Katie Dooley: They are but this one like really morphs into Irish folklore. Eventually. And looks completely different from its original pantheon of gods, which is where I was like, this has a lot of branches to it.
[00:01:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the Romans put a lot of work into making the Celtic religious tradition family really hard to study and really pushed it into obscurity, which is weird because like we're talking before the Christian conquest of the Celtic people. It's frustrating.
[00:02:03] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And like you said, then it becomes this, you know, at some point it almost becomes children's stories,
[00:02:11] Preston Meyer: Pretty much.
[00:02:12] Katie Dooley: And so where, where do you draw that line and Celtic is a lot broader than Irish too.
[00:02:18] Preston Meyer: Right, a lot.
[00:02:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I was doing all this research and wondering if I was researching the right thing. But I hope you all enjoy this episode nonetheless.
[00:02:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, the Celtic people basically originated in Western Europe. Basically anything west of Italy that wasn't south of Italy, centralized and southern Germany and France. But the Celts also lived in Austria, Czechia, and most famously, the British Isles.
[00:02:28] Katie Dooley: Like the North Germanic peoples, we have very few written records about old Celtic religious traditions. And unfortunately, most of the old writings we have about Celtic worship come from Romans, including Julius Caesar himself.
[00:03:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Before he decided I am the god-emperor of this ridiculous nation, back when he was just General Gaius, then he was, you know, out fighting people and getting to know his enemies. And so the writings that we have from him about his enemies definitely are fully... What's the word I'm looking for? They're very heavily biased in a very negative way. Yeah, yeah. The Romans spoke about all the foreign gods as though they were only foreign names for their own gods. We had talked about this a couple episodes ago, and when they were talking about the Gaulish and the Celtic gods, this makes it really hard to know who they're talking about, because they don't actually map onto each other terribly well, which is really frustrating.
[00:04:02] Katie Dooley: Well then, of course, um, the Romans hated the Gauls. And then, of course, we have the Christians who hate polytheism, which this is another polytheistic religion. We don't have any positive spins on this religion at all. And some are just outright propaganda to diminish this Celtic pantheon.
[00:04:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's uh, it's frustrating. Very little remains of the Celtic, the Celtic cultural tradition outside of the British Isles today and really the only exception to that is that tiny little corner of France that's trying really hard to reconnect to Ireland.
[00:04:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and then again, I just wanted to point out that again. I said it's a polytheistic religion, but when we do our wrap up episode, it is the concept of a monotheistic religion is so weird at this point in time. And that's something now it's gone the other way, especially if you live in the West, where a polytheistic tradition feels so weird. But no, everyone thought. The Jews and the Christians were out of their minds.
[00:04:42] Preston Meyer: it's an interesting world that we live in. Yeah. So diving into some of the the nifty elements that are the Celtic religious tradition, which of course, like everything we've talked about for the last few episodes and any religious group, nothing is ever monolithic. There's always diversity of thought, especially in a tradition that covers such a large part of Europe.
[00:05:40] Katie Dooley: Well, and again, no formalized writings. Like all the other ones we've touched on in these past couple of months, no formalized writing so there's nothing to go off of.
[00:05:50] Preston Meyer: There's no Celtic Bible. That's just not the way it goes.We don't even have something that really mirrors the Eddas very well either.
[00:05:59] Katie Dooley: There's like literally nothing on these people.
[00:06:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Which is rough. It's a lot of oral traditions that what we learn about them says that they would have been preserved in a way that should have been verbatim from generation to generation. But because there is such great diversity from east to west, from north to south, of the people that were called the Celts and the Gauls, it's not looking like it's really verbatim.
[00:06:26] Katie Dooley: Well, and then this is where, like I said, I had trouble researching because we do start to have good written record of Irish mythology. Which is where which comes from the Celtic pantheon. But there's not a lot on the Celtic pantheon. Anyway...
[00:06:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So generally speaking, the Celts were pretty interested in what we call animism, that most pagan folk were interested in the spirits of trees and animals. This was something that we saw a little bit with the Norse, where they were worried about sacred lands. But this is much more a part of the Celtic life than it was for the Northern Germanic people, which of course shouldn't be too terribly foreign to North American white folk who happened to be living on stolen land.
[00:07:14] Katie Dooley: Yeah, right? So unlike the harsh line between sacred and profane that we see in the Abrahamic traditions, Celts believed that spirits were in everything.
[00:07:27] Preston Meyer: Everywhere.
[00:07:28] Katie Dooley: Everything and everywhere.
[00:07:29] Preston Meyer: Like the land wights.
[00:07:29] Katie Dooley: Lands and animals share dreams with the gods. Which is one of the few ways that we know anything about some of these gods.
[00:07:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it gets to be tricky business. The Celts were also particularly concerned with how animals behaved, considering almost any potential act to be an omen, either for good or evil. And if you've paid a lot of attention to anybody who believes in gods today, this is still the way a lot of people behave. Taking all kinds of things as signs from the gods.
[00:08:06] Katie Dooley: Totally, yeah. Animals and the gods are always tied up, even if you think of, like, temple sacrifice.
[00:08:12] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Absolutely. It's kind of interesting.
[00:08:15] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Good thing we're apex predators.
[00:08:20] Preston Meyer: I just watched the movie. I can't remember the name of it now. It's basically the story that Moby Dick was based off of the true story. And whales are awful. They are brutal and mean, sometimes.
[00:08:36] Katie Dooley: Killer whales are very mean.
[00:08:39] Preston Meyer: Sure, I think this one was mostly focused on sperm whales.
[00:08:42] Katie Dooley: Oh, interesting.
[00:08:43] Preston Meyer: I think. I could be misremembering that. But yeah, they weren't. Even after the killer whales. They were after the big dark whales. Oh, yeah. With their goofy little flappy under jaws.
[00:08:56] Katie Dooley: Isn't that just Thor Ragnarok? The dark elves?
[00:09:00] Preston Meyer: Sure. Why not? So there is only minor evidence anciently, of what might have been called witchcraft among the old Celts. But the rise of Wicca in the last century does offer a little extra perspective into how people have preserved the old ways and brought them back to life, whether or not they're faithful reproductions of what used to be going on anciently is an entirely different discussion.
[00:09:27] Katie Dooley: We're gonna get into that, though. Unlike the Norse tradition, who had no defined priesthood whatsoever, the Celts had classes of priesthood, all of which were open to men and women alike, which we do see in modern Wicca.
[00:09:27] Preston Meyer: Anciently, bards were more than just performers sharing songs and stories. And if you're at all familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, which I know at least some of our audience is.
[00:09:55] Katie Dooley: Is it me? It's me.
[00:09:59] Preston Meyer: Bards have a sort of magic. And I thought it was really interesting. Magic and poetry or sorry, music and poetry share magical properties. And that's a really important part of the Celtic tradition. And it's it does show itself a little bit in the Harry Potter universe, where you see that nobody's using English words for their spells. It's always a slightly poetic sounding Latin-ish. If it's not real Latin, it's something that's meant to sound like Latin.
[00:10:31] Katie Dooley: Like Lorem ipsum. For my... Only a select few of you might understand that reference. I'm so sorry. It's graphic design, filler text. It's Latin-ish. It looks like Latin, but it's not.
[00:10:45] Preston Meyer: That makes perfect sense. Yeah, I like cheese ipsum.
[00:10:49] Katie Dooley: Ooh, pirate ipsum is a good one too.
[00:10:51] Preston Meyer: Sure, if you're looking for filler text, there's actually a lot of great services online. Yeah, but I thought that was really interesting that, like, I just thought it was dad doing this weird thing to bards that made poets magical. But no, this is a legit ancient tradition, so that's kind of cool. However, most people see bards as the lowest level of Celtic poets being more reciters than inspired writers.
[00:11:19] Katie Dooley: Interesting, so, an undergrad student?
[00:11:23] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:11:25] Katie Dooley: Then there were the fili. Which were the seers. Actually, I thought we should put the pronunciation in for basically all the gods. And I didn't, so we might need to do some googling. The Fili were seers, able to see the future and share their visions in poetic songs or riddles.
[00:11:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I feel like that would get really annoying for the layman.
[00:11:55] Katie Dooley: I feel like there's a pop culture character that does that, and I can't think of who it is right now.
[00:12:00] Preston Meyer: For people who are familiar with the Hebrew Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, there's famously good old Isaiah who talks in a very poetic voice a lot of the time and is pretty obscure for readers. So that's something that's reasonably common to religious folk today.
[00:11:55] Katie Dooley: Because of the power of song, the Fili, their words and traditions survived the Christian conquest and recorded by Catholic priests.
[00:12:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I thought it was interesting reading up on these Catholic priests that were writing these things, why they felt the need to preserve something that they really hated. Feels really, really odd to me, but I can appreciate that the need for decent scholarship was enough that they did a thing that needed to be done, even though they weren't doing it for properly noble reasons.
[00:13:07] Katie Dooley: No. No enjoyment. There was no enjoyment there. And in Ireland specifically, the Fili were counted as equals to Catholic priests, which meant that they received land from the chiefs equally. This became a hardship when pretty much anybody could become a Fili, so the title was restricted to only a few per family who were thought to have a special right to it.
[00:13:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that could be a problem. And it's I think it's really interesting that they were counted as equal under the law. I mean, anyone could become a priest too, but that doesn't mean you were going to get a parish right away, you know?
[00:13:44] Katie Dooley: No, I mean, that's and again, this is probably part of the reason why it morphs into, like I said, the folklore is that Ireland like still to this day, as Catholic as it is, they still have fairy trees that you don't cut down in your farmer's field, kind of like in Iceland, where you have to get permission from the elves to build civic buildings like it's the weirdest thing.
[00:14:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I'm curious how that actually operates from day to day, because I haven't looked that up. Do they just put a petition in front of a spot reserved for the elves and see what happens?
[00:14:27] Katie Dooley: I haven't looked into it either. I just know it's the thing.
[00:14:30] Preston Meyer: All right.
[00:14:30] Katie Dooley: But I did see fairy trees in Ireland where like in the middle of a field that, you know, here in Western Canada would be completely bare for grazing. It's like, nope, fairies live in that tree. Can't cut it down.
[00:14:43] Preston Meyer: Okay, cool. There's some question as to whether these are the same folks that the Greeks and Romans called the vates, but in English we call them ovates now, because learning Greek is hard. I know that because I've done it, but that's an embarrassing adjustment of a word. But ovates is easy enough to say in English, so I guess there's that. Druids. That's a word that I think should be a little bit more familiar. Were basically what we now know as priests in Celtic paganism, while there's little that we actually know about them, uh, there is a magical element to them. Many of their practices would be what we consider occult, including divination and spell casting. Just like other religious leaders at the time, they were also heavily involved in politics, medicine, law, and as information keepers. Basically, these were the guys that could read, but they didn't write things down.
[00:15:50] Katie Dooley: Bitches.
[00:15:51] Preston Meyer: Right. It's it's frustrating.
[00:15:53] Katie Dooley: It is frustrating. 2000 years later. You are correct. Did you know, Preston, that they performed human sacrifices?
[00:16:03] Preston Meyer: I mean, I've heard it about so many different peoples now that at some point we have to run across somebody that it's fully true.
[00:16:11] Katie Dooley: It's not this one, though. So I really just think this is Roman propaganda for all of them, or like Christian propaganda, I guess because Rome, there were rumors that in the Roman, ancient Roman they had human sacrifice.
[00:16:26] Preston Meyer: Well, even the Greeks would say it about the Spartans, that they would just destroy all their, their weak-looking children. Turns out there's no truth about that either.
[00:16:38] Katie Dooley: Weak-looking. Oh, that's sad. I can just, like, picture little Timmy being like, well, I'm sorry, you're a little scrawny. That's really upsetting.
[00:16:47] Preston Meyer: But this was things. That was something that the Greeks would say about the Spartans talking about, you know, their history looking backwards. And yet we've found no evidence that it's true. And some pretty strong arguments that the people that were saying this were just being dicks to people they didn't like.
[00:17:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So in in reading up on this round of human sacrifice, basically some scholars even deny that it happened at all. Um, it definitely didn't happen very often. If it did, in any instances of sacrifice were likely reserved for criminals.
[00:17:22] Preston Meyer: Makes sense. I mean.
[00:17:24] Katie Dooley: We still do that. So.
[00:17:26] Preston Meyer: Right. Julius Caesar, back when he was just General Gaius, would he actually said that one of the greatest things that he witnessed among the Gaulish people was that they would stuff people into these wicker men.
[00:17:43] Katie Dooley: Oh, yes, the Wicker man.
[00:17:44] Preston Meyer: Right. And the Wicker Man is kind of cool. But does a giant effigy actually need flesh and blood people inside it? Isn't that the purpose of an effigy is to not have the real thing inside the fake?
[00:18:00] Katie Dooley: I mean, yeah but even if they did, we burn people at the stake. Well, into the 1700s so...
[00:18:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah, so Julius said that they would stuff criminals into the wickerman, but when they ran out of criminals, when they just had a light year and people were being good, Santa Claus didn't have any to bring coal to. They would throw slaves and thralls into the wickerman, which seems really odd.
[00:18:27] Katie Dooley: Seems like a waste of labor.
[00:18:29] Preston Meyer: Right? You need your slaves?
[00:18:31] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I don't want anyone. I don't want anyone to have slaves. Period. But I don't want anyone taking my manpower. Paid. My paid manpower.
[00:18:40] Preston Meyer: Right? But this is a thing that people are saying about the old Gaulish people. Just like they were saying about everybody else in the neighborhood.
[00:18:51] Katie Dooley: Literally everyone has performed a human sacrifice.
[00:18:55] Preston Meyer: I mean.
[00:18:56] Katie Dooley: If we if we take what's been written, everyone has performed.
[00:18:59] Preston Meyer: I mean, human sacrifice is still an everyday occurrence in Texas today. Thank you government. But of course, these are criminals.
[00:19:10] Katie Dooley: Preston goes political.
[00:19:13] Preston Meyer: In Canada, human sacrifice is fully illegal and in many countries it is still totally acceptable. Just a reality. I'm not getting political about it. I'm just. That's the reality. So back to the Druids. They're generally thought to have had something that looks like a mystery school, but those mysteries are now lost to time. If such an oral tradition had survived to the present day, some people claim that it has. That would make them the only people in the world to preserve that as a secret, rather than have it leak out. So we're basically looking at the Bigfoot of religious studies
[00:19:58] Katie Dooley: Cool!
[00:20:01] Preston Meyer: That's so tricky business. And of course, in most literature since the medieval era, druids have been portrayed as malevolent sorcerers who oppose the advance of Christianity. The second half of that makes perfect sense, since the Christians destroyed and conquered their way of life, but making them malevolent sorcerers just seems like an unnecessary negative set of baggage there. But in the last couple of hundred years, Neo-druid groups have popped up. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that later.
[00:20:35] Katie Dooley: I mean. We've all watched Outlander, so.
[00:20:38] Preston Meyer: I haven't watched Outlander.
[00:20:39] Katie Dooley: Well, you're missing out.
[00:20:41] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:20:42] Katie Dooley: It's really meant for the ladies, but there's a lot of gore, though.
[00:20:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah, okay.
[00:20:50] Katie Dooley: I fast forward for the gore and get to the sexy part.
[00:20:54] Preston Meyer: That makes sense.
[00:20:55] Katie Dooley: Yeah. The descriptions we get about the Druids make it look like they ran theocratic tribes, but it makes more sense that in smaller tribal groups, there wasn't much reason for the more senior members not to have a familial respect for the whole community, allowing them to lead in both civic and religious affairs, which is a tricky distinction to preserve.
[00:21:19] Preston Meyer: Indeed it is. There's. The natural state of having the old people that know how to read, leading things that make sense but, being both civic and religious leaders looks problematic.
[00:21:34] Katie Dooley: I mean, I it's almost a historical it's a historical fiction novel. Like, I recognize this, but the way they wrote the Druid part of the book is that you had your chieftain and then you had your high priest Druid. High Druid and they would lead together a like I mean, the chieftain would defer like the, the, the druid was his counselor.
[00:22:03] Preston Meyer: That's what we see in a lot of cultures.
[00:22:06] Katie Dooley: And if the druid said, we need to sacrifice a baby, the cheif would go, okay, we need to sacrifice a baby, and they'd sacrifice the baby.
[00:22:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah. When your role includes. A connection to the future sustainability of your people. And everybody sees your religious leaders in that position. You end up having a lot of civic authority.
[00:22:29] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So the Tuatha De Dannan translates to folk of the goddess Danu. She is the mother goddess in Irish folklore. So again, this is where this weird blending of Celtic into Irish, because there's no records. So. She's the mother goddess in Irish folklore, though some associate her with the land itself. So calling the land Danu. There are no legends about her specifically, but she lends her name to this ancient Irish pantheon of gods.
[00:23:06] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:23:08] Katie Dooley: The De Dannan dwell in the other world, but visit us through passage tombs like the one at Bru na Boinne, which is older than Stonehenge and really fucking cool. I went to Bru na Boinne. Cool. And yeah, it's from like 5000 BCE, I think. And they figured it out. The light and the passage tomb. It's illuminated on the equinoxes.
[00:23:32] Preston Meyer: Nice.
[00:23:33] Katie Dooley: And you can't you can't actually get into Bru na Boinne on the equinoxes. You have to win your way in. You have to enter a draw.
[00:23:33] Preston Meyer: Because so many people want in.
[00:23:42] Katie Dooley: Because so many people want it in. I entered the draw. I did not win.
[00:23:45] Preston Meyer: Makes sense.
[00:23:46] Katie Dooley: I would have flown back to Ireland though, because how fucking cool would that be! Sorry, I got real nerdy there. Yeah, so it's way older than Stonehenge. Doesn't get nearly as much credit as Stonehenge. Google Bru na Boinne.
[00:24:02] Preston Meyer: We're going to include the spelling of that.
[00:24:04] Katie Dooley: Or you can also look up Newgrange, which is spelled just like it sounds.
[00:24:08] Preston Meyer: That's that's helpful.
[00:24:10] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So like in Norse and Greek mythology, the De Dannan are not the first set of gods, but rather descended from Nemed.
[00:24:21] Preston Meyer: Oh yeah.
[00:24:22] Katie Dooley: Scholars believe that the story of Nemed is Euhemerism and that he was a real person.
[00:24:27] Preston Meyer: Nice. It's cool when you can spot that in religions,
[00:24:31] Katie Dooley: Right? There are other supernatural races in Irish mythology that have some relation, one way or another, to the Dannan. The Aos Si are the descendants of the Dannan. The Fomorians are an evil race that fought the De Dannan, and the firbolg were ousted from Ireland by the Danaan and the Milesians. Milesians. Milesians. Milesians.
[00:24:59] Preston Meyer: Part of me wants to say Malaysians. But that's not right.
[00:25:01] Katie Dooley: No, it's not Malaysians. The Milesians are the final race of the present-day Irish people who arrived after they struck a deal with these gods and split Ireland above and below ground. They, the present day Irish people obviously got the above ground. I hope I don't need to clarify that.
[00:25:21] Preston Meyer: The dwarves and the elves are underground. And the fairies?
[00:25:24] Katie Dooley: Yeah, everything's underground except for humans.
[00:25:27] Preston Meyer: I think we got a pretty good deal there. Yeah, we need sunlight for happiness and health.
[00:25:33] Katie Dooley: But everyone below ground is magical, so...
[00:25:36] Preston Meyer: So they're probably fine.
[00:25:37] Katie Dooley: They're probably fine. But then do we get the short stick? We got light and they got magic. That sounds like an unfair deal.
[00:25:43] Preston Meyer: Oh, rough. Okay, unfortunately, very little is known about the deities of the Celtic and Gaulish tradition because there are very few written records, as we mentioned before. But we do have some decent oral traditions that the Druids were able to keep alive. And a bunch of place names are able to preserve these names as well. But not always helpful in telling us what they were gods of.
[00:26:11] Katie Dooley: Nope. Nope.
[00:26:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there there are some that remain from the broader Celtic tradition. And then we have lots that are specifically Irish from the Tuatha De Dannan tradition.
[00:26:29] Katie Dooley: You start so I can tell the story.
[00:26:31] Preston Meyer: Oh, okay.
[00:26:32] Katie Dooley: You start with the Dagda.
[00:26:34] Preston Meyer: All right. The Dagda is basically the all father associated with agriculture, fertility, manliness, and of course, in the Celtic tradition, magic and wisdom. He's another bearded man and the husband of Morrigan, lover of Boan. And he has seven children: so we got Aengus, Brigit, Bobd, Derg, Cermait, Aed and Midir.
[00:27:01] Katie Dooley: We really should have put pronunciations on there. I...
[00:27:06] Preston Meyer: Those look legit to me.
[00:27:08] Katie Dooley: Okay. Carry on.
[00:27:13] Preston Meyer: So the Dagda, carries around a club of life and death. You know what? That makes sense. A club can save a life or bring death. I like it. Uh, so the one end of his club gives life. The other end can brutally destroy you. Yeah. He resides at the beautiful Bru Na Boinne. As you had mentioned earlier.
[00:27:40] Katie Dooley: I definitely added the word beautiful because I was so excited about it. Thanks for reading it, Preston.
[00:27:46] Preston Meyer: I'm happy to read the words you give me here. In a challenge from their opponents, the Fomorians, the Dagda successfully finished a meal from his cauldron of plenty that was known to produce a bountiful feast. Okay. Good deal.
[00:28:04] Katie Dooley: World's first competitive eating.
[00:28:06] Preston Meyer: It reminds me of a story of Thor, where he was given this trick mug that he was supposed to finish the mug. Turns out it was a big ass straw piped straight into the ocean.
[00:28:16] Katie Dooley: And he did it.
[00:28:17] Preston Meyer: And he did it.
[00:28:18] Katie Dooley: He did it. This is that. This is that.
[00:28:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:28:26] Katie Dooley: So the Morrigan, her name translates to great queen or Phantom Queen like Athena. She is the goddess of war, which I love all these strong women being the goddess of war.
[00:28:38] Preston Meyer: Right? Well, every time we see a male god of war, they're always. What's the word I'm looking for? Clumsy and brutal and totally devoid of strategy or any sort of useful wisdom. But that's not what we see in the women. Every time a woman is a goddess of war, she's great.
[00:28:58] Katie Dooley: Good at it. I had to pee in a shop bathroom yesterday, and I could tell that no woman had entered there ever before me. And I thought of your Masonic Hall, and I was like, I don't know how men run the world. I really don't. It's the grossest place I've ever been.
[00:29:21] Preston Meyer: I'm sorry you had to experience that.
[00:29:23] Katie Dooley: I'm sorry I had to be there, too, but I did. But. Yes. Anyway. She is also, the Morrigan, is also the goddess of fate. And she could foretell victory or defeat in battle. She is a shape-shifter, commonly found in either the form of a raven or an old crone, if she's not her war goddess self. She has also been described as a tripartite goddess or three goddesses in one, and this actually happens a lot in the Celtic pantheon, which I found very interesting. The names of three goddesses vary. We always have Bodh, Macha and either Nemain, Anad or, Danu. But I couldn't find anyone that agreed on that third one. So, as always, we have a fun little story about one of these gods and goddesses. In this case, we have one about the Morrigan, and she features heavily in what is known as the Ulster Cycle of Irish folklore. So again, this is where religion starts to blend into fairy tales, essentially. Kind of like Santa Claus in the West, right? He was based on a saint and now he's a fairy tale. Um, or he's real. I don't know who's... I don't know who's listening.
[00:30:46] Preston Meyer: He's also dead.
[00:30:46] Katie Dooley: I don't know who's listening, but he's real. Um, so these stories take place around the time of Christ in the first century. But manuscripts date much later, from anywhere from the 12th to 15th century, though these stories are likely to have been passed down by oral tradition for a much longer. So the first time Morrigan saw Cu Chulainn was when he was defending the province of Ulster from Queen Maeve. Cu Chulain is basically Irish Hercules for brevity's sake. He's a demigod. Very strong, very hunky. For Morrigan, it was love at first sight and she tried to seduce Cu Chulain. But despite her godly and womanly ways, he rejected her, Preston!
[00:31:34] Preston Meyer: Ouch!
[00:31:34] Katie Dooley: Yeah. However, she was not deterred. She used her shapeshifting powers to turn into an eel, and swam to where Cu Chulain was in a fjord and tripped him up with her eel body. Mostly embarrassed, at least, I imagine he starts to punch the eel. Morrigan. So she shapeshifts into a wolf. While in her wolf form, she ran at a herd of cattle to drive them into the direction of Cu Chulain, to trample him to death. Fortunately for him, he grabbed his slingshot and temporarily blinded the Morrigan when he shot a stone in her eye. Again with the cows, she transforms to join them to get the stampede, heading to Cu Chulain again. He gets away, though, because he's Irish Hercules. He breaks her leg with a stone and she accepts defeat for now. Cu Chulain goes through his battle and wins, and on his way back, he comes across an elderly crone milking a cow. The crone was, of course, blind in one eye and had a leg injury. The crone offered the warrior some fresh milk while he drank, and he blessed her in thanks, unknowingly restoring the goddess to her full strength. Now Morrigan didn't attack, for she was happy to be restored. But it is said that when Cu Chulain eventually died in battle, a raven was said to have landed on his shoulder. Dun dun dun!
[00:33:10] Preston Meyer: Like right before the killing blow or afterwards in mourning his death.
[00:33:14] Katie Dooley: As in a mocking. This was meant to happen to you.
[00:33:18] Preston Meyer: Gotcha. Yeah. Rough.
[00:33:20] Katie Dooley: Yeah. There you go.
[00:33:23] Preston Meyer: Huh? Fun story.
[00:33:25] Katie Dooley: Was it? Lots of animals.
[00:33:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah. There's a lot of shapeshifter gods.
[00:33:33] Katie Dooley: I mean, I think it's the way that you can actually, like, visualize your deity.
[00:33:40] Preston Meyer: I guess.
[00:33:42] Katie Dooley: Is that a crow, or is that Morrigan?
[00:33:43] Preston Meyer: Right? There's a pretty strong tradition in some parts of the Christian world that are kind of odd in this way, that say that Jesus is also a shapeshifter and that he can be anything at any time, and you never know when he's right around the corner. It's kind of weird.
[00:34:02] Katie Dooley: And then I'll just add in really quickly before we go on to Brigid, Morrigan's also in the Arthurian legends, and she's very similar to the Celtic goddess. So you can see again how it went from gods and religion to folklore and change. Right? That's a very British versus a very Irish telling of the Morrigan.
[00:34:25] Preston Meyer: Well, the the Bretons and the Celts and the Gauls and all that, they're related peoples with similar mythology between them. And it just makes sense that the Arthurian legend would include something like that. All right, next on our list. Brigid or Bridget, the exalted one. Brigid is the goddess of healing, fertility, and motherhood. Her role in fertility and motherhood extended to animals as well. So she also was associated with domesticated animals. That just makes sense. The celebration of Imbolc is in her honor. At the beginning of February, the start of the Old Irish calendar, as she is considered a solar and fire deity represented by her red hair. Now I'm just thinking of a girl from Brave.
[00:35:16] Katie Dooley: I mean you're not far off.
[00:35:20] Preston Meyer: Right? And also, this is reflected in the meaning of her name. The Catholic Saint Brigid is believed to be just a Christianization of this goddess. And this happens a few times. There are a good handful of Christian saints that are definitely just syncretizations of gods to keep people happy as they're forced to adopt a new religion.
[00:35:44] Katie Dooley: Well, and Brigid is kind of like the like Thor, where while she's not one of the top two, we have a ton of writings about the goddess Brigid. Um, so yeah, I can totally see how they're like, oh, we'll just put a saint in front and make her a good Catholic woman and ta da!
[00:36:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And now your tradition is validated into this new system that we're going to force down your throat.
[00:36:11] Katie Dooley: Then we have Lugh who is also a very popular.
[00:36:15] Preston Meyer: Is it Lug or Loof? A GH is a weird thing that.
[00:36:19] Katie Dooley: Well, because you say Lughnasadh because you say Lughnasadh, not Loofnasadh.
[00:36:26] Preston Meyer: All I can do is take your word for it.
[00:36:27] Katie Dooley: I think it's Lugh.
[00:36:28] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:36:29] Katie Dooley: Anyway, someone's gonna come on and.
[00:36:32] Preston Meyer: Go ahead and correct us. We're okay with it.
[00:36:35] Katie Dooley: Yeah. It's true. He's the god of justice. Oath keeping and the nobility. He is a prominent god with his whole day being Lughnasadh, which is August 1st. He is also known as a trickster, even though he is the god of justice and was known to deceive his opponents to get his way. Odd right?
[00:36:56] Preston Meyer: It's incongruous.
[00:36:59] Katie Dooley: Yes. I feel like he and Loki would have got. Loki would have been like, I like your style.
[00:37:05] Preston Meyer: I guess.
[00:37:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah, he would be like, I see what you did there. He's also said to have invented many Irish games, including horse racing and fidchell, the Irish precursor to chess. Lugh's son is Cu Chulain. So the the hero I just told you about. And again, this is where religion starts to bleed into folklore and tales.
[00:37:32] Preston Meyer: Is horse racing a game that the Irish claim is theirs?
[00:37:37] Katie Dooley: I mean I don't I that's what the thing said. I can see the Irish doing that.
[00:37:42] Preston Meyer: Oh well yeah sure. But I mean, I also have an issue with saying that chess originated in the West, but, if fidchell is an old Irish game, then that's the way it goes.
[00:37:56] Katie Dooley: It's probably wrong. I can say that as an Irish person, they were probably drunk again. I can say that as an Irish person who was drunk last night. Um. Oh, dear.
[00:38:11] Preston Meyer: Next on our list, we have Angus, the god of love, poetry and youth. It's nice to see a man as the god of love and poetry. I mean, we did have Eros as, like, a half-ass god of love in the old Greek tradition. But it was mostly his mom's job, Aphrodite.
[00:38:33] Katie Dooley: He was just Aphrodite's little bitch.
[00:38:35] Preston Meyer: Kind of. And poetry has been ascribed to a decent variety of gods over history. But Angus is a pretty good symbol for bringing these things together. He's the son of the Dagda, and he resided at the Bru na Boinne as well. He had the power to resurrect the dead, which is pretty awesome.
[00:38:59] Katie Dooley: That's pretty potent.
[00:39:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I'm curious how many instances we have in history of this happening in Ireland, or even the entire Gaulish region. And again he is a shape shifter known to transform into a swan. So birds are his favorite and he would transform kisses into birds. You blow a kiss to a friend and then it actually hits them in the face in the form of a dove. That'd be great.
[00:39:28] Katie Dooley: To you, dear listener. Caw caw!
[00:39:34] Preston Meyer: So because he's a god and the God of love, he is pretty much always pictured as a very hunky man, but also surrounded with birds because that's his thing.
[00:39:46] Katie Dooley: It's also worded like that because Katie wrote that and poor Preston had to read it. Now we have two. I mean, there's not a lot of details on these guys. I'll just lump them together and you can move on to the other deities. I felt them noteworthy because of their parallels or their importance, but there's literally no records on these guys. So, Manannan mac Lir was the Irish Sea god, guardian of the underworld and rides a sea chariot. Does that sound familiar? Anyone? Anyone?
[00:40:15] Preston Meyer: That's our soggy boy.
[00:40:17] Katie Dooley: That's our soggy boy, Poseidon. So I thought that was interesting. And then we have Nuada. He's the first king of the Tuatha de Dannan. He got a silver hand after losing it in a battle to the Fomorians. He is the husband of Boan. So he's cuckolded by the Dagda and he's associated with hunting, fishing and leadership. So I felt like that was noteworthy. So you know where wine came from. And he's the first king and he's cuckolded.
[00:40:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah. What a great history to have a whole nation look back on with pride. Yeah, so there are other gods that are not part of the Tuatha De Dannan. They're thought of as the older gods. But because of this, we also have a lot less information about them.
[00:41:09] Katie Dooley: I actually like I had a whole list, and then when there was one sentence on each of them, I was like, well, I guess we're not talking about this guy. So there's only three, but...
[00:41:18] Preston Meyer: Well, we've got Cernunnos, the antlered god, the precursor to the Horned God that we see pretty solidly represented in the Wiccan tradition. Interpretations vary on what he represents everything from animals to travel. It's kind of messy.
[00:41:35] Katie Dooley: Yeah, when you're that old and there's literally just carvings of you, people can make whatever they want. Then we have Taranis, the god of thunder. His name literally means thunder comes from the Proto-Celtic word Toranos. Taranis, toranos. He could control storms. He was in a triad gods with Toutatis and Esus, also known as Turian in the Irish tradition. There is not much known about Toutatis and Esus. Some think it's an the triad gods situation, though couldn't find anything else on them.
[00:42:12] Preston Meyer: Okay. And another one. My favorite.
[00:42:16] Katie Dooley: Everyone's favorite.
[00:42:16] Preston Meyer: Is Epona.
[00:42:17] Katie Dooley: Neigh!
[00:42:18] Preston Meyer: Epona was a horse girl. And if you know horse girls, you know what that means. She's a goddess of horses, a protector of horses, donkeys, and mules. She's also the famous horse steed of Link in The Legend of Zelda.
[00:42:37] Katie Dooley: That's why she's named that, yeah.
[00:42:39] Preston Meyer: That name is definitely taken from this tradition. Worship of Epona was pretty widespread, which is kind of interesting for the time as a lot of people worshiped really centralized, local-specific gods and goddesses. Her tradition is a little wider than one would expect.
[00:42:57] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Like and quite well-documented as far as especially for something this old as well. So there's a lot in the old Celtic tradition and then there's even more that's been lost, which is kind of sad.
[00:43:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's a very depressing blank in a lot of the knowledge that we should have about these people.
[00:43:22] Katie Dooley: Now, in the last three episodes, we were talking about neopaganism and what it looks like now, and this one got quite interesting. Part of me was, you know. They do it now. The one sentence that we've repeated the last three episodes. But this one's really interesting because Wicca kind of folds into this. Even though Wicca is a 70-year-old religion and the lines that are drawn, I guess, um, it's...
[00:43:53] Preston Meyer: Separate but connected.
[00:43:54] Katie Dooley: Yes. And there's actually I found four sort of distinct classes of Celtic neopaganism that we'll talk about. So these are not all the same, but there are definitely similarities. And we're kind of going to go from the from the most traditional to Wicca is how I've laid this out. So we have Celtic Reconstructionist paganism. And this is focused on the historically accurate uh oh...
[00:44:24] Preston Meyer: Tricky.
[00:44:25] Katie Dooley: Right? Reconstruction of the polytheistic tradition. This is a genuine belief in the pantheon, much like the Greek restoration that we talked about a few episodes ago. But there's less wooery that we're gonna get into. They're big on the revival of Celtic culture as a whole, including music, dance and language in addition to the folklore, because so little has survived, for us to even put together an episode! They stress individual research and study, but also see the value in spiritual practices. They give offerings to the spirits and celebrate all major pagan holidays like Samhain and Imbolc.
[00:45:11] Preston Meyer: Sounds pretty all right. Tricky. Super hard to be good at. I mean, let's be fair. A lot of people are terrible at Christianity, and that's been well-established for a couple thousand years.
[00:45:24] Katie Dooley: I mean there's been a few councils about doctrine, too, right?
[00:45:29] Preston Meyer: But Celtic Reconstructionist is just hard.
[00:45:33] Katie Dooley: It is hard. And I think it's hard regardless. But we there are people smarter than us out there. In this particular subject. Maybe not in everything. Right? So if you're like, really into it, like we put this together in a week. You know, as we do. If you really wanted to deep dive, I'm sure there's more, but it's still tough.
[00:45:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:45:58] Katie Dooley: Then next step up is Druidry or Neo-Druidism. Not to be confused with Dudeism.
[00:46:09] Preston Meyer: Important distinction.
[00:46:11] Katie Dooley: Yes, this is similar to Wicca in that it celebrates the connection to the natural world. There is no historical link between the OG druids and neo-druids. Neo-Druids believe in the Awen or the "flowing spirit" in all things.
[00:46:30] Preston Meyer: Easy enough to get on board with.
[00:46:31] Katie Dooley: Yeah and again, they celebrate all major pagan holidays.
[00:46:36] Preston Meyer: Makes perfect sense.
[00:46:37] Katie Dooley: Which is. But this is also where I can see people getting confused. Right? There's four different groups, probably more that celebrate Samhain.
[00:46:45] Preston Meyer: There's loads of different groups that celebrate Christmas and Easter.
[00:46:47] Katie Dooley: That's true.
[00:46:48] Preston Meyer: I take no issue with that.
[00:46:50] Katie Dooley: Fair. But we do not lump them all together.
[00:46:53] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:46:53] Katie Dooley: Then we have Celtic Wicca, which is very similar to modern-day Wicca, but they believe in the full ancient Celtic pantheon, not just, duotheistic Wicca.
[00:47:10] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:47:11] Katie Dooley: So it's very similar to Gardner's Wicca. Gardner's Wicca is duotheistic and Celtic Wicca is pantheistic. Again, they celebrate all the major pagan holidays.
[00:47:27] Preston Meyer: I just don't see any reason why they wouldn't.
[00:47:31] Katie Dooley: Everyone should.
[00:47:32] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:47:34] Katie Dooley: And can we have an Imbolc party?
[00:47:35] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:47:37] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:47:39] Preston Meyer: It wouldn't. I don't think it would be a faithful Imbolc party, but it could be an Imbolc party.
[00:47:43] Katie Dooley: We could sacrifice a baby. I'm kidding.
[00:47:49] Preston Meyer: That sounds like a problem.
[00:47:52] Katie Dooley: I'm kidding. And then just to tie a nice bow on all of this and to move along swiftly from that comment, there's Wicca, which we did a full episode on, if you want to jump back and listen to it. But it was developed in the 1950s with inspirations from Celtic paganism. Like the holidays, but it's a typically duotheistic religion with the Horned God and, i don't remember the goddess.
[00:48:24] Preston Meyer: The triple goddess.
[00:48:25] Katie Dooley: The triple goddess. Thank you.
[00:48:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's unfortunately not a lot more that we could include here. There's just so much that's lost to time. There's stuff like some small groups talk about this thing, but there's really not a lot. They're not one giant homogenous group because there is no one giant homogenous group, as we've seen as we've made these explorations. But it's interesting to see how they have a lot of similarities to the Norse being both Germanic peoples, the Celts and Gaulish were the West Germanic and the Norse were North Germanic. And there are similarities that we see between the two groups, and yet they're both really quite different from what we saw in Greece and Rome.
[00:49:17] Katie Dooley: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this is a great example of just geography affecting religion. Right, because Greek and Roman are so similar and Celtic and Norse are so similar.
[00:49:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Some pretty cool stuff.
[00:49:33] Katie Dooley: But they're all going to get usurped by Jesus right away.
[00:49:36] Preston Meyer: So yes, unfortunately, we've watched, uh, pretty brutal conquest, looking back in history of how all of these traditions and their really great stories are just kind of buried. And many of them never to be seen again by the Christian conquest.
[00:49:55] Katie Dooley: You want to wrap up this episode?
[00:49:57] Preston Meyer: All right, so we've got our Patreon that we've got a handful of exclusive episodes just for people who support the podcast.
[00:50:05] Katie Dooley: With more coming this year.
[00:50:06] Preston Meyer: With more coming this year. I'm looking forward to doing more of those. We've got our shop where you can buy all kinds of stuff with a good and decent set of... No, with a good variety of great graphics, representing our podcast and some of the ideas that we share. You can get them on shirts, tote bags, water bottles, mugs,
[00:50:31] Katie Dooley: You name it.
[00:50:32] Preston Meyer: Basically, if it's a thing that people normally get branded, it's available and that's great. You can find us on Discord, join the chat, tell us that we said something incorrect or mispronounce something.
[00:50:45] Katie Dooley: Probably.
[00:50:47] Preston Meyer: We also post some great memes and some really cool infographics. I've found a pretty good collection of infographics for the last few episodes illustrating the family trees of the gods.
[00:51:00] Katie Dooley: Bushes.
[00:51:00] Preston Meyer: I mean, some of them are pretty bushy. Uh, some good fun. And also, you can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all kinds of great stuff.
[00:51:13] Katie Dooley: Anywhere your podcasts are cast.
[00:51:16] Preston Meyer: I mean, I trust that if you're listening to our episode, you found a way that you're comfortable listening to us.
[00:51:22] Katie Dooley: Oh hey, share with a friend too. Share with a friend.
[00:51:25] Preston Meyer: Definitely do that.
[00:51:27] Katie Dooley: That would be helpful.
[00:51:28] Preston Meyer: We would really appreciate that. Thank you so much for listening.
[00:51:32] Both Speakers: Peace be with you.
#Brú na Bóinne #Tuatha Dé Danann #Cu Chulainn #Cuhullin #Ulster Cycle #Spaceballs # Old Gods #ancienthistory #ancientcivilizations | |||
| 06 Dec 2021 | Hanukkah Matata | 00:45:59 | |
Did you know that the 8-day Jewish celebration of Hanukkah isn't in the Hebrew Bible? It's origins are much more recent than that! This episode, we learn about how the celebration of Hanukkah began with the Maccabees, and how your Jewish friends and family celebrate today. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website Be sure to check out Blackbird Farm and Apothecary on Facebook and Instagram.
** Katie Dooley 00:09 atheist not doing it needed at Clay and went strain ready the day that I shall play. Hey, today on the holy watermelon podcast are talking about Hanukkah, right wanted that as our soft opening so I thought I'd oblige. I like it last episode we talked about Diwali, which is the Hindu festival of light. And now we're talking about Hanukkah, which is the Jewish festival of light. Yay,
Preston Meyer 00:47 yay. That's pretty awesome. I've been celebrating Hanukkah for a long time. Now you have and
Katie Dooley 00:54 it's always fun. Can I ask why you started doing that?
Preston Meyer 00:58 As I'm trying to remember the first thing that that really made me want to do it. And I think it was mostly about celebrating the dedication of the temple. And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has a few temples that were dedicated over Hanukkah, which, out of almost 200 temples, it's a very small handful that are dedicated over Hanukkah, which is the festival of celebration of the dedication of the temple, the temple. Yeah. So it's kind of cool. And the Edmonton temple fairly close to here is one of those very few that's dedicated over Hanukkah.
Katie Dooley 01:40 Interesting. Hanukkah means dedication. Exactly. Sounds very redundant.
Preston Meyer 01:48 If you didn't get there already, you're there. Now. You're
Katie Dooley 01:51 all here together now.
Preston Meyer 01:54 Yeah. And so this year, it ran from November 28 to December 6, which is the day that this episode will be reaching our listeners. Katie's double check. I
Katie Dooley 02:06 really don't know if I believe you. 22 Six, Okay, you're right. Yes, Hanukkah is over today. Yay. Happy.
Preston Meyer 02:22 So for those of you who have been celebrating Hanukkah, I hope you've been enjoying it.
Katie Dooley 02:28 So, so future, Katie, you'll have already gone to prescence Hanukkah party when she hasn't even confirmed if he's having it or not. That's cool. I definitely told you we were doing more traveling. Yeah, so that made me I'm not invited. Similar to Diwali, its Hanukkah is celebrated on the 25th day of Kislev of the Hebrew calendar. And the Hebrew calendar is also a lunar lunar calendar just like the Hindu and Muslim calendar. My from what I've read, it's basically only the Gregorian calendar, which is what we follow. That is a solar calendar. Everything else seems pretty lunar.
Preston Meyer 03:07 I mean, I've never looked into it, but I bet you there's a couple other solar calendars out there. So we
Katie Dooley 03:11 should do an episode on calendars, because some of them are tied to religions, right? Absolutely.
Preston Meyer 03:18 I mean, the Gregorian calendar is a religious calendar. It's basically the Catholic calendar. It's slightly different from the Julian calendar, which started out in Rome as well, but was basically yeah, it got abandoned by the Catholics and the Orthodox like, oh, we still like it for a while.
Katie Dooley 03:40 Anyway, that's a digression. But we'll maybe we'll do an episode on calendars. So just like Diwali, it's meant to be solid braided during the darkest days of the year, because it's the festival of light to help with both the metaphor and to make the light Salaat more spectacular.
Preston Meyer 03:56 Yeah, that's pretty great. So even though it happens in December, alongside huge holidays, like the ones you're familiar with Christmas and Diwali, and Kwanzaa, maybe if you if you know Kwanzaa it's relatively minor religious holiday in Judaism, especially compared to the High Holy Days of Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and even Passover, though, those are kind of the big ones. And so Hanukkah, like Christmas is a great time to enjoy the fact that there is a holiday where you get to spend time with family and friends. And that's really kind of the big deal there. And
Katie Dooley 04:37 this was super interesting to me. Something I didn't know about Hanukkah before. And why it's less religious is that Hanukkah isn't mentioned in the Hebrew Bible at all. No, because the events that we celebrate happened after the book was written.
Preston Meyer 04:52 Yeah, pretty much. The Hanukkah story is recorded in the book of the Maccabees, which is found in the doodoo Deuterocanonical. Books, aka the Apocrypha found in the Greek literary tradition of the Jewish people in Alexandria, Egypt, preserved in the Septuagint. You
Katie Dooley 05:10 just said a lot of words, explained. So I'm sure some of our listeners need that explained as well.
Preston Meyer 05:15 All right, I'll start at the beginning of that list. Now go through my big words. Thank you. Deuterocanonical is a word that's used, especially by Catholics, where they differentiate those books that did make it into the Hebrew canon from those that didn't. So there's the Maccabees, for example, there's an alternate version of the book of Ezra, there's just a handful of stories about characters like Tobit. Judith, there's extensions to the book of Daniel, things like that, that we can find ancient sources saying, yeah, these things exist in the Greek literary tradition. But for some reason, we don't see them written in Hebrew. It's kind of weird. Interesting. Yeah. And so there's that distinction placed. And a similar distinction is made by Protestants. But they're like, no, no, no, if it's not in the Hebrew Bible, it's apocryphal. It's not even important. I actually, it kind of really bugged me in 2011. And 10 years ago, I bought the 400 anniversary edition reproduction of a King James Bible. And there was this huge section missing in the middle of the book, which is where the Apocrypha goes, because Zondervan, the people who publish this reproduction decided we don't like the Apocrypha, so we're just not gonna print that portion of this epic anniversary edition book. Oh, yeah, it was actually really frustrating for me. Because all of the work that goes into this book is actually really awesome. It looks really cool. It's got all kinds of really beautifully drawn family trees and stuff. And they just cut out all of the apocrypha. Yeah, it was a little frustrating. Septuagint is the Greek ish word,
Katie Dooley 07:20 meaning seven something 70. So yeah,
Preston Meyer 07:24 there's a tradition that is really hard to prove that 70 elders took 70 days to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. And they each did it individually, and all came up with the exact same text results. Yeah, and so yeah, that would totally be a miracle. Problem is, there's no way that that's true. There's loads of evidence that it took them many decades to complete this task in a way that everybody was satisfied with it. And there's just there's no way that they all would have reproduced the exact same Greek text from the Hebrew. But that's the story anyway.
Katie Dooley 08:19 All right. So what happens in the Hanukkah story? All
Preston Meyer 08:24 right. So most of the Hanukkah story is found in the Maccabees first Maccabees. And the story starts out celebrating Alexander the Great. And then it goes on to describe how awful his successors were to the people of Judea. Especially Antioch is the fourth epiphanies who is said to have outlawed the cult of Yahweh and 168 BCE, and killed 1000s of Jews and rededicated Jerusalem's temple to Zeus. So naturally, this gets the religious zealots all riled
Katie Dooley 08:55 up. And they call them Yahweh being the Jews. Yes, yeah. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 08:59 And, and like, naturally, everybody would be really uncomfortable with it. But the people who were like really zealous for the religion, oh, would be furious. Yeah, they're absolutely incensed. And four brothers, from the priestly case to come to be known as the Maccabees, which means hammer. And because of their intense violence against not only their saluted rulers, but also against any Hellenized Jews. So eventually, these hammers managed to defeat the Seleucids and went about forcing anybody left in Judea to convert to Judaism under the threat of
Katie Dooley 09:36 death. So back and forth with violence. Yeah, these people were incredibly
Preston Meyer 09:41 violent. But they got stuff done. Yeah, anyway, after clearing out all the Hellenic paraphernalia out of the temple, the Maccabees selected their brother Jonathan to be their high priest. Still, not exactly from a family that had the right to that office? No. But they felt they deserved it because they did all the work. And it's hard to argue with the people with their
Katie Dooley 10:14 with the station with the muscle with the hammer. Exactly.
Preston Meyer 10:19 Eggs Exactly. So the solutions tried to take the city back, but failed. And eventually they agreed to restore today in Liberty. During all this time, the Jews were kept from offering sacrifices and observing the High Holy Days. So as soon as they could, they dedicated the temple in a ceremony that had previously been associated with the Feast of Tabernacles. And from that time forward, the anniversary was commemorated as Hanukkah. And that's more or less the story we have in the Maccabees condensed, real tight,
Katie Dooley 10:52 real tight. Your five minutes summary on why we celebrate.
Preston Meyer 11:04 I guess yeah, there's more to it. And that's a good thing.
Katie Dooley 11:09 Well, yeah, I mean, obviously, there's a whole political climate that historians and scholars have looked into that. Yeah, that's the rabbit hole for us.
Preston Meyer 11:19 Yeah. So Hanukkah being the dedication, after all of this celebrates the rededication in 165 BC. So, little over 2000 years ago, the miracle of Hanukkah is the menorah. There was only enough oil to keep them menorahs lamps lit for one day. But all their festivities would require that they have to keep the lamp lit, they could have put it off. They really could have it because it took that time to produce the oil they needed with the very specific recipe that they're supposed to use. Oh,
Katie Dooley 12:02 interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that. That anything special? I thought they didn't have enough oil.
Preston Meyer 12:08 Yeah, there's herbs and whatnot mixed into it. It's interesting. It's your it's meant to culminate in a very specific scent experience in the temple. I think that's foreign to pretty much everybody on the planet today now isn't like we couldn't recreate it, as it's just not part of anybody's Temple experience in almost any popular religion today. People don't use sent very much in worship a lot. There's some people will use a sensor and burn a little bit of incense in the temple. Not quite the same.
Katie Dooley 12:44 I've told you my orthodox funeral story. Yes, yes. That's what I want to hear like scent isn't a big part of like, yes, it is. I can go back to a Ukrainian funeral.
Preston Meyer 12:51 Like, yeah, for sure. But this, this
Katie Dooley 12:56 particular oils, and it's not Yeah. Common anymore. Yeah. Well, I
Preston Meyer 13:01 don't think it's used anywhere. Interesting. Yeah. So anyway, it would take more than a week to get more of the oil they needed. But we can't delay this anymore. We need to rededicate the temple. So we're doing it now. And even though they had the one day's worth of oil, they had oil for the full eight days, there's two different versions of this, where they would use up the oil for the day, like just feed it into the lamps and just go and the vats would be empty, and then they just miraculously be full the next day. And the alternate story is that the VAT just never empty during that time.
Katie Dooley 13:47 Yeah, I read that it would miraculously be fooled again like the empty and then go back. That's the version I read in my research.
Preston Meyer 13:55 And today, instead of having oil lamps, most people use candles. And it still is lights, so we're still good. So this bit about the the oil and the lamps is not found in the Book of Maccabees. Instead, we find the oldest mentioned the oil miracle in the Talmud recorded about 600 years after the rebellion. So we're talking in the neighborhood of the fifth sixth century. See, so this
Katie Dooley 14:27 is kind of like the ascension of Mary where it's kind of become canon, but it's not actually in any of the books. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I'll just kind of go Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Right. Okay.
Preston Meyer 14:40 So, like you mentioned before, it's no reason for it to be mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. It gets one singular mention in the New Testament. Barely in passing. It's more just to let you know that Jesus was doing a thing at a specific time. They didn't say that he actually celebrated Hanukkah. But in John chapter 10, verse 22, it says, And this thing happened during Hanukkah,
Katie Dooley 15:08 I pulled it out because I was really curious. It said, tell me if this is a, this is the New International Version. Okay. Then came the festival of dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter. And Jesus was in the temple for its walking in Solomon's column ad. Yeah, that's it. Aaron is
Preston Meyer 15:26 Yeah. It's, it's perfectly reasonable to translate the word as dedication, especially since we know this coming from a Greek text. But a really good translator would recognize, hey, maybe we shouldn't use the word Hanukkah in this particular verse.
Katie Dooley 15:44 Yes, and it's like, reemphasize if there was winter. Yeah, right. Like there's no doubt but Right. There's no other festival of dedication that they're mixing this up with. Right?
Preston Meyer 15:54 Yeah. There's a lot of people who really like to divorce Jesus from Judaism. And there's no good reason for it. He wasn't your rabbi. Yeah. Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. traditional
Katie Dooley 16:11 Christianity is a cult of Judaism that just took off to its own thing.
Preston Meyer 16:15 Yeah. And so I found two Bibles, where the editor was really committed to making sure that you saw Jesus in His in the situation that he lived in. And so, use Hebrew words whenever it's appropriate, chose not to use Hellenized forms of names, but stuck with traditional Aramaic forms of names, and use Tonica instead of that dedication.
Katie Dooley 16:47 Let's talk about what a celebration looks like what your party's gonna be like.
Preston Meyer 16:55 So, when I celebrate Hanukkah, it's not exactly your traditional Jewish experiment to your party
Katie Dooley 17:02 after we record so there are no obligations to refrain from activities like you would on the Jewish Sabbath for Hanukkah. Most Jews will actually go to work but may come home early for celebrations because there are no religious reasons to be staying at home. Yeah, the menorah is a popular icon fixture in Hanukkah, Judaism. It is a candle holder and it has nine candles. So one for the for each night of Hanukkah, and this Shamash and I see that right, Chumash Amash. It's an extra candle that is used to light the other candles. The candle is lit on them not every night one on the first night, two on the second night, etc. and blessings are offered with the candles that are lit every single night. I thought you were gonna add more to this. Nope. I did. Did you? Yeah, I thought you were gonna give us a prayer. But there's actually a really good website I found that has dates, times and blessings for that. Well, it's past now that had all the dates, times and blessings for Hanukkah this year.
Preston Meyer 18:12 It has them for next year to have some furniture. So an interesting thing about the menorah is that there's a special menorah just for Hanukkah. A normal Jewish Menorah has seven lampstands. But the Hanu Kia, the Hanukkah menorah is the one with nine was
Katie Dooley 18:34 a regular menorah are used for I don't.
Preston Meyer 18:39 Usually you'll see them in synagogues and temples. They are modeled after the one that we see described in the Hebrew Bible. That's meant to bring light to the whole tabernacle.
Katie Dooley 18:53 boring chapter.
Preston Meyer 18:56 Yeah, you didn't enjoy that section very much at all. That's where it is. When added scribe describes everything in the template in excruciating detail. Yeah, yeah. It's very helpful for people who want to reproduce it. Not so helpful for people who just want to know the story, right?
Katie Dooley 19:15 I mean, it's helpful when you explain that there are different books for different reasons. And this just happens to me the floor plans chapter was a slog.
Preston Meyer 19:28 Yeah, so there are three special prayers that are offered for Hanukkah. There's a general prayer of gratitude for the Hanukkah miracle. There's a prayer of gratitude for our own living freedom today. And there's a blessing over the candles of the hanukkiah and gratitude for the persisting tradition that binds believers to their maker.
Katie Dooley 19:51 I got really excited about the food which you know, made all that shouldn't surprise you. I learned But we knew I knew what some of the traditional foods were latkes jelly doughnuts arugula are all customary Hanukkah foods, but I didn't realize that fried foods were popular because of the oil. Oh yeah, I like I didn't like connect the symbol as I just saw I was like we eat turkey like I don't know why we turkey. So I just thought it's like what people did traditionally but I like that it has the ties into the temple miracle. Yeah, one thing that also delicious,
Preston Meyer 20:29 right. One thing that I really appreciate about Judaism dietary tradition is that there's a reason for all of the things being the way they are food wise around the holidays, for passover, unleavened bread, and there's the story is we didn't have time for the bread Darius we had to get out of dodge. Dodge. So it's flatbread. Matzah, is basically just flour and water.
Katie Dooley 21:03 Yum.
Preston Meyer 21:06 If you want it to be delicious, you're gonna have to add something to it. And yeah, the oil for anything related to Hanukkah. Absolutely the deal. And the Holy barbecues every day at the temple back in the day. But what have been some good times to write.
Katie Dooley 21:24 This is why I get excited for your party. And I have heard of arugula before, but I didn't really get heard the word. You know, when I read it, I was like, oh, yeah, rubella, but I was like, I don't actually know what that is. Oh, sounds
Preston Meyer 21:39 like arugula. That's what Brian said, when I didn't
Katie Dooley 21:43 get that doll. But I also took German which is so similar to Yiddish. Sure. I was like really left, okay. But then I read what they were and I was like, press the numbering and lose to your party. So it is Yiddish for little twists. And they are pastries that can be filled with they have a cream cheese base, and then you can fill them with basically anything you want. nuts, fruit, cinnamon, sugar, etc. And I was like, That sounds amazing. So I'm gonna make a bench for us to consume right?
Preston Meyer 22:12 I want to first see them. My instinct is to compare them to croissants, but there's so much more.
Katie Dooley 22:18 I just like the thought of cream cheese and cinnamon sugar and a baked pastry. So they know how to do it right. foodwise right. Another I think this is probably pretty popular if you went to secular school is knowing what the dreidel that I sang about earlier. We definitely like talked about the dreidel when we were in elementary school and learning about other people and we play dreidel president's party for you. It is a spinning top game played by junior Jewish children excuse me during Hanukkah. And it has four sides. And each side has a letter that represents the Hebrew words.
Preston Meyer 23:05 NES Gadol hayah Sham, which
Katie Dooley 23:09 means and I actually really liked this a great miracle happen there.
Preston Meyer 23:12 Yeah, there's a variant in Israel. That changes there to hear for what should be pretty obvious reasons. Because
Katie Dooley 23:20 that's that. That's how it happened. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 23:29 Yeah, so dreidel is kind of a cool name, I guess. Instead of calling it a top, dreidel is the Yiddish name basically means Turner.
Katie Dooley 23:38 Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel, I made that a claim.
Preston Meyer 23:43 And it's also called sev. Yvonne. It's Hebrew has the same meaning Turner. dreidel is also known by a couple of alternate Yiddish names, like destiny and a little Thoreau. And those were semi popular names until the holocaust of the 1940s when those names lost popularity for some pretty sad reasons. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 24:09 I read one story that tells that the dreidel game was used as a cover for children who were at the time this is in the winter 16 or 168 BCE for children that were illegally studying the Torah when Seleucid soldiers came by those studying would pretend to be playing the game so it actually you know there's a story that ties directly to Hanukkah and that just you know, we play board games at Christmas because we like to play board games at Christmas, right?
Preston Meyer 24:37 Yeah, it's it's a an interesting story. Unfortunately, it's not well documented at all for the late 19th century fine, so cute. It is cute story. But when something shows up because story. Story doesn't show up until 2000 years after the time at supposed to happen. It makes it hard to believe. Female last points, right? It's like St. Barbara that we talked about a few months ago fair, just like the story came up a long time after she was supposed to exist probably wasn't even real. Specially if you remember the details of that story, I'll
Katie Dooley 25:17 say I don't know like how you hide your Torah fast enough to whip out a tiny dreidel. Well, usually
Preston Meyer 25:24 they were on scrolls rather than quota. Yeah, okay, so you just quick roll up stuff and up somebody's sleeve. whip out
Katie Dooley 25:29 your dreidel. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 25:36 Thanks for that mind work. But this is an audio medium. I
Katie Dooley 25:42 don't know why we're laughing like all year old boys. Exactly. So how can you actually play Dreidel, Dreidel game? Cuz you could probably pick up a dreidel at the dollar store and absolutely
Preston Meyer 25:55 fine. When I do hand out drills in large indiscriminate quantities, I usually buy a whole bunch of one party city. real cheap. Nice. So yeah, you can find them all over the place. Oh, interesting thing. So there's some evidence that the game might have originated in Britain.
Katie Dooley 26:18 Interesting. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 26:22 And then moved to Germany where yudishe kids picked it up. I thought that was kind of nifty.
Katie Dooley 26:27 All right. Do you like British Jews or just like Britain in general? And I got a British kid interesting. Yeah. Really popular in the Jewish community and then move to interesting. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 26:43 If things move all over the place, though, there is evidence we have found some old tops in the Middle East. But they don't have letters. They're just numbered basically a fancy D for on top. So for those people who are selling dagger dice, your idea isn't new.
Katie Dooley 27:03 Well, I mean, the rules are simple enough, which we'll run through in just a moment. That there's probably yeah, that's, that's good. It's not exclusively Jewish. It's kind of a fun game. Yeah, like, like tax you know? Something? You mean Jax? Jax. Is that what I meant? The
Preston Meyer 27:20 one where you throw the bouncy ball and try and grab. Yeah. Don't think I've ever played Jack.
Katie Dooley 27:27 I was on a huge I was like, I was like eight and I was on the huge Jacks kick.
Preston Meyer 27:32 I had a huge pug collection. Oh, man. This is like we're going back more than 20 years now back on pugs were a thing people cared about. Oh,
Katie Dooley 27:45 but yeah, so I can kind of see it being like a jacks or a PA. Who knows how old dreidel really is. But right.
Preston Meyer 27:56 Traditionally, it's a gambling game. You've got a whole bunch of coins. Very often people play with chocolate coins. In fact, I bet you at this point that's more normal than any other option or probably like nickels. I bet you chocolate coins are used more. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, everyone, so everyone puts some coins in the pot before they spin the dreidel. And depending on which of the four sides comes up, you have to take a specific action. If none comes up, which is each of these names are letters in the Hebrew alphabet, none comes up. You mean you do nothing. Gimel you get the whole pot. Hey, you get half the pot, and Shin you add to the pot. Sometimes it's Shin there's a chance Shin Shin put one in. But some traditions you put one in for each of the three points on the top of the shin. So you put three in Oh, there's loads of variety in the game. Yeah. And in Israel, when they say a miracle happened here, there's a PE instead of a shin. And I mean, the fact that it sounds like the English word PE sounds pretty great. You put some in. If you run out of coins or guilt, you are out of the game. But people have been trying really hard to make dreidel more fun for adults too. And there's all kinds of variants here. You could totally make it a drink. I'm very confident that's the thing that people are doing. I've actually found some interesting ones that I thought I would share with you today too. There's a game called No Limit Texas Hold'em dreidel and so you've got two dribbles in a cup. Shake it up and spin your drills in your cup. And you keep your cup secret of course because this is Texas Hold'em poker with dreidels and then there's publicly spun dreidels to see what comes up and you're looking to get your poker hands. It's kind of like you're not gonna get runs, but like full house for a time. Yeah, that sort of thing. Yeah, people play this. And I will definitely be sharing some great videos related to all this dreidel nonsense on our Discord. Right, and some people just compete for the longest spin Droylsden real nice so they can if you're good at it. In fact, there's major league dreidel is a thing that's really kind of fun to Google. You can find some great resources and videos. There are semi serious dreidel tournaments for people of all ages, including a variety of regulated spinning surfaces, depending on the organization. The spin agog. Yeah, it's so awesome. Again, check the discord to see this thing or I want to google it yourself. So it's reminiscent of a Beyblade arena and you remember Beyblade
Katie Dooley 31:12 they do? Yeah.
Preston Meyer 31:16 So there's no artificial letter rip business, but you spin there shouldn't be. That would be cheating. Because part of the pain oh, blade.
Katie Dooley 31:26 Dre blade?
Preston Meyer 31:28 I mean, I part of me does really want to see that.
Katie Dooley 31:31 I mean, it's all luck anyway. Like, who cares if you spin shittier good, like the fates will decide. But
Preston Meyer 31:38 the real challenge that most people are playing with the synagogue is a time deal. The synagogue comes with a time time when not Yeah, not a gambler. So you spin and hope for the best. And you get credit for having the longest spin. But this thing also comes with little boards on it so you can have different mats within the synagogue. One of them looks like a skee ball. Shoot where you want it? You want the dreidel to land on a specific point value and you make money this way. Wow. There's a baseball one. Which is kind of nifty.
Katie Dooley 32:19 My mind is being blown right now.
Preston Meyer 32:21 People have put a lot of work into making dreidel more fun for everybody. And honestly, they're kicking ass. I've also seen a synth a dreidel board. It looks kind of like a combination of cornhole and shuffleboard where you spin the dreidel, and I couldn't find the rules for this. But the looks of it. It's it doesn't really matter which side of your dreidel comes up. But it is important that you're still spinning the dreidel across the board to your opponent's side, you're playing in teams of two by the way. And you want to spin your data across the board and have it land in a zone that is going to get you money instead of lose your money. You know, this
Katie Dooley 33:08 all came from kids who were like forced to play dreidel in the corner and got bored with the base game right? Absolutely.
Preston Meyer 33:18 Right, I really enjoy game design. I've been messing with game rules for ages and writing games on my own for a long time. And this is how I got my start to is finding a game that I figured this could be better. Could be better. I love that. Yeah. So dreidel has come a long way. And honestly it's made its biggest strides in the last 20 years
Katie Dooley 33:41 I'm I'm excited to see what we post on our Discord where you post on our Discord. Yeah. Moving on from the fast paced high stakes, we're also trying let's talk about gift giving a little bit for Hanukkah because I think this is something that I don't want to say it's like foreign but it's a little surprising because it happens at Christmas, or Diwali, which are two big gift giving celebrations. And Hanukkah really isn't a big gift giving holiday historically. With the exception of Hanukkah guilt during the Maccabean Revolt revolution. This is the only time in history that during the subjugation of the Jews that they were allowed to mint their own coins in their own state. So giving Hanukkah kilt is symbolic of that. That being said coins are either either real like here have a loony Preston, or chocolate cover coins. So even then, you know, don't say oh get anything but it's either chocolate or a little bit of cash.
Preston Meyer 34:53 I love how you say real money and then use our joke name for our coin
Katie Dooley 35:00 What do you call it?
Preston Meyer 35:01 Well, according to what I've seen on our stats, a whole third of our audience is down in the States $1.
Katie Dooley 35:12 Because we all have $1 bills. No, okay. Well, no, forget this. But when I was in Australia to break up like a $5 bill for loonies, yeah, to put in the washing machine, but they weren't doing right. And so I was like, I don't know what to ask for. Right? It's because they're called quarters, right? We don't call them 25 cent pieces. I mean, he said, people don't know. And they're called nickels. And they're called dimes. I was like, What is a $1? Coin called? Like, I literally kind
Preston Meyer 35:42 of Canada's the only place that has come up with a reasonable name. That's kind of ridiculous. $1 coin.
Katie Dooley 35:50 It's a loony name. But yeah, it was so yeah. Anyway, a $1 coin or whatever people call it. That's not.
Preston Meyer 35:57 I'm so glad we didn't call the $2 coin, the bury that on the table. That's what I was very convinced it was going to be when they first announced it. Like, and it's gonna have a polar bear on it. Well, obviously, it's the berry. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who thought that even though I was like, six at the
Katie Dooley 36:17 time, for a really long time called them the blue knees.
Preston Meyer 36:23 Because there were double. That's fantastic.
Katie Dooley 36:27 Anyway, well tell that to people like that sounds cool, because it sounds like a doubloon. Right. But we are digressing deeply because of Western influence and predominantly Christian Christmas influence. Gift giving has become more common in the Jewish Hanukkah tradition. However, it is still more often to get eight small gifts like think stocking stuffers. One every night, instead of having our massive consumer fest that is Christmas morning.
Preston Meyer 36:58 That's pretty easy to appreciate to earlier on in our marriage when we were, you know, feeling pretty tight for money, instead of having Christmas presents at all. Because there's so much pressure to get something big for Christmas. We did just go. Here's eight small things over the course of a week. And it was actually pretty nice. We've definitely
Katie Dooley 37:19 been stocking stuffers, ourselves as well. Yeah. If you are pressing don't feel like you should handle this. On a to party etiquette. Especially if you are going you know, to a Jewish families. To a Jewish Family's Home for Hanukkah, not just your buddy Preston, which is a little more chill. Talk us through some Hanukkah etiquette. Generally
Preston Meyer 37:42 speaking, if you're going to any religious flavored event, don't go in expecting that you know what to do, because it's next to Christmas. Because Hanukkah is not Christmas. Be willing to be told what to do. Which sounds just a little culty I guess. Use your best judgment when you're told what to do. I guess the caveat to that. But just be prepared to learn something new and have no experience. Yeah, definitely don't do anything that feels terribly Christmassy for Hanukkah. So red and green, your Christmas colors. I mean, you're probably not going to offend anybody. But it does make you look kind of ignorant.
Katie Dooley 38:39 I go more than kind of, but yes, yeah.
Preston Meyer 38:42 Instead, here's a hint. The Hanukkah colors are blue and white. If you ever forget that, feel free to Google the flag of Israel. That might give you a candy reminder. Google Hanukkah decor. Yeah. You've got some options there. Celebrating during Hanukkah is the best way to celebrate Hanukkah. If you wait till Christmas, you could be way off the mark. Sometimes Hanukkah is in November. And you'll occasionally see Thanksgiving aka events where people will combine Hanukkah with thanksgiving. And that's a more apt combination. I
Katie Dooley 39:22 mean, it started in November. It was quite early this year started in November. I seen it as sort of late as mid December. So yeah, it was an early one this year right after American Thanksgiving. Right.
Preston Meyer 39:37 And yes, not knowing how to Google things bad excuse for not knowing things. But we try and be helpful as much as we can keep this in mind for next year. Of course since Hanukkah is over today. There's
Katie Dooley 39:55 you could get some last I hope we got a nice Hanukkah and yeah,
Preston Meyer 39:58 and that's it. Have it. Yeah. So while Hanukkah is a festival of lights, and in a way that's kind of comparable to Diwali, celebrating a victory over cosmic darkness. There are some great layers that are universal universally observed among believers, including the celebration of religious freedom. Because of the victory of the Maccabees over this elucidates, there is the celebration of National resilience, despite millennia of persecution, there's so much of the history of Judaism and the Jewish people is just awful, so much so much torment from all of their neighbors, almost all of the time, constantly. It's a bit of a bummer. And yet, this people has done so well. And so surviving, and thriving. And thirdly, the celebration of God's persistent covenant is hugely important that even after all of the struggles, they can still rebuild that temple 2000 years ago. And for many Jews, there's the dream of rebuilding the temple again one day, and whether or not it'll be rededicated on Hanukkah, hard to say, the first time the temple was dedicated under King Solomon in Jerusalem, it was attached to the Feast of Tabernacles. So to say that there's a hard fast rule of when it has to be dedicated. It's, it's a little squishy there,
Katie Dooley 41:39 it'd be pretty symbolic to do it. In either of those two things. Yeah. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 41:45 Honestly, it'll be weird if it wasn't either of those two things.
Katie Dooley 41:48 Yes. Especially after this long. Right away a long time. Yeah. They're gonna keep waiting. Right?
Preston Meyer 41:57 I mean, it's, it's not on the horizon yet. But it's the thing people are talking about. But in the meantime, there's the temple in our hearts.
Katie Dooley 42:10 Good, right. There's
Preston Meyer 42:12 a lot of love in Hanukkah. And there's a lot of spelling variations of Hanukkah. Oh,
Katie Dooley 42:17 man, I spelt it wrong every single time. I do though, I did because I'm a two ends and 1k kind of person. And then it would tell me it was wrong and had to go back and change the tau one and two K's.
Preston Meyer 42:28 Right. The weird thing is that the spelling in Hebrew doesn't double up any of the consonants.
Katie Dooley 42:38 So I'm not not wrong.
Preston Meyer 42:40 There's so many very common spellings of Hanukkah. That if you've spelt it in a way that people can recognize that you're trying to say Hanukkah, you're just fine. Saying Jonica though, is how Chanukah is fine. Okay. It sounds weird to be English here, but it's fine.
Katie Dooley 43:09 Like you gave me makes me think. Okay, but
Preston Meyer 43:13 that C is attached to the h in the same way that we see lock in Scottish. It's a hard age rather than a weird aspirated edge. Noise.
Katie Dooley 43:31 Final thoughts about Hanukkah?
Preston Meyer 43:34 I love Hanukkah, we have a lot of fun every year. We didn't host a party last Hanukkah because of the whole pandemic situation. Yeah, that was a bummer for me because it's been such a staple in our house for years. But it's a pretty great time to spend time with friends, enjoy a great meal and get a little bit spiritual for a few minutes as we go through the story. And our tradition has always read a dedicatory prayer for a temple. We've made a point of reading the first dedicatory prayer when Solomon's Temple was first dedicated, and all the way up to Edmonton zone. Temple dedication. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 44:22 All right. If you want to watch some of these great Hanukkah dreidel fight videos, you should follow us on our Discord. Absolutely. If you want more amazing episodes like this, you can check out our Patreon for a subscription model to help support us or our Spreadshirt to buy some one off merch person merch purchases. Both help us keep this podcast going.
Preston Meyer 44:49 Happy Hanukkah.
Katie Dooley 44:51 Yes, happy Hanukkah. Pleased to be with you by the late Middle Ages
Preston Meyer 45:05 Hey, what do you still doing here? Well, your commitment will be rewarded. We're having a giveaway. Thanks to the lovely folks at Blackbird farm and apothecary. We have a pair of very sexy holy watermelon tumblers, and posters perfect for the holiday season. All you need to do is check out the posts on Instagram and Facebook. Follow us like the post and tag a friend and one entry per tag. It'd be great. The winner will be announced December 10 2021. Be sure to check out our friends at Blackbird farming apothecary on Facebook | |||
| 02 Aug 2021 | Don't Put it in Your Mouth | 00:53:17 | |
Prophecy is prevalent in all major religions. Someone always seems to have a phone line right up to the Big Guy. Is prophecy real? When does it get dangerous? How does one become a prophet? All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
*** Hello again
Preston Meyer 00:17 man, today's gonna be good.
Katie Dooley 00:19 I feel like a prophecy is being fulfilled. Or at least appointment on the calendar
Preston Meyer 00:27 for sure. Welcome everybody to the holy watermelon
00:32 podcast.
Preston Meyer 00:35 Yeah, so we're going to talk a little bit about prophecy today. And I was thinking about Nostradamus, he is, thanks to History Channel. He's kind of the big profit that's not really tied to any specific religion, as far as popular culture presents really well,
Katie Dooley 00:55 right? He's just kind of this guy who predicts things. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 00:58 I mean, he was a Christian, his family, I was actually Jewish only a couple of generations before him. He lived about 500 years ago. 1500s was his time. And super popular guy, he wrote a book called The prophecies. You know, his name isn't. Nostradamus,
Katie Dooley 01:19 I saw that in our research and in researching this episode, yeah.
Preston Meyer 01:24 Michelle did not Nostradamus that, basically Michael of Our Lady, which is, you know, Nostradamus sounds way
Katie Dooley 01:35 more badass here. Also a little bit like a hippopotamus a little bit, a little bit.
Preston Meyer 01:39 But his hugely popular book, the prophecies, none of it is originally is. We like to give Nostradamus credit as a culture for being this great prophet who saw these things coming? None of the prophecies in his book, were originally his. He repeated a bunch from the Bible, he straight up plagiarized from several other sources. And he also actively denied being a prophet. Aren't
Katie Dooley 02:14 they so vague that it could apply to anything?
Preston Meyer 02:19 Many of them are vague that yeah, they could apply to anything. And we also have a problem with people who want to say Nostradamus was a prophet, translating his works from Old French to too common today English, and deliberately Miss translating them so that they'll line up better with specific events. What happened? Yeah. But Nostradamus, not a prophet, not even a little bit, just a skilled writer. He wrote almanacs and things like that. And then he was just like, and here's a bunch of prophecies that are known to people who read Latin, but my French audience doesn't read Latin, so they're gonna like this book.
Katie Dooley 03:03 So then if Nostradamus wasn't a prophet, what is a prophet Preston?
Preston Meyer 03:08 A prophet is, broadly speaking, if you want to generalize it across multiple religious traditions, A prophet is a person who serves as a mouthpiece for divinity or supernatural force on Oracle is a pretty fair word that's basically the same thing a mouthpiece for a god. So that's fairly distinct from say, a seer, or an agar who is able to read things, things or omens. Like sometimes you'll have an agar who reads entrails or tea leaves or just I don't think an auger is a fair title for one who reads the stars, that's more of a seer Nan agar. We've got a whole bunch of people who have found out a whole lot of different ways that they can read things in the universe,
Katie Dooley 04:07 medium psychics, not that this, that's not this episode. But you're right. There's a lot of titles for people who see things that have yet to happen, right,
Preston Meyer 04:15 and they can do it with a sort of reliability, that's just enough to get people to buy into it.
Katie Dooley 04:24 In my research, so there's prophets and prophecy, and then there's prophesizing, which is a little more you don't need to be a prophet to prophesize in my understanding is that that as in God is speaking to you and telling you what to do with you in within your personal relationship with God, this is very much like a Christian fundamentalist term.
Preston Meyer 04:46 So there's, I like to distinguish big P and little P profits.
Katie Dooley 04:52 Okay. Like
Preston Meyer 04:56 if you are prophesying then that makes you a profit, little p, if you have any official office or title as profit, that would be the big P profit. And so profits can be seen, whether that's their title or not, in every religious tradition and culture on this planet, throughout history, absolutely. Which is actually kind of nifty that we are able to see these parallels around the world without any worry about cultural lines.
Katie Dooley 05:34 I mean, it's, it makes sense in a way that, you know, how else does a religion start? Unless God is talking in the search of supernatural power talking to someone, then you just have atheists? Right? If there's not, whether that's God speaks to everyone, or God speaks through one or two people, there needs to be some connection. Someone has to believe God's speaking to them or when happen, right?
Preston Meyer 05:59 That's a reasonably popular model for religious development,
Katie Dooley 06:04 I guess you get the odd ones. But you will talk about Buddhist prophets as well, where I guess you're working to obtain some level of enlightenment, but and there isn't, I guess, I mean, depends on the model of Buddhism, you look I was gonna say, but there isn't a god and Buddhism. But depending on which one you follow, then Buddha is
Preston Meyer 06:25 what? It all depends on how you define God. Because we've had this argument before to
Katie Dooley 06:31 go back to our previous episode.
Preston Meyer 06:34 So there are some religious traditions that aren't started off by somebody claiming prophecy. If you are describing the idea of a god in the sky, you don't have to speak to him to say to your kids, there's somebody up there who is giving us the lightning in the rain, fair. But at some point, somebody will claim to communicate with that God,
Katie Dooley 06:58 I think so because it comes down to the How do you know it's up there? Exactly. And I don't want to say it's easy to say, but it's, it's a pretty good default to go to well, God told me or God told this person or whatever.
Preston Meyer 07:09 Yeah, Oracle's and prophets tend to speak as though they are the mouth of God, or the God that they serve. For example, the the oracles of Apollo way back in ancient Greece would speak as though their words had come originally from Apollo and they would quote him and speak as though they were him. So it's pretty standard for the way we look at prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament as well.
Katie Dooley 07:43 All right, so we've all been to notes on property. How do we do want to break down by religion first, what do you think? Are some of my just Mullings?
Preston Meyer 07:52 Let's go through your Mullings. Let's see what what are your thoughts here? Oh, as an atheist
Katie Dooley 07:57 as an atheist? Well, let's start on the scroll down on the notes a bit. I I titled this section profits in the wild. And I'm sure everyone if you live in a major city and have ever taken public transport, you've come across one of these people who claims that God is speaking to them. And I distinctly remember one day, going to university this man on the bus is saying that he had seen the start a time and the end of time and knew how was all going to end and that God was speaking to him and everyone like all the ladies were clutching their bags a little closer or putting them on the seat so he wouldn't sit next to them. And like my notes, I say, but if he was in a suit at a pulpit on a Sunday morning, people would be like, Oh my God, right? So this line between mental illness and being a prophet and we're going to do an exorcism episode around Halloween, but same thing or the difference between are they piss possessed by the devil or mentally ill? Are you profit? Are you mentally ill? And is that like, basically, based on what you wear and what your job title is? Or?
Preston Meyer 09:08 So anytime the audience doesn't want to hear what they're hearing? Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be easy to write it off as this person's probably mentally ill. And apart from that, any prophecy it can only be judged on whether or not it comes true. And I guess another roundabout angle at that would be you can also judge a prophecy based on how detailed it is. And like if it's deliberately going to be obvious that it's self fulfilling, or deliberately so vague that it's going to happen no matter what at some point, and you can tell in advance then That's not terribly impressive because he
Katie Dooley 10:01 even made obviously as outsiders. It's easier. But we see all these doomsday predictions that have yet to come true. So often the followers still believe the person is a prophet and that they're correct. They were just there was a miscalculation.
Preston Meyer 10:20 Yeah, I mean, people, people appreciate when somebody admits that they were wrong. And they can say, oh, no, I miscalculated this thing. That I mean, it's weak, but I get why people who really want to believe and choose to believe can accept that as something to not undermine their belief. But I don't love it. You know?
Katie Dooley 10:46 I don't I can't think off the top of my head because I'm just literally having these thoughts. Now, as we're recording. You know, some of these doomsday cults have, like multiple times, like it's like, Okay, once fine, but there's people who've been predicting the end of the world for decades, and they're their followers just to like, yeah. So let me once shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on you. Fool me three times. Shame on you.
Preston Meyer 11:16 Shame on me. Yeah. Like, oh, yeah, it's, it's a weird thing. Usually, when somebody gives out a whole bunch of different predictions. It's more of, hey, I'm studying the Scripture. And these clues are here. And this is here. It's all written down. Why can't you see it? They don't usually do the whole profit thing. It's more of a I'm smarter than you. Which is obviously annoying. I'm sure there's exceptions to that, but none are coming to mind right now. Okay. But we we've definitely got loads of people running around saying, hey, the end of the world, isn't i because God told me and hasn't happened yet. Now,
Katie Dooley 12:16 I think there was one recently that came in lens that some cult somewhere was preparing for.
Preston Meyer 12:22 Yeah, I remember in 2011 There was one right there was what wasn't the big one. But there was a reason that we popular fella who decided there's this time in May in 2011, where the world's going to end and that didn't happen. And then he's like, Oh, no, sorry, I was wrong. It's gonna be in October. Oh,
Katie Dooley 12:42 I do remember that October came and went. And here we are. With someone. I'm thinking oh, that was like in December to the Mayan calendar. Oh, yeah. The
Preston Meyer 12:49 Mayan calendar that got a lot of people all stressed out there. I don't. I looked into it. And there's not like any solid prophecy. Yeah, the world's gonna end it's just the calendar did end and a lot of people like well, a calendar this long. Having an endpoint means the end of the world sauce.
Katie Dooley 13:09 So I don't even remember what was it like December 21 2008, or something? That's never my brain. I don't remember the end of the Mayan calendar. But
Preston Meyer 13:16 I'm pretty sure my calendar is 2012 as a trainee.
Katie Dooley 13:19 I don't remember the date. Anyway, someone will correct. But I remember on that day, that all of a sudden, there's like this really weird noise in my neighborhood. Like this whooshing noise It was like it was super loud. And like I was still in high school, like I was still living at home and most of my friends were still living at home with their parents, I say. And so like everyone could hear it like for blocks where I was like, what is happening? And there is a utility station across from the carwash. You know what I'm talking about? I got pretty good idea. Yeah. carwash and junior high. Yeah. And it had like, over pressurize. So it was like releasing pressure. And the immediate neighborhood had to be evacuated. And we could hear it all the way. Like my parents are by the save on. I'd like try not to explain to President where this is without Daxing my parents were ready to save on and they we could hear it. Again, all my friends were like What is and we all that was the end of the world obviously. Because really, what is this noise? And we've lived there for decades and never heard it before. Never heard that sentence. Right? So anyway, that's
Preston Meyer 14:38 crazy. That's I like it.
Katie Dooley 14:42 I will say as an atheist who, you know, clearly I don't believe anyone is a prophet. I actually really appreciate the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints approach to prophecy, and I forget where I read it somewhere but basically, they have prayed but it's to this day the leader of the church of the prophet speaks to get got a phone phone line to God, I presume in his office and their perspective on it and jump if I'm jumping if I'm wrong, but you didn't correct my notes, I assume I'm do it Okay, is that if God spoke to us 2000 years ago, we should still have the ability to speak to him. Now. He wasn't all of a sudden, like peace out.
15:22 But yeah,
Katie Dooley 15:23 I can't I cannot speak to humans anymore. I've spent all this time putting you together and by. And so I'm like, okay, yeah. If you believe that. All these Old Testament New Testament prophets existed and they received revelation from God, then, yeah. Logic would follow that we could still receive prophecy and revelation from God. But there's definitely there's definitely Christian groups that don't think that.
Preston Meyer 15:50 Yeah, is Christianity, broadly speaking, has a weird relationship with the idea of prophecy, an awful lot of Christians reject the idea that there's any way to hear from God outside of reading the Bible, which, of course, is flawed in that you've limited this person that you viewed to be all powerful to the words that have been written down and edited centuries ago. In a book that isn't even complete anyway.
Katie Dooley 16:23 I mean, it's still getting rewritten, right? There's still new versions popping up. So
Preston Meyer 16:27 yeah, I wouldn't say rewritten the best word. But I mean, it does go through an editorial process that we were talking about in our bonus episode was rewritten. It does go through an editorial process before publication every single time. So yeah, a little bit rewritten. And so for example, you've got the the Pentecostals are also pretty big fans of prophecy, because prophecy is promised in the New Testament. Paul talks about how as long as there are believers that will, there will be prophecy among them. And so Protestants and other super charismatic Christian churches are definitely big into that idea that you can receive revelation, direct communication with God. And then some of the older traditions that are still with us from Christianity tend to be a little bit more. You know, the guy in charge, like the Pope, for example, you can receive some revelation to guide the church. But there isn't big revelations of old hidden things or hidden things to come so much anymore. Which I think is actually really interesting. There was about 500 years ago, in the Catholic Church, there was the prophecy of the Pope's, I was it's only about 400 years ago, sorry. It was first published in 1595 by a Benedictine monk named Arnold weon. He attributed this prophecy to St. Malikai, 12th century Archbishop, and it lists the last 112 Pope's it says, These are the last 112 There's not going to be more after this. So the end of the 16th century, this is kind of a big deal. People start counting down to the end of the Pope's. And it's kind of interesting. And remember, this is meant to have been written 400 years before it was published. But it's kind of interesting. It starts with Silverstein, the second and it is completely accurate. And describes correctly all of the Pope's up until just before it was published, then it stops being accurate, weird. Which means that it's very, very likely
19:12 that it was written 400 years before, right?
Preston Meyer 19:15 It's super suspicious. What's interesting though, is that 111 was Benedict the 16th. And then before it goes on to 112 There's this weird little paragraph, just just a short little note. And then it goes on to Peter the Roman. And so because St. Francis or sorry, Pope Francis isn't peter the roman as far as we can tell based on his name or where he's from
Katie Dooley 19:47 that's gonna say his name a little bit round.
Preston Meyer 19:50 There's a lot of people that like to argue that in this list that's called the last 112 Pope's there's space for who knows how many In between 111 and the last, and it's because people are desperate that this list is actually authentic prophecy. But I mean, there's loads of evidence that it's what counts is a forgery being a product of when it was published and not 400 years earlier.
20:25 Wow, it's so accurate. Wow. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 20:28 At the time it was published. People should have recognized Hey, yeah, it's super precise and accurate up to this point. And then is vague and cryptic leading forward. When it was mostly written 400 years before? It's just kind of weird. Yeah, it's fun. It's kind of it's it's like the prophecy that people within the Catholic world think about, as far as recent dish prophecies, interesting. And yeah, it's definitely a forgery. It's not authentic revelation.
Katie Dooley 21:06 Maybe that's a good segue. How do you know when something's authentic Revelation?
Preston Meyer 21:09 In the moment, it's almost impossible unless, theoretically, there's something in your gut that says, Yes, this is right. And even then, I mean, we've talked about the the tricky nature of belief and knowledge. How do you even know that that feeling in your gut means anything? You have to wait and see when that prophecy is fulfilled? To know that it was a proper prophecy, and judge it based on its merit as a self fulfilling prophecy or a guaranteed eventuality?
Katie Dooley 21:39 I really want to sing a line from Book of Mormon, go for it in 1970, God changed his mind about black people, black people.
Preston Meyer 21:50 Yeah, what a great musical.
21:52 And what a great process.
Preston Meyer 21:55 The the one thing that I love about the humor of that show is that it's all just about the two teachers, the missionaries, they were inept from the beginning and didn't know anything. So the presentation of what the church does believe is it's what is presented to be, and not necessarily a matter of historic fact. But it was an enjoyable show anyway. So prophecy is is all over the place, I really like the, the way we see profits presented in the Hebrew Bible, which is, of course, the familiar zone that we deal with in the West. And so they were usually men who served as permanent fixtures in royal courts, though there were a few that were not. And this is basically paralleled around the world, every culture that has a king or an emperor or a chieftain had somebody in his close circle that was basically responsible for reading omens and double checking the decisions of the chieftain or emperor or king or whatever, to make sure that it wasn't going to end in a catastrophic failure, that would end the nation. And sometimes that meant reading entrails. And sometimes it meant just popping off into the corner and praying and seeing what happens, and anywhere in between, depending on the culture and the traditional practices of that group. But what they all had in common is that they proclaimed a message to the people. Typically, in the end, in the Hebrew setting that message was if you guys don't stop doing these stupid things, you will be destroyed. Yeah, yeah. And Israel has a long history of suffering some wicked destructions. Yeah. There were a few of the old Hebrew prophets that talked explicitly about a man who had come to preserve the people in some way or another. And if you're a Christian, especially fundamental Christians, you believe that everything of these prophecies refers to the coming of Christ. Yes,
Katie Dooley 24:20 I am. In the documentary, I watched American gospel like it put on our Discord. It's a wild ride. That's what the one group was talking about is that everything in the Bible in the Old Testament, points to Jesus Christ, and if you can't see that you're not a real Christian. He was like every story in the Old Testament. points to the to Jesus. I was like, does it Oh, the
Preston Meyer 24:46 story of Lot and his daughter say does that it does not. Not even a little bit. I didn't think so.
Katie Dooley 24:53 But, however,
Preston Meyer 24:57 to the credit that may or may not Due to the person who said that the story might point to the need for a Savior with some efficacy. Okay.
Katie Dooley 25:12 I want Yeah, I mean, a lot needs intervention. A lot of things an adult. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 25:24 Yeah. It's, it's tricky. But I mean, if you genuinely believe that everything in the Bible points to Jesus, you'll find a way to connect it. Even if it's as simple as here's a, here's some people that need Jesus.
25:38 You'll figure out Jesus.
Preston Meyer 25:42 So, it's, it's not unfair, but I don't like to make that generalization, the story of Jonah and the whale. If it was written more recently, the story would have started once upon a time, the story of Jonah and the whale is fiction. Absolutely. It was never meant to be read as a historical story about a real prophet. Everything about the story is, like, obviously counterintuitive to anybody's experience in Israel, where if you pay attention, the story, everybody's righteous, and does what God says when they hear they hear the message, except for the guy who's supposed to be spreading that message. Jonah hears, hey, you need to go visit these people. And he says, hell no, I'm going the other way. The people in the boat. They're like, Hey, God has a message for us, and you are a problem to us. We're going to do what's right and get you out of this boat so that you can go into your job. And then Jonah finally gets to the city, and they repent. The city being Nineveh in Babylon, which everybody in Israel is like, no, those people are evil. And in the story is like, oh, yeah, no, we're good now. It's like, obviously, a fiction. But, you know,
Katie Dooley 27:14 we need to do an episode on biblical literalism. It was Yeah, I think you're right. It was requested to sort of, well, let's after
Preston Meyer 27:27 the profits are interesting. You've got prophets like Isaiah, and Jeremiah, these were quarterly profits, they served the king to let him know what he needed to do in any situation where he would ask. And so that's, that's pretty standard around the world. Like I said, before,
Katie Dooley 27:47 we should move on to the New Testament. Yeah. So
Preston Meyer 27:50 Jesus is kind of the central figure of the New Testament, even though he's only actually present for one narrative told four different times. And he's a lot more than a prophet in Christianity, but he does do some prophesying. And most of it pretty vague. He does specifically promise that the temple will be destroyed soon. And while he's also talking about his own body that's about to be destroyed. The Temple in Jerusalem is seen as another fulfillment of that prophecy because it was destroyed about 40 years later. Or 30 years later. Now, the timeline is going fuzzy on me, but that's okay. Shortly after shorts was crazy generation and a half two generations later, which in a grand scheme of than 2000 year old religion, it's not that much, right. And you've also got Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, an angel appears to him and broadly speaking, this fits into prophecy if you are able to speak with divine beings including angels so it Mary
Katie Dooley 29:03 have been a prophet or because she was the lady show some aloud.
Preston Meyer 29:08 Here's Mary has a very special position in Christian in some parts of Christianity,
Katie Dooley 29:16 the reality of Zechariah talk. Yeah, we can get back to Mary sorry. And
Preston Meyer 29:21 they're not wildly different in their experiences. And I'm even Joseph her husband had an angel appeared to him and say, Hey, this What's up? Mary's experiences a little bit more intense.
Katie Dooley 29:35 Yeah. She got to find spunked.
Preston Meyer 29:41 I mean, I don't know the the exact operation of how things happen, but she became pregnant in a way that as far as I know, there's one way people get pregnant. But turns out apps Two Minutes is not 100% effective.
Katie Dooley 30:03 I just think she had the best lie of all of all human history. No, no, I'm a virgin an angel knocked me out
Preston Meyer 30:16 Yeah, that's that's more or less the story.
30:20 I swear
Katie Dooley 30:23 while making shifty eyes just
Preston Meyer 30:25 listing his Joseph's family did not like it one bit No. Otherwise. Right it would have been a lot easier for them to find a place to sleep when I went time to deal with the census and have a place to stay during Passover with family was one usually does.
Katie Dooley 30:45 Well, we'll get to the Nativity episode. But yeah, back to New Testament prophet Paul
Preston Meyer 30:53 is visited by Jesus on the road to Damascus, this council is prophecy. It's one of the more so prophecy depending on how, who you read and how you define things. You've got all kinds of levels of awesomeness of prophecy, and hearing a voice kind of minor, seeing a person and hearing their voice and being able to touch them. opposite end, best possible kind of prophecy level. And Paul, who hated Christians, because they were just the worst kind of why is the word blanking on me. heretics, heretics, Christians are the worst kind of heretics. And then he pulls the one ad and realizes Oh, I shouldn't be killing these heretic Christians because Jesus is real. And is the Son of God and is mighty and divine. So changes his life around because of this revelation that he has. And then you've got John the Revelator, which is, I mean, he is a prophet, he sees and reveals and serves as an Oracle for the divine. And he also, he and Paul warn of false prophets of a couple of different varieties. You've got prophets who do testify of Christ, for their own personal profit, with an F for their own financial gain. That kind of profit. But you've also got false prophets who deny Christ while also performing miracles. And that's also a problem for Christians. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 32:44 We are going to do an entire episode and our next episode is on the revelation. And it's a pretty big deal, because there's entire denominations of Christianity that just love that one book, which
Preston Meyer 32:55 I think is interesting that we'll get into a little bit more. The Revelation of John was widely considered as questionably authentic for a long time among Christians. So
Katie Dooley 33:09 I listened to it while I was working. Yeah, and I'll probably listen to it again. But considering you've like, seen that shitty 70s movie that I showed you. And then there's like the Left Behind series, I was like, so I was like, expecting, you know, obviously, they talk about the beast. I'm like, this isn't nearly as scary as like, these books and movies make it out to be I'm like, oh, no, it was two hours of content. Like, I just thought it'd be a lot more. Spooky. What? Right anyway. But we'll talk about that on our next episode. I don't want to Yeah, give too much away anyway.
Preston Meyer 33:54 What else we got?
Katie Dooley 33:55 I mean, we can move on to Islam, because theirs is an incredibly profit based. Yes. And that's the next chronologically and then we'll talk about Eastern
Preston Meyer 34:09 that even the noise you make for your quotation. So yeah, in Islam, prophecy is hugely important. Muhammad is the final prophet. For most Muslims. There are some Muslim denominations that accept more prophets after him. But that's not typical. But he is he's meant to be the last in the long chain. And they also do respect Jesus as a prophet, not as the Son of God, but as a prophet. Yeah. And there's even stories of Jesus in the Koran. Absolutely. There's even a book in the Quran dedicated to marry as well.
Katie Dooley 34:50 Interesting and in Yeah, but that's a big misconception is that somehow Muslims hate Christians and Christianity don't believe in Jesus say absolute We do write, have stories about it that aren't in the Bible.
Preston Meyer 35:04 I'm reminded of an interview I watched with Reza Aslan, he wrote a book, a great scholarly book on Jesus. Oh, that's on my list to read. Yeah. And he got dragged around so hard in all these interviews with all kinds of people, because he's Muslim writing about Jesus, and all these people who are either Christian or pseudo Christian and be like, Why are you reading about Jesus? If you're not a Christian? A lot
Katie Dooley 35:31 of the theories I saw were like, how can you write about Jesus as a Christian? He's like, because I am a scholar, right? Like, I can I can do this objectively and look at the research. And he does well. And as a Muslim, he believes Jesus existed and was a prophet. It was yes, I'm gonna go roll your eyes out of your head. Watch some of those interviews, because they're like, how can you do this as a Muslim? And he's like, because I'm a fucking scholar. Right? Like, that's like being like, how can you be a nutritionist and be a vegan? It's like, you can still understand the nutritional value of meat. Even if you choose not to eat it. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 36:17 Because I have teeth in a stomach. Thanks. Yeah,
36:19 I have a brain
Katie Dooley 36:21 that I can read about the nutritional value of meat. Like, I just I don't know if that was the best analogy. But yeah, it's like, because the information is out there. And honestly, at this point, 2000 years later, it's all just conjecture. Right? So all the information we have about Jesus is out there in the world. Yep. You want to go and condense that made me come up with some new theories. Anyone fucking do? It doesn't matter what your religion is. Yep. Okay. That's gonna get bowel pressing. You should have brought that up. I'm gonna get off my little soapbox. Step Step. I like I feel like he had another point to make that I just like steamrolled.
Preston Meyer 37:07 Yeah, so back to Islam. So the Quran is revelations received by Mohammed. So he is meant to have received all these revelations primarily through speaking with Gibreel, or the angel Gabriel. And prophecy is kind of the staple that holds the religion together just like it is with Islam or sorry, with, with Israel, the Judaism, with Christianity, we rely on the appearance of Jesus to people Peter receiving revelation for the church, Paul, John, so on. And then we've also got the non western non Abrahamic faiths that are also finding revelation and valuable Zoroastrianism which a lot of people like to point to as kind of the big changing influence on Israel while they were in exile that made their religion what it is today found prophets to be important, particularly Zarathustra, who, of course, is one of those fellows who likes to go into trances, which is terrible, not terribly uncommon for prophets around the world, especially those who like to use psychotropic assistance. Yep. And, I mean, I don't have any personal experience with psychotropic substances. But from what I've heard, that's a great way to become more empathetic with the world at large, I guess, and to feel closer to God, I guess, is the way it's described by an awful lot of people. Whatever their definition of God is that it seems to work. What else we got on our list? I know you did some research. I
Katie Dooley 39:10 was just gonna end that Zarathustra. So he's the founder. Isn't he? He wrote his the sacred writing. So Astron NISM. The Avesta is is a revelation from Him. So inspired writings, just like Buddhism from the Buddha. Which there's our segue. I
Preston Meyer 39:32 like it. So Buddha's an interesting example that we have an awful lot of these people who are either like, okay, families or noble families who go and serve in the king's court as prophets. And occasionally you'll have real humble folks who come up to bring messages to the kings court. And Siddhartha Gautama does is kind of the opposite. He grew up in a royal court, and then said Peace, by
40:06 the way, are you kidding me?
Preston Meyer 40:09 He left the royal court to go and experience life and recognize the depth of the things. He only seen surface level after escaping for one night and became a prophet almost in exile. I don't think that's a perfectly fair label on there, but I'm gonna use it anyway.
40:30 Okay.
Preston Meyer 40:33 So, I think it's novel that he is different in that way.
Katie Dooley 40:36 I think it's great. Girl Siddhartha right.
Preston Meyer 40:42 And we talked a little bit about one of his cool prophecies back when we were talking about this, the Buddha, the chubby Buddha, the Maitreya Buddha, and if you're comfortable with wild mispronunciations of names, the body Buddha, the Buddha, I Buddha, the chubby Laughing Buddha,
Katie Dooley 41:03 so that is his reincarnation that is supposed to happen sometime sometime.
Preston Meyer 41:07 We don't know when supposed to be after the World forgets Buddhism, which I mean. It's meant to be like, if the whole world forgets the correct Buddhism, or Buddhism altogether, one or the other. Then Maitreya, Buddha will come and restore it. Like don't forget
Katie Dooley 41:29 me. Yeah,
41:32 Green Giant.
Katie Dooley 41:36 I didn't find any revelation in Hinduism, but I didn't do a ton of digging.
Preston Meyer 41:40 So Hinduism, you've got the Vedas, and we don't have a lot of solid information about where the Vedas really came from who specifically wrote them or anything like that?
Katie Dooley 41:56 No, they come from God, the gods from
Preston Meyer 42:00 like, even the way that we have the Vedas. I mean, we have them through the people of India. Oh, yeah, absolutely. them from speeding Aryans, who probably did originate the Vedic religion. But we don't have a lot of information there. No.
Katie Dooley 42:20 Yeah. We're just totally came from Brahmins mouth.
Preston Meyer 42:24 Right. And so in, in day to day Hinduism, there isn't a lot of in mainstream Hinduism, there isn't a lot of prophetic figures, publicly, but there are plenty of groups that have shown up where a person shows up and he gets his charisma and
Katie Dooley 42:43 some that are pretty charismatic, I guess is the best way, though, even then the the gurus I can think of that have started, you know, we talked about Bhagwan in our cults episode, which is a Hindu cult. He didn't talk about prophecy. He was just sort of, again, this charismatic leader that people liked the way he presented his branch of Hinduism, but I don't think he had any prophecies, specifically, just a very communal
Preston Meyer 43:15 lifestyle, presented a way to live that worked out. But yeah, I
Katie Dooley 43:19 don't think he had any prophecy that people thought it was new and exciting. He was just happy. Yeah, exactly how he presented
Preston Meyer 43:30 the argument with the tricky thing is define defining the difference between inspiration and revelation. A loads would argue that he was inspired to start all this up. But I guess it depends on how you define inspired. But yeah, it didn't claim revelation.
Katie Dooley 43:52 We actually we skipped over it. The plane I started laughing at do we want to talk about what Yeah, can I ask my question? We're kind of we're sorry, we're kind of jumping back. But modern prophecy. I made a note of what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit. We see this a lot, obviously, being a Western Christian country, being filled with the Holy Spirit. And this is kind of, like Preston said, the Pentecostal having a close personal relationship with God, or God speaks to constantly have maybe we don't see it as you being a prophet, but God is speaking to you. So that was my question. What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit?
Preston Meyer 44:35 So just as Christianity is wickedly diverse spectrum, there's an awful lot of different thoughts on what that means for some people. Can you even say that you're not filled with the Spirit if you're not rolling on the ground, just kind of wigging out. I mean, there's an all Have a lot of people that look like dementia patients when they're trying to show off that they've got the Spirit in them. And some people look like they're suffering from epilepsy. And other people are a lot more dignified and their behavior I guess. I mean,
Katie Dooley 45:16 you see people sobbing. Yeah. Again, if you're a Pentecostal, you speak in tongues. And then some people just like feel the spirit. And some
Preston Meyer 45:24 people just feel comfort and feel reassurance of truth and you're wanting to hold my hand. That is, yeah.
Katie Dooley 45:31 Do you feel the spirit in this room?
Preston Meyer 45:33 I feel love. And for a lot of people that's that's how they recognize that the spirit is there. Because we've been friends for a while. I feel loved when I'm here.
Katie Dooley 45:45 And I just made them hold my hand. I didn't hurt yeah, atheists don't burn, right? Yeah, just everyone knows
Preston Meyer 45:54 severe. So what it means to feel, nor to be filled with the Spirit. seems to vary a lot from person to person. But it's, it seems to me that it's a lot more useful. If it's reassuring ideas, and divine truths, then if it's causing you to roll around in a way that might cause you an injury or, or cause somebody to think less of you or your dignity. Maybe interesting.
Katie Dooley 46:28 We'll have to talk about Glock Glock gloss or gloss. Aliah are some I forget what the technical term for speaking in tongues is. There's a real okay, I'm good.
Preston Meyer 46:39 Okay. Oh, religiously? We just call it speaking in tongues. But no, there's a name for it. Not in my circles where I wander around but I believe you.
Katie Dooley 46:51 glossolalia the phenomenon of speaking in an unknown language especially in realistic religious worship glossolalia Okay, that's your Word of the Day.
Preston Meyer 47:05 That word is a mouthful. GloZell Ali
Katie Dooley 47:14 are bad people Preston.
Preston Meyer 47:18 just reminded me of the word eyeball phobia. It's a palindrome it's phobia. With phobia spelled backwards on the front of what is the phobia of it. It is the fear the irrational fear of palindromes are terrible. Some people who name them are just
Katie Dooley 47:39 there's a few of them that are just ridiculous.
Preston Meyer 47:41 Triscuit DECA phobia is kind of cool. It's the fear of the number 13. But it sounds way cooler than it is. It makes it sound like it's a legitimate thing to be properly afraid of. And if you're actually afraid of the number 13 You do have some sort of emotional problems that you probably need to see a professional for.
Katie Dooley 48:07 You're just dropping bombs.
48:12 So any final thoughts on prophecy?
Katie Dooley 48:15 The prophets? What do our listeners need to know? Be?
48:20 Be wary of false prophets
Preston Meyer 48:23 be wary of profits in general, okay. Cuz the reality is that nine times out of 10 You're gonna be able to prove easily with real investigation that there are false prophets. And I mean, I know that as an atheist, you don't believe there's any profits and that's Yeah, I'm
Katie Dooley 48:43 good. I'm already guarded. my loins are girded.
Preston Meyer 48:46 Right. And that's realistically a pretty safe position to stand in for speaking for your own safety. Like, you're not gonna be brought in by any crazy folks that are looking to take advantage with their prophecies. So it's, I think it's interesting to look at the things that people are prophesied. It's in my religious tradition, there's no hard fast rule that says nobody outside of our faith can receive prophecy. And for some people, that's not the way they see it. And that's, that's fine, I guess. But prophecy in general is a tricky thing. Something
Katie Dooley 49:33 tricky in religion, so
Preston Meyer 49:36 but if you're gonna predict anything, that's can be problematic, but prophecy can also be simply directing immediate action. And usually, that's kind of the purpose when you see oracles or augers or witch doctors in a royal court. That They're there to give that guidance and read omens when the reading omens bit sounds awfully tricky. It's interesting that in Judaism, divination is actually forbidden. You can't be casting bones and reading them or I'll throw
Katie Dooley 50:15 around cards. That's yeah, that's super frowned upon. We're gonna cover that. Yeah. So to Halloween, we have a whole spooky lineup for you.
Preston Meyer 50:23 It'll be some good fun. Yeah. So it's interesting that the way they deal with prophecy is deliberately don't rely on these physical physical objects that obviously are thrown by chance, and communicate with what feels right. In most cases, receiving dreams is common enough within the Hebrew tradition, a lot more with Northern Israel than southern Judah. Which I think is a kind of a weird distinction that ended up being a thing that we noticed. And guiding present action, based on what you see the need is makes an awful lot of sense. Whether that did in fact, come from a God or not. That kind of prophecy tends to be a lot more productive. But yeah, if somebody is trying to tell you, hey, you need to buy.
Katie Dooley 51:21 No, no, you need to sell all your stuff. Enjoy
Preston Meyer 51:24 me sell all your stuff, and give all of your money to this thing that isn't going to do you any good because the end of the world is coming. That is a scam 100% of the time. Prophecy is all right. I think it's cool, but like to look into it and study and see what things people are prophesied. I think it's nifty, but it's not a thing that you need to be stressing out about. Like if you go through your day to day life worried about a prophecy you heard?
Katie Dooley 51:57 Don't unless you're Harry Potter in the seventh book of the series. You don't need to worry about it.
Preston Meyer 52:04 Sure, but none of our listeners are the fictional character Harry Potter.
Katie Dooley 52:11 Harry Potter if you're listening please join our Discord.
Preston Meyer 52:17 Yeah, sure when I like it, I like it. Is that about it for subject to prophecy?
Katie Dooley 52:26 I think so. So we gotta we gotta do some sales now. Yeah, we
Preston Meyer 52:31 do. We would love to have you help support our podcast, keep it going for years to come. Patreon will help us make that possible. And we've also got our merch store Where's merch
Katie Dooley 52:44 store? Our merch store is Spreadshirt you can just search for Holly watermelon. And you can find all of those links and even better conversations on our Discord. All of those links will be in the description box. So we hope to see you on our Discord to continue this conversation. Peace be with you. | |||
| 04 Nov 2024 | AUM-mageddon | 00:47:26 | |
Shoko Asahara (born Chizuo Matsumoto) led a modest cultus that grew rapidly beyond the borders of its native Japan. A blind acupuncturist, Asahara was convicted of selling pharmaceuticals illegally before he decided to sell people faith instead. Asahara studied many religious traditions before concocting one of his own that would appeal to the people around him, AUM Shinrikyo, and he got people to believe it so strongly that they would kill for him. Among other things, Asahara taught that the end of the world was within reach, and only those who followed him would survive the devastation of the coming nuclear apocalypse. When the Third World War didn't start on schedule, Asahara encouraged his followers to do what they could to start the process. Sarin gas attacks and public violence became the modus operandi, and dozens of people were killed. AUM Shinrikyo has since changed their name to Aleph, but they remain under vigilant government surveillance. Hikari no Wa has split away from Aleph, and they, too, are suspicious. All this and more... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 14 Dec 2020 | Happy Holidays, Bitches! | 00:46:53 | |
We are discussing the war on Christmas! Or the lack of one... In this episode, we cover many of the holidays that take place in December including Kwanzaa and Hanukkah. Because there are literally dozens of holidays happening this time of year, Happy Holidays are more appropriate and acknowledge religious and cultural diversity. Did you know there are Christians that don't celebrate Christmas? While you may feel there is a "war on Christmas" against the Christian faith, there are subsets of Christianity that don't recognize the holiday. An umbrella term like "Happy Holidays" welcomes people from all backgrounds and doesn't assume that all white people are Christians (like our resident atheist, Katie). It's not about not celebrating Christmas, it's about recognizing that people come from different walks of life.
Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram
** Preston Meyer 00:09 Happy holidays.
Katie Dooley 00:19 Or laughing already. So bad. And welcome to another episode of the holly watermelon Podcast. I'm Katie. I'm Preston. And today, this is our last episode of 2020.
Preston Meyer 00:32 Oh man, I hope the new year is something good.
Katie Dooley 00:34 And I'll just say right now we're going to take three, three weeks between episodes instead of two. But we will see you all in 2021. And hope it's better than 2020. But today, I think this is going to be our most controversial episode yet. six episodes in but
Preston Meyer 00:56 yeah, I mean, it's a low bar, but we're gonna, we're gonna either launch right over it or fall right into it.
Katie Dooley 01:04 So today, we're talking about Happy Holidays, versus Merry Christmas, or on Christmas. I, this isn't all going to be about the war on Christmas, but it's definitely part of our conversation today. And I think why Happy Holidays should be everyone's preferred term.
Preston Meyer 01:29 Honestly, I don't think it needs to be a preferred term. But if you're the person who shouts at other people for saying Happy Holidays, you're the bad guy.
Katie Dooley 01:39 Yeah. Um, so there's a few reasons. I think this and we're, I think we'll just dive right into though.
Preston Meyer 01:47 All right. So what else is going on in December?
Katie Dooley 01:50 I mean, there's a lot going on December, which is why I don't have which is why like, have holiday.
Preston Meyer 01:57 Nice and generic, nice
Katie Dooley 01:59 engineer. So we have a Buddhist holiday called Bodhi day. We have a Jewish holiday called Hanukkah,
Preston Meyer 02:07 which isn't always in December, but it is this year. Also.
Katie Dooley 02:11 Diwali this year was in November, but I think it can fall in December as well. That sounds right. Also, the the Muslim calendar changes every year. So it's kind of good. It doesn't fall this year. But you could definitely fall in December. We have Kwanzaa which is an African American. It's not a religious holiday particular but it does fall in December. We have Zorro Astron holiday called Zara thoughts. D so we have to Hindu holidays Danu sense grantee and Geeta J on TV.
Preston Meyer 02:51 I love listening to you say these things, but I know that I wouldn't pronounce them any better.
Katie Dooley 02:58 Yeah, please throw me sure comment with the phonetics farm, you
Preston Meyer 03:04 send us your homemade MP threes and, or
Katie Dooley 03:08 whatever. And then we also have other Christian or near Christian holidays. So we have you all we have St. Nicholas stay. Epiphany happens in January, but it's kind of related. So there's a lot going on. And there's actually a lot going on all year round. But this is what we call the holiday season. Because
Preston Meyer 03:27 gay white, Christian centric American culture. We focus on one thing, we have one bank holiday in December, and that's December 25. For the white Christians, because let's be real, nobody was thinking about black Christians when they plan this.
Katie Dooley 03:46 And then of course, there's people who don't prescribe anything.
Preston Meyer 03:50 Absolutely loads of atheists who tend to celebrate bank holidays, which include Christmas.
Katie Dooley 03:59 It's always get saw or allowed. Right?
Preston Meyer 04:02 At least as a bank holiday almost every month. I think except for June. Think so. Yeah. Oh, bank
Katie Dooley 04:12 holidays are great religions.
Preston Meyer 04:15 I think we talked about it earlier in an earlier episode about how there's a faith system built up around money a little bit. So bank holidays doesn't even sound that weird in this context.
Katie Dooley 04:28 So I think that's one of my biggest reasons for Happy Holidays. I will say Merry Christmas on Christmas, but if I don't know someone personally, I will say happy holidays because I don't know what they prescribe to. They prescribed anything at all.
Preston Meyer 04:43 Yeah, I'll say Merry Christmas to the people that I know celebrate Christmas. I'll often say Happy Hanukkah to the people that know that I celebrate Hanukkah, which is irregular. That as a Christian, I celebrate Hanukkah.
Katie Dooley 04:59 Party You actually have the honor, right?
Preston Meyer 05:01 I mean, it's the greeting for the holiday. It just makes sense that it's if you know you're there for a specific event, you're going to remember that and say the appropriate greeting. I think, like when you show up to a person's birthday party, even if it's not on their birthday, you're usually going to say Happy Birthday like that. Because
Katie Dooley 05:19 it's true. Right? And with that being said, I am conscientious of I tried to be conscientious, I definitely don't know. 10 for 10, for sure, but when I know it is coming up, I will try to make a point of texting my Muslim friends Happy Eid. He because he changes like forget, Monica. Fortunately, because you celebrate it. I know it's coming up on a text my handful of Jewish friends, Happy Hanukkah, and they all wish me Merry Christmas in return. Right? So
Preston Meyer 05:53 it's almost like being a good friend works out. Yeah, it's frustrating that there's so much what appears to be contention around the holidays, like, there's the obvious Christmas is super stressful. And people want to make that as positive as possible. And so to do that, they start fights over what to call it and how to greet each other.
Katie Dooley 06:22 And we're going to move into I guess this is probably a good segue move into how Christian Christmas is. And even the fact that there were there are the fact that there are non believers that celebrate Christmas, like myself, that some of these things can get really contentious and exclusive, exclusive. There's gatekeepers everywhere. Absolutely. So we were we were talking before we hit play. A great example is we have a relative we have a relative that, you know, this time of the year, the social media posts are coming Jesus is the reason for the season, like how can you celebrate Christmas if you don't believe in Christ, and it's a very exclusive story for me, part of me was like, I should just not show up on your because they're presuming everyone believes is as a Christian. And yeah, I think that's counterintuitive to what this time of year is about, I think it should be about inclusion and whether you believe that Jesus is the Son of God or not, shouldn't exclude you from whatever your celebrations look like, whether that's Yeah, anything from Hanukkah, Kwanzaa to Christmas,
Preston Meyer 07:51 it's, it's weird that the secular culture that we've built up in North America finds its roots very strongly in Protestant Christianity. Protestant schools are what turned into our public schools for most of North America. Occasionally, it's actually Catholic schools and started the public schools. But mostly it's the Protestants. And so that Protestant morality in the Protestant worldview is the primary source of the way the secularist movement is built up. And so Christmas went from I think that was very Christian where most families when they celebrate Christmas, they've read from the one of the Gospels, usually Luke, sometimes Matthew, depending on your family and your preference. And there's very few people to do that. I think in my own family, we've done that three times. I and my family's occasionally sometimes pretty into their face, at least a little bit. And that
Katie Dooley 09:03 didn't sound wishy washy at all pressed and occasionally, sometimes at least a little bit.
Preston Meyer 09:09 My family is wonderful. But we're not consistent on our Christmas traditions at all. And I think that's actually probably pretty normal for the population at large. There's a handful of things that we usually do like a gift exchange, which is not specifically tied to Christianity at all. People give gifts that's what you do when you like people pretty often money for Christmas, Preston odd just doesn't have to be for Christmas.
Katie Dooley 09:39 December Preston, that's a secret.
Preston Meyer 09:43 But there is also a narrative in the Bible for Christmas gift giving, which is a lot of the justification for the hyper Christian theists Christmas movement, defenders This sounds like a weird set of words to jumble all up together. But I think you follow that if if you're really committed to the biblical Christmas gift giving still is okay. And so you can't get mad at the people who do it, which is kind of nice. Interesting.
Katie Dooley 10:17 I think it's, it's funny that you say that, you know, traditionally people had, you know, celebrate Christmas as a Christian holiday. I know here in North America, like Christmas and Easter, the two times churches are filled. Because everyone feels like they need to be there on those days.
Preston Meyer 10:36 And that's where the church is, makes it real money.
Katie Dooley 10:39 So my mom was raised Ukrainian Orthodox, and I think it's an interesting take on North America and North American religion and how they celebrate Christmas. But in their house, they called December 25, Canadian Christmas, and that's where you would give gifts and Santa would come. And then they would call January 6, or epiphany, Ukrainian Christmas, and that's where you went to church and the priest would come and it was this very religious thing. So I think that's an interesting take on it.
Preston Meyer 11:07 Right? There's there's my church Christmas and my secular and my
Katie Dooley 11:11 consumerism Christmas. Yeah. So I don't know what that says about Christmas in North America. But I think we can agree that it's not particularly Christian anymore.
Preston Meyer 11:24 Right. I went to Ukrainian school for several years growing up. And I thought it was really funny that there was a joke going around fairly often that the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians, were the smart ones. They had Christmas once everything was on sale. So wonderful. So
Katie Dooley 11:43 I, this always bothers me, and I know it's a tangent for episode. So we have Christmas Day, the 25th, which is the birth of Jesus. And then January 6 is epiphany, which is where Jesus became known to the wise men, or Ukrainian Christmas in the Orthodox Church. Those, everyone, those are the 12 days of Christmas. Those are the 12 days of Christmas, not the 12 days leading up to Christmas, not December 13. That's what those are not the 12 days of Christmas. But the 12 days of Christmas, are from December 25 to January 6, which is epiphany, or 12th. Night, if you're a Shakespeare fan, 12th night is epiphany. And they're traditionally that's the celebration, where you get a dress up and masquerade and be silly, PSA, those are the 12 days of Christmas. If you advertise anything in your business as the holidays Christmas before Christmas, I'll be mad at you.
Preston Meyer 12:40 I think it's really kind of funky. Thinking about how calendars changed to like that the Orthodox Christmas, not just Ukrainian, but the whole orthodox group. They stuck to the Julian calendar when we progressed on to the Gregorian calendar. And so we adjusted their calendars. And we said, Okay, you guys, when you aren't going to adjust your liturgical calendar, we that pushes your Christmas into January. So Haha, you have to remember when your Christmas is now.
Katie Dooley 13:14 Well, and this is I guess this is a good point to make for how Christians Christmas is like theirs their I don't think there's any proof that Jesus was actually born zero on December 21, a long standing calendar changes. And I think there have been at least two calendar changes since his birth. I read years ago, that the closest estimate that they have to Jesus's birthday is actually put it in April.
Preston Meyer 13:43 It's so being a person who worked intimately with the translation of the Gospels, most especially, it was really interesting to go through and really spend a lot of time with the stories and look at the words and whatnot. And the narrative and understanding where especially Luke is getting his information. He's the one who tells us about the census that everyone had to go and be taxed. And that's why Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem. There's no historical proof that there was a census in the years surrounding when it's likely Jesus was born, which makes it a weird thing to have Luke put in the book. But it's entirely possible that he was right. And we just don't have the historical data. But even then, that's not why they travelled to Bethlehem. It was almost certainly a wise move on the part of the government to count people when they have already gathered for a thing. People don't like the government. They're not going to go way out of their way, especially traveling 100 Miles don't get to help the government that don't like this, that's not going to happen. Look at the way people are behaving this year. And people We're not that different 2000 years ago. So I believe they were traveling for already existent Big Deal holiday, a reason when they were expected to go to the temple in Jerusalem, from all over Israel, or Judea and Galilee. And so I feel inclined to say very confidently It was March or April, for the Passover of that year. And of course, the story gets more exciting as Mary is not welcome in the family home because she's pregnant. Joseph says it's not his. Yeah. But that's not where we're diving into the depths of the story. That's not our point today.
Katie Dooley 15:46 I know there are also a lot of other religious figures that have prominent dates in
Preston Meyer 15:52 December, we were looking at one of one of the dates you mentioned, celebrating in this year was the death of a major figure. And now I can't remember what it was or who it was. I was that Xero sauce. Yes, it was definitely. That's our Astromon. Yes, the death of Zarathustra or tsar? Alas, Alastor. You're allowed to say either. Okay, unless I'm way wrong on this, that two names for the same guy based on linguistic differences. Yeah, so birth of Jesus death czar. Alastor. And there are plenty of religious theorists who think that there's some important connections between the development of Christianity and the influence of source Austrian ism. There's
Katie Dooley 16:43 also I mean, there's also we can't ignore the winter solstice is right around this time.
Preston Meyer 16:48 Absolutely. You will, is something that's kind of interesting, I only found out in my study in preparation for this episode of our podcast that we assume a lot of about the origins of you'll and the Yule Log. But we actually have no concrete proof that it predates the Christian tradition. Even though everybody says that it does. Everybody's like, yeah, it comes from the Germanic paganism. And we don't have any evidence for that. But everybody as far back as we can find is like no, this thing that's been going on for a long time, a long time.
Katie Dooley 17:32 It's interesting. You bring up paganism, because there are denominations of Christianity that don't celebrate Christmas, because they believe it's a pagan holidays. Yes. Back to like, we should just say happy holidays.
Preston Meyer 17:48 Christmas isn't exclusively Christian,
Katie Dooley 17:51 not even across the board. So what are some of the reasons that these denominations think it's a pagan holiday? Well,
Preston Meyer 18:00 my favorite is the idea that, Oh, well, Christmas must be Jesus birthday. We've said it often enough throughout history, that that's kind of the focal point of the whole deal. And people like to Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians, whether we've mentioned before, in passing, they both are very opposed to Christmas. Jehovah's Witnesses are also really against Easter. I don't know if that's true about Christadelphians.
Katie Dooley 18:31 I know Jehovah Witnesses celebrate a version of Issei. They call it Passover,
Preston Meyer 18:35 because they call it Easter pagan, because the name is from them.
Katie Dooley 18:44 I know what you're talking about, to have to Google it.
Preston Meyer 18:49 It's bothering me that I can't remember how it was pronounced in that part of the world. You got a star, you've got a star. You've got estar. I don't even know if I pronounced that right. But that's the way it looks like I'm supposed to say it. There's a lot of different gods in that area have very similar names are probably the same person, just cultural shift in the their names. Kind of weird that there's a lot of contention on this part of it as pagan for Easter. But for Christmas, they're just like, No, the whole thing is pagan. Even though there's all the things you need in the Bible to say it's okay to celebrate Christmas. I
Katie Dooley 19:29 read one thing. Is it in your notes? Maybe that Jehovah Witnesses don't celebrate Christmas because they don't celebrate birthdays? Yes. So it's because it's Jesus's birthday. No, and they don't celebrate birthdays. Yeah, and I know Christadelphians don't celebrate birthdays. But I don't know. I don't think that's a reasoning for Christmas. I think it's because Christmas is pagan that might
Preston Meyer 19:51 be like we have to dig a little deeper into that one. My favorite thing about the whole birthday thing though, is so don't celebrate birthday. Is because birthdays are basically the pagan thing that you do to honor the gods. So you honor your God by celebrating his birthday cheeses. The God of the Christians can't celebrate his birthday. No.
20:18 No
Preston Meyer 20:19 birthday either. It's just a little weird. I wouldn't call it a double standard or anything terribly negative. It just feels weird to me that
Katie Dooley 20:31 the Son of God himself is a lot of birthday, right?
Preston Meyer 20:34 Well, you know what, though, that actually does make a little bit of sense. For Jehovah's Witnesses. Jesus isn't God. He's the Son of God, but He is not God. We talked about this before in our monotheism versus Heno theism versus polytheism. For Christadelphians and Jehovah's Witnesses, there is one God and Jesus is the Son of God who is not divine himself at all. So actually, that feels like that lines. Not celebrating the birthday of ourselves. Look at that. You caught us right here figuring it out in real time.
Katie Dooley 21:12 Some other very pagan things Santa Claus and his elves that's checks the elves.
Preston Meyer 21:19 Okay. And there's no reason that either one of them would be in the Bible. Let's be real. The elves definitely pagan. There's no argument against that. That's very non Christian, very
Katie Dooley 21:31 isolated.
Preston Meyer 21:32 Yes. However, could Old St. Nicholas is Yeah, he is a Christian person. He was around about 300 ad ish.
Katie Dooley 21:45 Really good. Katie, St. Nicholas was safe.
Preston Meyer 21:50 What a champ. At least you can keep up. And so he was known for giving gifts secretly to children all the time. He also used to beat people up when they abused children, which is a really fun part of the story that's been shifted a little over to Black Pete I think. Yeah. So Black Pete? Oh, yeah. Having St. Nicholas is slave Black Pete. And, like, a little piece of me wants to just call him, Peter. But there's plenty of reasons not to make it more ambiguous and Christianity. And Black Pete is keeping the information alive. Well, hopefully we've shifted our attitudes. I really hope we've shifted our attitude. I
Katie Dooley 22:40 mean, I was reading last Christmas, some contention over, like Peter and like, fair enough, but we
Preston Meyer 22:48 still have people doing blackface. Yeah, like Peter, cuz there's, that's I mean, we don't have a shortage of black people in our communities that we could say, Hey, you want to be Pete for our Christmas thing this year? Which, I mean, asking somebody does feel a little racist, but it's a lot better than asking your white friend. Hey, we Black Pete.
Katie Dooley 23:11 My mom was beaten by Black Peter. Yeah. Nice. Germany. Cool. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 23:19 I like crumpets a little bit better. Because he's not human. It's less racist. Yeah. I mean, this is obviously awfulness to compass. Oh, but it's not properly racist. As far as I know. Unless there's some backstory there that I don't know that compass is actually one of those horrible, deformed stories of a Jew out to hurt Christians, which is one of those stories that got around a lot.
Katie Dooley 23:46 So back to Santa Claus. Yeah, very popular Christmas tradition that isn't Christian at all.
Preston Meyer 23:52 Yeah, he's just giving gifts not because of any particular calendar necessity, but because he was a nice guy. He showed his love to the kids who needed help, or at least needed some real concrete affection in a very familiar way. So over the course of time, St. Nicholas, St. Nicholas died on us and we kept them alive, kept alive St. Nicholas days early December. So somewhere these dates kind of merged. Yeah, we got lazy and we decided we can only have one bank holiday in December. So
Katie Dooley 24:29 is that lasers that industry has to keep us working? See?
Preston Meyer 24:32 That's a real philosophical question. I like it. I don't have an answer for it. But I like the question.
Katie Dooley 24:43 We have other Christmas traditions that are not Christian. Absolutely. The Christmas tree is not actually a Christian. I
Preston Meyer 24:50 don't think there's any reason to think that it's a Christian thing. Interestingly enough, there's a couple of passages in the Hebrew Bible, specifically warning against using trees in worship, King Josiah did a lot of reforms to the religion right before the downfall of the nation and the exile. And with some of those included tearing down groves that they had set up near the shrines all across the nation that ended up being associated with ASHA, who we talked about before the the mother goddess worshipped in Israel. And King Josiah had these torn down with fear that the worship was wildly inappropriate and sort of worship with trees and that being contrary to approved worship, has the whole philosophy seems to have been dropped with what I believe as a German tradition initially, yes, trees are German.
Katie Dooley 25:55 While the German
Preston Meyer 25:59 they gave us Krampus and Christmas trees, one of those things is far more pleasant than the other. There's definitely loads of hyper localized Christmas traditions. Oh, absolutely.
Katie Dooley 26:09 My dear friend is big on the gnomes as popular in Scandinavia, she has gnomes all over her house.
Preston Meyer 26:18 That sounds great.
Katie Dooley 26:19 That's the only one I can think of. I know there's I know there's more. I
Preston Meyer 26:23 have a couple of friends that collect gnomes. I don't know if they do it specifically for Christmas. But I know that they have Christmas themed gnomes in addition to the rest of their collection. There. Oh, gingerbread houses? I doubt it. I think it's just Germans.
Katie Dooley 26:39 Germans know how to party. Right? Yeah,
Preston Meyer 26:43 it's just a fun thing to do to keep the kids busy. And you know, if a kid can have a chance to make a mess and not get screamed at you know, he's going to jump on it. So gingerbread houses all away. I think I've only ever built three gingerbread houses my whole life. Though it didn't help us here. I did help with a giant gingerbread Colosseum a few years ago. That was so good fun. We didn't have a lot, but it helped a tiny little bit.
Katie Dooley 27:07 We were gifted a gingerbread house two years ago because we wanted a house. And we couldn't get one. Yeah. And the year we were gifted it. We were gifted it at Christmas. So I didn't make it. And I was like, Oh, don't build it next year. And then last year, I was so busy. I didn't make it. So it's still obviously we're not going to eat it. But I still have a gingerbread kit and I'm gonna make it.
Preston Meyer 27:27 Let's be honest, most gingerbread houses you don't eat Cheerio. It's a waste to candy when the candy isn't gonna go bad, but you're not going to eat it after you've put it on.
Katie Dooley 27:37 You always plaster can lead a nibble. Otherwise,
Preston Meyer 27:40 it'd be hugely depressing. But the gingerbread itself very seldom is eaten now.
Katie Dooley 27:45 So maybe let's talk about what the war on Christmas is some examples where it originates from and how because my goal and our goal for the podcast is to mind
Preston Meyer 28:01 the word lottery is to help people understand that there is no war on Christmas
Katie Dooley 28:09 and and maybe why if you don't know you should they happy holidays or you should venture to find out what they what they do you celebrate.
Preston Meyer 28:18 Yeah, absolutely. What is this? If you have friends who don't celebrate Christmas, saying Merry Christmas to them is a little bit weird. Not bad, just weird.
Katie Dooley 28:30 Well, I I will always say thank you. Right. And I think most people would, but again, it's you know, how do we bridge these gaps between people and you know, whether maybe with a stranger you don't give a shit but with your friends like to make that effort to say Happy Hanukkah or Happy Eid or Happy Kwanzaa I think means a lot. And I think that's why is when you don't know
Preston Meyer 28:57 that's, as far as I can tell. The reason why we've shifted towards saying Happy Holidays, is that if you as a Jewish person, keep getting people saying Merry Christmas to you, you feel a little bit anonymous, like nobody recognizes you, and that you're almost invisible in a couple of painful ways, I think. And this the big move to say happy holidays to people is primarily pushed in the retail industry. That's as far as I can tell where it really started coming from because you want people to feel welcome in your shops. Oh, yeah, rat well are all December long. Yeah. And so I mean, even though you're obviously going to be selling Christmas stuff, if you're selling things almost always. There's the need to have all of your customers feel welcome. You don't want to have that slightly alienating anonymity of you have no idea who I am. If you're wishing me a happy this thing that I'll celebrate Yeah, even though usually, like, say Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah to somebody who doesn't celebrate those things, who usually get a thank you and probably the same greeting in return, which, I mean, if I say Merry Christmas to you, you can assume that I celebrate Christmas so you can safely say back to me Merry Christmas presents. But if I refuse to say Happy Hanukkah to a Jewish friend or neighbor or somebody who I know is Jewish, your deck? Absolutely. I'm a bad neighbor and not a friend. And that's, oh, super frustrating.
Katie Dooley 30:39 Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's people out there who think we're being, you know, maybe overly politically correct. But like you said, as an atheist who celebrates Christmas Yeah. To hear family say, Well, if you don't believe you shouldn't be here is exactly that. And I'm not even in a minority. Right? I'm, I'm a white font, we'll call it a faux Christian, right? Because I celebrate Christmas, I sell, celebrate Easter. I don't go to church. I'll eat candy at both instances, is basically what I do. And spend time with family. Yeah, some people say, you know, whatever is definitely isolating. So I can't imagine if you're especially Jewish. In Canada in particular, there's honestly the percentage of the population that's Jewish is very small. It's very small worldwide. I know, two Jewish people. And both are nonpracticing. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to not see yourself represented in the world, especially when it's such a big holiday in your religion,
Preston Meyer 31:55 right? Yeah, Hanukkah is a big deal. Like it's not one of the High Holy Days, but it's kind of a big deal. And it's kind of a bummer that it can go unrecognized. So often, it's very seriously overshadowed by the far more popular Christmas. But if you go into a store and you see a white person, so often now we assume all they must be Christian, we can wish them Merry Christmas, if you see a dark skinned dude with great bone structure. It's not fair to to assume that they don't celebrate Christmas.
Katie Dooley 32:30 Absolutely. Well, we talked about this in our last episode about globalism. And I know white Muslims. I know. Like not just like, pale Arabic people. I know what Muslims, I was gonna say Caucasian, but Arab Arab people are actually Caucasian. Yeah, I know, North American white folk that are Muslim. And I mean, India is a great example of as a nation and you obviously we have a lot of immigrants and second generation people from India, in Canada. India is like very evenly split between Hindu, Muslim and Christian. So you can't I had a job where I worked with three people from India, one was Muslim, one was Hindu. And one was Christian. Nice. And yes, absolutely. It's like, how do you can't assume, right? But so where did the war on Christmas come from? Is this Is it legitimate precedent? You already said? It was bullshit?
Preston Meyer 33:30 Yeah, no, it's It's nonsense. There's no war on Christmas employers, as far as I can tell, based on observation, and I'm going to be honest, not a lot of in depth study, but plenty of observation on just culture and, and reading plenty of employers handbooks, working in retail, the drive to say happy holidays, instead of Merry Christmas is just to make sure that nobody feels like they're being left out a little bit. But you used a word that has gone out of my mind. I said, isolated, isolated. Yeah. I like that word. That it's, it feels also a little bit like you're being pushed to do a thing that you haven't made any commitment to do. I have no interest in doing pretty often. The the need to make a nation homogenized is a problem. Yeah, unity is great. But Unity is a lot better when it can also include diversity. Absolutely.
Katie Dooley 34:38 Well, that's where moderation is important. I think it's also hard to say, especially in North America, that there's a war on Christmas when Christianity rain. Supre right. Maybe in Saudi Arabia, there's a war on Christmas. I don't doubt it. I doubt it. I don't know. But when it's Christianity is the largest religion in the world. It's the most prescribed your religion in the world. And definitely that is the case in North America. Oh, yeah. You Christians have a persecution complex. They said, Yeah,
Preston Meyer 35:12 it's true. I mean, we started off our history in the first century, heavily persecuted, there was this cult that came out of the Jewish religion, and hated by the Jews, because they weren't following the rules. And hated by the Romans, because they wouldn't worship the Roman gods. And it took a couple 100 years, and then the Christians ended up on top a couple 100 years went by, and I almost got squished entirely by the Muslims, and then came back and just leaned real hard on that persecution thing ever since. What's really frustrating, and we'll get into it later on talking about dumb Christian sects. Chris, Christians have been persecuted by other Christians, way more than anybody outside of Christianity has disputed Christians.
Katie Dooley 36:05 I'm reading a book right now. It's not related. Wow. Yeah. So it's about Queen Elizabeth the first and her reign, and there's leave, there's been a few lines in it, where they're like, Oh, God was Protestant today, or God was Catholic today. And I was like, it's like, it makes me laugh. And I mean, it kind of comes back to like prayer and worship and whatever. But it's like, they worship the same God. And he, you know, obviously, Catholics and Protestants are fighting Oh, he decides one side show in one day and the next slide show in the other day. So I like that God was Protestant today, or God was Catholic today.
Preston Meyer 36:43 Make sense? If you want to believe that all of your victories and losses are decided by God. I mean, causes some issues when you look at the Greater theology and cosmology. But it's, it's an easy enough crush for an awful lot of people to lean on.
Katie Dooley 37:00 So I What would you say to someone as a Christian yourself? Who might feel like Christmas is under threat to them? You know, when Starbucks makes their takes Christmas trees off their mugs? Or whatever the fuck they do? I don't even know anymore. Like, what would you say to someone who is feeling threatened? Because they think GRAY Like if? How to Yeah, how do you? How do you bring them? Bring them closer? Well,
Preston Meyer 37:34 first, I'd have to start by asking them how they feel that Christmas is threatened. No, I've never heard anybody say it anybody else. You shouldn't celebrate Christmas, which is a weird thing that I've spent plenty of time with Jehovah's Witnesses. And the presentation has always been, we don't celebrate Christmas. Not you shouldn't, which is a really weird position to hear Christians take because most of us are familiar with the Christians who say you shouldn't have abortions. You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't do that. And it gets really tiring. So having these hyper aggressive Jehovah's Witnesses knock on the door, and being aggressive in their approach, but also actually really reasonable in the delivery is really relieving. But yeah, I've I've never heard anybody say, You shouldn't celebrate Christmas. It doesn't feel like there's a war on Christmas.
Katie Dooley 38:34 I have actually had the opposite and my real job when it comes to Christmas cards when you know, what do you want to autumn? And I've heard I've heard a few I've probably heard two or three people say it has to be merry Christmas. None of this happy holidays bullshit. Right? Like it's Christmas. It's Christmas. It's Jesus. It's Jesus birthday.
Preston Meyer 38:57 Well, if that's what you're sending your Christmas cards to fine, but the attitude still sucks. And honestly,
Katie Dooley 39:04 that's what bothers me more is the attitude behind it that just put Merry Christmas on the card because I've definitely done cards where people just like put Merry Christmas on the karma cool. Merry Christmas on the car. But when it's followed by none of this happy holidays bullshit and like you need to watch A Christmas Carol. Which is a completely secular Christmas story right to just so everyone knows I love
Preston Meyer 39:29 I don't remember. Is it any specifically Christian elements in that movie at all? Or well, okay, I see a movie. I've watched several different A Christmas Carol movies. I have not read the book.
Katie Dooley 39:42 I like reading it. I think at the end when he says he's saved. He does say something like having in the saints be praised. But I think that's about as religious as it gets. But it was England when Dickens was the Live, so it would have been a very Christian. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's still quite a Christian country, the Christian
Preston Meyer 40:04 overtones would have been assumed by the readers for sure.
Katie Dooley 40:08 Do we want to talk about Melania? And the wall, which I think is, I just think this is a funny anecdote.
Preston Meyer 40:16 And it's not even fresh news anymore. But it's new enough, it is this year leading into the preparations for the election.
Katie Dooley 40:24 So I mean, they won't be spending Christmas in the White House
Preston Meyer 40:29 really well. Well, they know it's January 20, is when we got the new president. I guess
Katie Dooley 40:34 that's nice, you know, this house before Chris, right.
Preston Meyer 40:38 But, you know, kicking them out of the house early isn't a huge problem, because Melania didn't want to decorate. She is recorded. And I've read about it. A while ago, back when it was fresh news. I actually didn't bother going and watching the video and hearing the audio until a couple of days ago. Say it out loud press and I have to read it. I know. All right, let's say a word of the First Lady of the United States of America. Melania. Trump actually said and is recorded saying, Who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decorations when talking about decorating the White House for Christmas. And CNN and a whole bunch of others blew up with this news that Melania is leading the war on Christmas, which may have been why Georgia voted against Trump this year. I mean, you have to have offended a lot of the Christians who are already worried about a war on Christmas.
Katie Dooley 41:39 Well, and I that's why I think it's interesting. And obviously she didn't know she was being recorded. But I think it's interesting coming from a Republican First Lady, right? When, and every president ever and probably for a long time still is Christian, and especially a Republican. Christian. It was very interesting to hear
Preston Meyer 41:58 you say you say that, but I know most of the presidents were Christian. There's actually a lot of doubt on how Christian Washington was. Donald Trump has been inside a church. I could lose a finger fingers to count.
Katie Dooley 42:18 Yes, but they all have to put on the
Preston Meyer 42:21 facade. Yes. So and if he does belong to a church, how long he has gone to that church? I don't know. And but
Katie Dooley 42:28 this is a another episode for another day. But we will talk about the No True Scotsman fallacy. So I mean, Trump has Christian who ended the No True Scotsman fallacy, right? Like,
Preston Meyer 42:41 he says he's a Christian. So that's all we can do. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 42:45 So, like you said, another discussion on why Westboro Baptist Church are Christian.
Preston Meyer 42:51 Right. Just, er, I guess that's enough. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 42:55 I mean, it has to be at the end of it.
Preston Meyer 43:02 The problem is just leaning into that fallacy bit a little bit. The people who say they are versus the people who act like they are. One MC is a bad name for the other. Oh, absolutely.
Katie Dooley 43:12 But I it goes back to the story you mentioned in their, in their very first episode of the good atheist, right, so any final thoughts?
Preston Meyer 43:23 Just the idea that there's way too many holidays in December, you shouldn't be making assumptions about people that you don't know very well. I have a good handful of Wiccan friends and other pagans and that I hang out with occasionally, Well, honestly, not this year, because this year is sucked there within my circle of friendly contacts. And there's loads going on this month loads to celebrate. Christmas is just one of many options. And there's a tradition that I noticed when I lived in New Jersey for a little while, they put candles up in their windows. I think I've seen like two houses do that here. And I don't think I ever noticed it before I went away. But there's a couple people to do here. And this, this idea of bringing light into the darkest time of the year is kind of nice for Christians. It's very strictly tied to Jesus, Jesus, the light of the world come into the world for Christmas. And a time when we need that light when it's all dark for so much of the day. It's kind of cool, similar, but wildly different tradition among the Jews of Hanukkah. It's hard because ultimately about the rededication of the temple. But there's an awful lot of emphasis on that fight for the liberty to celebrate their religion that led to the dedication of the temple. And then there's the miracle of the oil which is represented in the lampstand and the candlesticks today have more light. And then of course that you will love we mentioned before that there's still arguments about when we started that and who we stole it from. But light is such a big deal. We like fire a lot. Whole lot. Right? That's what makes us different from the apes who are also using boats and spear fishing. Yeah, 2020 has been a weird year. So fire is great. And whatever your lighting on fire this year to speed with you by the late Middle
Katie Dooley 45:42 Ages Christian Hey, Preston, you know what I want for Christmas?
Preston Meyer 45:50 What do you want for Christmas?
Katie Dooley 45:51 I want. You are congregant to share our podcast with one friend.
Preston Meyer 45:58 They'll be a wonderful gift to me. And to you, I suppose. I would love to have this podcast grow and spread knowledge and factual information and the ability to talk about religious about it. Absolutely. So it's not nearly enough laughter with religion. So
Katie Dooley 46:20 the greatest gift you can give this Christmas is the holy water pot holy watermelon podcast to a friend or family member and it would be a gift to ask him as well.
Preston Meyer 46:31 I agree what a wonderful idea. | |||
| 04 Dec 2023 | Questionable Saints | 00:51:20 | |
There's no shortage of saints with questionable careers, even during their "faithful years." For others, we might be looking at people who never existed. Let's explore more saints who might not deserve such exalted status. We can say with almost rock solid certainty that Saint Vernoica never existed. She is famed for the veil that bears the imprinted face of Christ--in fact, that's how the name Veronica was derived: the TRUE ICON [of Christ]. Nothing about her can be verified, but the veil (certainly a hoax) has well documented travels and miracles. Saint George of Lydda is the patron of several countries and military bodies, but there's some doubt on whether he was real. Certainly, his most famous conquest of the dragon is a fiction, typical of the knightly figures of the middle ages, and nothing more. If the man is real, then he might have been a soldier-martyr under Diocletian, and that--at least--is worth some regard, but the doubt remains--especially surrounding his various forms of attempted execution. To add further confusion around the figure, his popularity among Muslims brought new tales to his martyrdom. Saint Angela of Foligno might have led a misguided life before confessing her Christian faith and joining the Church of Rome, but what's chilling is the possibility that she murdered her family to focus on her religious observances. She certainly liked being in the limelight, so prophecy and theological literature became the new means to that end. Always be suspicious of people who can't handle being out of the spotlight. Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Agnes of Kolkata) was a vicious monster! Even though we've spoken of her before, there's more to say. While Katie might focus a little too much on Teresa's crisis of faith, there's a lot to unpack around how happy Teresa was to see other people suffer. Add to that the fraudulent fundraising she did for the church and you get somebody who was sainted with alarming speed. They're not all bad saints, some of them never existed at all. For more saints that make bad role models, check out our June 2021 episode, "Guess Who's Been Sainted." All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 05 Oct 2020 | In The Beginning | 00:52:16 | |
Is there a better place to start than the beginning? Where did religion come from? Is it inherent in us to be religious? Why does religion endure, isn't it outdated? There's lots of speculation about why and how religion started and why humans continue to be religious. In this first episode of the Holy Watermelon podcast, we discuss the different theories of how modern religion came about. Karen Armstrong’s book A History of God suggests that everyone worshipped a sky god until they needed more deities to explain how the world worked Another theory, described in The Golden Bough by James George Frazer, talks about how we moved from magic to religion and then science. However, we’re in limbo between religion and science. Magic, religion, and science are all ways to organize the world around us. As we’ve found more reasonable ways to organize the world, we move away more from magic and religion. We discuss how there is a pushback on science by some evangelical groups and the resurgence of magic in the last sixty years. Is religion evolutionary? Are humans meant to be religious? Let’s explore.
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[00:00:10] Katie Dooley: Hello everyone and welcome to the first episode of the Holy Watermelon Podcast. My name is Katie.
[00:00:16] Preston Meyer: And I'm Preston.
[00:00:17] Katie Dooley: And today we are going to be talking about the beginning of modern religion.
[00:00:23] Preston Meyer: Well, do we want to talk about the beginning of modern religion?
[00:00:28] Katie Dooley: See, now it's weird. I'm like, "Sure do, Preston." Um, yeah, I guess let's talk about how modern religion started. You got to take the lead on this. Our resident scholar.
[00:00:41] Preston Meyer: So I read a book, well, actually, I pretended to read a book for one of my classes. I read the introduction, which was the book for one of my theology courses called "Thinking About God". It was written by Karen Armstrong. I'm pretty sure.
[00:01:01] Katie Dooley: Oh, she's written a few good books.
[00:01:02] Preston Meyer: She's written a lot.
[00:01:03] Katie Dooley: Her Islam book is very good.
[00:01:04] Preston Meyer: A lot of people really like her, including the professor for that class and the intro for this book that I can't remember the name of off the top of my head right now talked about the idea that before we had all of these various religions that focused on multiple gods before there was this idea of magic, there was this sky God that everybody recognized as being the ultimate God. But nobody worshiped him. They just recognized that he is a creator. He's the sky God. And that's the deal. And they kind of, you know, would occasionally mention him when it was important. Like if something was happening in the skies, it'd be like, yep, that's the dude.
[00:01:49] Katie Dooley: Is it a History of God by Karen Armstrong?
[00:01:52] Preston Meyer: I bet you it is.
[00:01:53] Katie Dooley: Perfect. She writes a lot of great books on religion, so yeah, you'll hear her mentioned multiple times. There's also one called In the Beginning.
[00:02:01] Preston Meyer: That sounds cool. That's like the name of our episode maybe.
[00:02:06] Katie Dooley: Oh no, that's a Christian one. So it's definitely a history of God.
[00:02:11] Preston Meyer: I think it was a history of God. That does sound right. So in A History of God, she talks about this idea of and it's just a theory because there's no historical, concrete evidence that it's true that all people everywhere, or at least an awful lot of them, believed in this sky God without actually worshiping him, which is kind of interesting. Nothing ceremonial at all, but just knew he was there. Definitely recognized that he was a part of their lives. And then later, as the need came up to explain the universe around them, they came up with other gods, which is, I don't know. A familiar cop-out like the tooth fairy.
[00:02:54] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it's much like Santa Claus. How do I get my kids to behave?
[00:03:00] Preston Meyer: Right? Which works for December.
[00:03:02] Katie Dooley: And for, like, I don't know, from the ages of 3 to 10, like seven years.
[00:03:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And then people eventually figure out that Santa is not real. But Santa is real. He just died 2000 years ago. Well, almost 2000 years ago.
[00:03:20] Katie Dooley: That's a different episode.
[00:03:23] Preston Meyer: We can focus on Christmas later.
[00:03:25] Katie Dooley: Um, now, another cop-out from school is the book The Golden Bough, which I haven't read.
[00:03:33] Preston Meyer: I've heard of it. I've never read it.
[00:03:35] Katie Dooley: Maybe we should have read it for this podcast. But it talks about and I remember. Oh, I packed it. We're moving, but I packed it. Um, I remember when I took my introductory religious course, it talks about how civilization has moved from magic to religion, and it was supposed to move from religion to science, and maybe it still will. But we're in this sort of limbo where people still believe in both. But nobody, air quotes, believes in magic anymore. We don't use it to explain the universe.
[00:04:07] Preston Meyer: Which is a thing that I find really interesting, that, you know, if we look at primitive cultures, primitive, air quotes, that like, you know, an underexplored Africa or underexplored South America, you have people who are still very much into witchcraft and anthropologists have assumed for centuries that, well, obviously, because they're not as developed as we are, they represent our history. So we were all like that, which makes some sense. But it's also really hard to prove but it does make for very helpful examination of potential human development and helps us look at where we probably came from and where we ought to be going relative to that. But it's super weird that mostly 60s, 70s, that big hippie countercultural movement, saw a huge resurgence in magic. Wiccans, as we know them today were almost completely nonexistent in the 50s and yet magic is coming back too, for some reason, it may be because religion refuses to die. That's really hard to say. It could just be because people like pissing off their religious parents. And then that tradition continues on. There's a lot of guesses, and the people who really started the movement aren't really open to telling us why and how.
[00:05:36] Katie Dooley: I mean, some of the more modern examples of religion might be a good analysis of how religions come about, but I also find some of them odd in that... I mean, we were talking about Scientology before we pressed record, but, um, L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction author, so I can't extrapolate how someone believes what a 1950s science fiction author that this is some religion or explanation of the universe. And I even struggle with, you know, Mormonism and that we had record keeping in the 1800s. It's something that could potentially be provable but there is no proof. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really know where I'm going with that point. Right. But it, you know things that have stuck in recent centuries, um, maybe a good place to look at how we as a civilization have become religious over time.
[00:06:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I think as it relates to, um, the whole magic religion science thing, one of the biggest things, and this might also explain the resurgence of Wicca and other witchcraft forms, is the idea of authority in science. You have authorities, people who have done lots of testing, who can prove to you this is my claim and this is why you should believe it because water does boil at 100°C.
[00:07:01] Katie Dooley: And it's peer-reviewed!
[00:07:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And so when you've proven yourself to a bunch of people who are also knowledgeable and understanding, that gives you a sense of authority, a very real authority as far as epistemological authority is the word which is just I have authority because I know a thing rather than I have authority because I stab your friends several times with a sword.
[00:07:28] Katie Dooley: As in previous um, centuries.
[00:07:34] Preston Meyer: And so that same sort of epistemological authority is claimed by religious leaders. And historically, let's look at Muhammad, for example. He killed an awful lot of people to show his authority over them and then taught them, having established his authority and then establishing his doctrine after. And there's there's loads more examples than just Muhammad, but he's a really.
[00:08:04] Katie Dooley: I think immediately of the Crusades. Right? Killed a bunch of people and then converted them.
[00:08:08] Preston Meyer: Right. Actually, that's even more recent. So I like it a little bit better. So you've got that sort of religious authority that often came at the point of a sword, but also occasionally in the example of Jesus did not come by the point of a sword, but he just let people know, hey, this is a thing. And the stories are that he healed people and established his authority that way. People were super interested in him because of the cool things he did, instead of the deadly things he did. And then he established his doctrine, which is a little closer to the preferable science that we like. And then magic the authority isn't the same sort of thing that we have with religion and science. You've got people who can accomplish things, and then as they continually accomplish things, they get revered as sages or as shamans or priests or whatever, or often long-lasting just elders and people go to them because they can accomplish things and because they know things, which is usually a lot more respected than authority won by the sword.
[00:09:22] Katie Dooley: I mean, it's probably more long-lasting. It's, you know, keeping your staff happy.
[00:09:28] Preston Meyer: Right? Good management. Right.
[00:09:31] Katie Dooley: It's just good. If you're a boss, keep your staff happy. Don't bully them. So it's a system of organization.
[00:09:42] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. Whatever your religion is. And like we say, magic's not religion. And science isn't religion. They are, uh, religion...
[00:09:52] Katie Dooley: That's our next episode.
[00:09:54] Preston Meyer: ...Is nearly impossible to define in a way that scholars can all universally agree.
[00:09:59] Katie Dooley: But we're going to try.
[00:10:00] Preston Meyer: We're gonna try, and hopefully that'll work out. Um, but religion in its most base etymological meaning is a way of organizing things and binding people together. And whether.
[00:10:15] Katie Dooley: That's, I mean.
[00:10:16] Preston Meyer: And it could be a good thing, it can be a bad thing.
[00:10:18] Katie Dooley: But also like, and we'll get into this next episode. But science is a way to organize the world, and I'm sure I'm not magical. We'll find a Wiccan one day. Magic is the way to organize the world, and probably even more on a personal level. But like your thoughts and how your life is supposed to go, and I'm sure we'll get into topics on things like marriage and children and sex. But even, you know, it sort of dictates that this is the way that makes sense to live your life and then the community and then the world.
[00:10:52] Preston Meyer: Exactly. So the way that that progression model works is that we're finding better, more reasonable ways to organize the world, because it turns out, as far as we can observe now, magic isn't reliable. Um, the old explanation for that is that there's so many intricate details to performing a spell, for example, that you just can't do it reliably when the other half of the argument is magic is nonsense because it straight up doesn't work. Um, and then religion, I mean, for example, the idea that God lives in the skies, we have concretely proven that's not the case. Otherwise we'd have God all over the front of our windscreens on our airplanes. That would be a huge problem. There's there's loads of.
[00:11:44] Katie Dooley: There's no one in the clouds. Right?
[00:11:46] Preston Meyer: There's loads of specific details that are super easy to disprove when you look at a religion, depending on what religion it is, some of them make no specific claims at all, which makes you wonder why they're making any sort of claims at all. And then others make loads of very specific claims that just don't hold up, even internally. When you look at the rest of the religion they've built. For example, um, I can't remember the name of the lady. She was Jesus of the Shakers.
[00:12:18] Katie Dooley: I know who you're talking about!
[00:12:20] Preston Meyer: She said that she was Jesus reborn, and she taught from the Bible at least a little bit. But the Bible does explicitly say that Jesus will come back in the exact same way that he left.
[00:12:34] Katie Dooley: Anne Lee
[00:12:35] Preston Meyer: Said that she was Jesus, even though she denied that she came into the world the same way Jesus left, which was up into the clouds. Mary Dyer was born of a woman. In the typical expected fashion. Head first probably. And so there's already at the very outset of all of her claims, a serious internal consistency issue.
[00:13:06] Katie Dooley: I feel like there's going to have to be an episode on people claiming to be Jesus.
[00:13:10] Oh, there are so many.
[00:13:11] Katie Dooley: I watched a wild documentary last. It was wild, I it was wild. Well, we'll do an episode on it, but that's all I can say. I couldn't... Mind blown.
[00:13:24] Preston Meyer: Back onto our main track. Right. Magic. Science. Religion, religion. Science. Magic. Religion, science. There's this ridiculous norm in the United States, and it's nowhere else in the world, just in the United States, and those cultures heavily influenced by them. So Alberta, for example, a lot of Canada, but not all of Canada start getting. There's a religious objection to all science. Um, most flat earthers are Christians. I don't know why, but most flat earthers are Christians, and most American Christians, especially the evangelicals, will deny almost anything that is published in a medical journal, even if it's peer-reviewed and proven. I think this mostly starts from the idea of evolution has to disprove theology. Um, which I mean, even the Vatican, the Pope has said that. Yeah, evolution could totally be the reality. The Bible doesn't say how God created what lives on the earth. He just says that he did. And to be real, that part of the Bible is meant explicitly for a temple. Short history of the world. Understand where your place is in the world. God is your creator and everything else. So it's all poetical, ritualistic narrative, anyway..
[00:14:58] Katie Dooley: Well, and to jump in the super old movie on the Scopes Monkey trial.
[00:15:02] Preston Meyer: No idea.
[00:15:03] Katie Dooley: I don't remember what's called Inherit the Wind?
[00:15:07] Preston Meyer: I'm gonna Google that real quick.
[00:15:08] Katie Dooley: Google that real quick, Inherit the Wind, but.
[00:15:13] Preston Meyer: Just rely on our trusty editor.
[00:15:16] Katie Dooley: It's, uh. Yes, it's on the Scopes Monkey trial. I don't know if this was actually said in the Scopes Monkey trial. Um, or if it was just dramatic for Inherit the Wind. But the lawyer debating in favor of teaching evolution in schools says the Bible doesn't say how long the first day was. It could have been 10 million years.
[00:15:34] Preston Meyer: Well, especially since in the narrative in Genesis, the sun isn't created yet. To say that a day has to be 24 hours when there is no visible sun to rule. The night and the day is super weird.
[00:15:49] Katie Dooley: So absolutely. It's it's poetic. It's again, it's a way to organize and answer questions people have without having the tools we have now to explain it. Yeah, but back to your point on evangelicals believing.
[00:16:05] Preston Meyer: They will deny science at just like if you use the word science, it gets a whole bunch of people all worked up and their amygdala fires off, that they're being threatened because they perceive a war between science and religion. And an awful lot of scientists believe that that war is absolutely validated because most of their experience with religious people is crazy Christians who deny science, which is a problem.
[00:16:35] Katie Dooley: Well, I mean, we're definitely seeing that now. Absolutely. We're recording this on in 2020 because I don't actually know when it's gonna come out. So what I want to date ourselves. But recording 2020 in the middle of the, uh, coronavirus pandemic and the US has hundreds of thousands of cases. Uh, there's.
[00:16:56] Preston Meyer: More than 100,000 deaths.
[00:16:58] Katie Dooley: Yes, they have over 100,000.
[00:17:00] Preston Meyer: In just the United States.
[00:17:01] Katie Dooley: Um, and I mean, obviously, some of this is political and political policies. They don't have universal health care. But, you know, when you're being told to drink bleach, um, that is definitely a or not wear a mask or not social distance. That's definitely a science problem where people are listening to the experts.
[00:17:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And it's more Christians. And I'm going to pick on Christians here.
[00:17:24] Katie Dooley: He's allowed to. He is.
[00:17:24] Katie Dooley: I am a Christian, but I am not one of those Christians who is anti-science. And I feel no guilt picking on the anti-science Christians. They need to realize that science is a body of knowledge, as well as a method of proving that knowledge, which means there's loads of things that science will never prove. And there's lots of things that science will prove.
[00:17:52] Katie Dooley: I guess it's the problem comes from taking and and correct me as a religious person. Um, but taking everything as literal truth that when it gets contradicted now you can't pivot or else your entire world crumbles apart.
[00:18:10] Preston Meyer: There's there's loads of Christians. Um, so in from 2009 to 2011, I was a missionary actively teaching full-time every day of the week and no day job to support me. It was actually kind of nice to not have to worry about a job apart from teaching. I dealt with an awful lot of people who genuinely believed the Bible was written by God. Which I mean, if you've opened the book, that becomes very obvious that that's not the case, um, which actually is a segue into a cool topic for another day hoodoo, which is like voodoo, but not actually.
[00:18:47] Katie Dooley: I just heard this term recently. Yeah, I've never heard it before. And so it was on the internet. So I was being mocked for getting calling it, um, like a geographical formation. And then she shared the Wikipedia link to Hoodoo, and I was like interesting!
[00:19:02] Preston Meyer: So, um, to me, the most interesting, magical, um, groups are Voodoo and Hoodoo. And do you know the difference?
[00:19:11] Katie Dooley: Who don't because I didn't read that Wikipedia article.
[00:19:13] Preston Meyer: So Wikipedia article is quite lengthy and goes into loads of detail. Cliffs notes Hoodoo is Protestant to Voodoo's Catholic.
[00:19:24] Katie Dooley: Okay, yeah, okay.
[00:19:26] Preston Meyer: But not exactly like that one didn't break off from the other. Voodoo is... Voodoo is Catholic. Oh, Voodoo comes primarily from Haiti, which comes from Africa and exists because of Catholicism. In fact, it's the best example of what Catholicism is, because it takes an existing system and melds it into a new theology. So the voodoo had all these gods that could do all these crazy things and help people out a lot, and then when they said, okay, now you're Catholic, they're like, okay, so we have all these saints who have an awful lot of similarities with these gods, which is exactly the way they did it in Rome, not even the tiniest bit different. The Saints have just been amalgamated into these gods. And so sometimes I'll keep an old name like Baron Samedi. And sometimes, actually, that's not even a terribly ancient name. That's a French name. They'll and sometimes they'll have a new name like Saint Brigid, who is definitely an amalgamation with a previous Brigid. Kind of convenient that way. Names are the easiest way to amalgamate people, but sometimes you'll take aspects instead. And so you've got this multi-god saint Voodoo and they're really into dealing with the gods just like Christians, just like Catholics are way into dealing with saints. And we'll talk about what worship is a little bit later, because there's no valid claim that the praying and dealing with saints is not worship. Um, Hoodoo is directly derived from the same sort of magic people dealing with Protestants. They don't have saints. Protestantism is very anti-saint and or at least anti the model of Catholic saints. Yes, that's not good grammar. But I said what I said and so they, these magical people who are Hoodoo, they see the Bible that these Protestants wield and they declare great authority by having the book because you know, they never read it, just like the Hoodoo, almost never read it,
[00:21:55] Katie Dooley: Just like any religious person. Oh, there, there, I said it.
[00:21:58] Preston Meyer: There are way too many Christians who have no idea what's in the Bible. I actually had a conversation two days ago with a lovely fella. I never actually met him, but he's a relative of a friend of mine and we had a chat over Facebook, which is by its very nature very prone to explosion. Uh, he and I both did a great job of remaining civil. And then I ended the conversation when he said, there's nothing you can say that can change my mind. And I said, thanks for the conversation and goodbye. Essentially. Uh, but he was 100% convinced that the early Christian church had no interest in communism. And then I pointed to him the exact spots in the Book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles where God or the church killed a family for not voluntarily being part of this communist system. They were told to sell their property. They did sell their property, but they kept a bunch of the money to themselves and only gave a little bit to the church. They were killed for it. That is forced communism. And when I explain that to him, uh, he didn't like that at all, and I couldn't change his mind. It was very frustrating. But there's loads and loads of Christians who have no idea what's in the Bible.
[00:23:20] Katie Dooley: Well, and I mean, this is going to be probably a multi-part episode when we do tackle the Bible, but I, I mean, even if you have read the Bible, there's, I mean, dozens if not hundreds of versions of the Bible, plus your own personal interpretation. Well, we'll get there.
[00:23:39] Preston Meyer: There are hundreds of textual variants in Greek that we have more than 100 translations in English of the Bible.
[00:23:45] Katie Dooley: Somebody I was somebody had it in their Instagram bio. They had I don't remember what it was, but they had cited a Bible quote and I was just curious what it was. So I just put it in and googled it. And the website I found had every different version.
[00:24:02] Preston Meyer: Bible Gateway is a great tool.
[00:24:05] Katie Dooley: That's probably exactly what it was, and I just couldn't believe the variations from passage to passage, like totally different meanings. So yeah.
[00:24:14] Preston Meyer: So um, the Hoodoo, like many Christians, use the Bible just as a totem or a talisman. It's a beating stick as much as it's a thing to be read. Um, you can go into coastal United States along, along the east, and you'll find houses where there's Bible pages pasted behind the wallpaper for its protective powers.
[00:24:42] Katie Dooley: I'm remembering that comedian we saw that was beating the globe with a Bible to flatten it.
[00:24:52] Preston Meyer: For some reason, just the use of talismans and totems is incredibly ancient, that, um, that we've found loads of passages of scripture written on a piece of paper nail stuck through it and worn around the neck or in a pocket or thrown into a well as curses or protections to help people. And so Hoodoo and Voodoo are, for that reason, my favourite kind of magic community type thing, because they illustrate that really well, but also illustrate in a slightly alien way, the very natures of Catholicism and Protestantism. Yeah, that's more or less what I remember from there, The Faith Instinct. Do you want to talk about that?
[00:25:38] Katie Dooley: I do want to talk about The Faith Instinct, because I still don't know if I agree with you.
[00:25:43] Preston Meyer: Sure. That's fine.
[00:25:44] Katie Dooley: So I read a book called the Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures. So it was basically in the book saying that we are religious because of evolution. So just like we have two eyes and two hands and people average between 5 and 6ft tall, it's all evolutionary. And some of it was very interesting and some of it I disagreed with. Let's maybe start on the parts that I, I could wrap my head around, and then we'll get into our fight. We won't fight. Um, it talked about how it was used as a system of organization, especially for nomadic [00:26:34] peoples like this is tens of thousands of years ago. Like [00:26:37] this is pre-Christian, pre-Roman. Um, this sky daddy, you were talking about, um. And how do you organize a society to behave a certain way for, for the betterment and survival of all? The book compared religion to language, which I disagreed with, and feel free to jump in at any time, but it's that he sort of said in the book that, uh, even if no one taught you how to speak, if your mom didn't sit down and go, mama, you would learn how to speak eventually. And that religion was the same, that if no one sat down and taught you religion, you'd be religious anyway. Which I disagree with because I wasn't sat down and taught religion and I'm not religious.
[00:27:22] Preston Meyer: I disagree with both of those two points.
[00:27:24] Katie Dooley: Well, we'll get there and I am reminded, um, Ricky Gervais, the actor who's I relate to him because he's, he's like me and that he is an atheist, but he will protect you. He's happy to protect your right to be religious. Um, but he has said that, like, if kids weren't taught anything until 18, we'd have a way fewer religious people running around. But I see you're wanting to say something. So let's jump in.
[00:27:53] Preston Meyer: What was, where was...
[00:27:54] Katie Dooley: I was talking about speech and how that is evolutionary. But if someone doesn't sit down and teach a religion, you probably obviously there are exceptions to the rule. I'm sitting with one, but you probably won't be religious.
[00:28:07] Preston Meyer: See my definition of religion that I mentioned earlier.
[00:28:10] Katie Dooley: Okay, let's let's. Keep it in terms of organized mainstream religion,
[00:28:16] Preston Meyer: If nobody teaches you to worship a specific god, you're not going to start doing it out of nowhere. That doesn't that doesn't make sense. It doesn't logically follow that you have to have somebody tell you that this individual is worth worshiping. It's a lot harder when that being doesn't exist. So somebody's going to have to tell you. Now, if you know, Odin all of a sudden is real and isn't just a mortal man, but a god, and he comes to you and displays his power, you're probably going to start worshiping him. So there is that. Absolutely. You do need to be taught religion to be part of that religion. But as far as the whole authoritative leadership of an organized group, I mean, we straight up can't survive without it. Evolutionarily speaking, we absolutely do need to be religious in that aspect.
[00:29:10] Katie Dooley: Yes and but that can come as simple as your mom or dad's the boss, right?
[00:29:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah in fact, that's usually the deal.
[00:29:16] Katie Dooley: Yeah. It's usually how we learn it. And if your mom and dad's boss happens to be God, then yeah, cool. But if you're not, then I think it's a lot harder to fall into organized religion, and I guess, I mean, I'm, I, I know there's plenty of exceptions to that rule. I'm sure there'll be an episode on cults where perfectly normal people get pulled into something. But yeah, I think, you know, if you're not taught that, you know, there's someone watching your every move and things that I personally roll my eyes at. But you know, this person, this sky daddy cares that you're having sex before you sign a piece of paper. Um, then you probably won't care, right? And then it's on our outline, and I know we disagree on this. The book also said that our set of morals come from religion, and I can see this in a very, like, long term scope. You know, the ten, you know, prehistoric that, you know, you steal my corn from me and then I die. And now I don't like you because my kids are dead because they didn't have enough to eat. Like, I can get that from a moral standpoint, but I don't necessarily see how, uh, more modern religions in the last 2000 years affect our morals, because there's some really terrible stuff in all of the books, like don't I'm not picking favorites here. Yeah, but that, that teaches morals. Like, yeah, there's a lot of good stuff, but there's a lot of bad stuff. And I just don't see how, like, I don't see how that is something that we've been able to muddle through without. Like I said, long term. Oh, you killed my husband. I'm sad like, now like that's where your morals come from. But, you know, it's in the early books of the Bible. You can throw in your citation because I don't know about where the girls get their dad drunk and rape him. Like I almost threw up reading that one. I was like, well, this is so gross. So how do you separate that from, you know, don't covet and don't?
[00:31:27] Preston Meyer: Why should we separate it from that? Story is not told as a good example of what people can and should be. It's it's meant to be a horror story.
[00:31:35] Katie Dooley: Okay, good. Because there's really not a lot of context around it.
[00:31:39] Preston Meyer: No, it's it's really weak in the context area. There's a Lot and his wife and his daughters leave a town while it's being rained on by hellfire. And they happen to survive, except for the wife who turns into a pillar of salt, which obviously chemically makes no sense at all. And so the wife dies. It could be some narrative tool to describe something else. Who knows? The wife dies. Lot and his two daughters whose names I can't remember off the top of my head. Go hide in a cave and think they're the last people on Earth and there is no part of the Torah that says it's okay for a man to sleep with his daughters. It is specifically and explicitly forbidden. The girls do it anyway because they're dumb, and think that they need to repopulate the Earth with their very limited gene pool, because apparently it worked twice before.
[00:32:35] Katie Dooley: Now we're all mouth breathers.
[00:32:36] Preston Meyer: So it's a horror story that happens to be scripture. But yeah, no, I've heard a lot of people think that that's actually meant to be a good role model story, which.
[00:32:52] Katie Dooley: I mean, I definitely don't think it's that, but but I guess my is, you know, there's not a lot of context, right? They don't say this is bad. You shouldn't do it. They just say these girls get their dad drunk and rape him.
[00:33:05] Preston Meyer: But, um later on in the story, lot does wake up and say, what the hell are you doing? This is a terribly sinful thing. Why have you done this to me? So there's that little bit of helpful context that is not strong enough.
[00:33:22] Katie Dooley: Well, yeah and then, I mean, if you think thou shalt not kill, there's a ton of killing in the Bible, right? So, like I said, I can see long term prehistoric for the survival of people, you know. Yeah. Don't kill people, don't rape people. It fucks them up and makes them...
[00:33:40] Preston Meyer: Basket cases in almost every case.
[00:33:43] Katie Dooley: Right. Um, you know which which I mean, this is terrible. This is really just boiling it down to its roots, but makes a less productive, less healthy society. Um, yeah. So again, over a course of time, I can see how it shapes our morals. But I don't think because I am not a Christian, I am immoral. And I also didn't have my Christian friends tell me, like, Katie, you shouldn't steal. You shouldn't lie. Like that was fucking Sesame Street.
[00:34:13] Preston Meyer: Right, but if you compare the Christian Standard to, say, the Viking standard, it's okay. Even encouraged to go out and rape and plunder and take what you want from other people because they're other.
[00:34:26] Katie Dooley: Well, and they're religious people. So, you know, do we do we get our morals from religion.
[00:34:32] Preston Meyer: Your morality is informed by your worship. Entirely. And now worship used in the broad sense of things that you deem of worth, things that you deem of value. You've got people who worship themselves. So literally it doesn't matter what it is, if it's not me, it doesn't matter. I'll take what I want. That's my morality. Then you've got people who are very community focused. If it doesn't help my community, it is evil and that's a lot more palatable. But you swing that just a tiny little bit over towards Nazism. If it doesn't help my Aryan community.
[00:35:15] Katie Dooley: My people.
[00:35:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, then it's evil. And that's how you get very dangerous concentration camps and.
[00:35:22] Katie Dooley: But but again, back to religion. And in the modern context. Yeah, you have Christians that are very moral.
[00:35:33] Preston Meyer: And Christians that aren't,
[00:35:35] Katie Dooley: And Christians that... You get Westboro Baptist Church and 1 in 7 Catholic priests. Yeah. So what you worship, they're all worshiping the same thing.
[00:35:45] Preston Meyer: Or at least say they are.
[00:35:47] Katie Dooley: Um, and they all have vastly different ideas of what their morals are. And again, as someone who's an atheist who didn't go through church, I know it's not okay to pick at soldiers funerals. I know it's not okay to touch altar boys inappropriately. I would never be in a situation near an altar boy as an atheist. But, um, like, I know these things are wrong, and these are people who are leaders in their community and they're doing it so...
[00:36:14] Preston Meyer: Most of our Western standard morality, which is very different from the Greek morality that we like to pretend we model ourselves after, like Socrates defended the preservation of slaves, not the not preserving them, like keeping them alive, but just keeping them as slaves. Yeah, the secular morality that we're very familiar with is absolutely the born from Protestant morality. Our public schools come from Protestant schools and they just stop talking about God, but still kept teaching all of the same things. And then we started adding science and things started getting even better.
[00:36:55] Katie Dooley: Or worse, depending on your perspective
[00:36:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I mean, as science develops, there seems to be a greater and greater divide between American Christians and people who actually pay attention and understand science and are smart.
[00:37:11] Katie Dooley: Ooh! Shots fired. We're gonna get some hate mail.
[00:37:15] Preston Meyer: There are loads of American Christians who aren't stupid, but I feel like they're outnumbered by the ones who are. But everything that we call secular life is very tightly connected to what used to be the Protestant norm. Even the idea of keeping your religion private and not display it out publicly was a Protestant practice that is dying a little bit among evangelical communities, for example. But there's also political morality, things that have a motivation of ruling people rather than of binding people together that's not terribly different, but I guess not quite the focus of this discussion.
[00:37:59] Katie Dooley: Another episode.
[00:38:00] Preston Meyer: But is also incredibly complicated. So it's it's definitely not fair to say, oh, you're an atheist. There's no way you could possibly be moral. That's nonsense. The Christian majority on this planet has done an excellent job of imposing good morals on people, while also doing a terrible job of illustrating them on a regular basis.
[00:38:19] Katie Dooley: Or enforcing themselves.
[00:38:21] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. People have frequently proven that they are terrible at self-government.
[00:38:30] Katie Dooley: Shopping carts,
[00:38:31] Preston Meyer: Right? Shopping carts are probably my favorite example. If you can't be trusted to put a shopping cart where it's supposed to be parked when you're done with it, where where do you think you belong in society?
[00:38:44] Katie Dooley: Put your shopping carts back, people, if you're listening to this,
[00:38:47] Preston Meyer: Right. That's why. That's why they implemented the stupid token. Throwing a quarter, throwing a dollar thing into the little push thing to unlock it so that you have to put it back to get your dollar back. And people still don't do it.
[00:39:00] Katie Dooley: That's also a conversation in economics, which is not this podcast, but...
[00:39:04] Preston Meyer: But yeah, there's there's loads of atheists who absolutely are good people.
[00:39:08] Katie Dooley: Keep talkin'.
[00:39:10] Preston Meyer: There's actually a great story. Um, it's attributed to an old rabbi almost a couple of thousand years ago who was approached by a student and he said, God created everything, right. And the rabbi is like, yeah, God created everything. He created the plants, the animals, the air that you breathe, everything that you need to live and the kids like and and everything is good, right? So the rabbi is like, well, yeah, it's all good. It's meant to be a blessing to everybody in the world. And the kid's like, well, what about atheists? Which I mean, sounds... If you stop the story here, it's like, well, obviously there must be an exception to the rule. Atheists are terrible, right? And I mean, their experience in first century, second century Mediterranean atheists were almost always terrible to anybody who believed in God called barbarians, even though actually a lot of barbarians were just enjoying a different theology. Atheists were considered dangerous. They didn't answer to anybody. And so it's a very real concern for this little Jewish kid. And the rabbi has the best explanation ever. He says that atheists exists to make the faithful better.
[00:40:24] Katie Dooley: Oh, I like that. I like warms my little heart.
[00:40:26] Preston Meyer: Right? But but it's it's even more complicated and deeper and more positive than that, that when something terrible happens, you have so many faithful, faithful air quotes who will happily say, I will pray for you and hopefully God will help you. An atheist isn't going to say that one because it's a stupid thing to say. Even a properly faithful person should realize that that's a stupid thing to say. And so the rabbi explains to the kid that an atheist isn't going to say, I'll pray for you and send you on your way. He's going to do what he can to help you because he knows no one else will. And so in a time of hardship, you should think to yourself, what would an atheist do? An atheist is going to help. And so as a faithful person, the rabbi says to the child, you should pray that God will help, but then get off your ass and do something about it.
[00:41:25] Katie Dooley: They said ass in the first century?
[00:41:26] Preston Meyer: I'm paraphrasing a whole lot. I don't have this text in front of me. It's cool to read the story the way it's written, but I am paraphrasing a lot. But you've got I haven't found any biblical translation that meets my criteria, but Paul absolutely said shit in the New Testament we just translate it into a softer language because we don't like to have people swearing in church all the time. But so that that idea that the rabbi teaches the kid about atheists, I think is really helpful, that there are loads of atheists with good morality. And sometimes you have to pretend just for a moment that God isn't going to help.
[00:42:09] Katie Dooley: We'll do a full episode on atheism at some point, just like everything else.
[00:42:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah we can't leave that out.
[00:42:16] Katie Dooley: No. Well, we might lump it in. We're gonna break down all all the religions, the big ones in the coming weeks so that we have a foundation to do the rest of our episodes off of. Um, maybe we'll throw it in there.
[00:42:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So back to that, the morality thing, and I think I had mentioned it a little earlier, there's this idea that might is right, it's still popular today. You still see all over the place somebody who wants to argue with you and they're willing to fight you physically to show that they're right, which makes no sense at all. If somebody wants to beat me up because I think the world is a globe instead of a disk, there's no correlation between the two. I might lose that fight. That doesn't mean I'm wrong about the world being a globe but that is a method of establishing authority, which again, religion is in a position where that's a lot of their history and magic, only a tiny little bit. And science, not at all. That's not the basis of their authority at all.
[00:43:25] Katie Dooley: It would be hilarious to have scientists punching people and I'm sure some scientists want to punch people.
[00:43:32] Preston Meyer: Oh, absolutely. If you watch enough Bill Nye, you know that he is fighting the urge to be violent. Not all the time, obviously, but definitely sometime.
[00:43:42] Katie Dooley: Definitely sometimes.
[00:43:45] Preston Meyer: I watched part of a really intense debate between Bill Nye and some theologian down the street.
[00:43:53] Katie Dooley: I pulled that up because I wanted to. We were sort of talking near it, and I, uh, yeah, didn't get to bring it up, but it was Bill Nye and Ken Ham back in 2014, and...
[00:44:04] Preston Meyer: And neither of them got anywhere with the other guy.
[00:44:06] Katie Dooley: No, but I remember Bill Nye saying that I think it was one of the last questions. I don't know, but I really stood out to me. And the moderator asked, what would change your mind? And Bill Nye said, proof and Ken Ham said, nothing. Uh, which I think when we're talking about, you know, evangelicals and, and objecting to science like that, like that blows my mind, right? If Bill Nye had proof that creationism was real, he'd be like, yeah, creationism is real and to not budge like that, like that keeps us in the dark ages. And I think long term that will hurt religion, whatever religion it is. You know there are other religions that take firm stances like that. Um, but I think in the long term that will hurt religion as we learn more and as we I just as we become more aware of others.
[00:45:08] Preston Meyer: The religions that are going to find the least conflict in the development of science are going to be the ones who make no specific claims at all which they exist. The idea of them growing while making no specific claims is bewildering.
[00:45:30] Katie Dooley: But I guess in some ways that's like, let's just sweep it under the rug and then every person can decide for themselves what they believe. But yeah, once I take a firm stance on like, science isn't real, that sounds so wrong to say will will shrink because.
[00:45:46] Preston Meyer: Science is getting pretty strong.
[00:45:48] Katie Dooley: Well, it's getting strong. And we're, you know, having some real world examples of, you know, coronavirus on scientists are saying one thing. We're ignoring them and people are getting sick and dying.
[00:46:00] Preston Meyer: Well, you've got all these faith healers, especially the big televangelists who make a show of these fancy healing miracles they're happy to do on their stage with actors. They're not going to hospitals and healing people who are dying of coronavirus. You've got some people who say, well, it's just God punishing people. So of course I'm not going to go in there and help them which is nonsense. Like that's I don't know if you could come up with a more self-destructive evil position to hold than coronavirus is meant to be a punishment from God. Perfectly reasonable people who I don't think it's safe to say are the worst of sinners are dying. While very terrible people are not.
[00:46:45] Katie Dooley: I don't know where my brain's going with this, but did we explain the beginning of Modern Religion? We talked around it a lot.
[00:46:53] Preston Meyer: We did talk around it a little bit, didn't we?
[00:46:55] Katie Dooley: But basically it was used to organize society. It developed into more magical things. Then it got more organized and developed a set of morals that we sort of still live by. But I'm a good person, even though I've never been to church. Yeah, is my thesis statement.
[00:47:16] Preston Meyer: Yes. Your position of you can be moral without being religious is 100% correct, but I am disinclined to believe that morality is going to pop up in a vacuum. Okay, I use that that sentence wrong. Morality is a nonsense word in itself without a qualifier.
[00:47:37] Katie Dooley: That's true and it's something we'll never know because there's always been some sort of religion guiding people.
[00:47:45] Preston Meyer: Absolutely and so it's almost like it's just a mental exercise.
[00:47:49] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I, I'm thinking far too hard for a Sunday afternoon at this point, but any last thoughts on...
[00:47:56] Preston Meyer: The Golden Rule is a wonderful thing. It's taught by almost every major religion. Well, it's taught by every major religion and most minor religions. The idea that if you don't want somebody to be a dick bag to you, maybe you shouldn't be a dick bag to them.
[00:48:14] Katie Dooley: Well, and that's that's where I think morality could have developed if we and again, it's sort of a ridiculous idea because there's always been some sort of deity. I think morality could have developed without religion because stuff sucks, right? Like I said, if you killed my husband, I would be very upset and I would know how much it would hurt someone if I killed their husband or loved one or, you know, same with theft or.
[00:48:45] Preston Meyer: But revenge and demands for justice are also pretty great with strong arguments to support them even.
[00:48:56] Katie Dooley: Give me one.
[00:48:58] Preston Meyer: Well, say you kill my wife. Would it not be just for me to exact the same sort of suffering upon you? The Golden Rule says don't do that even though justice says no, you totally deserve it.
[00:49:12] Katie Dooley: Fair and this then turns into an interesting offshoot of capital punishment and religion, because often people in favor of capital punishment are religious.
[00:49:23] Preston Meyer: Usually. Usually. I mean the Bible. The Torah specifically says that capital punishment is appropriate. The interesting thing about an eye for an eye is that it's really easy to look at it from our perspective, where that's worse than what we have now. But when that was given as a law, it was actually far more generous than what was normal. Like, if you stab me in the eye in Egyptian era Israel, it was totally acceptable for me to kill you, which is extreme, extreme escalation. And then it got moderated in the days of Moses, and it got moderated even further in the Christian era by this idea that you need to be more merciful, you need to be better than your enemy.
[00:50:19] Katie Dooley: But I...
[00:50:20] Preston Meyer: Morally better rather than...
[00:50:22] Katie Dooley: Can't go back 2000 plus years. But I imagine keeping society in line when you don't have modern day police forces and lawyers and judges.
[00:50:32] Preston Meyer: Put the fear of God in them.
[00:50:33] Katie Dooley: Well, the fear of God in it. Yeah, fear of God. And the fact that my eye is gonna get stabbed out probably keeps people in line. And, I mean, there's examples of countries like Singapore that have really high penalties. Um, and you can go to a mall in Singapore and have money pouring out your purse will still be there.
[00:50:33] Preston Meyer: Because you're worried about your hand getting cut off.
[00:50:51] Katie Dooley: Because you're worried about your hand getting cut off. Yeah. So it's probably yeah, I mean, these are all just ways to moderate people's behaviors in society. And I mean, the golden rule is probably the most humane.
[00:51:04] Preston Meyer: It's the one that's the easiest to understand. The reciprocal imperative is very straightforward. If I don't want to get hurt, don't hurt somebody else. It's the economics of self-preservation. But also it's a really good way to deal with the world around you.
[00:51:26] Katie Dooley: I mean, I guess an eye for an eye is the golden rule, just a little more gory.
[00:51:31] Preston Meyer: It's slightly more enforced.
[00:51:33] Katie Dooley: Yeah, right but, yeah, do unto others, as you had done to you. I guess it would be the.
[00:51:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:51:41] Katie Dooley: This is a little more proactive.
[00:51:43] Preston Meyer: It is. And that is ultimately the intent of our new understanding of the golden rule versus the eye for an eye. It's yeah meant to reduce that violence rather than aggravate.
[00:51:56] Katie Dooley: That's all for our first episode of the Holy Watermelon Podcast. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a five-star review.
[00:52:04] Preston Meyer: Peace be with you. | |||
| 11 Sep 2023 | Tomorrow is a Later Latter Day | 00:53:19 | |
If you think you know Mormonism, this one's for you. We examined the origins of the Latter Day Saints last month, and now we're taking a look at the men that led the Mormons in various divisions. There was a nonet of splinter groups that left the early Mormon Church before the assassination of Joseph Smith, but some of them shouldn't really count, since they disavowed everything Joseph taught, and they had no interest in the Book of Mormon, but there were a couple who broke away because they believed what Joseph taught, but believed he was a fallen prophet. After the succession crisis and the Great Mormon Schism, Brigham came out on top as the leader of the largest faction, and he took his party to the Salt Lake Valley, but several groups splintered off to avoid Brigham, while others splintered off much later to keep Brigham's vision alive forever. We're exploring the history of the Bickertonites, the Strangites, and the Smith-family branch formerly known as the RLDS, now called the Community of Christ. (The name change came right after the leadership was separated from the Smith family.) We also look at the FLDS and their ilk, though they deserve greater attention in a later episode. What makes the Brighamite Majority LDS Church in Utah different from the others? The biggest difference is the Latter-Day Saint Temples and the secretive Endowment, so we get into that, too. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshirt. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 15 Aug 2022 | Apes Together Strong | 01:06:53 | |
Fascism has earned an ugly name over the last century, no question about it. Some religions lean into it, some look forward to a day when it can be openly celebrated, especially in monotheistic traditions. This week, we're exploring what it really means to be inside, to see fascism differently than what history has shown us. Straight out of the mouths of Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco, we examine the difficulty in defining fascism, and why some Christians are taking advantage of that obscurity. We get a little help from Umberto Eco and Stanley Payne in our efforts to delineate the nature of the beast, but few organizations hit all the landmarks--watch out for the ones that do. Ultimately, when it comes to religious groups throwing their hats in with the fascists, as we see all around the world today, it's up to every good person to stand against these fundamentalist authoritarian parties while it's still safe to do so. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
Sinclair Lewis: “When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”
[00:00:18] Preston Meyer: We don't usually record this early.
[00:00:21] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I thought you were going to say something. You did.
[00:00:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:00:24] Katie Dooley: Yeah. No, we don't record this early. And you can tell on this episode of.
[00:00:31] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast
[00:00:35] Katie Dooley: Everyone can hear our morning voices.
[00:00:36] Preston Meyer: Yum, yum.
[00:00:39] Katie Dooley: We're ready to roll.
[00:00:40] Preston Meyer: We'll see.
[00:00:42] Katie Dooley: So last episode we talked about.
[00:00:45] Preston Meyer: Communism.
[00:00:45] Katie Dooley: Communism. Why are we talking about this episode?
[00:00:48] Preston Meyer: Today we're going to talk about fascism.
[00:00:50] Katie Dooley: The opposite.
[00:00:52] Preston Meyer: I mean, they're not opposites. They're on two different spectrums. Communism is an economic policy that leans into politics in other ways. A little bit. Fascism is a governmental style that occasionally includes economic policies. And just like last time when we talked about communism, we brought it around to validate its presence on our podcast. And fascism does a really good job of pushing its way into the religious sphere.
[00:01:28] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say it's like self-validating.
[00:01:31] Preston Meyer: Uh, the vast majority of Christians are patiently waiting for a world where everybody will kneel at the throne of a single God, one that is painted as darkly totalitarian in several Christian traditions. And this looks a little bit fascist in some situations. So before we get into what that looks like in the religious sphere, I think we do need to talk about fascism in general. And if we're not describing you personally, we're probably not talking about you. A lot of people get their heckles up about fascism. It's a word that gets used as a weird pejorative. An awful lot more than it should. Yeah, a lot of people just don't like the word fascism because, you know, the fascists were the enemies during the Second World War. And that's actually the only association that a lot of people have with the word is fascists are the bad guys without any understanding why. So very few.
[00:02:32] Katie Dooley: To the point where some people don't even realize that they themselves are a fascist.
[00:02:35] Preston Meyer: Correct. Because they don't understand the word. They don't recognize what it means.
[00:02:40] Katie Dooley: I think Steve Rogers would really be really upset with the state of America right now.
[00:02:44] Preston Meyer: That definitely played into his representation in the MCU that when we first see him, he's got the star on, he's got the stripes. His second movie, the Winter soldier. There's no red in his costume anymore, and the star disappears by the third costume, and he becomes a lot less Captain America and more Captain Rogers.
[00:03:07] Katie Dooley: The Cap.
[00:03:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:03:09] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Now I gotta go back and watch him. Yeah, I was thinking about that while I was researching.
[00:03:14] Preston Meyer: And he never introduces himself as Captain America.
[00:03:17] Katie Dooley: Ever?
[00:03:18] Preston Meyer: Ever.
[00:03:19] Katie Dooley: I believe it because Steve was a humble man.
[00:03:21] Preston Meyer: He really was.
[00:03:22] Katie Dooley: Anyway, I digress.
[00:03:26] Preston Meyer: Unfortunately. So this whole deal of fascism is just a label for the bad guys. It's a lot like communism. It's thrown around willy nilly, and it's it's kind of weird that a lot of people are comfortable with a lot of the ideas of fascism without liking the word for this reason, because ultimately it's like Caesar said in the new Planet of the Apes movies. Apes together strong. Really. You know, strength through unity. And if you've watched V for Vendetta, unity through faith is a big part of fascism.
[00:04:04] Katie Dooley: So the word as we know it today comes from Italy. In the heat of the First World War, built around the idea of strength through unity, as illustrated by the fasces, an axe in a bundle of rods or a bunch of arrows bundled together, like in Spain and the US. Italy and Spain turned away from fascism after the Second World War, but America continues to use the symbol and the rhetoric.
[00:04:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that bundle of arrows is still on American money as it's printed today.
[00:04:30] Katie Dooley: Interesting. I didn't even know I had to look up that symbol, and I didn't know it was on American money.
[00:04:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's not the exact same bundle of arrows that we saw in Spain, but it is a bundle of arrows.
[00:04:42] Katie Dooley: That's what it means. Yeah, cool. Germany didn't bother coming up with their own symbol for fascism, but they embodied it so well that Hitler's Third Reich is the only fascist entity most people can name today.
[00:04:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. You talk about fascists. Almost nobody today thinks of Italy or Spain.
[00:04:58] Katie Dooley: Sometimes I think about Mussolini.
[00:05:01] Preston Meyer: Okay. That's good. You're. You're ahead of the curve.
[00:05:03] Katie Dooley: Thank you. I like to think so.
[00:05:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The tricky thing about fascism, like religion and communism, as we talked about before, is they're a little tricky to define. Political scientists, historians, policy analysts and sociologists are still having a hard time with this, even though it's been around for a hundred years. It's probably not a problem that's going to be quickly solved. Whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry summarized it as far right, authoritarian ultranationalism, which is kind of broad. That describes a lot of different things. There's some wiggle room there.
[00:05:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and there's always perspective, right? And I mean, hopefully without doxing ourselves, I think our listeners know we're in Alberta.
[00:05:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:05:47] Katie Dooley: And so our left wing National Democratic Party in Alberta is the farthest right national Democratic party in the country because we're in Alberta, and if they were any further left, they wouldn't get elected. They still barely get elected.
[00:06:01] Preston Meyer: One time.
[00:06:02] Katie Dooley: Like one time. Uh, and even seats they have like, what, ten? Right. So there's like spectrums within spectrums. So what one person thinks is right, someone will think is far right, which someone will think is center, because the NDP here should get called commies a lot. And like I said, they're as far right as an NDP party can be.
[00:06:19] Preston Meyer: What? Yeah. Calling them communists is.
[00:06:22] Katie Dooley: Incorrect.
[00:06:23] Preston Meyer: It's absolutely ridiculous if you actually understand what the word means.
[00:06:28] Katie Dooley: Well, yes, but that's for our upcoming political science podcast, which neither of us are qualified to talk about. Okay.
[00:06:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:06:38] Katie Dooley: That's not coming. Unless you want it to drop. Drop something in the discord.
[00:06:43] Preston Meyer: We'll see how that goes. So Thinking of how we can define fascism. It's a little tricky. Benito Mussolini, the first guy to use the word, is the leader of the Italian fascist movement, gave us a nice long speech to describe what he thought fascism should be. He said political doctrines pass. Nations remain. This is the century of authority, a century tending to the right, a fascist century. If the 19th century were the century of the liberal individual. This is the collective century, the century of the state. The fascist concept of the state is all embracing outside of the state. No human or spiritual values can exist. Thus understood, fascism is totalitarian and the fascist state, a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values, interprets, develops and potentiates the whole life of a people. Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his imminent relationship with a superior law, and with an objective will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. Whoever has seen in the religious politics of the fascist regime nothing but mere opportunism has not understood that fascism, besides being a system of government, is also, and above all, a system of thought. That's creepy.
[00:08:11] Katie Dooley: That sounds very 1984 George Orwell.
[00:08:14] Preston Meyer: Well, he beat George Orwell to it by many decades, right? But George Orwell in 1984 was describing the world that George Orwell saw existing. It wasn't a prophecy of the future. It was the world he knew.
[00:08:27] Katie Dooley: Fun fact that is all dystopian novels.
[00:08:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah pretty much yeah.
[00:08:31] Katie Dooley: No, that's actually they're literally just describing the worst parts of the current world. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, have fun reading your dystopian novels now, everyone.
[00:08:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. If if you can imagine it, there is somebody living it in some detail. I mean, if you want to talk about flying cars, we got a problem there.
[00:08:49] Katie Dooley: But that's not dystopian in and of itself.
[00:08:52] Preston Meyer: No.
[00:08:53] Katie Dooley: The problems in a dystopian novel, the dystopia of a dystopian novel.
[00:08:57] Preston Meyer: The societies that we see in any novel exist in real life in broad strokes. But like we said, fascism is hard to define. So I want to swing over to the next couple countries over. Spain had their own idea of fascism. Uh, Francisco Franco, famously the leader of the fascists over there.
[00:09:18] Katie Dooley: What a great name for a fascist. Fascist Francisco Franco
[00:09:22] Preston Meyer: right?
[00:09:22] Katie Dooley: Franco Francisco, the fascist Francisco Franco, the fascist. Said that wrong.
[00:09:29] Preston Meyer: You'll be alright.
[00:09:29] Katie Dooley: What a great name.
[00:09:31] Preston Meyer: Anyway, Frank.
[00:09:34] Katie Dooley: Frank.
[00:09:35] Preston Meyer: Frank said, wherever it manifests itself, fascism presents characteristics which are varied to the extent that countries and national temperaments vary, it is essentially a defensive reaction of the organism, a manifestation of the desire to live, of the desire not to die, which at certain times seizes a whole people. So each people reacts in its own way according to its conception of life. Our rising here has a Spanish meaning. So, like Franco explains. And it's not that his explanation is functionally useful. It does play well into our point that what we're talking about is really hard to pin down. Fascism is not wildly different every time we see it, but it varies a fair bit.
[00:10:21] Katie Dooley: Well, and I think this is the problem even in, you know, we see in Germany in the 30s and 40 is it's so hard to define it escapes detection.
[00:10:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:10:32] Katie Dooley: Before it's a problem.
[00:10:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's really hard to identify until it becomes an obvious threat to the population.
[00:10:40] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:10:41] Preston Meyer: Which is why you have so many people, apart from just ignorance, denying that there is fascism here in North America and that it's gaining it's roots because it's been here a while and tiny little steps are harder to recognize for a lot of people.
[00:10:57] Katie Dooley: It's like cult indoctrination, which we're going to talk about right away. Right? Where it sounds reasonable. And that was absolutely Hitler's politics, where it sounds reasonable, especially at a time of high inflation and national widespread poverty. It sounds reasonable. And then it becomes not reasonable butit's you can't see it anymore. I mean, I just read I Am Malala Malala's book. She was shot in the head by the Taliban.
[00:11:25] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:11:25] Katie Dooley: Probably a decade ago now. And she was like 14 when she was shot in the head. And that was a really interesting part of her story, is like she and her dad are like, is nobody else seeing this happen to Pakistan? And I was like, yay, the Taliban! And they're like, gahh. And then she got shot in the head, and now she's a super famous speaker and philanthropist. She survived.
[00:11:50] Preston Meyer: I have to assume that if she is.
[00:11:53] Katie Dooley: I read her book. Yeah, I read her book post... Yeah.
[00:11:57] Preston Meyer: Anyway, okay, that kind of sucks. Surviving a shot to the head.
[00:12:01] Katie Dooley: Uh, yeah. She said like, a dozen surgeries.
[00:12:03] Preston Meyer: So there's an Italian scholar named Umberto Eco. Uh, he gave us a pretty good list of things to watch out for back in 1995. So we've had this list for a while, and we're just not doing anything about it, apparently. But his checklist is actually really solid. So all these things are things that you can expect to be features of fascism, some to a greater extent than others, in different iterations of the phenomenon. The first is the cult of tradition. Umberto says that when all truth has already been revealed, no new learning can occur, only reinterpretation and refinement. This tends to include cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. And as you go, as we go through this list, I am thinking about how we see this in religion. I remember when I was 18 or 19, talking to a guy that I knew through the church and came up that I was reading other religious texts that weren't in our canon. And he was really stressed out about that. He was like, no, that's not okay. And there's there's a lot more good things out there than our short list of books, buddy.
[00:13:21] Katie Dooley: Well, and why is it not okay?
[00:13:23] Preston Meyer: Right? It's. He couldn't explain it.
[00:13:25] Katie Dooley: I love that argument because it's like, well, it'll take you away from the faith. That's often a reason. It's like, well, then our faith must not be very good. If a couple books can.
[00:13:33] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:13:34] Katie Dooley: Can change my mind.
[00:13:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:13:37] Katie Dooley: Or you're only a half assed believer if a couple, right? So either way.
[00:13:41] Preston Meyer: Right. Is it a loss?
[00:13:43] Katie Dooley: Yeah. If that's what's going to happen, then that's what's gonna. You're not preventing anything. I digress.
[00:13:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but this is a a serious phenomenon. That is a problem in some groups. I don't think I can I don't recognize this particular detail in a lot of fascist movements, but I guess Hitler was pretty stuck on the old ways.
[00:14:07] Katie Dooley: I mean, thinking about what's happening now. We had a conversation with family this week and they were saying some very, not very nice things about, you know, gender pronouns and, oh, some of that stuff. And they were. And this family member said, oh, and they were talking, we're in Canada. So, you know, Eskimo versus Inuit. And this family member said, are we just supposed to unlearn everything we learned in school? And I was like, yes, yes we are. When we get better information, yes. I'm like nodding furiously at this microphone, I was like, yes. When we learn new things, we throw out the things we no long leach people? Did you know that? Someone learned that in school.
[00:14:52] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Stop putting leeches on.
[00:14:55] Katie Dooley: Stop putting on leeches.
[00:14:55] Preston Meyer: People.
[00:14:57] Katie Dooley: So that's I guess that's sort of one example where perhaps the older generation is starting to feel attacked, air quotes and are leaning more into these traditions that, you know, is it we all we don't eat meat on Fridays. No, but it's some of these identity things.
[00:15:15] Preston Meyer: Well, even just the more obvious parts of science, it's we're learning more things. Stop repeating the things that are misleading or have obviously been disproven. And like, if we're teaching five-year-olds this new science that we've actually known for a couple of decades, and we've actually been able to simplify it so that we can teach it in kindergarten, because we were learning about planets in kindergarten back in the days of Galileo. That wasn't the thing that teenagers were talking about.
[00:15:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:15:45] Preston Meyer: Traditions. Umberto's next point is the rejection of modernism. He says the rationalistic development of Western culture since the enlightenment is seen as a descent into depravity, though fascist regimes show off their industrial might as proof of the virtue of their system as well. So there's some mixed messaging here. Technological modernism. Cool. Moral modernism. Bad.
[00:16:13] Katie Dooley: Which is funny because most moral modernism is just like ancient morals that we forgot about because of the church.
[00:16:19] Preston Meyer: In many cases that is the case. The next one is cult of action for action's sake. He says that the idea that action is a value in itself should be taken without intellectual reflection. Don't think about it, just act. This is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, which we have been seeing grow rapidly and dangerously in North America. And I'm sure in other parts of the world too. But my scope isn't over there right now.
[00:16:49] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Action for action's sake. That doesn't even sound productive. That sounds super culty.
[00:16:55] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:16:56] Katie Dooley: That is super culty not sound. It is super culty.
[00:16:58] Preston Meyer: Keep you busy so you're not thinking because we cannot afford to have you thinking about things. Anti-intellectualism is super important. We saw the fascists in Germany hunt down the Freemasons in addition to many other groups that they were abusing. This is a problem.
[00:17:14] Katie Dooley: Burning books, yeah.
[00:17:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Umberto also says that this also manifests in attacks on modern culture and science. Get rid of the good literature. Get rid of the the Jewish science, as the Nazis called it. Yeah. Problem. Next on his list. Umberto has disagreement is treason. The idea that you can't think independently. That is authoritarianism. We talked about this in our cults episode last year. Umberto says fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning because there are barriers to action, not because you might deviate and do the wrong action, but because thinking keeps you from doing the thing. Weird position to hold.
[00:18:02] Katie Dooley: That's actually that's one of those ones that, on the surface, sounds kind of reasonable, because we all have been in that moment where we're overthinking a decision, and at some point you're like, I should just pick something or...
[00:18:15] Preston Meyer: That's fair.
[00:18:16] Katie Dooley: You know, as a business owner, people who overplan and don't execute, right. I've known tons of I call them wantrepreneurs. Wantrepreneurs who plan and plan and plan and plan and plan their business but don't actually do anything to execute their business. So that's actually one where I'm like, oh, that kind of kind of makes sense.
[00:18:36] Preston Meyer: Until you take it to the extreme.
[00:18:37] Katie Dooley: Until you absolutely until you take it to the extreme where and they even say, like, if you're, you know, building habits, like just doing just do it and then everything else will come after.
[00:18:47] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:18:47] Katie Dooley: So anyway.
[00:18:49] Preston Meyer: I've definitely heard people talk about religion that way. Just just do it. You'll get it. You'll you'll start believe. That's a weird way to do it. Oh well. But there's a little bit more than this barrier to action. Umberto also describes it as a thing that's connected to fear, that you'll notice the contradictions that are part of this syncretistic new cultural faith. So it's a little bit of the other thing, but mostly that barrier to action. And the next point he brings up is the fear of difference. We have all seen xenophobia. That's a real issue. Fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants. And I've been doing a little bit of reading specifically in this field recently, and a lot of times growing up, it always sounded like Hitler hated the Jews because of their faith that they were singled out, because they weren't Christian, because he did lean into the Christian thing a little bit for a little while. No, he hated the Jews because of they were a different race in his perception, had nothing to do with what they believed about God or religion. It's just, I mean, either way, it's still othering, but it's kind of a weird little detail.
[00:20:15] Katie Dooley: There you go.
[00:20:16] Preston Meyer: Next on our list, we have an appeal to the frustrated middle class. I know too many people who I who think that they're super special, who are definitely in what we would call the middle class, the working class. And they are terrified of immigrants. And you can guess which way they vote. And their loyalty definitely bumps up against fascism. It's really creepy.
[00:20:49] Katie Dooley: I never understand sort of this white supremacy stuff where it's like, when's it gonna matter? You know what I mean? I remember watching a video on YouTube and someone was like, in whatever some dick white supremacist was like, well, I'm trying to keep America pure for my grandchildren. I'm like, you're gonna be dead. Who cares if she marries a BIPOC.
[00:21:12] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:21:13] Katie Dooley: You're not gonna know.
[00:21:14] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:21:14] Katie Dooley: How does that affect you?
[00:21:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's the real question. Why does it matter?
[00:21:21] Katie Dooley: Anyway.
[00:21:22] Preston Meyer: What value does that have?
[00:21:24] Katie Dooley: It doesn't.
[00:21:26] Preston Meyer: Doesn't have any value. Oh no. Somebody's got a tan. If you were that worried about the whiteness of your skin, you wouldn't go outside.
[00:21:41] Katie Dooley: Uh oh. I don't go outside, but that's for other reasons. I have a desk job.
[00:21:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, another really interesting thing is the obsession with a plot. Umberto says this obsession with a plot and the hyped up threat of a looming and exaggerated enemy is a really important. This combines xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society, such as the German fear of the 1930s Jewish population. That there's always got to be this story that elevates my people. And obviously a good story has an antagonist. So there's somebody around us who's really holding us down and keeping us from progressing towards our goals. And that person is definitely local.
[00:22:30] Katie Dooley: Definitely a Jew. No. I'm kidding. Sorry.
[00:22:34] Preston Meyer: Ouch.
[00:22:35] Katie Dooley: It's not, it's not.
[00:22:36] Preston Meyer: It's really not.
[00:22:38] Katie Dooley: But it all. All conspiracy theories come back to that, though.
[00:22:41] Preston Meyer: I mean, the vast majority, I won't say all conspiracy theories go back to anti-Semitism, but.
[00:22:48] Katie Dooley: A lot of them.
[00:22:50] Preston Meyer: A distressing majority.
[00:22:54] Katie Dooley: This one, this next point, we were seeing so much in North America. And it drives me crazy. We see it all the time for Prime Minister Trudeau that he is both simultaneously incompetent and an evil mastermind, right?
[00:23:11] Preston Meyer: This is the worst dictator who can't.
[00:23:13] Katie Dooley: He's such a dictator, Covid's planned and he's so incompetent.
[00:23:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Like I don't love our our prime minister, but I have a much more realistic perspective.
[00:23:27] Katie Dooley: Yes, yes. So anyway, Fascism's enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.
[00:23:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:23:33] Katie Dooley: So please listen to your friends and family, talk about your political leaders and see what kind of rhetoric they're using. Because this is coming up a lot. Like a lot, a lot. On the one hand, fascists played the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
[00:24:00] Preston Meyer: Those people there, they're so powerful but we'll overpower them. You can't have it both ways.
[00:24:08] Katie Dooley: Those Dungeons and Dragons players, they're so popular, they can't be kicked out.
[00:24:14] Preston Meyer: Uh, Dark Dungeons. What a ridiculous movie. I love it.
[00:24:21] Katie Dooley: Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy because life is permanent warfare.
[00:24:27] Preston Meyer: I mean, white supremacism, white supremacy. Yeah. White supremacism really leans into this. That if. What if you stop fighting against the others? Because I don't want to pick out one race. If you're not white, you're you're the other.
[00:24:42] Katie Dooley: Bipoc is a great term.
[00:24:44] Preston Meyer: Sure. It's, uh, I hate it. It's ridiculous.
[00:24:48] Katie Dooley: So there must always be an enemy to fight. You touched on this. The principle leads to a fundamental contradiction with, in fact, within fascism, the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war. So, and this is great... Question mark. Um, they're always othering someone. So even if they've taken care of, then they'll just find someone else and they'll find someone else and they'll find someone else until they come for you.
[00:25:13] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. Yeah. There. We don't know who was going to be the next race on Hitler's terrible list, but luckily, we didn't get that far.
[00:25:24] Katie Dooley: Thanks, Captain America. See how I've brought the episode full circle?
[00:25:31] Preston Meyer: Very nice.
[00:25:32] Katie Dooley: Thank you.
[00:25:35] Preston Meyer: Uh, Batman did some Hitler punching, too, yeah.
[00:25:38] Katie Dooley: Nice to keep up with Captain America.
[00:25:41] Preston Meyer: I don't know who did it first, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was Captain America. I don't know. Back in the good old days, popular comics had everybody fighting the national enemy. It just makes sense.
[00:25:55] Katie Dooley: Great, I love it. The next point is contempt for the weak, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic, popular elitism in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. They encourage leaders to despise their underlings up to the ultimate leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force. That's creepy.
[00:26:19] Preston Meyer: A little bit, yeah. I don't know. It's. Fascism sucks.
[00:26:23] Katie Dooley: It's very aggressive.
[00:26:24] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:26:26] Katie Dooley: Everybody is educated to become a hero. Which leads to the nationalist cult of death. The hero is impatient to die in his. In his impatience, he sends other people to death. So we see this with the Taliban and al Qaeda suicide bombers. Even Japan a little bit.
[00:26:41] Preston Meyer: I mean, this is it's a little bit of a problem here in Canada.
[00:26:45] Katie Dooley: I mean, I was.
[00:26:46] Preston Meyer: Going to say American armed forces.
[00:26:48] Katie Dooley: I was going to say the American Army is very like.
[00:26:51] Preston Meyer: This is their cult.
[00:26:52] Katie Dooley: If I don't know where you're tuning in from, but a lot of people think Canada and the US are similar. We are so different. Once you know, and the US and pageantry is like the biggest difference, like it always surprises me when I'm flying a US airline when they're like military, please board first. We do not do that in Canada or on Canadian airlines.
[00:27:14] Preston Meyer: I don't know what this obsession with getting on the plane first is, but I love watching Americans fight for this right. And then you just sit there and wait in a different in a different, tighter tube than the hotel open space. Not the hotel, the airport open space. And then people push past you and bump you while they get to their seats. How is that desirable?
[00:27:38] Katie Dooley: Also, because I've had so much luck flying, being stuck on an airplane that is not moving is the worst.
[00:27:46] Preston Meyer: It sucks.
[00:27:46] Katie Dooley: So you absolutely want to be the last person on the plane.
[00:27:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:27:50] Katie Dooley: I have been just like I've sat on the tarmac for hours before and they don't blow any air because the plane's off. One time they let us disembark because it was going to be hours. But yeah, if I know the plane's just going to sit there forever, I absolutely want be the last one on the plane.
[00:28:07] Preston Meyer: Right? The only advantage that I see is the knowledge that you're not going to miss your flight.
[00:28:15] Katie Dooley: Or if you're a window seat, because then I won't want people climbing over me. Or sorry, if you're an aisle seat, I wouldn't want people climbing. No, if you're an aisle seat going last, or if you're a window seat going first.
[00:28:25] Preston Meyer: I don't know if I'm going on last and if I have to climb over people. Sure, it might be a little awkward, but at least I'm not the one with the ass in my face.
[00:28:31] Katie Dooley: That's true. It's your ass in their face.
[00:28:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Go on last. It's win-win. If you are the policy makers for airlines, make some changes. Wow. Expanding on this idea of everybody is educated to become the hero. There's the idea of machismo. Yeah.
[00:28:54] Katie Dooley: Whuh!
[00:28:57] Preston Meyer: Machismo brings the work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists, then have only intolerance and condemnation for nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality. Anything that's not strong heterosexual male style.
[00:29:16] Katie Dooley: Missionary style!
[00:29:16] Preston Meyer: I mean probably definitely no Amazon position for these guys. So that's all of this added to a actual serious hatred for women. And I mean, I've watched enough Trump rally footage to see that the women who show up to these often hate women. It's very messed up.
[00:29:39] Katie Dooley: Mhm.
[00:29:40] Preston Meyer: It's you know, it's so girly that even that that's an idea that is really endorsed in this movement.
[00:29:49] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:29:50] Preston Meyer: It's ridiculous.
[00:29:52] Katie Dooley: Then we have selective populism. The people conceived monolithically have a common will distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, The leader declares himself to be the interpreter of the popular will, so he must stand in as a dictator. Fascists used this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions. They accuse of no longer representing the voice of the people.
[00:30:17] Preston Meyer: Kind of like the Capitol riots on January 6th last year.
[00:30:22] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Where we thought this was faked, and I'm pretty sure it was not.
[00:30:28] Preston Meyer: What a disaster.
[00:30:30] Katie Dooley: Right. Newspeak. This comes straight from 1984.
[00:30:34] Preston Meyer: It does.
[00:30:35] Katie Dooley: Newspeak. Fascism. Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
[00:30:42] Preston Meyer: Mhm. And I've heard people argue that being politically correct is Newspeak. Let's go through that. That description, how he describes Newspeak again employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning. If we ask you to you to stop saying Negroes and start describing people more individually, more faithful to their origins, more faithful to their real identity.
[00:31:14] Katie Dooley: How they would like to be called.
[00:31:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's not an impoverished vocabulary. And, I mean, we can come up with all kinds of extra words to replace the words that we're trying to get rid of. But if they're not the words that people want, why are you doing it?
[00:31:31] Katie Dooley: This goes back to the family conversation we had last week in pronouns. And, you know, we're a little bit, you know, transgender people changing their names. And this comment of like, why are we calling people all these different things? I was like, well, we don't call you fat white lady. We call you by the name you want to be called.
[00:31:49] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yep. It's that simple.
[00:31:53] Katie Dooley: I saw a great meme. It was basically like people get all their hackles all up about having to Having to use different pronouns for people. And it's like you think misgendering someone isn't important until you call a straight white man a she. And then then they get it.
[00:32:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:32:14] Katie Dooley: God. Excuse me.
[00:32:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah. Address the bouncer at the club who's obviously roided out of his mind, ma'am. And see what happens.
[00:32:23] Katie Dooley: Have a good night, ma'am. You will die.
[00:32:27] Preston Meyer: Uh, trans or not, you're gonna have a real hard conversation. That's not just gonna be words. So Umberto was talking about fascism, but hopefully, as we went through this list, you can see how some of these principles are really well espoused by churches.
[00:32:47] Katie Dooley: I mean, the tradition Newspeak, every I mean, every group has their own lingo.
[00:32:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Which is different.
[00:32:54] Katie Dooley: It is. There is a point where it hits into the BITE model of speaking.
[00:32:59] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:33:00] Katie Dooley: Yeah. No, I mean there's a lot that it's very easy to see an extremist religion groups.
[00:33:05] Preston Meyer: Mhm. So yeah. So 1995 Umberto Eco gave us this great list. And the same year Stanley G. Payne gives us a much shorter guide to identifying fascism. He gives us the idea of fascist negations. Basically there's a handful of things fascists definitely are not. So fascists are, generally speaking, anti-liberal. The liberals are too individualistic, which is, I don't know. When I think of liberals, I usually think of people who are, you know, looking for a better society, but they're all are also after their individual rights.
[00:33:44] Katie Dooley: It's they're coming for a better society. But I definitely see what he means by this and that. Like, people want their own pronouns and their own. Yeah. So there's.
[00:33:55] Preston Meyer: Individual freedom.
[00:33:56] Katie Dooley: Right? Exactly. So, yeah, you know, we talk about this romantic spectrum and the sexual spectrum and a gender spectrum. So yeah, we're breaking starting to break this binary. I was like, there's A or B and that's I mean, even 15 years ago you were straight or you were gay. Nothing in between. You were a man. You're a woman. Nothing in between. So, yeah, there is this sort of individualism of, yeah, you know, you can be a she/they you can be a they/them, you can be a he/they you can.
[00:34:22] Preston Meyer: You got options.
[00:34:23] Katie Dooley: Yeah. You got lots of options. So that I can see from the individual listing perspective.
[00:34:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Fascists are famously anti-communist. Communism is too egalitarian. And fascism sometimes will talk a little bit about egalitarianism for a short time. It is mostly a recruiting technique.
[00:34:45] Katie Dooley: I was going to say it's like this weird like group thing. Right? So in that, in that way you'd think or, you know, strength through unity, so it kind of kind of leans into this egalitarian idea but...
[00:34:56] Preston Meyer: Communism is where the community owns everything together.
[00:35:00] Katie Dooley: Exactly.
[00:35:00] Preston Meyer: It's not socialism. Not so much. And fascism is very seriously opposed to this idea. So when you describe somebody who's pretty close to center as communist as a pejorative, you are announcing yourself to be at least leaning into fascism, if not fully committed. Mhm. But fascism is also pretty anti-conservatism because the conservatives aren't right enough. They see themselves as separate and obviously far superior.
[00:35:40] Katie Dooley: We're starting to see this.
[00:35:42] Preston Meyer: Oh yeah. Yeah. If anybody's telling you that you're Conservative Party, whatever name it goes under isn't far right enough.
[00:35:53] Katie Dooley: Red Flags! Ding ding ding. Ding ding ding ding.
[00:35:57] Preston Meyer: But there are some specific fascist goals that are maybe a little bit more helpful. The creation of a nationalist dictatorship. Big red flag. If you've gotten that far. It's already too late.
[00:36:09] Katie Dooley: Start organizing underground.
[00:36:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Usually this is to regulate economic structure for the fascist governments that we have seen actually leading a country. Usually it's controlling the economic structure, which is different than socialism. In a few important ways. But the the socialist part of the national socialist movement, that was Nazism, they were socialists to the point that they had a good war engine going and that's it. Their war machine was the only socialist feature of the entire program, apart from let's let's help Germany and help the German people by, you know, destroying the non-Germans in the nation. That's not socialism.
[00:37:02] Katie Dooley: No.
[00:37:04] Preston Meyer: Uh, I once had a guy tell me that socialism was what made the Nazis bad. Not fascism, not nationalism. It was their socialism. I was just like, you have no idea what you're talking about. And you clearly reject reality to the point that we cannot continue this conversation.
[00:37:22] Katie Dooley: Sir, can you please define socialism for me?
[00:37:26] Preston Meyer: It's it was a ridiculous conversation, and I'm glad it was short-lived. This dictatorship that we see in the fascist goal also is intended to transform social relations with a modern, self-determined culture. Favoring a single race is usually the deal, and it is a feature, not a bug, That if you really want to have united people, you need to start looking the same. According to this ideology, some parts of Canada and some parts of the United States do a really good job of being united where hey don't look all the same, and that's cool. Other parts of the world do it much better than we do.
[00:38:09] Katie Dooley: Oh boy.
[00:38:10] Preston Meyer: Which just proves that this idea is fallacious. And then the last fascist goal that I have here on Stanley's list is that the conversion of the nation into an empire is super important. Usually this includes ideas of expansion. Mussolini really wanted to rebuild the Roman Empire. Hitler wanted to control all of Europe. And I had an interesting conversation with a friend this week that if things had gone just a little bit differently, if if peons hadn't made a couple of false steps, maybe the axis powers could have actually ruled the entire Eurasian continent. That would be bad news. And I'm glad things went the way they did in the Second World War. Mostly there are some things that are pretty shameful, but for the most part, it turned out.
[00:39:03] Katie Dooley: Turned out okay.
[00:39:04] Preston Meyer: Well for us in Canada anyway. And then Stanley talks about fascist style, that a political esthetic of romantic symbolism and political liturgy is really important. The pageantry you were talking about in America very much resembles what we see here. Mass military mobilization. Big problem. And I mean, if you want to overpower your political enemies, this is a good way to do it. Positive view of violence like we talked about that. Well, Umberto mentioned this, and Stanley has this really succinct statement, positive view of violence.
[00:39:44] Katie Dooley: There's a lot.
[00:39:45] Preston Meyer: It feels gross to say.
[00:39:47] Katie Dooley: But Catholic Church, the Taliban, gun control in the United States. That's right, I said it. Yeah.
[00:39:54] Preston Meyer: Well, just the number of times you hear the phrase 'you want to fight', I mean, these people are looking for violence. It's not that everybody who says that is a fascist, but this idea is really valuable to fascists. And of course, that machismo, that promotion of masculinity, but also the idea that youth is super important is really, I don't know. Yes, we're we're pretty ageist all over the place.
[00:40:21] Katie Dooley: I was just reading a stat that ageism is the most, like, air quote acceptable form of discrimination.
[00:40:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah pretty much.
[00:40:29] Katie Dooley: And it's terrible.
[00:40:30] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:40:31] Katie Dooley: Anyway
[00:40:32] Preston Meyer: And of course charismatic authoritarian leadership is the fascist style.
[00:40:38] Katie Dooley: There's definitely overlap between fascism and cults. And then obviously that heads into religion.
[00:40:43] Preston Meyer: And authoritarianism is the thing that binds that all together. But it's a real problem.
[00:40:50] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Well, we don't have a singular definition for fascism for everybody that that we agree on. We have a solid checklist of things to help us when we see it. And this is the same with religion. We can't really define religion. But there's a few key characteristics that if you follow, you're probably a religion. Or you're probably a fascist.
[00:41:11] Preston Meyer: Those things that if you've been paying attention, you can you can recognize it when you see it.
[00:41:16] Katie Dooley: Yeah. It looks like a turtle and smells like a turtle. It's a fascist dictator.
[00:41:22] Preston Meyer: I like it.
[00:41:22] Katie Dooley: Thank you. I don't know why I picked on turtles. I'm so sorry. To our turtle listeners.
[00:41:27] Preston Meyer: Well, there's a merch idea.
[00:41:29] Katie Dooley: Well, I have a little mustache. I mean, saluting.
[00:41:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:41:36] Katie Dooley: Turtle heil. That's terrible. I can't make that. You can't have people walking around with that one.
[00:41:45] Preston Meyer: No, that would be a problem. That would be a problem. I don't think that would sell.
[00:41:49] Katie Dooley: No, we'd get kicked of Spreadshirt.
[00:41:51] Preston Meyer: Not to the people that we want to be making money from anyway. Anyway, fascist movements are usually born from despair, often caused by increased disparity and the disappearance of the middle class. Make that middle class fight back and really claim their spot. And so that they don't, of course, disappear into poverty. And this is what we saw in Italy. That's what we saw in Spain. That's what we saw in Germany. That's what we're seeing in North America today.
[00:42:20] Katie Dooley: So then, of course, I came off. I came upon the term theocracy in our research. And so we can probably do a whole episode on theocracy. So theocracy is a system of government in which priests or religious leaders rule in the name of God or and in God or other gods. That's weird. I know it's just weird and weird because I copied from Oxford English Dictionary.
[00:42:45] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:42:47] Katie Dooley: That makes it sounds like there's only one God in the name of a god. So while not all theocracies will necessarily be fascists, it's pretty fertile ground for a fascist movement. They gave some examples when I was researching of theocracies that aren't fascists, but there's not very many. And then again, you don't need to be a theocracy to be fascist. So, Mussolini.
[00:43:15] Preston Meyer: [00:43:15]Yeah. Theocracy. [00:43:17]
[00:43:17] Katie Dooley: Hitler wasn't a theocracy.
[00:43:18] Preston Meyer: The short definition that's maybe a little too broad, but fits nicely. Is that authoritarian nationalism. Theocracy, authoritarianism, very important if you're ruling with a religious power. That power is super important to you. That authority needs to be respected and obeyed. And if you have this national religion, nationalism comes way too easily.
[00:43:49] Katie Dooley: So like we said earlier in the episode, religions can look fascist, especially the monotheistic religion. So most Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians see the world ending with some sort of God acknowledging unity among all nations.
[00:44:04] Preston Meyer: Most religious people see the social progress made in the last 500 years as a bad thing, that the world has gone soft on sin.
[00:44:13] Katie Dooley: You know what the best part about this is? Is that the revolving 500 years in the next 500 years, they'll think the last 500 years were shit.
[00:44:22] Preston Meyer: Probably.
[00:44:24] Katie Dooley: Many religious people, regardless of religious denomination, fear formal education and science.
[00:44:30] Preston Meyer: I have heard way too often, why? Why you go to college with all those all those sectarian teachers and the the secularists.
[00:44:41] Katie Dooley: I actually I was on YouTube just scrolling and I found a, a video from a lady who was part of the same group as the Duggars, which name escapes me right now. Bill Gothard, his school of thought. And her story was actually very similar to Sarah's, who we had on the podcast a long time ago where she was allowed to go to college and all of her friends were like, what the fuck? And so now she's since left and...
[00:45:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:45:09] Katie Dooley: So I thought that was really interesting. And I mean, I guess rightly so, that they fear it because this is what happens. People go, that's not normal to be tied to your sister, because that's what happened in this YouTube video.
[00:45:20] Preston Meyer: Wow.
[00:45:21] Katie Dooley: Or you can go back to Sarah's story, listen to some things that aren't supposed to happen in your childhood.
[00:45:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Formal education is good, depending on the source. I suppose that's the trick, but also just becoming more aware of what's out there is a good thing.
[00:45:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I think I mean, that's why interacting with other people is so great, because it kind of I mean, it moderates everything, right? If you're only in this group of people, whatever their sort of fascist group or religious group or a cult or whatever, and you don't realize your beliefs are way out there and maybe someone you meet, their beliefs will be way out there in the opposite direction. But the more people you meet, the more you go, oh, this is where we need to be to all get along.
[00:46:05] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Many churches push their members to actively proselytize for its own sake. Just the act of getting out there. You tried. That's what matters. Rather than teaching them go and practice love. Go and be a good person. Like Jesus said, don't be a dick.
[00:46:28] Katie Dooley: Phallatians six nine. Many churches discourage congregants from questioning leaders traditions or passages of Scripture.
[00:46:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah, trust my authority. Trust the book. Don't think about it too hard. Gross.
[00:46:44] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:46:45] Preston Meyer: Many religious traditions include guidance against marrying or even socializing outside of the group. Seen that plenty.
[00:46:52] Katie Dooley: Yeah, this is where we get again, going to talk about Sarah's interview. The worldly be of the world but not in the world. In the world, not of the world?
[00:47:01] Preston Meyer: In the world, not of the world. Yeah. Which, like we mentioned, has been interpreted. Interpreted a couple of different ways.
[00:47:07] Katie Dooley: Oh, absolutely. Everything from, like, sort of normal to terrible.
[00:47:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:47:14] Katie Dooley: Many religious groups treat members poorly because they are seen as less faithful for any number of differences of opinion or practice.
[00:47:21] Preston Meyer: Yep. Can't hang out with Doctor Beck because he's a weirdo?
[00:47:26] Katie Dooley: Uh, you see this sometimes in Islam where they're there, encouraged to pray five times a day. So if you pray anything less, then people can see you as not as good of a Muslim.
[00:47:36] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Uh, I remember when I was in Jersey. Good times. A lot of fun experiences there. And one day we were walking down the street in Newark, and we saw a couple of guys in their front yard on their prayer mats facing northeast. So you're supposed to pray facing Mecca. That's the rule. And I just don't think there's anywhere in new Jersey where Mecca is northeast. But I suppose I'm looking at maps of the paths that airplanes take, maybe the shortest way from there to Mecca, angles that way. I don't think many people have ever worried about the actual shortest path around the globe when deciding which direction they pray. But now I need to look into that more.
[00:48:32] Katie Dooley: I feel like you're overthinking this. Just do, Preston.
[00:48:36] Preston Meyer: Which is Anti-fascist.
[00:48:37] Katie Dooley: I was going to say just do, Preston. Christians like to paint Satan as too strong to be allowed into the gates, but too weak to reverse one's claims on salvation. That you must always wear the armor of God against him.
[00:48:54] Preston Meyer: That constant war with an enemy that is both too weak and too strong, but with whom there is a promised victory. There's a couple of features and feels a little bit weird. It's presented differently in different groups, but some Christians are fertile ground for fascism.
[00:49:13] Katie Dooley: Oh, we'll get to that.
[00:49:15] Preston Meyer: Most Christian groups and many other traditions insist that unless you're obedient to the man in charge, you will suffer eternal torment. Authoritarianism can be extremely dangerous and even in the best cases is still not good.
[00:49:34] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:49:35] Preston Meyer: And of course, we can get more specific. We can find more issues that line up with the criteria that we've been given by Umberto Eco and Stanley Payne, all kinds of things, and see them in a lot of religions, especially with the danger cults.
[00:49:50] Katie Dooley: Danger cult and then yeah, extremism as well. Like you said, you see it a lot with the Taliban. And then there's some Christian groups popping up that are getting scary.
[00:49:57] Preston Meyer: Are you trying to tell me they're not danger cults?
[00:50:00] Katie Dooley: I would say, I guess there's a) we've had this discussion about how to define a cult. I think the Taliban is probably too big to be considered a cult. Right? Kind of cult in my brain are like a small interest group.
[00:50:14] Preston Meyer: Because we haven't got a great definition for cult. I just accept you're right.
[00:50:19] Katie Dooley: When you say cult, I think of like Jonestown and Peoples Temple, which absolutely falls under this. But then the Taliban that has such a broad spread across the Middle East is a lot bigger than that. And then there, I'm based and we're going to get this into Islam, a bigger religion. Oh, we don't have a great definition for cults either, so this is one of those episodes where we just kind of talk around the issue.
[00:50:45] Preston Meyer: Well, we penetrate through it without telling you what the wall looks like. That's the trick.
[00:50:52] Katie Dooley: So generally, people don't complain about fascism as long as they're in the in-group. But fascism is especially appealing to most religious conservatives and extremists and fundamentalists.
[00:51:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah, even the Catholic Church was a fan of fascism until they saw the damage it was doing. In 1929, the Catholic Church signed the Lateran Treaty, being friendly with the Italian fascists. They did get some nice little benefits out of this. The papacy gained state sovereignty because the the Italian regime before that wasn't that kind of friendly. Uh, the church actually finally got paid for lands that had been taken by the previous regime before the fascists took over. So that was nice for them. You know, this is before the terrible Saint Teresa of Calcutta made them a whole bunch of money.
[00:51:41] Katie Dooley: Oh, good. Good. Ew.
[00:51:45] Preston Meyer: But of course, this Amity only lasted about two years before things went sour. The church denounced the idolatry of the state and all of the obviously hateful violence. It's like, oh, turns out this fascist government is really terrible.
[00:52:01] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:52:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Espousing some fascist ideas is different than saying yay, fascism! But it's still dangerous.
[00:52:11] Katie Dooley: Just like, you know what a great real world example of this is the board game Secret Hitler. Sometimes putting down a fascist policy helps your cause.
[00:52:20] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:52:20] Katie Dooley: But.
[00:52:21] Preston Meyer: It's the only way to kill Hitler.
[00:52:22] Katie Dooley: Super dangerous.
[00:52:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:52:24] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Wow.
[00:52:27] Preston Meyer: If you're into board games like Secret Hitler.
[00:52:30] Katie Dooley: Highly recommend.
[00:52:31] Preston Meyer: I once played a game of Secret Hitler with some friends as a few years back.
[00:52:36] Katie Dooley: Was I there?
[00:52:36] Preston Meyer: I've actually played it a lot. You weren't there this time.
[00:52:38] Katie Dooley: Where was I?
[00:52:38] Preston Meyer: I don't know. I had some friends over that I hadn't seen in a little while. And this friend had married a girl from the States.
[00:52:46] Katie Dooley: I know this story.
[00:52:47] Preston Meyer: I told you before.
[00:52:48] Katie Dooley: Okay, but tell it for our audience. It's so good.
[00:52:51] Preston Meyer: And nice lady. Good guy. And so I'm explaining the rules to them. She, as an American, got really, really uptight, I guess she was offended by the idea that there was a dichotomy between the liberals and the fascists that you. That somehow the two parties in the game mirror this real world principle that you have to be either a liberal or a fascist. That was a really weird conversation to have.
[00:53:28] Katie Dooley: How did it end?
[00:53:29] Preston Meyer: I was just like, it's a role-playing game. And in this role-playing game there are two parties. And please, whichever side you end up on, try to win.
[00:53:42] Katie Dooley: This is make-believe, ma'am.
[00:53:43] Preston Meyer: Right? It was an interesting conversation.
[00:53:47] Katie Dooley: Oh, boy. So now we're going to wrap up this episode with getting to some specific examples of religious fascism that we've seen or are seeing, unfortunately. Again, this is mostly with the monotheistic traditions, the Abrahamic traditions. So we're going to start with good Ole Christianity. Christian fascism has been a long time coming, unfortunately. Sinclair Lewis, the novelist from the 1910s to about the 1930s, said when fascism comes to comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
[00:54:20] Preston Meyer: With the number of pictures I've seen and videos that I've had to listen to of people saying Trump represents God. I mean, one, if you know anything about this man's personal life, you know that's ridiculous. Yeah, this this does not jive well at all with the Christian view of God in any religion that I've ever dealt with. I know it's very weird.
[00:54:50] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And actually I didn't put it in the notes, but one article I read was from 2007 on Christian fascism, which is why I didn't quote it, because it was quite old. But the lady writing it was writing about her professor, who 20 years prior had said it's coming.
[00:55:07] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:55:08] Katie Dooley: So in the 80s he was like, it's here, it's here. Um, so Christian fascism is becoming more prominent in the United States and Canada, and I'm sure elsewhere in the world but we feel here. So the goal is to create a Christian theocracy as opposed to the current secular model. With this freedom of religion and where we don't make decisions off of people's religion.
[00:55:27] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, I have heard so often, even in my family, people talking about fears of with all these Muslims moving into our country, we're going to have to live under Sharia law.
[00:55:38] Katie Dooley: Or we're already under a religious law, but it's not Sharia.
[00:55:43] Preston Meyer: Right? How is it different? It's so weird. I feel like we've had this.
[00:55:47] Katie Dooley: We have a bonus episode on abortion and Sharia law. Obviously there's problems with it, but there's places where it's better than Christian law Sharia law allows abortion so...
[00:56:01] Preston Meyer: Which for most Christians is not Good news. Well, not most Christians, but an awful lot of vocal Christians. So there's a problem with the evangelical movement. The basis of the movement encourages a close and personal relationship with Jesus. So far, that sounds okay. If you want to be friends with a guy who is very deeply socialist, that's okay. But the problem comes in when you basically convince yourself that anything that you can create your own echo chamber and just ignore the socialist, gouge your own eyes out, Jesus. Just cherry pick the bits that you like.
[00:56:43] Katie Dooley: Yeah, you get to make him the friend you want to have.
[00:56:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah, which makes sense. But know that if you're making something up, you've just created a fiction.
[00:56:54] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:56:56] Preston Meyer: And that is not different from the idol worship that your religion tells you to avoid.
[00:57:03] Katie Dooley: So with the standard of to be a good evangelical Christian, you just need a close personal relationship with God. So you are a good Christian. Good Christian. Air quotes. Without actually having to do anything that benefits the wider community. As long as Jesus is your best friend, you're golden. And I don't know about you and your best friend, but me and my best friend are pretty terrible people together.
[00:57:26] Preston Meyer: I feel like I've said this before, that there's a difference between being in love with somebody and loving somebody. You can be obsessed with somebody that's basically being in love. And if you actually love that person, you're going to pay more attention.
[00:57:44] Katie Dooley: To what he wants from you.
[00:57:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And we got an awful lot of Christians who were in love with Jesus that do not love Jesus.
[00:57:54] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And with evangelicalism, there's no public theology or standard that these evangelical groups live by. You're. Yeah. You're sweet. As long as as...
[00:58:06] Preston Meyer: As long as you tell people that you're in love with Jesus, everything's fine. Gross.
[00:58:12] Katie Dooley: He's probably like, why are you so obsessed with me? Ew, go give to the poor instead. Mhm.
[00:58:21] Preston Meyer: Christian fascism loves a very specific type of Christian as well. Specifically the evangelical Protestant, conservative, white American/Canadian-born Christian. Man, that's awfully precise.
[00:58:36] Katie Dooley: Yep. It is not the everyman's Christianity like somebody preached. I don't do you know who might have preached in every man's Christianity? Any names like Jesus..?
[00:58:49] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:58:50] Katie Dooley: You know anyone who might have said it's for everyone.
[00:58:54] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:58:55] Katie Dooley: Maybe like Peter?
[00:58:57] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:58:58] Katie Dooley: Would he have said that? Yeah. Yeah yeah.
[00:59:01] Preston Meyer: Paul was pretty vocal of hey, just be good. Have faith in God that everything is going to be okay. You don't have to cut off bits of your body to have a good time with the Christian church.
[00:59:13] Katie Dooley: Oh yeah, it's like nobody's ever heard of this before.
[00:59:16] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. Anyway, Christianity is great source material for the disenchanted. It promises uetopia. The I'll spell this with a e.
[00:59:31] Katie Dooley: I was like did I spell it wrong?
[00:59:33] Preston Meyer: There's.
[00:59:33] Katie Dooley: You went in.
[00:59:34] Preston Meyer: Utopia, the Good place as opposed to the Nowhere Place. We talked about this before.
[00:59:39] Katie Dooley: No I know.
[00:59:39] Preston Meyer: What was his name now? Why has it gone from my head?
[00:59:43] Katie Dooley: Thomas More!
[00:59:43] Preston Meyer: Yes, it was Thomas More.
[00:59:44] Katie Dooley: He wrote Utopia.
[00:59:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah he did. Because people do struggle to make ends meet. And politics are getting more divisive. And it feels like the whole world is going to hell. And unfortunately, this is the sort of garden that grows fascist plants. Mhm.
[01:00:02] Katie Dooley: So red flags that we're seeing as per her lovely list of what fascism is, particularly in America. But we're starting to see this in Canada is anti-immigration in the States, specifically the repealing of Roe v Wade, creationism in schools. We don't see that too much here but...
[01:00:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah, like in Catholic schools, sure. And other Christian schools, it makes sense. Don't teach creationism in science class.
[01:00:28] Katie Dooley: Which the states are.
[01:00:30] Preston Meyer: In your theology class or your religious studies class? Yeah, that makes sense. Creationism doesn't have a whole lot of scientific evidence backing it up.
[01:00:42] Katie Dooley: And then anti-LGBTQ+ and racism. Yeah. Um, definitely feels like it's growing so...
[01:00:49] Preston Meyer: Anti-women. Anti-immigration policies. I mean, yeah, there's lots of things to let you know. Hey, we got a problem with the system.
[01:00:59] Katie Dooley: So a study was done, and I thought this was super interesting. It was a was a 2017 Baylor University Religion survey. And I guess like makes sense. But the more in favor you are of a Christian theocracy, the less actually religious you are. So defining religious as, um, actively praying, worshiping, attending church, paying tithing. Uh, the less likely you are to do that, but the more you want a Christian theocracy. Uh, and again, we're going to talk about Islam. It mirrors this very well. The Taliban is a great example of that. And like I said, I read I Am Malala and the Taliban sweeps through her home in Pakistan, and they're quoting the Quran, and they're like, that's not clearly no one here has read their Quran because this is wrong. Um, and anyway, yeah. So the less exactly mirrors it pretty great. The more in you're into Al-Qaeda or ISIS the less Muslim you are.
[01:02:01] Preston Meyer: Right. It's it's interesting that we can see this in North America, that when you're taking the opportunity to shout once or twice a week about how great it would be if our nation was a faithful nation, the there's so many people take that as an opportunity to not have to worry about it in their own personal life, because they look good for shouting it once or twice a week somewhere outside.
[01:02:30] Katie Dooley: Yeah, so they didn't actually find a lot of unique notes on Islam. It mirrors the Christian nationalism, national Christian fascism, very much.
[01:02:41] Preston Meyer: Like the groups that we've already mentioned.
[01:02:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So it's just geographically different. But the process is pretty similar. They're getting yeah, they're getting more fundamental in their beliefs, and then they're getting more violent and thinking that an Islamic theocracy is a great idea.
[01:02:56] Preston Meyer: Gross.
[01:02:57] Katie Dooley: But then I was looking into Zionism.
[01:03:01] Preston Meyer: A thing that deserves its own episode. We'll get to this year.
[01:03:03] Katie Dooley: We'll touch on it just briefly today with our episode that's already well over an hour. And Zionism is so interesting because the Jewish community was so affected by fascism in World War Two. And now if you're in Israel, you're basically doing the same thing to Palestine. This idea of creating Zion, getting a Jewish, the establishment of a Jewish homeland is very much a Jewish theocracy.
[01:03:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's it's kind of rough. And it does have roots back to before even the First World War, which we'll get into later. But it's it's caused some serious problems. The ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict is a I'm not 100% sure I want to call it fascism, but it definitely does have a lot of the red flags we've talked about today.
[01:03:53] Katie Dooley: Well, and I saw.
[01:03:54] Preston Meyer: Decide more later as we.
[01:03:55] Katie Dooley: As we when we actually dive into Zionism. Uh, I saw a saw a news article not that long ago and I wish I could find it, but, uh, I think it was the Israeli military was disrupting a Palestinian funeral. Like the guy was already gone. And so the comments were like, this is so beyond religion at this point. So again, reflecting back to the more you want to create this religious nation, the less religious you actually are, because a good Jewish person, a good Christian person, a good Muslim person would never interrupt the funeral of... A good person, period, would never interrupt a funeral of a deceased person, whether you agree with them or not.
[01:04:36] Preston Meyer: Zionism isn't just popular for Jews though. Christians also actually really like Zionism, because if we can get the Jewish people to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, a lot of Christians see that as a very good thing that will help trigger the end of the world. And I mean, there's an awful lot of firepower backing up the opponents to that movement that maybe if the Jewish people, the Israel, the state of Israel were to take back the the temple grounds, they would potentially start a war that would be catastrophic for huge chunks of the world.
[01:05:16] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And so this is in the Israeli-Palestine issue. They get a lot of backing, Israel gets a lot of backing from American evangelicals. Yeah. There's a lot of firepower and a lot of money in the States.
[01:05:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:05:28] Katie Dooley: It's quite terrifying. If you get too far down that rabbit hole.
[01:05:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:05:33] Katie Dooley: Well. So everyone, while it's important to know what's happening. Please protect your mental health.
[01:05:38] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah. Religion and fascism, what a weird marriage.
[01:05:42] Katie Dooley: Yes and no. Right. Like we said, there's a lot of...
[01:05:46] Preston Meyer: Bad news.
[01:05:46] Katie Dooley: It is? Oh, it's absolutely bad news. But it's without good leaders in place. It's not a far step right to get there.
[01:05:53] Preston Meyer: Absolutely.
[01:05:54] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Well, that's happy for a Saturday morning recording. Wow.
[01:06:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So we can obviously continue the this conversation and explore it a lot more on our discord.
[01:06:06] Katie Dooley: Yes. Join us on our discord. We are growing pretty steadily. I've been quite happy that we are also on Facebook and Instagram.
[01:06:16] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[01:06:18] Katie Dooley: If you want to support this podcast so we can do more great episodes, perhaps more frequently, you can check out our Patreon where we have some bonus episodes that have been released recently.
[01:06:27] Preston Meyer: And we've got merch on our Spreadshop.
[01:06:29] Katie Dooley: Yes. And we have again two a couple new pieces on Spreadshirt, so at least go check them out and maybe put something in that shopping cart.
[01:06:40] Preston Meyer: Thanks for joining us.
[01:06:41] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 16 Nov 2020 | Jesus of the Silver Screen | 00:48:41 | |
Religion and pop culture go together like watermelons and summer. They are so intertwined, sometimes we don't even recognize the allusions anymore! Can pop culture be a religious experience? Can the love for pop culture go too far? In this episode, we explore its core concepts. We talk about the role of God and touch on Buddhism. We question terms like "holy" and "sacred". Our exploration continues into the complexities of religion and spirituality. We discuss the differences between righteousness and holiness and think about the challenges of understanding holy texts. We draw connections between deification and fan culture, questioning the rituals and tax-exempt status of both. We then broaden our discussion to talk about spirituality versus religion. Exploring the wider scope of spirituality, including practices like sound therapy and LSD use. We challenge the idea that religion requires specific beliefs. Our conversation also touches on tax exemption for churches, inspired by John Oliver's humorous take. We share different views on whether churches should be tax-exempt, considering transparency and financial concerns. We end by inviting listeners to share their thoughts on this complex topic. Book: Jesus Potter Harry Christ: The fascinating parallels between two of the world's most popular literary characters, by Derek Murphy
Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram ** Preston Meyer 00:14 And welcome to the holy watermelon Podcast. I'm Kate Preston.
Katie Dooley 00:20 And what are we talking about today?
Preston Meyer 00:23 What are we talking about?
Katie Dooley 00:25 I mean, I did all the research for this episode, so I should probably introduce it. We're talking about
Preston Meyer 00:31 para religion and culture, pop
Katie Dooley 00:34 culture, as religion is the topic, but religion in pop culture will definitely come up. I think it's unavoidable. We also I'm just gonna say we have a third co host, that's my dog. So if you hear snorts or jingles, that's her, that'll just help with editing if you just know she's here. Alright, so let's get started. I guess. When I was researching this, I found a term I had never actually heard before, which was pair religion and I thought that that describe what we're talking about really well. And its definition is a secular belief system having certain aspects of religion, but not all aspects of religion. So then I had to look up what religion was because if you heard our last few episodes nobody knows.
Preston Meyer 01:27 Yeah, I think the things we covered in the last two episodes lend themselves very easily to the discussion of parrot religion.
Katie Dooley 01:35 Yes, and I Yes, all the talk arounds I guess what religion is and what Gods are basically fall under pair religion. So for morons who didn't really throw up formal religion has a belief in supernatural powers, some influence or live rituals and ceremonies and so a pair religion would be missing some of those things. So this is where pop culture comes in. And that could be repaired religion, whether that sports celebrity, your favorite TV show, media, Aberdeen's media, just like a big that covers all, YouTube and books, and everything worshipping
Preston Meyer 02:17 PewDiePie.
Katie Dooley 02:20 I mean, I think we all have our favorite YouTubers. Well, yeah, I
Preston Meyer 02:24 think if you spend enough time on YouTube, you're definitely somebody that you're going to keep going back to.
Katie Dooley 02:29 It's true, like the holy watermelon podcast, right?
Preston Meyer 02:32 Like and Subscribe. He was five star reviews. So
Katie Dooley 02:37 we're getting better this. Maybe we should start our conversation with why people worship pop culture, like religion, and maybe some similarities and differences and what that looks like. I mean, you wrote a paper on this.
Preston Meyer 02:56 I did. And I didn't actually explore the why in the paper that I wrote. But I just tried to illustrate a whole bunch of things and said, See, these people are definitely religious in their reverence for these things. Yeah, sports masochism is a great example. It helps bind communities together, you go to a hockey game, and you're in a stadium filled with people who are super excited to be there to participate together and love screaming. They'll usually
Katie Dooley 03:26 well, I can't say usually that's how they worship.
Preston Meyer 03:29 Right? There's an awful lot of getting dressed up in the uniform of your favorite player who are picked. Absolutely. There's loads of war paint, I think, probably more in football games than hockey games. But I see a lot more hockey jerseys on the train in hockey season than I see football during football season. I'll think cannabis, right? CFL is not a big deal. I actually have friends who have been professional football players, but not here in Canada.
Katie Dooley 04:02 So yes, people celebrating their puck choice can look a lot like worship.
Preston Meyer 04:11 Absolutely. There's, if you look at the cosmic duality that's present in an awful lot of the big religions, there's good and evil. That's usually the way it's simplified. And it's super easy to see rival teams like the rangers and the islanders. If you like one, the other one is not likely to be anything other than the rival the evil. And that's a little bit religious. The other
Katie Dooley 04:43 Yeah, yeah, I think it's them. Absolutely. Um, I didn't put this in the show notes, but I'm actually reminded of the book that I read for the first episode called in
Preston Meyer 04:57 the beginning. Know, the face
Katie Dooley 04:59 instinct. Oh, yeah, I mean, yes, our first episode called in the beginning, the book was called a faith instinct. And it talks about how humans are programmed to be religious. And I think that this is probably one of those Why's the question of the why is that we feel compelled to be part of the community.
Preston Meyer 05:21 Yeah. And a community that is bound together by a belief in something even if that belief is as simple as our team is going to win. I remember in V for Vendetta there was that the mantra of the Chancellor Have you strength through unity, unity through faith. And that faith can be literally anything general trust or belief example from pop culture, right. It's like I studied this a little bit.
Katie Dooley 05:52 Like you're talking about pop culture, and religion.
05:58 Are such dorks? Yeah,
Preston Meyer 06:00 but it's okay. Right.
Katie Dooley 06:03 I feel like sports is kind of its own beast, especially sports and there's often a standout player, you know that Michael Jordan is in the Wayne Gretzky's. But often it's a team sport. And maybe it's because I'm a sports fan, but I can't separate out one player from another Sorry, guys. But it just blurs on the screen. On the screen. They shoot their puck into hoops and different quarters. I don't know. That was purposely bad. I know a little bit
Preston Meyer 06:39 by sports do the goal.
Katie Dooley 06:42 Figures or number y. But I would separate sports a little bit from books, movies and television because books, movies and television often have. They have a protagonist always
Preston Meyer 06:57 have their fiction. Sports are straight up real. Quidditch. People play Quidditch. That's true. I mean, it's started out as a fictional terribly nonsensical game that turned into somehow a thing that people actually do
Katie Dooley 07:13 Delmon sensical. Yeah. That's true. But there I mean, no, I'm just being a brat. But there are fictional sports to precedent. Yes. But you're right.
Preston Meyer 07:24 But we don't revere the sports heroes, for their sports achievements in these fictional stories. We revere Harry Potter, for example, not because he's a great seeker, but because he took seven or eight years to beat Voldemort.
Katie Dooley 07:41 Wow, what a great segue into talking about what a Christ figure is. I don't know if you plan on that. We're silly today. So I was reading another book to get ready for this and good book, not really what I thought was gonna be at all, it will definitely be helpful later on. But I was reading Jesus Potter, Harry Christ, and it talks about the parallels between two literary characters. It's not really a comparison of Jesus and Harry Potter. But they did provide a really great definition of what a Christ figure is. So I'm going to read that Christ figure is simply a literary reference used to identify a fictional character that seems to symbolize Jesus Christ in a significant way, such as through the endurance of suffering, a sacrificial death, or a perceived rebirth or resurrection. Many literary figures have been called Christ figures by various researchers, including a half of Moby Dick Gandalf or Frodo Baggins of Lord of the Rings, or Galahad in the Grail quest. So that's where I separate movies and TV and books a little bit is because we have these Christ's character figures that don't necessarily appear in real world forts.
Preston Meyer 09:00 And we appreciate them. Why? Because they're awesome stories.
Katie Dooley 09:04 They are awesome stories is actually it's
Preston Meyer 09:08 a hotly contested statement regarding Harry Potter. But there's an awfully large following of Harry Potter, because they're absolutely enjoyable stories, whether or not you think they're academically good.
Katie Dooley 09:26 I mean, that's a different discussion. I think the conversation I want to have around Christ figures is, why is it interesting? Is it interesting because we've heard this story for 2000 years? And I honestly don't know and I didn't think to look into it. Is there a non Judeo Christian equivalent of Christ figure? Or is this further this? This deep dive that I don't necessarily want to go into today? If you do have a Christ figure from another religious group? Is it Just because it's an even older story than we realize it probably I've answered my own question. comments, thoughts, concerns.
Preston Meyer 10:09 In my excitement for developments in the Marvel Universe, I've done a little bit of looking into this new announced TV show TV show. It's on Disney plus, probably like two or three years from now called moon night. Character I know very little about but I did some wiki reading. And he's this Jewish fella, or half Jewish, Jewish or half Jewish, who his dad is a rabbi, and he's out as a mercenary. He's a very scary dangerous fellow. And he experiences this death or near death experience. In a wanna say, Egypt, I'm going from memory from what Wikipedia article summarizes probably more than one version of the story. But, you know, when I'm just casually looking into my pop culture, learning, expectations, Wikipedia, it's an OK place to go to Manage expectations maybe. And he is approached by this Egyptian god who brings him back from this near death or, or maybe full death, to be almost himself a deeply deranged Christ figure. Crush, beggars can come in a lot of different flavors, usually they tend to be non threatening, very positive Savior figures.
Katie Dooley 11:43 And I guess the point we should clarify is I was reading about Christ figures on
Preston Meyer 11:50 wake up with fear
Katie Dooley 11:51 so easy. And it says that they need to, it's very broad, almost anyone can be a Christ figure. So I don't even know it's a great definition. Or you could argue that someone is a Christ figure very easily. So it does the character might display one or more of the following traits. What are one performance of miracles, manifestation of divine qualities healing others displaying kindness and forgiveness right there. I'm already crazy. You're fighting for justice being guided by the Spirit of the Father character, and the characters own death and resurrection
Preston Meyer 12:32 symbol.
Katie Dooley 12:33 Right so I've been seeing but healing others, like literally any doctor character, you could argue as a Christ figure because if it's
Preston Meyer 12:44 not there playing out any one of the stories in the Bible that center around Jesus doing a thing, then it's very easy argue that Christ figure.
Katie Dooley 12:52 So why What about the case for your story is so appealing 2000 years being retold and retold and retold and retold. We
Preston Meyer 13:01 all love a hero. But that's just the way it goes. And if you don't love a hero, that says something about your character that I don't want to dive into it this particular
Katie Dooley 13:11 sociopath. Seriously, like a bare minimum, you're probably a sociopath. Probably,
Preston Meyer 13:17 yeah, no judgments. We need sociopaths to keep things going.
Katie Dooley 13:23 She never likes. She
Preston Meyer 13:25 likes some heroes. But there's plenty of villains that she finds absolutely fascinating and really latches on to. These, we all generally love a hero, and a hero that we can feel some sort of familiarity with actually helps a lot. And familiarity can be achieved in a lot of different ways. If he's from your hometown, like Deadpool is from Saskatchewan, like the actual character of Deadpool, the character of Deadpool is always like Wolverine, because he's from Alberta, right? Wolverine is from Alberta, Ryan Reynolds. I think it's actually from BC. Yeah, I think. Not that I have learned the home countries of all of the superheroes ever, that would be dreadfully boring to study up on for long term that's very different. takes all kinds to make the world go round, right. So familiarity in that way is easy enough to accomplish. Another way of familiarizing yourself, what are familiarizing the hero of your story to your audience, is to make them seem like something that they're already aware of. And Jesus is pretty ubiquitous around the world. The Everyman. In some ways, he's definitely well known, at least in part. Like there's an awful lot of people who say they're Christian who straight up don't know Jesus, but they're aware of Jesus and at least a few stories.
Katie Dooley 14:59 So that's
Preston Meyer 15:03 and so that that familiarity having a Jesus type hero in your story helps to familiarize the audience with the hero.
Katie Dooley 15:14 I have a follow up question, and my brain doesn't quite know what it is.
Preston Meyer 15:18 So I think that's the why anyway,
Katie Dooley 15:22 this might be diving down a rabbit hole. Do you need to have some awareness of, of Jesus to appreciate the stories? Or is the story of Jesus based on the every story? as well?
Preston Meyer 15:37 That's the great question, isn't it? One of my favorite heroes, whose called a Jesus figure is Superman. Yeah, that was, almost all Christians will say, Jesus, and Superman, basically the same guy. But there's a couple of reasons why I really don't like that statement. Number one, is, Superman was written by a couple of Jews, who definitely would have been familiar with Christian lore live, like one of the creators was a Canadian, from Toronto, one of them was an American, they met up in Cleveland, I'm pretty sure. And they threw together this great story after a few other ideas that weren't really working out. And that's they lived in a world where Jesus was absolutely a real present thing. But if you look at the Superman story that they wrote, there's no Jesus there at all. It's all Moses. Interesting.
Katie Dooley 16:40 And that was, I guess, what I sort of talked around earlier of other religions. And because we're in North America and Judeo Christian world, are their Moses figures, or, you know, Buddha figures, or Muhammad figures, like we talked about the Christ figure, and it's very easy to find. But maybe that's just because we're in North America. And whether you're Christian or not, you just societally you grew up with it. And it's easy to read, it's easy to find. And I don't even know if it's easy to find, because people are purposely relating to the Bible, or if it's just actually good story writing?
Preston Meyer 17:26 That's a great question, right? I like that you brought up the potential of a Buddha figure made me immediately think of the matrix. I remember when it came out. And ever since everyone's like, Neo is the the awesome Jesus figure in the story. He's absolutely messianic. He actually feels to me more like a Buddha figure. He becomes enlightened. So I mean, he also has a guide, but he doesn't rely on his guide very much either. Which, I mean, there's absolutely a perfectly decent argument that he's a Jesus figure. There's several books on this subject that point that out. And I, I just happen to feel that he's more of a Buddha figure.
Katie Dooley 18:07 So while we're talking about it before we sort of move on to the next part that I want to talk about. This is storytelling format. As described by one of my favorite writers, Donald Miller, he writes books on business writing, and I use this frequently in my work so storytelling format, a character is your character.
Preston Meyer 18:34 Let's call it Luke Skywalker. How the problem Yeah, he does. He hates tending to dehumidifiers on a desert planet means the guy. Yeah, Old Ben Kenobi. That gives him a plan. Yeah, go fight the Empire. Here's your dad's lightsaber call
Katie Dooley 18:50 them to action. Yes. That Yeah. Cool. There's probably a little more with like the Republican shit but we join
Preston Meyer 19:00 the rebellion to save Princess Leia because here's a mission leads to a success. Yeah, they actually get her off the Death Star. And it avoids a failure. Yeah, she didn't get killed. And the character transformers Yeah, Luke becomes a Jedi or Well, kind of he slowly becomes aware of the force and does use it
Katie Dooley 19:21 very much a new help Luke Skywalker. Yes. Yeah, definitely.
Preston Meyer 19:28 We can definitely stretch this out further.
Katie Dooley 19:30 Right, but we could storytelling format easily can do that with Jesus. Oh, yeah. Or basically anyone else like is that any good story? Once you know this. I was literally watching Lord of the Rings and Preston came. So Frodo has the ring me scandal. Joe joins the fellowship goes to Mordor tosses three in the fire avoids the destruction of the world. And Frodo and the happy little ha But again, x finger, minus a finger and a whole bunch of points. He's actually not a happy little hobbit again. He's deeply traumatized and has to go across the sea. That's his character transformation.
Preston Meyer 20:11 Book is different than the movie. It's been. Brian
Katie Dooley 20:15 and I were talking about this. It's been so long since I've read it, I actually have no frame of reference for book to movie anymore.
Preston Meyer 20:21 Yeah, so I took a whole course on the works of Professor Tolkein, through college, and it was pretty enjoyable. We started with the Silmarillion moved through the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. And that's actually all we covered of his writings. And I really enjoyed the summer alien, first couple of chapters, and then it got really hard to keep reading, I skimmed half of The Hobbit. And then when it came to Lord of the Rings, I was so burned out that I just went I had to write something about it, I would look through the movie, to find where in the book, I would find the information I needed. And then read that chapter in the book. So I know, more or less how the story ended in the book. Remember very little, because I was skimming it looking for something. I just know that it is a lot more bleak. And sad than the end of the movie was gonna be when
Katie Dooley 21:20 I finished Jesus Potter Harry Krystal go back to Earth during Christmas. Well, what a lovely wormhole that was. So I have some example of pop culture as religion. And I really wanted to keep this episode on pop culture as religion, not religion in pop culture. But I think that would be hard.
Preston Meyer 21:40 There's definitely some blend in this Venn diagram in the mind. And
Katie Dooley 21:44 the reason I wanted to stay with pop culture is religions, because religion in pop culture is infinite. And we could talk for hours, basically, just reiterating that everyone's a Christ
Preston Meyer 21:55 figure. Right? That's all we want to do.
Katie Dooley 21:58 So there's a couple of examples I wanted to talk about. I mean, I guess, is it healthy or not? And if if there's a problem with worshiping pop culture, or treating pop culture as religion, so just keep that in mind. So two examples that kind of tie in together, both of which I love is they love Bob's Burgers episode, and we're both Bob's Burgers hands where the kids try to save an aquarium and they turn it into a church. And then there's also a John Oliver Last Week Tonight episode that I highly recommend. And he's taught he's talking about televangelists and seed face. So he actually turns his show into a registered religion with the IRA. So it can be tax exempt, and he can take donations.
Preston Meyer 22:50 It's weird that more companies don't do this. Like like in Bob's Burgers, they set up the aquarium to be a religion. We could totally take that model and just build up the temple of the shark have, basically, why, why am I blanking on the name of the big waterpark down in San Diego,
23:10 like Sealand,
Preston Meyer 23:12 like sea land, is that what it's called? SeaWorld. It's called SeaWorld where we could do, we can totally set up a thing like SeaWorld probably in a place with a warmer climate than we have, and set it up as the temple of the shark, call it a religion. If you want to come and visit the park, you have to offer a sacrifice, usually in the form of dollars. Let's be real.
Katie Dooley 23:33 That's like an admission fee.
Preston Meyer 23:35 Right? But it's not it's a sacrifice to the gods of the sharks. Come and check it out.
Katie Dooley 23:41 Well, I mean, that's a great i somebody's
Preston Meyer 23:45 gonna beat me to actually making this a real thing. Well,
Katie Dooley 23:49 I don't actually know. I've tried to find it. I can't find what the series rules are for on religion, but I hope our Congress subscribers care to make a donation to our Patreon so that we can register as a religion. I will wear giant watermelon on our heads. Sure,
Preston Meyer 24:08 I think absolutely. You try out a watermelon and it's not gonna get real gross, perfect. And then it could be a perfectly reasonable hat. I
Katie Dooley 24:15 just thought we'd make the felt but I like the cutting edge. So obviously, the buzz burgers episode is fiction, but John Oliver actually turned his show into a registered religion. Is there a problem with that?
Preston Meyer 24:35 Is there I'm asking that depends on how you want to evaluate a religion. As far as dangerous religions go. I don't think Last Week Tonight counts as a dangerous religion. Is it an abuse of the tax code? Maybe. But so the tax code be better? The tax code should absolutely be better. We got way too many and people who make way more money than I do paying less taxes than I do. And I haven't paid taxes in years.
Katie Dooley 25:10 He's been a student everyone just Yeah,
Preston Meyer 25:12 not a tax evaders, evading tax. I just have not legally been required to pay taxes in a long talk
Katie Dooley 25:20 and be like, Who's this lazy? Motherfucker?
Preston Meyer 25:25 I have only recently qualified myself to be a host on this podcast.
Katie Dooley 25:30 You're my club and then
Preston Meyer 25:33 me. No, that's not true. There's a reason there's two of us we can't just have one person who's educated and call that a podcast.
Katie Dooley 25:44 So whether or not something's legally registered entity with whatever tax place, that's where to buy looking Tax Department.
25:54 Pete stop making mouth noises. Yeah, tax taxation
Katie Dooley 25:59 hammers of your country. Is there a point where worship of media or let's say celebrities is dangerous? What you taking, taking your like, or love of thumb thing to a worship beyond level, I
Preston Meyer 26:22 suspect with no personal experience in this department, that there is somebody who genuinely believes in at least the possibility of a real life Cthulhu. And that's a thing that approaches religion. And because Cthulhu is a dark, maddening character in the writings of HP Lovecraft that could bump up against dangerous potentially.
Katie Dooley 26:55 I even mean, so much as liking How I Met Your Mother too much. Right? Is there? I don't know what that looks like. Maybe the producers met your mother have a crazy fan encounter that they want to email me about? But is there a benefit to worship worshiping something to that level? That again, that's the pure religion, not your typical religion,
Preston Meyer 27:22 but to there's a benefit. And
Katie Dooley 27:25 and is there a point where it's dangerous? So again, like, like How I Met Your Mother, the Harry Potter books,
Preston Meyer 27:33 let's go with My Little Pony,
Katie Dooley 27:34 My Little Pony. Orlando. Sure.
Preston Meyer 27:40 The reason my little pony came to mind is because you've got a strong following of people who are super committed. And I've had friends who really love My Little Pony. There's absolutely some good stories that are absolutely worth sharing with your children. My Little Pony? I don't know My Little Pony well enough, but I suspect strongly that there is. But that is a uninformed suspicion. Or at least under informed. And what I do know is that there is like You familiar rule, you're familiar with rule 34? Yes. My Little Pony has some scary Oh, no scary contributions to the internet. Oh, now and that is because of the religious or almost religious or parent religious following of this media. Well, I mean, the little plastic toys eg that you get your kids, not terribly sexual, but are they sexual at all? To some people they are if people are into what they're into, and though I'm not going to kink shame somebody I do believe that there is a line where you do need to change your behavior
Katie Dooley 29:00 I guess if you're not hurting anyone, including yourself
Preston Meyer 29:07 or other animals that often people don't feel comfortable with considering as having feelings or feeling pain, anything that sentient don't hurt it. What's What's the line for sentient?
Katie Dooley 29:24 Does it have a personality? Absolutely.
Preston Meyer 29:27 I think that's a pretty decent criteria. If you want to follow those rules that you have set then that's a perfectly good criteria to meet that.
Katie Dooley 29:36 So if your pair religion doesn't hurt anything sentient I think it's fine. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 29:43 that's that's fair, including yourself,
Katie Dooley 29:45 everyone. So
Preston Meyer 29:46 if your religion, your shrine,
Katie Dooley 29:49 that you spend all your time at and you don't eat problems, problems Yeah. So, how has religion absorbed pop culture? And religion intentionally or unintentionally can give greater meaning to media?
Preston Meyer 30:09 I don't know try to list in but it's they're both kind of big questions. Maybe we'll
Katie Dooley 30:17 end with how has religion into our pop culture. And then we can talk about some of our favorite examples, Christ figures or Bible stories that we that are like,
Preston Meyer 30:27 religion absorbing pop culture. There's an awful lot of Christians today, compared to the very few Christians 2000 years ago, who actually believed in the figure of Lilith, who is in any story that deals with a hell and a devil. And the idea of angels in pop culture that I'm aware of, there is a Lilith figure, who, in old rabbinic writings, was Adams first wife before Eve in the Garden of Eden, who was not a great wife, who would not submit yourself to Adam. And so was cast out and replaced with a far more submissive wife.
Katie Dooley 31:12 I don't know if the audience heard my IRA. Wives, but there was a pretty big iral. But
Preston Meyer 31:20 that's the story. And it's not based on the biblical text. But it's an old story that has been told so often, that it has found itself in popular culture, which has then reflected itself back on to how a lot of Christians actually look at their theology. So that's one example of pop culture affecting theology that I've observed.
Katie Dooley 31:46 Oh, that's a interesting one.
Preston Meyer 31:48 It is an interesting one, and it's interesting to dive into and look at or, or hell, the way most Catholics or even Protestants see hell is based a lot on the story of Dante, ala Gary and his Divine Comedy. Very good. So those are the two examples I've got. And they're, they're pretty cool. The Divine Comedy is a good read. But also, you know, it's a time commitment. It's broken down into three consumable chunks.
Katie Dooley 32:22 And, yeah, I mean, those are examples where it actually influences how we read Scripture.
32:32 Interesting.
Preston Meyer 32:34 I hope those answered your question.
Katie Dooley 32:36 I mean, it sure did. Okay. Now, I'm just like, pondering feel. feels to me. Also was the ascension of Mary, like added after the fact by the Catholics? Yeah, absolutely. That was a pop culture, though, because that was so old. I mean, I guess maybe it wasn't was my pop culture. But I'm glad when, when you mentioned more than how it was like what was added after the fact that people believe that's actually not in there at all. And that was one that was the question
Preston Meyer 33:02 there is how do you define pop culture?
Katie Dooley 33:04 I mean, I don't remember the date that the ascension of Mary was that like, added of cannon
Preston Meyer 33:10 was after she died.
Katie Dooley 33:13 Very good. And before I was born, so that narrows it down right? About 1900 years. Thanks, Stan. I mean, I would feel like we should put this other thing I would find pop culture is any media that is popular that is popular at the time. So I don't I don't know enough about what was happening at that time to determine whether that was based off of pop culture or not. But I think it'd be an interesting thing to look into, because I bet it was influenced by what was happening at the time.
Preston Meyer 33:43 It was the popular belief back in those days, when the story came about that to be the mother of God, you have you, therefore had to be sinless yourself. which became a problem when people started teaching that. Absolutely. Everybody is born deeply sinful. So there had to be this higher status given to Mary so that she could be a believable vessel to bear. A sinless Jesus. So the why is the word escaping me right, immaculate? The Immaculate Conception? Isn't the conception of Jesus. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 34:22 I remember learning. This is like one thing that stuck with me from my time in university with religious days is that it's the conception of Mary was immaculate and immaculate, everyone. I don't know. It actually means untouched by man, the mailman. So if your house is immaculate, it means your husband and the whole view, not just pristine it means untouched by a man immaculate fun fact.
Preston Meyer 34:45 Because men are dirty and
Katie Dooley 34:46 men are girls. My rights,
Preston Meyer 34:51 sorry. So Mary had to be elevated to this higher status. And then the story, the proto evangelio of James This tells the story of how Mary was conceived immaculately by a figure who not only bears the name and in the English translation, but straight up is a copy of the Old Testament. Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Interesting. Yeah, Mary's own story is also very similar to Samuels in the Old Testament. It's just copying older source material, like we talked about before,
Katie Dooley 35:31 before we turn on the mic. So that makes this really weird. But that'll come in an episode when we probably just talked about Jesus for at least an hour. That might be a two parter, but it could be I was saying to Preston, this book that I'm reading do this potter Christ, I thought it would be more about pop culture, but it's actually about how the the author argues that Jesus is a fictional literary character as opposed to historical. And that information for Jesus was borrowed by earlier writings, just like the Harry's in the frozen world are borrowed from Jesus. So Preston, why is some of your favorite Jesus see pop culture for lack of a better term? Because like I said, there was gonna be no way we could talk about pop culture as religion without religion and pop culture. So what are some of your favorite examples of religion in pop culture, and it can be anything like, I'm just going to test out the Book of Mormon musical is amazing.
Preston Meyer 36:33 There's so much fun. I like that though. It addresses the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That's not what the story is about. It's about two missionaries who straight up make their own theology and really screw up. And the potential for teaching in Uganda, where the Church of Jesus Christ is not currently present, as far as I know, not at least on any official status. It is a pretty funny example of religion and pop culture. We had a lot of fun go into that show together. Huh, my favorite. There's,
37:11 I have a bunch.
Preston Meyer 37:11 There's so many little aspects of things that are all over the place and so many different media. What what's coming to your mind? Well,
Katie Dooley 37:19 one of my favorite things to do this sounds so stupid, is I like to listen to the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, which, if you haven't listened to it, it's an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical from the 70s. And it's like the last few days of Jesus. And then I'll listen to Book of Mormon because then it's chronological. But it's like Jesus Christ Superstar, like very serious. And book Mormons not. But I listen to them both together and think about all my theology and for the day. I mean, if we're talking Christ figures, I've always been a big Harry Potter fan, literally just watching Lord of the Rings. I think those are probably my big ones. I had another point to make, but I'll let you tell me about some of your favorite examples.
Preston Meyer 38:09 My most ridiculous example was Hamlet two is a ridiculous movie. I can't remember the name of the star. But basically, the idea of the show is that this new theater teacher comes to school and says, I got this show plan that's really going to rock everybody's socks. It's a sequel to Hamlet. I was like, what? Everybody died in Hamlet.
Katie Dooley 38:42 I mean, I know it's been done very rarely, but it's rare that not the original author does
Preston Meyer 38:49 like, right? Like the idea of a spiritual sequel is one thing, but this is straight up Hamlet two, meant to be a sequel to the original Hamlet done 400 years later. Oh, now, as a musical. If I remember correctly, it's actually been fairly confident it was a musical. And so everybody's dead. You have to bring them back to life. How do you do that? Bring in Jesus.
Katie Dooley 39:18 Jesus just resurrected everyone. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 39:19 and it's just gets crazy. So that was a lot of fun. I mean, I wouldn't call it high quality cinema, but I would recommend it. It was some good fun. The opposite end of that spectrum. I would say you've got things like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Aslan is Jesus. Absolutely.
Katie Dooley 39:41 CSS is very open about that. He's Yeah, apologist and I don't mind Lion, the Witch in the wardrobe.
Preston Meyer 39:49 It's the only story in the series that I actually familiarized myself with and I did enjoy it well enough, though. It's weird that the kids walk into Narnia in land full of sentient animals of all shapes and sizes, wearing fur. And nobody talks about
Katie Dooley 40:08 my problem. My problem book in the CS Lewis series was the Silver Chair. That one is like, have some religion shoved down your throat. And that one I actually struggle with read that one, like the entire thing is very preachy, I found this, and that's why I remember it, because there's a bunch of books and I couldn't list them all to you. I will read the series once but everywhere the sellers are being very, very preachy, but
Preston Meyer 40:34 I do enjoy the Lenten it's a good it's a good movie, which is the only basis I have to judge the series on I've never actually read any CS Lewis, I have Mere Christianity on my shelf. I've been meaning to read it for 10 years, and I still haven't gotten around. Well, I'm gonna assign it to you in a podcast. Is it even a long book?
Katie Dooley 40:55 Well, one more question I want to address especially to you as a religious person, and I have my own ideas for this but as a whole and religious person I can't really answer it is getting away with religion in pop culture, especially like, really blame examples of Jesus Christ Superstar Book of Mormon, I have Lucifer here on the list. Where you are dealing with Canon and scripture. How do you not offend people?
Preston Meyer 41:30 What do you mean? Do I fail to offend people?
Katie Dooley 41:34 Personally, people that you personally. Um,
Preston Meyer 41:40 I'm sorry, I guess I don't understand the question. Well,
Katie Dooley 41:44 you remember the LDS church? Why are you not offended by the Book of Mormon? The musical not not the actual book?
Preston Meyer 41:52 Because I don't take it personally, I guess like there are. There's one song I believe,
Katie Dooley 41:58 which favorite song five out that out right now. You don't want me to?
Preston Meyer 42:02 I've seen people use it as just a fun song to say, yeah, these are the things we believe. And the tone of it is a little mocking in some parts, particularly those parts that slightly misrepresent what we believe. But it's also sung by a fellow named Kevin who, that's, that's what he believes. And though most of it reflects the general belief of the church, not all of it does, technically. It's, I accept it as an expression of a fictional person's belief. Constantine, the movie, not the TV show, they came up with Keanu Reeves, like, almost 15 years ago or whatever. Yeah. Perfectly enjoyable. There's a part in it. There's like, while in hell Corinthians has a couple of extra chapters or whatever. It's been a while since I've seen that too. But I remember that little thing. And it's just like, that's weird. Because there's plenty of extra books in the Bible that could be added that aren't books that we know the Bible talks about, that are no longer available, things like that would have been easier to say, oh, yeah, it's in these other writings of Paul, rather than saying, Yeah, this epistle just had an extra chapters that have been cut. It's kind of weird. But it doesn't offend me it just but it does hit me as kind of weird. And Lilith being used, like, as mentioned before, in almost every story that deals with hell, and angels and demons. It doesn't offend me, it just that storytelling, in that universe, things are different. It's to think that all stories take place in the same universe I live in. It's just asking to be offended and have problems. But if you accept a thing as fiction, and everything's gonna be just fine. The way I deal with it is,
Katie Dooley 44:00 I guess, then my follow up question. And then maybe I'll go into my thoughts. Is there a point or place where pop culture could cross a line? Where is there a way they could have done the Book of Mormon musical, for example, that you have been like, this is super offensive to everything. I believe, if they were, I mean, and maybe if you can remove yourself a bit, because if you can separate people who can't separate themselves from that,
Preston Meyer 44:29 I think if something is deliberately defamatory, like the Book of Mormon, talks about the book, more musical talks about how Joseph Smith found the plates and how to pass them off to Brigham Young and said, Don't let anyone see them. I mean, that's straight up not true, but it's not presented as deliberately defamatory. It's presented from the point of view of a character who straight up has zero familiarity with his church's history. And so that if you were to make that transition and to make the Book of Mormon musical about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and make it straight up contradictory to all of the histories that we have available on that time, that would probably be offensive. But when it's told from the point of view of us, completely ignorant figure, it's way less offensive.
Katie Dooley 45:26 Okay, perfect. That's
Preston Meyer 45:27 where I stand.
Katie Dooley 45:28 And that's that was my thoughts, again, that I can't say as a non believer, but I have a friend who's quite a devout Christian, she loves loose fur, but she's also said some very accurate to Scripture. Obviously, loose fur does not come to earth as a hot man, fortunately, but every time they reference something biblical, it's accurate, and that's where she enjoys it. And I, when I first saw this, her not knowing that much, I was like, Oh, she don't like this, but she enjoys it because it's accurate. And and you just kind of confirmed that and because it's accurate, or accurate to the character. It's like, okay,
Preston Meyer 46:08 if in Lucifer, for example, where you have a figure living on Earth as this hot dude, imagine having Jesus show up, but instead of being like Jesus, he's like Zeus from the old tales in Greece, that would be offensive to people. Because that's, edges straight up a misrepresentation of the character. And biblically we have very little detail on what the character of Lucifer really is. And presenting him in any sort of way that is attractive to people. It makes perfect sense based on his role, that it's not offensive.
Katie Dooley 46:50 And I mean, for the premise of the show, a good character to pick Crake Jesus as a crap.
Preston Meyer 46:57 No, it wouldn't work. It wouldn't be interesting, I think.
47:00 Yeah.
Preston Meyer 47:03 I think it would straight up fail to be interesting.
Katie Dooley 47:04 There's that show. I haven't seen that Netflix club Messiah. Have you seen the
Preston Meyer 47:08 previous I've seen the previous for it. I've heard it's good. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 47:12 Anyway, that was a complete digression. But any final thoughts any bows you want to tie in wrap up this episode?
Preston Meyer 47:23 Religion is complicated. Don't be afraid to try to talk to your friends about it. And the things we've addressed I think are both fascinating and very deep wells to dive into as always are
Katie Dooley 47:43 you have any thoughts or comments are lovely congregants that's phone calling you know, shoot us an email let us know your favorite Christ speaker is or example of religion and pop culture at and it was wrong last episode because I hadn't said that up yet. Holy watermelon pod pod@gmail.com. And leave us five stars on your preferred podcast player and subscribe and share with a friend. He's been with you | |||
| 23 Oct 2023 | This is Halloween | 00:50:15 | |
Halloween is--despite what you might hear from your local evangelical group--a Christian holiday... kinda. There's a lot to it, and there are layers of syncretism to dig through, but just under the secular (not-technically-pagan) veneer of sugar and chocolate, is a thick layer of juicy Christian religious expression. All Saints' Day on the old calendar begins at sunset, giving us the EVE of so many great holidays. Halloween was never meant to become it's own distinct holiday until we made it a great party. We explore the original dates for the Christian festivals for the dead saints, and how more recent authorities (Pope Gregory IV) moved the religious celebration 1200 years ago. We are obligated to look at the Celtic Samhain (or Calan Gaeaf) and the old Roman Lemuria, and the claims surrounding Wicca. Opening the earth in the cold season before the freeze brings with it a vast collection of superstitious ideas around the dead and their visitations, too, and we can't leave out the fae folk. We examine the traditions of the jack-o-lanterns, and guising, the fascination with death, and the uniquely Canadian contribution to the nearly-global practice of Trick-or-Treating. With the Mexican Day of the Dead, we also dip into the story of Lazaro Cardenas del Rio and 1930s' Aztec-Mexican nationalism and the beautifying effects of secularism. After all, we have to spend some time exploring anti-Halloween rhetoric among evangelical Christians, and it's a little tough. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshirt. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 01 Mar 2021 | My Buddy Buddha | 00:50:59 | |
Is Buddhism a way of life or a religion? Is Buddha divine or is he just a smart guy? Because Buddhism is such an open religion (you can be a Buddhist and belong to another religious group) many people view it as a way of life instead of as a religion. However, Buddhism directly addresses what happens to your soul after death, which is a pretty religious thing to do. In this episode, we tell the story of Siddhartha Gautama. While you might think he’s the first Buddha, he’s actually the 28th Buddha we’ve had on earth, and there are more to come. Siddhartha was born in a royal household and given every creature comfort. It wasn’t until he was an adult that he saw people get sick, live in poverty, grow old, and die. When he had this experience he realized that life is suffering and left his home forever. Siddhartha went to the other end of the spectrum and lived with ascetics, depriving himself of sleep and food while he meditated under the famous Bodhi tree, where he eventually received enlightenment after 49 days. This enlightenment brought us the Middle Path – something between indulgence and deprivation. Buddhism started in BCE as an oral tradition, by the first century CE we started having records written down. Some of the most notable beliefs in Buddhism are the 4 Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. 4 Noble Truths
Eightfold path
Join us for a broad overview of the Buddhist religion, beliefs, practices, and more!
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Preston Meyer 00:00 Katie Dooley 00:13 Both Hosts 00:15 Katie Dooley 00:23 Preston Meyer 00:29 Katie Dooley 00:33 Preston Meyer 00:37 Katie Dooley 00:37 Preston Meyer 00:43 Katie Dooley 00:46 Preston Meyer 00:50 Katie Dooley 00:51 Preston Meyer 00:59 Katie Dooley 01:01 Preston Meyer 01:14 Katie Dooley 01:18 Preston Meyer 01:25 Katie Dooley 01:29 Preston Meyer 01:32 Katie Dooley 01:39 Preston Meyer 01:44 Katie Dooley 02:57 Preston Meyer 03:21 Katie Dooley 03:26 Preston Meyer 03:29 Katie Dooley 03:32 Preston Meyer 03:38 Katie Dooley 03:42 Preston Meyer 03:55 Katie Dooley 03:56 Preston Meyer 04:09 Katie Dooley 04:11 Preston Meyer 04:15 Katie Dooley 05:10 Preston Meyer 05:12 Katie Dooley 05:26 Preston Meyer 05:37 Katie Dooley 05:43 Preston Meyer 05:49 Katie Dooley 06:02 Preston Meyer 06:06 Katie Dooley 06:13 Preston Meyer 06:15 Katie Dooley 06:32 Preston Meyer 06:33 Katie Dooley 06:33 Preston Meyer 06:36 Katie Dooley 06:37 Preston Meyer 06:39 Katie Dooley 06:44 Preston Meyer 06:49 Katie Dooley 07:04 Preston Meyer 07:06 Katie Dooley 07:10 Preston Meyer 07:18 Katie Dooley 07:29 Preston Meyer 07:36 Katie Dooley 07:38 Preston Meyer 07:50 Katie Dooley 08:35 Preston Meyer 08:38 Katie Dooley 08:40 Preston Meyer 08:42 Katie Dooley 08:47 Preston Meyer 08:53 Katie Dooley 08:57 Preston Meyer 09:02 Katie Dooley 09:16 Preston Meyer 09:19 Katie Dooley 09:35 Preston Meyer 09:42 Katie Dooley 09:43 Preston Meyer 09:48 Katie Dooley 10:13 Preston Meyer 10:28 Katie Dooley 10:44 Preston Meyer 10:57 Katie Dooley 11:01 Preston Meyer 11:27 Katie Dooley 11:28 Preston Meyer 11:44 Katie Dooley 11:54 Preston Meyer 12:10 Katie Dooley 12:37 Preston Meyer 13:12 Katie Dooley 13:29 Preston Meyer 13:41 Katie Dooley 13:48 Preston Meyer 13:51 Katie Dooley 13:57 Preston Meyer 14:02 Katie Dooley 14:07 Preston Meyer 14:19 Katie Dooley 15:11 Preston Meyer 15:14 Katie Dooley 15:35 Preston Meyer 15:44 Katie Dooley 15:55 Preston Meyer 16:00 Katie Dooley 17:17 Preston Meyer 17:20 Katie Dooley 17:22 Preston Meyer 17:29 Katie Dooley 17:32 Preston Meyer 17:33 Katie Dooley 17:33 Preston Meyer 17:38 Katie Dooley 17:43 Preston Meyer 17:52 Katie Dooley 17:54 Preston Meyer 18:00 Katie Dooley 18:02 Preston Meyer 18:05 Katie Dooley 18:22 Preston Meyer 18:27 Katie Dooley 18:28 Preston Meyer 18:31 Katie Dooley 18:37 Preston Meyer 18:42 Katie Dooley 18:51 Preston Meyer 18:52 Katie Dooley 19:34 Preston Meyer 19:47 Katie Dooley 20:18 Preston Meyer 20:44 Katie Dooley 20:45 Preston Meyer 20:58 Katie Dooley 21:43 Preston Meyer 21:47 Katie Dooley 21:50 Preston Meyer 21:52 Katie Dooley 21:58 Preston Meyer 22:14 Katie Dooley 22:20 Preston Meyer 22:24 Katie Dooley 22:35 Preston Meyer 22:57 Katie Dooley 22:58 Preston Meyer 23:03 Katie Dooley 23:17 Preston Meyer 23:19 Katie Dooley 23:45 Preston Meyer 24:14 Katie Dooley 24:17 Preston Meyer 24:18 Katie Dooley 24:41 Preston Meyer 24:43 Katie Dooley 24:44 Preston Meyer 24:46 Katie Dooley 25:17 Preston Meyer 25:18 Katie Dooley 25:25 Preston Meyer 25:28 Katie Dooley 25:39 Preston Meyer 25:45 Katie Dooley 26:00 Preston Meyer 26:13 Katie Dooley 26:15 Preston Meyer 26:18 Katie Dooley 26:26 Preston Meyer 26:30 Katie Dooley 26:50 Preston Meyer 26:52 Katie Dooley 26:54 Preston Meyer 26:55 Katie Dooley 26:56 Preston Meyer 26:59 Katie Dooley 27:04 Preston Meyer 27:37 Katie Dooley 27:41 Preston Meyer 27:52 Katie Dooley 27:59 Preston Meyer 28:00 Katie Dooley 30:26 Preston Meyer 30:30 Katie Dooley 30:32 Preston Meyer 30:38 Katie Dooley 30:39 Preston Meyer 32:39 Katie Dooley 32:45 Preston Meyer 32:59 Katie Dooley 33:01 Preston Meyer 33:11 Katie Dooley 33:16 Preston Meyer 33:26 Katie Dooley 33:29 Preston Meyer 34:10 Katie Dooley 34:13 Preston Meyer 34:49 Katie Dooley 34:55 Preston Meyer 35:11 Katie Dooley 35:15 Preston Meyer 35:16 Katie Dooley 35:33 Preston Meyer 35:35 Katie Dooley 35:39 Preston Meyer 35:44 Katie Dooley 35:51 Preston Meyer 35:53 Katie Dooley 35:54 Preston Meyer 35:56 Katie Dooley 36:06 Preston Meyer 36:11 Katie Dooley 36:51 Preston Meyer 36:53 Katie Dooley 38:47 Preston Meyer 38:48 Katie Dooley 40:13 Preston Meyer 40:16 Katie Dooley 40:57 Preston Meyer 41:01 Katie Dooley 41:10 Preston Meyer 41:14 Katie Dooley 41:28 Preston Meyer 41:31 Katie Dooley 41:32 Preston Meyer 41:36 Katie Dooley 41:51 Preston Meyer 41:53 Katie Dooley 41:59 Preston Meyer 42:04 Katie Dooley 42:40 Preston Meyer 42:47 Katie Dooley 43:30 Preston Meyer 43:44 Katie Dooley 44:05 Preston Meyer 44:22 Katie Dooley 45:01 Preston Meyer 45:18 Katie Dooley 46:10 Preston Meyer 46:12 Katie Dooley 46:21 Preston Meyer 46:29 Katie Dooley 46:47 Preston Meyer 47:08 Katie Dooley 47:13 Preston Meyer 47:27 Katie Dooley 48:00 Preston Meyer 48:42 Katie Dooley 48:48 Preston Meyer 48:54 Katie Dooley 48:58 Preston Meyer 49:01 Katie Dooley 49:14 Preston Meyer 49:20 Katie Dooley 49:23 Preston Meyer 49:32 Katie Dooley 49:58 Preston Meyer 50:05 Katie Dooley 50:10 Preston Meyer 50:28 Katie Dooley 50:31 Both Hosts 50:45 | |||
| 19 Dec 2022 | Rebranding the Holidays | 00:38:09 | |
You don't get many holidays that are more Christian than Christmas, right? The celebration of the birth of Jesus on December 25th is second only to Easter as far as Christian holidays go. But what if we told you that a lot of what we do is borrowed? Did you know that many of the Christmas traditions we know and love have roots in other cultures and "pagan" traditions? In this episode, Katie and Preston chat about some of the most beloved Christmas customs like Christmas trees, caroling, mistletoe, yule logs, Santa Claus himself, and more! Many of these practices come from the short days, and unreasonably cold weather that most of the Northern hemisphere experiences this time of year. With all of these pagan beliefs, it's no surprise that Christmas has been banned before. Oh wait, it was banned in the 1600s by Christian Puritans because of all the material excess. Ancient Egyptian, Norse, Roman, Siberian and more! We dive into the different cultures, deities and beliefs that influence this modern-day Christian celebration. Here's a link to Vivian Bricker's terrible dissertation.
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| 21 Nov 2022 | Jonesing for Utopia | 00:50:31 | |
The cult of Jim Jones, known as the Peoples Temple, is only one of many dangerous groups to deliberately shuffle off their mortal coils in large concerted efforts, but theirs was the most impactful. They are famous for "Drinking the Kool-Aid," an unfortunate and insensitive misnomer... After leading his church to Guyana, in 1978 they became the victims of the single greatest loss of American life in a non-military action until the 9/11 WTC attacks. Jones got a lot of his ideas from Father Divine, from the Peace Mission, which he eventually tried to take over... Jimmy was deeply religious in his youth, though his belief in God faded as he grew up. He was a Methodist preacher for a while, and later a Pentecostal preacher. He loved telling people how to live their lives, but he was one of those people who only did what was right under the threat of punishment for misbehavior. Jim Jones was a serious communist, interested in building a racially diverse "rainbow family", but he was also a doomsday prepper, spouting some serious incel philosophy, which is on-brand for how things ended. While not all negligent parents raise mass murderers, but all mass murderers have negligent parents. While Jimmy claimed to be the only heterosexual person on the planet, he has been known to rape men and masturbate for a all-male audience. It's all great until it isn't. If your community asks you to be willing to kill yourself at a moment's notice, you are in a dangerous cult. Some of Jones' followers weren't present for the massacre, but received orders by radio to commit revolutionary suicide. Some of these faithful followers took the opportunity to murder others before taking their own lives. Family of victims and survivors of the massacre find the phrase "Drink the Kool-Aid" offensive, and rightly so. Making light of such a tragedy is a poke at a deep wound. It's also an odd case of brand confusion: the real juice that was mixed with cyanide was Flavor-Aid. Jones claimed that a nuclear attack was coming, and he was able to convince people to move away from their home, eventually to Guyana. When people got concerned, they took their problem to congress. Unfortunately, having the government come to take some children away is a great catalyst for the worst action any cult could take.
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| 30 Nov 2020 | From Asherah to Zhimáshén | 00:51:03 | |
In the study of the world's religions, religious groups are divided into two categories: Western (mostly Abrahamic religions), and Eastern (almost everything else). We're going to unpack these labels in this episode and chat about the similarities and differences between the two big categories. We also chat about everything that's left out (surprise, it's a lot). All of the world’s religions come from Asia. Regarding the terms Eastern and Western, we are just referring to where in Asia they are from. The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are from Western Asia (Middle East), whereas religions like Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Shinto are from Eastern Asia. The labels of Eastern and Western aren’t handy anymore. You can be any religion anywhere in the world. These labels also only apply to a handful of unified world religions. It doesn’t include Indigenous religions, Animism, or other smaller pagan groups. Eastern and Western religions can be broken down by their theological model. Eastern religions are more spiritual, typically polytheistic and have gods with niche stewardships. Their deities are very involved with specific things, but rarely involved with everything. Western religions are monotheistic, with Islam and modern Judaism being truly monotheistic while Christianity and the trinity are ideal monotheism. In this episode, we also talk about Henotheism and how it is present in the Old Testament.
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| 26 Feb 2024 | How YOU Could Become a God | 00:59:09 | |
Apotheosis is the process of becoming a god, and that gift isn't always limited to the dead. Some classic examples include Asclepius, Ariadne, and Glaucus. Apotheosis also appears in the Abrahamic tradition, in a varity of manifestations, including the Alawite tradition, which elevates Ali ibn Abi Talib to godhood. We examine the diference between Apotheosis and Theosis in the Christian tradition. Preston expounds on the exaltation promised in the Latter-day Saint tradition. We look at the worship of mortals in cults of personality (Jim Jones, Amy Carlson, Joseph Kony, Nirmala Srivastava, and Alan John Miller), the god kings of the empires, and those who were deified posthumously by their followers (Buddha, Hitler, Washington, Pythagoras, Mother Mary, Saint Teresa of Calcutta), and even some who were involuntarily deified in their lifetimes (Raj Patel, Kumari, Prince Philip, as well as some of the old Apostles of Christ). There's also the wonder of Apocolocyntosis (divi) Claudi, or pumpkinification, the extravagant or absurdly uncritical glorification of a person. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 14 Aug 2023 | Lost and Found: Sacred Texts | 01:08:10 | |
Lost books include apocryphal literature from heretics, grifters, and entrapment-dodging translators, but there's also genuine works that were abridged or edited later, allowing the originals to disappear in the fog of disuse. Some books are lost because their religious traditions and communities have died out or were pushed underground, and other books are the stuff of legend, and may never have really existed.... After our discussion of how the various canons were established, we MUST discuss what was left on the cutting room floor. In addition to the more popular Deuterocanonical "Apocrypha" of the Alexandrian Greek Judeo-Christian tradition, there's a vast collection of other Jewish apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings, and more from Christian writers. Some of our favorites are the Book of Jubilees, and the Testament of Job, and the Christian Infancy Gospels. There is also material that was once listed with--and within--sacred texts that has been lost, including several Hebrew prophetic books mentioned in the Tanakh, and several lost apostolic letters mentioned in the New Testament canon. Even the original Book of Mormon has material that didn't make it into the final publication. With these books, we also explore some of the lost books of Mani (the founder of Manichaeism), the legendary Purvas of Jainism, the burned books of the pre-colonial Mexicans of the Aztec Triple-Alliance, the Christian Book of Nepos, and the Gospel of Eve. But all is not lost, we have been fortunate to discover--in the last century--the Nag Hammadi Library and the Dead Sea Scrolls, so we have to examine these, too. Learn more about the Dead Sea Scrolls project at www.deadseascrolls.org.il Support us on Patreon and consider joining our Book Club. You can get our exclusive merch at Spreadshirt. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 14 Feb 2022 | Ragna-Rock'n'Roll | 01:13:41 | |
Thor and Odin are well known today, but are these images faithful to the source material? There's more to the Norse religious tradition than the bit of mythology that makes it into the movies. It's a complex system with a rich poetic tradition. Unfortunately, much is lost to time. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the comics that inspire it, have told wonderful stories about the figures of Thor, Odin, and Loki, and their many companions, but the family tree and the cosmology is far more complex than what we see in most popular fiction. The North Germanic pagan tradition is alive today, but things have gotten complicated. White Nationalism including groups like the Sons of Odin have taken up the names of these figures of faith and power, in the hopes of intimidating their "lesser" opponents. Join us as we explore the Eddas, and the things that Marvel and the Nazis got wrong. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
[00:00:11] Preston Meyer: We've enjoyed a little bit of the wine religions in the last month.
[00:00:16] Katie Dooley: Sure have.
[00:00:17] Preston Meyer: Now we have to abandon the wine religions in favor of the beer religion.
[00:00:21] Katie Dooley: Ooh, I like beer.
[00:00:26] Preston Meyer: Not a fan of either.
[00:00:28] Katie Dooley: You wouldn't be. You wouldn't be.
[00:00:33] Preston Meyer: That's just the way it is. Yeah. I don't drink, no. As I take a sip of water.
[00:00:41] Katie Dooley: It's just water everyone. He has not turned it into wine successfully yet, so.
[00:00:45] Preston Meyer: I don't have that kind of power.
[00:00:46] Katie Dooley: No. Yep. So we are on this episode. We are talking about Norse religion.
[00:00:54] Preston Meyer: On this week's episode of.
[00:00:56] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast!
[00:01:01] Katie Dooley: So I, I mean, I know a little bit about Norse religion, but I did not know enough to know how accurate Marvel is.
[00:01:16] Preston Meyer: Uh, there's there's a couple of details they got right and....
[00:01:20] Katie Dooley: A lot of the names and things like, I literally thought Ragnarok was made up for the movies.
[00:01:26] Preston Meyer: Oh, okay, yeah. See, I had read the Prose Edda a few years ago before I started my degree, so I knew a little bit. But it's actually really frustrating how much Marvel screws up.
[00:01:42] Katie Dooley: Well, we'll have to dig into. You'll have to point it out as we go along.
[00:01:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, I think it's really interesting that the Norse didn't have a word for religion. Honestly, most cultures didn't have a word for religion before they got exposed to Christianity.
[00:01:58] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Before there was this big shift in religion from polytheism to monotheism.
[00:02:04] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's it's a weird thing. So what we call the Norse religion, they just called the old custom, in contrast to the new custom, which was Christianity. And so there was the old gods and the new gods. The New Gods being the Christian gods, because things are always complicated.
[00:02:34] Katie Dooley: So unlike the Romans and the Greeks. Norse, the Norse never achieved the same level of imperial power.
[00:02:43] Preston Meyer: No, they mostly just went around raiding camps when they were looking to expand.
[00:02:47] Katie Dooley: Raiding camps and stealing women.
[00:02:50] Preston Meyer: And not just women,
[00:02:51] Katie Dooley: Stealing everyone.
[00:02:51] Preston Meyer: Men and children for slaves too.
[00:02:55] Katie Dooley: So they didn't collect gods the same way that the Greeks and Romans did.
[00:03:02] Preston Meyer: No, it's actually really, really frustrating trying to figure out how the religion, the old customs evolved because we don't have a lot of documentation for that time period. And frustratingly, we have even less from their neighbours. So we've just kind of mostly got what was written after they were exposed to Christians.
[00:03:28] Katie Dooley: Yeah. You know and then what Marvel did with it.
[00:03:36] Preston Meyer: Which muddied the waters. So instead of having a bunch of separate henolatric cults like we saw in Greece and Rome, the North Germanic people seem to have been truer polytheists than the others. But of course, they weren't monolithic either. Things were different from one area to the next. The people in North Norway were a little different from the people in south Sweden. That kind of deal.
[00:04:07] Katie Dooley: Nice use of alliteration. You didn't have to do that, I love that. And just like any of these old religions, the Norse religion didn't rely on a holy book or any sort of sacred texts. It was an entirely, I mean, entirely oral tradition. But just like Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, for the Greek mythology that Eddas are written records of the Norse mythology.
[00:04:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The elder Poetic Edda is estimated to date back about a thousand years. It was compiled more recently than that, but individual poems that build up the whole are older, and because it's poetic, way too much of it is way too ambiguous for outsiders. Which is, of course, everybody. Now that it's been a thousand years.
[00:05:01] Katie Dooley: It's interesting to me that's such an old religion was and I mean, when we talk about the Prose Edda is even newer, that was compiled so recently.
[00:05:12] Preston Meyer: Right. And there's a younger Edda called the Prose Edda because it's a lot less poetic, written by a fellow named Snorri. He wrote it in the early 1200s, and it's way easier to understand. But yeah, it's weird that it was only that recent that things started being written down when writing was actually a very powerful thing for them.
[00:05:36] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and I mean, the 1200s like that part of the world would have been fully Christian by then. So to even take it on at that time seems. Kind of odd, right?
[00:05:48] Preston Meyer: It is odd.
[00:05:49] Katie Dooley: It'd probably be seen as heretical. And again, it's probably another 2000 plus years older than than the time it was written.
[00:05:56] Preston Meyer: It could.
[00:05:56] Katie Dooley: Or compiled.
[00:05:57] Preston Meyer: I mean, it's it's really hard to say, really, how old these traditions are. Uh, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of old mystery schools or cults like we saw in in Greece. There doesn't seem to be any secret knowledge among the Norse peoples, or at least there isn't any evidence today. If there was any, it hasn't survived at all.
[00:06:20] Katie Dooley: The elves have it.
[00:06:22] Preston Meyer: Maybe.
[00:06:26] Katie Dooley: My dad was. I forget what book my dad was reading, but he was talking about how in Iceland, like, they still, like, genuinely believe in elves and that they have to get, like, elf permits for any sort of property development. And so he showed them that clip from, uh.
[00:06:39] Preston Meyer: From Eurovision.
[00:06:40] Katie Dooley: Eurovision where the the elf knifes the guy in the back.
[00:06:43] Preston Meyer: Ah, I love it. What a ridiculous way for that bit of the story to get tied up right.
[00:06:48] Katie Dooley: I oh, that made me so happy.
[00:06:50] Preston Meyer: It was great and yeah, there's kind of a lot going on culturally around this old custom. There are dwarves and elves and trolls and all kinds of figures that are just part of the story that never really interact religiously. It's just part of the custom.
[00:07:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah. No. Exactly. It's interesting that, yeah, there's no stories about trolls per se, but it was I guess it's. Yeah, kind of implied that they I mean, there are stories about giants and we'll get into that, but that they exist right alongside these gods in Asgard.
[00:07:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah. There were three basic classes among the Old Norse. You had the Jarls, uh, which are basically noble folk. You had the Karls. That's how we get the French named Charles, fairly common among our people today. And that name means free people. And then you had the thralls, the slaves, who were occasionally offered up as sacrifices. But that wasn't their most useful application. It was far better to keep them around for labour.
[00:08:07] Katie Dooley: Right?
[00:08:09] Preston Meyer: There were no priests, really. A handful of regions have different words that are usually treated like priests, but any person could offer sacrifices and group ceremonies were typically led by the head of the family or the village leader. So these words that we usually treat like priest seem more appropriate to apply to teachers or shamanic fortune tellers, things like that, rather than how you would see a priest today in the Christian tradition.
[00:08:43] Katie Dooley: Now tell me about blood.
[00:08:47] Preston Meyer: Uh, so blöt, uh, is a word that means blessing, but the every way that it's used, it basically is a sacrifice. And the sacrifices, like we've seen in a lot of religions when you really boil down what's going on, these are big community barbecues or sometimes just small family meals. The sacrifices could be offered for literally any occasion. It could be to celebrate a wedding, to prepare for a voyage, to hope for the best at the time of a birth. Literally anything. If you wanted to make sure things were going to go well, a sacrifice just kind of made sense.
[00:09:30] Katie Dooley: A barbecue just helps everything.
[00:09:33] Preston Meyer: So the animal was killed and the party would eat the animal. Bigger events deserved bigger sacrifices, fed more people. Sacrifices were offered freely rather than required by the gods. Certain gods would prefer certain kinds of animals and these were offered with the hope of divine generosity that, hey, out of nowhere, I'm just going to offer this thing to Odin in the hopes that God's going to be generous to me and give me what I need. Kind of a deal. It was an offering for a trade instead of a "I owe you this thing and as a covenant deal, you're going to bless me with this thing"
[00:10:14] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I kind of like that better.
[00:10:14] Katie Dooley: Right? It also leaves a little bit of space for the gods to still be like, "nah, I don't want to help you with this thing."
[00:10:24] Katie Dooley: Right? You haven't done enough for me yet.
[00:10:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Human sacrifices are really actually still a matter of contention among scholars, but many agree that it was mostly done in connection with war during the Viking Age specifically, and not actually common in most communities. And there was no schedules for sacrifices, so the North Germanic peoples actually never had any use for the idea of a week like we're familiar with today. They didn't name the days because there was no necessary cycle.
[00:10:58] Katie Dooley: Time is a construct!
[00:11:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah, for most of them, the day was actually counted in the way we see it in the old Hebrew tradition of a new day starts when the current day dies, so at sunset. But other than that, they didn't worry about time so much apart from yearly cycles. Which makes sense. Take care of the seasons. Don't worry about weeks.
[00:11:23] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah. Makes sense a sense. How do you know when it's a birthday though?
[00:11:29] Preston Meyer: I don't think they really worried about birthdays.
[00:11:31] Katie Dooley: It's a very modern thing.
[00:11:33] Preston Meyer: From the impression that I've been getting, they didn't worry about it. You would count the days of the cycle, like for the season.
[00:11:41] Katie Dooley: Yeah, they would know the equinoxes and solstices. Most people did back then.
[00:11:46] Preston Meyer: But there was no Monday until the Romans made their social connections. And then Monday became a thing. So the names that we have for weekdays now are born from kind of a Norse butchering of the Roman system. They didn't even bother to come up with anything to replace Saturn for Saturday.
[00:12:09] Katie Dooley: Well, I like the sound of the Saturn.
[00:12:11] Preston Meyer: I think they just couldn't think of anything.
[00:12:15] Katie Dooley: I like the sound of the Saturn. Yeah.
[00:12:18] Preston Meyer: But Sunday, Monday, the sun and the moon. Super simple.
[00:12:22] Katie Dooley: And then we get with Thor. I don't know why they're Italian.
[00:12:30] Preston Meyer: And then we got Tyrs day. Uh, and some people pronounce it two. And so that's how we got Tuesday.
[00:12:37] Katie Dooley: And then we get the one with the....
[00:12:43] Preston Meyer: You're killing me. And then wooden and then Thur, and then Freya. And then that Saturday that they had no idea what to rename it.
[00:12:53] Katie Dooley: None of it sounded like...
[00:12:55] Preston Meyer: There were a handful of scholars that nobody really seems to be taking seriously on the matter. That think that Seder was a figure among the Norse, and there's a couple of people who are like, no, no, it was Seder, but no, no, it's it is Saturn. They just didn't rename the day. It's kind of weird.
[00:13:22] Katie Dooley: That like the sound of the Saturn.
[00:13:24] Preston Meyer: I guess.
[00:13:26] Katie Dooley: Like the Italian names.
[00:13:28] Preston Meyer: You know, we should do is start a movement to rename Saturday Borsday. Because Saturn is the father of Jupiter in the Roman mythology, um, and Bor is the father of Odin, so we can follow that scheme and just go ahead and replace Saturn with Bor.
[00:13:50] Katie Dooley: Right. Okay. We'll start a petition.
[00:13:52] Preston Meyer: We don't we don't have a day of the week that starts with B yet, and.
[00:13:56] Katie Dooley: We have two that start with T and two that start with S, what?
[00:13:58] Preston Meyer: We can chop this confusion in half by having a weekday that starts with B. Borsday. It's the best day of the weekend.
[00:14:07] Katie Dooley: Our episodes are released two days after Borsday.
[00:14:10] Preston Meyer: Exactly. Another really important part of the old custom was Sade. Which means tether or bind or rope. It's a word that we're still figuring out what really is the precise translation of the word, but basically it it's the thing that ties everything together. It's magic.
[00:14:37] Katie Dooley: It's the force.
[00:14:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And so it's basically used to find secrets, discern the future, but also predict the future. And so this divination was really important, like it was everywhere else. And when you look at all of these other old religions, but it seems like it was mostly women that were really involved in this practice of discerning the future. Odin is supposed to have learned it from Freya, rather than being the fount of this gift on his own, which is kind of a cool touch, I think. Sorry. I thought you were gonna say something.
[00:15:16] Katie Dooley: I was like i thought you were gonna say something, so I stopped myself. I was just gonna say that the women in Norse mythology are pretty badass, but they are pretty badass in Greek and Roman, too.
[00:15:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:15:28] Katie Dooley: I think monotheism wrecked that all for us women.
[00:15:32] Preston Meyer: I don't think it's the monotheism so much as the people who are pushing it on others. Runes were also really important. They were thought to be very, very powerful. It is said in an old poem that the right rune could make a dead man walk again. So there's all kinds of study on, on these old forms of writing that had ritual value. And even though this writing was super important, we actually have really minimal ancient records about this tradition. We find rocks here and there with things inscribed on them. But it's not like big theological writings or anything. It's just Thor protect us kind of deal that we'll find written on a rock somewhere, which it's interesting to look back and see how long ago they've been talking about Thor, but it doesn't give us a whole lot more information than that.
[00:16:30] Katie Dooley: No, and I will get next segment we'll talk about specific gods, and there are some that I found that they're basically like, we don't know anything about this guy, but it was important to them.
[00:16:43] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:16:44] Katie Dooley: He's mentioned twice in the Edda and that's it. But based off of who he was in the pantheon. We think he was important. I read that a few times.
[00:16:55] Preston Meyer: Right. Well, we had the same problem with the Romans that even their scholars before the fall of the Republic, they're like, these are the gods that we have official, nationally paid priests offering to these gods, and we can't remember who two of them are. Yeah.
[00:17:16] Katie Dooley: Whoopsie daisy.
[00:17:18] Preston Meyer: Right. It's kind of weird. Like they lost track of who they were before the Empire took over the Republic's place. Yeah. Weird.
[00:17:28] Katie Dooley: Whoopsie poopsie.
[00:17:32] Preston Meyer: Another part of the old tradition. The old custom is their philosophy, which has actually not really died out. The philosophy still remains an important part of the culture in Scandinavia today. Um, basically it's. Well, completely free from theological dogma. The goal of life is to find happiness. This is best done through the virtues of independence, hospitality, loyalty, modesty, generosity, courage, and wisdom. Independence comes from wisdom. Wisdom comes from travel. Kind of nifty. I like it really encourages you to get out and see the world which more people should be doing and something else that was really important to them was the idea that there is no escaping fate. Fate was decided by the Norns and even the gods couldn't escape Ragnarok. They knew it was coming. They have all these details foretold. Ragnarok is still in the future, as far as we can tell, according to their writings.
[00:18:37] Katie Dooley: What about the hit movie from 2017?
[00:18:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's a couple of years ago, loosely based on the ideas of the prophecy, not a faithful representation of the story at all.
[00:18:54] Katie Dooley: No, because nobody's supposed to survive it.
[00:18:57] Preston Meyer: Oh, there are survivors.
[00:18:58] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's true. There are survivors. The Hulk's not involved in the Edda. He never shows up.
[00:19:04] Preston Meyer: Nope. There should have been a Beta Ray Bill, though. You'll know who that is soon enough.
[00:19:11] Katie Dooley: Oh, dear.
[00:19:13] Preston Meyer: But yeah, fate's super important. You just accept it. But it's interesting that this idea that there's no escaping the fates has actually really encouraged people to be bold and go out and do great things. So that's cool.
[00:19:29] Katie Dooley: I mean, that I mean, that just reminds me of. Have you seen Big Fish?
[00:19:34] Preston Meyer: No, I don't think I have.
[00:19:35] Katie Dooley: That's a great movie. Yeah. Anyway, it's not a huge plot point, but, uh, Ewan McGregor's character is asked if he wants to know how he's going to die. And on the surface, most people would be like, no, I don't want to. I want to hang and die. He's like, yeah, because if I know how I'm going to die, then I know I can survive anything else.
[00:19:53] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:19:54] Katie Dooley: Right? So it takes place in the past. So he does like the most dangerous World War II mission, so he can finish his service faster and get home to his wife because he knows how he dies. And it's not in World War II, so part of me is like, yeah, I can kind of see, like if you know how it's going to end, then. You probably enjoy it more.
[00:20:13] Preston Meyer: Would you rather know how or when?
[00:20:19] Katie Dooley: Oh, I think I'd rather. I think I'd rather know when. Because how, then I would try everything to avoid the how and be able to avoid the how. Right. You know what I mean?
[00:20:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:20:31] Katie Dooley: Whereas if you know when, then you can just, like, live your best life until then. Right? Because if it's like, oh, you're gonna die in a plane crash, well, then you'll never go on a plane again. 'Cause maybe it's the next one, or maybe it's one 30 years from now. Whereas if it's like you're gonna die 30 years from now, then it's like, cool. I can do whatever I want until for 30 years. Instead of trying to avoid chocolate or cars or, um, cigarettes, whatever it is anyway.
[00:20:58] Preston Meyer: But what if when was changeable, but also like...
[00:21:08] Katie Dooley: Um, well, I mean, it would be really upsetting, but again, I think it like. Then you know, right? Then you stop paying your mortgage, right?
[00:21:15] Preston Meyer: I guess so.
[00:21:17] Katie Dooley: The changeable changes, that's too many variables. 'Cause that's probably exactly...
[00:21:21] Preston Meyer: Fate is crazy. It's such a big mind issue.
[00:21:29] Katie Dooley: Drop in our Discord whether you want to know how or when you're going to die.
[00:21:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Terrible things, terrible thoughts.
[00:21:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Let's keep it positive, though. Put a GIF in there. How do you think you're going to die?
[00:21:45] Preston Meyer: I'm just reminded of this thing I've seen on Reddit a few times now over the last couple of years of this lady walks up to this box, it says, put your finger in here and it'll tell you how you're going to die. And she just hesitates a little bit, but she puts her finger in there and gets a little piece of paper out, and it just says, old age gets this big old smile on her face, starts skipping down the across the street, hit by a guy in a car. You see the guy - Old guy. Old age got her. Yeah, it was rough. Prophecy can often be very vague and entirely useless or self-fulfilling in the most irritating way.
[00:22:26] Katie Dooley: Yes. All right. So who the heck were these old gods?
[00:22:33] Preston Meyer: Well, there were two groups of gods. Well, I mean, it's more complicated than just saying there's two of them. There's an awful lot of groups of powerful beings, but the ones that are usually called gods. Are the AEsir, the Asgardians, or the Vanir. Which don't have a common name in Marvel yet, as far as I've heard.
[00:23:00] Katie Dooley: And the Vanir split off from the Aesir, is my understanding and then they fought each other.
[00:23:07] Preston Meyer: There are some thoughts that they were actually the gods of a rival nation. But because we have so little information from the earliest points of this developing history, we actually don't know when and it's mostly all guesswork.
[00:23:27] Katie Dooley: So again, none of these gods were repurposed for any sort of Christian use.
[00:23:32] Preston Meyer: No, none of them turned into saints like the old Roman gods did. A lot of Christian saints are actually just repurposed Roman gods. We'll take a look at that later this year.
[00:23:46] Katie Dooley: And again, as Preston mentioned, these two groups, they would fight and intermarry, but they were equally matched in all things. So eventually a truce had to happen because they realized no one was going to win.
[00:24:02] Preston Meyer: Nice. Perfect match. Yeah. Break down your walls and accomplish nothing else.
[00:24:09] Katie Dooley: Okay, so one of the theories I read is that this war that appears in the Edda is actually a retelling of something that actually happened in Scandinavia thousands of years ago.
[00:24:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah, a lot of scholars are actually pretty convinced that Odin was a real person, just some ancestor of royal line. And it makes good sense to me, actually. Euhemerism can be really tricky trying to figure out how the gods are connected to real things. Like some of them are just the personification of the sun. Some of them are real people made divine by tradition. Odin. It seems really easy to say that he was a real person.
[00:24:57] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. So most of the popular, popular, well known Norse gods are part of the AEsir. That's Odin, Frigg, Hodr, Thor, Baldur, all fall in there, and very few of the Vanir are named. But the three that constantly come up are Njord, Frey, and Freyja. And they're a little family, which we'll talk about in a second.
[00:25:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:25:23] Katie Dooley: And just like Greek and Roman, the the gods have human emotions. They're anthropomorphic, and they are deeply flawed. There's no, um, like, you see in monotheism. All good benevolent, righteous knows, all omniscient. Role model here. In fact, there's some that I would say do not use as a role model, even a little bit.
[00:25:49] Preston Meyer: Uh, Zeus was the great example and a couple episodes ago, Loki is a great example in this one. And Loki, again, a great example of gods that there's no evidence of anybody ever worshiping them. A lot of these gods actually fit into that category where they're part of the story. They're counted as divine, but nobody actually offered them sacrifices or prayed to them or worship them in any way that looks like worship to us. I think that's kind of fascinating.
[00:26:22] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean and we don't really have a parallel in the monotheistic religion because like yeah, you could pick a random character from the Bible and be like, yeah, well we don't worship Zadok.
[00:26:36] Preston Meyer: But we also don't call him a god.
[00:26:38] Katie Dooley: Exactly. Yeah. I was just trying to pick my most favorite random name from the Bible.
[00:26:42] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:26:43] Katie Dooley: Uh, right. But yeah, exactly. He's not divine. So it is interesting to have a powerful being that is not being worshiped. That obviously could influence a mortal's life, so anyway.
[00:27:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah, well, earthquakes are thought to be connected to Loki, so he certainly is a figure of power in the world that influences us. Still didn't get worshiped.
[00:27:12] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And then Preston mentioned earlier, but varying from region to region, town to town, smaller deities and ancestor worship were also common. So actually, that's where absolutely, Odin could be just someone's ancestor, Clans leader.
[00:27:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. In addition to the gods, there was also this phenomenon of land wights. Wights W-I-G-H-T-S the ghosts and spirits of the land, the forest, or sometimes even a whole region, or sometimes just the corner of a farm. They could have all kinds of different sizes of area of influence, which I thought was kind of interesting to to come across. But people would make offerings to these spirits just like they would to the gods.
[00:28:05] Katie Dooley: Nice. Now I think I have about a dozen of the gods summarized. You're gonna have to help me with some of the names. Sure. Mostly Thor's hammer.
[00:28:16] Preston Meyer: Mjolnir.
[00:28:16] Katie Dooley: Mjolnir.
[00:28:17] Preston Meyer: Not Mew Mew.
[00:28:19] Katie Dooley: Mew, Mew. Uh, I might still call that, uh, I'm gonna start with Thor, everybody's favourite brawny, hammer-wielding Hulk. Hunk. Hunk. That's what my notes are. Everybody's favorite brawny, hammer-wielding hunk. He is the god of thunder, storms, trees, protection and fertility. Yeah, he is. Literally. I'm picturing Chris Hemsworth.
[00:28:48] Preston Meyer: Of course, you're picturing Chris Hemsworth. He's played Thor. For more hours of screen time than anybody else has, as far as I'm aware. So it makes sense that he's the face that comes to mind. But traditionally, Thor was a chubby redhead, not an intensely fit blond hunk.
[00:29:12] Katie Dooley: So Thor is the son of Odin and Jörd, not Frigg like in the Marvel movies.
[00:29:18] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:29:19] Katie Dooley: He is the most prominently mentioned God in the history of the Germanic peoples. So we actually have tons and tons of information on Thor, which is nice. It's a breath of fresh air than some of the one-paragraph things I found on some of these people. He swings around Mew Mew.
[00:29:38] Preston Meyer: Mjölnir.
[00:29:39] Katie Dooley: Mjölnir. And he is the defender of Asgard from the Jötnar.
[00:29:44] Preston Meyer: Jötnar.
[00:29:45] Katie Dooley: Jötnar. There are like there's tons and tons of stories about Thor, and we could probably do a whole episode on him or write a bunch of Marvel movies.
[00:29:56] Preston Meyer: Maybe they're clearly not done with him, right?
[00:29:59] Katie Dooley: One story I want to see is Thor: Cross-dresser.
[00:30:08] Preston Meyer: Tell me more.
[00:30:08] Katie Dooley: This was just so good I had to include it. So. Settle in for this, kiddies. Thor woke up one morning to find Mjolnir missing, which isn't good, because how the heck is he going to defend Asgard from the Giants? So the goddess Freya gives Thor and Loki some falcon feathers to help them find the hammer. Loki, being a shapeshifter, takes his feather and turns into a falcon and heads to Jotunheim. After he arrives, he quickly realizes that the Giants have stolen it. The chief of the Giants, Therm told Loki that he did indeed have the hammer, but he wasn't going to return it until he could marry Freyja.
[00:30:56] Preston Meyer: Rude.
[00:30:58] Katie Dooley: Right?
[00:30:58] Preston Meyer: Whatever happened to consent?
[00:31:00] Katie Dooley: Consent and like. Like there's I mean, even then there's like, got to be a transaction and you got to get Njor involved because it's her dad. You can't just steal a hammer that has no connection to Freya and then ask for her hand in marriage. So now, when Loki flies back to Asgard to tell everyone this, no one is happy about it. So Heimdall suggests that Thor, good ol' Heimdall, that Thor disguises himself as Freya and head to Jotunheim to take back his hammer. Thor wasn't really feeling too much into the crossdressing thing, but Loki being Loki and his pal so said he'll cross-dress with him and pretend to be his maidservant. So now we have Thor and Loki dressed as women heading to Jotunheim, so Therm is super excited that he gets to marry Freya, so he holds a big feast. Thor, being Thor, eats an entire ox and drinks many barrels of mead, which makes Therm rightfully suspicious about how much his future wife eats. Now Sneaky Loki, he smooths talks their way out of it, and hastens the ceremony on. So Mjölnir is called upon to hallow the union. Thor grabs it and kills Therm, all while dressed as a beautiful blushing bride. The end.
[00:32:34] Preston Meyer: That's great.
[00:32:36] Katie Dooley: Right? How come that has not made it into a movie or a one-shot?
[00:32:41] Preston Meyer: There would be a great time.
[00:32:47] Katie Dooley: So yes, there's lots of great stories about Thor. Highly enjoyable. God of Thunder, protector of Asgard. Mew mew.
[00:32:57] Preston Meyer: The name Thor is basically the word that means thunder as well. So not terribly inventive name, but nice and easy for people to remember.
[00:33:11] Katie Dooley: I mean we called people Mason and they were Masons, right? So. Thunder, my son. And we name our kids a lot dumber things now than...
[00:33:23] Preston Meyer: True story. It's a wonderful world we live in.
[00:33:30] Katie Dooley: That actually, that's probably something in your scope of words. But like, as you know, I don't know who it includes, but as you know, I'm reading Zealot and like, they didn't even have last names. So they just like described people based off their relationships to others or what they did. Jesus of Nazareth or James, brother of the one who says he is Messiah. Um, and so like everyone had the name, like everyone was fucking named Mary. How do we go from Mary to, like, Abcde? You know what I mean? We're like, everyone was named Mary, and then all of a sudden we just got way too creative. What happened?
[00:34:06] Preston Meyer: I don't know. I think people just got tired of having seven Chrises in one class.
[00:34:16] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but, like, people just, like, threw sounds together to make new names.
[00:34:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:34:22] Katie Dooley: Anyway if anyone's a name specialist. Let me know.
[00:34:26] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Uh, Odin is next on our list. He's associated wisdom, death, healing, royalty and war. He's the husband of Frigg. He's portrayed as a fellow with one eye and a great beard. And he has lots of animal friends. He's got ravens, thought and memory, or Huginn and Muninn. He's also got two wolves, Geri and Freki. I can't remember what their names mean off the top of my head right now. They also accompany him most places, except for when he's really serious about being incognito. And these animals bring him information from Midgard. He's also often pictured riding Sleipnir an eight-legged horse, which sounds terrifying and spider-like. But let's fix that image by saying wherever you'd expect one leg, there's just two.
[00:35:23] Katie Dooley: Again, doesn't make it any less creepy.
[00:35:25] Preston Meyer: No. But easier than imagining a spider with a horse's head. Um, and we'll talk a little bit more about this ridiculous horse later and who its mother is. Odin watches over Valhalla, a hall in Asgard where half of those who die in battle are summoned. And it seems kind of weird. We'll talk more about those details. Um, Odin is a shapeshifter. He likes wandering around and he is the one telling the story through much of the Edda. That he is just in disguise, just pretending to be this old wise fella, not letting you know until after you're done talking to him that it's the All-father. And as we mentioned before, an awful lot of scholars are pretty sure he was a real person.
[00:36:25] Katie Dooley: Next, we move on to Frigg, who is the Queen of Asgard and wife of Odin. She is associated with marriage, motherhood, and prophecy. She resides in the marshlands called Fensalir. So she has three children Baldur, Hodor, and Hermod. And Frigg was known for being very smart. And this is, you know, something that they do do in the movies. Uh, Odin often asks her advice, and she can see into the future, but rarely did she ever tell anyone what she actually saw.
[00:36:56] Preston Meyer: That sounds like she's got a little bit of a Cassandra complex where she can see the future and nobody believe her anyway.
[00:37:03] Katie Dooley: Right, mom?
[00:37:07] Preston Meyer: Uh, next on our list, we have good guy Baldur. Everyone likes Baldur. He's incredibly handsome, according to the Edda. So handsome that it's like his face shines. Kind of like, um, what we hear about Moses sometimes. Except nobody got confused and said they were horns on his forehead.
[00:37:26] Katie Dooley: It's just a mistranslation.
[00:37:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's a weird tradition that people have gotten really committed to. Baldur is Odin's son with Frigg. Not the same relationship with Thor. It's weird that we haven't seen Baldur yet in the Marvel movies.
[00:37:46] Katie Dooley: Well, and and there isn't a lot written about Baldur in the Eddas, which is really interesting when you think that, you know, his dad was Odin and his mom was Frigg, and everyone liked him, but that's basically all the Eddas say about him. And then the next point, you'll. This is the next big point about his cameo.
[00:38:04] Preston Meyer: Right. So it was supposed to be his death that sets off the chain of events that lead to Ragnarok. Unfortunately, Marvel treated it differently and his father's death. Kind of triggered all of that bit of a bummer, leaving out what is historically an important character in the story.
[00:38:23] Katie Dooley: Well, and then they add Hela, which I couldn't find any record of her...
[00:38:26] Preston Meyer: In the story of Ragnarok.
[00:38:28] Katie Dooley: Well, in.. at all.. In the list of gods and goddesses I couldn't find Hela.
[00:38:33] Preston Meyer: Her relationship to the gods is kind of funky. I mean, Loki is barely a god, and well, let's look at Loki.
[00:38:43] Katie Dooley: Let's look at Loki. So Loki is a lot like Zeus in that he'll have sex with literally anything in the shape of literally anything.
[00:38:52] Preston Meyer: Uh huh. What a guy. Great for parties, I guess. I mean, the stories. Yeah. He's great for parties.
[00:39:01] Katie Dooley: He was friendly with the other gods until he masterminds the death of Baldur, which, as Preston mentioned, is the first event that leads to Ragnarok. And the MCU portrays his character qualities well in that he is self-serving, playful, and mischievous. He is a shapeshifter. Um, but it completely changes how he fits into his family. Loki is a Yoden cousin and adopted brother to Odin, and Loki is the father of Hel or Hela and her wolf Fenrir.
[00:39:34] Preston Meyer: Yep, Loki is the father of that wolf Fenrir.
[00:39:38] Katie Dooley: I was like, did I read that right?
[00:39:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's a mess.
[00:39:42] Katie Dooley: He fathered a wolf. Really good. It gets even weirder though. Loki is the father of the chaos monster known as Jormungandor.
[00:39:52] Preston Meyer: Well done.
[00:39:53] Katie Dooley: Thank you.
[00:39:54] Katie Dooley: Who is a serpent. Oh, and this is the serpent. That was a big deal for Thor. This was Thor's arch nemesis.
[00:39:59] Preston Meyer: Yes, the world serpent.
[00:40:01] Katie Dooley: The world serpent.
[00:40:01] Preston Meyer: The snake big enough to wrap around the world, just chills out in the ocean and is kind of the source of a lot of chaos in the world.
[00:40:09] Katie Dooley: Yes and then it gets even weirder. He is also the. Mother of Sleipnir. That's right. Everyone. He mothered a horse.
[00:40:20] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Good old Loki decided, hey, I need to have sex with this stallion, so I need to be appealing to this stallion. And then he remained a mare long enough to carry an eight-legged horse to term. Which sounds like hell.
[00:40:41] Katie Dooley: Can you imagine being that horny?
[00:40:44] Preston Meyer: To desperately need stallion wiener.
[00:40:47] Katie Dooley: To need stallion wiener so bad that you're willing to turn into a girl stallion and stay a girl stallion and give birth to an eight-legged horse?
[00:40:55] Preston Meyer: Catherine the Great is jealous.
[00:40:56] Katie Dooley: Catherine the Great is jealous. As is Mr. Hands. Um, because I'm pretty sure I don't know anything about farm animals. Preston, this is your world. But I'm pretty sure legs are like the dangerous part about giving birth. They get caught on things.
[00:41:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there is a risk.
[00:41:15] Katie Dooley: So having twice as many legs coming out of your horse vagina.
[00:41:20] Preston Meyer: Well, and interestingly enough, birth has always been thought of just without counting legs, as a very dangerous experience that sacrifices would be given before somebody gives birth. Loki choosing to go through this seems really weird.
[00:41:39] Katie Dooley: He really wanted that horse dick. Really wanted that horse dick. Oh, dear.
[00:41:47] Preston Meyer: Well, now that's in all of our heads.
[00:41:49] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So I'm going to try and move on, but I don't know if it's possible. So. Laufey is Loki's mother and she was never described as a Joden, but instead as a goddess. But his father, Farbauti was a Joden.
[00:42:04] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I don't know why Marvel has done this weird thing of making Laufey Loki's father. That's really weird.
[00:42:15] Katie Dooley: Is it when you turn into a mare and have sex with a horse dick? Is it? Is that the weirdest thing they could have done, Preston? I think you need to readjust your perspective.
[00:42:26] Preston Meyer: It's just weird. They've completely changed Loki's story and saved us from the more graphic parts of his story, I guess. But they've just destroyed everything about how he relates to the Asgardians. It's just kind of weird. Uh, next on our list, we have Njord. He was a Vanir god of the wind and the sea. He was also the god of wealth, bestowal, and prosperity. He married his sister and fathered, two kids, Freyja and Freyr. He then had a failed marriage with a giant goddess, Skadi. And we don't really know a lot more about him.
[00:43:07] Katie Dooley: That's kind of it. Then we have Freya, which we do know a little bit more about. She's one of the Vanir. She's associated with love, beauty, sex, war and gold. So kind of our Aphrodite, if you will.
[00:43:21] Preston Meyer: A little bit.
[00:43:22] Katie Dooley: But she's better than Aphrodite. You know why?
[00:43:25] Preston Meyer: Tell me?
[00:43:26] Katie Dooley: Because she rides a chariot pulled by cats.
[00:43:30] Preston Meyer: Now, are we talking house cats or are we talking..
[00:43:33] Katie Dooley: Meow meow meow. I don't actually know. I don't look it up. I always.
[00:43:36] Preston Meyer: I always imagine them being mountain lions.
[00:43:37] Katie Dooley: I literally always assume them to be house cats. Okay, do I need I'm googling it. I'm googling a picture, but I really if it's not house cats, I'm gonna be upset. It's house cats! It's house cats everyone! Meow meow meow!
[00:43:59] Preston Meyer: What we have here is a couple of. I mean, large tabbies. They're not mountain lions, that's for sure.
[00:44:13] Katie Dooley: These are old. Like, not these, I mean, not these aren't even just weird cat girl. Sorry. Weird cat girls. You know who you are. Uh, these aren't even just weird cat girls hoping it's cats. Even the older pictures show cats. And I am so happy right now.
[00:44:29] Preston Meyer: You know what? I guess I'm on board now.
[00:44:34] Katie Dooley: Slightly less exciting.
[00:44:36] Preston Meyer: But more adorable.
[00:44:38] Katie Dooley: No, I mean, I was gonna go into what, her other mode. Okay, go for it. Slightly less exciting than the cat chariot. She also rode a boar with golden bristles. So she's pimp my ride. She was cool. She was cool. Her twin brother is Freyr, as Preston mentioned. She has a husband, Odar, and two kids, Hnoss and Gersemi. She resides in the heavenly fields of Folkvangr, where she picks half the warriors that die in battle and then the others, leftovers go to Odin's Valhalla.
[00:45:18] Preston Meyer: See, I didn't when I was reading, it sounded like Odin's Valkyries picked the half they wanted and the rest went to.
[00:45:26] Katie Dooley: Oh, see, I read that this was an honor bestowed on her that she gets to pick.
[00:45:31] Preston Meyer: Well, I feel like this is a similar problem that we've had with other things where ancient sources also varied, right?
[00:45:42] Katie Dooley: And then, even just in a similarity of names, there are some theorists and scholars that suggest that Freya and Frigg stem from the same person or source.
[00:45:52] Preston Meyer: Makes sense. Their names are pretty similar. It's pretty easy to jump on that assumption, and it requires more work. But it could be true. Might not be.
[00:46:04] Katie Dooley: I mean we're in. We'll never know.
[00:46:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. At this point.
[00:46:08] Katie Dooley: But Frigg never got a cat chariot. Just saying.
[00:46:11] Preston Meyer: Right. Uh, Freyr, as we mentioned before, uh, brother of Freya, he is associated with fertility, rain and sunshine and also associated with the boar as well. So those were sacrifices that he was happy to receive. Just like his sister.
[00:46:31] Katie Dooley: Then we have Tyr an Aesir seen by the Romans as the ethnic equivalent to Mars or the God of war. Hee defendd the Asgard from the great wolf Fenrir who bit off his hand.
[00:46:44] Preston Meyer: It seems like the most powerful gods get to lose bits of their body in Norse mythology.
[00:46:50] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. He's often overlooked by modern enthusiasts. He was often overlooked by modern enthusiasts, but was important enough to have a day named after him. Tyrsday.
[00:47:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That's a weird way to pronounce that. But yeah, that's what we got.
[00:47:11] Katie Dooley: It's Tuesday. Yeah, and there's an R in it, so I'm just.
[00:47:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:47:14] Katie Dooley: Tyrsday.
[00:47:17] Preston Meyer: The Anglo-Saxons really dropped that R and it was more of a Tue.
[00:47:21] Katie Dooley: Tuesday.
[00:47:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And next on our list actually kind of a nice way to wrap up our list of the important gods.
[00:47:30] Katie Dooley: Because there's loads more if you want.
[00:47:31] Preston Meyer: There are lots of minor gods. There's personifications of things we see in the sky. There was Sol and Mun who were the sun and the moon. But back on track. Last of our list that we really actually have some stories about is Heimdall, who in the Eddas is described as the whitest of the Asgardians. I love Idris Elba, I do, and he killed it as Heimdall.
[00:48:03] Katie Dooley: But he would not be described as white.
[00:48:06] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, he's the blackest Asgardian, which. I mean, he killed it. He was a great Heimdall, but it would have made more sense to have somebody really pale, like maybe Conan O'Brien as Heimdall.
[00:48:25] Katie Dooley: Poor Conan O'Brien.
[00:48:27] Preston Meyer: I don't know, it's just.
[00:48:31] Katie Dooley: But he's such a badass, so it doesn't even matter. I don't care.
[00:48:34] Preston Meyer: I enjoyed Heimdall so much.
[00:48:36] Katie Dooley: I enjoy Idris Elba so much.
[00:48:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah, he was great, but it's just that he was the exact opposite of the one defining detail of Heimdall as being the whitest of the Asgardians. But his job, like we saw in the very popular films, was to watch over Asgard, protecting it from invaders and to really just chill out where the Bifrost met the sky. And so of course, he was there for Ragnarok, and he has kind of a bad fate. Uh, he was born to nine mothers.
[00:49:16] Katie Dooley: Loki?!
[00:49:18] Preston Meyer: I mean, logistically, this sounds like a huge problem. It also makes perfect sense that he was just raised by nine sisters, that's easy enough to get on board with. Being born of nine mothers, I don't get it. But whatever. His mothers were the personification of waves of the sea, which is actually a really cool image. And old Norse poetry also indicates that Heimdall is the father of all mankind, which may be that's part of the inspiration for making him the darkest Asgardian. Was that pretty much all scholars agree that humanity came from Africa, and not all humans should be white, which is something we'll talk about later. All right, I do have a story. And it's a little bit more epic than the one we had about Thor.
[00:50:25] Katie Dooley: Wait, there's nothing more epic than Katie picturing Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston cross-dressing for a hammer?
[00:50:34] Preston Meyer: Uh, it is a great story, though. All right, so there's a pretty cool origin myth given to us in Norse mythology and it's it's kind of tricky. A lot of people are actually starting to think that this was composed from a bunch of loose and separate ideas by Christians so that they could then later explain to the Norse people that you believe this thing. And here's the Christian story that isn't wildly different. It's wildly different. Let's look at it. So Ymir was born from the hot primordial mists that formed in the void between the rivers of Niflheim and the fires of Muspel.
[00:51:22] Katie Dooley: Niflheim is a great name.
[00:51:25] Preston Meyer: So Niflheim is the home of the mists. Muspel is hot, fiery, nonsense. So Ymir is born from these mists, and he is the ancestor of the Jötnar, often translated as giants or trolls, but not necessarily large or ugly. Kind of a tricky thing. It's just these were, this people, that are actually also called gods, but they're not Vanir or AEsir.
[00:51:56] Katie Dooley: One thing I read is kind of like the Titans compared to the Olympians.
[00:52:02] Preston Meyer: Right? That's really kind of the deal here. The Jötnar just sprouted from Ymir's limbs while he was sleeping. Yeah, like part of one of the poems says that one of his legs made babies with the other. It was really weird that basically they just popped out of his body while he was sweating. It's weird that they mentioned that he was sweating. I don't know what's going on. I don't need more detail and I didn't need that.
[00:52:39] Katie Dooley: I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:52:42] Preston Meyer: Uh, anyway, Ymir survived off of the milk of a cow. That is also never, never properly explained. There just is a cow. And he gets milk from the cow. And the cow is just licking a stone until a dude pops out of it.
[00:53:03] Katie Dooley: Okay, this is a wild ride.
[00:53:05] Preston Meyer: It is a wild ride. And so this cow's just licking this stone, and then there's a bunch of hair coming out of the stone, and the cow just keeps licking because when has hair stopped a cow from licking Exactly. So after a day, it was hair. Another day and the cow has licked the rock enough that a full head is exposed. And presumably Ymir is like, well, don't stop now.
[00:53:39] Katie Dooley: Oh yeah.
[00:53:40] Preston Meyer: And in one more day, it was one day to get hair. It was one day to get the head. One more day they got the rest of this dude's body.
[00:53:50] Katie Dooley: The cow got really excited after that.
[00:53:52] Preston Meyer: I mean, it was either a determination or a small body and a big head deal.
[00:53:57] Katie Dooley: Oh, no.
[00:54:00] Preston Meyer: I'm more inclined to think it was the motivation.
[00:54:02] Katie Dooley: Let's go with that, because everything else is creepy.
[00:54:05] Preston Meyer: This well, and this dude is described as incredibly handsome.
[00:54:09] Katie Dooley: Mhm.
[00:54:10] Preston Meyer: So not likely to be the case if he had an itty bitty body and a giant head. But his name was Buri. Buri has a son. Nobody remembers how for some reason. And his son is Bor. Bor marries a Jötan, named Bestla. They have three sons Odin, Vili and Vé. Things get a little bit Greek when Odin and his brothers kill Ymir, and the blood floods the land to kill all but two of the Jötnar, and they use several parts of his body to build the world.
[00:54:49] Katie Dooley: Ew
[00:54:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah! It's gross. His skull forms the firmament of the heavens. Uh, yeah. Nasty stuff. They weave his or not weave, but spin his brains into fluff that makes the clouds in the sky. It's super gross. uh, yeah, but also an oddly familiar thought, When you look back to the Marvel Universe, Nowhere is built in the head of a dead celestial.
[00:55:22] Katie Dooley: That's true.
[00:55:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But anyway, we're looking at a real mess here. The three brothers form Ask and Embla, the first humans from driftwood. Just stuff they find on the beach. So it's almost like humans are kind of an afterthought.
[00:55:43] Katie Dooley: I'm kind of offended, but that's fine.
[00:55:45] Preston Meyer: And that's just this one version of the story, because of course, I mentioned that a different story says that Heimdall is the father of humans. So we've got some diversity of thoughts here.
[00:55:55] Katie Dooley: I'll be the child of Idris Elba. Thanks very much if I have a choice
[00:55:59] Preston Meyer: Sure.Uh, and then in all of this cosmology, there is Ygdrasil, the world tree. Yggdrasil is an interesting name. It means Odin's horse. But it's a really weird turn of phrase meant to allude to how one rides the gallows at their death because that is the tree upon which Odin hanged himself so that he could learn all the secrets of the cosmos.
[00:56:31] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:56:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The mythology behind all of this stuff is intense.
[00:56:37] Katie Dooley: Yes and the cosmology too. Yeah. Yeah, there's there's kind of two pieces to this, which.
[00:56:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So this tree is a sacred ash tree at the center of the cosmos. It connects the nine realms. And the number is always nine in all the different sources, but not all of the sources. Well, no source actually lists out these are what the Nine Realms are, but it just will talk about them in various different stories. And so scholars have kind of settled on a list, but there are scholars that disagree on what that list.
[00:57:16] Katie Dooley: I didn't include it because I was like, I can't find all nine.
[00:57:18] Preston Meyer: So I found a list that was put together in the 1920s that people have just kind of accepted. Yeah, this is the list that we can work with. It's acceptable and it works. Uh, first we have Asgard, the home of the AEsir. It is above Midgard. Midgard is our home where humans live. Also sometimes called middle earth. Professor Tolkien was hugely influenced by Norse mythology.
[00:57:50] Katie Dooley: Absolutely, yeah.
[00:57:52] Preston Meyer: In fact, every single one of Bilbo's dwarf friends full on plagiarized from Norse mythology. Every single one of them is a dwarf with a mythological story around him. We also have Vanaheim, a separate world for gods who are the Vanir. Also, it seems like land wights are thought to have come from Vanir. It's a thing. Uh, we also have Alfheim, the traditional home of the elves. When they're not chilling out, messing around with our stuff and cutting people's throats instead of letting them interfere with Eurovision.
[00:58:37] Katie Dooley: I was going to say that was so they could play at Eurovision, Preston.
[00:58:40] Preston Meyer: Exactly. We also have Svartalfheim, home of the Dark elves, and there's a lot of racist thought that goes into how people look at Svartalfheim today. These are actually wildly different from what we saw in the Thor movie. The Dark elves weren't weird and pale and evil. They were darker than pitch like absolute black, which probably a little bit racist and a little tricky. But so were regular elves, so it's weird that there's even a distinction.
[00:59:23] Katie Dooley: I was going to say that's the more racist thing is that you're separating them. They're living segregated.
[00:59:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. They were fully segregated. That is a problem. Uh, then there's also Nidavellir a home of the dwarves. And this is where some things get a little bit tricky. A lot of scholars think that the dwarves and dark elves are actually the same people. And it's hard to say with any real certainty that they are fully separate. Its. It's tricky. The Poetic Edda is part of this confusion. You have Jotunheim, the home of the Jötnar, the giants, the trolls. Uh, this is where Odin traded his eye to drink the water of wisdom. And of course, more stories like that. And then the last two worlds realms are Muspelheim and Niflheim, the realm of primordial fire and the realm of primordial cold mists that I mentioned at the beginning of the origin story.
[01:00:29] Katie Dooley: Cool. Nine realms. So we would be remiss to not talk about the afterlife when we're talking about a religion. So we will, Yeah, we're gonna dive into that. And then we have a couple more things to get into.
[01:00:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:00:50] Katie Dooley: Ominous. Um, so. While the many virtues are worth persuing in life. They have no effect on your eternal reward. So this is how those who die in battle are taken to Valhalla.
[01:01:04] Preston Meyer: The Hall of the fallen is the literal translation of the name.
[01:01:09] Katie Dooley: Valhalla. Yeah, yeah. They are led by the Valkyrie and are. And prepare to support Odin in Ragnarok. That's what they're doing in Valhalla is prepping for Ragnarok. Yeah.
[01:01:19] Preston Meyer: Getting ready to fight, but also lots of great feasts. Of course.
[01:01:24] Katie Dooley: They've earned it. And I. Preston's notes say that they were chosen by Odin. But I read that, uh, Freya got to choose first, so I just skip that part entirely.
[01:01:33] Preston Meyer: Fair enough.
[01:01:36] Katie Dooley: The fields of Folkvangr so it translates to the folk fields is for those, the other half who fell in battle and were chosen by Freya or not chosen. We'll see. We don't know and they also get to arrest and enjoy food and mead.
[01:01:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's more restful than Valhalla, which I thought was kind of cool. And I tried finding any statement on where Folkvangr was, and I couldn't actually find any solid statement. But my suspicion as a very underqualified scholar in this particular corner of the field is that it was in Vanaheim rather than Asgard, mostly based on the fact that Freya is a Vanir instead of an AEsir. But prove me wrong, I dare you.
[01:02:30] Katie Dooley: Yeah, prove him wrong, I love that.
[01:02:35] Preston Meyer: And for those who didn't fall in battle, there's more options. Hel is the queen and goddess of Niflheim, and like Hades, has a place named after its keeper. Hel is the realm of the shameful dead. Those who died of sickness or old age. Remember, there's no.
[01:02:57] Katie Dooley: There's no good or bad.
[01:02:58] Preston Meyer: There's no reward for virtue. It's either you died in battle or you didn't.
[01:03:02] Katie Dooley: I kinda want to die in battle now.
[01:03:04] Preston Meyer: Right?
[01:03:05] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[01:03:07] Preston Meyer: Of course, ancestor worship was important to keep ghosts from haunting the family. This was probably more of a problem if you had family who didn't die in battle, 'cause the ones who died in battle would be off doing something fun. Whereas Hel and Niflheim are underneath the world and relatively close. So the hauntings are possible.
[01:03:29] Katie Dooley: Shameful dead.
[01:03:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah and so if you aren't doing something to help out your ancestors, the shameful dead will bring you shame and discomfort. It's a problem, I guess.
[01:03:46] Katie Dooley: I mean, they know where their priorities are. They wanted you to fight in battles.
[01:03:50] Preston Meyer: Yes. When all is said and done and Ragnarok is a distant memory, it survivors will live in bliss. In Gimli, a sacred hall in the heart of rebuilt Asgard. I thought it was interesting. I decided to look up more on Gimli, and I found this cute little entry that popped up on my Google search on on Wikipedia. There's a town or was a town called Gimli in Manitoba, but it was unincorporated about 20 years ago because shrinking population. But they still have a strong Icelandic tradition there.
[01:04:28] Katie Dooley: I like that.
[01:04:29] Katie Dooley: I, I don't think just knowing Manitoba. I don't think people lived in bliss there.
[01:04:40] Preston Meyer: Uh, yes. The long distant future world of Gimli has got to be a lot more fun than Gimli, Manitoba.
[01:04:51] Katie Dooley: So I wanted to touch on this next section, mostly to lead up to the section after. But there is a, just like Greek and Roman, there is Germanic Neopaganism or Norse revivalism, whatever you want to call it. Basically people who practice this religion today. I don't have a ton of notes on it because that's what it is. They practice the religion today. They believe in the gods. They do feasts and sacrifices. Again, much like Roman, they're not slaughtering cows, they're pouring beers and, uh, yeah, they it was rerecognized as a religion in Iceland in 1972.
[01:05:36] Preston Meyer: So fairly recently.
[01:05:38] Katie Dooley: Yes. There were some theories they read that said it never fully disappeared, even with the conversion to Christianity. And there's a name for it that I found called Asatru or Heathenry. So this is basically, again, that neopaganism practice, um, again, Asatru is specifically focused on the Norse gods. Obviously, neopaganism is a little more broad than that, which is really important to say that there's this group of people.
[01:06:11] Preston Meyer: And then there's a much worse group of people.
[01:06:14] Katie Dooley: And. And, I mean. Unfortunately, it can be hard to tell them apart. Just by looking.
[01:06:24] Preston Meyer: Just by looking. If you talk to them, it'll become a lot more obvious real quick.
[01:06:28] Katie Dooley: So unfortunately, and this goes back to the night, as you know, it goes back to the early 1900s. Norse mythology, symbolism, has been co-opted by white supremacists. And I think we would be remiss not to mention it in this episode as much as it's gross. So these people don't practice the revival faith, but are using the symbols for their own racist purposes. It stems from the false belief that Vikings somehow had racial purity, which makes no sense because they were Vikings and pillagers and they absolutely transported humans. Um, bought and sold slaves, had concubines, were merchants, got married. Did they travel as much as we did now? No, but they definitely traveled.
[01:07:19] Preston Meyer: Racial purity was never important to them as a as a seafaring people. That's that was not the reality at all.
[01:07:27] Katie Dooley: Yes. Um, so again, I want to be super clear that if you're not, not every neopagan is a racist. Um, and that if you're actually practicing the faith.
[01:07:39] Preston Meyer: That it's different.
[01:07:40] Katie Dooley: That it's different. You wouldn't... Thank you, Preston, like, I don't understand my notes. Yes, it's different than being a dick.
[01:07:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's been going on for a long time. The swastika pretty famously became the symbol of the Third Reich. And there's there are a lot of different peoples throughout the world who have used very similar symbols. A lot of people like to point to how the swastika was used among the Indian people. But the Nazis found their power in the swastika specifically, as it's related to Thor.
[01:08:14] Katie Dooley: Yes and then, I mean, there's two other symbols that can obviously or sorry that get used a lot. So Thor's hammer Mjölnir is a really popular hate symbol.
[01:08:28] Preston Meyer: But it's also a popular symbol for people who just believe in individual personal power.
[01:08:34] Katie Dooley: Yes. And if you're a follower of Asatru, then absolutely. And so I also want to be clear that this is like the stylized Mjölnir, not like literally Thor's hammer from the MCU. So that that one's fine. If you see someone with an MCU Thor hammer, it's fine. Um, so on its own, again, it's not necessarily racist. Often if you are white supremacist, you'll incorporate things like swastikas and other hate symbols into the hammer. The valknut is another symbol. It's kind of I don't want to say it's pretty, because now it's a hate symbol, but it's this like Celtic knot symbol and it means the knot of the slain. So we have Valhalla, we have the valknut. And it's the meaning behind it is that the that the person who bears it or wears it is willing to give up their life for Odin. So again, it's not like inherently racist. So context is key, but it is, you know. Uh, like a red flag for sure. And then on that point, we have the Soldiers of Odin here in Canada, which are, um, uh.
[01:09:43] Preston Meyer: Hate groups are a problem.
[01:09:46] Katie Dooley: They're a problem. And they use a lot of this imagery.
[01:09:48] Preston Meyer: If you're making. Hate groups feel comfortable in your space. Maybe you need to change something that you're doing.
[01:09:59] Katie Dooley: Yes. And I think it's also important that we. You know, even in our podcast, right, that we educate that these symbols are out there and that that they do unfortunately have multiple meanings because some of these gross people fly under the radar because it just looks like a Celtic knot and nobody knows. And except for other white supremacists. So take back the valknut, take back Mjolnir. Mew-mew.
[01:10:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah, this world is a wonderful, diverse place, but some of this diversity is kind of gross.
[01:10:33] Katie Dooley: Let's punch nazis.
[01:10:36] Preston Meyer: Uh. Yeah, fewer Nazis would be great.
[01:10:43] Katie Dooley: I, uh, I read a post today. Yeah. And, uh, it basically said if you have 11 people at the table and one of them's a Nazi, then you have a table of 11 Nazis.
[01:10:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I've seen that going around.
[01:10:58] Katie Dooley: I like that one. So, yeah. Punch Nazis.
[01:11:01] Preston Meyer: Right? All right, well.
[01:11:05] Katie Dooley: Can you put a nice bow on this, Preston? And I made it sad. I didn't mean to.
[01:11:10] Preston Meyer: It seems like as I look at what's going on in this religion, it's the old custom, as it was called, that really. It's not really hyper-focused on worship of gods for any long-term goals though. There is thoughts of the future and there is acts of worship. It's mostly about making your place in the world comfortable for you. Which some people's standards is a little unpleasant, but for others it's about being happy, which is ultimately the goal of life. And if your joy is to enjoy great times with friends and die in battle, then there's a place prepared for you according to this tradition. And that's pretty cool, I guess.
[01:12:07] Katie Dooley: I like it.
[01:12:09] Preston Meyer: The philosophy is something I can get behind, that independence is important, and wisdom comes from getting to know what's around you.
[01:12:21] Katie Dooley: I like that too.
[01:12:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah and that's part of our mission. Get to know what's around you.
[01:12:28] Katie Dooley: Get to know what's around you.
[01:12:29] Preston Meyer: Your life actually can improve because of that.
[01:12:36] Katie Dooley: You know what else can improve your life, Preston?
[01:12:38] Preston Meyer: Some merch from the Holy Watermelon Store.
[01:12:41] On Spreadshirt? Why, yes. That's exactly what I was thinking.
[01:12:45] Preston Meyer: I'm glad I'm reading your mind.
[01:12:47] Katie Dooley: What if merch isn't for you though? How else could you pursue happiness?
[01:12:52] Preston Meyer: By supporting our mission on Patreon, or connecting with our community on Discord, or Instagram or Facebook or YouTube. So many options!
[01:13:05] Katie Dooley: And all of these are at different price points for every budget.
[01:13:08] Preston Meyer: Exactly. If you don't like something, we say Discord is a great place to let us know we can talk about it.
[01:13:18] Katie Dooley: Yes. I agree. All right. Yeah. So do some of those things. Share our podcast and.
[01:13:28] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 13 Feb 2023 | Sainted Love | 00:35:16 | |
It's the season of love, but the man we know as St. Valentine is a bit of a mystery, lost to time, and almost certainly an amalgamation of two or more men. Valentinus was a big fan of romantic love, as the story goes, but there's more to be unraveled. Valentine's relics are scattered all over the planet, many of them in wax-sealed paper bags, which isn't much of a thrill for the average tourist. There's naturally some doubt on their authenticity, but that doesn't seem to stop anybody anymore. More anciently, the middle of February was celebrated in Rome with the feast of Lupercalia, a great festival where the various cults of Rome would gather to purify and renew their city, and remember their furry heritage. This event also featured a romantic element--as long as you only asked the young men. Galatin's Day also celebrated the love of women among the Normans, and may have been a touch more civil by modern standards... Today, the only purification widely celebrated in Rome in February is that of Mother Mary, a carry-over celebration in Christianity informed by the Jewish tradition of faithful motherhood. All this and more in this not-so-romantic entry. Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord | |||
| 02 Dec 2024 | Papal Papers Please | 00:53:56 | |
Vatileaks (or Vatican Document Leaks) caused a lot of trouble in Rome in 2012, leading directly (allegedly) to the Pope abdicating his office for the first time in centuries. Paolo Gabriele (papal butler) snuck documents to GianLuigi Nuzzi (Italian journalist) to expose the corruption of Archbishop Carlo Mario Vigano. The Holy See was burying sex scandals, bribery, home invasions, and overpriced home improvements and helicopter rides, and so much more. Did you know that canonizing a saint costs about half a million euros? Vatican Spokesman, Federico Lombardi, coined the term "Vati-Leaks." Since all this drama, a few changes have helped improve things, but much has yet to be done.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 02 Jan 2023 | Literally Jesus - an Interview with Jack Hopewell | 00:55:34 | |
In this episode, we interview Jack Hopewell, who stars as Jesus Christ in the 50th Anniversary Tour of Jesus Christ Superstar. When Jesus Christ Superstar came out 50 years ago, it was controversial: the musical doesn’t depict the resurrection, it's sympathetic to Judas, it takes the position of predestination (Judas was required to betray Jesus). While the controversy has died down in the last 50 years, some audience members still get their feathers ruffled. Jack Hopewell speaks with us about his Roman Catholic upbringing, how he brings humanity to the character of Jesus Christ, and the physical and mental toll of performing the Passion eight times a week. Jack also gives us an insider's look at how such an emotional and physical production is done consistently and impressively in theatres all across North America. Katie (our resident atheist and Broadway nerd) considers Jesus Christ Superstar to be one of her favourite musicals. What makes this musical accessible to religious and non-religious alike? Whether you’re interested in theology or in a behind-the-scenes peek at what it’s like to be part of a major Broadway tour, this is an interview you don't want to miss. You can watch the uncut video of this interview on YouTube Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram
Find Jack Hopewell on Instagram , YouTube, and his official website Check out Jesus Christ Superstar on Instagram, YouTube, and their official website
Transcript: Preston Meyer 0:13 Hi, Katie. Katie Dooley 0:14 Hi, Preston. Happy New Year. Preston Meyer 0:16 Happy New Year to you and to everybody. And happy new year to our special guest, Jack Hopewell. Jack Hopewell 0:24 Hey Happy to be here. Katie Dooley 0:26 So on this episode of Both Hosts 0:29 The Holy Watermelon Podcast Preston Meyer 0:32 It never really syncs up as well when we do it remotely. How did that sound to you, Jack? Jack Hopewell 0:37 Sounded great. Preston Meyer 0:39 All right. Katie Dooley 0:41 Yeah. So we're joined by Jack Hopewell, which the musical theater nerd in me is way too excited for this. But Jack is playing Jesus Christ in the second national Broadway tour of the 50th anniversary of Jesus Christ Superstar. Jack Hopewell 0:57 You folks saw me I think it was Edmonton or... Katie Dooley 0:59 I saw you in Edmonton on opening night. Yeah. Jack Hopewell 1:02 That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. Good stuff. Preston Meyer 1:05 I must admit, I'm not as big of a musical theater nerd as Katie is, but I do enjoy musicals. And when I went through the list of projects you've done, I was actually really quite surprised and pleased to see that you had played Snoopy a little while ago. Jack Hopewell 1:19 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Big, big fan of You're Good Man, Charlie Brown. My two my two type casts God and then off the walls like animal. So Snoopy? Yeah. It works. Preston Meyer 1:34 Rock on. Jack Hopewell 1:36 Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Katie Dooley 1:37 That's awesome. So I mean, we start with all our podcasts and all our guests asking what your religious background is. What you were raised? What are you now? Because that will influence some of the questions we ask today. Jack Hopewell 1:49 Yeah, absolutely. So I was raised Roman Catholic, I was born. Not all my family's Roman Catholic. But my my mom's side is, but a fun little fact. My, my grandfather was a Catholic priest, at one point. My grandmother was a Catholic nun, at one point. They left that service before meeting each other, I have to give that disclaimer, but they felt they were called to raise a family. So my, and my grandfather disagreed with some policies of Rome at the time. And so he received his papal dispensation had my had my mother, with my grandma. And, yeah, so I was raised Roman Catholic, I wouldn't say that I'm super practicing Roman Catholic, I still consider myself a Catholic, but more of a like salad bar Catholic, in which I pick and choose some of my beliefs and some of my attitudes. So yeah, that's, that's that's how I'd classify myself now as a as a semi-practicing Catholic with some disagreements towards the church, in certain areas. Preston Meyer 2:57 I like that metaphor of the salad bar. Jack Hopewell 3:00 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Katie Dooley 3:04 I mean, I think most people are probably followed by religious. Jack Hopewell 3:07 Yes. Right. Right.
Preston Meyer 3:09 Generally speaking, belief is a tricky thing, though. Sometimes we, we feel like we just can't believe a thing that's presented to us. And sometimes, it's helpful to just hold on to the bigger thing while letting go of the little thing that we don't agree with. I think that's a healthy choice. Jack Hopewell 3:31 Thank you. Thank you. Katie Dooley 3:33 As you mentioned, you've played Jesus more than once. In this tour. Is there something I mean, now, you've told us you're Roman Catholic? Is there something about Jesus or the story that draws you to these roles? Jack Hopewell 3:45 Yeah, I mean, it's, it's in the simplest way, it's really it's really magnanimous, it's a magnanimous character. It's it's Jesus. You know, I mean, a simple answer is, I just keep getting cast. As Jesus, I, I was not surprisingly, seeking this, this tour out, I, it just kind of the, I ended up going to an audition. And this, you know, kind of ended up happening for me, but at the same time, I, I think, really what draws me to to play, Jesus is fleshing out and discovering his humanity. Because at the end of the day, even in looking at the Gospels, and in the really Biblical sense of Jesus, aside from being a god, he is human. And I just think it's fascinating to be able to play somebody whose personhood and godhood are almost diametrically opposed in that way. So it presents a challenge, and it's also really fulfilling at the same time. Preston Meyer 4:46 So what would be your key to meeting both of those points together? Jack Hopewell 4:50 I mean, I find the more that I play the humanity the the godhood in playing Jesus, the godhood kind of presents itself. Because I think the more you know, the more human Jesus seems the more the more magnanimous his actions seem to be, I guess, if that makes sense. While he's, you know, in pain on the cross, fearful for his life and dying, you kind of take a step back and go, Oh, wow, he's sacrificing himself for us. So yeah, I guess that's, that's the way that I would try to make those to meet. Preston Meyer 5:30 I like it. Thank you. Thank you. Katie Dooley 5:33 How does your How does being Roman Catholic affect how you approach the last days of Jesus? Jack Hopewell 5:39 Yeah, I mean, going back to the previous point, I think it motivates me to think about him playing in more than just the strictly Biblical sense. Because I was raised, I went to Catholic school for a bit. And I think a lot of people just have this notion of who Jesus is. And I feel while while they while people can feel really connected to the idea of the godly savior, Jesus, I think there's still a disconnect from who he really truly was. Which is a person, which is a human being as much as he was the son of God. So, yeah, I think thinking about my Catholic upbringing, really makes me wants to play into his humanity and his fears, his doubts. And, you know, it really, it helps me appreciate certain moments, a lot more, I think, like his, like his crucifixion, like his pleas in the Garden of Gethsemane. I mean, there's really, really big moments in which he has his doubts, which I think a lot of people gloss over. Even even Catholics or really religious people. And the the final text in in the show is is pretty accurate to the end of most of the Gospels in his seven phrases that he has, while he's dying on the cross. One of those being, you know, my God, why have you forsaken me? Or it's sometimes another, it's why have you forgotten me? Why have you abandoned me? It's like a rough transliteration from the Aramaic. But yeah, it's moments like that, where I'm like, Wow, I feel like these are really glossed over, even in Bible study. And I want to play into this, I want to play into his humanity and his flaws and his doubts. So, yeah, Preston Meyer 7:35 So has the musical influenced your relationship with your faith at all? Jack Hopewell 7:41 Um, Preston Meyer 7:43 Or maybe even any other times you've played? Jesus? Let's open it up just a little bit more. Jack Hopewell 7:48 Yeah, um, I guess, it's, I think beforehand, the idea of Christ was a bit more intangible for me. I think, especially, again, going back to being in Catholic school, you're just given this, like, you're just looking at this statue, this figure on a cross, this icon, and it's hard, as much as you're told to appreciate this sacrifice, and this you know, his actions and all that it's hard to truly appreciate it when you feel so disconnected from this iconography, I guess. And doing the show, and connecting with the humanity has really, I think, helped me connect with Jesus himself as a person, but also his message. His messages throughout the gospel of compassion, and forgiveness and love for one another at its base, you know, all of his all of his Beatitudes, I think, I've connected a lot more with that, because I can relate to it a bit more. It's coming from an actual figure, and actual person as opposed to this figure. So, yeah Preston Meyer 9:07 You didn't use different words, but I know what you mean. Jack Hopewell 9:13 This figure as opposed to this figure, yeah, right. Katie Dooley 9:16 For our listeners. He's making arm gestures because the visual medium. Jack Hopewell 9:23 Forgot about that. Katie Dooley 9:23 I know. We do that sometimes. Descriptive Video, right. Or Yeah, right. How's the reception been to you playing Jesus from friends family? Jack Hopewell 9:36 I mean, are you are you wondering from an audience a general audience perspective as well? Katie Dooley 9:39 Or even? Yeah, yeah all of the above. Jack Hopewell 9:42 I mean, with family, it's been pretty positive. So far, a lot of them haven't seen it yet. And I'm a bit concerned for some of my more conservative family members. Because it's a bit of a bit of a progressive take on on the gospel. But that being said, family wise it's been, it's been positive. And audience wise, I'd say 95 to 99% of audiences have agreed with it. It's always been a controversial musical part, because there's a lot of reasons. But one of those big reasons is there's no resurrection depicted at the end of the show. And some Christians take great offense to that, because they feel that that is what this whole story is building up to. When really, I think it's a story about humanity. It's a story about the relationship between Jesus and Judas and two men that are, have everyone's best interests at heart, but are diametrically opposed in how they proceed with those goals. And so there have been some upset people, production does get some letters, here and there, about, you know, of them being upset about the resurrection, or about the way in which I'm crucified sometimes or, you know, things of that nature. But I'd say for the most part, people are really, really touched by this show, there really moved people that people of the faith and people that are not religious, they have seen lots of people from both sides of that coin moved to tears at the end of the show. It's it's very emotional, regardless of your religious beliefs, watching a man be crucified and sacrifice himself. It's, it's, it's a lot to take in. And I think, especially for those that are Christian and have those beliefs. It's, it's really visceral for them. And they're, they're very emotional by the end of it. And lots of them are, you know, you know, at the stage door in tears, like, Thank you. Thank you for this. That's, it's really sweet. It's really, it's really nice to see, Katie Dooley 12:03 My mom didn't watch from 39 lashes onward. Jack Hopewell 12:06 Oh! Katie Dooley 12:08 She was llike, I just looked around, and I was like, that's fine. Jack Hopewell 12:11 Yeah. Was it was that more of a, like, not wanting to see the, the blood and everything else Katie Dooley 12:19 Yeah neither of us like gore. And then she told me that you it's weird dreams when she's like about things in general. She was like, yeah, it wasn't gonna dream about that. I was like, that's fair. Jack Hopewell 12:30 That's fair. I get it. Preston Meyer 12:34 I can appreciate the choice to not show the resurrection, in addition to keeping it more of a story of a man instead of a story of a god, that makes some sense. But also, Judas's experienced, according to the Gospels doesn't include any resurrection experience. Jack Hopewell 12:50 Right. Preston Meyer 12:50 So it's just if it's more of a Judas story than a Peter story, that seems like a natural choice. Jack Hopewell 12:56 Oh, and it is. And I, I'd say a lot of people, This story follows Judas even more as a as a protagonist, than I think it follows Jesus. And I love that, personally, and I may get people that disagree with me on this. But I do think that the traditional telling of the Judas story is a little bit a little too black and white. I don't I think people are more complex than that. And I think this show does a really beautiful job of portraying Judas as a man who has the right intentions but makes some mistakes along the way. And if you're going with the idea of predestination on certain things, I mean, there really wasn't a way for him to avoid doing what he was doing. He was destined and fated to do this. And I think the show asks that question, is that fair? Did he have the choice to do this? So Preston Meyer 13:52 It's one of the great questions. There are some interpretations of the scripture that actually have Judas kind of not loving the position he's put in, as Jesus tells him, Hey, this is the role you're going to play. It's rough. Jack Hopewell 14:08 Right? Well, and there's the question also, I've got I got into a heated discussion with somebody today about this, actually, whether or not Judas knew what was going to happen to Jesus when he turned him in. Because, at least in the show, and my personal interpretation, I don't think that Judas thought that Jesus was going to be murdered, murdered. I think, you know, talking to the to the priests, and everybody else, I think he was under the impression that Jesus is going to be turned in, removed from the public eye. Things are going to settle down a little bit. And because I think, at least in the show, Judas is very fearful of the mob rising up and becoming out of control. And then his people being oppressed even further by the Romans as a result. And so I think he thought it was in everybody's best interest. And also Jesus's best interest is worried about his health and safety, to remove him from the public eye, remove him as this icon. And I think he thought getting Jesus arrested was the solution to that. But then it gets out of control. He's beaten within an inch of his life and then crucified. And he, Judas, out of guilt, out of anger, out of rage out of all sorts of emotions, eventually takes his own life. So, Katie Dooley 15:33 I mean, it's not a happy story. Jack Hopewell 15:35 No, it's not by any stretch of the imagination is not but... Preston Meyer 15:40 It's hard to imagine that with the relationship, they must have had, that Judas would have knowingly sent Jesus to his death. Jack Hopewell 15:48 Right? That's what I that's, that's what I that's what I, what I feel what I believe, and I've had some people, because I think it's a somewhat traditional Christian, you know, education to be told though, Judas knew what he was doing. And he did this out of greed. And then he took his own life, because he felt guilt. He just felt guilt for what he did. And he realized what he did. But Judas is this evil character. And there's not really any redeeming qualities given about him. And I don't even think that's how Jesus would have wanted Judas to be remembered or recognized. So Preston Meyer 16:27 Yeah, the, the whole thing about Jesus that we get from the Gospels is that he's a loving, forgiving fella Jack Hopewell 16:34 Right? Preston Meyer 16:37 A moment of weakness like this is something relatively easy to forgive when you have a greater perspective. Jack Hopewell 16:42 Exactly. Katie Dooley 16:44 While we're on the topic of the ending, other actors have spoken about how difficult it can be to get into a character, you know, read articles about playing Evan Hanson is very difficult. Is it difficult physically, mentally, to be crucified eight times a week or get lashed? Eight times 39 times Jack Hopewell 17:04 1000, 1000%? It's yeah, it's not it's no easy task. I think. I mean, there's a lot of preparation for me that goes into it and doing all the things you should do hydrating, eating properly, and doing my little warm up before the show, in order to prepare my body and mind for the thing. But I think the most important for me is finding moments of levity and happiness throughout the show. You talk to other people backstage and I'm usually doing my best to you know, even as I'm being covered in blood and dirt and sweat and boot prints backstage before I come on for the lashes I'm dancin, I'm doing little dances with people getting getting prepped up. And then at the very last moment, I compose myself I take my Chekov breath, my get into my you know, hunched over, beaten, wounded position. And that is what I that is all I need to be able to get into that mind space. And then I go on with the lashes and the crucifixion and it's really physically and mentally taxing, but I've had those moments of happiness beforehand that I can hold on to and then immediately come back after but come back to afterwards. So Katie Dooley 18:29 Awesome. And any like post show ritual besides shower? Jack Hopewell 18:34 Yeah, I mean, the shower is honestly a big part of it, because I, I get that shower so hot that it like hurts. It is like steaming, and that just decompresses me so much. But then afterwards, now with the rest of the cast, I don't speak much and I don't drink or any of that. But, you know, if we're out I might be dancing in a corner doing a little doing a little jig silently. And if not that I usually decompress with some tea and a show. So, yeah, just kind of wind down for the night. Katie Dooley 19:14 It must be super tiring to live. Jack Hopewell 19:17 It's exhausting. It's exhausting. Yeah, and the travel is hard on top of it, you know, being in a different place all the time. But, but it's also fun. And I could do it while I'm young. Katie Dooley 19:29 I mean, yeah, that's the time to do it. Jack Hopewell 19:31 Right. Exactly. Katie Dooley 19:33 How much do those lashes suck? He doesn't. It's just glitter. Jack Hopewell 19:38 Yeah, so I mean, it's still it's Preston Meyer 19:40 But it's glitter. Jack Hopewell 19:41 Yeah, right? Katie Dooley 19:42 Have you gotten glitter in your eye? I was deeply concerned. Jack Hopewell 19:46 Yeah, yeah. All the time. In my mouth sometimes. Doing studies on like, microplastics in blood like I'm going to be I'm going to be like a shining example in in 20 years or so, but I yeah, I mean, it gets all over me. And I'm very safe the whole time. I never feel like I'm in danger or really in pain. But it is, it is an interesting position for me to be in to, like, have my arms over my, over my head and, you know, held on to buy a cable and be lashed and then have to physically react as though I'm being hit with with an actual whip. So it's uncomfortable, for sure. And I feel such a relief when I'm finally able to like fall and collapse to the ground. Katie Dooley 20:37 So that's real, that's not acting. Jack Hopewell 20:39 Oh, that's, that's 100% real. That's hardly, that's hardly acting at all. But I'm crawling across the stage. It's because I am. I'm beat I am beat. But yeah, Preston Meyer 20:51 It's work to pretend that you're taking an injury? Jack Hopewell 20:54 Oh, yeah. Well, because the whole the whole time. And this is, you know, something I learned, people that are in pain, your muscles are contracting, your muscles are contracting that whole time. And for me, a lot of that presents itself and me like doing a crunch, essentially, that entire time. And so I'm just doing a whole ab workout. And seeing, you know, thrown around and I can I can barely breathe by the end of it. So yeah, Preston Meyer 21:23 So you don't even need to hit the gym. Jack Hopewell 21:26 No exactly, exactly. Katie Dooley 21:27 I think how physical acting is. Especially when you're laying there. And you're like, This is amazing. And you just kind of get engrossed for 90 minutes. Jack Hopewell 21:37 Right? Katie Dooley 21:37 Then you're like, oh, wait, someone just did that. That's why I like theatre so much is like, you just did that for me! Great. Jack Hopewell 21:45 Right. Well, yeah, thank you for saying that. Because it is. It's interesting. This roles really interesting to me because I was joking with somebody like it's it's a rock show. And like a rock concert until it's not. And I describe that, as it's, yeah, it's until it's really not. And for me that presents itself in very much like a vocal and, and acting show into a very physical show. And so, yeah, it's a fun challenge. Katie Dooley 22:18 I was sitting with some ladies and they had no idea. They were like, we just like bought tickets to this. I was like, hold on to your butt because you're in, for a ride. Jack Hopewell 22:29 Yeah, the people that don't do that don't know anything about the show. Don't do research about the show beforehand. So that's wild to me. And that's those are some of the people that do get upset, I think, because they have an idea of what the show's gonna be about, because of its name. And then they that doesn't live up to their expectations. So they're a little bit disappointed by that. But yeah, that's it's always for the most part, though, it is really exciting. When the when those people have no idea what's going to happen. And they don't know anything about the show. When they see it. They're like, whoa, that's so cool. Yeah, Katie Dooley 23:05 Sorry, back to the physical stuff. Do you have any battle stories? Any? Come on. Jack Hopewell 23:11 Um, I mean, I do have a couple wounds here and there. I sometimes when I'm taking my post-show shower, I'll go to like, wipe off a bruise. And I'm like, oh, that's real. That's that's not makeup. That's or that's real blood. That's fun. I don't know how that doesn't happen all that much more the bruising than anything else. I guess it's you know, it's very physical show but I there was one time that our an understudy went on for our mob leader. So our original mob leader, I'm not sure who you saw that you were there but is Caroline Perry, Katie Dooley 23:57 Phenomenal, best I've ever seen. Jack Hopewell 23:59 Fantastic, incredible. And her the mob leader understudy Haley Huelsman, also an incredible, incredible dancer. And she she does such justice to the role but it was one of the first times she was on, and she's the one lashing me. If anyone lashes you it's very, I just love the idea that you know, the mob leader the leader of the mob is is the one lashing me It's so essentially all of these people are inflicting this pain upon me, but she's doing this for the first time and throwing so much glitter. Because it takes practice to know how much glitter you're supposed to throw on to me. And so she's just throwing massive handfuls on me and it's getting everywhere. It's getting all over me getting all over the stage. And that glitter when mixed with like, random precipitation from like the haze and then my blood that I'm just like, trailing everywhere. And everything else on that stage it is a slippery slippery mess. So the poor ensembles trying to do like dance this crazy, crazy number. They're, like, kind of slipping and sliding everywhere. I'm trying to crawl across the stage. And then I'm like, Whoa, you know, doing that whole thing. We're doing the flight where I'm being thrown around. And I'm genuinely just like, Spider Man slipping and sliding all over the place. So yeah, that was a fun time. Spider Man musical. There's some real danger. Yeah, right. Oh, true. Talk about talking about curse shows. Turn Off the Dark. Preston Meyer 25:47 Yeah. A little different. But so the very real danger for Jesus too Jack Hopewell 25:54 Right? Oh, go ahead. Preston Meyer 25:57 Sorry. Go ahead. No, I interrupted you Jack Hopewell 25:58 I think I have I have to say I've never once felt unsafe in the show. And our, our stage management team and all of our technical team do a fantastic job of making sure all of us are, like never in any danger. So never had truly any like Spiderman Turn Off The Dark moments. But Preston Meyer 26:19 Do you have a favorite song? Not necessarily one that you sing? Or maybe it is one that you sing? Jack Hopewell 26:25 Yeah. It's hard for me to pick, I'd say if I can give you two answers in terms of ones I sing. There's a bit of a love hate relationship with it. But I love Gethsemane because it's Thank you. It's I so much of the show for me is is being the bigger person and the not revealing this grander plan that God and myself have for humanity. And some of that frustration comes out during the Last Supper and my argument with Judas. But finally, somebody has that moment where I'm able to really question God, why are you making me do this? There's most certainly another way for us to accomplish this. And you're giving me absolutely nothing. And so vocally it's it's, it's, it's a beast, but it's fun to sing. And it is an emotional roller coaster, acting wise and, like I've said a million times. It really showcases Jesus's humanity in his doubt of God, and himself and this grand plan. And then second answer, songs I don't sing Superstar. I love Superstar. It's I'm being thrown around the whole time. But Elvie Ellis plays Judas is incredible, he's just got one of the best voices I've ever heard. And he's singing the crap out of that song. And the whole ensemble is dancing for their lives. And it really feels like the number that this whole show has been building towards. And for me, it's terrifying. Because this mob that was you know, half an hour ago, singing my praises is now hell bent on destroying me. And the choreography and the way it staged really shows that and it it. It's it's really a song. I feel like in part about the birth of zealotry and fanatical faith around Jesus as they're putting me up on the cross. So yeah, I love it. Katie Dooley 28:46 Speaking of speaking of Gethsemane I was my parents went on Saturday, which is also really cool because my parents are 70. So my parents saw it 50 years ago. Jack Hopewell 28:57 Oh, that's awesome. Katie Dooley 28:58 My mom saw the first international tour in Denmark. Jack Hopewell 29:02 That's awesome Katie Dooley 29:03 Of all places. So yeah, they went on the Saturday. And then I had dinner with my parents and my dad had been like, singing it all week. And my mom was like, "You got to stop him". And I was like, No, we're gonna listen to the soundtrack instead. And we listened to the 1996 West End version and my dad was Jack Hopewell 29:20 with Steve Balsamo right. Katie Dooley 29:22 But my dad was like, they were better on the weekend. Jack Hopewell 29:26 Awe! That's, that's one of my favorite versions too. So that's That's high praise. That's super sweet. Katie Dooley 29:34 I mean, he's as much of a theater critic as I can be. But I'll pass it along um, Jack Hopewell 29:39 thank you. Thank you. Katie Dooley 29:41 We talked a little bit about you getting the complaints concerns about there being no resurrection we know when it came out in the 70s. It was super controversial. I think a lot of that was partially how they portrayed Judas. What do you think Jesus Christ Superstar means to audiences today, 50 years later? Jack Hopewell 30:01 I mean, I think, at least for Christians, I think people are a lot more willing today to accept a more nuanced interpretation of the gospel than they were 50 years ago. I think people are less beholden to strict doctrine. And like, rote biblical beliefs, and they were half a century ago. So I think, I think a modern version of the show is, it really speaks to people. I think people really resonate not just with the style that the show is put on, you're reimagined for our modern era. Because as a side tangent, I think some people get a little disconnected from the some of the productions where it's, you know, set in Nazareth, and it's like period clothing and things like that. So I think people are able to connect with the modern staging and telling of it, but also, I think it's, I think it's moving for people and people connect with it, because it's nuanced. And like I said, before, people are less beholden to strict doctrine. So yeah, Preston Meyer 31:17 So the one that I've seen most recently had Tim Minchin playing Judas. Jack Hopewell 31:22 Yep. Preston Meyer 31:23 Pretty famously atheist. Jack Hopewell 31:25 Yeah. The stadium tour, I think. Preston Meyer 31:27 Yeah. And is there a nice variety of believers and non believers in the current cast? Jack Hopewell 31:34 Most definitely. Yeah. There's, there's a fair number of Christians in the show. There's a number of Buddhists in the show, atheists, agnostics all over the place. So there's a wide, I'd say, a wide range of beliefs in in the cast. Preston Meyer 31:52 Cool. Does that come into play in the way you interact with each other at all? Jack Hopewell 31:57 Yeah, I, I think so at the top of the show, some of us will have, you can frame it, we have an open invitation could frame it as a prayer or just like a breathing circle, to get ready for the show, be together, and have this almost spiritual connection with each other before we go on this 90 minute marathon. And I I think, regardless of your of the person's belief systems, they can connect with this human story that's taking place they can, they can connect with the community that's forming on the stage, whether that's around this man, Jesus Christ in supporting him or suddenly not supporting him. So I think regardless, the show's been really, really great in helping us form a really diverse community among cast. Katie Dooley 33:05 So, to that point, and this is something I really wondered about a lot is that the arts have always been a really inclusive space. So how do how is it playing in a musical in a religion that's been exclusionary? Historically? Jack Hopewell 33:20 Yeah. Well, I think, going back to the idea of doctrine, I think Christianity at its core is not an exclusionary, prac-, an exclusionary religion, I think what's been exclusionary has been organized religion, that's, it's always been the case that you know, what you'd take, these people will take the faith in its purest form, and then create an aristocracy around it, and then push people out, control people with it, and when, and that just completely forgets Jesus's original teachings. And I think that's part of the why part of the reason I've been somewhat disillusion from organized religion, and more, so just leaned back on what I believe Christian faith is. So I guess, to your to your question about, you know, inclusivity, and art and then inclusivity, and religion, I think, because this is more of a nondenominational show, in terms of its telling of the Gospels. I think it works really well in terms of inclusivity because it's, it's teaching those original, those original Gospel teachings, and it's incorporating some really high art at the same time. So, Preston Meyer 34:42 yeah. A lot of people really like making rules for other people. Jack Hopewell 34:47 Yeah. Preston Meyer 34:48 And I think the closest that Andrew Lloyd Webber gets in this, apart from showing the Pharisees being just awful occasionally, is writing a script, which you kind of need for a play anyway, but in doing so he remembers that Jesus wants people to love each other. That's the number one rule. Jack Hopewell 35:07 Right? Preston Meyer 35:08 Easy enough to get on board with. Exactly, exactly. And I think people forget. I don't think, I know people forget that when Jesus preaches love for your neighbor. That means everyone that not like your as soon as you start saying, or using religion to exclude a set of people, because you don't think that they agree with your way of living or the your fundamental beliefs and you've you've, yeah you've lost the faith. So, yeah, Katie Dooley 35:44 I saw great posts on Instagram, on our Holy Watermelon Instagram said, Jesus said, Love your neighbor, not love your religion. Jack Hopewell 35:51 Ding ding ding. Katie Dooley 35:54 I mean, art and theater are always pushing boundaries. And Jesus Christ Superstar has always been a modern interpretation. Jack Hopewell 36:00 For sure, Katie Dooley 36:00 Even 50 years ago, do you think this like super modern version is helping introduce it to new audiences? And does it allow you to push boundaries even further? Jack Hopewell 36:12 Absolutely. I mean, I spoke about that a little bit previously, I think people are able to connect with the non-period version of the show a little bit better. Because I think, at least for me, sometimes or for audiences, sometimes it's hard to make connections to modern life with something that is rigidly set in a in a pure time period. That's so far back, it's easier to kind of make parallels and connections with something that feels more modern. And so this, this ancient story that is still very applicable today is now reskined a bit, and people can connect with it a little bit more. And it does allow us to push boundaries a little bit. I mean, there I don't want to say pop culture references almost in it. But I think, you know, in certain numbers, there's, I think of Herod's number, for example, which is done in drag. And that's not, I don't think something that you would be able to do 50 years ago, let alone with, with a classical telling or interpretation of Jesus Christ Superstar. And so I really, I really appreciate how the show is able to do things like that, and push boundaries in that way, have all sorts of different characters. So, yeah, Preston Meyer 37:45 So we're all young enough that we can hope to be around for the 100th anniversary tour, do you think that some of the language might end up being adjusted? Jack Hopewell 37:55 Interesting. I mean, it's, it's very possible, the language is the language and the lyrics have adapted since 50 years ago, not by a lot, because I gotta be honest what Tim Rice wrote, for the show is incredible. It's so good, it's some of the best him and Andrew Lloyd Webber produced some of the best source material anybody could ask for. But it's adapted a little bit, make it mesh a little bit more. Lyrically, and, and for for performance. So I think there might be minor adjustments a little bit, but I don't think at the end of the day, it's going to be anything too wild, it's just going to be similar to 50 years ago, a word change here and there, you know, for example, 50 years ago, and in Gethsemane the line was, God thy Will is hard, but you hold every card, and now it's God, thy will be done. Take your only son. So I think it's an improvement. So I think I think it'll be I think the language won't stray too much from its original message, but I think there'll be there'll be lyrical changes here and there. So Preston Meyer 39:03 You don't think we'll ever get rid of the thees and thys? Jack Hopewell 39:07 I don't think so. I don't think so. Although, I'm trying to think because that's it. I've never really thought about that until you brought that up. That's that's, I think the only time that a thy or thou is ever used in the show, because a lot of the a lot of the language is so is so contemporary. So but I think that's really cool that that moment has that in that more archaic biblical language because in that moment, Jesus is assuming his role. And you see this in the production he I go from having a man bun and this like very this bomber jacket and high top sneakers to a robe and sandals. My hair's a little bit more down to eventually my hair is down and I have fully assumed this Jesus role. And I think that that is I think that that thy is is probably important in assuming that. So Preston Meyer 40:06 I think it fits with the image pretty well. Jack Hopewell 40:08 Yeah, I think so too. Katie Dooley 40:09 I also noticed that Judas doesn't call it a concubine anymore. Jack Hopewell 40:15 Yeah. Yes. Because originally the you're probably thinking of the '96 version of the Yeah, great. It's a great version. The originally the line was that a man like you could waste his time on women of her kind. '96 they changed it to man, like, you could waste his time on such a concubine. Now it has now it's back to women of her kind. And I feel like that's, for me at least, like concubine is definitely biting. But it's the women of her kind. So Oh, that's such a biting phrase. Another change that I am so happy for Ciaphas has a line during this Jesus must die. "One thing I'll say for him, Jesus is cool". Which is us? It's so it's so corny. And the best way like it just fits the tone of that song so well, and they changed it. I think in the 96 version, it's infantile servants the multitude grows or something along those lines. But are the multitude drools something along something along those lines, but it's back to one thing I'll say for him, Jesus is cool. Which I am so happy for. Katie Dooley 41:35 Yeah, that I mean, that is pretty modern language. Jack Hopewell 41:39 So good. So good. Katie Dooley 41:42 In one of our very first episodes, we talked about pop culture as religion, or it's called para-religion where people get so into their thing that it could be considered worship. What are you super, super nerdy about? Jack Hopewell 41:56 That's a good question. Um, I am very much a sci-fi nerd. Also fantasy nerd. But I really nerd about nerd out about sci fi, particularly the Dune series. That's always been a big like Frank Herbert's Dune has always been very big. Ever since I was young. My parents introduced me to that. And I, I just, I just really have loved the Dune books. I love the movie that came out. I thought it was I thought it was a really good interpretation of the books. But yeah, I just think it's, it's held up so well. And in terms of discussions about religion, ecology, about colonialism, and all sorts of other themes. I think it's just a really, really solid series. Katie Dooley 42:46 Yeah. Preston Meyer 42:47 And good reasons to like it. Jack Hopewell 42:49 Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I even one of my tattoos is of the desert mouse. From that series. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's it's, it's it's solid. It I think it I think it's I think it's a book that most people should should read. I think it's more topical today than it was back in the 50s when it came out. So. Katie Dooley 43:09 Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. The movie was good. I'm excited for the second half of that. Yeah. Preston Meyer 43:15 I really enjoyed it. I think that picked a weird place to break it relative to the way they've broken it before, but just feel good. Jack Hopewell 43:21 Yeah. I'm um I yeah, right. Where it ends right after the sorry, spoilers for anybody who hasn't seen it, but it came out month's ago it's what Yeah, where it ended right after the duel with Jamis. I was, I was like, little little bit of whiplash there. But yeah, Katie Dooley 43:41 I'm excited for the next one, be some of our listeners. And I also want to know what, what your day in the life of a Broadway superstar is, like. Jack Hopewell 43:50 It's not always super exciting. I have to say, at least for myself, I've been working on it, my sleep schedule is terrible. So it's been a lot of getting up at like 11. And eventually getting out of bed by like, 1130, maybe getting brunch by that point. And then a lot of the time, especially when we're in a new city, our cast mates and our crew will, will go out and explore things, whether that's a restaurant, or we go to a museum, or a zoo, or go on a hike or something like that. We try to do that a lot of the time. And then it's I should preface this with saying I'm usually warming up throughout the day for this show, vocally. But then about two hours before the show I'm doing a more intensive warm up and usually steaming my voice voice with a with a personal steamer. And then by 45 minutes before the show. I'm at the theater. I do a fight call for that massive fight at the end I'll do a lift call sometimes if we're in a new city where the ensemble practices lifting me in the new space. And then half hour to show I get my costume, get my makeup put on somebody comes does my hair and that super tight man bun and then by 15 before show, I'm usually ready to go get myself psyched up might have a little bit of an energy drink right before going on. And then that's done. We'll come back from the hotel, and then or from the show to the hotel. Sometimes I'll get dressed up to go out, but usually I'm just like staying in sweats or something like that, and maybe going out, get something to eat. Or sitting with friends watching a movie, and then eventually falling asleep. The wee small hours of the morning. So yeah, Katie Dooley 45:46 I'm sorry, the weather was so shitty here because Edmonton's actually it's pretty cool. Jack Hopewell 45:50 It's okay, I had a blast exploring it. And I love the snow. I won't lie, it was freezing. But but I had a blast like walking around in the snow and finding things. I had some great food, had some great food. And I went to the we went to the West Edmonton Mall that was wild, the biggest mall I've ever been to, put like every American mall to shame Katie Dooley 46:18 It used to be the biggest mall in the world. And then China built like four that were Jack Hopewell 46:21 Gotcha. Gotcha. I believe it. I was like there is a whole waterpark in here. There's a there's but it's a really well designed mall too. Because it I was like, Oh, I feel like I'm gonna get overwhelmed very easily. Because I do get overwhelmed in malls. And I wasn't overwhelmed. And it felt very manageable and walkable for as big of a mall as it was. So that was cool. Katie Dooley 46:45 Well, that's good because it was balls cold when you were here, and it's balls cold now. Jack Hopewell 46:51 I still had the I still had the weather widget for Edmonton brought up and I saw negative negative 11 this morning. And I was like, okay, that's Fahrenheit. It's yeah, it's Fahrenheit. Sorry. Yeah. Katie Dooley 47:03 Yeah, it's minus 25. Today, I think Preston Meyer 47:07 it's a cold one. Katie Dooley 47:10 Yeah, that's awesome. I can't imagine living on that sleep schedule, because I'm a morning person, even like going to the show and it ending at. What time did it start? It started at eight and ending at 930. I was like, this is past my bed time. Jack Hopewell 47:21 Yeah. Right? A lot of us like the night's young after that show. So sometimes, I will just like go and pass out. If it's like been a really long week, but usually on like two show days, I'm like, Okay, I'm not. I'm not not going out after this. But yeah. Preston Meyer 47:41 Yeah, I'm more of a night owl. The schedule works for me. So is there any part of the show that you find to be a real challenge to do consistently night after night? Jack Hopewell 47:56 Yeah, I mean, crucifixion, it's really hard, emotionally. And I have to, I have to be careful not to get myself into a place where I, you know, am really methoding it and believing that I am actually, you know, dying. Because that's not a safe place to live in. But even, you know, using different training methods and I mentioned, Chekov breathing before, like, I, I'm a big fan of Michael Chekhov, and his psychological gestures, in terms of acting technique, and using that kind of breathing and physicality helps me to feel those emotions, but not sink too deep into them that I like, can't get back out of it when I need to. So that's helped a lot. But it's still really difficult. Because it's to, to breathe like that, and to contort my body like that and to scream in agony like that. While I found a way to be sustainable with it, it, it takes a lot out of me. And it's hard. And it's it's agonizing, sometimes emotionally, to be crying out for my mother and to be asking why I've been forsaken, and all of that, but so I'd say that's probably one of the more difficult things to do night after night. But thankfully, I'm navigating it in a way that I think, is keeping me safe emotionally. So Preston Meyer 49:29 That's important. Jack Hopewell 49:30 Thank you. Yeah, I think so too. Katie Dooley 49:32 Could you explain the Chekov breathing techniques for people who don't know? Because I don't? Jack Hopewell 49:36 Yeah, yeah. So Michael Chekov is a is an acting teacher and has the Chekov philosophy from a la-- I think he's one of the original Stanislavski students. So a lot of it is rooted in Stanislavski and using your own experiences to inform your your acting but for Chekov specifically, and this is different. Michael Chekhov, I should say is different from Anton Chekhov and the you know, all of that that playwright but it a lot of it has to do with physicality and the way you breathe. And it's the idea that if you assume the physicality, or the breath of the character that you are portraying, that will help inform your emotions. And your not only your physical response, but your emotional response to it. So there's psychological gestures that Chekov talks about in his book. And those, those can help portray different different actions and ways you're trying to communicate with people or how you're currently feeling. So there's things like what I do before I go on for the temple scene, I smash, and I do a large motion in which I am moving down with a lot of force and having a quick breath, as opposed to before I'm on for the for the lashes and the trial. I am in my I'm in my cuffs, and I do a ringing what Chekov would call a ring, where I take the breath into myself, and I contract a little bit and everything gets very tight and inward. And I can barely breathe, but I've taken the breath into myself and it's at that moment that I'm ready to go on and experience pain for the next 15 minutes. So yeah, Katie Dooley 51:33 cool. That's awesome. Jack Hopewell 51:36 Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, no, people don't usually ask about that. So it's fun to talk about. Katie Dooley 51:42 Yeah, I like I said, I watch it, but I don't have any talent. So Jack Hopewell 51:48 I'm sure that's not true. I'm positive. That's not true. Katie Dooley 51:52 Well I just listened to our upcoming episode to proof it, and I do rap a couple lines of Hamilton. Jack Hopewell 51:58 Oh, incredible. Excited to listen. Katie Dooley 52:04 Yeah, Preston tolerates me. So Preston Meyer 52:06 we won't subject you to any voice tryouts today. Katie Dooley 52:09 Yeah, Preston was like, don't think he might sign off the call. Preston Meyer 52:16 Is there a question that you wish people would ask in interviews that never gets asked? Jack Hopewell 52:22 I mean, honestly, I was going to, usually my response to that would be in terms of this show, like, what are your thoughts on Judas? But you guys asked, you asked me, like Judas came up. We talked about it. So trying to think other than other than Juda Preston Meyer 52:52 So nothing on the top of your head? Jack Hopewell 52:54 Yeah, nothing off the top of my head. But I'm gonna say I'm gonna say for the most part, what people usually never asked about is my relationship with Judas and whether or not I think that Judas knew what he was doing, or whether or not honestly, people never asked whether I think Judas is the bad guy. And I don't think he is. I don't think he's a bad guy at all. And I think he's human being. I don't think he's perfect. I think he's flawed, just like Jesus is. But yeah, I think he's a man who thought he was doing right. And wasn't. Katie Dooley 53:30 Judas is just as big a part of Jesus Christ Superstar as Jesus Christ. Yeah. So I agree. I think it's important to have this interpretation of him. Anything else? Preston? Preston Meyer 53:46 I got nothing else on my mind at the moment. Is there anything else in your mind Jack Do you want to bring forward before we finish this? Jack Hopewell 53:53 Other than if you want to, if you want to check out our show, you can follow us on any of our socials. Usually, the tag is Jesus Christ Superstar. It might be like JCS musical on Twitter. But for most, for most platforms, it's Jesus Christ Superstar. Our website for the tour is you can go to UStour.jesuschristsuperstar.com There you can find a lot of our bios and get tickets for the show, see where we're going next. Find photos things like that. And for me personally can find me on most platforms usually @JackHopewell or jackhopewell.com. So Preston Meyer 54:35 Awesome we will be sure to include all of those in our show notes. Jack Hopewell 54:39 Thank you. Thank you. Katie Dooley 54:40 Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy touring schedule to Jack Hopewell 54:44 of course. Thank you for having me Preston Meyer 54:47 It was a pleasure to have you join us. Katie Dooley 54:50 And then for the Holy Watermelon Preston. Preston Meyer 54:53 We've got our merch shop on SpreadShop. We've got Discord for great religious discussions, some great memes were pretty safe space for religious humour. We've got Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and of course Patreon for those of us who want to support us and get a little extra content out of us. Katie Dooley 55:16 Absolutely. And with that Both Hosts 55:19 Peace be with you! | |||
| 07 Jun 2021 | ... But Then Satan | 01:21:33 | |
Satan is THE ultimate rebel. If you want to learn all about Satanic Death cults and how evil they are well... you're going to be disappointed. Satanism is actually pretty normal? Tune in to find out more!
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******* Preston Meyer 00:12 Hey, Katie. I'm great. How are you?
Katie Dooley 00:15 I'm great. Are you ready for another episode of
Preston Meyer 00:18 holy watermelon podcast? I am. I am excited for today's episode.
Katie Dooley 00:24 I'm excited for you to be a part of today. I mean, you're a part of every episode, but
Preston Meyer 00:33 Right. It's a great thing that we share. So in our previous episode, we talked about how atheists don't worship Satan, which is a ridiculous thing to have other people contradict. But people keep saying that atheists worship Salman,
Katie Dooley 00:50 it's pretty common thing. If you don't worship God, then you must worship the devil.
Preston Meyer 00:56 Right? It's nonsense. And with
Katie Dooley 00:59 that segue, today, we're talking about devil worship.
Preston Meyer 01:03 Yeah, I wanted to start off with the idea of the devil. What is he? Where does he come from? How do we get these ideas?
Katie Dooley 01:13 See what I'm talking about who the devil is or what the devil is?
Preston Meyer 01:16 Yeah, the devil appears, usually four times in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, which is the Old Testament, He naturally shows up a lot more in the New Testament. And the nature of this figure changes a little bit. The word shed refers to evil spirits, in Hebrew, and that word is usually translated as devil. And, interestingly enough, it's spelt the exact same way in Hebrew because of the lack of vows, as the word shad and showed, showed, meaning a spoil like to destroy or to rob, and shed, as in breasts. Wow. Right. And that's an important detail we'll come back to in a minute, okay.
Katie Dooley 02:08 You would think breasts are important.
Preston Meyer 02:10 I mean, at some point in every human's life, they are either important or sought after. Fair. Alright. And the other word that is usually translated as devil in the Hebrew Bible, is Sayur, which is actually a word used to refer to saders, or to go to idols, or even sometimes broadly, just goats. And so, this these two ideas, the the Savior, the Seder, and the breasts, in form a lot of the typical idea of how we display the devil in art, especially the Baphomet statue, which is popular because of some other groups we'll talk about later in this episode. It's usually a Goat Man with breasts.
Katie Dooley 03:11 Ah, I just picking her like the muscular man breasts
Preston Meyer 03:16 with firm manly picks rather than the boobs. Yeah, there are both versions of the Baphomet in art. Yeah, but an awful lot of people prefer boobs.
Katie Dooley 03:29 I think everyone prefer boobs. Like I think statistically, 100% of the planet likes boobs.
Preston Meyer 03:37 I feel like part of our population isn't terribly interested in boobs, at least in their later life. Oh, I'm gonna go out and say gay men wrong. Probably less gay
Katie Dooley 03:48 men like boobs. All of them. I'm
Preston Meyer 03:53 Yes. I am perfectly willing to accept that many gay men appreciate boobs. That's a reality for sure. I don't think that you can say that there are no gay men who like boobs, or who don't like boobs.
Katie Dooley 04:08 Or a gay man who doesn't like boobs.
Preston Meyer 04:15 Let's keep the conversation.
Katie Dooley 04:19 Hitting conversation going. I stand by what I said now 100% The population like carry on.
Preston Meyer 04:27 So the the interesting thing about this, the way we see the devil in Scripture is that it's informed from other traditions outside of Israel. In fact, the the way that we see the devil in the more common Judeo Christian cosmology seems to be informed a lot by Zoroastrianism where there's a more almost equal duality of good versus evil in By the gods of Zarya, Zoroastrianism, which is mostly pretty strongly monotheistic, but isn't so strongly, monotheistic when you dig deeper.
Katie Dooley 05:13 Oh, like all of them. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 05:15 there's all theological models have layers,
Katie Dooley 05:20 like ogres and onion. Exactly.
Preston Meyer 05:24 So the devil as an idea is kind of an interesting one. And it's associated with idol worship in old Israel. And, oddly enough with goats for some reason. Out of all of the idols that exist, the devil is specifically tied to the to the goat.
Katie Dooley 05:46 I did some reading on why the goat per for Baphomet. And I know it's a pagan god. Yes, yeah. Is where that imagery was made popular in the early 1900s. In the context of Satanism, they, I think it was some popular story. And they use this pagan god that was a goat and brought it into devil worshipers in worship.
Preston Meyer 06:15 Especially for Christianity popping up a bit in it. Its base of power, if you will. The idea of Seders is an idea that Christians were super uncomfortable with, because they, as opposed to the Baphomet of boobs, as we've described, saders are all about having an extra huge penis, and they're super sexually aggressive, almost all the time.
Katie Dooley 06:42 And I mean, that comes from Greek and Roman mythology. Yeah, yeah. So it's not a new,
Preston Meyer 06:48 but it's a part of the environment in which Christianity grew up.
Katie Dooley 06:52 Yeah. So it was easy to like, adopt
Preston Meyer 06:55 and villainize. Yeah. It's weird to like individual Staters are pretty often antagonists in the stories of Greek and Roman mythology. But to say that they're the ultimate bad guy of the stories, that's a Christian
Katie Dooley 07:14 twist, are so cute.
Preston Meyer 07:18 They're less cute when they're half man with a huge penis.
Katie Dooley 07:23 Speaker yourself.
Preston Meyer 07:28 Alright, so moving on to ace what looks to me like I actually totally separate idea is Satan. And I just, it's hard to see Satan and the devil as identical things. There's an awful lot of overlap in the values that we have dumped on to these ideas. But the title Satan is using the Hebrew Bible 27 times, it shows up a lot more than that in the Christian New Testament. And broadly, in the New Testament, they are meant to be understood to be the same thing, or at least that's the way as people who look at it, yeah, it's typically understood that they're that meant to be the same figure. In the Hebrew Bible, Satan is a title, not a name, but a title. And it denotes an adversary or an accuser. So the way it's meant to be understood when you read the Hebrew Bible, the the Christian Old Testament, Satan is a member of the Heavenly Court, who stands to accuse each and every man and woman for the ways that they have transgressed the law. That God is the judge in that heaven and that there is why can't I think of the more common poetic term for defense attorney, Prosecutor know the prosecutor is Satan
Katie Dooley 09:03 sane? Different than
Preston Meyer 09:06 the defendant is you and me Hello, it bugs me that I've lost this word and I clearly should have written it down
Katie Dooley 09:15 the barrister
Preston Meyer 09:20 I don't know why this word is blanking me, i It'll come to me when we're done recording. That's the way it goes anyway. But Satan is a member of the court of heaven, who stands to accuse us of breaking the law. It's his job to keep track of that. And that's a little bit different feeling than we get that from the New Testament Satan, where he's the one who encourages us to break the law. And so it's, it's interesting to see that change of flavor. Yeah. And so there's there's an awful lot of theological exploration of this idea that He is doing both jobs, the two halves of that, that biblical split the Hebrew Bible versus the Christian Bible. They have different views. They're not necessarily contradictory.
Katie Dooley 10:13 So that he encourages you to do bad things. And then later he judges you for them.
Preston Meyer 10:17 Well, he's not the judge. He's the prosecutor. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 10:21 later. Yeah, wherever the thing you did that I encourage you to do Yeah. Guilty,
Preston Meyer 10:26 right. I mean, ultimately, we're all we are all responsible for our own actions. We can't say the devil made me do it. Because that's nonsense. We we choose what we do. Though. We are also a product of our environments, the various very different forces that act on us, but we get to make our own choices.
Katie Dooley 10:48 Wow. Oh, pep talk there.
Preston Meyer 10:52 Yeah, don't be a dick. I'm gonna find a way to work that phrase into most of our episodes. Like an Easter egg, right? Maybe we'll put it on a t shirt or a hat.
Katie Dooley 11:04 Yes, it is on my list of merch to make.
Preston Meyer 11:08 And with that note, check out our merch.
Katie Dooley 11:12 We have just launched our Spreadshirt store. So if you want some sweet Holly watermelon merch, check us out. Our link will be on our social media.
Preston Meyer 11:25 Just check out our link tree and get connected to that and our Discord server where we have great conversations
Katie Dooley 11:33 about whether gay men like boobs or not right.
Preston Meyer 11:37 Let us know. Anyway, let's get back on to the train. tracks that we have derailed all train tracks. Yep. Yeah. All right. So Lucifer. Lucifer is a great one. The there's, I feel very certain that somebody out in podcast land is happy to argue with me on this one. And let's just start with if you want to argue with me on this one, you're wrong.
Katie Dooley 12:05 Okay. That's the tolerance we like.
Preston Meyer 12:09 I'm not saying I won't discuss it with you. But what I'm about to share with you is widely agreed upon by the vast majority of scholars in the field. Lucifer is not the name of the depth, it is not Satan's name.
Katie Dooley 12:28 I believe that. Yeah. And he's like hard. Lucifer is hardly mentioned in the Bible, if I'm not mistaken. So
Preston Meyer 12:33 the name doesn't show up very much in the Bible at all. Yeah. And it's, I'm gonna distract myself just a little bit. You There are so many things in popular culture that love to make the name of the devil, Lucifer Morningstar,
Katie Dooley 12:51 is it? The hit show? Lucifer
Preston Meyer 12:55 is one of many cases. There's so many shows that Lucifer and one that's a lazy tautology. But, but second, that's not his name. The one time that we see Lucifer in the average English translation of the Bible, Lucifer is, it doesn't show up in the Hebrew, it doesn't show up in the Greek. It is added by the Latin translation, replacing the Hebrew name, hello, which I said name that's, that's still the wrong word. It's a title. And hello means shining, and refers to a shining one, specifically, in the context we have it. It's meant to refer to the title of the king of Babylon as referring to the Morning Star, that he's this bright God for the king. The one time we have the name Lucifer in the Hebrew Bible. It's not talking about the devil. It's Isaiah, the prophet addressing the king of Babylon. Calling him out for being such a powerful being who has fallen so far from grace by doing such great wickedness against Israel. not taught to Satan,
Katie Dooley 14:25 so it does have reference to to a person who did bad things, though,
Preston Meyer 14:32 was the king of Babylon. Yeah, but, and there are an awful lot of scholars who want to say that for this brief passage where Isaiah is using this title of Lucifer, that he's changed his subject, that he has stopped talking to the king of Babylon. The context doesn't make that statement make any sense by The name Lucifer has stuck in popular culture as the name of the devil.
Katie Dooley 15:05 You don't want to go down the rabbit hole, but I'd be interested to know why I got applied to the name of the devil.
Preston Meyer 15:10 Yeah, so I am also interested in curious to figure that out. And so far I haven't found an answer. Interesting. What's interesting to me is that the title of Morningstar is applied to Jesus several times in the New Testament. And Lucifer being a title that means light bringer, as a refers to the Morningstar that I mean, it's quite a positive title. It is a positive title. And so it makes sense that it applies to Jesus. And so of course, the the rationale behind it being applied to Lucifer is that he was one of the great angels before he rebelled. And so it's one of those names that show us how far he has fallen. But that just
Katie Dooley 15:58 fanfic, though, because there's no stories. Well, it's just Bible fanfic.
Preston Meyer 16:04 It looks an awful lot like fanfic from a biblical perspective,
Katie Dooley 16:07 just like the what is it? The Assumption of Mary? That Bible fanfic, too? Yeah, yeah. We should do an episode on that.
Preston Meyer 16:17 There's an awful lot of biblical fanfic out there. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 16:24 And I forced you to put this one in, I just like wrote the numbers 3666. The Beast?
Preston Meyer 16:33 Yeah, so it's a number that shows up in Revelation 1813, the number of the beast is a human number, and that number is 666. Some translations of the Bible, use slightly better language than that, saying that it's not the human number, as Iron Maiden says, but is the number of a man. A lot of translations prefer that wording. And the man according to almost all scholars on the subject, is Emperor Nero. There was, according to scholarship on the subject, an awful lot of people were really worried about Emperor Nero coming back from the dead, to wreak even greater Havoc than he had previously. And with the style of apocalyptic literature, that is super obvious in the Revelation of John, the story is that Israel will overcome even when Nero comes back. Now whether John was genuinely himself worried that Emperor Nero himself would come back, or somebody much like him, we can't say with any certainty.
Katie Dooley 17:48 So also nothing really to do with Satan or the Devil. We just lump it in there as an evil thing.
Preston Meyer 17:55 Yeah, like it's a connected idea. That's, I mean, all four of these numbers and titles are connected ideas in the way that we've associated them over the centuries, but they are all individual distinct things. What's interesting is that the number is 666. And many Greek manuscripts actually spell it out as 666. There are a few that use the numeral letters. And that's it's not numeral numbers that are numeral letters. anywhere else. Yeah. But smarter than Roman numeral. Okay. So Latin is super dumb that five is a V, and one is an AI. And there's no like you couldn't look at the alphabet and figure out why those letters were chosen to be those numbers. And you have to add them up in a way that makes doing math really hard. Greek and Hebrew and probably other languages did this really sensible thing where the first nine letters are 123456789. The next nine letters are 1020 3040 5060 7080 90. And then the next nine letters 100 200 300. so on, so there are some Greek manuscripts that spell out 666 There are some that use the numerals to this, like, it looks like 666 If you want to translate it accurately into English, but there are not three sixes Yes, seems like June 6 2006. A bunch of people were worried about it for some reason, because it was 666 is dumb, because it wasn't 666, which was the number that we're looking for. What's interesting, though, is there are also manuscripts in Greek for some reason, that instead of being 666, there 616 And the The odd thing about that is that it doesn't contradict the popular scholarly interpretation of it applying to Emperor Nero. It's instead applies one to the Greek spelling of Emperor Nero. And one to the Latin spelling of Emperor. Yeah, it's super weird. So. And it's a matter of adding up the value of the letters that spell up the name to get this number 666. Because John had to write in code, because he was in exile, when he wrote it, he needed this thing to be published. But, you know, anything that he's writing is getting read by his guards before it goes anywhere. Yeah. So that's kind of the idea there.
Katie Dooley 20:45 So he should be just as worried about the number 616 as 666 is not at all
Preston Meyer 20:52 correct. Okay. I'm really glad you finished it off with that last qualifier. Otherwise,
Katie Dooley 20:57 I just make a big deal about 666.
Preston Meyer 21:02 Yeah, people are super stressed out about it. Like if that's the number on your bill, they'll make sure that they change something six, seven.
Katie Dooley 21:08 Yeah, fun fact, I have a car payment is $667.
Preston Meyer 21:14 Nice. And that's how I remember it. That's fazed by the number. Because it's not quite there. Well, I
Katie Dooley 21:21 just know it's new 666 and I can make financial decisions.
Preston Meyer 21:31 Yeah, there's a, there's a lot of people who are really worried about the number. And that association isn't enough to make me feel like that fear is validated. But I mean,
Katie Dooley 21:43 especially once, you know, it's meant for Nero and not some supernatural beastie. Yeah, I mean, I guess they think he's coming back from the dead like a zombie. But
Preston Meyer 21:52 that somebody like Emperor Nero is going to come in the future. That either or it's not mean like having a number on a piece of paper being a danger.
Katie Dooley 22:03 I mean, chances are the people who believe in the 6x X would support someone who looked like an arrow was the way things are going.
Preston Meyer 22:11 There's way too much evidence to support that supposition.
Katie Dooley 22:17 All right. So let's get into the Satanism. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 22:22 there's a couple who talked about Devil's yeah, there's a couple of big groups that are both formed and named to deliberately antagonize Christians that have taken up that mantle of Satanism. Do they antagonize
Katie Dooley 22:37 Christians? Like there's nothing in their official statements that say they exist to,
Preston Meyer 22:45 I'm gonna show a couple of points to you through generally, the statement and the media presence of saying, I worship Satan is to one degree or another, sometimes it's really not an aggressive antagonism. And sometimes it has been, yeah, against Christians or Christianity in general, or sometimes just against the idea that there's a Christian supremacy in the state, which is hard to deny in North America. And depending on where you are in South America, it's actually a problem, too, that's quite visible.
Katie Dooley 23:24 Is there anything you want to share with the class before we start talking about Satanism? Preston,
Preston Meyer 23:29 there was a time when I was a Satanist. And it's, I mean, that's not the life I live now. But it was, it was part of who I was for a little while when I was in junior high and your identity is super flexible and constantly changing.
Katie Dooley 23:47 I mean, it was still valid.
Preston Meyer 23:51 I showed up in all black to my younger brother's Christian baptism. I'm sure that it wasn't that intense. It wasn't like super golf. I just haven't had black pants and a black T shirt. We're not going too crazy here.
Katie Dooley 24:04 You're a pretty vibrant guy.
Preston Meyer 24:08 Right? That's surprised I didn't do the I make up and dyed my hair darker.
Katie Dooley 24:14 Crossing your forehead.
Preston Meyer 24:18 It wasn't really even a long time thing. But it was a few months where I was like, yeah, no, it makes perfect sense that, you know, let's let's follow the first great philosopher. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, that some of the positions of these groups are interesting and worth exploring, which is part of why we're doing an episode. So first, I want to talk about the Church of Satan. This is I don't want to keep saying for each group. This is not the group I belong to because I don't belong to any group at all.
Katie Dooley 24:51 Yeah, so that's, that's where honestly, this episode was hard. It's because like, there's this church to say we're gonna talk about and then there's The Satanic Temple and then you can just actually be like a Satanist. Yeah, just like I mean, I guess you can be a Christian without prescribing to any particular denomination. And debt to death. It's a spectrum. So everything, everything's a spectrum. So the Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple are actually quite different. Oh, yeah. So you can see just from the issue, that if you're involved in any sort of organized Satanism, there's two vastly different groups, and then anything and everything in between, including satanic ritual killing, which we'll get to.
Preston Meyer 25:43 All right, so the Church of Satan was founded in San Francisco in 1966. Not very old. Now. I like that they picked 66 To start with, do you think he just like sat on it for a little bit? Uh, you know what a little piece of me thinks he might have.
Katie Dooley 26:00 not time yet.
Preston Meyer 26:03 Was it June of 66? I don't know. Okay, a little piece of me now hopes it was June 6 66. But I don't know that that's the case file it today and has to be filed today. It was started by a fella named Anton LaVey. He's an interesting, weird duck. Yeah, he is. And we don't really have the time to get into all of his baggage. But he wrote the Satanic Bible. He didn't publish it until after the church had been around for a few years. And it is their official text.
Katie Dooley 26:39 Now, I think I have this in our notes later, but LaVey believed in magic. So we're gonna get into their beliefs a little more. So that's one big difference between the Church of Satan, which we're talking about now in the Satanic Temple, which we're talking about later, is that church of Satan strongly believes in magic in the use of magic, whereas the Satanic Temple is more humanist and doesn't believe in those superstitious things. So, if you're wondering how weird this guy is, he believes in magic.
Preston Meyer 27:11 Yeah, they're, they're into magic. But they do not at all subscribe to the familiar ideas of what the devil is.
Katie Dooley 27:22 And that really such subscribed me that really surprised me. I knew a little bit about Satanism. But the fact that none of these Satanists generally do not believe in Satan.
Preston Meyer 27:38 I don't know if it's fair to say generally, the bigger groups that is the case Yeah, yeah. It's, it's interesting that though they use this title, Satanist, they do not worship Satan,
Katie Dooley 27:51 and they actively discourage the worship of Satan as a deity. So yeah, there it is, in my notes, so the church's lean believes in magic or black magic, but not in a higher power. So it is both supernatural, but atheistic, which is kind of that was kind of weird for a moment for me to wrap my head around as a secular humanist. I was like, how can you believe in both the supernatural? How can you believe in the supernatural and not believe in God?
Preston Meyer 28:21 Well see, we've talked about a few religions where there's this spiritual cosmology, without a deity, any specific theology or deity, yeah, like even Buddhism is pretty fuzzy in the god department.
Katie Dooley 28:39 This is a quote I pulled LaVey taught that his infernal Majesty was a symbol of humanistic values such as self assertion, rebelling against unjust authority, vital existence and undefiled wisdom. So Satan is really just like a figurehead are a metaphor.
Preston Meyer 28:57 Yeah, for the Church of Satan. He's definitely more of a metaphoric symbol than a personal presence. But a positive one, which is feels weird in a pretty Christocentric society.
Katie Dooley 29:16 Yes, and there's going to be a lot of numbers coming up I'm gonna have a whole bunch of numbers that you guys what we like no, I love numbers, but the church of Satan has their own set of numbers and the the Satanic Temple has a different set of numbers. Yeah, so a nice summary of the so churches saying the nine satanic statements, so Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dream. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self deceit. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates. I'm excited for you and to unpack all these. Satan represents venture Instead of turning the other cheek, Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all fours, who, because of his divine spiritual and intellectual development has become the most vicious animal of all. Satan represents all the so called sins as they all lead to physical, mental or emotional gratification. And Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years. So what do you think of all that President?
Preston Meyer 30:37 Well, I mean, that's just nine separate things to unpack. I mean, some of them are deliberately in specifically meant to contradict teachings of the Church teaching straight out of the Bible. Others are less targeted, but still, there, that vein of thought, where it's meant to be in opposition to all of the fairly oppressive teachings of the Church over the centuries.
Katie Dooley 31:07 I mean, I was gonna say, these aren't all necessarily negative. I think we're just so used to these restrictive religions where that you have to make some sort of personal sacrifice to be part of it. And this doesn't have any level of personal sacrifice.
Preston Meyer 31:24 No, none at all. This is all about almost self deification, that you shouldn't be worshipping Lucifer at all according to these thoughts, but that you kind of put yourself up on the pedestal, and if somebody's gonna hurt you, they have wronged God, and you will hurt them.
Katie Dooley 31:42 Yeah, the one that represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek. That one's a little. That's probably the worst 109. But
Preston Meyer 31:55 it's not a great way to be a neighbor.
Katie Dooley 31:58 No. Let's replace that with don't be a dick. And you have a pretty solid nine,
Preston Meyer 32:03 right? But these are just the satanic statements. We also have rules, which feel a little bit like the 10 commandments, but this time, there's 11 of them. I mean, if you want to explore the 10 commandments, even within the Decalogue, there's more than 10. All right, so the 11 Satanic rules of the Earth First, do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked love it. Right. That's actually pretty good. Do not tell your troubles to others, unless you're sure they want to hear them. Also kind of in that yeah, I'm into that. That's nice. When in another's lair, show him respect, or else do not go there. Yeah, my house. The word layer feels weird. But also good rule.
Katie Dooley 32:54 Yes. The sentiment is there. The wording, okay.
Preston Meyer 32:59 Yeah, I, every time I see the word layer in these writings, it's just like, you're deliberately you're affecting a feeling. And it doesn't feel natural. It doesn't slide smoothly, but I get it. You're making this
Katie Dooley 33:17 for a certain type of person?
Preston Meyer 33:19 Absolutely. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy, not. Unless I'm bored.
Katie Dooley 33:32 No one makes less sense. I'm pretty sure you can just ask them to leave.
Preston Meyer 33:35 Or hey, don't do that annoying thing. How to this isn't a translation issue. Anton LaVey wrote this in English. If somebody is annoying, you treat them without mercy. Not a great way to be a neighbor.
Katie Dooley 33:49 Pretty bad. That's pretty bad. I would have kicked I would have been really mean to a lot of people if that was
Preston Meyer 34:01 Here's another good one, though. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
Katie Dooley 34:08 Love it. How can Christianity doesn't have that
Preston Meyer 34:11 effect? The kind of do but honestly not in such a well worded way. That it's great. That the wording again is a little bit weird. We don't talk about mating signals. I mean, it's not that we don't have them. It's just we don't call them that. But it's a good rule is such a good rule. Do not take that which does not belong to you, unless it is a burden to the other person. And he cries out to be relieved of it. Like so far, like we're halfway through this list. We've only found one that's objectionable. And certainly there's gonna be people arguing with us on how objection no bullet is on that's fine. Just, you know, whatever. But don't take what's not yours.
Katie Dooley 35:09 That's, that's good. I love it and lighten the load if you can lighten the load. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 35:14 it's great. Love it. And I like how it's tied into one statement, even though it's there's a negative and a positive there. Yeah. Next, acknowledge the power of magic, if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic, after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained. So just like in the deck log, the 10 commandments, we have one of the many commandments that actually has a promise attached to it. This is the one that we have, where you must acknowledge the presence of magic. And if you've used it and deny its power, then you will be punished for it. Within a self consistent thing, we're still solid. But magic,
Katie Dooley 36:11 I mean, is weirder than what any other religion asks us to believe,
Preston Meyer 36:17 as its own thing know. If you've successfully use magic, acknowledge that you've successfully use magic? I got it. Cool. All right. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.
Katie Dooley 36:32 Yes. Yes, I was just having this conversation the other day. We have a few people in our lives where the like, answer their texts, like this person, I don't want to text them and then they text them. I'm like, you know, you don't have to answer that text. You don't have to text someone
Preston Meyer 36:49 yet. Don't volunteer for suffering and then complain about it. Yeah, that's nonsense. And that's how I understand that amendment. Or, well, I guess it's not a commandment, it's rules of living. The earth is the next one another really good one. And here we have some really strong non contradictions with the teachings of Jesus. The rule is do not harm little children. I know a few strong and solid groups that can use that rule. Right? i Some churches even
Katie Dooley 37:26 that's what that's what I was getting at.
Preston Meyer 37:30 It's it's really hard to naysay some of these, you know, these are good rules.
Katie Dooley 37:37 Why would you want to naysay them? I don't think there's anything wrong with Satanism. Do you
Preston Meyer 37:43 get so far I haven't seen anything that's outright objectionable. Okay. Well, okay, that's not true. There was a couple of things. Mostly, that's a good way to live. Next, do not kill non human animals, unless you are attacked. Or for your food. Make sense? Don't go around stomping on things that don't mean you any harm. Don't go torturing animals for no reason. We've got enough people doing that it's a problem. kill animals for your food or your protection? Makes good sense to me. Yep. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.
Katie Dooley 38:31 I went from like, zero to 110 Start escalated incredibly quickly. But the first half is not bad. Right? I like the first half. I mean, we've lived in sketchy enough neighborhoods, to know that you just keep yourself to yourself and keep your head down and don't bother people and you'll be fine. That being said, I think there are times people should intervene. But for the most part, the first part of that is
Preston Meyer 39:05 a good rule. Honestly, the whole thing looks pretty solid if you want to live the biblical life when you're not there yet in your Bible reading. But when Israel leaves Egypt and wanders around in the wilderness for 40 years, and makes their home in the Promised Land, that's exactly the way they made their their home was they wandered in peace, they promised peace to anybody that they came across. And when the people who had already set up their homes there, said, Hey, we don't want you and threatened to kill them. Then Israel fought back and destroyed them. Oh, lovely. So this is the way we see the existence in the Bible.
Katie Dooley 39:49 So Satanists are Christians slash anti Christians.
Preston Meyer 39:56 That's pretty fair. I'd say, well, we didn't actually explore the title of antichrist. I know that right now, but, and depending on who you ask, there are a good handful of different definitions for antichrist. Some people say it doesn't count as the Antichrist who is not the literal physical, embodied spawn of Satan. Which that's a really extreme position to hold to. I don't I don't want to call it a weird position but it's an it's an extreme one to say there's just the one thing that could ever be so where are we have this title showing up? In our oldest literature is right in the New Testament? And an antichrist is literally any person who denies that Jesus rose from the dead. Which we have an Antichrist in this room.
Katie Dooley 40:53 Oh, no. Where it's me.
Preston Meyer 40:58 And so realistically, and fairly and antichrist, depending on who you talk to, you can be anywhere in between those two extremes. Wow.
Katie Dooley 41:07 Everything from the literal spawn of Satan to Katie. Yeah. Wow, I'm gonna make a graphic. I'm gonna be all teary eyed, like thumbs up, and then they'll be like, the little little literal like Baltimore abortion. On the other side. Choose your antichrist. There's a meme in here. I need to
Preston Meyer 41:30 figure it out. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 41:34 Oh, dear.
Preston Meyer 41:35 Yeah. And so those were the rules. Those are the beliefs so
Katie Dooley 41:39 that you're just with a little digression in there. Um, so what does it look like if you're a practicing Church of Satanist?
Preston Meyer 41:49 Well, out on the streets, that most Satanists wouldn't look terribly out of place. Among any other group of professionals, you'd see, I think, but there's Satanist, weddings, funerals, even baptisms. Sometimes you hear the word anti baptism thrown around.
Katie Dooley 42:10 And baptism is popular in temple of Satan. Yes, Satan,
Preston Meyer 42:15 the satanic Satanic Temple.
Katie Dooley 42:18 Whereas you can get at satanist baptism through church of Satan. Yeah. There is a ranking system in the Church of Satan.
Preston Meyer 42:29 Oh, absolutely. It's not just your regular church, like it would be very foreign to say, your average evangelical Christian. And not just because it's Satan. But it's actually modeled after the old mystery schools where you've got sets of degrees that you progress through. And to be fair, the Church of Satan, very few people go up through all the degrees. But you'll have a few people who go up to second or third. It's kind of interesting that way.
Katie Dooley 43:04 Yeah. So it starts as a registered member, anyone can be a registered member, you can go on to churches st.com right now and register, and you'd be a registered member of the Church of Satan. And then to get your first trigger, you become an active member. And that's basically just showing your interest in the community building of the Church of Satan that you want to be involved and not just to have it on paper, that you're a member of the Church of Satan. The secondary agree is which are Warlock third degree is priest or priestess. Fourth Degree is Magister or magistra. And fifth degree is mega or magus, on their website, and I didn't do a ton of digging, it basically said to get in so they don't tell you how to get into the upper your degrees up approach. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 43:49 I did some digging,
Katie Dooley 43:50 I could find what those ranks are. It's on Reddit, for sure.
Preston Meyer 43:56 There's a very real chance having not looked into it at all, specifically myself, that once you've gotten to the point where somebody is comfortable inviting you up to these higher degrees, each individually, of course, you're probably not the kind of person who would decide to reveal those secrets.
Katie Dooley 44:18 I mean, there's always people who leave though. That's where I get my internal Intel
Preston Meyer 44:23 and the cult here your group is for sure you're gonna have people leaving. But based on the things we outlined in our cults episode, as much as Anton LaVey kind of set up a slightly authoritarian system. It's really not setting off my cult alarm bells. Yeah. And
Katie Dooley 44:45 that's the interesting thing about both this and the Satanic Temple is, you know, in the news, you'll hear about satanic cults. And these are not cults at all in in the danger cult zone. Right? You might call them a cult and turn memes of a small upstart religion, but definitely not danger call. These are full fleshed out regular old religions with tax exempt status with tax exempt status. When I guess, I guess controversial point, something if you've seen the exorcist or at all is the black mass. So the Church of Satan performance black mass, as does the Satanic Temple, which is basically this blasphemous version of a Catholic mass. The vestments are all black, hence black mass, and the alters the back of a naked woman, kind of sexy. Is that why teenage precedent was the sameness?
Preston Meyer 45:44 No, not at all, though, it certainly wouldn't have heard, it probably would have encouraged me to stick with it a little longer, maybe.
Katie Dooley 45:53 And then they, you know, they do things with the sacrament and whatever.
Preston Meyer 45:59 For sure. So in contrast with that, we have the Satanic Temple. It's a baby, right? It's pretty new. It's been around for about eight years. It was founded in Salem, Massachusetts, in 2013. The group was co founded by Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jerry, and kind of like Moses and his brother air, and one of them was the spokesperson, that was Malcolm Jerry. So it's, it is pretty new. And the little parallel is kind of interesting to me. You know, things.
Katie Dooley 46:42 I actually like, I mean, I'm the to, like, if I had to pick, I'd pick the Satanic Temple, it seems like more modern, and there, they appear to be more active than the Church of Satan. And, yeah, they're doing some cool stuff in the community,
Preston Meyer 46:59 the Satanic Temple is really involved in helping secularize the state. That's one of their main drives.
Katie Dooley 47:08 Yeah, and this is where this is why we pick to do Satanism, I think a little bit after our apparently religions is that part of their job is to, you know, if if Christianity is getting certain privileges, that they're making sure that they get certain privileges, those privileges as well as a commentary on religion in the United States. So kind of like the flying spaghetti monster that if you can teach creationism in science class, you can teach spaghetti flying monster ism, Flying Spaghetti Monster ism in class. And one of their beliefs is that all churches should be taxed. And that's something that they advocate for So,
Preston Meyer 47:52 but in the meantime, since churches get to be tax exempt, they're taking full advantage of all of the benefits of being a church.
Katie Dooley 48:00 Absolutely. But I think that's where people go, you know, and we'll get to Satanic Panic in a little bit. But oh, my goodness, the church is saying, how can they be tax exempt? It's well, you know, turn around and look at literally any other group. And they're not actually doing anything bad.
Preston Meyer 48:19 Right? It's important to note that the Satanic Temple also does not claim to worship satan. They do discourage that, though, as we talked about earlier on in our podcast in history, go back to early episodes. When we define what is a God and what is worship. That's pretty nebulous, and it it does kind of look like both of these groups do kind of worship Satan. But it's, it's as true as saying Catholics worship saints.
Katie Dooley 48:55 Were where they avoid that. Yeah, so the Satanic Temple. Satan is a metaphor, a symbol for the eternal rebel. So I see what you're saying, Preston, but I think like
Preston Meyer 49:09 tonic Temple is even less theist. Oh, yeah, they're
Katie Dooley 49:13 like, actually, they believe in extra This is a quote, they believe in exercising reasonable agnosticism, and all things that religion should be divorced from superstition. superstition, I said that weird. I think the reason that they both say that. And junk. This is just an opinion piece to jump in. But there's this idea that I mean, we targeted Satan is evil. But I don't know from the
Preston Meyer 49:46 Christian New Testament
Katie Dooley 49:47 perspective. Yeah. But Satanists aren't evil. But then part of me goes then why did you pick Satan as your rap?
Preston Meyer 49:54 It's to specifically antagonize Christians, whether to a great degree or a minor degree. There's there is that spirit of antagonism there.
Katie Dooley 50:03 You know, I was talking to someone, they're like, oh, this person's a evil. They're a devil worshiper and I'm like, so usually not. Usually not. So that's just like, and chances are they're not a devil worshiper. Right? If you're saying this, you're not actually devil worshiper. So it is it interesting. So they I feel like yeah, they just picked the name to piss off.
Preston Meyer 50:25 Christians. Yeah. And it works.
Katie Dooley 50:31 Are you? Are you grumpy? No,
Preston Meyer 50:33 I think these groups are fascinating. And in particular, the Satanic Temple does great work. We'll look at a few points here later on,
Katie Dooley 50:41 carried carry the seven tenets do it? Yes. So they have seven tenants. So we have the nine and then we have the 11. And now we have seven. So number one, one should strive to act with compassion, empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason I can't complain about that ever to the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over our laws and institutions?
Preston Meyer 51:06 Absolutely. We've got an awful lot of people who, especially in the last year have been shouting for the rule of law, completely ignoring the need for actual justice.
Katie Dooley 51:20 Yes, law and justice are two different things. And the law doesn't always make sense.
Preston Meyer 51:25 Right? An awful lot of terrible things have been not just legal, but enforced by law, and an awful lot of righteous things have been banned by law. Yeah. So they are different and a lot of people seem to have a lot of trouble with that.
Katie Dooley 51:42 Number three, one's body is inviolable. I don't know. Is that how you say? Yeah, findable inviolable, subject to one's own will alone. So body autonomy? Yeah, perfect. I like it. I just looked up the umbrella of protection, like yesterday. Yeah. And I didn't like it. But I like this. The number four the freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend, to willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forego one's own. Yeah. Is that about what to say? Basically, every episode, don't be a dick. As long as you're not hurting anyone else. Go hard. Number five beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.
Preston Meyer 52:43 Right. We got way too many people doing that. Oh, many
Katie Dooley 52:47 I love the MIS Satanist.
Preston Meyer 52:50 I don't know are you You tell me. I don't like telling other people a thing that they are when they may not agree
Katie Dooley 52:59 with me, number six people are fallible if one makes a mistake once do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused? Absolutely agree. And stemmer number seven, every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought the spirit of compassion, wisdom and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word. Absolutely. I have no problems with these. These are less weird than love A's.
Preston Meyer 53:29 Right? Destroying. Yeah, our fellows in the Satanic Temple seem to be a lot. I don't want to say less rage motivated, even though that's what was going to come out of my mouth. Cuz there's definitely a perfectly reasonable anger against a very prejudiced system in place.
Katie Dooley 53:50 Yep. No, I like all of those. I have no problems with that sense of beliefs and it makes Satanic Panic even funnier. And actually, when I was researching this episode, I found an article I think it was the CBC and it was like news satanic cult makes its way to Canada. And it was Satanic Temple because it's fairly new. Like I had. I had just met my husband in 2013. Like we were just becoming friends in 2013. So this is a very new religion and it just, it just made me giggle at it was like on the CBC is this scary thing and then you read this and you're like, oh, there's nothing to disagree with. And if you can disagree with it, please leave a note on our Discord because I really want to know what you disagree with. Yeah, because those all seem super reasonable to me.
Preston Meyer 54:45 So far, it's great. So kind of like the Flying Spaghetti Monster. As Katie mentioned, it's important for the Satanic Temple to remind legislators that religious freedoms need to be available to Every one that's no matter what it is you believe that we need to have both freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Yep. Secularism is hugely important, as we talked about in our previous episode.
Katie Dooley 55:16 rituals that they do black mass, as I mentioned, prior, this is straight from their website. It's a celebration of blasphemy, which can be expression of personal liberty and freedom. They have the and baptism which I actually really liked. This is different than the satanic baptism with the Church of Satan. This is where if you were baptized as a child, you can renounce that baptism ceremony, which I think is kind of cool, because I know a lot of people that were baptized as babies, and now they're like, what? Well, and
Preston Meyer 55:49 I really appreciate that it's about going back on a thing that was done to you without your consent.
Katie Dooley 55:58 I mean, I think that goes back to the data of your body is your budget and bodily
Preston Meyer 56:01 autonomy? Absolutely.
Katie Dooley 56:04 They have a destruction ritual where participants destroy an object they own that symbolizes a source of pain in their lives, hopefully, cathartic, I was gonna say also very healthy. And they've a defiance ritual. So a pledge to challenge the status quo in a way that is personally meaningful.
Preston Meyer 56:20 I don't see an issue with that. I mean, I recognize that there is room for problems there. But broadly generically, I betcha that doesn't come up very often.
Katie Dooley 56:32 I mean, if you pair the Defiance ritual with the seven tenants, then you're probably going to pick something that would be
Preston Meyer 56:40 And realistically, you'd be doing this with a group and somebody's going to say, Hey, don't be a
Katie Dooley 56:47 tech, tenant hate.
Preston Meyer 56:51 No, I think that was already there. Just reading our words to you know, there's nothing wrong with restating your thing and rules. Like what's the second rule of fight club?
Katie Dooley 57:01 Don't be a dick.
Preston Meyer 57:04 It's the same rule is rule number one is, I've never seen Fight Club, we might need to fix that.
Katie Dooley 57:10 I think this came up in a previous episode now with John Wick was I feel like people are gonna start realizing how little TV I watch.
Preston Meyer 57:18 So on our Discord, somebody called me out on that, like, are they really that similar? To be fair, he said that he hadn't seen one of the films as well. And my comparison wasn't a strong comparison. But I stand by it that there is some parallels between the two. So one thing that I think is great, and will always be a wonderful highlight for me in the Satanic Temple organization's history is the pink mass of 2013. They were still brand new at this point babies. And it says an example of some deliberate antagonism, not that it's not deserved. In this case, it's very deserved.
Katie Dooley 58:09 It is an act of deliberate antagonists.
Preston Meyer 58:12 So the Westboro Baptist Church, right. We've talked about them in passing a little bit more in private than we have on the podcast. They are a very aggressive evangelical pain in the ass.
Katie Dooley 58:30 Man, like, if you think Satanists are bad, just look at the Westboro Baptist Church. Because Satanists are saints, Satanists, compared to the Westboro Baptist Church. Thank you for laughing at that really?
Preston Meyer 58:47 Great. So anyway, the Westboro Baptist Church had decided that they were going to pick at the funerals of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. I don't know if anyone can defend that choice. I'd like to hear it. I'm not going to love your argument, but I'm willing to hear it.
Katie Dooley 59:11 I really want to get oh my goodness, I forget her first name. The Phelps lady that left really want her on the podcast.
Preston Meyer 59:18 Sure. All right. So the Westboro Baptist Church wanted to pick it, the funerals of the victims of the bombing. Nonsense. So the satanists temple held a meeting over Catherine Johnson's grave. Catherine Johnson is the mother of the Westboro Baptist churches. Mm. Founder. Church has living founder, her mom, his mom is dead. They decided to have a meeting on her grave because of their decision to pick it. The funerals of the bombing victims and the way they decided to have this meeting is just Truly deliberately antagonistic. I love it. There's nothing I like about Westboro Baptist Church famously anti gay, so they made sure to have gay couple kiss on her grave directly over it. No ambiguity here. That's just hey, we're here to piss you off. Next part though, but then the leader of the organization decided to rub his junk on her headstone. But not just that he didn't just rub his junk on her headstone. He rubbed his junk on her headstone and cast a spell to change her sexual orientation post mortem. I love it. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 1:00:44 Especially because they don't believe in magic. Like he was just doing it to troll All right,
Preston Meyer 1:00:51 yeah. Love it. The whole thing is, no, everything's a spectrum. Not all Satanists are seriously constantly antagonistic. This event is a really great example of just how antagonistic they can be sometimes. And in this case, I not only do I find it hugely entertaining, but it's not like it's not deserved. The people that they're antagonizing asked for this kind of publicity and behavior.
Katie Dooley 1:01:22 And I mean, even the, oh, my goodness, my brain just stopped working even, you know, their political work is arguably deliberately antagonistic, but with good reason. Even if they don't ensure religious equality for themselves as a small, kind of weird group, as long as you know, they're working to ensure religious equality for all. So whether that's, you know, Sikhs or Muslims or Jewish people in in American Canada, if they can, you know, work towards for themselves that guarantees that everyone has it, too. And I think that's important.
Preston Meyer 1:02:03 And also, but as we talked about secularism, they want to reduce the anti atheist prejudice that exists all over North America. Yeah. And it's, it's so weird how much anti anti atheist prejudice there is, considering how many atheists there are here.
Katie Dooley 1:02:25 But I think and this was, I mean, this is last episode, but I was really quiet about my atheism for a long time. Because I didn't want people to be like, Oh, or like, have to defend it. So it's just easier to not say anything, and how that people assume what they want to assume. If you're a Christian chances are you assume that that nice white girl is probably a Christian to you, even though I'm not. I remember St. Item came up at work. This is like years ago, when I had a job. One lady was like, I'm Catholic, and other was like, I'm Christian. And I was like, I'm an atheist. And they're like, you would be like, Okay. I don't know what that means. But thank you. And that's when you know, finally I, you know, if it's going to come up, like I don't shove it down anyone's throat, but if it's going to come up, then yeah, I'll say I'm an atheist.
Preston Meyer 1:03:19 Well see, shoving a atheism down somebody's throat is a lot different than shoving fears on down someone's throat. They're both kind of annoying, let's be real. But you can also be a perfectly reasonable atheist. And I thank you.
Katie Dooley 1:03:37 Thank you. But I know, I've been in situations where people are like, Hey, you should check this out. And I'm just like, No, thank you. I'm an atheist.
Preston Meyer 1:03:49 So people are a lot more aggressive in their evangelism. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 1:03:53 But before I used to just like sit there quietly and take it, and now I'm like, if they are so bold to bring it up to me, why am I not so bold to respond with it? Right. So, anyway, that was a little bit of a digression. You added another small one that I just did about this morning, but I'd like to talk about it.
Preston Meyer 1:04:12 I think the Temple of set is a pretty interesting group. They were founded by Michael Aquino in 1975. So the the Church of Satan had been around for less than 10 years before this group decided to splinter off
Katie Dooley 1:04:27 from is a Satanic cult.
Preston Meyer 1:04:30 I'm not gonna apply the word cult now the danger call sect, they have sectored themselves off of the Church of Satan. And this group actually is more satanist than the other two that
Katie Dooley 1:04:49 we've covered in the stereotypical way we think of Satan, the temple of
Preston Meyer 1:04:53 set don't worship Satan, they worship set Okay, there's a but the, the whole idea of this group is that Satan appeared to the founder in a dream and revealed to him that his name is set. Satan, as we talked at the beginning of the episode is a title set is a name. So, most members of the Temple of set actually don't prefer to be called Satanists. They prefer to be setting nests, which is a little harder to say. But they actually don't worship him the same way Christians worship Jesus or the father, because let's admit there's some diversity in Christianity to they revere him as a leader and as a teacher, as the archetypical philosopher, the free thinker that is opposed to cruel and harsh and demeaning laws. But he is a real figure that exists in reality and is a person to be revered, which is different than the other two groups that we've talked about heaven. All right. So their sacred text is the book of Coming Forth by night. I'll admit I haven't read it. The title is intriguing. Yes. And it's going to be on my reading list. At some point,
Katie Dooley 1:06:38 we there should be a few books that we can get this out. But there should be a few books we tackle together and then do an episode on
Preston Meyer 1:06:45 for sure. All right, so the Temple of set like the Church of Satan is into magic. But the Temple of set doesn't have any prescribed ritual magics. It's more of a Yeah, we acknowledge magic, and you can go and use magic. And we can do it as a group sometimes, but we're not going to prescribe rituals to you. Kind of cool a little bit for you. inherence, are encouraged to celebrate their own birthdays. Yeah, there are Christians who are opposed to this. It's kind of interesting to see some contrast there. But there's actually no other holidays that they're required to observe. It's, you should recognize your own birthday, when we talked about worship months back. It's kind of interesting to me that this is the one thing that you were encouraged to observe. And as we look at how birthdays were considered couple 1000 years ago, that the important birthdays were the birthdays of the gods. And so I feel like that's kind of the feeling that's meant to be attached here is that when you are freed by Satan, or set from the overbearing other religions in the world, as they're thought to be in this group, that you become a God unto yourself?
Katie Dooley 1:08:11 Well, I think that's the common thread with all of these satanist groups is that you should be the center of your world. Absolutely. And I mean, as an atheist, I don't disagree. You may as well enjoy this life if you don't know if there's one coming after. Especially some of those really toxic Christianity's that are Calvinist comes to mind. The Hellfire. Yeah, and really depriving yourself for the promises something better. I guess they believe that there is something better, but I'm kinda right. Let's enjoy this road trip while we're on it. And if there's something better awesome, and if there's not, then we had a hell of a time,
Preston Meyer 1:08:55 right? So the Temple of set actually does teach that there is an afterlife, not one for everybody, not a universal afterlife. But if you achieve apotheosis or deification in this life, then you will move on to an afterlife that is yours. Otherwise, there's nothing you got nothing to worry about. There's you cease to exist when you die. So that's, that's not so bad. If you want to hope for an afterlife, you're going to do what it takes to have an afterlife worth having. And if you're terrible, then you got nothing anyway, which isn't very different from the Jehovah's Witness program, where the truly righteous will be resurrected, and others will simply cease to exist. So not terribly alien, though some aspects of it are not exactly mainstream.
Katie Dooley 1:10:00 So I wrote a couple paragraphs on Satanic Panic this morning. I noticed that yeah, I just thought it was a good way to wrap up all of this because I think a lot of the reasons we got requests, not that I didn't want to ask for it specifically was deeply concerned about Satanists, but I think it comes from truly from the Satanic Panic and link, there are these things to be scared of. So my first point is trigger warning. It's not terrible, but I am going to mention some potentially triggering things. So by potentially, or stay with me, so it is also Satanic Panic is also known as satanic ritual abuse that originated in the 1980s and still continues to some extent today, but it was really popular in the 1980s. I think this is unlike punk and metal were really starting to define themselves find themselves and we're becoming more mainstream and yeah, people were just worried about their kids. So it's basically Satanic Panic is basically that the Satanist groups, ritually abused people, physically and sexually. And then I put a price so do some Chris. I know that I said, but then again, so does the Catholic Church. So this includes everything. And then again, this is just a legend. This is cannibalism, child murder, torture, human sacrifice, etc. And then Katie's commentary so I'm not saying that this doesn't happen, but there's not much evidence for it. There's not much evidence at all for it and I have some notes coming down below. It is not this is not this happens just as much as in Satanism as it does in Christianity. So for every any group
Preston Meyer 1:11:51 that's big enough to have a difference of opinion between people is gonna have some issues. Yeah, child
Katie Dooley 1:11:57 per capita in Satanism in Christianity, I'm sure is about the same that faces some sort of abuse and because Christianity is bigger, probably a lot more kids gonna be that way. Yeah, so don't be locked into Satanists to stir up trouble. There's bigger fish to fry.
Preston Meyer 1:12:20 Yeah, if you've got a community problems, I'm gonna bet against Satanists being the root of that problem.
Katie Dooley 1:12:27 Yeah. And we have to be really careful with Satanic Panic. And this kind of ties into your note that we're gonna get to, but chances are the satanists you know, or have heard of, or have met, don't actually worship Satan. And Satanic Panic is often linked with unfounded conspiracy theory. So we have this Q anon with their pedophile Cabal, this this kind of ties into Satanic Panic, where we think there's this group of evil people doing these things. And
Preston Meyer 1:13:00 what we do know that there's a group of rich people who do terrible things,
Katie Dooley 1:13:03 absolutely. But Satanists, and we like to keep it up to be this. We're looking where they want us to look actually, that we're looking for and that's not the right way to be. Look,
Preston Meyer 1:13:14 it's a bad Cup game and we're losing. Yes. shell game is the word I'm looking for. Most people play with cups anyway, though, so I don't feel like I'm wrong. But I had to use words.
Katie Dooley 1:13:24 We're looking at the wrong cup in the shell game. Sure.
Preston Meyer 1:13:27 There you go.
Katie Dooley 1:13:29 So this is a study I believe it was from 2018, the National Center of on Child Abuse and Neglect conducted a study led by University of California psychologists Gail Goodman. This is a quote from an article, which found that among 12,000, accusations of satanic ritual abuse, there was no evidence for a well organized integrational satanic cult who sexually molested and tortured children. No evidence 12,000 cases of child abuse alleged child abuse. None of them were linked to any organized, satanist group. Although there was convincing evidence of lone perpetrators or couples who say that they involved, that they're involved with saying or use the claim to intimidate victims.
Preston Meyer 1:14:20 I can see them using Satan as an intimidation tool. But
Katie Dooley 1:14:24 I think especially if you're involved with a larger Satanists group, like the Satanic Temple, or the Church of Satan, you're involved in the community and you're not doing weird shit. Like I'm actually thinking of a serial killer case in particular. I don't even know if it's a serial killer case. It was a murder case where some of the stuff happened, but like these are the Jeffrey Dahmer is that killed animals and we're loners as kids. But if you're actively involved in you know, the Satanic Temple is a great example where there's a community and you're doing political activity and community outreach. chillin chances are you're not doing weird shit like this right? reason to not do weird shit like this. Yeah, so that's basically Satanic Panic. I had another note on more on the mysticism of Satan, but I don't know if that's another digression. Go for it. So I just I was thinking about this in my research and on you know how this devil figure comes from Zoroastrianism people are so worried about the Devil and Satan, but there are so many other dark demon deities for both a dark demon deities and other religions that nobody gives a shit about. Right. It's like I said, you know, this person I know all they're a devil worshiper. They're evil only. But what if there isn't Kali? That's evil? Goddess of death and destruction? Yeah. What is there a caller, you don't care if there are Kali worshiper or I'm not going to look up the Zoroastrian guy's name, or a Hades worshiper, or I'm sure there's, I mean, I know there's others. I just can't think of any other names and other religions. But
Preston Meyer 1:16:15 Hades is one that I think is actually really fascinating, and definitely worth bringing up here. Because there's not evil. There's so much Christian baggage thrown on to Greek mythology and cosmology that we've equated Hades with the devil. Yeah, in
Katie Dooley 1:16:35 the Sistine chapel's, that devil is Hades,
Preston Meyer 1:16:39 right? In the Disney movies. Hades is definitely the antagonist in the stories. But if you actually go back and read Greek mythology, these stories, Hades is a victim oftentimes, and not outright evil. He's the guardian of dead spirits, good and evil. That equating him with Lucifer, the devil, Satan of Christianity, makes no sense at all, especially when Zeus goes around raping people all the time. And he's the woman as well in our Disney animated classic. Beloved, Zeus is such a nice guy. And he is meant to resemble what a lot of people like to think of as the God of Christianity. And yet, if you read the stories about him, there's no personality overlap.
Katie Dooley 1:17:41 I think like my point is, if you didn't know about Christianity, you would never worry about devil worshippers. Right? And that's where, you know, we worry about Satanic Panic. Well, it's only because you have the context of Christianity if you're raised atheist or somewhere else in the world where Christianity is not as common. Back to last episode, this is where I, you know, question. religion as a whole is, you know, if you were never exposed to it, then it wouldn't exist. Right? It's like, why are Catholics the only ones who get exorcisms? We're gonna we were just talking about our exorcism episode. We're gonna do it this Halloween. So anyway, we'll talk more about that, then we'll get to us for the long teeth for the future. But I guess October's only a few months away. It's June. But anyway, that was just sort of my my last point after doing all this reading, especially because, you know, I get frustrated when people are like, cool. Satanists are evil, and they're really not. I'm actually super into it. If I had to pick one. Which religion? Yeah, it'd be. I hate you mean, the
Preston Meyer 1:19:02 Satanic Temple. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Thank you. Thank you as a Christian, I'm okay with that for
Katie Dooley 1:19:10 you. We're bridging. We're bridging we're building bridges and bridging gaps with those bridges
Preston Meyer 1:19:20 the concept isn't funny. It's just the way it was.
Katie Dooley 1:19:24 I was going for that. So I guess but then Satan,
Preston Meyer 1:19:28 right. Okay. It's we're gonna pretend this is a two parter from the previous episode to this one. All these people that keep getting accused of being Satan worshippers usually aren't that's that's the thesis I want you to take away from this. That anybody if they if you ever hear somebody say those Satan worshippers bet against them being right.
Katie Dooley 1:19:56 Actually questioned them a little bit and then Oh, for sure, but no one on our Discord calls Oh
Preston Meyer 1:20:02 yeah, we definitely are in this for the learning more about your weird communities that you're running into
Katie Dooley 1:20:09 well and fostering healthy conversations that promote critical thinking.
Preston Meyer 1:20:15 Exactly.
Katie Dooley 1:20:17 Well, where can you find us?
Preston Meyer 1:20:21 Instagram, Facebook? We're on Discord, but you're gonna have to get our links from our link tree which is on disk on Instagram and Facebook. Definitely email us. What's your email address?
Katie Dooley 1:20:33 Holly watermelon pod@gmail.com
Preston Meyer 1:20:36 Perfect. A little bit.
Katie Dooley 1:20:40 And if you're liking our episodes, please think about sharing with a friend or family
Preston Meyer 1:20:43 member. Definitely check out our merch. Oh, yeah,
Katie Dooley 1:20:47 that's launching. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 1:20:49 we're just this month we've launched our
Katie Dooley 1:20:53 Spreadshirt store. And it's 15% off for two weeks guys. So from the launch of this episode to our next episode released 15% off your purchase, so we'd love to see your pictures sporting our merch.
Preston Meyer 1:21:07 Thank you so much for joining us on this wonderful exploration of say Ted | |||
| 24 Apr 2023 | The Battlefield of Samsara | 00:42:59 | |
The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most religiously important pieces of Indian literature, a segment of the longest poem ever written: the Mahabharata has 1.8 million words. The origin of The Song of God is obscured a little by time, but it certainly predates the Christian scriptures, though its form was finalized after the Biblical Canon. Vishnu is said to have incarnated partially into the personage known as Krishna Dvaipayana or Vyasa -- the same guy who split the Vedas into their four parts, and authored other variably important scriptures for the people of southern Asia. Arjuna and Krishna have a deep conversation about everything that a man could hope for in this life and in the next -- kind of like The Legend of Bagger Vance, except on a battlefield instead of a golf course. As we dive into the content of this short volume, we explore the principles of samsara, karma, reincarnation, cosmology, and the nature of the trimurti, and gods in general. We also begin to investigate the syncretic melting pot that gave birth to modern Hinduism. All this and more... Support us on Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord | |||
| 30 Aug 2021 | Godsmacked | 01:17:37 | |
Religious Trauma Syndrome is similar to PTSD. Negative beliefs taught at a young age have lifelong ramifications. In this episode, we are diving into what causes religious trauma. Trigger warning: we're talking about lots of yucky stuff, and we're not psychologists! All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
*** Katie Dooley 00:09 Hi Preston.
Preston Meyer 00:13 Hi, Katie.What's wrong?
Katie Dooley 00:16 We have a sad episode today.
Preston Meyer 00:19 It's a little rough for sure. You're gonna welcome everybody
Katie Dooley 00:28 I know that's what you're doing. You're gonna give us more of a soft open.
Preston Meyer 00:32 Yeah, nothing.
Katie Dooley 00:33 All right. Well, welcome to the holy watermelon podcast. Speaking of rough, that was a rough soft opening.
Preston Meyer 00:46 Yeah, a little bit. Might have to make some edits.
Katie Dooley 00:50 Thank you can think of our topic today piggybacks off of last episode a little bit? A little bit. It's kind of how we
Preston Meyer 01:01 we kind of we kind of had a flavoring allusion to what's coming ahead. Wow. Yeah. My
Katie Dooley 01:11 palate is so exciting. It's not actually today. Trigger warning. We are talking about religious trauma for
Preston Meyer 01:21 Yeah, so an awful lot of society seems to agree that religion is good, or at least benign for the most part fair, but broad strokes like that gets you in trouble. Because there's an awful lot within religion that has caused some serious damage over the years and so we're going to talk about religious trauma Color
Katie Dooley 01:45 Me shock already being insensitive.
Preston Meyer 01:53 So we've we've already talked before about how some religious groups really lean into authoritarianism. Some people call them cults or danger, religion or danger
Katie Dooley 02:03 cults, yeah, to separate from regular call for sure. And
Preston Meyer 02:07 they do damage in pretty obvious ways that we've talked about. But now we want to explore some of the more subtle or more common issues found in mainstream religious societies.
Katie Dooley 02:20 Journey free.org defines religious trauma syndrome. And I should clarify so religious trauma syndrome from my understanding isn't like an official mental illness like you find PTSD in like psychologists books, but they are starting to identify it as a separate entity. And it's,
Preston Meyer 02:40 it's a thing that psychologists and therapists are talking about, but it's not in all of the Brain Stuff. Exactly.
Katie Dooley 02:49 So religious, again from journey free.org religious trauma syndrome is the condition experienced by people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination. They may be going through the shattering of a personally meaningful faith and or breaking away from a controlling community and lifestyle. RTS is a function of both the chronic abuses of harmful religion and the impact of severing one's connection with one's faith. Right. So those are two important parts that a there's the doctrinal pieces and the community pieces, but also removing yourself most likely from all your friends and family. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 03:32 so we're gonna explore each of those points with some depth and and see how,
Katie Dooley 03:39 how it happens. And signs of it, I guess.
Preston Meyer 03:43 And the symptoms of religious trauma are pretty similar, similar to that of complex PTSD. In fact, a lot of people who are studying religious trauma, or having a hard time distinguishing one from the other, and some are just saying, No, it's just it is PTSD. It just happens to be triggered by this particular thing. And that's not terribly unfair, but I because of what we're talking about as the holy watermelon, we're looking at the religious aspects, whether you want to distinguish it from PTSD or not, there's the reason it comes to be is specific and kind of unique. Well, and
Katie Dooley 04:26 I think with religious trauma syndrome, as opposed to a comp, complex PTSD is that it's very systemic. And very preventable. And I'm not saying that there are pieces of PTSD that aren't systemic or preventable, but when you literally have international organizations perpetuating what we're about to talk about, it makes it an interesting case. I guess that's as diplomatic as I can put it.
Preston Meyer 04:56 Yeah. The scholar The classification is tricky. And it's probably gonna be tricky for a while. But the fact of the matter is, it's a real thing. Absolutely. But the symptoms are pretty obvious an awful lot of the time. And so we're going to talk about those was the first one on our list.
Katie Dooley 05:20 Here's why our list is confusing, confusing, confusing thoughts, and the reduced ability to think clearly. And these are also from journey. free.org. So
Preston Meyer 05:29 that's how I don't want to word this question.
Katie Dooley 05:34 I mean, that's like step one, in any indoctrination, is that you don't trust your own?
Preston Meyer 05:40 Your own thoughts? Yeah, if you're trying to free yourself from any system of thought that has been imposed on you for any real long period of time, breaking free of that is going to be problematic and is going to cause confusion,
Katie Dooley 05:54 especially when this isn't targeted at one specific religion, and won't be very sensitive Preston so you can slap my hand. But when it actively, most religions discourage you to think critically.
Preston Meyer 06:07 An awful lot of them, I can't say for sure most of them being more than half. But that's not a thing, I would say. An awful lot of them easily the Abrahamic faiths. Pretty often, mainstream Christianity has an awful lot that actively discourage critical thought. So there's a few that are more or less within the mainstream that encourage it. The Catholic Church has a weird relationship with critical thought that there's like when it comes to science and evolution, for example, they're totally on board with the scientific community. There's a lot of other places where things get tricky and cause bad relationships.
Katie Dooley 06:54 Wow. Just talking around it, love it, we're
Preston Meyer 06:58 gonna get into it as we go on. So
Katie Dooley 07:02 number two is negative beliefs about self, others in the world. And this can take the form of dissociation identity, confusion or crisis, depression, anxiety, grief, anger, feeling isolated, feeling lost or directionless. One thing I read in a lot of interviews that fall under this, there's really a lot of like, what surprised you when you left. And one thing I saw come up a lot is that these people who left their religious group were so surprised that atheists and agnostics could live happy, fulfilling lives. So that false hundreds of the negative thoughts about others is that you think if they don't have and this is just what comes up in research, and I think it's because they're the most vocal group but ex Christians or ex evangelicals, you know, think didn't realize that if you didn't know Jesus in your life, you could be a happy, healthy, kind, good person.
Preston Meyer 08:03 Way too many Christians. I have heard speak over the pulpit saying that there is no way that any non Christian could ever lead a fulfilling life, which, like that's, that's absolute garbage. I don't know how they can believe that. I don't know how you can go through your life and associate with your neighbors and believe that
Katie Dooley 08:25 I think I talked to I think I talked about this in our atheist episode is that I think people just assume they're Christian.
Preston Meyer 08:31 Yeah, I that is definitely reality for a lot of people. I don't know. It's weird.
Katie Dooley 08:38 I think if we picked someone that would didn't listen to the podcast and ask them what my religion was, they probably picked Christian.
Preston Meyer 08:46 Probably. Yeah, if you were just ask a stranger. Hey, what religion do you think I subscribe to? Or
Katie Dooley 08:51 even someone who knows me well enough to kind of know my personality and work ethic and some of that stuff but not know me so well, that we've talked about this or they've listened to the podcast, I would get I probably put money on it.
Preston Meyer 09:07 That's not an unfair assumption.
Katie Dooley 09:10 Anything Do you want to add to that point before I move on? Now, let's leave a lot to cover this video. Number three is a lack of pleasure or interest in things you used to enjoy. I think this is just a pretty general trauma response. Yeah. I look kind of love this one. Number four is feeling behind the times with cultural happenings. For sure
Preston Meyer 09:31 if you've if you've gone to church for years, and they say you're not allowed to read Harry Potter because it's of the devil, and then you go out into the open world and half of the people around you love wizard
Katie Dooley 09:43 know you're out of touch, or not having I mean groups that aren't allowed to have TVs or watch TVs and go on the internet. Oh, that's huge.
Preston Meyer 09:54 So about 14 years ago, I was hanging out with someone My friends and third dad brought home this guy who had left a Hutterite colony. And he ended up going back later on, but because he couldn't handle it, right, which is a problem that will explain a little more as we go through here, but his first night away, we watch Star Wars Episode One The Phantom Menace with him, didn't lose his mind. So to make it worse, somebody told him, this was a actual representation of the world outside of his little bubble, okay, that's mean that this is a thing that is actually happening somewhere. This isn't computer generated effects, space travel. I don't believe that he left the house believing that this is true. But in the moments immediately following this declaration, you can't feel anything other than completely out of touch with the world around you.
Katie Dooley 11:00 I've just finished reading an orthodox by Deborah Feldman. And it's a biography about her leaving the ultra orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. And she talks about she's older. And when I mean older, I mean, like 19. And she goes to her first movie, and she like, couldn't wrap her head around. Like she couldn't understand that it was fake or real or like who these people were that they were playing other people. And I think it was Mystic River. She talks about that she's into this day. She's like, I have a really weird relationship with Miss Tucker, because I watched it in a context where it wasn't a movie. And we're like, so you look on screen and you go, who's in Sean Penn, Mr. Curry thing? You go. That's Sean Penn, but like she can't, even to this day. Like she doesn't see him as Sean Penn. Because she knew she watched it like it was a documentary like she can. Yeah. Mind blown.
Preston Meyer 11:56 Yeah, that's a problem. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 12:01 I think after that, she figured out what movies were but
Preston Meyer 12:05 but first time today, it's yeah, that messes with you for a while mistake
Katie Dooley 12:10 or was not like an easy movie to just, you know, it's not Wally, you know? Sure. It's, it's pretty heavy movie. So High School Musical, you know, you're really like jumping into the deep.
Preston Meyer 12:25 Sure. And there's a few other symptoms of PTSD that overlap here too. Nightmares are common flashbacks for sure. General emotional difficulty, panic attacks, suicidal ideation, sexual dysfunction, substance abuse, and sometimes even extreme violence. It's making these transitions can be really rough on people. Yeah. And that all comes from the trauma that you experience within these religious groups that broadly get categorized as good, or at the very least, but not.
Katie Dooley 13:02 Absolutely. And I mean, part of the problem is that, I mean, especially the ones that would cause religious trauma, because obviously, not all religious groups would cause religious trauma that you're supposed to be isolated. So it'd be really hard to even know that you've needed help, let alone being able to ask for help.
Preston Meyer 13:21 Yeah, well, the worst of the groups rely on you being isolated for their success. So that does make things a lot worse. And so of course, these problems appear more often in authoritarian and dogmatic groups than anywhere else, not only in the cults that we've previously addressed as the danger religions, but they're really quite common in Islamic groups, and even more common in Christian groups, specifically, well,
Katie Dooley 13:49 and again, I'll toss in Orthodox Judaism, halter Orthodox, for sure, because I just read that great book I highly recommend. Yeah, but it doesn't look too different from ultra conservative insert Abrahamic religion, right?
Preston Meyer 14:07 The biggest issues that tend to cause lasting religious trauma are toxic environments that focus on doctrines of you're not good enough or you're not good at all. And you're not safe and you can never be safe. I've seen churches do this and it's, I don't know how you stand at the pulpit and say something like that. And think that that's an okay thing to say.
Katie Dooley 14:29 There is I should show it to you when we are done recording. There's a I think it was a refinery 29 dock, a little mini documentary on the Christian mainstream music industry. And they interview like x musicians, and they basically say like, it got really hard to sing about how shitty you are as a person all the time. For
Preston Meyer 14:55 sure. So anyway, it's a world of Christian music is Oh, weird world for sure.
Katie Dooley 15:01 Maybe that'll be an episode.
Preston Meyer 15:03 Yeah, maybe it's weird because there's some Christian music that I really enjoy. And worship music is not the worst Christian music that there is out there. But it is the hardest to listen to. Because it's so repetitive.
Katie Dooley 15:20 Fun. Katie fact, I really enjoy religious Christmas, Carol. Sure. Like if you made me pick between like a secular Santa Claus Christmas Carol and then something about Jesus, I'd pick something about Jesus. They're just better songs.
Preston Meyer 15:36 All right.
Katie Dooley 15:38 I know now always surprises people and like I can appreciate you like, right.
Preston Meyer 15:47 Yeah, so it's, it's frustrating, because phrases like you're not good enough, can be useful in some situations. And as part of a constructive and helpful dialogue, but, I mean, that's a CAN NOT A is, they're usually not okay. Especially when they're repeated too often, especially when it's like drilled into constantly, then you're gonna have a bad time. And things like Original Sin and other mainstream Christian doctrines like that. The nature of hell, which does actually has a lot of variety, depending on who you're talking to about it. They're frequently used to reinforce very traumatizing ideas.
Katie Dooley 16:33 We'll get into that. But yeah, I, I definitely know, kids that were scared of how, yeah,
Preston Meyer 16:39 but an awful lot of parents whether or not their priests agree with them, have used hell to terrify their children. And that's not okay.
Katie Dooley 16:50 You're just asking for religious trauma? Yeah,
Preston Meyer 16:53 really. So there's a lot of ways that abuse fails to be discouraged in religious communities. And I want to address that a little bit, too.
Katie Dooley 17:04 I want to be sassy, you don't say?
Preston Meyer 17:08 One, there's always pressure to preserve traditions that any deviation or modification is treated as disrespect. And any sort of progress is seen as a spit in the face to those ancient righteous people that people like to look up to when they talk about the people who have gone before them.
Katie Dooley 17:26 Yes, because it hasn't changed at all in 2000 years.
Preston Meyer 17:32 Right? That's, it's nonsense. Traditions are constantly evolving. And we'd like to hope that they're improving and in an awful lot of situations they are our society in general, is a lot safer than it was 1000 years ago, for example, but to say that any sort of change or any questioning of why this tradition is upheld, people saw
Katie Dooley 18:00 I mean, it doesn't it doesn't even make sense in the context of, I mean, simply adapt or die. Right. And I think, you know, we'll we'll see. Obviously, this will take time, but it's already starting where churches that don't accept LGBTQ plus people are not going to last
Preston Meyer 18:18 year we're seeing a lot of them dwindle. And
Katie Dooley 18:21 this is a huge problem. And we'll talk in more detail about this later, but a huge problem in the Catholic Church with their sex abuse scandal. It's like adapter die. Alright, figure it out. They had the other third party look into all the sex abuse. And their findings were like, let the priests get married. Like that was literally the result was like, let them not be celibate, and marry and they're like, No, we can't do that. But people leave the Catholic Church in droves because they don't want their children.
Preston Meyer 18:54 Right. Well, it's it's so weird because the Ukrainian Catholic communion still look up to the Pope as the head of their church there. But they're slightly separate. Because they're the Ukrainian Catholics that they've they've joined the Catholic communion after establishing non traditions. Ukrainian Catholic priests can
Katie Dooley 19:14 marry Ukrainian Orthodox compared to beginning orthodox orthodox is
Preston Meyer 19:18 a lot more reasonable.
Katie Dooley 19:23 It's it's funny because it has the word orthodox in it. Right? So progressive Church,
Preston Meyer 19:28 the triggers, they never implemented the law to begin with, as far as I'm aware of where they said priests can't marry, which
Katie Dooley 19:35 is probably why the Ukrainian Catholic clergy are allowed to do it because they go, he's allowed to get married across the street. It's
Preston Meyer 19:43 fine. I guess they establish the tradition and then join the union. And so the Catholic community never stopped them from doing which is really odd. But so we do have Catholic priests who have wives and still work work in their communities. And it's just super obvious that it's working
Katie Dooley 20:07 there. Anyway, so that's my commentary on that point.
Preston Meyer 20:14 So this sort of absolutist devotion to tradition often leads to abuse of any person who points out any reason for change. Some people are shunned and excommunicated. Which there's an instant trauma maker right there. Absolutely. Yeah. Some people suffer physical disciplinary action, potentially an instant troublemaker. Yeah. Pretty high risk. Some people are forced into remedial indoctrination, that's gonna cause some problem. And some people are lucky enough to only be permanently blacklisted from opportunities to serve in their community.
Katie Dooley 20:51 Oh, boy.
Preston Meyer 20:55 Yeah. Which doesn't help build trust. Yeah, it's a problem. But abuse is not only used to ensure obedience to the dead. We also have a whole bunch of systems in place that perpetuates simpler abuses. Some will simply use your differing opinion as evidence that you lack faith. And in the worst situations, this has led to sexual abuse and murder. Yeah, which I don't know how you make that leap, in your mind intellectually, intellectually or emotionally. But it's happening, it's hitting the news. Some will use your lack of commitment to the group as evidence of other sins. And so of course, that will lead to fewer opportunities to serve, which just that builds a terrible spiral, where you're then obviously less committed to the group because you're not serving. And then people assume greater sins and then just gets worse and worse. Yeah, that
Katie Dooley 22:01 falls into the you're not good enough, or that you're not trying hard enough to whatever be holier whatever.
Preston Meyer 22:11 Yeah, that's being part and being an active part of a community is not supposed to be this heart. No, and I
Katie Dooley 22:23 think in my guess we'll probably be more specific on it. But any commitment to any community is supposed to ebb and flow. Yeah. Right. Sometimes you're really into it, and sometimes other stuff gets in the way. And in some of the stories I read, people would say that, like they couldn't give any more when they had to step back and take a break. And then they were guilt tripped into law, you know, like, what's happened to your faith or whatever. But you can only give so much to anything. And yeah, to be a healthy human beings have interests outside of your religion, I presume. And yeah, so some moments of your life you'll be more dedicated than others.
Preston Meyer 23:06 Financial offerings, especially in Christian traditions, though, certainly not exclusively, are directly connected to promised blessings. And unfortunately, this usually leads to manipulating gullible poor people into into donating more and more money and staying poor with the promise of some farcical windfall in the future. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 23:30 there's a few groups we see this in a lot. Send us your seed money. I was gonna say, Yeah, prosperity, gospel churches. Scientology is obviously a big Yeah. Yeah, up to par and too busy to realize what's happening, right.
Preston Meyer 23:51 Next one, I've got on my list, multi level marketing schemes. There's so often pressure to join multi level marketing schemes within religious communities, especially Christian churches, as far as I've been able to see, though, I'm sure it shows up other places too. And if you express any distrust in a company, you're accused of not trusting the people that you see every week and end up being pushed away by the crowd that did end up buying in which just seems ridiculous to me that there's that much pressure not and there is I've seen it, but it's ridiculous because how can your tiny business survive when you flood the market with eating providers?
Katie Dooley 24:37 Yeah, you need to tap new markets, right? You would want to be the only one in your church that sells the product if you're the only one at church that sells Tupperware you make him bank
Preston Meyer 24:49 by but you know what the real problem is? Pyramid Schemes rely on
Katie Dooley 24:54 a downline okay, then you and like you can have two downlines at your church. Ah, that's it.
Preston Meyer 25:02 You got to have more downlines. I know by selling the product anymore, you're just making money off of other people's product. Yeah. Well, not just other people selling your product, other people buying your product and hoping to sell and they probably won't. Because that's how those MLM schemes really work. It's not okay. And so if you're in a hard financial position, and turn down one of these opportunities, you're shamed or shunned for being lazy. I can't get work or join my, my company and be a salesman for me. No, bro, that's not cool. Oh, well, you're so lazy. That's not okay.
Katie Dooley 25:44 I promise you, that's not the problem.
Preston Meyer 25:47 Right? But an awful lot of people get treated that way. And then you lose this, you lose trust in your community. And then things get worse. It's problem.
Katie Dooley 26:03 Why are you doing how are you holding up?
Preston Meyer 26:06 There's so many complaints about churches. And I know they're all valid. I've seen them. But it's it's draining.
Katie Dooley 26:16 I mean, maybe we'll wrap this up on what people, congregants, clergy, churches can do. Oh,
Preston Meyer 26:25 we have to we have to end on a pause.
Katie Dooley 26:29 This is gonna be a long our folks. But try not to.
Preston Meyer 26:36 We've also got way too many people that are actively discouraging their neighbors from getting the medical and professional help they need. Why don't you just believe more, God is going to take care of you. Or God would have prevented this if you just had faith,
Katie Dooley 26:55 or sometimes they this one, I think is almost even worse. This is all part of God's plan. You were meant to get sick, which your child was meant to die. I don't
Preston Meyer 27:06 know how people can go through saying that and believing it.
Katie Dooley 27:12 I think even the act of saying it is traumatizing.
Preston Meyer 27:16 planned for you to suffer. Right? That's not cool. Because
Katie Dooley 27:20 obviously whatever you're going through is traumatic. So to have someone come back at you basically saying you deserve it. It's just very traumatizing.
Preston Meyer 27:29 Well, it's, there's a difference between saying you deserve it. And God planned this for you. That's true, however, but in an awful lot of people's minds. If you genuinely believe in God, they are the same thing. And that's, that's harsh. Gross. Yeah. There's loads of people with full time jobs working for churches or other religious societies, and they're sick, they're underpaid, and the excuses that you're serving God, and you should do your duty to volunteer every waking hour, and your needs will be met. Don't you worry. God takes care of the sparrows and the dandelions he'll take care of you too. And then it turns out, your needs aren't being met.
Katie Dooley 28:13 God also put like doctors on our earth and like labor laws on or Brains, brains, he instilled the minimum wage, because if he's all knowing, and all seeing and good and someone was divinely inspired to make a minimum wage, if you
Preston Meyer 28:33 believe God controls everything, then you have to believe that God supports different minimum wages in all jurisdictions.
Katie Dooley 28:42 So those specific free time very good stick of you.
Preston Meyer 28:56 I wrapping I don't believe in the same God that every other Christian believes in but to say that every other Christian believes in the same God between each other is also ridiculous.
Katie Dooley 29:06 That sounds like a problem within Christianity.
Preston Meyer 29:10 We've got a huge variety. It's a spectrum, you know, take a shot. Yeah, there's way too many people who are either deliberately or sometimes even just carelessly, taking unreasonable advantage of people because of their faith. And this causes problems in pretty much every case. It's especially seen when people in authority belittle their subordinates but there's an awful lot of people who just like to say, Hey, I'm better than you because I have this much faith. i Hey, I'd saw you put less money in the pass around bowl than I did. So. My faith is better so I'm better than you do. People suck.
Katie Dooley 30:02 That's what this entire episode is about.
Preston Meyer 30:05 Right? And sometimes you'll even see people use another person's lack of faith to excuse their own deviant behavior. Which, I don't know how you can take that logical step. Like, I know how it sounds when people say it, but I don't know how you can get there intellectually, yourself.
Katie Dooley 30:25 Give us an example.
Preston Meyer 30:28 Oh, he's, he's so awful. He's, he's a homosexual. So I'm going to step outside of the boundaries of what I know, my faith teaches and beat him with a rod. I mean, if you've read the book, which, as a faithful person you're supposed to have done, you'll know that's not okay. But it happens literally every day on this planet. It's really sad pressed and it is really sad. It makes me mad sometimes. But that's the world we live in a slightly weirder example. That's less extreme. I remember one time when I was a kid, I didn't want to go to church. This one day, it's like, I don't really feel like it today. And my mom was so mad. She's like, No, no, if you're going to really honor the Sabbath, you're gonna go to church. And if you're not, then you're going to work all day, which is an X, an absolute contradiction, because the same law that says you're going to honor the Sabbath also says you will not permit anybody within your gates to work on the Sabbath. And that's a contradiction.
Katie Dooley 31:46 But she got some free child labor out of you know,
Preston Meyer 31:48 I ended up going to church. I would have picked the labor, but she was happy to act unnecessarily hypocritical to get what she wanted out of the situation. And that sucked. Yeah, but that's actually not even weird in Christian communities.
Katie Dooley 32:08 I'd say probably in any Abrahamic community, probably, probably. If you can work it. I mean, how do you think the priests get away with it? Yeah, as
Preston Meyer 32:22 long as you get what you want, you're gonna be alright.
Katie Dooley 32:26 I mean, what?
Preston Meyer 32:29 Yeah, it's, it's really frustrating. But that's, that's the world that we have built for ourselves. And we have the power and the opportunity to change that world. If we want to make that choice.
Katie Dooley 32:47 So now, we're gonna have even more fun, and break down the different traumas, I guess in a little bit more detail. Yeah. So we're going to start with the actual doctrine that causes trauma. And before they this episode, this is basically my entire understanding of religious trauma that something in the doctrine was so disturbing, it basically it causes PTSD. I didn't organize, it's just okay,
Preston Meyer 33:16 that's fine. I just feel like I've kind of monopolize the voice. So just kind of let you do your thing.
Katie Dooley 33:25 So I have a quote by Laura Anderson, who is the co founder of the religious trauma Institute. And she talks about she says, we're talking about in a way brainwashing doctrines taught over and over and over with consequences that are eternal and terrifying. So deep rooted fears of hell can cause PTSD. Absolutely.
Preston Meyer 33:46 If I don't do as I'm told, I'm gonna burn a lake of fire forever. No, that's, that's gonna mess with some people for sure. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 33:55 So while we have Java joked, excuse me, while we have joked about the movie, a thief in the nights, I talked about, I think we've talked about our revelation episode. It's from the 70s It's super hokey. I kind of went to a watch party on Discord one day. But I've read multiple about multiple people that obviously in the 70s, saw for the first time, that were like deeply disturbed by it, including parents and sister. And so I found a quote, I think I found this on Reddit. But this lady says, a few days or weeks after the film viewing and came into the house and mom wasn't there. I stood there screaming and tear. When I stopped screaming, I began making my plan, who my Christians neighbor who my Christian neighbors were, whose house to break into to get money and food. I was 12 years old, and I was preparing for Armageddon alone. So she had thought her mom had been robbed her she was probably at the grocery store. But that's immediately what her 12 year old brain went to, is that the rapture had happened and she had been left behind, which is also a book series targeted towards children and I I can see why that would be deeply traumatizing if you actually thought you weren't good enough to be slurped up into heaven and that it's impending. So that's pretty scary.
Preston Meyer 35:14 Yeah, it's, it's a mess.
Katie Dooley 35:18 So the stories shared on the forum all kind of have similar thesis is, is that even though people have left their faith, and maybe they don't believe in how our purity culture anymore, the physical and mental random notifications, even thinking logically say they don't believe it anymore. It's like imprinted itself on their minds and bodies, they can actually, they can logically say, I don't believe in heaven or hell, but they can still wake up at night terrified that they're gonna go to hell. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 35:51 it'll still come in nightmares, things like that. So, pretty messed up. And PTSD is, right there.
Katie Dooley 36:02 No joke. Individuals have from early childhood that they're empty of goodness, strength, or wisdom and must rely on God for anything of value. So this goes back to our first point of doubting your own your own brain and your own critical thoughts.
Preston Meyer 36:19 If it's not good, it's not from God, if it's not from God, it's not good. Which is not an okay way to go about your deal. Get
Katie Dooley 36:25 into this. And the next section is purity culture, but then you're being told by perhaps a church leader that it is from God, and it's really, really bad. It's really bad. Yeah. And they don't know what to think or do anymore.
Preston Meyer 36:42 An awful lot of churches. I've seen people teaching that if you don't vote for a specific political candidate, there's no escape from eternal torment. It's mostly people using their faith to defend the far right. Especially in places where the Liberals approve or accept the legality of abortion, and the conservatives don't then use if you even give a liberal a time of day, you're supporting them so much that you deserve to go to hell. I don't know how you can go through life like that.
Katie Dooley 37:26 No, I didn't put this in the notes. But I've obviously been thinking about it in our research, and I didn't do anything specifically on this. But and I've talked about this on our Discord, kids and the Passion of the Christ. Like I've seen videos, like, you know, Easter pretty graphic Easter plays, and there's like five year olds in the audience. That feels traumatizing to me,
Preston Meyer 37:52 watching somebody yet whipped and tortured. Yeah, in real life. Yeah. Okay. I don't know how that would not be traumatizing.
Katie Dooley 38:00 I mean, we just don't often talk about it in the scope of religious trauma, right? We write we usually talk about the rapture, or hell. And I mean, I don't know if you have any insights on why we do or don't talk about that. Maybe it's because it's, you know, it happened, it was a thing that happened, where it's like, people are waiting for the rapture and waiting for how. So, you know, you see what I'm saying the difference there. This
Preston Meyer 38:25 imagery is usually like, if you want to take a child to a passion play, and they see whipping and torture. Usually, it's all about the Jesus suffered this so you don't have to, but the but is always included. If you're not good and do what you're supposed to do. His suffering doesn't matter for you, you have to suffer the same kind of torture forever in hell. So it gets tied directly into the hell fears.
Katie Dooley 38:58 Okay, so maybe that's why it's not talked about as its own entity, right. Anyway, I think so. All right. So Bibles graphic, it really is.
Preston Meyer 39:08 Most, I mean, most of the Bible is stuff that if your kid can understand it, then it's acceptable for most of it, but an awful lot of it is way too graphic for kids. So
Katie Dooley 39:24 the next, next traumatizing thing we're going to talk about parody,
Preston Meyer 39:27 culture. Purity culture has messed up a lot of people. Absolutely.
Katie Dooley 39:31 I absolutely. I think it's still messing up people and even in non religious ways. Yeah, for sure. We were definitely taught that abstinence was the only guaranteed form of birth control.
Preston Meyer 39:45 If you've read the Bible, it's not
Katie Dooley 39:49 for Mary She was so abstinent, right.
Preston Meyer 39:54 And then bam, baby, but I mean, the huge amount of emphasis As we put on abstinence is actually really problematic for literally any rape victim.
Katie Dooley 40:07 Yes. And I mean, I say purity culture is very much detrimental for women. I know how much men are affected by it not
Preston Meyer 40:16 nearly as much, no. Well, okay, they're not affected as much in a traumatic way, right? Typically, when men really adopt the purity culture, they end up being more abusive. to women. Yes, not to each other. But
Katie Dooley 40:33 so does that always comes back to the poor women? Yeah. But there's like a bunch of really gross analogy is like, Who would want a piece of use chewing gum? That's a favorite.
Preston Meyer 40:44 I've heard it in church more than once. And the next time it happens, somebody's gonna get hurt. Really, for like, you're gonna talk about my throw hands?
Katie Dooley 40:54 Can I come? Sure.
Preston Meyer 40:57 I mean, I don't know when it's going to happen. But the next time I hear the gum analogy in church on the throw hands very like,
Katie Dooley 41:06 oh, man, I'm so excited. Which is gross, because it has no bearing to your worth, right?
Preston Meyer 41:19 Well, the thing that bothers me, in addition to it being a really gross analogy, is that it's absolutely contrary to the doctrine of Christ.
Katie Dooley 41:28 He liked Mary Magdalene.
Preston Meyer 41:31 There's, unfortunately, no evidence that that's the case let's not be liked or that she was a whore that she was a whore, I'd say popular Catholic doctrine that actually has no basis in any reliable source. Oh, interesting. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 41:44 Dang, that wrecks, Jesus Christ Superstar form a little bit.
Preston Meyer 41:53 But even if she was, even if she was, doesn't matter, who she was, before she changed her life around.
Katie Dooley 42:02 Do sex workers need to change their life around? Well,
Preston Meyer 42:06 this one became a faithful disciple of Christ. Okay, without any I'll give her an injection on anybody else. She Mary Magdalene became a faithful disciple of Christ,
Katie Dooley 42:17 I'd actually say. So there's obviously like, I mean, just treating women like they're objects. And this goes for both men and women. But not teaching kids sex ed, in my mind is literal child abuse. Yeah. And maybe in the moment, it's not traumatizing because they don't know. But one day they're gonna have sex. And that's gonna be traumatizing.
Preston Meyer 42:39 Yeah, there's remember, one on an episode of 1000 ways to die. This super conservative couple. They they'd never kissed. I'm sorry.
Katie Dooley 42:52 I'm gonna tell you. Okay. Tell me.
Preston Meyer 42:57 They'd never kiss before they got married. So they couldn't have sex tonight. They got married, because I was way too extreme. Absolutely. It took us a month to try. Because they just couldn't get over those boundaries that they had put up in their heads that sex is bad and not healthy. And you just shouldn't be doing it. But eventually, they got around and figured it out and finally understood what they needed to do. And they both died of heart attack. Because it was so much stress. And the blood pressure didn't help. They died. I don't know if there's any truth to it. I feel like more than half of the deaths and 1000 Ways to Die are fake even though they tell you they're real. But the fact that there are an awful lot of people who can relate to that level of trauma around sex is a serious real life problem.
Katie Dooley 43:57 Absolutely. Because you're told forever that it's bad. And then one day thanks to a Reagan signing a paper. It's supposed to be good. Yeah. But this is a terrible story. Some people might want to pass hard. It comes from the book unorthodox, which I was like, shoot, I read it in like a day. If you can't tell I'm on a kick. Anyway, and so this didn't happen to the author, Deborah, but she was talking to one of her friends at and you get super conservative, Orthodox. Same thing. Sex is bad. No, they didn't even learn about sex. She didn't even know she had a vagina.
Preston Meyer 44:35 That's not a healthy way through.
Katie Dooley 44:37 She had a vagina. She talks about the book. And anyway, so she and her friend were talking about sex. And this friend, they didn't know what hold put it in. So they had anal sex. And he ruptured her anus and she almost bled to death. Wow, right I shouldn't say that, like, I'm excited. But like,
Preston Meyer 45:04 that's traumatizing. Yeah, that's long term trauma right there. Absolutely.
Katie Dooley 45:08 Wow. So everyone should go to sex ed. And it shouldn't even be your parents who've had this conversation.
Preston Meyer 45:16 Yeah, no, it's we've done the sex ed with parents thing for 1000s of years, we've come up with a better way. Don't do that anymore. Take advantage of the newer, better way. And
Katie Dooley 45:30 I guess the other piece, I want to talk about will eventually we'll do a full episode on purity culture, because I think it warrants when the other big piece is that for women, your body doesn't belong to you, it belongs to your dad and your father. You that's the same thing it belongs to your dad, and your husband, and then to God. So you have no body autonomy. Yep. And
Preston Meyer 45:53 it's weird how many women buy into this and vote to preserve this every couple of years? At the fact that it's even a legal issue. That's still being debated blows my mind. You know,
Katie Dooley 46:10 I had someone posted on Facebook today about the tree that owns itself. Have you heard about this? Anyway?
Preston Meyer 46:17 And it's always, always somebody comments, this tree has more personal autonomy than most women.
Katie Dooley 46:22 I know. I didn't comment on it. Because all the comments were like, Oh, that's a really cool story. That that is exactly where my mind went. I was like, for sure this tree has more rights than most women. Because it can't be cut down. Yep. But there's a huge chunk of the United States where women can't get abortions.
Preston Meyer 46:42 Now, to be fair, nobody's gonna give those same rights to another tree in the future. I
Katie Dooley 46:47 mean, that's fair. But like, why can we not revoke these trees rights
Preston Meyer 46:53 because it has rights, you can never take away rights. But most of the time it's, it's not fair. People have definitely taken away rights, but it gets really tricky and it's actually kind of hard to do. But giving rights we have so many people fighting against giving people rights. It's it's a mad world it is. And
Katie Dooley 47:19 purity culture piggybacks nicely into
Preston Meyer 47:22 just the general religious progeny of religion. It's, it's really frustrating. We have evidence of religious misogyny as far back as ancient Hellenism in Greece. Zeus is the worst. He'll rape anything with a pulse. The stories tell us many, many instance. Without pulse
Katie Dooley 47:43 I feel like even dabbled in some of that. No, I don't mean necrophilia. I mean inanimate objects.
Preston Meyer 47:48 I got nothing coming to mind. But it made me think of something.
Katie Dooley 47:52 He seems like the kind of guy that'd be like cool whole.
Preston Meyer 47:57 I mean, that's. And a weird side note on that is, I still think it's super weird how much the Zeus from the Disney cartoons looks like Donald Trump.
Katie Dooley 48:15 I have to google that. Now. I can't picture him off the top of
Preston Meyer 48:18 my head. It's not a perfect likeness because Zeus is muscular as hell. But there
Katie Dooley 48:25 were they right wing, cartoonists have made Trump muscular as hell. And it's real weird.
Preston Meyer 48:34 So in these old Greek stories, where they talk about how men deal with the gods, because of course it was men. They taught that men existed as companions of the gods until Prometheus stole fire from the gods for mortal men. And so Zeus gave them Pandora. And after her all of womankind, and her jar, not a box, as much as I love the pun that we've used that word for lately, her jar contained all evil, and she is personally responsible for unleashing it on humanity. Because women are meant to be objects. And that's actually how that story goes about is that they were meant to distract men from trying to achieve greater things
Katie Dooley 49:27 and doing a good job does it
Preston Meyer 49:31 mean me maybe I have been to you and I'm
Katie Dooley 49:34 not distracting it.
Preston Meyer 49:39 In Christianity, the apostle Paul is very worried about more or less the same thing that women are distractions, and that men are falling victim to them as well as homosexual men.
Katie Dooley 49:53 How can you men can control yourself even a little bit?
Preston Meyer 49:58 That's a great question. And that's not a fair question. But it's a good one. An awful lot of men have great self control. An awful lot are the most dangerous people you see in the world because they have no self control.
Katie Dooley 50:14 To stop, put it on the women. We're not distractions, you're distracted, right?
Preston Meyer 50:19 It's ridiculous. And a lot of people like to take opportunities to praise Paul for his position, saying that we need to suppress women and shame them instead of worrying about what Jesus said. When he just said, If you can't look at a girl without sinning, cut your own damn eyes out.
Katie Dooley 50:44 Can we preach that more often? Can you do to How old are your Sunday school boys?
Preston Meyer 50:48 I have the Sunday school it just for adults. So Oh, when it was
Katie Dooley 50:53 like what age though? Like young adults or like 40 year olds,
Preston Meyer 50:56 any any adults?
Katie Dooley 50:59 Can you please talk about that on Sunday?
Preston Meyer 51:02 I don't think that it really can fit nicely into what I've got coming. Okay. But we'll see where it can come. Okay. Absolutely. Okay, I have done it before. Okay. And I've had people be very happy that I brought it up. Oh, good. I'm happy women. No surprises.
Katie Dooley 51:22 Can I just say, Brian tonight just started dating but at your wedding. I presume a huge portion of your guests were Mormon, half. So unlike Solon, check me out with a child and his arms. And I was like, okay, guy.
Preston Meyer 51:45 Yeah, the one you were there for? I'd say probably about
Katie Dooley 51:47 okay. I assumed it was like me and Lindsey were the only two that weren't. But in the mission, Lindsay side, too. She was like, Did you just see that? I was like I did.
Preston Meyer 52:00 That's unforced. Yeah. Anyway.
Katie Dooley 52:01 So that guy needs to go to your school class. I don't know if you were,
Preston Meyer 52:07 in fact, looking at just talking about a variety of religions here. Muhammad is even quoted as when saying why women should cover up. It's because the men around us are rapists. So let's cover up the women instead of you know, beating the shit out of the men. Maybe I like UNIX. Yeah, sure. I can appreciate their necessity in some instances.
Katie Dooley 52:34 If you're gonna rape lady kebab balls. Yeah. Usually
Preston Meyer 52:38 when I think of Unix, I think of voluntary Unix. But no, no as a disciplinary measure ation? Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. And it would happen a lot less. It's weird that it's not more common. Forced castration for criminals,
Katie Dooley 52:57 even if it was like, I think it can be like a chemical castration, where you're not actually cutting balls, you just make it so they can't get a boner anymore. Yeah, there'd be a lot fewer rapists. I
Preston Meyer 53:07 think. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be touching other people, but the way they touch them would change. Not necessarily when
Katie Dooley 53:15 even just having the ramifications of live losing your penis, essentially. Oh, no,
Preston Meyer 53:24 I don't know, this much product. It's it's weird that instead of learning discipline, which clearly men need, and not just men, let's be real, there are some, some trashy women out there to to add to the list of terrible, terrible men. But instead of learning discipline, it's easier to just make sure women are seen less often. And it naturally follows that if they're seen as in, if they're seen less often, they'll be seen as inferior, because they're actively prevented from taking visible leadership roles, which is the world we live in today. Where nobody thinks that a woman could be President of the United States because she's a woman. And women can't lead because we've just been telling them that for 1000s of years. Nonsense.
Katie Dooley 54:21 I think it was the Trevor Noah show. One of his people went to a Trump rally and started interviewing people. This is like anyone else this is it before his first election, and must have no this is like pre Biden anyway. And no, I lied. This was pre his up before he went up against Hillary. And he asked a lady at the rally if Hillary can be president. She said no, she couldn't because she's a woman. Which I think he already thought was weird because of a woman saying it was like, Well, why not? He's like, Well, she said women are too emotional. He's like, you know, a woman has never stopped In a war, right?
Preston Meyer 55:01 Never ever,
Katie Dooley 55:02 never ever. He's like, You know what? Every war Yeah, she was like we were in tune. Well, she'd start a war or something. He's like, you know, every wars been started by a man.
Preston Meyer 55:14 Yeah. People rely very often on terrible arguments. That's one of them.
Katie Dooley 55:21 Didn't I say that? But I think Queen Elizabeth the first invaded Spain or did they start that with her? She fought a war with Spain. I just don't know who instigated it. Anyway. That's completely irrelevant to this conversation.
Preston Meyer 55:34 No pair of women has ever women can fight against men. That's that's obviously a thing. But I don't think there's ever been now they would
Katie Dooley 55:42 talk about, right.
Preston Meyer 55:48 It's crazy. This world we live in is nuts. But in the Quran, Muhammad goes a little bit further than even Paul did. And actually advises men to beat their disobedient women folk. Of course, there's some scholars who say no, no, we choose to translate that differently. Most people translating the Koran say, ya know, they're talking about you need to beat your disobedient women folk. There's
Katie Dooley 56:18 some and I don't know if this is just like, specific to a group, but there are like Trad, wife, Christian groups that are totally into corporal punishment. And kids, I just don't I don't know if that's in the Bible, or if that's an entire terrible, terrible interpretation, or, like Gothard from the Duggars. He's all into Corp. He's fine with corporal punishment. So
Preston Meyer 56:42 I don't remember any corporal punishment being advocated against wives in the Bible, you've actually read the Torah more recently than I have. Did anything jump out at you on that subject? No, I don't think so. Yes, just crazy. Scientology you had brought up earlier, L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology actually said, a society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family, the care of men, and the creation of future generation is a society which is on its way out. Obviously, this man did not have a healthy relationship with women at any point in his life.
Katie Dooley 57:27 He like abandoned his wife and kid for because he just didn't like them anymore. I think he Yeah, his he was not successful at the marriage thing. So do not take advice from L. Ron Hubbard, right.
Preston Meyer 57:41 An awful lot of I don't want to say Islam as responsible for this, but an awful lot of nations that are happy to describe themselves as theocratic Islamic states have a really hard time allowing women to go to school. And there's no solid cause for this and the Quran, or even the Hadith that I'm aware of. But it's a thing that keeps happening. I,
Katie Dooley 58:12 well, there's that. And then, I would say, the homeschool system, predominantly in the States, but I'm sure it happens here in Canada, that they, I mean, they stay in school, probably. But they get a completely different curriculum that doesn't set them up for life. I don't even think. So the new Duggars on TLC is a show called Welcome to Platteville. And they're also Quiverfull. But they don't have quite as many and
58:39 quiver half full or half full.
Katie Dooley 58:43 And my favorite daughter, her name is Mariah because she totally left the fold. But yeah, she says like the schooling they did, doesn't even qualify them for their GDS. Although she finished grade 12 air quotes, she has no high school diploma. So I mean, while she's not, I mean, she was homeschooled. So being physically pulled out of school is the wrong, wrong phrase to use here. But while she's still going to school, unlike in some of these Islamic nations, she is good as well.
Preston Meyer 59:14 was, you know, rare that she is being deprived to a proper education.
Katie Dooley 59:19 But yeah, that is a much more eloquent way to put it tonight. Thank you. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 59:23 And it's it's not just any one religion, it's an awful lot of religions are seeing this as their reality. And it's a huge problem.
Katie Dooley 59:34 I think, again, especially in, you know, in in here in Canada, we have the public school system, the Catholic school system. And I think just from the size of the Catholic school system, it's a little more monitored. But when you get some of these privatized religious schools, that's where some big gaps in the proper education start to happen. Obviously, these parents think that the proper education as a religious said, Vacation. But that's not set them up for university. And I, I don't know why I'm on it this time, because the entire book was about it. But on Orthodox, same thing, she got a great Jewish Hebrew education. But she, you know, wasn't prepared for university. Right? She's prepared to make babies and cook for her husband.
Preston Meyer 1:00:25 Yeah, there's a real problem where, broadly speaking, which you know, I say don't do but I do. Occasionally. Broadly speaking, people in charge, people with power are not going to give you the education that you need to realize that change needs to come into effect. A lot of people like to say this to talk down about public education. And there's some truth to it. But it's way worse. In private schools, especially rigid religious schools, and of any religious organization who sets up a homeschooling program for you is definitely going to lean into that too. Well,
Katie Dooley 1:01:04 I mean, yeah, public school is not perfect, but at least you'll get the school of life. A little bit of the School of common sense, because you're just dealing with so many different types of people. You're not going to be blindsided when you turn on a TV for the first time,
Preston Meyer 1:01:20 right? If you're homeschooled, you're very likely to hear all kinds of stereotypes about different groups of people, usually, your minority groups. And if you're not exposed to them, because you're homeschooled, you've got no contrary evidence, and you end up believing it because you've heard it so many times, because that's the agenda of who's schooling you. But in a big city with a diverse population, you're a lot less likely to have that problem where you start believing the stereotypes because you have loads of evidence of people who fit the descriptor and don't fit the stereotype that's being shared. We
Katie Dooley 1:02:01 have a family member, I'm gonna speak very vaguely, who occasionally says some pretty Islamophobic things, but they're from rural Alberta. And so often I'm like, Have you even met a Muslim? I don't think you know what you're saying.
Preston Meyer 1:02:24 A little while ago, this lady's saying, talking about this time when she convinced the Muslims that they had been worshipping a moon god, you don't know. We were watching. We're watching a movie together I shared with you. That's what it was. She was bragging in this video about hers, her spoils of victory, teaching the Muslims that they had been worshipping a false moon god for ages. And it's just like, you don't know who the Muslims are. They don't worship a moon god at all. They worship the same God that Christians do. So
Katie Dooley 1:03:02 you've convinced them to not believe in your God? That's not good, right?
Preston Meyer 1:03:08 Sounds kind of weird.
Katie Dooley 1:03:11 We've digress. Our last point, which we've kind of talked around, is that many religions teach that men are both women in heterosexual relationships. And this is I think, this is from the religious trauma Institute. If you feel that you have no choice other than being submissive to your husband or domande to your wife, it might be time to reconsider the structure of your relationship. Yeah, actually, here's a question for you. If you can answer it. Because we always hear about, you know, peer to culture and misogyny as it's toxic to women. Do men feel pressure to be dicks to their wives? You know what I mean? Like if you're a I
Preston Meyer 1:03:53 never have felt pressure to be a dick to my wife. Feel that
Katie Dooley 1:03:59 kind of a dick earlier tonight.
Preston Meyer 1:04:01 But with not with not being funny.
Katie Dooley 1:04:07 He's lovely to us. Please don't have us.
Preston Meyer 1:04:14 She has plenty of opportunities for escape. But I I don't think there's a lot of real pressure in any circles where I travel to be,
Katie Dooley 1:04:26 you know, yeah, you're the wrong I should have done more. Now. I'm just thinking about like, if you're really nice guy and really loved your wife, and she wants to go to university and the pastor's going well, you should put her back in your place and you go
Preston Meyer 1:04:42 Yeah, we'd might throw hands. Probably not become violent, but we definitely have some pretty harsh words.
Katie Dooley 1:04:51 Is that you know, is that happening to men? Probably and sort of what extent that they feel pressured to be this hard ass husband And when they don't want to be,
Preston Meyer 1:05:03 there have definitely been loads of men who have been called to bring their wives in the line, for sure. And probably a lot of them. I can't say for sure most of them I would say, with confidence, an awful lot of them have absolutely done as their pastor has told them to do because of that relationship of authority. Gross, yeah, it is kind of gross.
Katie Dooley 1:05:29 Carry on with the growth.
Preston Meyer 1:05:31 So, the next bundle of things, we got people who are abused for variance of opinion, we got people who are abused for being born without a penis. And we've got people who are abused because of the color of their skin, which is nonsense. And there's an awful lot of layers why people are terrible to each other. Usually, it's just a tribal mechanism that relies on encouraging the simple minded to use only their eyes and not their brains to determine easy lines of separation. But people have very often been abused or simply neglected in the religious communities because of differences in ethnic origin. One of the first examples that comes to mind, having grown up in a community with an awful lot of Latter Day Saints is Brigham Young. He decided that it made sense to ordain children to priesthood offices, including making his 11 year old son an apostle, but decided to undo Joseph Smith's work and deny priesthood ordinations to anybody with even a drop of African blood in them. So
Katie Dooley 1:06:41 everyone, because you know where humans came from, right? Africa that's
Preston Meyer 1:06:48 what the science is showing. Yeah, but that's, that's good. All Brigham Young 66 wives. So you know, how we felt about women do
Katie Dooley 1:07:01 I? I saw a flowchart of Brigham Young's wives once. Yeah, it was terrible. Of how like, so obviously, he was a polygamist. Yeah. But he they don't like bigamy, right, where women can have multiple husbands.
Preston Meyer 1:07:20 That's polyandry. Polygamy is having two wives. Okay. So he definitely likes
1:07:27 polyandry. To when you can have 66 He liked bigamy times.
Katie Dooley 1:07:32 30. Sorry, polyandry. But he married other men's wives. Yeah. Well, there's some are so that is Pollyanna. It is and then they they show ages, and we're sisters, and they were mother and daughter and my kids.
1:07:50 Anyway, yeah, it's weird. It
Katie Dooley 1:07:52 is weird. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about racism.
Preston Meyer 1:07:55 Yeah. And so the way that Brigham Young related to black people was not positive at all. And to be fair, to Brigham Young, and Joseph Smith, and the early Latter Day Saints leaders. They were not alone in this idea that because all black people were the children of Cain, who were was, you know, the evil of the sons of Adam, that all black people were inferior. This is widely believed among most Christians in the 1800s. And the cause and effect there is definitely a huge problem. Yes, has led to a lot of abuse, and is not at all reasonable. And thankfully, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has reversed Brigham Young's policies on racism only about 50 years ago. Not soon enough, but it happened. So at least we got that. When prompted, most people will describe the physicality of their god as matching their own physical ideals, if not their own actual self image. That's why Jesus is classically depicted as European when you look at most religious art, because the Europeans and the European artists didn't really have much of a model reference apart from Europeans. The same is true when you go to Korea Jesus is going to look a little bit Korean. And you hear a lot about black Jesus in the States and other parts of the world as well. But mostly where I've heard of black Jesus in the states it's it makes sense that you project in the absence of a true model yourself on to the God you worship. Back to the Korean Jesus. I think it's really important to state Jesus was way more Asian than any of my Phillip You know, Friends, and I will fight anyone who wants to contradict me on that.
Katie Dooley 1:10:03 He's so aggressive person. I love it
Preston Meyer 1:10:07 this topic of trauma, it makes me very uncomfortable. Oh, I mean, said that. If it makes you feel ugly, you've got issues. The Philippines are islands in the ocean. They're not part of continental Asia, but they are on the Eurasian tectonic plate, but they're not in Asia. The Middle East, including Jerusalem, is in continental Asia. So Jesus is Asian. That's the way it goes, Oh, that's
Katie Dooley 1:10:40 very semantical. But
Preston Meyer 1:10:45 you know what? I'm okay. If somebody wants to draw Korean Jesus and say this is the real Jesus, it is as accurate as saying, British JESUS IS THE REAL JESUS. Because they're both on opposite ends of the continent from each other. Jerusalem is in the middle of
Katie Dooley 1:11:02 some black. No, he was a brown, or Arabic guy of
Preston Meyer 1:11:08 Arabic isn't a fair descriptor. The Arabians are a different nation. But I mean, when it comes to skin tone, yeah. People who have grown up surrounded by just white folks would definitely have a hard time distinguishing the two.
Katie Dooley 1:11:24 Well, that's where the word Caucasian comes from. Is Arabia. That's where the caucus mountains are. But
Preston Meyer 1:11:30 that's not the same thing.
Katie Dooley 1:11:32 I know. I put on a job. We're like, Oh, are you Arabic know, people who are Arabic, just have white skin.
Preston Meyer 1:11:42 I mean, not white, white, but pale, fair, fair, compared to say the depths of Congo.
Katie Dooley 1:11:52 Or, I mean, even just other places you think of in the Middle East.
Preston Meyer 1:11:59 So it's, unfortunately, it's way too easy to step from my God has this skin color. Because if if your God has a body, you're not usually imagining and without skin. So that skin, it's a great Attack on Titan, here we go. So it's not hard to go from my God has this skin color to anyone who doesn't have this skin color is inferior. And that's a huge problem, especially when you jump to the next step that an awful lot of people do. Where if you have this inferior skin color, you clearly have a deficient spiritual potential. And that is evidenced by your skin color. That's not okay. Well, there's an awful lot of reasons why a lot of people have been hurt by religion. And there's no reason for any of these things to still be part of our culture. But we have an awful lot of people who want to perpetuate these problems.
Katie Dooley 1:13:06 So to end on our hopefully positive note, how does it get fixed? What do people need to do? One
Preston Meyer 1:13:15 we need to recognize trauma when it appears. And we need to acknowledge that trauma is a perfectly natural response to the repetition of doctrines of a violent, angry, all powerful God, who is dissatisfied with your race, your gender, your subculture, or the entirety of humanity. Teaching these things should probably stop. Trauma is perfectly natural response to repeated exposure to pastors use threats of eternal damnation or demonic possession to maintain control their flocks that needs to stop. Any person who doesn't conform to strict rules of sexuality and gender expression are at greater risk. We need to acknowledge that and maybe take better care of them, because they face extreme pressure to mask or change their identity, which also causes trauma.
Katie Dooley 1:14:09 Oh, absolutely. Well, and we didn't even touch on conversion therapy, which I won't open that can of worms, because we're, we're well into this episode already. But absolutely, that's a huge part of it. atheists don't do conversion therapy.
Preston Meyer 1:14:27 No, no, are the atheist countries that actually really try and suppress religion? like Russia, for example, just kill their gays. No conversion therapy? No. China has a hard time. We got a lot of countries that don't like gods and don't like gays. There's like
Katie Dooley 1:14:47 all I remember hearing a statute and finally 20 countries that have legalized gay marriage. Now it's like 198. That's terrible. And
Preston Meyer 1:14:57 it's a short list. Leaving a religious group can add to religious trauma because these communities as damaging as they are, also offer some measure of support to their members and sustain a worldview that brings personal stability and promises of safety. So leaving these groups means abandoning that support, and is usually accompanied by greater anxiety and depression. And actual trauma. Trauma is a real thing. And it it ruins lives. But therapy exists for religious trauma syndrome, much like PTSD. And there are loads of resources online to help connect you with the help you that you might need. And it's important to know that religious trauma is a lot more common than you think it is. It's a real thing. A lot of people feel it to one degree or another. And you're not alone. If you suffer from religious trauma. There's people you can reach out to.
Katie Dooley 1:15:55 I also feel like this is a disclaimer, we probably should put the ban but we're not therapists. No, not at all. Not even though if you can't tell,
Preston Meyer 1:16:03 like as much as I want to point people in this in a specific direction to get help for religious trauma. I'm not even qualified to do that. Right.
Katie Dooley 1:16:12 Speak to your local mental health service provider.
Preston Meyer 1:16:16 Yeah, there's help out there. People will acknowledge your troubles and they will help. Absolutely. Well, that was hard. It was hard, but it's I think it's important to absolutely to share. Thanks for joining us it's it's been a bit of a ride will lighten things up a little bit next.
Katie Dooley 1:16:42 You can find us on our Discord server if you want to continue the conversation. We are also on Patreon doing a bonus episodes in early releases and we have a really interesting interview coming up. Probably in a couple of weeks from this episode. I'll just teaser out with a cult survivors. So type a little bit into this title of into our call episode. And of course so Patreon if you want to support and keep our podcast going. And our merch store on Spreadshirt every little penny we get helps us keep this podcast running.
Preston Meyer 1:17:19 Thank you so much. Peace be with you | |||
| 30 Jan 2023 | Medical/Miracle | 01:02:42 | |
Sometimes it's hard to know who to believe, sometimes it isn't: Do you believe the person who has studied the finest details of physical health and wellness for upwards of a decade, or do you trust your pastor who thinks that God couldn't possibly reveal those secrets to anybody willing to test such principles? Unfortunately, that's the dichotomy we find in the world today. Christian Nationalists have actively led the crusade against medicine for most of the last two centuries, but there's some interesting nuances among the more moderate groups that we're happy to explore with you this week. Hospitals were a Christian invention, so why do so many distrust them? Maybe part of the problem is that most of our history has us going to our priests/shamans/knowledge holders to get healed.... President Richard Nixon was the subject of a lot of satire. Relative to his predecessors, he's an outlier in many ways, not least of all was his membership in the Quaker community. This informed his decision to protect parents from legal repercussions for medical neglect. We also have some data from Pew Research Center that makes a lot of religious groups look bad, relative to vaccine hesitancy. Unleavened Bread Ministries has taken the lives of several children in the name of being "Pure Blood," including 11-year-old Madeline Kara Neumann, who simply needed a regular insulin supplement for diabetes. So many people are calling vaccines a secret poison masquerading as a cure, if only they read their Bibles (Mark 16:18). The faithful among "Jehovah's Witnesses" avoid blood transfusions, the Amish avoid heart transplants, and "Christian Scientists" typically avoid medicine in all its forms. Muslims avoid medical products derived from swine, and Hindus tend to avoid medical products derived from any animals. Interestingly enough, Seventh-Day Adventists still run hospitals, and the head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a retired heart surgeon. We dive deep into the story of Doctor PP Quimby and Mary Baker Eddy, and how mesmerism burrowed into the "Science of Health." From Tim Minchin's “Storm”: "Alternative medicine… Has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? Medicine." Watch Dr. Glen Fairen's discussion of COVID-19 vaccines and the Apocalypse on YouTube
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Episode Transcript Katie Dooley 00:12 Hi, everyone. My name is Katie. Preston Meyer 00:14 Hi, Katie. I'm Preston. Katie Dooley 00:18 And this is. Both Hosts 00:19 The Holy Watermelon podcast, Katie Dooley 00:22 I thought an intro would be like an introduction. Would be nice. Occasionally. Preston Meyer 00:27 All they know is our names. We haven't described who we are and why we're here. Katie Dooley 00:32 Oh, I got to go back to the trailer for that. Preston Meyer 00:35 Should we introduced ourselves a little more often? Katie Dooley 00:37 probably. Join our Discord. I mean, sure. It's the end of January 2023 Already, which blows my mind. Preston Meyer 00:49 We've been doing this for a couple of years. Katie Dooley 00:50 Couple years. I'm a resident atheist. Preston Meyer 00:54 And I'm a Christian and graduate in this exact field of studies Katie Dooley 00:59 and an all-around great guy. Preston Meyer 01:00 Thanks. I am glad you think so. You're pretty good for an atheist too. Most atheists are better than most Christians. Katie Dooley 01:11 Oh, wow. Preston Meyer 01:12 Wow. Okay, that that could be an exaggeration, but probably not by a lot. Katie Dooley 01:15 You know one reason atheists tend to be better than Christians is that they don't just let their children die in the name of the Lord. Preston Meyer 01:22 That specific detail is true. Katie Dooley 01:28 Wow I just said it. Today we're talking about religion and medicine, and how religion and religious beliefs affect your belief of science. Preston Meyer 01:39 Yeah, man, what a roller coaster. There's some interesting things we've been able to uncover. And definitely lots of bad news, which we cannot cover every news story that falls into this category. Of course, Katie Dooley 01:55 there were some, there were some really sad ones. Preston Meyer 01:58 But yeah, generally, problems have come up. Katie Dooley 02:02 Yeah. Which is so weird. Because historically, the hospital system as we know, it is a Christian invention. Preston Meyer 02:10 Yeah. Hospitality. And I mean, even the word that we have for hotels now, all of that this is, comes from the need to take care of people who don't have somewhere else to be, especially the people who straight up can't take care of themselves at all. Katie Dooley 02:28 Yeah, so the first hospitals were kind of an amalgamation of both hospitals as we know them, but also hostels and food banks and or soup kitchens, and yeah they just take care of everyone that couldn't. That needs some extra help. And then obviously, we started segregating those things. And a lot of healers, or medical people were priests to begin with. Preston Meyer 02:53 Well, anciently, if we look at the biblical tradition, and this was pretty standard for most societies around the world, your healers, your medical practitioners, were the priesthood. Those are the people that could read who were keeping notes on things that worked and didn't work. Katie Dooley 03:12 Because they could also write Preston Meyer 03:13 Yeah, Katie Dooley 03:13 most people couldn't. Preston Meyer 03:14 Yeah. Yeah. The the craft of literacy and, and writing was all practically magic to the layperson. Katie Dooley 03:24 Yeah. So then things somewhere along the way, went horribly wrong. Preston Meyer 03:30 They sure did. Katie Dooley 03:32 Yeah. So there's a lot of Christian groups that and I mean, Preston I'll get your hot take on this. But there are science deniers, and I know a lot of that stems from having to reconcile evolution with what's written in the Bible. So it feels like they just are like, Well, science isn't real, because how can Noah work then? Good enough. So they deny science. And then by extension, things like medicine, and most recently, with the pandemic, things like vaccines are being denied for their efficacy. Preston Meyer 04:08 Imagine this just for a moment. Katie Dooley 04:10 Okay? Preston Meyer 04:11 Do you you live on this planet? Katie Dooley 04:14 I do. I don't need to imagine that kay. No, I don't like that. Preston Meyer 04:16 So far, you're with me, right? All right. Now imagine going through life, not ever being able to predict the outcome of any action ever. No, that's absolute nonsense. You know that when you put one foot in front of the next one, it's going to meet the ground that you can see, and that as you shift your weight, you can propel yourself forward. That's science. Katie Dooley 04:45 That just reminded me of a really bad joke. Preston Meyer 04:48 If you're going to pour yourself a glass of water, that's science. We have reliably proven that the exercises to accomplish these tasks work. Katie Dooley 05:00 Yeah. And I mean, we can go go back to our early episodes, but there was a time when things couldn't be proven. So we use religion to prove them Preston Meyer 05:11 All kinds of fancy hypotheses for all sorts of things we didn't understand. And then we studied them, Katie Dooley 05:17 Then we figured it out which is awesome. But yeah, but would I be right to say that a lot of this anti science comes from trying to reconcile the Bible that if you're a fundamentalist and believe is true to the word, even though there are stories we know are not true stories, then you have to cut out science? Preston Meyer 05:32 You don't have to Katie Dooley 05:35 But then how did Noah work if you have science?! It doesn't! Preston Meyer 05:41 Yeah, things get complicated when you try and make stories that are primarily symbolic. Katie Dooley 05:48 Doesn't work.So if you do the literal truth, then we Yeah, Preston Meyer 05:54 you're gonna have a hard time. Yeah. And so it's weird that the and this is definitely throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you're just Oh, science disproves this one thing that I believe really strongly, really effectively, then I'm gonna have to stop believing literally everything under the banner of science. Weird choice. Katie Dooley 05:55 Gonna have a hard time. You think so? But again, a lot of people let their kid die over this. So Yeah, we found a whole bunch of Christian denominations that do this. The followers of Christ in the early 2000s, this group had a child mortality rate 10 times higher than the state average of where they were located, which was the state of Idaho, because they liked faith heailings... Preston Meyer 06:25 yeah. Yeah, Katie Dooley 06:46 instead of real doctors. Preston Meyer 06:48 Yeah, Katie Dooley 06:49 one thing that was also really terrifying that I guess benefited, benefited the followers of Christ. Also, we're going to talk about Christian scientists later also benefited Christian scientists, is that President Nixon actually made a ruling that required states to pass exemptions to child medical treatment based off of a religious exemption. So basically, parents couldn't go to jail if their child died, because they made a medical choice based off of their religion, so you can charge them with like, neglect, or murder. So that was really cool. Preston Meyer 07:24 So I'm fully on board with the whole the government won't impose laws on what you believe. But the government has an awful lot of laws on how you can act in our shared society. And our actions are founded on the things that we believe about the world around us. So we need to convince people to change their beliefs. Katie Dooley 07:49 Well, you know, comes back we've done a lot of episodes on this everything from our parody religions episode to atheism, and Satanism of like, that's great that you want to kill your kid but like, I can't just like make up a rule for religious religious exemption. Preston Meyer 08:05 Right. Katie Dooley 08:06 Right. If we can just do things because we say but I'm religious like it would, everything would become chaos. Preston Meyer 08:12 You just gotta stop telling the government you're an atheist. And then you get all kinds of fancy freedom. Katie Dooley 08:17 Cool. Okay, well, I believe in Russell's teapot and Russell's teapot tells me I get to be naked 24/7 in public, so I cannot go to jail for public indecency. Like, you can't just do that Preston. Preston Meyer 08:31 That depends where you live. Katie Dooley 08:35 I mean, I know Preston Meyer 08:36 I mean, full nude still prohibited in most places, but Katie Dooley 08:40 Handful of nude beaches you can go to Preston Meyer 08:41 but you can be fully topless in most parts of Canada. I mean, we also have the weather that discourages that Katie Dooley 08:51 like right now, right but you just can't have your wiener hanging out Preston. Preston Meyer 08:56 Noo. Katie Dooley 08:58 And you can't... You know, if everyone just said, Well, it's because I'm religious. Preston Meyer 09:03 Well, though, okay. We do know that members of the clergy have definitely been caught with their wiener in places where it does not belong and get away with it because they claim religiousness. There had been way too many times where somebody who has been a pastor for a while diddled a couple of kids went, went to court and got a reduced sentence because he's a man of faith. When clearly his actions say he's not Katie Dooley 09:37 anyway, we just hopped on a soapbox for a minute there. This was eventually repealed in 1983, which I guess is good, but it was around for a while where you couldn't go to jail if you killed your kid. So A+ President Nixon, Preston Meyer 09:53 right. Yeah, that was that was interesting. Christian Nationalism is a little bit of a problem. Katie Dooley 10:01 Yeah. I mean, you were on I was just remembering the other day you were on a podcast talking about some of this stuff progressive versus... Preston Meyer 10:08 Yeah... Katie Dooley 10:08 Not progressive Christianity. Preston Meyer 10:12 Yeah, it was a little while ago now, actually. But it was good time. Katie Dooley 10:15 I'm the villain. Preston Meyer 10:17 Yeah, Katie Dooley 10:17 check out Preston. Preston Meyer 10:18 Man that was... it feels like so long ago. Katie Dooley 10:22 Yeah, real scary stuff, especially when it came to the pandemic. Preston Meyer 10:27 Yeah, I mean, Christian Nationalism has been a problem in North America for almost a century. But things got really weird over the COVID crisis, and all kinds of people shouting about their rights to avoid this poison. I want to get a little bit more into that later. But it's just crazy that 45% of white evangelical adults said they would not be vaccinated. That is a staggeringly large number. And this idea is not just in like a couple of weird little nationalist groups, either it had spread through a lot of Christianity. But the nationalists got really gross about it. Katie Dooley 11:15 And like bizarre about it, one of the articles I read that Christian nationalists have said that the vaccine is the mark of the beast, as prophesized in the Revelation of John, because it prevented people from buying and selling, air quotes, "without the mark". Preston Meyer 11:33 Yeah. Our recent guest, Dr. Glenn Farron has shown up in other shows, examining this exact phenomenon, it's really fascinating. Katie Dooley 11:44 And terrifying. Preston Meyer 11:45 Yeah, it's weird. Katie Dooley 11:47 Okay, as because we introduced ourselves as our resident Christian, why do you think it's taken such a hold on Christianity, Preston Meyer 11:54 we have this frustrating problem where there's been this prediction of a whole bunch of signs that will mark the coming of the Savior. And it's been many, many centuries, where it's kind of been a building tension. We've got all kinds of apocalyptical groups popping up more and more recently, but they've been around for a while. And when we see anything that can fit into that framework that's built to be a thing of interpretation, rather than a one for one obvious comparison kind of deal as something that people really latch on to. And so when you see this part in the scripture that says, without this mark, you won't get to participate in the economic part of society, then you, you fear that maybe this is a parallel to what is happening with oh, you need your COVID passport to go into a store. Instead of recognizing, oh, I have a civil responsibility to do my best to take care of the people around me. And that's why I'm being shunned. But because I don't want to help out. It's so much more fun. And self aggrandizing to see everyone else as the villain, rather than admit that you're the one causing harm. That's the problem. Katie Dooley 13:24 Mormons believe in the Second Coming, yeah? Preston Meyer 13:27 Yeah. Katie Dooley 13:27 Okay. Is there any piece of this, that's like, people wanting it to happen? Preston Meyer 13:32 Oh for sure! Katie Dooley 13:33 Yeah? Preston Meyer 13:34 Absolutely. Katie Dooley 13:35 They just want to be on the bleeding edge. So Jesus takes them up. Preston Meyer 13:40 Yeah. Katie Dooley 13:40 With them Preston Meyer 13:41 Yeah. Katie Dooley 13:42 They don't want to be wrong. Preston Meyer 13:43 Hey? Katie Dooley 13:43 They don't want to be wrong. They don't want to take the mark of the beast, and then Jesus will be like, No, sorry. Preston Meyer 13:48 Yeah, you don't want to do anything wrong. Because what if this is the end? What if this is the trial, I don't want to fail. Katie Dooley 13:55 Okay. Preston Meyer 13:56 I need to be as faithful as I possibly can. Even if that means I've screwed up. It's okay to make mistakes, you're forgiven for mistakes, as long as they're genuine mistakes, and not me skipping out on opportunities to be better. But I mean, all it takes is a little bit of extra thinking. Katie Dooley 14:19 It just anyway, goes back to love your neighbor. We've talked about this a lot this month, actually. Preston Meyer 14:25 And so many people have a hard time realizing that that's the number one thing. Jesus wasn't ambiguous about this. But it's hard to love your neighbor sometimes. Especially if your neighbor is anti-Vaxxer. Katie Dooley 14:44 You know, I realized during this podcast, I like Jesus a lot more now and Christianity a lot less. Preston Meyer 14:50 Yeah. Katie Dooley 14:51 Like if you asked me three years ago, if I like Jesus would be like, like, like, no, like, I don't know, but I actually kind of think he's a cool guy. Preston Meyer 14:58 I appreciate that you have, in your head, separated the man from the fan club. Katie Dooley 15:02 Yeah. And the the more I learned, the more they're getting very separate in my head. Preston Meyer 15:07 They are very very different I mean, yeah, there's more than one fan club, most of the fan clubs suck. Katie Dooley 15:15 So what we should do is start our own fan club! I am kidding, that doesn't solve the issue. Preston Meyer 15:19 What more parties?!? Katie Dooley 15:24 more denomination Okay. In the United States religious conservatism, including the evangelical and born again Christianity movement is associated with lower levels of trust in science, rates of vaccine vaccine uptake, vaccine knowledge and higher levels of vaccine hesitancy. Preston Meyer 15:44 Yeah, research has found that religiosity is negatively associated with plans to receive the COVID vaccine, which is a huge bummer. And one religious worldview, especially hostile to science and vaccines is the Christian nationalism movement. It's caused a fair bit of problems, distrusting the government is fair to to a degree. So not the same thing that sees a rebellion a whole year ago, or a couple of years ago now, January 6. But, you know, fun Katie Dooley 16:24 Is it fun? One of these groups I found and just because they came up in the news for killing a child, and I put an asterick Preston I will let you guide me on how much we actually talked about this group was the unleavened bread ministries, and I'm big Asterix in our show notes. They say, I barely want to give this man any attention, because he's fucking crazy. Preston Meyer 16:46 I mean, that's fair. Katie Dooley 16:48 So I'll probably just not say the pastor's name. Preston Meyer 16:51 I think that's the right way. Katie Dooley 16:52 So in 2008, an 11-year-old girl, Madeline Cara Newman died of diabetes complications that were very manageable, and very treatable. She literally just needed some insulin, which is really sad, but instead her parents opted for prayer. Preston Meyer 17:11 Yeah, it's not the only headline, but it happens. And I don't know why people want to deny that, medicine is a gift. If you believe that God gives us all the good things, and we've studied the universe to understand creation, which is the way a lot of religions do look at it. Knowing that, oh, now that we know more about this thing, we can help people. Why not jump on that? Katie Dooley 17:42 So we're, so her parents were part of this Unleavened Bread Ministries, and so I decided to go to their website. I really hope I'm not retargeted for anything, because that was something that was not pleasant. You can tune into their radio. 24/7 they actually say tune into our radio channel, 24/7 Which implies they want you to listen to it 24/7. Not that it's on 24/7, which was scary. Preston Meyer 18:09 I mean, that's how you get your ad revenue. Right? I think if you were to listen to us 24/7 right now Katie Dooley 18:13 I guess so. You should listen to the Holy Watermelon podcast 24/7 you just have five days Preston Meyer 18:23 Yeah, just couple of days of content, and then you're on repeat. Katie Dooley 18:28 That's fine. Preston Meyer 18:28 I mean, Katie Dooley 18:29 I'm okay with it. Preston Meyer 18:30 You know, maybe some people would be better for it. Katie Dooley 18:32 So basically, this pastor tells to pray away COVID and others other diseases, but he also recommended Ivermectin and hydro hydro ox so Chloroquine hydro- Preston Meyer 18:47 hydroxychloroquine? Katie Dooley 18:48 that one that makes you go blind or whatever, as well which was insanity. To me, it's like you should pray but if you don't feel like praying, take something that will kill you. Preston Meyer 18:58 The vaccine is poison, but Katie Dooley 19:01 Ivermectin is totally fine... Preston Meyer 19:04 So- Katie Dooley 19:05 So I have in my notes I wrote "not sure if grifter or cult leader" Preston Meyer 19:10 it's, it's problematic. What's interesting to me, is there is a reasonably common belief among these Christian extremists, let's call them what they are, that the vaccine is poison. And I've heard several times that all these people who took the vaccine they're gonna be dead in five years or less. Katie Dooley 19:35 Did you see this quote? "Fully vaccinated people-" this is from the pastor again, his name I won't say fully, "vaccinated people are now suffering from what looks like the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, better known as AIDS. Their immune system is fading as many have warned." so both Preston and I apparently have AIDS. Preston Meyer 19:54 Apparently. Katie Dooley 19:57 Most of our friends also apparently have AIDS. Preston Meyer 20:01 Yeah. So what I was getting to this idea that this vaccine is poison. And remember, the vast majority of us are taking the vaccine to either protect ourselves, or to protect the people around us because we care about them. So they're here. Here's a passage from Mark chapter 16. Gospel of Mark, it's Jesus speaking, it's after he's been resurrected, he's teaching the remaining apostles because Judas is gone. He's not with them. And he says, Those who believe in Me will be able to drink poison without being hurt. I mean, there's a bit about snakes in there, there's, there's all kinds of little bits I skipped. But I added the beginning and the end together to give you the good bit, that if you believe, and if you do actually believe you want to help your neighbors and protect them, then it sounds like the Lord says, You got nothing to fear from this vaccine. Katie Dooley 21:00 Yeah, well. Preston Meyer 21:03 But to be fair, that is a personal interpretation of Scripture, that is at least as valid as the opposing argument. Katie Dooley 21:18 So one of the arguments I wrote in, in these, nothing short of crazy articles was that, and this kind of goes back to the Nixon thing is that some of these groups have argued like, well, if a doctor, someone dies under a doctor's watch, the doctor doesn't get charged. So just because we weren't successful in our prayer circle, doesn't mean we should be charged. Oh Preston... Preston's face is gold right now. Preston Meyer 21:47 So while it's very tricky to charge a doctor- Katie Dooley 21:54 Unless it's malpractice. Preston Meyer 21:55 Right, and it's very tricky to sue a doctor, they have training to do the things that are they're expected to do. And the rest of us are told with, I would say, a close to equivalent value of repetition of take your people to a doctor. So when we fail step one of the process to not even give the doctor a chance to screw up or do the great thing that we need. Wit and it's usually a success, that is neglect. And I would say in an awful lot of situations a criminal neglect. Katie Dooley 22:38 I just had a weird thought- Preston Meyer 22:39 Yeah? Katie Dooley 22:40 that's not in our notes. America in particular, and I mean, Canada, to some extent, as well, prides itself on being a Christian nation. Preston Meyer 22:50 Yup Katie Dooley 22:51 Christianity started the first hospitals to help people. Yeah, that couldn't help themselves. And America doesn't have free health care. Preston Meyer 23:00 Nope Katie Dooley 23:01 Those things don't all go together, do they? Preston Meyer 23:03 No, they don't. Katie Dooley 23:04 Okay. Preston Meyer 23:06 It sounds like you understand perfectly. Katie Dooley 23:09 I do, I do. I understand the pieces, but the why? I am perplexed by because Jesus would have wanted public health care. Preston Meyer 23:20 So we've already talked about the prosperity gospel- Katie Dooley 23:22 we have, Preston Meyer 23:23 and nothing on this planet is more American than publi- Katie Dooley 23:28 Grifting! Preston Meyer 23:29 Than grifting! Yeah! Maybe the the next best thing would be mass extermination, which I mean, is connected to this in some sort of way. Katie Dooley 23:45 All right. Well, I feel like we're being very critical today. But Preston Meyer 23:50 sometimes you got to be and that it comes with the territory and today's subject. Katie Dooley 23:56 Totally. Then there are groups that have very specific rules around medicine. Not necessarily, these sort of broad- Preston Meyer 23:57 Yeah, Katie Dooley 23:59 don't believe in science. Preston Meyer 24:05 A lot of groups generally like the idea of science. Oh, yeah, I guess this thing has been proven. Let's go with it. With exceptions. Katie Dooley 24:14 So there's the Jehovah Witnesses are almost famous for it, they do not accept blood transfusions. So overall, they're pretty cool with medicine and science, unless you need a blood transfusion. Preston Meyer 24:28 Yeah, Prince was a pretty well-known star, and almost as well known that he was one of Jehovah's Witnesses. And he had some wicked hip pain for a long time. And it is speculated hard to confirm things now that he's gone, that it took him a while to get the hip surgery he needed, because hip surgery almost always comes with a major blood transfusion. Cuz, you know, open up pretty high traffic area in the body. Katie Dooley 25:04 Yeah. Preston Meyer 25:05 And so it's a big problem. So it's generally discouraged that because of the blood transfusion hip surgery is a tricky thing to try to navigate as a Jehovah's Witness. Katie Dooley 25:15 Yeah, I, this is ages ago, and I didn't find them for this. And we'll do a full episode on Jehovah Witnesses one day, but the number of parents that when their kid needs a blood transfusion, start to question their faith pretty Preston Meyer 25:32 it's a healthy perspective. Katie Dooley 25:34 Totally! But it's interesting, like, I didn't pull up blood transfusion statistics, but especially probably before 50 Most people do not need a blood transfusion unless you're, you know, touch wood in a car accident or something. But I'm learning a blood transfusion and presume you never need a blood transfusion. So it's pretty easy to be like, oh, yeah, fine. I cannot accept someone else's blood until you need to accept someone else's blood. Preston Meyer 25:59 Right? Well, and I think it's really interesting that I've, I've heard stories of people who say that after a blood transfusion, my brother-sister-loved one is just a totally different person. And so obviously, it's because the spirits in the blood, and that's now, now they are a different person. The weird thing about that is they totally ignore the possibility that a incident that requires a blood transfusion is a life changing experience! He's probably traumatized. It's things like cancer and major accidents, while recognizing your own mortality. Sometimes it's all it takes to really change how you want to deal with the world around you. It's a weird thing to hear people say, but I mean, the facts are the facts. They behave differently. Sure, fine. Or maybe you're reading more into it than is real, and they haven't changed as much as you think. But you expect them to be different because there's this idea of a different soul in the body. Katie Dooley 27:02 Sounds like... Preston Meyer 27:03 it's a spectrum. I can't say that it's all one thing or all the other, but I bet you it's a mix of the two Katie Dooley 27:09 Totally. So there's three Bible passages that Jehovah's Witnesses cite for not accepting blood transfusions, so I'm gonna read them so we can get Preston's hot take on them Preston Meyer 27:19 Perfect Katie Dooley 27:19 first- and who knows how- Preston Meyer 27:20 I like it. Katie Dooley 27:21 So Genesis nine "for you shall not eat flesh with its life. That is, its blood." Preston Meyer 27:28 All right. So part of the context that we have here is, this is a document of how the Lord's people should be different than their neighbours. What makes them different. A lot of the people around them their neighbours, would ritually consume blood. Katie Dooley 27:48 That's blood in the mouth? Preston Meyer 27:50 Yes, eating blood. Katie Dooley 27:52 I think we need that to be clear. Preston Meyer 27:54 I have eaten blood, or a blood adjacent substance, on a, on a few occasions. It is delicious. Katie Dooley 28:06 As someone who enjoys a good black pudding, yes. I prefer white pudding though, which doesn't have the blood. But I won't say no to the black pudding. Preston Meyer 28:14 Right. So you can take my interpretation of this however you want, I suppose. I don't think that there is a spiritual reason. I think this is more of a this separates the people of Israel from their neighbours. Just another way to mark that we are different from them kind of deal. Katie Dooley 28:35 All right. Preston Meyer 28:36 And I mean building an us versus them philosophy isn't the healthiest choice. But here we are. Katie Dooley 28:43 In Genesis, what makes a Jewish person a Jewish person, right? Preston Meyer 28:46 I mean, that's really what Genesis and the tour of the Tanakh are all about. Katie Dooley 28:51 Alright, so the next one is Leviticus 17:10. "If anyone of the house of Israel or of the aliens who reside among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut that person off from the people." Preston Meyer 29:07 So- Katie Dooley 29:08 that God speaking? Preston Meyer 29:09 Yeah. Katie Dooley 29:09 Wow. Preston Meyer 29:10 So the short version of this is, if this person insists on eating blood, they will be excommunicated. Or exiled, depending on whether or not the church has a monopoly on national politics. Excommunicated if they're out in an area that's diverse like ours, exiled from the nation if you have a monopoly. Katie Dooley 29:37 And again, this is blood in the mouth? Preston Meyer 29:39 Yes. Do not eat blood Katie Dooley 29:41 Okay, because this is where I- Preston Meyer 29:43 and it doesn't actually mean human blood. Cannibalism is an entirely separate law. This is don't eat the blood of the cattle and the livestock and the pigeons and everything else that you bring in for sacrifices, Katie Dooley 29:57 Right, which is part of the kosher process. Preston Meyer 29:59 Yeah. Katie Dooley 30:00 That seems super fun. Acts 15:28 to 29. "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials. That you have seen from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourself from these, you will do well. Farewell." Preston Meyer 30:22 I mean, I like having such a short list very convenient. Don't eat things that are sacrificed to false gods. Easy. Generally speaking, though, there are other parts where Paul does specifically say you know what? It's okay to eat something sacrificed to idols, if that's all there is to eat. Just remember, the gods aren't real. But be grateful that you have something to eat. So, even in these essentials- Katie Dooley 30:55 There's still an asterisk! Preston Meyer 30:56 There's an asterisk yeah. But again, don't eat blood is still on the list. Katie Dooley 31:03 So again, blood in the mouth. Preston Meyer 31:05 Yes. Do not eat from these animals that you need. And then of course, there's don't eat anything that's been strangled. Which Katie Dooley 31:19 the meat would be tough. Preston Meyer 31:22 It's better to quick kill rather than choke. Because then it's got fight in it. Katie Dooley 31:27 Yeah. All the muscles not- Preston Meyer 31:29 Yeah. Katie Dooley 31:30 I'm gonna be plugged meat. And then don't have sex. Preston Meyer 31:35 Which Yeah, totally unrelated to the previous three things. While fornication isn't just sex, fornication is extramarital sex. Katie Dooley 31:45 Oh, specific. Preston Meyer 31:46 Yeah, fornication is dirty sex. I it's, it's specifically that sex which is unapproved by society. Katie Dooley 31:55 Well, wait till next episode. Preston Meyer 32:00 Yeah, we'll get a little more details there for you. But yeah, so in Old and New Testament for the Christians who are super concerned about it. That's the deal, is that you should not EAT ANIMAL BLOOD. Katie Dooley 32:15 So they don't let you take any blood. Even if it's not in your mouth. Preston Meyer 32:21 Yeah, life-saving apparently not that big a deal. If it's your time to go. It's your time to go kind of philosophy. Which sucks if you could have survived with the tools available to you. Katie Dooley 32:32 Now there are bloodless surgeries and blood alternatives. Preston Meyer 32:40 Which sounds really weird. Katie Dooley 32:42 I mean, I'm kind of that person. Like, if you can have the real thing. Why wouldn't you have the real thing? Like if you're not allergic to milk? Or lactose intolerant. Why would you squeeze the shit out of an almond? Preston Meyer 32:54 Right?!? Katie Dooley 32:56 Like, you know, and I mean, I get lactose intolerance is a thing. Don't get me wrong. Preston Meyer 33:02 I'm lactose intolerant. I have- Katie Dooley 33:04 I didn't know that! Preston Meyer 33:05 way more dairy in my diet than I should. Katie Dooley 33:10 The fact that I didn't know that you're lactose intolerant until this moment tells you that you do. Preston Meyer 33:15 I'm lactose-sensitive, not lactose intolerant. I correct that there are times when I am way more sensitive than at other times. The night before I got married. Katie Dooley 33:28 Ohno, ohno! Preston Meyer 33:29 We stopped at one of the great drive-throughs and got the classic, real good, absolutely delicious milkshake. And I was ruined by the time... Katie Dooley 33:41 Ohhh you, noooo! Preston Meyer 33:45 So everyone else is setting up the chapel for decorations and the tables and everything. And I was just camped out somewhere else. But this week, I've gone through a whole litre of eggnog and plenty of milk and no issues. Katie Dooley 34:04 All right, well. So yeah, I mean, I guess like I said before, it's great to say you don't accept a blood transfusion until you're one of the 4.5 million people a year in North America that needs one. Preston Meyer 34:16 I'm curious because I haven't been able to find anything. And maybe I just need to talk to somebody who's got specific religious authority to make such a declaration, how they might feel higher up among the witnesses about synthetic blood. I don't know how they'll feel about that. Katie Dooley 34:38 Members that willingly and knowingly accept blood transfusions are often disfellowshipped. And generally, like I said, they when witnesses are encouraged for medical help other than this weird blood thing, which I feel like they haven't run by God ever but what do I know? Preston Meyer 34:54 Right. And a similar limitation for some reason the Amish and some other Mennonites but not all Mennonites believe that the spirit specifically lives in the heart. And you know, if you're watching a movie and you get to a real emotional part and you feel a twinge in your heart, I can see why they might come to that conclusion. Katie Dooley 35:18 When you see your husband who I haven't seen in three weeks! Preston Meyer 35:22 Right?! When you feel that in your chest, it does make sense that you can believe your spirit resides in or near your heart fine. Feels a little bit weird, but I get it. So specifically, the Amish, while they have a tricky relationship with modern medicine, they do specifically avoid anything that would be even close to a heart transplant, because that's the soul. And yet, there's sometimes exceptions to that... Katie Dooley 35:55 Asterisk! It's a spectrum! Preston Meyer 35:59 Yeah. There have been children who have been born with heart defects that are so severe that before baptism, because as an Anabaptist, you are baptized later in life instead of as a child. Like in the Catholic tradition. They are okay with a heart transplant in a young child... sometimes. Katie Dooley 36:23 Asterisk. I was born with a hole in my heart, maybe that's why I'm an atheist. Preston Meyer 36:28 Is it a Jesus-shaped hole in your heart? Katie Dooley 36:29 I don't... I don't know. I, that was 32 years ago. Preston Meyer 36:35 Is the hole still there? Katie Dooley 36:36 No it healed up. Preston Meyer 36:37 It just healed up? Katie Dooley 36:38 Yep. Sometimes they heal up on their own. Sometimes they need surgery to make the switch. Preston Meyer 36:41 Well see that's the weird thing about making people from a clump of cells is that when you're born, you still got a lot of growing to do. Katie Dooley 36:51 So apparently, I looked into this like a million years ago, apparently, like when you're born and finally get oxygen. It is supposed to just like happen. The chambers in your heart close up to what they're supposed to be and mine didn't. Preston Meyer 37:03 huh! Katie Dooley 37:04 Yeah! Preston Meyer 37:05 So that's the thing I don't know much about. But that is cool. Katie Dooley 37:08 Yeah. Science! Preston Meyer 37:10 Check out our bonus episode on abortion! right. It's, it's weird how many churches insist that the Bible says that a baby is a murderable person, before they're born, when the Bible was pretty clear on the detail of, "And he breathed and became a living soul." Now, you're allowed to take that symbolically. But when you do that, you no longer have the Bible backing you up when you say that a baby is alive from conception, or from six months in or whatever. Whatever your arbitrary time is. The Bible doesn't have your back, for any point before birth! Yeah, we get into a lot more detail there! Katie Dooley 37:51 The next one we're going to talk about are Christian scientists or the Church of Christ, comma scientists is their official name. Preston Meyer 38:08 This, this group- Katie Dooley 38:10 and guess what Preston they hate science. Preston Meyer 38:14 So this, I've run into a couple of these people over the years that we've got a Christian Science Center downtown. And I've been trying to figure out for a while, how they can get away with feeling comfortable using the word science, and that they call themselves scientists, and absolutely deny the scientific method! The scientific collection of knowledge that we've amassed. I don't get it. Katie Dooley 38:51 We will eventually. Again, just like Jehovah's Witnesses we will do a full episode on Christian scientists at some point, but we're just gonna dive into the medical stuff for today's episode. The Church of Christ scientists was founded by Mary Baker Eddy in the 19th century. And it can actually be traced back. For more if you remember our last episode to Phineas Quimby, the mesmerist!! Preston Meyer 39:00 Yeah. Yeah, so she was a patient of his! Katie Dooley 39:18 Oh, cool! Preston Meyer 39:19 Yeah! So that's where this connection comes in. So I did a little bit of more research on this Quimby fella and oh what a trip! So oh... Katie Dooley 39:31 so Phineas Quimby... I'll let you read your your research but finance can be started that new thought movement which turned also into the prosperity gospel that name it and claim it Preston Meyer 39:41 Yeah, Dr. PP Quimby which I didn't make up to make this humorous. This is how he styled himself Katie Dooley 39:52 This is amazing! And I love that we both are so mature that we can just laugh at Dr. PP! Preston Meyer 39:58 I'm not sure he was a real Dr. Katie Dooley 40:01 WHAT?!? Preston Meyer 40:02 I mean, as you learn more about this fella, you'll see why that could have been a problem. But Dr. Phineas PP. Quimby was a clockmaker. You don't need a doctorate to be a clockmaker- Katie Dooley 40:09 Yes. No you don't to be a clockmaker Preston Meyer 40:21 I mean, you do need tools. Yeah, for sure. And he was convinced that he had found the key to the science of health. This is where the Christian scientists adopted the word and never validated it ever again. The science of health, which of course, is, it's all in your head! Katie Dooley 40:47 Yet it's it's not. Your feelings and physical ailments are all- Preston Meyer 40:53 Yeah, this gaping wound in my leg that's making a huge mess of the kitchen is all in my head. Katie Dooley 41:03 No, it's all on the kitchen floor! Preston Meyer 41:07 Anyway, Quimby's theory was that there is no intelligence, no power or action in matter of itself. That the spiritual world to which our eyes are closed by ignorance or unbelief, is the real world that in it lie all the causes for every effect visible in the natural world. And then if the spiritual life can be revealed to us, in other words, if we can understand ourselves, we shall then have our happiness or misery in our own hands. That sounds really nice. Katie Dooley 41:42 Oh, and I believe some of it- Preston Meyer 41:44 Sure! Katie Dooley 41:45 we talked, again, we talked about this for prosperity. If you're a positive person, your life will feel more positive. Preston Meyer 41:50 Yeah. Katie Dooley 41:51 But this does not account for gaping leg wounds! Preston Meyer 41:55 No, or viral infections, bacterial problems! There's a lot of things that you can't control with positive thinking. And this is a proven fact. Katie Dooley 42:06 Yes. Preston Meyer 42:07 So, interestingly enough, he was a very busy man. Quimby was treating several patients every day, almost every single day for years, which would be normal if he was a doctor. But he wasn't really a doctor. He would sit next to his patients and explain that their ailment was just in their minds, and that they could control it just by thinking really hard about it. Just convince yourself that everything's fine and it will be! If it was easy to convince yourself of something that wasn't so easy to believe. And then it got weird. Sometimes he would rub their heads with his wet hands. Katie Dooley 42:50 Ew! Why were they wet??? Preston Meyer 42:52 Oh, he would dip his hands in water too, and just rub their heads. He later explained that it was the words that did the help. Not the contact with the wet hands. So presumably he was just rubbing their heads with wet hands for his own enjoyment? Katie Dooley 43:10 That is a very specific fetish, but we don't kink shame at the Holy Watermelon Podcast. Preston Meyer 43:15 True story. Katie Dooley 43:16 But we do fake Dr. shame! So carry on! Preston Meyer 43:20 cause people are weird! Katie Dooley 43:25 There's various fetishes and rubbing. Preston Meyer 43:28 I'm okay with if that's your fetish. That's fine. Our- Katie Dooley 43:32 Is there consent? Preston Meyer 43:34 That's my question! Are these people participating with informed consent? In what is probably a sexual fetish. Katie Dooley 43:44 Probably not because it's the 1800's. Preston Meyer 43:47 Yeah...consent was a tough discussion back then- Katie Dooley 43:49 Actually still a tough discussion, but that's a different episode! Preston Meyer 43:52 But at least it's becoming more mainstream. Now. Katie Dooley 43:54 Did you know 55% of Canadian men don't actually know what constitutes as consent? Preston Meyer 44:00 That's an alarming statistic Katie Dooley 44:02 Yeah. A study came out recently. Preston Meyer 44:07 Members of Congress are outing themselves all over the place right now saying, Oh, if we have the liberal wrought laws of consent, I would be a sex criminal! Katie Dooley 44:17 That means you're a sex criminal! Preston Meyer 44:19 Why would why would you say that? Katie Dooley 44:22 That means you're a sex criminal. Carry on. Preston Meyer 44:27 Anyway, Quimby met Mary Baker Eddy in 1862 when she became his patient. And she was already into the the weird spiritual thing. Yeah, which is fine. It's what she started doing with it after she met Quimby that makes it easy to label her as full crazy. Katie Dooley 44:49 So Eddy basically thought the world was the matrix and the only real world was the spiritual world. And we've created this physical world in our minds. Preston Meyer 44:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson talks a little bit about how the world is, and the universe is probably just a simulation. So is that really all that different? They both sound crazy. Katie Dooley 45:11 They both do sound crazy. I mean, we're getting into philosophy, and it already hurts my head is trying to formulate this sentence, but like, Preston Meyer 45:21 The trick is, it's really easy to believe that the world isn't. The world is as concrete as it looks and feels. But I mean, the things that we found out by just scoping down on to the molecular level is even solid rocks are mostly empty space. Katie Dooley 45:39 Yeah. Preston Meyer 45:41 So it gets pretty easy to say, wow, yeah, there's there's a lot of magic going on here. What is what? Who knows? But it feels like, we're getting some pretty interesting fictions. Katie Dooley 45:56 Yes. So Eddie also wrote a book called Science and Health, which in addition to the Bible is considered a holy book in the Church of Christ scientists. Preston Meyer 46:06 Yeah, it's pretty normal to have the founding person's literature as part of your Canon. Katie Dooley 46:12 It seems like there isn't a lot of Christ in Church of Christ scientists. Preston Meyer 46:16 Well, they still have the Bible. Katie Dooley 46:17 Yeah. Preston Meyer 46:17 It's just secondary to you have the divine power yourself to heal all your problems. Katie Dooley 46:25 This goes back to my earlier point, is that I am starting to like JC- Preston Meyer 46:29 not the fanclub. Katie Dooley 46:30 Not the fanclub, all right. Preston Meyer 46:33 That's fair. Katie Dooley 46:33 Okay Preston Meyer 46:35 Yeah, it's interesting that members of the Church of Christ scientists aren't strictly prohibited from seeking medical attention, but they do avoid it an awful lot. Instead, they just pray. And it's not like your regular prayer. That's like, it's never do the Lord's Prayer, and everything's gonna be fine. It's kind of a, you need to go find a place where you can argue with yourself for a while, just like Mary did with the Nez Marus Katie Dooley 47:04 Yeah, not even. Yeah. You like, it's weird. I read some instructions on how to pray. And basically, you just like, fight yourself to not feel sick anymore. Preston Meyer 47:14 Yeah! Katie Dooley 47:14 So I am like to Jesus or God, it's like "Don't be sick Katie!" Preston Meyer 47:19 Right?! Katie Dooley 47:20 Don't be sick! Preston Meyer 47:21 which sounds like not just counterproductive, because you're not getting the help you need. But you're tiring yourself out more. So if you were fighting an infection, you're probably worse off than if you hadn't had this internal conflic Katie Dooley 47:37 I just watch Fraggle Rock when I'm sick. Preston Meyer 47:39 Yeah. Does it help? Katie Dooley 47:40 Yeah. Preston Meyer 47:40 That's good. Filling your life with positivity is helpful. And there's there's a lot to be said about the placebo effect. That doesn't mean don't seek actual help when there's something wrong that needs help. Katie Dooley 47:57 Absolutely. There are reports though, even though they aren't specifically prohibited from seeking medical treatment, that members that do opt for medical treatment are often ostracized. Preston Meyer 48:09 Yeah, but you can hire somebody from the church to come and help you out. You can get a healer, which is like a doctor, but they're making money off of lying to you. Katie Dooley 48:22 It's actually a Christian Science practitioner, and they're very good at praying! Preston Meyer 48:27 Are they? Katie Dooley 48:29 That's what they're trained to do! Preston Meyer 48:32 So I'll just 11 years well, 12 years ago, now, I guess. There was a practitioner named Frank Prince Wonderlic. If I'm not writing that pronunciation, I'm at least close. Put his his name in the show notes. He said... "all healing is a metaphysical process. That means that there is no person to be healed. No material body, no patient, no matter, no illness, no one to heal, no substance, no person, no thing and no place that needs to be influenced. This is what the practitioner must first be clear about." Katie Dooley 49:08 It sounds very Scientology. Preston Meyer 49:11 A little bit yeah! So, I mean, the problem that I have, right off the beginning is, there is nobody that needs to be healed or influenced. When your job is to heal people. Maybe that's not the thing you should be saying. Katie Dooley 49:28 What are you charging for? Preston Meyer 49:31 Right? I mean, basically, he's standing here saying, either you don't exist, or you do but nothing else does. So you got nothing to worry about. Which I mean, it may be an extreme interpretation of those words, but that feels really weird when you say there's nothing that needs to be influenced. You're either saying there is no disease at all, or it's not a problem and there is a disease and it is a problem. It's frustrating. And at least 50 Christian scientists have been charged with murder after the children died of very preventable illnesses. Now, of course, it's not first-degree murder that requires premeditation. And the situation is a little premeditated, but not to the degree where it actually counts as premeditated murder. Katie Dooley 50:29 Then it would be manslaughter in Canada. Preston Meyer 50:30 Exactly. Katie Dooley 50:31 Where I think it's third-degree murder in the States is our manslaughter. Preston Meyer 50:35 Yeah. Katie Dooley 50:37 LDS! Preston Meyer 50:39 Yeah, the LDS tradition is a much healthier place relative to this issue. I'll admit it's a mixed bag, there are a lot of converts to the church who come from a wide variety of backgrounds. A lot of people have believed that you really should just pray and not see a doctor when something is wrong. That if you're having mental health problems, or physical health problems, pray about it, eat your vitamins, get your essential oils, and maybe talk to the bishop for counselling. Most of those are not very good choices, including the last one, your bishop is very seldom a properly trained therapist. But there are cases where he is, and he deserves to be paid for that. Katie Dooley 51:31 But talk about these elder blessings, because I've heard about it in passing, just being your friend. Preston Meyer 51:36 Yeah? So while there are encouragement to seek medical attention, there is also encouragement to get a blessing from an elder of the church comes with an anointing of virgin olive oil, and all that fun stuff. And typically, we laid- lay hands on somebody's head and give a blessing of whatever is needed. Very often, there's a promise that you'll be healed. But this does not take the place of seeking medical attention. It is very explicitly stated over the pulpit regularly from the very top that it should not take the place of seeking medical attention. Katie Dooley 52:17 Well, that's good. Preston Meyer 52:18 Yeah. Even though some people have a hard time with that. Spectrum! No, church is monolithic. I've given lots of blessings, and that's not because I believe that it's going to fix everything and that you need to go, just pray afterwards. No, sometimes you should get medical attention, depending on what the situation is. Yeah, I don't know. The president of the Church throughout the COVID crisis was a world-renowned heart surgeon, we've got a serious commitment to actually making sure people are healthy, that we can stick around for a long time. The Latter-Day Saints are in some communities longer lived than average. So Katie Dooley 53:01 Because you don't drink do drugs or anything! Preston Meyer 53:03 I mean, that's probably a bigger contri-contributor, though, we have our own vices. There's a there's an awful lot of Latter Day Saints who eat a lot more sugar than they ought to. Katie Dooley 53:15 That's gonna say from the ones I know. Yes. You all feel personally attacked now, I'm so sorry! Preston Meyer 53:25 But to be fair, the entirety of North American culture with a handful of specific localized exceptions, we eat way more sugar than we really should. So are Mormons to stand out there? Not so much. Katie Dooley 53:40 Well Okay! Seventh Day Adventists. Again, another Christian denomination, they are typically vegetarians. Preston Meyer 53:49 Pretty often. Katie Dooley 53:50 And so they're comfortable with seeking medicine and modern medical and health practices, but they have know, have been known to prefer holistic medicine, kind of in line with that vegetarian thing. So they've been known to follow holistic medicine, which is a phrase that has been used by people who oppose medical treatment, but good doctors also talk about the necessity of keeping the whole body healthy, which is holistic. So Preston Meyer 54:18 yeah. Dr. Mike even talks about it sometimes. Katie Dooley 54:22 Is that the YouTube one? Preston Meyer 54:23 yeah, Katie Dooley 54:24 That's kind of cute? Both Hosts 54:25 Yeah. Preston Meyer 54:26 He's a handsome man. Katie Dooley 54:27 He's very handsome. An Adventist family hit the news in 2014 for failing to get their son proper medical care after being diagnosed with rickets. Preston Meyer 54:36 You don't hear about rickets very often! Katie Dooley 54:38 That's what Tiny Tim had or they speculated it, it's not actually written the book. Preston Meyer 54:42 I mean, it's it's a work of fiction, so Katie Dooley 54:45 and then in it's always sunny. Preston Meyer 54:48 Rickety Cricket! Katie Dooley 54:49 Rickety Cricket! Preston Meyer 54:52 Yeah, you know, but, I mean, we put vitamin D in so many things now. Katie Dooley 54:56 Yes Preston Meyer 54:57 Like we encourage children to have cereal with a bowl of milk and all of our milk that you get at the grocery store today has vitamin D in it. Katie Dooley 55:05 Yeah. So rickets is preventable with vitamin D. Preston Meyer 55:07 Yeah. Katie Dooley 55:08 So, yeah, it's pretty easy to get. So that's really bad. Preston Meyer 55:13 Pretty easy to not get rickets. Katie Dooley 55:15 Yeah, I mean, it's pretty easy to get vitamin D Yeah, it really is not easy to get, rickets. So it must be known that they got sucked into the anti medi-medic trap despite warnings from their church. Preston Meyer 55:30 Yeah, this is not a normal thing within this religious community. There there is even a network of Seventh Day Adventists hospitals where they actually perform real medicine. So it's, it's weird to see this kind of news hit where a family within this religious community just doesn't want to get involved in medicine. Katie Dooley 55:31 Yep. Now we've been pretty hard on Christians. This episode, specific Christian denominations. Preston Meyer 56:03 Yeah. Katie Dooley 56:04 Spectrum, we know it's not all Christians. But Preston Meyer 56:06 one, it's not even all people within the dominant denominations we've talked about. Katie Dooley 56:10 Right, like I said... Preston Meyer 56:12 Nothing is monolithic. Katie Dooley 56:13 Yes, so on your deathbed, if you need a blood transfusion, you might change your mind real fast! And people have. Preston Meyer 56:19 Yeah! Katie Dooley 56:19 But we also see it in other religions. Preston Meyer 56:22 Yeah, the Hindu tradition is kind of interesting, where generally speaking, medicine is favorably talked about. In fact, when we talked about Hinduism, in our introductory episode, there is a whole part of their religious philosophy that deals with different kinds of medicine. How that translates to the modern things can get a little bit fuzzy. But generally speaking, it's pretty positive, because the Vedas were written 1000s of years ago. But it's kind of cool. But there is, of course, a lot of prejudice against doctors from overseas coming to North America. Do they live up to the same medical standards? Investigation always has to go into it, and they usually end up becoming taxi drivers or literally anything else that's easy to get into. Because getting into the doctor's office again, it's really complicated. Katie Dooley 57:12 Yeah, there needs to be some better international cooperation there. Because Preston Meyer 57:17 well, and we do have some doctors who make it and become doctors here Katie Dooley 57:20 Oh absolutely! Preston Meyer 57:20 -relatively quickly. But it's yeah, it's not 100% thing. It's really frustrating. And the interesting thing that I think is worth bringing up here is that while they're cool with medicine, they actually do have an issue as... If they're really into their Hindu faith. Of they have an issue with using animal products in their medicine! Any animal juices! Katie Dooley 57:27 Gelatin often quite- Preston Meyer 57:47 Yeah, we use a lot of different animals stuff in our medicine, which sounds really weird until you actually know a lot about it. And it's like, oh, yeah, that sounds like a natural choice. I'm not an expert. I just trust the people who are. Katie Dooley 57:59 Fair. Preston Meyer 58:00 Sihks follow the same Hindu principles. This comes with the whole vegan vegetarian thing that care for the animals. It's not about keeping the body, non animal keeping it pure. It's about respect for the animals. So of course, our First Nations people here in North America are more positive about using the whole animal respecting the animal, but take what you need, and be responsible and respectful with what's left make find a use for it, if you can. So really different way of looking at the world there. Yeah, Islam is interesting that they have similar restrictions to Sikhs and Hindus, but not the same. That you absolutely cannot use any material that comes from swine. swine is haram. But animal products from cows, for example, is fine. Katie Dooley 58:53 Medical Products from cows. Yes, you said animal products from cows. Which that's true, that is not untrue! Preston Meyer 58:59 It's not what i meant- Katie Dooley 59:00 Its not specific enough Preston Meyer 59:01 medical products in cows. So I thought that was really interesting. Because you would be haram if you were part pig, I guess. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm haram anyway. According to their laws. Katie Dooley 59:14 I mean, yeah, I own a dog so Preston Meyer 59:17 Oh yeah, there you go. Katie Dooley 59:17 Already Preston Meyer 59:18 Troubles. Katie Dooley 59:19 Yeah. Preston Meyer 59:21 Of course, there are exceptions life or death emergencies are validation enough to ignore these prohibitions. Of course, there are a lot more available here in the West, where there's not preexisting prohibitions. Some people like their books more than they like their children. So Katie Dooley 59:38 I was gonna make sassy comment, but I will refrain for once. I like books better than children. I said it, I said it. Preston Meyer 59:47 That's fair, but they're not your children. Katie Dooley 59:49 That's true and I have no interest. Preston Meyer 59:51 Do you like your books more than Paige? Katie Dooley 59:53 No, I would save Paige in a fire but not my books. Preston Meyer 59:55 See? That's how it goes. Katie Dooley 59:57 Fair Preston Meyer 59:58 And that feels like the right choice. Katie Dooley 59:59 Thank you! Preston Meyer 1:00:00 And Paige isn't even human. Katie Dooley 1:00:03 But she is real! Preston Meyer 1:00:04 Yes. She is real! Katie Dooley 1:00:06 She's a little dog. Yeah, I'll post the picture in Discord just 'cause I like her. Preston Meyer 1:00:11 Yup. And a few years ago, I heard this great poem from Tim Minchin who we actually mentioned ever so briefly in a, in our most recent interview episode. Storm is the name of the poem by Tim Minchin, and this, this little snippet is just perfect. "Alternative Medicine has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? Medicine!" And that's the deal. It's, I can't think of any better way to explain it. I couldn't get a doctor to say it in a more beautiful way Katie Dooley 1:00:49 Judas would say something like that... Yeah, so we were pretty hard on people today. But that's okay. Preston Meyer 1:00:59 That's okay. I don't think we've alienated anybody. Katie Dooley 1:01:02 No I think it's, I mean, that's why we exist, is to have conversations about religion, and maybe push some boundaries on beliefs, because no group will get better if we don't. Preston Meyer 1:01:16 Right. Whether you're Christian, Buddhist, or just really into snails, or atheist. Generally, the best way to run through this life is by caring about each other as people and wanting the best for each other. And that means saving lives when we can in the effective ways through proven methods. Katie Dooley 1:01:42 You know, what, everyone? In addition to following us on Discord and our Instagram and Facebook this week, I encourage you all to go and donate some blood! Preston Meyer 1:01:53 I think that's the best civic thing that we can all handle. Unless, of course, Katie Dooley 1:02:01 unless you can't. Preston Meyer 1:02:01 Yeah. Katie Dooley 1:02:04 You can also support us on our Patreon, where we have early release and bonus episodes and our book club. Thank you to patron Lisa for supporting our podcast. And if the subscription model is not your thing, you can also check out our spread shop where we have some amazing Holy Watermelon merch to make you look fancy in this new year. Preston Meyer 1:02:26 Thanks for joining us! Both Hosts 1:02:27 Peace be with you! | |||
| 31 Jul 2023 | Staring Down the Canon | 00:57:29 | |
Staring Down the Canon might be intimidating for some, but now that we've explored several holy texts, we're ready to talk about the nature of scriptural authority and how texts are measured against one another within religious traditions. Books are a great way to preserve knowledge, testimony, and prophecy, but its imperative that readers remember that authors perform their work as imperfect people full of biases and ignorance, just like the readers themselves. Canon is the criterion against which all ideas and writings are measured. No canon has been divinely established, instead, canon is the product of intense deliberation and authoritative ruling. To help illustrate the universality of this word's utility, Preston uses the Star Wars canon (pre-Disney) to lay down an intellectual foundation before getting into more germane examples in more religious realms. Fundamentalism is a growing problem in some faith communities, particularly among those who run from a healthy education, seeing their parents' favorite version of their favorite book as the only authoritative source of information on history, physics, biology, geology, and astronomy. What could go wrong? Support us on Patreon and consider joining our Book Club. You can get our exclusive merch at Spreadshirt. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 27 Sep 2021 | Voodoo You Think You Are? | 00:55:12 | |
Voodoo has a long history originating in the West African Vodun tradition. While pop culture has made Voodoo out to be dark or evil, it's actually a spiritual religion that is syncretic with Catholicism. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
*** Katie Dooley 00:09 Hi Preston.
Preston Meyer 00:12 Hey, Katie,
Katie Dooley 00:13 things are getting spooky.
Preston Meyer 00:15 Right? We're getting closer to spook Tober? Yes. Have you heard people call it that?
Katie Dooley 00:24 I just I feel like that's really stretching for a cute name for October.
Preston Meyer 00:28 Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Okay.
Katie Dooley 00:31 What are we talking about today on the
Preston Meyer 00:36 holy watermelon podcast? We're talking about voodoo. Spooky, right? Well, no, it's not really the way it's depicted in pretty much all of popular media. Absolutely. It's, it's meant to be a little bit spooky.
Katie Dooley 00:55 But like most religions, it's just misunderstood.
Preston Meyer 00:59 Yeah. Oh, more than most. Yes.
Katie Dooley 01:03 There are some perhaps McCobb parts to voodoo, but we'll talk about that. But
Preston Meyer 01:08 there's some some dark and shady and seldom visited corners of most religious traditions. So I don't, I don't think this is really that much different.
Katie Dooley 01:20 All right. Let's talk about
Preston Meyer 01:24 there's actually kind of a lot of variety within what we like to call voodoo. And I mean, it's not even all voodoo. There's so many different ways to pronounce this one word based on different cultures.
Katie Dooley 01:39 Well, and I'll just interject and say originally, we were on this episode to be on both voodoo and hoodoo. And then I realized how big booty was. And I cut the hoodoo, because I was like, There's no way we can cover both properly in about an hour.
Preston Meyer 01:55 So I think that was right choice. Thank you. But the Vodoun tradition comes from West Africa. If you want to imagine Africa, for those of you who aren't terribly familiar with geography, that little the armpit I guess, I No, that's not the best way to describe it, to keep friends with people who are from there. But for those of you who aren't familiar with that the countries that are there, that's so helpful description. Yeah. The countries that are along the Gulf of Guinea, is where the voting tradition primarily is born with the job people
Katie Dooley 02:37 and then photon made its way to North America that the Americas through really shady means.
Preston Meyer 02:46 Shady. Yeah, I mean, perfectly legal slavery. Yes.
Katie Dooley 02:51 Yeah. So the spirit based tradition that is Odin moved on over to four countries predominantly, Haiti, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Dominican Dominican Republic are two different countries they are and then then you get the migration of people from those countries to America, where Louisiana Voodoo is kind of its own entity. So we'll talk about all of those today. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 03:20 it's kind of interesting. The way that the voting tradition has evolved over the years, like Shintoism, an awful lot of people found it difficult to classify it as a religion unto itself. And when we talked about Shinto, even though everybody in Japan was Shinto, basically, they didn't see it as a religion, they thought it was easy to adopt. Yeah, another national religion
Katie Dooley 03:48 becomes so integrated. It's just part of the culture. You don't even think about Yeah.
Preston Meyer 03:54 And so the way that the Vodoun tradition and respect for spirits and everything that is attached to it, carried along with the people who are displaced by slave traders, they adopt adapted their religion, primarily, including a lot of principles from Catholicism. And so there's a lot of syncretic elements taken from Catholicism and transposed onto the voting tradition in really interesting ways.
Katie Dooley 04:23 Yeah, let's um, expand on the term sin kradic. Because this is the first time I have really heard about and dive deep into it. So for our listeners, let's define syncretic religions a little bit.
Preston Meyer 04:36 A syncretism is the practice of taking features from one tradition and incorporating them into your own. That's, that's the short of it. And there you can see it in a lot of different ways. The Roman Catholic tradition, is also originally a very syncretic adopting a lot of features from Greek and Roman culture, and why it's so very different from Judaism from which it initially was born. There's a couple other little similarities I thought were nifty comparing it to Shinto. Remember, we talked how Shinto has a different name for the religion among the people who practice it. Often you'll hear it called Camino mici which means the way of the spirits. Vodoun literally means spirit. So I thought that was really nifty, a nice little parallel. And so they believe spirits are in everything, but there's one main creator, pretty similar to a lot of the religions that we've talked about especially tightly similar to Shintoism. They're
Katie Dooley 05:44 obviously like any religion, there's varying degrees, but one thing I read about the main creator is that it's a very hands off creator, or they built the world and said by and left it to the spirits.
Preston Meyer 05:54 Yeah, there's not a lot of religions look at their theology that way. Some of the founding fathers of the United States, were deists that had adopted that particular idea, though, where
Katie Dooley 06:07 there was an initial mover and then he said, by got other things to do fun. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 06:12 exactly. And so instead of interacting with this great Creator, who is now unreachable, you deal with a lot of intermediaries and call upon them to do some pretty cool things, which sounds
Katie Dooley 06:28 a lot like Catholics. Were where they get this really interesting. Mix.
Preston Meyer 06:34 Yeah. So when all these people who are displaced by trader, they are told that you can't worship your old way, you have to worship our way. And they're like, well, that's not terribly different. So fine.
Katie Dooley 06:48 Yeah. Yeah. The sound a lot like this guy. I know. Right? They must just have the name wrong, silly white folk. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 06:59 that's kind of the deal. And so it was easy enough for them to adapt enough to avoid beatings.
Katie Dooley 07:07 Perfect. That's the wrong word. But yeah,
Preston Meyer 07:11 it's unfortunately, everything that we see in popular voodoo, as far as we see it in the Western Hemisphere, is coming from a place of pain, which is really unfortunate. But there's an awful lot of celebration in it as well.
Katie Dooley 07:28 Yeah, we'll dive more into the perception of voodoo. As we go throughout this episode, I just want to mention that's in our notes before we dive into beliefs, that the spirits in voodoo are called Lua. Lua. Is their term for a specific spirit.
Preston Meyer 07:49 We've talked a lot about how a lot of your your mileage may vary with a lot of religions. And that's incredibly true with the Voodoo traditions. Even when you talk about Louisiana voodoo, the various some variety from one town to the next from one family to the next. So I mean, like I've always heard a prance lower rather than Lua. That that's not to say Lua is wrong. It's just there's a lot of variety. And there's many different spellings because of the way people pronounce it differently. I
Katie Dooley 08:25 mean, just like from Christian church to Christian church, it's a little bit different. Exactly.
Preston Meyer 08:31 Yeah, I did put in my notes that there's actually some some interesting though not entirely valuable for educational depictions of voodoo in popular culture. Some of my favorites are the use of voodoo in American Horror Story. And also in Marvel's cloak and dagger was actually kind of cool. I'm
Katie Dooley 08:53 really upset that you didn't add the Princess and the Frog to this list.
Preston Meyer 08:57 I haven't seen the whole movie is the problem. I am aware that it is Baron Samedi that's in that movie, right?
Katie Dooley 09:09 I don't know if he's named named Baron Samedi. But there is uh, you know, the the dark character as you know, Disney, you know, picks Hades or something and wrecks it. Just yeah, there's a dark yeah, there's the bad guy. I don't know if he's called i It's been years since I've seen I don't know if he's called Baron Sandy. But he's obviously based off of barren Sandy. Right, which there is one of the ladies in the movie is love voodoo. She's supposed to be a voodoo priestess. Sure. But again, it's been a minute since I've seen it myself. So we're gonna get some anger email being like, you haven't wrong.
Preston Meyer 09:45 But there's reasons I didn't put it on my list.
Katie Dooley 09:50 But it's the chicken movie.
Preston Meyer 09:52 Believe you I don't remember. Because I didn't see all of it. We'll have to have a movie night I guess so.
Katie Dooley 09:58 So what do people Paul who follow voodoo actually believe Guess what? It's not devil worship.
Preston Meyer 10:07 Yeah, an awful lot of people like to say that Voodoo is evil because they deny God and worship Satan. I don't know where people come up with these ideas.
Katie Dooley 10:18 I mean, if it's like one thing, if you and that, not that I'm saying this is a good thing, but it's one thing if you think people are evil, because they're whatever, not your religion, not Krishna, Jewish, not whatever, but then to like, then put on them that they believe in Satan, when they don't follow the first group, like only those Abrahamic religions believe in Satan. So if they're not an Abrahamic religion, then don't throw Satan on top of it. Right? It's just it's just too much. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 10:51 it's, it's, it's a huge problem. People don't like talking to each other. And huge misunderstandings come out of that.
Katie Dooley 11:02 And actually on that devil worship topic. Voodoo, even though it's syncretic with the Catholic Church does not have a satanic equivalent, right? They do not have any you figure that they go, oh, yeah, Satan. So even though there are these elements of Christianity in voodoo, they don't have any belief in the devil or this big, bad evil thing.
Preston Meyer 11:27 Yeah, the closest they get. Let's go back to that issue we have with Hades in the Hercules cartoon, where Hades is, for some reason, a bad guy because he's the closest thing we can come up with to a King of the Underworld as Satan who is not the King of the Underworld, like Hades is. And so Papa legba, or Baron Samedi, serve as the keeper of the dead. And so that's why he is occasionally portrayed as a villainous character, which is nonsense. Well, and
Katie Dooley 11:59 I don't want to jump ahead too far. But in food death isn't this negative thing that it is an Abrahamic religion? Right? So there you go. He's even less evil than you might think he is right? Even though he's just watching the dead, which is a noble job, right?
Preston Meyer 12:18 Yeah, it's a way people look at religions is just so weird. And that's why we're here to hopefully fix that.
Katie Dooley 12:25 Okay, I really like this the semantics of the creator the universe, right. Do you want to talk about my Whoo, because I didn't actually find that note I found on Barney. Right. So I want to talk so Barney, broadly
Preston Meyer 12:40 speaking, the West African tradition addresses the the great creator goddess as Malu or Ma, who I find mahu a little easier to say. But my Whoo, I think is actually slightly more common pronunciation. And thanks to the French influence on the tradition as it came across the great big lake, or the ocean,
Katie Dooley 13:04 I love this. It makes me so excited. The
Preston Meyer 13:07 creator of the universe has a, a kind of a cooler name, but
Katie Dooley 13:12 it comes it's fun because it comes full circle. So because of the French influence and colonization in the slave trade. Lavon Zhu means the Good God. But in the Haitian tradition, it turned into Bonnie or bhanji. But then in the Louisiana tradition, which came after a turn back until Ubuntu because of the French influence in Louisiana, right? I guess it'd be the Acadian influence in Louisiana, but I just thought that was pretty cool that it went from the Bantu to Bondi to levant you again. Right? And it all just means the Good God.
Preston Meyer 13:51 So Mahou or Bonnie or Bon DIA is connected to the moon, and there is a male counterpart that is connected to the sun. And his name is Lisa. Which I assume for many people listening like me, that sounds an awful lot more like a a woman's name. I
Katie Dooley 14:11 have the Simpsons for at least a birthday song in my head. Now Lisa, it's your birthday.
Preston Meyer 14:19 But Lisa is coming from a different culture not weird to see as a man's name. But my who has seven children that I think are pretty cool. And each of them are Vodoun of a specific element, I guess of of the way that the world is understood. We have sock PATA the Vodoun of the Earth, which is kind of cool. It just takes care of the earth. It's almost half of Hades job actually. Then we've got agbay voting of the see Joe voldoen of the air. So Hades, Neptune and Hey, Zeus. I'm totally mixing together things aren't I? Neptune is Roman, yeah. Poseidon, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. I'm ashamed that makes those things together. See how often I talk about Greek stuff? I
Katie Dooley 15:16 guess I could cover that in the new year. Right, get you back.
Preston Meyer 15:21 We've got Auggie voting of the forest. And also as an extension of that pretty much anything relating to agriculture. And then we've got zavio. So photo Vodoun of thunder
Katie Dooley 15:33 Guardium Leviosa, right,
Preston Meyer 15:37 like, you know, mine too. So in addition to being the voting of thunder, he's also responsible for justice. And then we've got Guth, a Vodoun of iron, and also of war. And then legba, sometimes called Papa legba, Vodoun of the unpredictable and fate and a variety of things attached to that. He's kind of like, the god of like, not everything else. But kind of that catch all title of an awful lot of things that aren't part of the other things are
Katie Dooley 16:11 just too hard to predict. Right.
Preston Meyer 16:16 So it's a kind of a cool set of seven siblings instead of three as are actually really quite common in a lot of other totally collections of gods,
Katie Dooley 16:25 especially as you get into older religions. Having things based off of the elements is super common. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So as Preston mentioned, the lewat are intermediaries between humans and MA who are bond you. And they will help you in exchange for ritual service. And yeah, all right. I just have a stroke, I just like don't know how to move into the next slide. So decease, voodoo priests, and priestesses may become lewat. Or you can have talismans or objects that can also become the law, surprisingly, similar to Shinto. Right, right, from the ritual service to who or what can become a spirit. I find it interesting, because I don't think they would have had any influence on each other, which is why I find it pretty confident that you're right. Right, which is why I find the similarities. Fascinating. Like, it's one thing to be like, oh, there's similarities in Judaism and Christianity.
Preston Meyer 17:28 Expect, right, but there's,
Katie Dooley 17:29 these are two cultures that, again, I assume have never or in the time of development would never have
Preston Meyer 17:36 well, once Atlantic Ocean stuff and once Pacific Ocean stuff. Yeah. And Shintoism I guess spread across the Pacific Ocean, about the same time that this voting tradition spread across the Atlantic Ocean, that didn't really have much time to mix. It's just kind of a, a cool way to look at and study primal religions, I guess,
Katie Dooley 18:01 maybe they're the ones who are right. Maybe, because they were both developed in a vacuum and they're the same.
Preston Meyer 18:09 I don't think anything's developed in a vacuum. And they're not the same, but they have similarities. Fine. But they're absolutely worth studying in much greater detail than what we're going to offer in this episode. And, like you mentioned before, most lower have been linked to Catholic saints, Papa legba, in his role of taking care of the keys to the spirit world is very often connected to St. Peter. I think that's pretty cool. Being the dude who holds the keys, the kingdom of heaven
Katie Dooley 18:46 to take over there. And then there's the Mbala, who is a serpent spirit, and he is linked to St. Patrick who notoriously chased all the snakes out of Ireland. What
Preston Meyer 18:57 an ironic connection there that seems a little bit weird. They would have heard the
Katie Dooley 19:01 story of St. Patrick's coat chasing the snakes out of Ireland. Oh, okay. He's killed the serpent.
Preston Meyer 19:08 Maybe, maybe that's how they swung it because when I initially read that I'm like, but one is when one is the serpent voting fella and the other one, like, celebrated for getting the snakes out of Ireland. Now I need to share the druid, however you want to look at it.
Katie Dooley 19:29 It was the druids that were never snakes.
Preston Meyer 19:33 But he also didn't get rid of the druids either. He converted many but druids that shouldn't
Katie Dooley 19:40 be a saint. I'm kidding. I mean, I know I wish I had looked deeper into Dunbar because maybe he's the king of the serpents and can control them. Maybe. And so then because St. Patrick can control the serpents and send them on their way. They were like Oh cool. I'm sure I'm
Preston Meyer 20:05 Vodoun theology is best described as monotheistic. Polylang Patrick, that's the new one, right? So we've talked about monotheism, worship of one single god, or well, not just the worship, but the belief in God. And then Polly Lautrec means that view worship many beings. And so that's basically how we look at the boat in tradition, that there is one Creator God. Of course, he said, Peace out, y'all can deal with the rest of the Vodoun and the laws. And so polymetric is that worship of all of those figures. So there's an awful lot of variety, people will latch on to a specific Vodoun or LOA that they find valuable to their worship, much like you see in the Catholic tradition, where people will hang on to a specific Saint for most of their interests, I guess, and then occasionally branch out to other saints when necessary for their specific needs relative to that saint, but people have patron saints and favorite saints. Same for the Voodoo tradition, my
Katie Dooley 21:18 viewers, St. St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
Preston Meyer 21:24 The lactation what a great miracle. What's interesting, though, is that the idea of this theological model goes a little bit deeper. Like we've talked about some traditions, they look one thing, and then you dig a little deeper, and it looks a little bit differently in the voting tradition. It's, it's kind of funky that because the Creator God is sometimes described as encompassing all things, which would lead us to a pantheist pen. In theistic conclusion, there is a distinct separation between the creature and the unapproachable creator. So it's not true pen and theism. It's kind of a an interesting and complicated distinction we see here. Like
Katie Dooley 22:16 it's you just splitting hairs, right? Did you know Preston, that voodoo practitioner prefer priestesses to priests contrary to most religions?
Preston Meyer 22:35 I had suspected it based on the way it's depicted in some of the more interesting popular media that I've consumed. But I didn't know that before I actually went and dug deep into this. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 22:47 And I guess I've definitely seen them. If you'd asked me prior to research in equivalence, but digging deeper. Yeah, I saw more on voodoo priestesses and voodoo priests. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 23:00 That's, it's kind of nifty that the idea of voodoo priestess would have actually been incredibly offensive to a lot of the colonists in the Americas.
Katie Dooley 23:13 Well, Catholicism you can't have a female priests. So Right.
Preston Meyer 23:17 But the idea that you have a powerful black woman up against the power of the white man, that was offensive to an awful lot of people. I mean, it still is, let's be real.
Katie Dooley 23:32 Gets the scary washing that it does. I think you're right. It's, it's absolutely racism. And these processes will perform regular family ceremonies like marriages, funerals and baptisms, just like a non voodoo priest. What, right?
Preston Meyer 23:52 It's kind of cool. It's, it was weird to me when I first saw that these voodoo priestesses performed baptisms. And then I remembered, oh, yeah, even Katie can perform a baptism and have it recognized by the Catholic Church. Really? Yeah. How do I do that? Well, first, you have to profess the faith in Christ and feel the need to perform the baptism, and then you're good to go. Oh, the Catholic Church acknowledges valid baptisms by pretty much anybody because they want as many Catholics as possible. Yeah. The exceptions, of course, are groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons. They don't like those groups for farming
Katie Dooley 24:38 or a Mormon. I mean, I guess, my belief in Christ and I'm not an atheist anymore, right?
Preston Meyer 24:46 If you're a temporary nondenominational Christian Oh
Katie Dooley 24:53 no, I'm phenomenal. I love that. In this moment. I believe in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Preston Meyer 25:00 I mean, it would be weird to have you perform a baptism. But if you felt the need to perform a baptism to, you know, accepted,
Katie Dooley 25:07 I can perform a baptism on behalf of the Sandlin out of fellowship. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 25:12 you can. Not that baptism is terribly important to this and Lynette is fellowship not yet.
Katie Dooley 25:23 This was a terrible tangent.
Preston Meyer 25:28 What's interesting is that Voodoo is more vulnerable to change than most other religious traditions. Because there's no single authoritative scripture or unifying leadership. It's just an oral tradition that passes from one generation to the next, and is deliberately adaptable to specific needs and situations. I think that's really fascinating. And so you'll see minor changes from one place to the next or one generation to the next. But for the most part, it's still something that you could recognize looking back as being a similar related tradition. I
Katie Dooley 26:05 think so. Yeah. And I think, you know, just knowing its history rooted in slavery, is that that's something they would want to keep recognizable, right, as part of that culture that survived that whole ordeal,
Preston Meyer 26:19 right? Well, it was originally syncretized. With with Catholicism, an awful lot of voodoo practitioners in America have also incorporated elements of Judaism and Hinduism In more recent years. Interesting.
Katie Dooley 26:31 Right? Did you find any specific practices that were incorporated? Not
Preston Meyer 26:36 specifically just other scholars saying this is a thing that I've noticed, and it's possible they're just like, This feels kind of flavored like, since I didn't find those specific notes. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 26:51 no, that's fine. We're gonna talk a little bit more about Baron, Zandi. Yeah. All right. Hey, it's a very good room. I believe you it there's a Yeah. Good. Brom. Great designed to Yeah, you can tell it's sudo inspired ROM.
Preston Meyer 27:10 Make sense with a name like that? Yep.
Katie Dooley 27:16 He's kind of the, I don't want to say most popular because in the religion, he's probably on par with anyone else. But sort of for outside observers of voodoo Baron Samedi would probably be the most recognizable spirit. Like he said, he guards the dead.
Preston Meyer 27:37 He takes the good. Those who have not displeased him back to Guinea and allows him to live in the paradise that is there. And if you've done something to offend Baron Samedi, then you would be left here to kind of suffer and potentially even end up as a zombie. We'll talk about a little bit later. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 28:03 Which is, again, where the zoo gets this like weird rap. But yeah, they absolutely believe in zombies, but not like the walking dead zombies. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 28:12 no, it's, it's kind of weird. And everything that we see in Baron Samedi, there are some that will attribute all of that to Papa legba. So it's things differ from one place to another not really that big of a deal.
Katie Dooley 28:30 All right. So if you were practicing your voodoo beliefs, what the heck do those look like? Oh, is it ritual sacrifices, kidding?
Preston Meyer 28:40 I mean, there's rituals, there are rituals, there are ritual sacrifices, and they're important, but they're not like the be all and end all defining feature of the religion. I think one of the most visible things that you can see in blue is the use of Vevey which are sometimes kind of abstract, sometimes more obvious, they're they're drawings, line drawings that are used as beacons during rituals that represent specific lower and they can look really cool so the
Katie Dooley 29:13 lower will prison possess these things as the presence in the ritual is the
Preston Meyer 29:20 belief until they move from that to a person right, just a thing that is
Katie Dooley 29:27 and these are drawn on the ground with usually some sort of white powder most commonly asked and cornmeal but it would depend on what you have on hand and where you are in the world. And yeah, we
Preston Meyer 29:37 got variety there for sure. Yeah. So animal sacrifices are used to give energy to the lower they take the life energy from the sacrificed animal, and that's used to rejuvenate and re energize the lower to whom it is offered. Way It sounds really foreign. But if you get through the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, that's not wildly different from what we see in the sacrifices offered at the temple,
Katie Dooley 30:12 and it's like a chicken, and then they eat it.
Preston Meyer 30:14 Yeah. Much like we see in the Jewish tradition. It's more of a holy barbeque situation where people share in the meal in most situations. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 30:25 it doesn't go to waste. It's, I mean, if you need to wrap your head around and think about praying before you eat dinner right now, you're just doing you just do a little more prep work. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 30:36 So I think that's kind of cool. These sacrifices are not used in casting dark spells or anything shady, because that's not what the religion is about.
Katie Dooley 30:47 No, there's really no not like Wicca where they really do believe in spell casting and magic. That's not where and like you said, it's not actually spooky, but that's where the okie that's not where the Kooky spooky and voodoo comes from? It comes from the possessions, the spirit possessions. I probably misunderstood that are definitely misunderstood. Definitely. But it is it is a very full. I mean, again, I'm an atheist. So it is a very foreign thing for me to you know, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and spirit possession and voodoo, but Christians are taken by the Holy Spirit and ended up rolling on the ground and speaking in tongues. So. Right. Yeah, so prime is different. Yeah. But I mean, for me, I'm like, Well, yeah, that's hard to wrap my head around. But yeah, depending on your even fairly mainstream Western religious practices isn't actually that out there. It's a different spirit. Or maybe it's the same spirit. And we just haven't all figured it out yet. Right.
Preston Meyer 31:52 So the the whole deal with possessions in the Voodoo tradition is actually really interesting to me. And they, the terminology is kind of interesting to a person who is being possessed is referred to as the horse. And the incident of possession is called mounting the horse. Kind of an interesting turn of phrase, I don't think this is universal, among all voodoo, but definitely seen in Creole voodoo.
Katie Dooley 32:20 Well, it's an interesting just just imagery to kind of put it into context. And like you said, I watch a whole bunch of YouTube videos on voodoo spirit possession, these people don't remember what's happened to them. So I kind of, even if it's not universal, I like that imagery of you, our blood vessel. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 32:39 You're not the the active participant. It's kind of interesting. And so low are specifically called to possess a person to bring a message or accomplish a task, sometimes performing business transactions, which seems a little bit weird. But that isn't actually crazy, because the God of Abraham is a covenant making God. So having somebody show up, make business transactions, still not that foreign. I will or sometimes they'll simply show up to receive worship, which is not too crazy. Sometimes, however, things get a little bit more complicated, possessed person could receive an unexpected lower, or even a sequence of several lower, which makes for an interesting day, or week, several days. Yeah, it's, there's no set time on how long these possessions can last. And this seems like it'd be a problem when, say the possessed person has social duties to perform. Yes,
Katie Dooley 33:44 um, I mean, that being said, I guess it depends on where you are in the world. Maybe if you're in Louisiana, it's a little different. But when in places like Haiti, where especially in the rural communities where Voodoo is that way of life, people would be like, oh, yeah, he's possessed by Allah. And they either like, wait it out, or get a priestess to intervene, or to figure out what the Spirit wants. But, you know, I think, yeah, this was your everyday life. And again, I I watched a lot of YouTube videos. Yeah, there was one where some guy's son was possessed. And he was just like, wandering around the town. And they're like, well, but I get the priest involved now, because it's been a minute. But
Preston Meyer 34:27 yeah, there are ways to artificially end a possession, to say, hey, it's time for you to go back home lower. There's also ways that people will act to prevent possessions that are unwanted. Usually it means putting something in your hair or your head dress or your hat or whatever. Wax is used, actually, pretty often, in this way. I thought that was kind of nifty. But
Katie Dooley 34:52 I also saw sort of the opposite to that. Were people that the spirit has a preferred color. and they would know that so they these whole like houses and villages are painted a certain color to tempt to encourage a specific law to come. So I searched freeze painted blue and houses painted blue and so that whatever spirit they want to come to visit is more likely to come visit and she knows that's her place. She's welcomed there, right female spirit in this case,
Preston Meyer 35:24 a lot of work goes into this. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 35:27 I mean, it goes until all the religions, right,
Preston Meyer 35:32 like Wicca, as we talked about where people are really not too keen on dividing good magic and bad magic, or black magic from white magic. It's just magic is the thing. It's the tool not doesn't have a will of its own or a moral value in the Voodoo tradition, that they feel the same way if they don't like distinctions between good and bad magic. But there is a thing that's called red magic, which is named because of the color of the eyes when a person is possessed by a malicious spirit. I thought that was kind of nifty. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So it's not like any moral quality thrown on the color red, apart from the malicious spirit happens to cause this thing in a human's eyes, which there's a lot of things that can turn eyes red. So there's no real moral value put on that red color either. Yeah. Apart from the fact that it's a warning of a malicious spirit.
Katie Dooley 36:36 Yeah. And I was I was thinking while you were talking that, you know, this good versus bad or white versus black magic, like, in in, you know, Western Abrahamic religion. We talk about God's will is God's will, whether you agree with it or not. You know, and I disagree with some of this. But you know, someone gets cancer and they say, well, that's God's will. That person saying that doesn't go cancer is bad. They're just saying that's God's decision. Right? Or they're not saying God is bad, excuse me that that's just God's decision. That's his bigger plan for you. So same thing, if you're kind of going, where does this fit or how do I make sense of, but this feels bad or wrong? That's a parallel. I was thinking about. Sure. Okay, fair, parallel. Excellent. Okay. Just like in Shinto, altars are a big deal. And funnily enough, they always include images of the Catholic saints, even if that's I mean, I guess it would relate to the spirit that they're trying to invoke, but it's not like they're saying, hey, St. Patrick, come for a visit. You're trying to bring the spirit that was synchronized with St. Patrick Dunbar in this case, but I just think it's funny you see all these like Catholic prayer candles and statues and right. That's not really it at all.
Preston Meyer 38:04 It's, it's an interesting combination of faith traditions, for sure. In addition to saints, and the more common LOA and the vodien ancestors are often revered and added to the list of LOA and are sometimes invoked in various ceremonies as well. Like if your grandma was a great sorceress or a priestess, depending on your tradition, you might want to have her come and help you with something specifically.
Katie Dooley 38:33 And this I actually found really interesting because it's so different than North America is that in Haiti, graveyards are actually family owned, because that's how important a graveyard is in their rituals, whether that is for invoking a family member or accessing Baron Samedi. graveyards are huge in their rituals, so they're just like, privately owned.
Preston Meyer 38:55 I think it was pretty nifty.
Katie Dooley 38:57 I mean, I don't want to own a graveyard.
Preston Meyer 39:01 It's I feel like an awful lot of people think it's weird until you realize how many people even among Christians, and atheists want to be buried on their own homestead?
Katie Dooley 39:15 I guess so I just like, and maybe this is partially North American culture and partially the state of the world, but like, people move around so much, like grandparents or burden, Saskatchewan. And we're not in Saskatchewan. We're in Alberta, and who knows where I'll end up when I met that, you know, half of my life so to have a privately owned family graveyard is like it's it feels like more of an inconvenience. But, you know, North America, far more affluent than Haiti, unfortunately. So we're a lot more mobile and yeah, so I can see why. If you're kinda staying where you grew up that it would make sense, but yeah, I know. I'm not shipping bodies to Saskatchewan, right? My notes say this is where voodoo can get kind of spooky is that human skulls can be included in some of the altars. And like I said, altars are very common to be found in graveyards, since this is where spirits like to hang out. But not this is not exclusive. Some people have their own home shrines or there's community trends or altars as well so that you're not just always gonna find people in graveyards in Haiti.
Preston Meyer 40:37 Yeah, so the idea of fetishism. And I feel like we posted on Instagram about what a fetish is, but I'm going to restate it here because I think it's a great point to illustrate that a fetish is not not an obsession or a kink. A fetish is an object that brings you power. Within shamanic traditions like voodoo, a fetish is a necessary tool in a charm. Much like in your sex life where a fetish is what gives you the power associated with arousal, which without which you might be impotent. Oh. So a fetish gives one power. So if we get pedantic, having a foot fetish sounds relatively innocent. Owning a fetish. Sounds a bit creepy.
Katie Dooley 41:29 I do.
Preston Meyer 41:33 Do I own a foot fetish? No? No, okay.
Katie Dooley 41:38 I don't know anyone with a foot fetish?
Preston Meyer 41:40 I do. I bet you do know somebody who has a foot fetish. But it's most people don't talk about their fetishes and play company. But I feel like it's a lot more common than most people expect.
Katie Dooley 41:59 So on the topic of, there's like, a rabbit's foot is a fetish.
Preston Meyer 42:04 Or a rabbit's foot is a foot fetish
Katie Dooley 42:07 that you own. That you've put luck on.
Preston Meyer 42:11 Yeah, if it brings you luck, if it's a talisman or a magical artifact of any kind. That's not a non fetish. It is a fetish.
Katie Dooley 42:24 At all malarious right now. So bad.
Preston Meyer 42:32 And an awful lot of manmade objects are believed to have supernatural powers in the Voodoo tradition.
Katie Dooley 42:38 Yeah, and this is just like in Shinto, where spirit could possess basically anything as well. Yeah. Um, during rituals at the altars, offerings of food, like recent animal sacrifices and drink which is typically rum. I think that has to do something with the geography are offered to the spirits.
Preston Meyer 42:59 Absolutely. Pouring out for the departed pour one out for whoever is collecting.
Katie Dooley 43:04 Yeah, one for me. One for the spirit. One for me. One for the spirit. Right. Okay, so when everyone's wanting to hear is about voodoo dolls. And I was so excited to learn about voodoo dolls. And then I was grossly disappointed because they don't exist. Pretty
Preston Meyer 43:25 much. Yeah. voodoo dolls
Katie Dooley 43:29 do not exist. It's like a karate chop.
Preston Meyer 43:33 Doesn't exist. You trying to tell me that? There's no such thing as a karate Joey. No, it's
Katie Dooley 43:37 a judo chop. That doesn't exist. Yeah, Judo is all throwing, isn't it? Yeah. Pinning. No, but when I was a kid, my daddy school Judo that needs to go Judo chop. And then I learned that due to chops aren't real. Voodoo Doll so Andy there Santa.
Preston Meyer 43:54 Hey, Santa Claus is real. He's just been dead for a long time and deliver.
Katie Dooley 44:03 On this horrible tangent voodoo dolls don't exist. They come from English folklore. I'll flashback to last episode. And they're actually called puppets. Puppets are used exactly how culture has made the voodoo doll to look out where you represent the human and you cast magic on it. The idea of the voodoo doll is it's anti black sentiment. Basically they're trying to make voodoo look like a scary world religion and dehumanize it but there's it doesn't voodoo dolls don't exist at all. Like there's nothing even close that I can be like, Oh, it was taken from this. Nope. Only the puppets, which are English folklore are
Preston Meyer 44:47 sure I did find some voodoo doll ish things in the Voodoo tradition in my researches, but they were not meant to be used to hurt
Katie Dooley 44:57 people do not stick pins in them to get Do people body aches? No,
Preston Meyer 45:01 that's not it at all. They're pretty much exclusively used to draw positive attentions of the spirits to the intended person. And from my observation, they're not super common, but I've seen some work that says that they are real thing. Oh, interesting.
Katie Dooley 45:20 Everything I read said, No, you've been fooled.
Preston Meyer 45:24 Maybe the dude I was reading up on, I had been fooled. Maybe.
Katie Dooley 45:29 There you go. So like he said, All this making wudu to look like a scary devil worshipping dangerous. Religion is basically racism.
Preston Meyer 45:39 Yeah, absolutely. It's not basically how can we villainize the black? Absolutely. Yeah. How
Katie Dooley 45:43 do we make them other?
Preston Meyer 45:45 Yeah. But
Katie Dooley 45:47 that being said, they do believe in zombies.
Preston Meyer 45:50 They do. It's interesting, most of what we see as the zombies apart from of course, the more popular science fiction zombies that we've been seeing in the last couple of decades. Most of them are kind of tied to the Haitian tradition. But that's not to say that they didn't exist in the West African tradition, either. The zombie is the Congo Bantu word for God. And new zoom B is a Congo, Congo Bantu word for fetish. And so the zombie that we see is in between, but part of both worlds, it's kind of interesting that it's an object with the divine power connected to it. And they are basically slaves to a book whore, or a sorcerer, they have no personality, or spirit or will of their own. And they are just mindless, kind of like we saw in Dawn of the Dead, which is nice and simple and slow and dumb.
Katie Dooley 46:56 I mean, I saw the report that basically, it's like being in a coma, you can be that kind of zombie to where you appear dead. And they, honestly, they probably aren't good. But they believe that they're still like this life force in them. And they have no control. So
Preston Meyer 47:16 yeah, and sometimes they are walking around. And those freak people out real bad. But there's also the opposite side, where a second kind of zombie is a disembodied spirit. And both of these are terrible fates that are meant to be avoided by faithful vodien practitioners. And the threat of being turned into a zombie was used to keep patients slaves from killing themselves to escape their terrible slave drivers, who are also usually slaves themselves. So life in Haiti before the revolution really sucked. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 48:00 And was that to just like, preserve the population and the culture? Yeah.
Preston Meyer 48:06 It's awful. Yeah. Cuz
Katie Dooley 48:08 I mean, they're discouraging you from killing yourself to be a slave? Yeah.
Preston Meyer 48:16 Yeah, it's awful. And what I thought was really interesting. And we went looking up into some some law books. And article 246 of the Haitian Criminal Code, which was established in 1864, dictates that turning somebody into a zombie counts as attempted murder. What I thought that was really interesting that it is attempted murder rather than outright murder. So I think they get some credit for knowing the difference. Because it's hard to say that a walking body is dead, but you've definitely messed him up. Absolutely. There's been a fair bit of research looking into how these zombies are actually made. And it's a few chemical compounds that basically make you just mentally malleable, like super easy to control and docile and slow and some details kind of line up with a stroke. It's pretty messed up. But there are some elements that they haven't been able to really figure out what's going on with it. And the morality of the issue is actually a problem. Because part of one of these compounds is made from the brains of a buried child. We can go ahead and be testing that.
Katie Dooley 49:44 Yeah, that's interesting. And I I wouldn't be surprised and I don't know this for sure. This is just Katie talking out of her ass. I wouldn't be surprised if some of that is just the faith of it. You know what I mean? That
Preston Meyer 50:00 frogs eyes.
Katie Dooley 50:01 Yeah, right that if you you're I mean a placebo right? If you believe that somebody's tried to turn you into a zombie and then there's chemical chemicals already that are interfering with your your brain chemicals. And you have this belief for your entire life on in voodoo and zombies and spirits. impressionable is not the word I want to use because I think that's unfair, but it's the best word I have for what I'm trying to describe.
Preston Meyer 50:29 Yeah, there's a lot of social reinforcement. That's the existence of these zombies. If you if you are told, and are in a state where you're going to believe that you are dead and a zombie, you're going to behave that way. And people who see you and know that this has happened to you are going to treat you this way. There's no discouraging it. It's hugely problematic, not that it's a common everyday practice. The people who make zombies are generally hated by their communities at large.
Katie Dooley 51:05 Because it's not this is not a smiled upon practice. No, zombies is bad. Yeah, no matter what tradition you're in zombies are bad.
Preston Meyer 51:16 But it's, it's fascinating that it's such a visible part of Haitian folklore, and also visible in other parts of the world as well. Absolutely. On a lighter note, I think it's interesting to note that today, most voodoo practitioners in the Americas at least, and the Caribbean, have been baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. In 1993, Pope John Paul the second actually spoke favorably about the magical tradition that has become so tightly bound to the church, which of course was spoken out against by an awful lot of people who don't like the Pope and Catholicism. Some of the more American traditions of Christianity are like, It's proof that the Pope is terrible. And the Pope is a Satanist in disguise, which is nonsense.
Katie Dooley 52:06 You don't believe in Satan? I mean, I guess the Pope would believe
Preston Meyer 52:11 he does. But the people that he's offering favor to don't. He visited the voting practitioners in Benin in West Africa, and praised their faith and told them that being Catholic does not require them to betray or abandon their voting traditions.
Katie Dooley 52:29 How Hannah theistic have him, right?
Preston Meyer 52:32 Except he is definitely speaking from a point of, Hey, y'all need to become Catholic.
Katie Dooley 52:39 Can you keep that but you gotta become Catholic, right? Yeah.
Preston Meyer 52:42 He is saying this fully aware that syncretism has been a thing in their tradition for so long, that it's just like, hey, that God that y'all talk about? worship Jesus. JC, right. And I think it's kind of interesting. While there are bad actors in voodoo traditions, like the book horror Sorcerer's that we mentioned before, Voodoo is not about casting spells on people, or hurting people. That's not the deal. You're not going to make friends hurting.
Katie Dooley 53:16 As long, right?
Preston Meyer 53:18 The voodoo tradition is about healing. I think that's kind of the best takeaway from all of this. On the small scale, it's about healing individuals in times of need, being able to call on papa legba, or Baron Samedi when somebody is near death, and bless them and have them turnout. Okay. Pretty cool. Pretty positive stuff. On the larger scale. Voodoo is about healing a nation and in some respects the whole world. It's, it's born to us in a place of pain, carried over by the slavery and some terrible abuses, but it's all about becoming better and healing
Katie Dooley 54:02 like that. That was a really hopeful message.
Preston Meyer 54:07 Yeah, I can't take credit for it. That's just what I've gleaned from my studies. All
Katie Dooley 54:11 right. I'll take credit for it, then. You're not going to do it. Oh, well. All right. Well, I really enjoy learning about voodoo. Right. And if you enjoyed learning about voodoo, you should check out our Discord. And hop into the conversation that we're inevitably going to have about voodoo. And you should check out our Patreon so that we can keep producing great content like today's episode, or if a subscription model is not your thing, you can always check out our Spreadshirt and buy some sweet sweet holy watermelon merch.
Preston Meyer 54:51 Thanks for joining us. Peace be with you. | |||
| 28 Mar 2022 | Where Did You Go? | 00:45:55 | |
A lot of great pantheons have disappeared as Christianity swept the world. Katie and Preston explore the details around the disappearance of the imperial and tribal traditions of Europe and North-Eastern Africa. Is it reasonable to expect monotheism to supersede polytheism? Is there really a scheme for the evolution of religion? Life is a lot more complicated than restricting knowledge to empirical evidence. In a world with deep-fake technology, is it even fair to say that 'seeing is believing' anymore? We will always rely on trusted testimony, but the question remains: who do you trust? An awful lot of people have stopped believing that gods live on Mount Olympus--people have been up there plenty, but for those who have revived the faith, they rely on a less literal interpretation of the simple claim. New voices are bringing new mysticism to old traditions. Magic is renewing, and polytheism is being revived in places where it was formerly abandoned. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
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[00:00:10] Katie Dooley: Special guests today, everyone Paige the dog is in on this recording.
[00:00:16] Preston Meyer: After a traumatic day at the vet.
[00:00:18] Katie Dooley: A traumatic day at the vet. Yeah, that's not your water, though. That's my water. Yes. Um, she's also very interested in our topic today, Preston.
[00:00:28] Preston Meyer: Is she? That's good. I hope everyone else is too.
[00:00:34] Katie Dooley: Today on the...
[00:00:36] Both Speakers: Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[00:00:38] Katie Dooley: We're talking about why and how these religions, these spent the last two and a half months talking about died out. So everything from the Greeks to the Celtics to the Norse to the Egyptians. Um... yeah, that's what we're talking about today.
[00:00:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, so there's a popular theory among religious scholars that there's kind of a natural progression to the growth and eventual death of religious traditions, that it usually starts with magic and then evolves into polytheism, then evolves into monotheism, and then just kind of gives out and is replaced by science. And I don't know if we really have enough examples of that sort of progression to validate the claims of this pattern. It feels a little bit weird. We're going to look into that as we go on. Um, and also when you say that magic gives way to all of these other models that also eventually disappear, that's kind of a pretty rude thing to tell a Wiccan that their tradition is too primitive and on its way out.
[00:01:49] Katie Dooley: Well, then we get into the debate of what even is magic. You know, is it any pseudoscience? Because there's a lot of people who have pseudoscience-y jobs.
[00:01:59] Preston Meyer: Well, and we keep coming up with new, weirder pseudosciences.
[00:02:04] Katie Dooley: Right. So weird.
[00:02:07] Preston Meyer: That's it's a mad world we live in. And I have a problem with this model that so many people are convinced is just the cat's nipples.
[00:02:17] Katie Dooley: Wow. Maybe we just Frigga would have like that. Um, Frigga, not Frigga. Freya.
[00:02:23] Preston Meyer: Frigga. It was Frigga.
[00:02:25] Katie Dooley: Was that the cat...?
[00:02:26] Preston Meyer: I'm pretty sure.
[00:02:27] Katie Dooley: No, I think it's Freya. They're debatably the same. So, um, maybe we'll just have this endless cycle of magic and religion and never, never offload to science.
[00:02:42] Preston Meyer: Uh, that would be really odd... I hope that science does continue to grow in popularity. We've got way too many people who deny science generally, categorically as a rule. I know that every one of our listeners knows somebody who fits into that camp, and it's really frustrating.
[00:03:09] Katie Dooley: Yeah, totally. I found this quote in an article from The Guardian when I was doing my research on how to religions die and the author of the article, Andrew Brown says "There is a sense in which I can believe in Thor without this for a moment meaning what it would to a believer. So blasphemy can kill deities and the measure of its success is that it comes not to be blasphemous at all." And I thought that was really interesting. Where the Thor movies are not blasphemous, but if you did the same thing to Jesus, it would be.
[00:03:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:03:51] Katie Dooley: So ergo, the Norse religion is well and truly dead minus a few neopagans.
[00:04:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Pretty much.
[00:04:03] Katie Dooley: So I thoguht that was an interesting litmus test, if you will, of if a religion is still thriving.
[00:04:10] Preston Meyer: Right. Yeah, that's pretty solid, I like it. All right. So going back to this idea that there's a progression from magic to polytheism to monotheism into science. I want to look at a few things that look like they may be examples that validate this pattern claim. Naturally, I think we should start with Judeo-Christian monotheism. It's the thing that most of us are most familiar with. We know that anciently Judaism was either polytheistic or henotheistic. It's kind of tricky since we're mostly looking at archeological artifacts, but we do know that in Israel, before the exile into Babylon, there were a lot of gods worshiped in the land. There is a distinction between El Elyon and Yahweh, and there, of course, had a consort that, depending on the source and the and where they're finding their artifacts, this consort belongs to one or the other. Her name is Asherah, the mother goddess. And there's other minor gods as well. And so there's definitely multiple gods, but whether or not there's a relationship with them that's henotheistic or polytheistic is hard to tell from archeology.
[00:05:32] Katie Dooley: From 5000 years ago.
[00:05:33] Preston Meyer: Right. And so we rely on the biblical text, which of course was edited post-exile to be "We're strictly monotheistic now!" Tricky business. Um, and of course, the bulk of Christianity claims a Jewish origin and also claims monotheism. Mostly. We've talked about how this is tricky. And so that seems like honestly, the only strong basis for this model that people are really sticking to is that the Western culture, as we know it had an origin in polytheism, is more or less monotheistic and is giving way to science. And I can't think of any other really good specific example of that progression.
[00:06:21] Katie Dooley: No, I mean I, um. We've had this conversation. I just finished a really, really big book by Edward Rutherford called Sarum, and it's a historical fiction novel. But his citations... It was I listened to it. It was an audiobook. I saw citations for like an hour and a half long, like it's very well researched, um, and put into a historical fiction format, but and so Sarum is the entire history of the island of the United Kingdom.
[00:06:53] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah.
[00:06:54] Katie Dooley: Like, it literally starts like in the Stone age as this book and goes all the way to the 1800s, which is why it's 40 hours long. But to this point, they start with worshiping the sun God and goddess in the Stone Ages. And then you get the druids and then they go to Christianity and Druids, you would say would, you know, would fall under magic. It's the opposite.
[00:07:19] Preston Meyer: Most magical traditions that we look at do have at least one God.
[00:07:25] Katie Dooley: Yeah I was going to say that as well.
[00:07:27] Preston Meyer: The polytheism doesn't disappear with the magic, but it does complicate the model.
[00:07:36] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And I, I mean, I'm no historian, but I don't know any civilization that was purely based in magic.
[00:07:45] Preston Meyer: Just magic with no gods. I can't think of any.
[00:07:48] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:07:48] Preston Meyer: Even with all the research that we've been doing, I can't think of any at all.
[00:07:52] Katie Dooley: Harry Potter. That's not real.
[00:07:56] Preston Meyer: That's the trick. Fiction, you can come up with anything you want.
[00:08:01] Katie Dooley: Even the Lord of the Rings has deities. So yeah. There's... Again, if we're wrong, please put it in our Discord. But there's no one, no civilization at the top of my head that just dabbled in magic. Exclusive of a higher power.
[00:08:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:08:17] Katie Dooley: Anyway. Anyway.
[00:08:20] Preston Meyer: Um, since we got Egyptian religious tradition fresh in our minds, if you've been listening to our episodes as they come out Atueism I thought.
[00:08:30] Katie Dooley: You should be. Sorry you were saying.
[00:08:34] Preston Meyer: Atenism is actually kind of interesting and it kind of looks like it might have almost followed this pattern. So Egyptian monotheism. It's such a weird idea when you look at what we know about the popular religion of the of the region. But it may have started out as henotheism, so it does kind of lend itself into this idea. Uh, partway through his rule Amenhotep the fourth announced that he was changing things up. He announced that Aten was the head of the National pantheon. Aten is kind of interesting. Most scholars just assume that it's another form of Ra because of its association with the sun. Even the name Aten is usually thought to mean just the disc, as in the sun disc in the sky. So if his people saw it that way, then it wouldn't really be a big deal. They would have just been like, yeah, it's Ra, okay. But I suspect that's not the case and it'll become obvious why in a minute. So the Pharaoh changed his name from Amenhotep to Akhenaten to recognize, hey, I'm fully devoted to this one god. His name previously had the name Amun in it, which was a different aspect of the Sun God. So this was a meaningful change for him.
[00:10:06] Katie Dooley: Wow. Yeah. Changing your name is always a big deal. That's why I didn't do it.
[00:10:11] Preston Meyer: Fair enough. After a little while, Akhenaten, the pharaoh, banned all worship of the old gods. This is a big deal for a country.
[00:10:24] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And we'll see more examples of that as we go on.
[00:10:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And then luckily for the nation, this only lasted until his son Tutankhaten reversed everything and changed his name to Tutankhamun. King Tut, the famous boy king. In fact, there was a time, probably only 20 years ago, where that was the only Egyptian pharaoh that most people could name, unless they were Bible readers and could name Ramses .
[00:10:57] Katie Dooley: Fair, I mean, if you put me on the spot. Yeah.
[00:11:01] Preston Meyer: King Tut and Ramses, if you can name more. You are an Egyptology nerd.
[00:11:06] Katie Dooley: Oh. You're an Egyptologist. You actually have your degree at that point. Well done,you.
[00:11:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah, so in the 1900s, scholars like Hugh Nibley and Sigmund Freud connected this short-lived religious phenomenon directly to the Israelite religious tradition in Egypt, which I thought was kind of interesting that this may not have been a local thing, but a religious tradition brought in from outside of Egypt. It's tricky and complicated. Hugh Nibley and Sigmund Freud are actually on opposite ends of how it was connected to the Israelites, but it's all still pretty interesting. There are a couple of different issues that I've seen scholars have with this idea. The strongest kickbacks I've seen are questions of the timeline. Or there's also a handful of armchair scholars who just refuse to believe that Moses was even a real person. And if Moses isn't real, then there's no reason to even have Israel in Egypt. Tricky scholarly stuff, right?
[00:12:12] Katie Dooley: For things that are so old, you can't prove it.
[00:12:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we've got stories. And the great thing about stories is you can either say, yeah, they're true or no, they're not, and you can do that pretty freely. Um, but since Atenism was terribly unpopular and very short-lived, there isn't really a lot outlining it for us. We know a little bit about their sacrifices, and that's almost it.
[00:12:41] Katie Dooley: This is the episode and Atenism right here. Last ten minutes of talking. Yeah, that's it, we're done.
[00:12:47] Preston Meyer: There's there's not a lot more to it. And so looking at Atenism I don't... Like it might fit well into that model of magic, polytheism, monotheism. It didn't get to science because they were the people largely reverted back to polytheism very quickly. But there's also that trick of if it was an external influence, you can't call it a natural progression from one form to the next. It was a replacement deal.
[00:13:16] Katie Dooley: Yes, and I know we're nowhere near the end of the episode, but I feel like my thesis is somewhere along the lines of that this is not a linear path.
[00:13:26] Preston Meyer: No, not so much.
[00:13:28] Katie Dooley: I mean, we don't know what's going to happen in the next 50, 60, hundred years, but some of these countries that are predominantly atheist thinking off the top of my head of Scandinavia, they might pick up a new religion or Christianity might make a comeback, like we don't know. Like they...
[00:13:47] Preston Meyer: We can't know the future that well.
[00:13:48] Katie Dooley: Also just the I mean, obviously I lean towards science and atheism, but... They're going to be around for thousands more years, thousands of more years to think that this is like their final state.
[00:14:04] Preston Meyer: Well, realistically, we've always had people who doubted the existence of the gods. And among those there was almost always at least somebody saying, you know what? I am so sure that these gods aren't real. But these traditions last anyway.
[00:14:24] Katie Dooley: I think we'll all be together forever in this confusing relationship of religion.
[00:14:31] Preston Meyer: Probably.
[00:14:33] Katie Dooley: Which is why we need to learn to get along people.
[00:14:35] Preston Meyer: Right? So and there's I did look up just broadly a survey of all monotheistic traditions throughout history. And there's a good handful of primal religions, little small native religions all over the planet that a lot of people keep calling monotheistic. And they're not a lot of them are henotheistic.
[00:15:01] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say...
[00:15:05] Preston Meyer: Um, and of the ones that are monotheistic, they've always been monotheistic. There's no evolution evidence at all. But of course, their records may be incomplete and maybe they were polytheistic beforehand, but those are just guesses that would be forced upon them by outsiders that I don't think could be legitimized. It's kind of frustrating.
[00:15:31] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Then we have animism. It definitely doesn't get covered a lot in academic discussion. Animism is common... It was common among underdeveloped civilizations. Primitive civilizations. It is actually the foundation of the Egyptian tradition. With all these animal-headed gods.
[00:15:56] Preston Meyer: Right? But they weren't just animal-headed. They were. They were originally animals. Wild animals interacted with people, and then people made offerings to those animals and/or made deals with the spirits that controlled those animals. So the Egyptian gods were, as far as I can tell, really likely exclusively animal or human, until after generations of ritual representation within the temple mystery schools where a priest mage would wear a headdress bearing the skull, either embalmed or painted of the animal being represented.
[00:16:35] Katie Dooley: Well, that makes a lot of sense if you think of the pairings of the animals with what the attributes of the god are.
[00:16:41] Preston Meyer: For sure.
[00:16:42] Katie Dooley: It makes perfect sense that they observe these animals behaviors. The one that stands out now I can't remember is the jackal.
[00:16:50] Preston Meyer: Anubis.
[00:16:51] Katie Dooley: Anubis, right. So if you feed a jackal, they're not going to eat the dead people's bodies, right?
[00:16:56] Preston Meyer: Why would you work for bad food when you're receiving good food?
[00:17:01] Katie Dooley: Um, therefore, you want your body to be whole into the afterlife. So you give something to your local friendly jackals. Your body will go whole into the afterlife. Makes sense to me.
[00:17:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So I think animism is actually really interesting. And there are a good handful of scholars who have done a lot of really good work in that field, but it's not really addressed a lot when you're looking at how religious societies develop.
[00:17:31] Katie Dooley: Part of the reasons religions ebb and flow is the function of religion in society. And if it's not needed, which we're starting to see, overall religion worldwide is declining, though sometimes it doesn't feel like it.
[00:17:48] Preston Meyer: Uh, it's a religious people are getting louder, for sure,
[00:17:52] Katie Dooley: Fewer But louder. Um, so the ultimate pursuit of most religious traditions is to make sense of the world. Um, we've also talked in the past about organizing society and people. So, as Preston mentioned with the animism, many gods are personifications of natural phenomena, and understanding them encourages life-preserving behavior. So this is why everyone worships the sun in some capacity.
[00:18:19] Preston Meyer: You gotta pray for it to come back every summer.
[00:18:21] Katie Dooley: It's really important.
[00:18:22] Preston Meyer: Every morning.
[00:18:24] Katie Dooley: Right? Life would suck without the sun. There would actually be no life without the sun.
[00:18:30] Preston Meyer: Correct.
[00:18:31] Katie Dooley: That's a scientific fact. Wrapped in religion.
[00:18:34] Preston Meyer: So sun worship is scientifically validated.
[00:18:38] Katie Dooley: Oh, dear. Settle down.
[00:18:41] Preston Meyer: If you use both the word scientifically and validated loosely.
[00:18:47] Katie Dooley: Many gods are memories of ancestors, rulers, teachers. We talked about this a million years ago, it feels, in our worship episode. And understanding these people, guides followers to safety and knowledge. And when you venerate a person, it tells you that their teachings are really, really important and you should listen. As opposed to just your mom telling you something, right?
[00:19:11] Preston Meyer: You can get mad at your mom and stop listening. Getting mad at a figure that you don't get to interact with happens less. Not that it doesn't happen.
[00:19:21] Katie Dooley: Regardless... Most polytheistic religions combine the two the personification of nature and the ancestor worship. There are myths and religions are also used to explain the origin of things. In the beginning...
[00:19:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we got myths for the origins of humanity. The Greeks had that fun myth about the origin of spiders.
[00:19:47] Katie Dooley: The one about ejaculating water.
[00:19:48] Preston Meyer: Right? All kinds of really great stories on where things came from.
[00:19:53] Katie Dooley: Very creative, very creative.
[00:19:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:19:59] Katie Dooley: And most religions discuss what happens to us when we die. Um, so again, this is just to help people organize their lives, and the world and society. And so we can see again, in societies where religion is declining, we don't need religion to help us organize things anymore.
[00:20:18] Preston Meyer: Right and sometimes we've got things that we just don't feel the need to explain. If you don't exist anymore after you're dead, you don't need an explanation beyond that. It's fairly simple. Of course, there are exceptions to the cosmological function of religion. There are plenty of examples of religions that exist just to gain control over people or to gain personal power. Scientology is a great example.
[00:20:47] Katie Dooley: I was going to say danger cult, okay. If you want to call it Scientology. I agree with you.
[00:20:56] Preston Meyer: And there's, there's loads of examples of these dangerous religious traditions and it's frustrating to to suss out the difference sometimes.
[00:21:09] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. And then I wrote a couple points on religious violence with the attempt to exterminate a religious group. I couldn't find any that were successful, which I guess is cool? And I actually couldn't find a lot of examples. I did read a little bit around the Buddhist being run out of India. Buddhism started in India it's a very minor religion there now. Um, and then of course, more recently, the Crusades, there were lots of crusades. That's probably an entire episode on its own, but it was basically predominantly Christians killing Muslims to spread Christianity.
[00:21:50] Preston Meyer: And vice versa, and Muslims killing Christians to spread Islam.
[00:21:54] Katie Dooley: All right.
[00:21:55] Preston Meyer: But for the most part, it was, hey, we need to take back the Holy Land from the Muslims.
[00:22:00] Katie Dooley: Well, when you hear the term the Crusades, you hear the Christian connotation. But you're right, everyone's been trying to kill everyone. And then even more recently, of course, the Holocaust, which killed far too many Jewish people. And it was only recently that the Jewish population recovered, like in the last, I think, what, 5 or 6 years the Jewish population is now what it was pre-Holocaust. So while they didn't. Kill off the Jewish population. There have been Jews around the world since the 1940s. They did put a big dent in it.
[00:22:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah. All right. So looking again at how some of these religions that we've been talking about have successfully been wiped away, mostly it involves Christianity.
[00:22:53] Katie Dooley: Good old J.C..
[00:22:55] Preston Meyer: Uh, Christianity enforces strict adherence to monotheism in most situations. Most traditions don't really want to talk about the Trinity today, but there will come a time. It doesn't really allow for a lot of syncretic amalgamation like we saw among the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, but we'll talk more about that later, too, that there is a little bit of syncretic work going on. Part of the problem is that these ancient polytheistic religions were very syncretic. They were cool with Jesus. If you say that you have another God, cool, let's talk about them. But the Christians weren't very cool with sharing that light.
[00:23:38] Katie Dooley: So there's a reason monogamy and monotheism start with the same prefix.
[00:23:45] Preston Meyer: Yes. Just one.
[00:23:49] Katie Dooley: It's just one forever. One dick for life.
[00:23:54] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:23:57] Katie Dooley: Preston's very uncomfortable with that comment. I'm so sorry.
[00:23:59] Preston Meyer: The Christian God did want an exclusive relationship. "No other gods before me" very often quoted part of the Old Testament. That's really the deal.
[00:24:12] Katie Dooley: So we're gonna get into each of the five that we've talked about over the last few months and what happened and dates and people and events, but it's really hard to pin a solid date down, um, because so many of these had small regional traditions that kept going, um, after the urban centers were Christianized and Syncreticism allowed a blending of traditions, um, old traditions with new traditions. So it was a very gradual Christianization of the world. And then there's always the did any of these really die out? That kind of comes back to my Thor point at the beginning. But also we have, you know, records that there have always been small pockets of these pagans. Basically forever. And then with the internet, they get even more popular.
[00:25:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. All right. So let's start with the Greeks, just like we did a couple months ago. We know that there was this strong Polytheistic tradition. Don't know why I blanked on the word for a second. I guess I've said it too many times.
[00:25:17] Katie Dooley: We've only been talking about it for three months.
[00:25:20] Preston Meyer: Uh. All right. So. Interestingly enough, there's this fellow named Xenophanes of Colophon who was a Greek thinker, and he just didn't really believe in the popular pantheon. Uh, and he said a few things that looked vaguely monotheistic sometimes, if you're inclined to interpret him that way. Kind of tricky business. And though, of course, there were a lot of other Greek philosophers and even oracles eventually started talking about a sort of pantheism behind the Olympians. So the trick with this is that it's I. I'm just not inclined to think that it's a fully naturally Greek phenomenon, because it all happened after exposure to Judeo-Christian monotheism. Which kind of undercuts the homegrownness of the idea.
[00:26:22] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I'm picking up what you're laying down. So for the decline of the Greek and Roman religions, I've actually lumped them together Bbecause one led to the other.
[00:26:38] Preston Meyer: Well, and in Rome and under the Roman Empire, they basically were one lump by the time that they disappeared, they were one lump.
[00:26:47] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So the the Roman Republic conquered Greece in 146 BCE, which led to the synchronization of their pantheons. So already the Greek, I mean, I'm sure there are still people who called, um, Jupiter, Zeus and...
[00:27:04] Preston Meyer: Oh, absolutely. If you spoke Greek, it was Zeus. It doesn't matter whose god it was but if you were Roman, it was Jupiter, no matter who we belong to.
[00:27:12] Katie Dooley: But because of this event, their declines are now the same. So their traditions came roughly to an end in the ninth century, when the last believers were converted to Christianity. Constantine the First was a Roman emperor and the first of the Roman emperors to convert to Christianity. In 313 CE the Edict of Milan was passed, which allowed Christians to live relatively peacefully in the empire.
[00:27:41] Preston Meyer: Well that's nice.
[00:27:42] Katie Dooley: So big deal. 300 years, uh, after Jesus, now they are allowed to. It's not the official religion, but they're not.
[00:27:52] Preston Meyer: They're not officially persecuted. They were persecuted for a long time, sometimes harder than other times. But it's nice to have the government say, hey, it's okay to be Christian.
[00:28:03] Katie Dooley: Right? After Constantine, though, several emperors waffled back and forth. There was like 3 or 4, and it was basically like, this guy reversed it, and then this guy reversed that. And so and several emperors reversed or waffle back and forth with how tolerant they were of Christians until Theodosius the First began to actively persecute pagans in 381 CE, so about 70 years after the Edict of Milan. So even after this was passed and they were actively being persecuted again, the pagans who believed in the old pantheon it lasted for another 500 plus years in small regional ways. Or did it disappear and never disappear entirely? We'll never know.
[00:28:53] Preston Meyer: Tricky stuff to know for sure, right? All right. As we talked about before, the Norse also suffered because of Christianity. Um, the North Germanic tribes were often at war with the Romans, and there was definitely some intellectual conflict, or at least the Romans saying, hey, the Germanic people's religion is no good, but not as bad as we'll see with the Celts. Um, the Norse religion lasted longer than the Greek and Roman religions, probably mostly because of their distance from the imperial core. Um, the decline in the Norse religion began in the 11th century.
[00:29:35] Katie Dooley: Wow. Much later.
[00:29:37] Preston Meyer: And it was mostly missionaries rather than a real conquest, which is kind of cool, kind of impressive that it it worked out that way, I guess,
[00:29:46] Katie Dooley: Just talking to people nicely.
[00:29:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Mostly. Mostly.
[00:29:52] Katie Dooley: Tell me about your mission, Preston. What do you mean mostly?
[00:29:56] Preston Meyer: I mean. I didn't...
[00:29:57] Katie Dooley: Did you shake a few people down?
[00:29:58] Preston Meyer: I didn't get to carry a sword as a missionary, so it was definitely the power of the word or nothing at all. By the 12th century, Christianity was the dominant religion in Scandinavia. And it was after this mass conversion that we received the written Eddas that we have. So historians believe that the Scandinavians would have been in contact with the Christians much earlier, probably like the sixth century, but their beliefs didn't change until good old Bluetooth.
[00:30:35] Katie Dooley: Are we air-dropping things?
[00:30:36] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:30:37] Katie Dooley: Okay. Are we air-dropping Christianity?!
[00:30:42] Preston Meyer: Not in this forum.
[00:30:46] Katie Dooley: Fair.
[00:30:48] Preston Meyer: Uh, Good Old Harald Bluetooth is where we get the Bluetooth name from. The logo that we all have on our phones is a Norse rune. So his goal was to convert the Danish to Christianity. And other leaders in Norway and Sweden also worked to convert their people. But it took about another 200 years after Bluetooth started his work in Denmark. And of course, the Viking Age that most people associate with all of the Scandinavians were Vikings. That's not how that worked. But the Vikings were a class of people, a professional group that went and did great things. The Viking Age coincided closely with the conversion to Christianity when Scandinavians were traveling a lot, usually taking slaves and whatnot. So Christianity also said, "hey, maybe don't do that that way". Anyway, converting to Christianity often opened doors for people in marriage and trade. Whether they believed it or not, it was convenient at the time to be Christian, and more and more people just kind of jumped on the bandwagon.
[00:32:01] Katie Dooley: I mean, you know, we briefly touched on the Holocaust. I mean, that was a time where it was convenient to be not Jewish.
[00:32:07] Preston Meyer: No kidding.
[00:32:08] Katie Dooley: Right? So if it meant your safety to convert to Christianity, this is how part of the reason how religions die out.
[00:32:18] Preston Meyer: Well, there was before the Holocaust. There was so much persecution against the Jews all over Europe. And the Jewish religion, the Jewish tradition, the Jewish identity persisted. And then it got really, really bad. And. I think overall there wasn't a lot of people that said, oh yeah, I'm not Jewish, because they had, up to that point been persecuted and yet stuck with it anyway.
[00:32:51] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it's such an identity piece. And it's I mean, it's in all of their stories, this idea of persecution.
[00:32:59] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The Hebrew Bible is full of it sucks to be Jewish, but it's a lot better when we've got God on our side.
[00:33:07] Katie Dooley: Yeah. You're God's people, yeah.
[00:33:09] Preston Meyer: So we can't deny it.
[00:33:13] Katie Dooley: Onto the Celtic religion, also a victim of Christianity.
[00:33:17] Preston Meyer: But there's more.
[00:33:18] Katie Dooley: But wait, there's more. So as early as the first century, with the Roman conquest of Gaul, so Christianity having spread yet.... JC is still warm in his grave. Wait. Nevermind.
[00:33:32] Preston Meyer: I think he was only warm in his grave for a couple of days.
[00:33:36] Katie Dooley: There was an aggressive undertaking to eradicate the Celtic tradition. So the the Romans hadn't accepted Christianity yet, they still did not like these Druids. Uh, Druidism in particular was forbidden and many important temples were destroyed. But there was a resurgence in Celtic paganism until Christianity.
[00:34:01] Preston Meyer: Good old Saint Patrick.
[00:34:03] Katie Dooley: Good old Saint Patrick. So Saint Patrick was one of the first missionaries in Ireland, uh, and began in the fifth century. So right around the same time as the Greek and Roman conversion and he was basically not him personally, Uh, but the conversion was basically done by the seventh century in Ireland, was a very Catholic nation after that.
[00:34:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Yeah. All those stories of Saint Patrick getting rid of the snakes of Ireland. Pretty sure it was just talking about druids.
[00:34:39] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. Yeah. And this is also an interesting one in particular, how the religion, the Celtic paganism became stories and folklore instead.
[00:34:53] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Which is interesting that the stories persisted, that the priests. We talked about this before, that the priests wrote the stories down so that they weren't lost. Kind of interesting. All right, next we have the Egyptians. Again, we're going to blame this on Christianity.
[00:35:13] Katie Dooley: Jesus Christ, I'm so sorry. If you don't get that reference, please join our Discord.
[00:35:20] Preston Meyer: Even before Constantine the First and the Edict of Milan, Egypt was already becoming a hotbed of Christian activity. There was a pretty sizable Jewish population in Egypt already. The Jews there produced the Septuagint, which is, of course, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. And so things got rough for them. They, the Jews, were never popular outside of their home. And so this social position made Christianity pretty appealing to the Jews there. And many Christian writers like Origen and Clement of Alexandria, spent their lives in Egypt, and the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria is the largest and oldest church in Egypt, founded in 42 CE by Mark the Evangelist. And eventually, all of these forces, all of these great Christian thinkers in Egypt, gained enough popularity that they kind of just forced out what was left of the Egyptian amalgamation with Greek polytheism in Egypt. Kind of messy, but it was definitely the Christians.
[00:36:32] Katie Dooley: Yes, this one. Messy, but the most peaceful.
[00:36:37] Preston Meyer: I guess. Yeah, you could say that. It was definitely an intellectual conquest.
[00:36:43] Yes as opposed to let's kill the Druids.
[00:36:46] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:36:48] Katie Dooley: You know, what'll get rid of this religion? Dead priests.
[00:36:53] Preston Meyer: I mean, it worked. Not that the goal was good, but the mission was a success.
[00:37:02] Katie Dooley: Um, yeah. So messy. But exactly. I like your the way you spun that intellectual conquest. And the Coptic Orthodox Church is beautiful, and I want to go visit one day and massive.
[00:37:15] Preston Meyer: Actually my first. Hold on. My first non-family connected job when I was living alone as an adult was with an awesome Coptic Orthodox Egyptian Orthodox family at a pizzeria.
[00:37:31] Katie Dooley: That's amazing. I want what pizzeria is it still around? Is it in Saskatchewan?
[00:37:36] Preston Meyer: It's in Alberta, but the pizzeria has since gotten new owners.
[00:37:42] Katie Dooley: Oh.
[00:37:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but super cool family. I really enjoyed hanging out with them.
[00:37:49] Katie Dooley: So let's get down to the real point of this podcast, Preston, is that science is just superior.
[00:37:58] Preston Meyer: The great thing about science is that it is easy to prove a point with sufficient evidence, which is the basis of good science. You can argue all you want about theology. We've got loads of evidence of that if you go into any university library. But science is the bee's knees.
[00:38:24] Katie Dooley: You do this thing. You do it 15 times. You get the same result.
[00:38:27] Preston Meyer: It must be a solid, reliable fact. Religious behavior does satisfy needs, but it's not the only thing that can do so. We don't need to have a river God to explain why the river has stopped feeding our community or to hope that a dry river will flow again. We've mapped the world. We understand the water cycle. We don't need gods for that. We get it. We don't need to personify the lightning and thunder with good old Thor to understand the deadly power of electricity. Just maybe don't go outside in a thunderstorm holding a giant metal rod.
[00:39:07] Katie Dooley: But you can lick a battery.
[00:39:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That's fine. That's probably the safest way to learn about electricity, other than rubbing a really old TV right after you turn it off.
[00:39:17] Katie Dooley: Oh, that was always fun when it was like fuzzy.
[00:39:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah, I've. I've played with electricity so much that when my wife tries to shock me with static, I feel it half the time.
[00:39:31] Katie Dooley: Wow. That's concerning. Are you?
[00:39:33] Preston Meyer: It's probably not a good thing.
[00:39:34] Katie Dooley: So Electra? Electro?
[00:39:37] Preston Meyer: Those are two very different Marvel characters. Only one of them uses electricity. And I would say, no, I am not Electro or Electra.
[00:39:45] Katie Dooley: Okay, disappointing, but I'll keep you guys posted if I see anything weird from Preston. Yeah, so science has helped us move past the utility of a lot of specific traditions. If like if we've mentioned a few times, if you don't need it to organize or explain things, and there's better ways to organize and better ways to explain. Humans, at their core are lazy as fuck.
[00:40:17] Katie Dooley: Right? It took us forever to climb up Mount Olympus, but when we got there, there were no gods.
[00:40:25] Katie Dooley: But my point is, we're so lazy. We are very efficient.So again, if there's a better way to organize or explain, we will do it.
[00:40:34] Preston Meyer: Mhm. It took us forever to fly. Found out that there's no angels in the clouds. Otherwise, we'd have a much messier plane to clean when it lands. I mean.
[00:40:46] Katie Dooley: I'm sure we hit the odd bird.
[00:40:48] Preston Meyer: Oh for sure.
[00:40:49] Katie Dooley: I don't want to know. I feel like I'd be really... I hit a bird with my car once. I was very upset.
[00:40:54] Preston Meyer: No kidding.
[00:40:55] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I don't do well with that. Um, yeah. So that's why religions die. Because science is knowing.
[00:41:04] Preston Meyer: If if any religion relies too much on a thing that is objectively a matter of fact, and then you can prove that fact wrong. If that's the basis of the religion, the religion must die and other than that, it's mostly a replacement thing. There's no I still don't think there's enough evidence for the model of magic into polytheism, into monotheism, to science, because most of the religions that we look at that eventually end up as or most of the populations we look at that end up as monotheistic. It didn't evolve from polytheism to monotheism. It was a hostile takeover in almost every situation.
[00:41:53] Katie Dooley: Well, and to my point of, you know, science being more efficient and more accurate, 2000 years ago, Christianity was more efficient and more accurate than these big pantheons of gods, right? It worked better for society. Whether you believe Jesus is the Messiah or not, in a very violent time in our history, hearing love your neighbor probably was a lot more effective and efficient to get things done.
[00:42:23] Preston Meyer: For sure.
[00:42:26] Katie Dooley: [00:42:26]So I think for any of [00:42:27] these it's just whatever moves society as a wholem forward the best. And I think that's why secularism is becoming so popular, because we can't satisfy all these different religious beliefs. That a secular path satisfies most people's needs is where we're headed. But I could be wrong.
[00:42:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we've talked about secularism before, and the reality is that if we have any one religious population ruling over all of its neighbors, everyone's going to have a bad time. We need secularism. We need to have a society built on what is good for the whole, not just what fits the religious doctrines of one group.
[00:43:22] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Any other final thoughts?
[00:43:27] Preston Meyer: I think we've pretty much nailed down how most of these groups that we've been talking about have been kind of cleared out, mostly by Christians. But there's always a little bit of complication to that too, especially, for example, the Celts, where they were villainized before the Christians hit the stage. That's that's kind of the deal. That's where they went.
[00:43:54] Katie Dooley: Away. Just went on vacation, little Timmy.
[00:44:01] Preston Meyer: Well, the vacation is a fair enough word since we see resurgence of a lot of these ideas.
[00:44:10] Katie Dooley: Yup. Thanks, internet.
[00:44:13] Preston Meyer: Yes, being able to help people communicate across vast distances and share ideas no matter the quality of their goodness, because there's a lot of bad ideas being spread out too. There's a lot of interesting ideas becoming more popular.
[00:44:31] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Hey, Preston, speaking of the internet.
[00:44:34] Preston Meyer: Oh, man, we've got such a great presence on the internet. We've got Discord where you can chat, share memes. We post pictures of a lot of the things that we talk about, so you can have a visual representation of what's going on.
[00:44:47] Katie Dooley: Preston's going to post cat nipples this week, apparently.
[00:44:52] Preston Meyer: I've already posted cats and almost had one with nipples for our last episode. And my last episode. I definitely mean a few episodes back. Time is weird since the recording time versus release time. Uh, anyway, we've also got YouTube, we've got Facebook, Instagram. We've also got Patreon where we would love to see some of your support. And we've also got a shop on Spreadshirt.
[00:45:25] Katie Dooley: With some new releases.
[00:45:26] Preston Meyer: Oh man, I'm so excited for our newest release!
[00:45:30] Katie Dooley: Do you want to see what we're talking about? Check out our Spreadshirt.
[00:45:33] Preston Meyer: Good old Saint Bernard.
[00:45:36] Katie Dooley: And we will see you in two weeks time.
[00:45:39] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 22 Nov 2021 | Diwali You Want | 00:38:54 | |
Curious why there were fireworks popping in your neighborhood last week? It was all in celebration of Diwali, the pan-Asian holiday rooted in Hinduism. This week learn more about Diwali traditions and the story of the Ramayana. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website Be sure to check out Blackbird Farm and Apothecary on Facebook and Instagram.
** Katie Dooley 00:12 now, this is the start of it, right. That's how I'm gonna start this show. Yeah, Preston, we're heading into the holiday season for
Preston Meyer 00:20 the holidays. Don't you mean that Christmas season?
Katie Dooley 00:26 You forgot one of my favorite holidays that we're going to talk about on the holy watermelon podcast.
Preston Meyer 00:35 And what's your favorite holiday?
Katie Dooley 00:38 I mean, it's actually Christmas. But today we're gonna talk about Diwali. i The the, the holiday for the Vedic religion.
Preston Meyer 00:50 Yeah, it's pretty much the big deal for most Hindu people. And it's not just a Hindu holiday. I thought that was kind of cool to dive into that in my studies. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 01:03 it is celebrated by Jain Sikhs and even some Buddhists. And in my reading, I kind of likened it to you don't North America. You're not necessarily Christian, if you're celebrating Christmas. It's just such a big deal that everyone jumps on board.
Preston Meyer 01:26 Yeah, it's it's basically the pan Indian festival of lights. You could call it the shorter Indian Hanukkah, maybe.
Katie Dooley 01:37 I like that. I also find it really interesting. It is official, an official holiday. And I think it's 13 countries and I just found which countries very interesting. So Fiji, Guyana, India, Malaysia, Mauritius, Myanma Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. Which that's almost every continent. Yeah. How's it as an official holiday?
Preston Meyer 02:05 I mean, white folks did a pretty good job of shipping Indian kids all over the place. So we've got that. Well, yeah.
Katie Dooley 02:12 So I mean, obviously, there's Indian people all over the world. But to make it an official holiday, it's not official holiday in Canada, you know, we have a huge population, right? Or in America. So I thought was interesting that Mauritius and Trinidad and Tobago were the two that stood out to me, Africa and North America.
Preston Meyer 02:31 Sure. Yeah. Makes sense. I just kind of interesting. It's a holiday that is all over the place. And it seems like an awful lot of people don't really have any clue what it is.
Katie Dooley 02:45 No. And actually, by the time this episode airs, Diwali will actually be over. It was on November 4 This year, but it changes every year. There's a Hindu lunar calendar, kinda like there's an Islamic lunar calendar. And so the date changes based off of moon cycles.
Preston Meyer 03:06 So we have writing about Diwali, dating back about 1300 years. Kind of nifty. Know that we have some solid history behind this. But Diwali has been celebrated certainly longer than that. How
Katie Dooley 03:21 long would we have celebrated Christmas in comparison? I mean, it's not like to see they were like, yeah, it's Jesus's second birthday. I mean, married Joseph probably celebrated his birthday because it's their kid but as we know it now.
Preston Meyer 03:41 You know what? I don't know exactly. Once we started celebrating Christmas. I haven't done that study yet. But as we creep closer to Christmas, that is actually a thing that is on our horizons, too. We
Katie Dooley 03:54 are going to do an episode on the Nativity. So we'll get that answer for you. Then I was just curious. You know, in North America, when Christmases we think it's the be all end all that you know, something it was probably definitely celebrated longer than
Preston Meyer 04:09 Yeah, I digress. So Diwali, coincides with the Hindu New Year, changes every year as it follows the Hindu lunar calendar, as Katie mentioned, and it's done on a new moon sometime between October and November. So shifts a little bit. That's kind of the framework that we have from year to year.
Katie Dooley 04:31 So the month it happens in is called Karthika Kartika Kartika.
Preston Meyer 04:37 I mean, you can make it sound as wide as you want. Wrong.
Katie Dooley 04:41 Absolutely. Well, there's no way we're doing this right. And it's on happens on the darkest day of Crytek. So on the new moon, and I am assuming is that because it's the festival lights that would make the lights more brilliant. I think that's part of it, but I'll see you in further the metaphor. I have, and we'll get into this a little bit more. But it's the festival lights. It's about good defeating evil. So, emphasizing that light in the darkness, metaphor,
Preston Meyer 05:10 light overcoming darkness, intelligence and wisdom overcoming ignorance. There's kind of some heavy handed symbolism here. But I like it
Katie Dooley 05:23 isn't, isn't every major holiday, some heavy handed symbolism? Yes. Now, I love this that Diwali is generally especially in India, a five day festival with the third day being the
Preston Meyer 05:41 big day, the climax of the whole thing. Wow. And
Katie Dooley 05:44 I liked that because it's like, we basically do that with Christmas. But we just stress ourselves out way more, because chances are we're still at work. But there is that sort of build up and run down for NAFTA and they just accept it. And I like that.
Preston Meyer 06:01 Yeah, I like the first day is literally clean your house and get ready.
Katie Dooley 06:09 Yeah, prepare your house. There's a tradition of buying a new metal kitchen tool as a sign of good luck. You do that on the first day too.
Preston Meyer 06:21 That's optimistic.
Katie Dooley 06:22 I like it.
Preston Meyer 06:24 I like that feeling when I bought a new kitchen tool. It's definitely a I'll probably use this a lot. This will change
Katie Dooley 06:31 and you totally would use it for what the next days are coming for ya. So you can really like plan a great day to is like the big prep day where people would decorate their homes with the lamps, food and create rang rangoli patterns on the floor using colored sand. I highly recommend looking up rangoli on YouTube and just like relaxing for hours.
Preston Meyer 06:59 It's a great way to just zone out it's better than just staring into a fire because you get to watch this intense piece of art being created. Knowing that it's not permanent. It's going to be blown away and swept up, tossed away. It's the the impermanence is a nifty part of that art tradition. Oh,
Katie Dooley 07:22 see, I like the whole like ASMR watching satisfying things aspect. Sure. Yeah. So if that's your jam, we'll look up some rangoli to celebrate Diwali this year, right.
Preston Meyer 07:36 I've watched so much on Reddit. It's probably a little embarrassing to admit how much time I've spent there.
Katie Dooley 07:47 Just watching rangoli Yeah. Wow. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 07:51 I love it. Right. It actually took me a while before I realized that it was rangoli some cool standard. Yeah, but it has a name and it's pretty nifty and
Katie Dooley 08:03 it's very, I won't say very specific to Diwali. But it is a big part of Diwali. Obviously if you want to wrangle the in June you go hard. Sure. You can't get that good. If you don't, I
Preston Meyer 08:15 presume I think you need a lot of practice.
Katie Dooley 08:19 Anyway, days of Diwali, like I said, it's the big day. And it's marked with prayers, fireworks again, festival of light, big celebrations and eating all that food that we prepared.
Preston Meyer 08:32 Yeah, as I was studying, I've discovered that this day is kind of like the Fourth of July in a lot of ways, especially when we're talking about emergency room intake. Because fireworks I
Katie Dooley 08:49 was looking up to local Diwali celebrations. I thought it'd be something fun we could do. Yeah, we've actually missed them all. They were early. I don't understand why
Preston Meyer 08:58 we've already missed them all and we're recording before Diwali before Diwali. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 09:02 They were in the middle of October. Not to date this episode too much but we missed them all. And I was reading on like a government website that the there's four days that you legally can have your own fireworks. Victoria Day 10 of the day, Diwali and New Year's Eve
Preston Meyer 09:21 Hmm there's there's so much of what is generally called white privilege in North American laws where you know, white holidays get actual legal designations and everything else is just extra. But it's nice to see Diwali get some special needed status and I
Katie Dooley 09:42 want to go to the Diwali for next year. Yeah. Cuz I'm sad we missed it.
Preston Meyer 09:48 What so we have the fireworks early.
Katie Dooley 09:51 No fireworks will be on Diwali on the fourth. Just all the celebrations are still like all the community celebrations at The mall down the street. They had a Diwali fair and that was whatever the 16th to 17th that weekend.
Preston Meyer 10:08 So I feel like your Diwali fair would be incomplete without fireworks.
Katie Dooley 10:11 I mean, maybe they had like official, not private fireworks. But those were the only four days for like private fireworks.
Preston Meyer 10:18 Except as long as it's not something like the government screwed up when you're allowed to have fireworks, so they switched, you know, this
Katie Dooley 10:25 was like a community celebration. And if you want private fireworks, you can still do it on November 4.
Preston Meyer 10:31 Except, that's better news than I thought it was.
Katie Dooley 10:36 Day four will vary from lobbying, everything will vary from person to person and region to region. But I found it as often to dedicate often dedicated to worshipping tools of work. So the example they gave us, the businessman with their Ledger's, or Katie and Preston celebrating their audio gear,
Preston Meyer 10:58 it makes good sense. I mean, it's, it's an odd flavor for the average Christian, but for somebody who is just grateful for the things that they have the let them do the work that brings in their money. That makes perfect sense.
Katie Dooley 11:13 I think this also relates to your dharma, right, your purpose on the planet, and you know, being having some gratitude for that. Exactly. Which is probably a good thing, I think. So. It's also the first day of the new year, so people will also often visit with family, and friends and relatives, I imagine they would have done so a little bit on the day before. But again, if you need a Christian alternative, it's like Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, we see tons of family on those two days, so great. And day five, it's about sibling relationships. So sisters will pray for the well being of their brothers and brothers will visit their married sisters. So it's about sibling relationships on day five.
Preston Meyer 12:00 Yeah, I think it's important to encourage visitation, especially in parts of the world where the tradition is that you don't see some parts of your family as often as others.
Katie Dooley 12:11 It's also nice, you know, and we're both at this stage of life where, you know, we make the effort to go to our parents, but when you're married and your spouse has parents, then it might not all coincide with your siblings. Right, right. It's, you know,
Preston Meyer 12:28 yeah, my, of all of my siblings. I've been to a couple of their homes in the last 10 years. And not terribly often, especially compared to how often I've been to St. My mom's house. So I can definitely understand the the need to make this solid tradition like that. It's nice. And it, like we said before, it has a strong Thanksgiving flavor. And as Thanksgiving is kind of around this time in America, and about a month ago here in Canada, this idea of Thanksgiving has been talked about a whole bunch and everyone seems to think that Thanksgiving is super racist. And I keep correcting them know, Columbus Day is super racist. But Thanksgiving is the oldest religious festival on planet. Yeah, it's tightly connected to the harvest, and gratitude to whatever God is connected to the harvest. For all of the things that keep us alive for the year.
Katie Dooley 13:34 I learned this year that Canadian Thanksgiving is linked to the date they found the Northwest Passage. That's because they had to pick something so they kind of went
Preston Meyer 13:45 well for years and years and years. Thanksgiving moved around it from year to year, based on whatever the government said, Hey. Yeah, and it was always thanksgiving for a specific thing, as a unifying national thing. Oh, that's kind of cool, too. And then we picked a day and stopped having the government say, hey, we want to be thankful for this one thing, which I understand why people would complain about the government saying, hey, you need to be thankful for this. But it's also nice to have a unified nation in that one thing for that one day,
Katie Dooley 14:24 even if it's just for a moment. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 14:27 So during this Thanksgiving feeling Festival of Lights, Diwali celebration, prayers are popularly offered to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. Though it's such a huge population of Hindus and their variety of gods, you can find people who associate Diwali with one of maybe a dozen gods. It's kind of diverse,
Katie Dooley 14:53 like a very violent Yes, don't fight a Hindu person. If they say they celebrate a different god on Diwali just because you heard, say Lakshmi on the holy watermelon, but not only watermelon pumpkin sad, don't
Preston Meyer 15:11 do that. Anytime you want to tell another person you believe this thing. You're probably wrong.
Katie Dooley 15:19 haven't said in a long time, though, just don't be a dick. Right. Good reminder. So I wrote this thinking I was so clever. So Lakshmi is a bit of a magpie. And so that's part of the reason at the Festival of Lights is that she likes bright lights. And if you catch her attention with your lanterns, then you will receive her blessing. Sure. Also, I found this post, Preston's review. She also only enters clean homes, which is part of the cleaning ritual on the first day. And I was just thinking, like, from a historical perspective, right, the Vedic religion is 1000s and 1000s of years old. This probably came from like encouraging general hygiene and health in your space,
Preston Meyer 16:12 I think that's a pretty good policy one way or the other. Also a great way to start the new year. Right.
Katie Dooley 16:18 So anyway, that's when I learned a little bit extra but Lakshmi for you, right
Preston Meyer 16:23 here, we just call it spring, spring cleaning, because we have our new year, a little later.
Katie Dooley 16:28 And we all know it's too old to open any windows in January. It's
Preston Meyer 16:32 a thing we desperately need. All right. And there's also offerings of food that are left out for the gods, which I want to say, runs the danger of cluttering your home and making the house not exactly what Lakshmi or whatever, God, you're inviting, making them uncomfortable. But basically, don't be a dummy and keep a tidy house and don't leave food everywhere. Yeah, that's
Katie Dooley 17:03 Indian slob. It's like leave a plate out for election
Preston Meyer 17:06 like Santa Claus. Like Santa Claus, right?
Katie Dooley 17:10 Yeah. Perfect analogy.
Preston Meyer 17:13 I mean, it's not great. But we started off with this is like Christmas in a couple of ways. And this is one of those ways.
Katie Dooley 17:22 And then my next point starts with the words just like Christmas. So people, just like Christmas, people update their homes in the wardrobe to exchange gifts and have parties leading up to Diwali. It's, it's really not that foreign to us. Right? If you're wondering what your South Asian neighbors are doing in the next few weeks, guess what they did last week, by the time this comes out. They're just having early Christmas, right?
Preston Meyer 17:54 Or early Hanukkah, whatever you're familiar
Katie Dooley 17:57 with whatever you're familiar with is
Preston Meyer 18:01 something that's pretty common to my experience of Christmas and Hanukkah, is there is usually some gambling that happens over Diwali as a just a nice social thing that people do together. So usually, it's card games when related to duallie. Kind of like the scratch off tickets that somebody's going to put in your stocking.
Katie Dooley 18:24 I love getting those.
Preston Meyer 18:27 Or the dreidel that's common in Hanukkah. So it's a good time for people to just have fun and when adults have fun it seems like often gambling is involved.
Katie Dooley 18:42 So Brian, we'll decide if we keep this in the episode but you know he's terrible luck with basically every board game yeah. Our audio guy slash my husband has terrible luck with that report came in when Christmas we were coming to pick up his brother to go to the next family and they were all playing a game of remotely and they all just brought like a roll of nickels. So it was $2 everyone paid a nickel for everything so like no big investment. But there was some real money ended at the end. And so grandpa like but Brandon because we didn't bring in nickels. Bryant cleaned up and left with $15 Wow good deal considering a We didn't buy it at all. And like people only pay $2 Each if we clean house. That's great.
Preston Meyer 19:32 Did Grandpa asked for his two dogs didn't grab
Katie Dooley 19:35 it. Just let us take all the money.
Preston Meyer 19:38 That's that's some some good spirits
Katie Dooley 19:42 will be gas money when you're traversing the country for Christmas was great. Preston. What are we celebrating on Diwali?
Preston Meyer 19:52 I mean, there's a lot but there's generally broadly speaking from one group to the next there's Usually the steam of triumph of good over evil. Most religious holidays have a little bit of this flavor. And it's leaned into pretty heavily in the stories that get told over Diwali. And there's a lot of different stories depending on your local tradition and religious affiliation, of course, but many who observed the tradition anchor their celebration to the story of Lord Rama. So I've made some point notes here, so I can keep myself on track and drag this out way too long, for story time, but if you want to dig into the story of Lord Rama later on, and really enjoy the depth and the details of it, it's actually pretty good story. But basically, here's the gist of it. The king of Ionia had three wives and several daughters, but He really really wanted a son. So he offered a sacrifice, and his wish was granted, each of his wives had a son or two, each of whom received a bit of Vishnu his power because Vishnu needed to defeat the demon Ravana as a mortal, rather than in his divine character, so that he could keep Ravana from oppressing the gods. The dynamic that we see here in the Hindu pantheon is a lot different than we see in a lot of other theological models. Where this is possible, the demon can oppress swathes of gods, and this is a problem but apparently, he can be defeated by a mortal with a little bit of divine help. Kind of a rock, paper Scissors thing, I guess. I don't know. So one of the sons Rama, when he was 16, somebody came to the royal court to to get help against the demons who were interfering with sacrifices. And Rama was chosen as champion to lead the fight against these demons. And his brother Lakshmana tagged along, kind of like Frodo and Sam dill. No. is a very loyal brothers kind of cute, and he sticks with them all the way through the story. Happens Lux mana is there with Rama?
Katie Dooley 22:19 And actually, before you even said the salmon Frodo and we were talking about the mortal defeating the demon I was thinking of a Oh, when I am no man, right? That's what I thought of so basically, Lord of the Rings, guys,
Preston Meyer 22:32 except way older.
Katie Dooley 22:34 So are the rings stole? It is what I'm hearing.
Preston Meyer 22:38 I mean, when you have a dude trying to build a mythology for England, and like that's actually his goal. He's going to be borrowing elements of stories from all over the place that really work.
Katie Dooley 22:51 We should do an episode on that. Sure.
Preston Meyer 22:55 Amen. All right. So we've got Rama, Frodo and Laksmana. Sam. So their adventure has been vanquished an awful lot of demons. But ROM has real show of power was in the court of Janaka. The king of myth Mithila Janaka found his baby daughter in the ground while plowing it. Like, under the ground. She's the potato. Kinda Yeah, but she's supposed to be beautiful.
Katie Dooley 23:24 She's a beautiful, beautiful potato.
Preston Meyer 23:28 And the way it's described is so weird, like, tearing the ground apart. She's She was in the ground. Now like, Oh, I'm working and found a baby sitting in the grass. No, like a potato, like a potato. I'm following you. It's so weird. But that's the story. So he finds this girl and decides to take her home named her Sita. And when she was old enough to marry, he announced to the world that if a man could lift the heavy bow that had been presented to his family by Shiva generations earlier, he could marry Sita. Rama not only lifted the bow, but broke the string when he tried to draw it.
Katie Dooley 24:09 Ooh, so strong.
Preston Meyer 24:11 He's so strong. So Rama and his brothers get to marry the daughters of King Janaka. So, things get pretty nice for him. Yeah. Pretty good. Yeah. So when Cetus father is ready to step down as king. He wants Rama to take over he's earned it. But Rama stepmother calls in a favor from her husband, Roma's father, and has Rama and Sita exiled from the country for 14 years, so that her son Bharata can be king. And this is where the nation of India gets its real name burrata.
Katie Dooley 24:47 Interesting. Yeah, that's really cool. I thought
Preston Meyer 24:51 so. So ROM has wife and loyal brother, follow him into exile, know where they have even more epic adventure. through over the course of 14 years, including a great battle of wits and steel with the terrible God crushing demon Ravana, before Rama returns victorious to the kingdom of Ionia, which is promptly offered to him again. So Diwali in, in some traditions celebrates this triumphant return, in addition to the destruction of Ravana. That's a really great story, right? And it's so much better when it's not just summarized in five minutes.
Katie Dooley 25:30 Yeah, I can see it sitting by the Diwali fireplace and listening to that story, right?
Preston Meyer 25:37 Yeah. It's some good fun. And there's alternate versions of the story, of course, because the story has been told for so long, and has been told for so long before literacy was common. So, variation happens. The Buddhist version for the handful of Buddhists that find the story important. They call Rama, Rama Pandita. And he is said to be the previous incarnation of Gautama Buddha.
Katie Dooley 26:11 Oh, interesting. So pre Buddhism,
Preston Meyer 26:13 right? Oh, I like that. Yeah. When Rama goes into exile, he actually is exiled to the Himalayas, in the Buddhist version of the story. And so that connects to that little part of the world really nicely. And the weird thing is that the Buddhist version of the story doesn't actually include any war with Ravana, or any mention of the demon crushing, or the god crushing demon Ravana. But other Buddhist literature does talk about him. So it's kind of odd that he is left out of this story.
Katie Dooley 26:49 I have a question that is gonna take us a step back, but it just came to my head. Where can mean and our listeners find the full story of Rama? Or do you find it?
Preston Meyer 27:03 Yeah, the story of Rama is called Rama, Jana. And it's actually like the Lord of the Rings. There's a book one, book two book, three business, that kind of thing. All right. It's a few books that build up this one huge epic to the
Katie Dooley 27:18 culminating with the defeat of Ravana. Yeah, cool. Awesome. All right. I will let you continue with the other Diwali. historical
Preston Meyer 27:30 stuff. All right. In the Jain tradition, we haven't really explored Jainism a lot, but it's basically a slightly newer branch of the Vedic religion. That's not so tightly tied to the Vedas. Really, it's, it looks an awful lot like Hinduism, but it's just a little bit different. We will have to take some time to explore that a
Katie Dooley 27:57 little later. I and we I have some earmarked for next year. So
Preston Meyer 28:01 in the Jain tradition, Rama is unwilling to kill so it's actually his brother Lakshmana, who kills Ravana
Katie Dooley 28:08 well, so real Sam hero. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 28:12 It's kind of great. This version also has Rama renounced the kingdom to become a monk who goes on to achieve moksha while both his brother and Nirvana go to Hell, no.
Katie Dooley 28:23 Yeah. Laksmana. That makes me really upset, right? Imagine
Preston Meyer 28:29 a world where it just seems everyone just accepts that Sam and Sol Ron get to be neighbors free turn. No,
Katie Dooley 28:38 I don't like that.
Preston Meyer 28:40 There's good news. Okay. Hell isn't forever. Oh, good. So, there's in the Jane tradition, there's still that cycle of resurrection reincarnation, rather. And so the, the tradition around these two is that they are both, even in the story predicted to come back as even greater righteous people. So even Ravana will be reborn as a righteous man and serve as an omniscient teacher for James everywhere, kind of like the next big savior. But not the next one. But sometime in the future. That's kind of
Katie Dooley 29:21 that's another happy ending right to be celebrated. Right? during Diwali. Yeah. Okay.
Preston Meyer 29:28 Because even these these terrible fingers can see the light, be enlightened and achieve moksha and just be everything that we would have hoped that their former selves would have been. Yeah. So lights
Katie Dooley 29:46 light, good defeating evil. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 29:51 And of course, like I said before, this these stories predate common literacy. So from little group to little group you will see some variation in the story,
Katie Dooley 30:02 especially something this old. Yeah. And with such a right a big population of Hindus and obviously jeans and Jains and Buddhists around the world. Yeah. Just like other religious holiday traditions vary from person to person. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 30:20 your mileage may vary.
Katie Dooley 30:25 Another story, and we don't have as many as many details on this as we do with the Rama story, but it is commonly told in India is about a battle between Krishna who is an avatar of Vishnu and the Demon King NERICA Surah after Krishna is victory, he freed 16,000 young girls so another great reason that celebrate right
Preston Meyer 30:48 let's sounds like a terrible situation. Definitely a great victory. As we mentioned before, Diwali is commonly associated with Lakshmi that the bite of Vishnu and some traditions have Diwali as the time of her birth in the cosmic ocean of milk. Which sounds really weird when you first hear it, and then you realize that you know, the biggest thing in our night sky is the Milky Way. That's literally how we named the galaxy is the milky bit.
Katie Dooley 31:20 A milky bit.
Preston Meyer 31:24 So that's as much as it sounds weird when you first hear it. It's like, That's literally how every ancient people looked up at this guy. St.
Katie Dooley 31:32 Bernard would be all over that,
Preston Meyer 31:34 right? Gotta love St. Bernard. While her story isn't exactly as epic as Ramas after overcoming obstacles, Lakshmi goes on to marry Vishnu on this anniversary, that is commemorated by the Diwali that we now know.
Katie Dooley 31:57 Another God that can appear is actually Callie so for some Diwali reminds the faithful of the victorious Kelly, the mother of all living beings and master of time and death. She is said to destroy evil to protect the good and innocent, since the Festival of Lights is a celebration of all that is good that the connection makes sense, even without there being this big epic story, like the Ramayana, right?
Preston Meyer 32:23 I like it. Saraswathi is also revered at this time because of her gifts of knowledge and writing, that are essential to victory over ignorance. And her gift of music is particularly germane to any good celebration. So, like I mentioned before, the flavor of Thanksgiving is present as some of the prayers are offered to Kuvera the God of wealth, but he is also a protector who assists in the triumph of knowledge and good over ignorance and evil.
Katie Dooley 32:56 In Jainism, Diwali also celebrates the final death of Mahavira, a savior and a teacher as he achieved nirvana. So that's also something. Not everyone achieves nirvana. So
Preston Meyer 33:13 some people get stuck here for a long, long time.
Katie Dooley 33:16 There'll be me and we didn't talk much about a bit Sikhs also recognize Diwali. I imagine a lot of this is regional influence, but they celebrate the day celebrate is the day that the city of Amritsar was founded. And later the day, Guru Hargobind, was released from prison and arrived at the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Preston Meyer 33:43 So it's not just Hindus, but a solid civic thing that has an awful lot of religious connotations for all kinds of people for a whole bunch of different reasons.
Katie Dooley 33:57 Yeah, it's one of those things that you really get to put your own meaning on, because it does sort of fall into this Civic almost secular all holiday in India. Where again, you the core belief, the core celebration is there. Yeah, you just put your own spin on it, like we celebrate Christmas, but we're very vocal about not being Christian. But the core of you know, all that is good and lovely in the world. We can get behind and food.
Preston Meyer 34:31 You're already collecting your Christmas stuff to know
Katie Dooley 34:33 that I bought it while I was on holidays. I just haven't put it away. And now it doesn't make sense to put away don't have any final thoughts, conclusions for Diwali? And let's face in Hinduism.
Preston Meyer 34:57 As far as I'm able to tell it's a big deal. For good reason, great stories are told, and great time is shared with family. And fireworks. Any holiday with fireworks is going to be some fun.
Katie Dooley 35:12 And gambling, fireworks gambling good food. What else do you need?
Preston Meyer 35:19 Me music but they're very good solid.
Katie Dooley 35:25 And their beats would slap way more than our Christmas hymns. For sure.
Preston Meyer 35:29 I went 20 years without being aware of Indian music why? Know how that happened? And then I started hanging out with a girl who isn't from India, but just really liked Indian guys and some music with her. Fair and some of it slaps Yeah,
Katie Dooley 35:50 no, it's great. As we mentioned, we're recording just before Diwali. And by the time this is published, it will be after Diwali. So, unfortunately, not this year, but I strongly encourage you and me and Preston next year to go check out some of your community events. There will absolutely you know, COVID notwithstanding, there will absolutely be public events for Diwali. So you don't need to eat if you're not comfortable going to a temple or inviting yourself over to your neighbor's house. There will absolutely be public celebrations that you know, just a great way to check it out and have an extra holiday in your year. Yes, it'd be my final thoughts.
Preston Meyer 36:31 I think that we're doing a pretty kick ass job of celebrating Diwali being such as it is the conquest of knowledge over ignorance. Since that's exactly the motive behind our show.
Katie Dooley 36:47 I I love it. We should get some Indian food next week and record our next episode. I like all right.
Preston Meyer 36:57 All right. Before we go,
Katie Dooley 36:58 I was like what's next? Oh, want
Preston Meyer 37:01 to thank everybody for listening to us, especially in this busy holiday season that we're creeping up into. We have all kinds of social media that you can follow us on we got Facebook Instagram, we got Discord server that we're having some good fun on. And we also have a Patreon that we would love to get your support.
Katie Dooley 37:25 And, and holiday season Preston you can't forget our Spreadshirt where you can buy some sick holy watermelon merch to give for Diwali. Or Hanukkah or Christmas or Kwanzaa.
Preston Meyer 37:39 whatever occasion you can find to give a gift
Katie Dooley 37:43 from the holy watermelon podcast. You should do it. Just a hard sell right there. I'm such a bad salesperson hard sell buy our stuff.
Preston Meyer 37:51 I like alright.
Katie Dooley 37:55 Peace be with you. By the late Middle Ages
Preston Meyer 38:09 Hey, what are you still doing here? Well, your commitment will be rewarded. We're having a giveaway. Thanks to lovely folks at Blackbird farm and apothecary. We have a pair of very sexy holy watermelon tumblers and coasters. Perfect for the holiday season. All you need to do is check out the posts on our Instagram and Facebook. Follow us like the post and tag a friend and one entry per tag. It will be great. The winner will be announced December 10 2021. Be sure to check out our friends at Blackbird farm and apothecary on Facebook. | |||
| 24 Feb 2025 | Roses, Crosses, and Confessions | 00:50:12 | |
Christian mysticism is widely spread through this relatively common but fairly new tradition derived almost exclusively from what might have been parody pamphlets that told the story of Christian Rosenkreuz. Johann Valentine Andrea claims to have written one such pamphlet to make fun of the growing interest in mystical and magical traditions shortly after the beginning of protestant era in Germany. Attempts at understanding the divine are plentiful and diverse, but there's a reasonable sort of logic to the idea that scientific pursuits can reveal the nature of the universe and its creator. Rosicrucianism has branched into scores of organizations, and is even found in some branches of Freemasonry. AMORC (Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis) and the Rosicrucian Fellowship are both fairly popular, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn brought us such great works as the Waite-Smith-Rider Tarot deck of 1909. All this and more... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram.
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| 22 Apr 2024 | Dying to Know | 01:17:05 | |
Why are there no bear ghosts? Nearly all the ghosts in the world seem to come from a specific period of time, long before any of us were born. There is a universal obsession with death, so we're going to explore death from the perspective of those left behind. (Traditions about what lays beyond will be the subject of another episode.) We talk about the Shiva tradition in Judaism, and the ghastly tradition of shades that dates back to at least as far as the monarch's encounter with the witch of Endor. We explore some traditions common among Christian denominations, and also WAKES! Another strong ghostly tradition exists among Christians, but not universally shared. We look at funerary and ghostly traditions among Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and Zoroastrians; and we take some time to ponder the Ghanaian Fantasy Coffins, and the New Orleans Jazz Funeral. What really deserves attention is the phenomenon of near-death experiences, not that they teach us about the world beyond, but they teach us an awful lot about ourselves. Raymond Moody put a lot of work into that field of NDEs, too bad it's all completely subjective neural chaos. DMT has been reported to offer a similar experience. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram.
[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: Hello, Preston. [00:00:12] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie. [00:00:14] Katie Dooley: Get off your phone. [00:00:15] Preston Meyer: Okay. [00:00:18] Katie Dooley: It'll rot your brain on today's episode of-- [00:00:21] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast! [00:00:24] Katie Dooley: I don't know how to make a segue into this one. [00:00:27] Preston Meyer: This is a bit of a bummer. [00:00:28] Katie Dooley: It's... I feel like it's a more awkward conversation than even our sex talk. [00:00:33] Preston Meyer: I don't feel like it's more awkward. [00:00:34] Katie Dooley: People don't like talking about death. We're going to talk about some gross things today. [00:00:38] Preston Meyer: A little bit. But yeah, death is around us all the time. Can't really avoid it. That's the deal. [00:00:44] Katie Dooley: No, it's, uh, inevitable. Like Thanos. [00:00:48] Preston Meyer: That's what they say. Yeah, so I was talking to. A person that I work with the other day about his concern with ghosts. He was actually really worried about, um, the Titanic 2 expedition and all that nonsense, but the conversation led very quickly to ghosts, and it boggles my mind that we haven't just agreed that everywhere on the planet is super haunted or nowhere is. [00:01:21] Katie Dooley: I have had that thought as well. Um, I don't disagree with him because. My house alone has been around since the 50s. You can't tell me something hasn't died nearby, [00:01:33] Preston Meyer: Right? [00:01:34] Katie Dooley: Actually, I have heard that there is an unfortunate story with the next-door house, so, um, [00:01:40] Preston Meyer: Tell me more. [00:01:41] Katie Dooley: Uh, apparently someone killed themselves next door before the current people... [00:01:44] Preston Meyer: Bummer. Lived there. Are there haunting stories? [00:01:46] Katie Dooley: Not that I've heard of. [00:01:48] Preston Meyer: Okay. Just the unfortunate circumstances of death. [00:01:51] Katie Dooley: Yes, but that's typically. [00:01:54] Preston Meyer: What leads to a... [00:01:55] Katie Dooley: Haunting story. And I always think about how I'm like, you know, get haunted by your cat or your dog. How come ghosts are only humans? There's no bear ghosts. [00:02:03] Preston Meyer: It's a great question. Cocaine bear has unfinished business. [00:02:09] Katie Dooley: We should name this episode, "How come there are no ghosts?" Though I do really like your title, which we will probably stay with. Um. But I have often thought. [00:02:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah, for sure. [00:02:23] Katie Dooley: Or, like... I don't know... [00:02:25] Preston Meyer: Dinosaur ghosts? Why are we not haunted by the soul of absolutely ravaged Triceratops? [00:02:33] Katie Dooley: And also there's like, I don't know, ghosts feel like they're from a very specific time-period. Like, if you hear, like, how come we all have a ghost kicking around from the 1200s? [00:02:42] Preston Meyer: Right? All ghosts are Dickensian. [00:02:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah, or more modern but, uh, anyway. [00:02:54] Preston Meyer: Death is great, and we have really weird ways of dealing with it. [00:02:58] Katie Dooley: We really do. And I will sort of preface this before we break it down by religion is like we kind of think our way is the right way or the normal way. And reading some of these, some was like, that actually makes a lot of sense on how they handle death. And then some of them, I'm like, that's fucking weird, I won't... [00:03:18] Preston Meyer: Well, if you see one thing often enough, even if you aren't behind it theologically, the habits are still your habits. Normal gets normal. [00:03:27] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So that was, you know, eye opening to say the least.houldUm, anyway, so we kick it off with our good old Abrahamic buddies. [00:03:39] Preston Meyer: Let's do it. Stick with what's most familiar, and then we'll dig into. Yeah, the good stuff. So in Judaism, respect for the dead is one of the most important mitzvot. I feel like we've used this word before. It's commandments. So really take care of the dead. Traditionally, Jewish people bury their dead intact. Some people mostly, you know, you're more reform, more liberal Jewish groups will do the cremation thing. I think that's generally the the theme we'll see moving forward is the more conservatives will not like cremation. We're going to run out of space real soon. An interesting thing that I have read about Judaism is that cremation is counted as destruction of property. [00:04:31] Katie Dooley: Who's property? [00:04:35] Preston Meyer: That's an interesting question. [00:04:37] Katie Dooley: God's property. [00:04:38] Preston Meyer: That makes sense. But there's also the strong family thing in Judaism where there's like you, you belong to your family in this way that you are. If you're not moving that body around yourself anymore, you're property. [00:04:56] Katie Dooley: Oh. We'll, move you around. Oh, wait, that's a different tradition to talk about. [00:05:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, Jewish people tend to observe a strict week of mourning after a funeral. They call this the shiva. Uh, it's just the number seven. So seven days of mourning. And during this process, mirrors in the home are often covered. And it's good to keep candles burning. And mourners will sit on nice low stools, like low as your squatty potty. [00:05:33] Katie Dooley: I'm too old for that. I'm not even that old. [00:05:36] Preston Meyer: It's a little tough, but these are all indications of mourning. Black veil is good for that. Things like that. Yeah. [00:05:43] Katie Dooley: Abrahamic and Western favour black for mourning. [00:05:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah and traditionally. Uh, you don't want to hasten up a death. You don't want to speed things along, even if you know death is imminent. Our country has a pretty interesting relationship with assisted death. [00:06:05] Katie Dooley: I think it's going to have to change anyway. That's not to digress too much. We could go on and chat about that, but I have my opinion. [00:06:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, having it available makes perfect sense. The reality of the government actually pressuring people into it. I'm not a big fan of. [00:06:26] Katie Dooley: But I yeah, I mean it shouldn't be a government decision, but just like your pets, to let someone live in pain just so they can live as long as possible. And health care costs are only going to get more expensive, for whomever. [00:06:42] Preston Meyer: If the only activity on your schedule of day-to-day for months on end is eating up resources, at some point you got to figure out maybe there's a better plan. [00:06:54] Katie Dooley: Well, and I care less about resources as opposed to quality of life. Like we have family members that live every day in pain and then they're also paying. For fentanyl patches, which are very expensive to manage that pain that they're still in. [00:07:10] Preston Meyer: Fentanyl is a wild thing. [00:07:13] Katie Dooley: Anyway, wild. [00:07:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But as you may have deduced, we're going to talk about some ghosts today. [00:07:23] Katie Dooley: Really wants to talk about ghosts today. So. [00:07:25] Preston Meyer: So the Tanakh does mention ghosts. Um, there's a lot of different kinds of ghosts I've been in unrelated studies, been trying to suss out how different people categorize ghosts. [00:07:39] Katie Dooley: Like angels. [00:07:40] Preston Meyer: with A little bit. Yeah. Okay, so you've got poltergeists who can legit interact with the physical world, and then you've got shades which are not so much. [00:07:51] Katie Dooley: They're there, but they're they can't do anything. [00:07:53] Preston Meyer: Right. Like maybe you can communicate them. Maybe not, but they just they may be barely visible. They might be more visible, but they're not going to interact physically with the world. So they're like a shadow. So that's a shade sort of thing. So what we have in the Tanakh usually talks about shades more than poltergeists that we have in ancient Israel, the belief that ghosts, the spirits of the departed, could be summoned and you could have conversations with them and learn things from them. The story of Saul and the Witch of Endor is an example. [00:08:35] Katie Dooley: That's from Star Wars, right? [00:08:38] Preston Meyer: George Lucas is not half as original as he likes to get credit for. And Endor was just an old place. No Ewoks, which is just Wookiee backwards. Almost not perfect. [00:08:55] Katie Dooley: I see your theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:08:57] Preston Meyer: No, the plan was that they were going to go to the Wookiee homeworld in Return of the Jedi. And then they couldn't figure out how to do it in a reasonable way. So they decided, okay, we'll make smaller costumes and just cast little people. [00:09:15] Katie Dooley: Okay. Wow. Also, some Star Wars backstory from Preston today. Sorry, I interrupted, and I regret interrupting now. [00:09:26] Preston Meyer: So the shades are a thing that is a matter of concern in Jewish folklore. And in their theology a little bit as well. There are explicit commandments. Do not mess with people who summon ghosts. Which makes sense. And they also talk about shades that can linger in the land and just stay near the place where they lived or where they died. Isaiah talks a little bit about those too. So I think it's kind of interesting. Ghosts, very solid, part of the religious tradition and there are in more recent than biblical texts, traditions of these shades actually possessing a body usually for a short time just to accomplish a specific task. We talked about this a little bit in our voodoo episode. Actually, it's the same sort of idea. [00:10:22] Katie Dooley: Which makes, I was gonna say, makes a bit of sense knowing the origins of Voodoo, right? [00:10:27] Preston Meyer: Well, especially the way it interacted with other religions on its way here. Yeah. So kind of interesting that this possession business is really interesting. And as we get into Christianity, there's stories of ghosts in the New Testament, in Jewish populations where the story feels a lot different, knowing that there's this belief locally that these would be things that dead people are coming back to accomplish, rather than demons like the Greek interpretation jumps onto it. Mhm. It's kind of weird. Kind of fun. [00:11:06] Katie Dooley: Um, you know who loves death? Christian? [00:11:09] Preston Meyer: Uh, I don't even remember where the quote came from originally, but I feel like I've quoted it a few times. Christians are just way too excited to die. ' [00:11:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Oh, man, they love it. Why is that Preston? [00:11:23] Preston Meyer: That we talk so much about the promise that the next life is going to be better. And yeah, there's there's so much wrong with this world that it makes sense to hope for something better. But when it gets anywhere close to somebody else realizing that you're too excited to die, you have really screwed up where your focuses are. [00:11:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And even like trying to try to make it all happen faster, trying to bring up the Second Coming. It's like. [00:11:52] Preston Meyer: Well, there's there's a lot of different ideas of what is supposed to trigger the Second Coming. [00:11:58] Katie Dooley: Humans aren't going to do it. [00:12:00] Preston Meyer: It's outside our control. We can't control God. [00:12:03] Katie Dooley: Doesn't mean people aren't trying because they can't wait. Yeah. Anyway, um, as I mentioned in Christians historically also don't like cremation because there would be no corpse when Jesus comes back and raises everyone from the dead, or he Christians believe in a physical resurrection. [00:12:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah, your body's got to rise from the grave. And as you pivot at the waist, you got to be facing east. [00:12:28] Katie Dooley: That sounds horrifying. It's all these and they all have to claw up six feet. Wow. Yeah. [00:12:37] Preston Meyer: Imagine the horror that this event would be. [00:12:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Anyway. But again, a lot of them are more relaxed now. I mean, I think it's just even people in my world, both of my grandparents were cremated and they were Christians. So. Anyway, I feel like they're the most relaxed now of any of the groups. [00:12:59] Preston Meyer: Probably,yeah. [00:13:02] Katie Dooley: I mean, Christian is a really big umbrella. [00:13:06] Preston Meyer: It sure is [00:13:07] But I'm sure there's groups within Christianity that still love a good burial, probably Catholic. [00:13:13] Preston Meyer: So I went to my granddad's funeral last... [00:13:17] Katie Dooley: We both did a bunch of funerals recently. [00:13:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. What a time. [00:13:20] Katie Dooley: Yeah. [00:13:21] Preston Meyer: And I mean it was interesting that I had never talked about religion at all with my granddad. I'd never thought that he identified as Christian. Found out at his funeral. This was an important detail to somebody. Yeah. So there was a little ash cross dropped on his coffin and was laid down on the ground, making sure that he was facing in a way that if you were to bend at the waist, he'd be facing east. [00:13:52] Katie Dooley: In six feet of dirt. [00:13:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah it was it was an interesting learning experience. [00:13:59] Katie Dooley: Well, good. [00:13:59] Preston Meyer: And now we're talking about death. [00:14:01] Katie Dooley: Now we're talking about death in the terms of Christian wakes are a Christian thing. [00:14:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I haven't heard the word wake used a lot outside of a Catholic context. Um, though I'm certainly can't say that that's not happening, but it's certainly an old tradition. [00:14:20] Katie Dooley: Yeahand as someone who's involved with the Irish community, the Irish still love a good wake. I don't know too many other groups that do it. And I don't know if that's because it's Irish or because it's Catholic, like what that Venn diagram looks like. And how much is just the circles I run in. But the Irish love a good wake. The name comes from staying up long hours watching over the dead while reciting psalms. [00:14:43] Preston Meyer: So we're not talking about the risk of the dead waking up. It's just that you got to stay awake to watch the body. [00:14:50] Katie Dooley: To watch. [00:14:51] Preston Meyer: In case it wakes up. [00:14:53] Katie Dooley: in case it wakes up to make sure. [00:14:55] Preston Meyer: I mean, there it does make sense because historically we we have had situations aplenty enough that we've taken precautions. [00:15:05] Katie Dooley: Bells and... [00:15:05] Preston Meyer: Where the bodies do occasionally get back up again after we thought they were dead. But we're just dumb. [00:15:13] Katie Dooley: If you want to hear a great vaudeville song about exactly that, it's called Tim Finnegan's Wake and basically he's dead and everyone's sad. And then someone spills whiskey on him and he comes back to life because whiskey. [00:15:27] Preston Meyer: It's like the plants in my office. [00:15:31] Katie Dooley: Water. Oh. That's terrible. Preston. [00:15:38] Preston Meyer: Uh, no one's perfect. [00:15:41] Katie Dooley: You know, you don't need to keep plants if that's... If you're just gonna kill him. [00:15:45] Preston Meyer: I'm gonna be honest. I don't keep plants in my office, and the person who generally takes care of them generally takes very good care of them. But there are occasionally exceptions. [00:15:59] Katie Dooley: We're not going to do a full episode on Heaven or Hell. But Christians and even Muslims and Jews, depending on whether you're good or bad, good or bad, you get sent to heaven or hell. Dun dun dun. Yes, that definitely deserves its own episode. [00:16:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, for most of history, the majority of Christians and an awful lot of segments of the Jewish population as well, have believed in a tiered series of heavens. In our angels episode, we talked about the ninth heaven, where like, the greatest of the angels live forever with God. And, um, the seventh heaven is a thing that happens occasionally in the way. What's the word I'm looking for? It's a common enough English idiom. Um, there's a TV show. [00:16:48] Katie Dooley: I know. [00:16:49] Preston Meyer: Who is in that TV show. I watched it for a year. [00:16:53] Katie Dooley: The most famous person out of Seventh Heaven was Jessica Biel. She was the second oldest daughter. Um, the guy who played the Christian pastor ended up being a pedophile in real life. [00:17:03] Preston Meyer: Oh, no. [00:17:04] Katie Dooley: Yeah, she was the most famous. I can't think of any of the other actors names now. Um, the older there was another. [00:17:10] Preston Meyer: Singer who was, like, really popular for a really short time. That was from that show, wasn't there? I don't know. I've got nothing. [00:17:17] Katie Dooley: Maybe as a side character, but of the family, only Jessica Biel made it anywhere significant. I mean, JT and all and actually having some decent movie roles afterwards, [00:17:27] Preston Meyer: Right? Good for her. [00:17:30] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean, considering no one else. [00:17:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The phrase I'm on cloud nine. Yeah, I don't think you hear that a whole lot anymore either. But that was a thing. [00:17:38] Katie Dooley: That Cloud Nine superstore. [00:17:39] Preston Meyer: Your grandpappy, probably said... Man, Superstore was a good show. [00:17:43] Katie Dooley: It was a good show. Better than better than Seventh Heaven. [00:17:45] Preston Meyer: Yes. Um, yeah. So for a long time, we talked about these tiered heavens that. Yeah, salvation is universal, but because people suck to different degrees, some of us are going to achieve a better situation. [00:18:04] Or hell yeah. [00:18:05] Preston Meyer: Protestants, especially, like the evangelical movement, mostly believe in the simple dichotomy of black and white, no shades of gray. Everything that's wrong with you is going to be fixed or burn forever in hell. It's hard to say that I see the appeal to that. I don't really like it. [00:18:23] Katie Dooley: I mean. [00:18:24] Preston Meyer: It takes away your identity. [00:18:25] Katie Dooley: Well, and if it's that black and white, then everyone's going to hell because nobody's. [00:18:28] Preston Meyer: And that's absolutely contrary to the mission of Jesus. Oh, well. [00:18:34] Katie Dooley: I guess we'll find out one day. [00:18:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I think it's a lot more reasonable to accept this more classical idea of shades of gray. It just makes sense. Um, different types of people organized and divided based on the way they choose to live their lives would merit different levels of heaven, I think is really a really clean way of explaining it. There was a lady I used to visit for a while when I lived in New Jersey who hated the idea that God would separate people based on any judgment at all. It makes a lot more sense that we would separate ourselves, right? If you like stealing but hate violence, there's a community for you where you're safe from the violent. But the people who don't like being robbed are safe from you. [00:19:32] Katie Dooley: That's good. So you just all rob each other for all time. [00:19:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah, [00:19:37] Katie Dooley: That's a pretty good punishment. [00:19:38] Preston Meyer: Right? [00:19:39] Katie Dooley: You steal something, then you turn around and your shit's got. Ah. [00:19:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. [00:19:42] Katie Dooley: So you got to steal more. [00:19:44] Preston Meyer: It feels a lot like the punishment fitting the crime. Yeah. [00:19:49] Katie Dooley: Um, we didn't put in our notes, but I know, I mean, I went to a Catholic funeral recently. We were... I don't know if you want to touch on that. [00:19:57] Preston Meyer: Sure, yeah. What is it that you experienced that you want to share? [00:20:00] Katie Dooley: I mean i've been told 2 or 3 Catholic funerals, now? Obviously, this one, most recently Catholic funerals are long because they do a full mass. I will say the thing about Catholic funeral, there's a lot of talk about God and not nearly as much about the person. [00:20:18] Preston Meyer: Sure. Now, is this a mass in addition to the daily mass, or is it just a not just a funeral attached to the daily mass? [00:20:27] Katie Dooley: No, they do... My understanding is they do a separate funeral mass. [00:20:31] Preston Meyer: I mean, nobody's accusing the Catholics of being efficient. [00:20:35] Katie Dooley: No, because it also took a long time. And then of course, I was like looking for the reliquary, because now we know from our lovely guest, Frank McMahon, confirmed that there is a holy relic in every Catholic church. So I'm looking for bits of saints. [00:20:49] Preston Meyer: Well, at the bare minimum, they'll have one locked away in the tabernacle, right? And you wouldn't get to see that. But yeah, if there's more about on on display. [00:20:59] Katie Dooley: There was something pretty fancy in a corner. And I was like, I don't know what that is. Okay, I didn't get close enough because I left the front for the family, but, uh. [00:21:07] Preston Meyer: No, no, you got to push your way through during a funeral. [00:21:10] Katie Dooley: During it. I need a front row seat, please, because I just need a front row seat. Um, but that's the biggest thing. Like. I mean, the last funeral I went to was as secular as a funeral gets. And they talk a lot about the person that passed. Um, so it's just. Different. But yeah, you know, everyone, priests especially very hopeful that she's in a better place. And we're the ones who are the losers an I don't know, I mean, you know, I don't believe any of that. I was like, is she. I mean, it's nice to think, but. Why are there no bear ghosts? [00:21:54] Preston Meyer: Because they don't have unfinished business. They got their honey. They're happy. [00:22:01] Katie Dooley: But. Right. If there's no bear heaven and bear hell, why is there human heaven? Human hell? Why are there no bear ghosts? That's my thesis. [00:22:14] Preston Meyer: I have a hypothesis. That bear heaven is fish hell. It's a very efficient system, and it's good enough that they don't need to linger here on Earth. [00:22:29] Katie Dooley: I've heard that, uh, squirrel hell is dog heaven. [00:22:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Perfect. So Christianity does inherit a lot from Jewish thought. It makes sense. Dispensationalism has got some tricky bits to it, but the inheritance system is inarguable. And that includes the matter of ghosts and the idea of possessing spirits I already mentioned shows up with the New Testament, but Greco-Roman thought shows a lot of its influence in the way that we see demons described in the Christian tradition that almost every ghost that you see described in the New Testament, apart from when they think that maybe Jesus is a ghost until he says, touch me and find out. [00:23:17] Katie Dooley: Pull my finger. Preston just wiggled his finger at me, so... "Pull my finger." - Jesus, Matthew 22:34. [00:23:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah, all the the ghosts are, well, terrible demons possessing people or making everybody have a bad time. Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians outright deny the possibility of ghosts, which is really frustrating for them when you point out the holes in that logic. But. Oh, well they just stopped visiting. [00:23:52] Katie Dooley: As much as I, uh, you know, try to be fair to... They're the least Christian of the Christians. [00:23:59] Preston Meyer: I mean, it's so hard to delineate what what is Christian and what isn't. [00:24:03] Katie Dooley: I know, but that's was my point. I was trying to poorly word, but yeah, but they're at least Christian. [00:24:12] Preston Meyer: I can't argue with that in this moment. [00:24:15] Katie Dooley: My next thesis. [00:24:18] Preston Meyer: Um, Seventh-day Adventist got a lot of those in my family. They teach that any ghost you might encounter is absolutely, certainly a demon in disguise. [00:24:28] Katie Dooley: Cool. [00:24:29] Preston Meyer: Sure. Not that I'm encountering a whole lot of ghosts. [00:24:34] Katie Dooley: No, but I just, like. I'm imagining a ghost pulling off its ghost mask, like in Scooby Doo and be like there's a demon under here. [00:24:43] Preston Meyer: I like that imagery. [00:24:44] Katie Dooley: Thank you. [00:24:45] Preston Meyer: But generally everybody agrees they can basically shapeshift. [00:24:48] Katie Dooley: Oh, oh that makes a lot more sense, but it's way less cool. [00:24:54] Preston Meyer: Right? Most other Christians admit the possibility of the disguise problem, but acknowledge that a ghost could genuinely be the dead person you're after. The ghost that we see in the Witch of Endor story. It's not really answered in a really concrete way. Whether or not this should be expected to be a demon in disguise or the dead prophet returned. Because that wasn't the important part of the story. The important part of the story was stop getting witches to summon demons. Many Christians believe that the dead can take on the role of angel. [00:25:34] Katie Dooley: Which is where, as we're writing these notes, I was like, we need to separate heaven and hell. And even we talked about angels. And I was like, but dead people become angels. [00:25:43] Preston Meyer: Right. [00:25:43] Katie Dooley: One so yeah, there's like a whole other piece to this. [00:25:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, the Revelation talks about how there's like a third of the host of Heaven fell with Lucifer, as most people prefer to call him. [00:25:57] Katie Dooley: Satan is accurate. [00:25:59] Preston Meyer: [00:25:59]Satan is a far more helpful thing here. And so those generally [00:26:03] get to be the ones that we call demons within Christian theology models. But there are also talks of, well, if you're just a bad person, you can become a demon that way too. It's exciting. It gives you something to aspire to if you don't want to change your ways. Lots of goodies. [00:26:23] Katie Dooley: Cool. The last of the Abrahamic religions, of course, is Islam. And I mean last chronologically [00:26:23] Preston Meyer: Of course and the last one we're talking about. [00:26:33] Katie Dooley: And the last one we're talking about today. [00:26:34] Preston Meyer: Because we usually stick. [00:26:36] Katie Dooley: Last but not least. Very similar, obviously, it's been influenced by Judaism and Christianity. When death is imminent, a family member or close friend is present to say the shahada, which is the, uh, [00:26:49] Preston Meyer: There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet. [00:26:53] Katie Dooley: Yes. Uh, there's a word for it. Something of faith. [00:26:57] Preston Meyer: Uh, statement of faith. Statement. [00:26:58] Katie Dooley: Declaration. Declaration. Thank you. Declaration of faith. We talked about this in our Islam so years ago. But the shahada is also recited when you're born. So it's this. If you're born a Muslim, it's kind of a nice full-circle moment. [00:27:12] Preston Meyer: It's a very convenient conversion tool. All you got to do is shout that in somebody's ear and bam. [00:27:18] Katie Dooley: You actually shout it? [00:27:20] Preston Meyer: I mean, some people like like the video of the guy who doing like a really awful baptism of a baby with dunk, dunk dunk dunk dunk. [00:27:28] Katie Dooley: Baby gets shaken baby. [00:27:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And the parents are just horrified. There are people who shout at the children. But that's not likely the typical format. [00:27:39] Katie Dooley: All right. Again with like with the other Abrahamic faiths and more strictly Muslims do not cremate their dead. Some Jews do. I'd say half of Christians do, and no Muslims do. They do not cremate their dead because they believe in the physical resurrection that will happen. And autopsies are also forbidden. Unnecessary autopsies, obviously. I presume in the case of murder they would do an autopsy. But if someone dies in their home, they don't do autopsies [00:28:11] Preston Meyer: Right. There's I mean, there are places where autopsies just aren't happening. But here in North America, yeah, if something bad happens, it's going to happen. And you can put on your frowny face all you want. It's still going to happen. You just muscle through it. [00:28:30] Katie Dooley: Uh, but organ donation is okay because it helps people. [00:28:33] Preston Meyer: So I'm really glad that exception exists. It feels weird. [00:28:39] Katie Dooley: It feels contradictory. [00:28:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But I appreciate that exception exists because it helps people. [00:28:45] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean, you know, someone's dead and you don't care why they died. What is the point of an autopsy? Right. If they're 80 something years old. [00:28:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah. [00:28:57] Katie Dooley: And they died at home in their bed or in a hospital in the bed. [00:29:00] Preston Meyer: There's gonna come a time 100 years from now, and our podcast will still be available on podcast libraries. And somebody's going to hear that it was normal for us to die at 80 and go. What the hell was wrong with these people? [00:29:16] Katie Dooley: You think our life expectancy is going to get that? [00:29:18] Preston Meyer: I think our life expectancy can reasonably be expected to be extended by decades. I got high hopes. We'll see. [00:29:28] Katie Dooley: Uh, bodies are originally washed and wrapped in a white sheet before burial. And they are washed three times by a family member of the same gender as the deceased. Sharia law dictates that funeral planning start immediately after the death, and bodies are buried quickly. There are no viewings, so no wakes. You did not stay up all night drinking with your dead grandma. Have you seen Derry Girls? [00:29:55] Preston Meyer: I've seen a little bit of Derry Girls, but I definitely have not seen whatever has come to your mind. [00:30:00] Katie Dooley: There's an episode and they're at someone's wake. And my favorite character, Sister Michael, she's a curmudgeonly nun. Who I don't even know if she has that much faith. And there's one part. She's at this wake and she's talking to a family member. The family member is very annoying. She's like, oh my God, is this my wake? Am I dead? Am I in hell? [00:30:23] Preston Meyer: I love it. [00:30:26] Katie Dooley: Sister Michael, I'll show it to you after I love her. I watched through the whole series, and it's filled with charming teens. I was like, no, that grumpy old lady. That's my favorite. [00:30:38] Preston Meyer: That sounds right. So, if you were wondering. Yes, Muslims believe in ghosts. Uh, the spirits of the dead are supposed to go on to an underworld called Barzakh. [00:30:51] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's a good name. [00:30:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I like the name. Be honest, I did not look up what the name means. I'm sure it's got meaning, but I'll look it up later. Improper burial can impede the journey to this underworld. [00:31:03] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's why they're so regimented in it, okay. [00:31:06] Preston Meyer: Because you don't want to risk screwing this up, and then you've got a ghost wandering around because, I mean, if you ever notice ghosts, it's not because they're doing nice things for you. Nobody's emptying your dishwasher. It's not happening. [00:31:19] Katie Dooley: Oh, you seen that webcomic of this little ghost? And he's like, I love home decorating. And he's, like, moving around frames and vases, and the family's like, ah, but he's just this cute little ghost. It's like, I love this work. It makes me way too happy, but also sad. [00:31:34] Preston Meyer: I love it. Yeah, that's great. Um, so the shades of righteous spirits are expected to linger at their own graves, which feels a little bit weird. I had to dig at this. There's like, the soul goes on to the underworld and awaits resurrection. But a shade, a shadow of that soul lingers at the grave so that people can come and talk to it and get whatever great mystic knowledge is reserved for, not the living. But apparently the shades are willing to share it sometime. [00:32:16] Katie Dooley: It feels like a pretty common practice of like. [00:32:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. [00:32:19] Katie Dooley: Visiting grave to talk to a loved one. [00:32:21] Preston Meyer: I would say it's pretty close to universal that you would go to wherever you buried your loved ones to talk to them, hoping to get some sort of answer. [00:32:32] Katie Dooley: But they believe that they actually stay there. That's cool. [00:32:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's kind of nifty. [00:32:38] Katie Dooley: Yeah. All right. Heading to the East air quotes. [00:32:44] Preston Meyer: Vaguely eastward from where we were. [00:32:46] Katie Dooley: Or where we're heading to the Dharmic religions is actually a better title. Hinduism. [00:32:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah. [00:32:54] Katie Dooley: So when death is near, it is common to obtain water for purification from the Ganges River, which is considered sacred. [00:33:02] Preston Meyer: Remember we talked about how the Hindu people are the river folks. [00:33:05] Katie Dooley: The river folk is the part to be surrounded by loved ones at the time of your death. If the body is left alone, uh, light, ideally, a candle should be left near the body as close to the head as can be done safely so. [00:33:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah. You don't want them catching on fire. [00:33:20] Katie Dooley: No. Uh, to comfort the lingering spirit. Generally for Hindus, families are encouraged to remain conservative in their mourning, allowing the soul to move on quickly to its next stage. The soul is said to linger as long as people hold it with their thoughts. So mourners are encouraged to focus on happy thoughts and memories. I like that. [00:33:41] Preston Meyer: Right? So it's okay to mourn, but not too long and not too negatively. Which is good. Remember the good times. [00:33:51] Katie Dooley: Families typically prefer to bury the body within a day. Any work the coroner might need to do is a major inconvenience. [00:33:58] Preston Meyer: I mean, that's true, generally. [00:34:02] Katie Dooley: All organs need to be returned to their place before burial. So no organ donation here. [00:34:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I'm there's definitely going to be exceptions to that. Some people are a lot more liberal than but the the general religious expectation is leave it be. [00:34:20] Katie Dooley: The soul is believed to carry on to its next incarnation, whether as an angel, a human or an animal. Or better yet, escape the cycle of samsara and recombine with Brahma, the source of all creation, potentially to be recycled into creation. But that would be as a nearly totally new soul. [00:34:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the this cycle of samsara is. A really interesting thing to study so much potential or just go back and recombine with God. And maybe he'll use you again. [00:34:54] Katie Dooley: Maybe he'll use you for something else. You've done it. But now you're a rock. Because he needed a rock right here. Yeah, ad if you'll recall, the you come back based on how good you are. Good you were your karma in your past lives. So if you're doing good, you'll come back as something better. You're not doing so good. You're heading back to that rock. [00:35:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And that's historically that was like the way to move between casts was just. [00:35:26] Katie Dooley: Being reborn. [00:35:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And now we've seen in some places some movement between castees is more possible than in other places. [00:35:37] Katie Dooley: I mean, this generaetion, I think, is caring less about caste than ever before. And I'm sure in the next 20, 30, 40 years, it'll... [00:35:47] Preston Meyer: Get a little bit better every generation. Yeah, one can hope anyway. [00:35:52] Katie Dooley: Tell me about the Ghost, though. [00:35:53] Preston Meyer: Oh, man. So there's some there's some baggage here with Hindu ghosts. You're supposed to move on to the next life. [00:36:01] Katie Dooley: So if you don't, you're downgrading. [00:36:05] Preston Meyer: Right? You're supposed to get a new body. [00:36:07] Katie Dooley: So a ghost is like a variant of Loki. You've come out of the timeline. [00:36:14] Preston Meyer: A little bit. [00:36:15] Katie Dooley: Interesting. [00:36:16] Preston Meyer: I mean, to the point where you've got folks like the TVA saying, no, you need to get back in line. Yeah, that's a little that is a fair enough analogy of what we're looking at. Okay. It's not perfect. [00:36:29] Katie Dooley: But you're right because you're either supposed to come back better or come back worse. So if you're not coming back at all and you're not escaping samsara, there's a problem. Okay. I can't wait to hear this. [00:36:40] Preston Meyer: So go start a very serious matter. Reincarnation is the normal path. Something is keeping spirits from passing on to the next phase, which could theoretically be nirvana. But if you're in this situation where you're lingering here, maybe that next step isn't Nirvana. So there's a good list of things that might prevent a spirit from moving on, and thus lingering is a noticeable and likely malevolent spirit. We've got improper burial. So a lot of religions worry about burying people properly to prevent ghost problems. Uh, we've got violent death. Loads of fun there. Unfinished business. I mean, that's bad karma. Most of these are bad karma type things. Sometimes it's not your karma, but other people's karma on you. But if you've got unfinished business, that's your own karma. And the worst of all of these, the one that had some serious baggage that I thought was really interesting is if a woman dies in childbirth or at the abuse of her in-laws, then she is said to return as a churel or chudel or whatever. 400 different ways are pronouncing that based on the various languages of the region. A malevolent and destructive spirit is what a churel is, and they are focused on the destruction of the family that wronged her. Yeah, it's apparently very dramatic, caused a lot of problems, and they've got ghost hunters to deal with that. [00:38:15] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I was going to say that sounds like the plot of a good Bollywood movie. [00:38:20] Preston Meyer: There's got to be one, right? The odds are good. [00:38:23] Katie Dooley: The odds are... I might have to do some digging. Yeah. Cool. Buddhism. [00:38:30] Preston Meyer: So I remember showing you a video a little while ago that looked super suspicious. [00:38:35] Katie Dooley: I remember when I saw this, I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. Um, so Buddhism sort of overarching, very similar to Hinduism, trying to escape the cycle of life and death. But there's some nuances and some practices within Buddhism that are neat slash kinda gross. [00:38:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they're care for the dead is completely incompatible with what we see in the Hindu tradition. [00:38:58] Katie Dooley: I'm tempted to put a trigger warning on this part of the episode. I found it a bit gross. Sure, mostly the sokushinbutsu. [00:39:06] Preston Meyer: You've been warned. Skip ahead five minutes if you don't want to handle this. [00:39:09] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it's just like body horror is a bit strong, but it is a little gross. So we're gonna talk about Tibetan sky burials. Tell me about this video that you showed me. [00:39:18] Preston Meyer: So there was this person in a little corral full of vultures because they don't always just fly around waiting for stuff. Sometimes they know where the good stuff is, and sometimes they're part of a farm. And this person was just chopping up a human skeleton up. It was a pretty clean skeleton. Somebody had already taken care of business. [00:39:39] Katie Dooley: And it was very clear from the rib cage that it was a human skeleton. [00:39:43] Preston Meyer: It was very obviously human. [00:39:45] Katie Dooley: So this was a Tibetan sky burial. Sky burial. I don't know if it was in Tibet, but that's where it comes from. The term sky burial is a Western term. The actual practice, the translation translates to giving alms to the birds, which I kind of love. [00:40:00] Preston Meyer: It's for the birds. [00:40:02] Katie Dooley: This is a practice where the corpse is placed on a mountain to decompose through exposure to the elements and animal scavenging. Obviously, in the case Preston's talking about, for whatever reason, they need to speed it up. Or. [00:40:14] Preston Meyer: I mean, this could have been taking care of the skeleton after the scavenging. Yeah. [00:40:20] Katie Dooley: So Vajrayana Buddhists believe that the body is an empty vessel once the spirit has left. So none of this physical resurrection and therefore there's no reason to keep it. The person's got a new body somewhere else. They died. They've resurrected. They're not sorry, reincarnated somewhere else. [00:40:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah, Buddhists just generally aren't terribly worried about the corpse. And that's nice. I can appreciate that. Just don't worry about it. [00:40:49] Katie Dooley: Another Buddhist practice that mildly traumatized me. And it has a I feel like a deeper theological discussion we could talk about is Sokushinbutsu is the practice of self-mummification. [00:41:06] Preston Meyer: So gross. [00:41:06] Katie Dooley: Japanese. It started by Japanese Buddhist monks. Um, it's an ascetic practice. Acetic, ascetic? I always say it wrong. [00:41:14] Preston Meyer: Acetic is a kind of acid. [00:41:17] Katie Dooley: It's an ascetic practice that takes about 3000 days. That's what, eight years, roughly. [00:41:22] Preston Meyer: Sure. [00:41:23] Katie Dooley: To complete. And it involves essentially eating a tree. Monks would eat pine needles, resin and seeds found in these trees, and the process eventually eliminates all body fat. [00:41:38] Preston Meyer: So you've you've had Buckley's tastes awful, but it works. [00:41:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah, that's part of the tree. [00:41:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So the reason that it tastes awful and works is because pine needle oil is mildly toxic. That's why grass doesn't grow right up to the base of the tree. Why would you want to eat pine needles? Unless, of course, this is your plan. [00:41:59] Katie Dooley: Well. And yes. And this is I'll finish explaining it. But this like this idea and I guess it's like self-flagellation of, like, what is so important that you're willing to do this. And as an atheist I'm like, mm, nothing. Anyway, we'll we'll come back to that. Continue explaining this horrific process. So eating the tree eliminates all body fat. It does result in the starvation that it leaves the body well preserved, and they found corpses with skin, hair, teeth, nails in the forest, which is wild, and obviously probably because you're right of the biotoxins animals don't touch them right, and the skin doesn't rot away. So I don't know who figured this out. I don't know why anyone wanted to figure this out, but. [00:42:44] Preston Meyer: Right. There's there's so much that we do that like knowing it. Sure. We can keep going. How did we first find out? Like cheese. The milk went so bad and then all of a sudden was fine again. [00:43:03] Katie Dooley: There's a lot of things in life. I'm like, how did we figure this out? This is one I don't think we needed to figure out but... So the practice has been banned since the late 1800s in Japan. But and there's pictures of this if you do like this kind of stuff. The Buddhist monk Luang Pho Daeng died in 1973. He was a Thai monk from Thailand after practicing sokushinbutsu, and his body is actually on display and they just die while meditating. So he's sitting there cross-legged and they put sunglasses on them because apparently his eye sockets are pretty horrific. But, uh, I mean, it's an interesting example of... They didn't do anything to him. He's just he's behind glass now. [00:43:47] Preston Meyer: But I would hope so because people, you know, people are going to be touching. Right. [00:43:53] Katie Dooley: Yeah. But he's they didn't do any other sort of embalming to him besides... [00:43:58] Preston Meyer: What he did himself, what he... [00:43:59] Katie Dooley: Did to himself. So anyway, um, yeah, it's an interesting like but I guess we even have cases like 9/11. What do you believe in so much that you're willing to die for it? Something that takes 3000 days of some commitment [00:43:59] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, there's a lot of things I like to eat that would slow this process down. [00:44:20] Katie Dooley: I don't I don't think you're supposed to eat other things. [00:44:23] Preston Meyer: I know it's a major commitment. [00:44:25] Katie Dooley: You'd be like, you'd eat like pine needles and then be like, oh, but a burger sounds great. [00:44:29] Preston Meyer: Right? [00:44:32] Katie Dooley: Um, yeah. And the the Luang Pho Daeng, he had six kids and a wife, and he left to become a Buddhist monk. And then he decided. [00:44:41] Preston Meyer: He would end it all the slowest way possible. [00:44:43] Katie Dooley: The slowest way possible. And I just, I, I don't know, I just I can't wrap my head around it, but I guess it's. [00:44:50] Preston Meyer: Not for me. [00:44:51] Katie Dooley: I guess. But John Paul II flogged himself and people flew into the Twin Towers and Luang Pho Dang starved himself to death. I don't, I guess. Maybe I'm just too apathetic, Preston. [00:45:05] Preston Meyer: Maybe, I don't know. [00:45:08] Katie Dooley: Maybe I just like life too much. [00:45:10] Preston Meyer: There's a lot to like about life. [00:45:12] Katie Dooley: I think so, but. [00:45:14] Preston Meyer: All right. Well, believe it or not, Buddhists believe in ghosts, too. [00:45:19] Katie Dooley: What? I'm seeing a theme. This might be the only universal belief in the entire world. I don't believe in ghosts, though, so. [00:45:26] Preston Meyer: Well, we've already pointed out a couple of groups that deny the universality of the belief. Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians. [00:45:34] Katie Dooley: But I do know atheists that believe in ghosts, which is funny to me. [00:45:37] Preston Meyer: Right? You can believe in ghosts without believing in God. [00:45:39] Katie Dooley: No, but I just. [00:45:41] Preston Meyer: No. I think if you do believe in ghosts, it's easy to talk somebody into believing that there's more. And then bam, you get into the mysterious agnostic belief in some sort of god. [00:45:56] Katie Dooley: Or some sort of something. [00:45:58] Preston Meyer: Well, even even if the universe is God, you still got all God. [00:46:01] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Anyway, I was so excited to find a universal belief, its not even universal that puppies are adorable. [00:46:09] Preston Meyer: Right? Puppies are haram. [00:46:12] Katie Dooley: Are haram. Anyway. [00:46:14] Preston Meyer: All right, so many Buddhists celebrate a ghost festival. Where they offer food to ghosts who might linger. This is an expression of compassion mostly, which is one of the greatest virtues of Buddhism. And in return, the ghosts do not bother the community, which seems to usually work, or, depending on your measure of things, maybe always works. [00:46:39] Katie Dooley: Because they don't exist. [00:46:41] Preston Meyer: Right? Um, ghosts might also move onto a realm specifically for hungry ghosts, where there are no offerings and everybody is just hungry all the time. [00:46:57] Katie Dooley: That sounds scary. [00:46:58] Preston Meyer: That sounds like hell. I feel like this is a really nice way of saying they're in hell. [00:47:04] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I don't want to be hungry. [00:47:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That sucks. In the Tibetan tradition. A bothersome ghost can be captured with a special trap and extra killed with a ritual dagger, sending it to be reborn again. [00:47:20] Katie Dooley: My, do you know what that reminds me of? When people say he was killed to death, I'm like, uh huh, uh huh. Yep. [00:47:27] Preston Meyer: Redundant. [00:47:28] Preston Meyer: Murder-Death-Killed. [00:47:29] Katie Dooley: Murdered. Death killed. He was murdered to death. [00:47:33] Preston Meyer: But if a ghost is sticking around, that's. Yeah, there is a procedure in place to kill the ghost so that it is not an operating ghost any further. [00:47:44] Katie Dooley: I was going to say that's the only context in which I will accept killed to death is when you're killing a ghost. [00:47:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's. It doesn't fit in the frame that we have for ghosts here. It's different than exorcism, which is kind of what we would talk about, about getting rid of a ghost. But there there are some, some commonalities. There is one particular ghost that I think is rather interesting. And the Dalai Lama agrees. Maybe not for the same reason. Dorjee Shugden is a powerful 17th century monk, I say is because that's what some people believe. In Tibet, he's revered by some who claim that his lingering ghost is a god. Most Buddhists don't really mess with arguments about theology. Don't worry about God's worry about your own path through samsara. [00:48:40] Katie Dooley: This one is hot topic. [00:48:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah, because a lot of people believe that Shugden is a God that is, like worthy of worship and like focus on him a fair bit. And other people, not so much. Of course, the Dalai Lama is not a fan at all. He says that Shugden is an evil spirit. And yeah, this division is causing a lot of contention in Tibet. [00:49:06] Katie Dooley: Sikhs, Sikhism, like Buddhists and Hindus, believe in reincarnation, which is interesting because it's also a monotheistic religion. Remember, it's the baby of Hinduism and Islam. [00:49:18] Preston Meyer: Hindu's a little bit monotheistic. That's true. Depending on your interpretation of all of the things and expressions of God. [00:49:26] Katie Dooley: Um, so Sikhs believe in reincarnation that comes from the Hinduism side and to eventually escape the cycle and become one with God, but only one God. I guess, as you pointed out, Brahma. [00:49:39] Preston Meyer: Right, one, three, 700 million, whatever. [00:49:43] Katie Dooley: It's fine. Cremation is the preferred and traditionally accepted method to deal with the deceased in Sikhism. This is the first time we've seen that. [00:49:54] Preston Meyer: It's like a system built around being wise in a very densely populated part of the world. Thought of a solution to one of a few problems. [00:50:06] Katie Dooley: Family members are expected to witness the cremation process, which I thought was interesting. I don't think that's very typical here. [00:50:12] Preston Meyer: I don't know if we make it very convenient to witness a cremation here. [00:50:16] Katie Dooley: I think you can if you ask, but I don't think it's typicalbecause when we put down Paige, if you've heard our little jingles on the podcast, there's no more jingles anymore. It was an option to watch her be cremated. And I was like, no, I'm good. But I haven't had a human in my life cremated recently, so I don't know. [00:50:35] Preston Meyer: Fingers crossed that it doesn't happen. [00:50:37] Katie Dooley: I'm gonna do that. [00:50:38] Preston Meyer: And if you're curious why people cross their fingers or knock on wood, we did an episode on that a little while ago. [00:50:45] Katie Dooley: Ashes are scattered into a river. They believe that the body should be returned to the earth, and that the family left behind doesn't carry this attachment to the body. In instances where Sikhs may choose burial, headstones are not allowed because the body is just that shell that we've seen in the other Dharmic religions. There should be no attachment to the body. A Sikh funeral is antam sanskar. Antam Sanskar which translates to final ceremony. TThe deceased Sikh is dressed in their five Sikh articles of faith before the funeral and cremation. So that's the Kesh, Kanga, Katcha, Khara and kirpan. If you want to know what those are. [00:51:31] Preston Meyer: Check out. [00:51:32] Katie Dooley: Our episode. One of those is a little knife. Yeah, that's the kirpan. After a funeral service, family and friends gather to read the Sri Guru Granth Sahib. Which is the final guru and the holy book. [00:51:46] Preston Meyer: So as an heir to both Hindu and Muslim philosophies, the ideas of ghosts live in both realms. To some extent, we do have the worry of the ghosts of the abused, that maybe they'll come back and cause some problems, and it's kind of hard to work that out of the faith when it's still living in at least the more secular portion of the Hindu reality. Yeah. Nothing terribly new and exciting there. [00:52:13] Katie Dooley: Now we have some outliers, some that attach directly to religion. Some are just cultural practices around death. Now that we all know what Zoroastrianism is. They are actually doing something very similar to the sky funerals, they have a tower of silence. [00:52:27] Preston Meyer: That sounds really cool. [00:52:29] Katie Dooley: It does. They put their dead on this tower raised platform for scavengers and the elements to aid in decomposition. It is a circular ray structure used just for this purpose. This keeps corpses which are considered to be unclean, away from the sacred elements of fire, earth and water. [00:52:53] Preston Meyer: Up in the air. [00:52:55] Katie Dooley: Well, there's not much you can do about that. I figured it this way. Right. You either has to be Earth. Well, I guess any of them. One of them has to be tainted, though, to get rid of the body. So they've opted for air and give it to the animals. I didn't read the full article because it was behind a paywall, which I hate, but, uh, there's no Towers of Silence in in the West. So that has led Zoroastrians to have to compromise on their last funeral rites and traditions, which is kind of sad. I mean, right, and this is where. [00:53:28] Preston Meyer: Fire is such a big thing, there's always these these fire temples for Zoroastrianism. And part of me wants to say, well, just build a separate fire for cremation, but that is still putting an unclean thing in sacred fire. [00:53:44] Katie Dooley: But and this is where, you know, I said at the top of the episode, some things make a lot of sense, like getting rid of a body in a very both economical and ecological way makes a ton of sense, and I don't think it gets more sanitary than a tower of silence. Whatever, you could argue a sky burial mound could get into the water system or whatever. But yeah, you're right. The West is so uptight about. [00:54:14] Preston Meyer: Dead bodies. [00:54:15] Katie Dooley: Dead bodies, so do I think. You know, eating a tree to die makes a lot of sense. No. Do I think, uh, sky burial does? Yeah. [00:54:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Fair. [00:54:25] Katie Dooley: And so it made me sad for them. Like, imagine not being able to have a funeral the way you won't have a funeral for a loved one. [00:54:32] Preston Meyer: There's. There's got to be a way that we can work around existing systems to make that work out. [00:54:39] Katie Dooley: I don't know, I feel like you. Well, no, because there'd still be laws. But the solution is buying private land, right? But you still have to circumvent laws with dead bodies. And I don't know what laws. [00:54:49] Preston Meyer: Cops aren't allowed on our property. [00:54:51] Katie Dooley: Yeah, um. [00:54:52] Preston Meyer: What's the tower for? None of your business. It's a religious structure. [00:54:55] Katie Dooley: You can't see what's on top of it. Of course we have, of course, drones and airplanes and all sorts of things. People know there's dead. [00:55:01] Preston Meyer: There's. Yeah. New project. I'm going to design a structure that isn't super friendly to drones, where you could have a tower of silence. [00:55:13] Katie Dooley: Okay. [00:55:16] Preston Meyer: This would be a thing that will happen a lot more easily if I knew people who were Zoroastrians. [00:55:24] Katie Dooley: Well, if you know a Zoroastrian... If you know Zoroastrian, put them in touch with us. I would just love to interview them and, uh, Preston can talk about his scheme with them. [00:55:37] Preston Meyer: Yep. All right. New Orleans jazz funeral is a fun little extra thing to talk about. Yeah. So, Louisiana. I've never been. Have you been to Louisiana? [00:55:50] Katie Dooley: No. It's actually quite high on my list of places in the States to go. Um, I would really like to go to New Orleans. [00:55:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's from from what I've seen on TV and movies. A great collection of people. That's about what I got for my own knowledge. But luckily we do reading. [00:56:09] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And I mean, I this is nice because we have talked about Voodoo and a little bit of Hoodoo in the past. [00:56:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So there's strong colonial past there. Connects to Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. There is a great tradition of military style brass bands at these funeral processions. You can you can find videos on YouTube. They're great. Mix that with African spiritual practices, Catholic influences. And you know, this being the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans has a pretty unique funerary tradition. Lots of dancing. I've seen more than one casket drop. [00:56:48] Katie Dooley: I mean, that person doesn't care anymore. [00:56:52] Preston Meyer: And everybody's having a good time. You're like, for sure there are going to be a couple living people who are a little uncomfortable with dropping a casket, but that's not a thing that has to be remembered. Yeah. They really incorporate celebration into the mourning. Yeah. You lost somebody you love, but you get to celebrate the time you did enjoy with them and celebrate the fact that you've been brought together with your community and family. [00:57:17] Katie Dooley: You know, I'm just going to touch on this right now because I'm thinking of it. Our good friend Sarah Snyder, our very first ever guest on the podcast, she shared a I guess it's a meme that's not a funny one the other day. And she said, things that are said at funerals should be set at birthdays. And I thought, I'm going to start doing that. I'm going to write long loving cards to my friends now. So I like it. It doesn't all get left to the last minute. [00:57:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. [00:57:42] Katie Dooley: Ghanaian fantasy coffins. So interesting. We'll post some pictures on the day this launches on our Discord. These are works of art used by the Ga people of Southern Ghana. They believe that our lives continue into the next world the same as they did on Earth. So the coffins represent the deceased by using different symbols. Fantasy coffins are shaped and painted. You can get them in ships, mermaids, chickens, shoes and so much more. And yeah, often they use it to represent what your job was in life. So pilots will be buried in planes and. [00:58:20] Preston Meyer: So I can get I wrap my head around a lot of careers that would get you buried in something that's shaped like a ship. What do I do I have to do to get buried inside a mermaid? [00:58:32] Katie Dooley: I would also say ship related work. Ocean navigating. You can also be a professional mermaid now. [00:58:41] Preston Meyer: Okay, fair. [00:58:43] Katie Dooley: I don't know how popular that is in Ghana I feel like it's a real white person thing. [00:58:46] Preston Meyer: Famadihana is the traditional Madagascar ceremony of the Malagasy people, of turning of the bones. It's basically just a way to continually remember the deceased. Bodies of ancestors are removed from their resting place, rewrapped and their names written on the shroud to be remembered. That's kind of nice. A little gross. [00:59:11] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I was gonna say I want to be the person. There's like a there's a point where is horrible. And then once they're just bones, it's fine. But there's like the first couple of years where they're still icky. I wouldn't want to be that person. [00:59:24] Preston Meyer: But yeah, when it's sticky, it's a bad time. Yeah. [00:59:27] Katie Dooley: But once they're just clean bones, yeah, that's not so bad. [00:59:32] Preston Meyer: And depending on the situation, I mean, it might not even be a long time, right? [00:59:36] Katie Dooley: I don't know how long the body takes to decompose. [00:59:39] Preston Meyer: It varies on region. Right. Well Madagascar is wet. [00:59:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And then I mean over here they don't decompose because we put so many fucking toxic shit into them, which. [00:59:47] Preston Meyer: There is that [00:59:49] Katie Dooley: Please don't do that to me. I want to be a mushroom. [00:59:52] Preston Meyer: Okay? [00:59:53] Katie Dooley: Hollow me out and then turn me into mushrooms. [00:59:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Okay, so there is more to this process. They don't just wrap them up and then stick them back where they found them. They dance with their skeletons. They have a real party. I'm almost. I'm gonna say Mexican Day of the dead level. [01:00:12] Katie Dooley: Yeah. [01:00:13] Preston Meyer: But there's this practice creeps a lot of people out, and so they're doing it less and less. I don't know if it needs to be stamped out. It doesn't feel like that is necessary, but the Christian missionaries have really put a lot of pressure on them to stop, even though the Catholic Church is okay with it. [01:00:32] Katie Dooley: The Catholic Church has come out to say they're okay with it. So I'm guessing these are Protestant missionaries that are like, maybe we shouldn't dance with bones. Catholic Church has come out and said, no, it's fine. Have fun. [01:00:43] Preston Meyer: I mean, especially this newest pope. He's mostly like, yeah, keep doing your good things. Please don't leave the church. [01:00:52] Katie Dooley: I just heard by the time this episode comes out, this will be really old news, but that he's, like, not approved of gay marriage. But there's steps being taken to... You can't call them marriage, but you can get blessed. [01:01:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The Pope did a little while ago announced that he will bless gay unions, which is. It's a step. It is a step. [01:01:24] Katie Dooley: So, anyway, uh, Preston mentioned the day of the dead, and we've talked about it a little bit before. And it is, of course, the subject of video or popular animated films. The day of the Dead is November 2nd, religiously. Secularly. It has extended to more than a single day, and the festival is much more fun. The ghosts aren't likely offended, right? [01:01:47] Preston Meyer: It's just loads of rum. Loads and loads and loads of rum. [01:01:50] Katie Dooley: For that part of the world. [01:01:51] Preston Meyer: Bright colors and parades. All right, so I did a bunch of deep diving into near death experiences. Um, so research into this field of near-death experiences is relatively new. We haven't been talking about it for even 200 years quite yet, really. And so it started when people started regularly falling from heights great enough to have time to contemplate their lives. So fairly recent history. And so when we started reviving people from clinical deaths, then we started getting a lot more people giving reports on their near-death experiences, experiencing the sorts of things in huge numbers, even enough that we could study them more effectively. So in 1975, a fellow named Raymond Moody. I think he was credited by most people as coming up with this term near-death experience. He studied about 150 patients who all claimed to have had a near-death experience. His findings outlined nine common steps in this experience, though not everybody experienced all nine steps, but they were nearly universally in this order, so. [01:03:06] Katie Dooley: Almost everyone experienced one, and then they get less common. Is that my understanding? [01:03:11] Preston Meyer: Sometimes you could have number two, number five, and then number eight. [01:03:14] Katie Dooley: And I wasn't sure if one was the most common. [01:03:16] Preston Meyer: And then no, this the these are all the this is the order of all the steps. Which ones you get to experience may vary. [01:03:25] Katie Dooley: But this is okay I see. Okay. [01:03:27] Preston Meyer: So the first is immediate peace and pain relief. Really sucks when this one's not on your list. And then there's this unfamiliar but calming sound or even music. And then there's the the moment where yourself is elevated above your own body. And sometimes watching medical professionals trying to bring you back or whatever. [01:03:50] Katie Dooley: Bryant's aunt experienced that. Yeah, yeah, she's talked about that one. I don't know she if she experienced others, but she has talked about number three. [01:03:58] Preston Meyer: Cool. Uh, and then the person leaves Earth and ascends quickly through a dark sky into a bright tunnel. And then the person arrives in a brightly lit heavenly space. Maybe it's a nice garden. Maybe it's at a fountain. Whatever. It's a nice place where you feel comfortable and you are in awe of your surroundings. And then the person is met by deceased friends and family. And then the person meets a god that usually matches their religious tradition. Or a brilliant mass of just tangible love and bright lights. And then the person undergoes an instantaneous life review and understands how all the good and all the bad they have done has affected them and the people around them. Usually this happens in the presence of that God. And then finally, after all of that, the person returns to the awareness of their body and they are told that it's not their time to die, or they choose to return to be with their loved ones who are not dead yet. Remember, not everybody has all of them, but this is the steps in that order, almost always in this order. And it's kind of nifty. There's there's been a lot of out of body experiences that people have reported on, and there's been loads of trials to try and figure out these out of body experiences. They've even done weird tests like, oh, we're going to hide a thing in the room that you're not going to know what's there when you're sleepy, whatever. But when you are outside of your body, maybe you'll spot it. And never has anybody ever successfully identified the hidden target. But there's also loads of reasons why they wouldn't like. Maybe they didn't look that direction, maybe they didn't get high enough out of their body to really see it. Whatever. [01:05:56] Katie Dooley: See, I think it'd be more like a dream state where you dream. Even this afternoon I took a nap and I dreamed I was awake getting ready for the podcast. And then I actually woke up and I was like, shit, I'm not ready for the podcast. Um, but in my dream, I was sitting up on our couch. Um. [01:06:10] Preston Meyer: Right. [01:06:12] Katie Dooley: I'm getting ready to record. [01:06:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah. We'll get into the more theories, that's how I want to finish this. I think it's normal to see personalities change in some way after this experience. I don't know why some people like Jehovah's Witnesses and other people like them, blame this on the soul transfer that comes with the blood transfusion. This is why you're a different person after a near-death experience, because you have somebody else's blood in you. [01:06:42] Katie Dooley: Okay, but like reading your list, which you'll get into, most of these look pretty positive. So why would you be against blood transfusion? These all sound pretty good for the most part. [01:06:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah, these nine steps are a pretty pleasant experience. Not universal. There are people who. [01:06:58] Katie Dooley: No, but the changes that we haven't gone over. At first glance, all are quite positive. So why would you be against blood transfusion when, um. When it looks like it's a positive change? [01:07:10] Preston Meyer: See, I think that it's just normal to be a little bit changed after a traumatic experience. [01:07:16] Katie Dooley: Trauma, yeah, absolutely. [01:07:18] Preston Meyer: Trauma changes you. That's the deal. [01:07:20] Katie Dooley: That's literally science. [01:07:22] Preston Meyer: But the changes that are typically happening with this experience, if we've got greater compassion. that's a win. Oh, no. The blood transfusion ruined it. [01:07:35] Katie Dooley: Blood transfusion made me nicer, no! [01:07:39] Preston Meyer: Uh, we've got higher self-esteem, greater sense of their purpose in the world. Less concern for acquiring material wealth. [01:07:50] Katie Dooley: But capitalism. [01:07:54] Preston Meyer: Um, we've got a desire to learn more about the world around them. Elevated spirituality, though not necessarily a greater commitment to any religion. Just generally more aware of feelings. [01:08:06] Katie Dooley: Spirit level. Yeah. [01:08:08] Preston Meyer: And just the greater self and the thing that binds us all together. There's also they usually stop worrying about death as much, but they're more willing to and more interested in really living their life as much as they can. And most notably, these folks often claim to have witnessed an afterlife, and we're talking about millions upon millions of people reporting these experiences. The most recent number I got for the United States is unfortunately ten years ago or more. But they said 9 million people in the United States in 2011 had reported a near-death experience. And that's just the United States. [01:08:52] Katie Dooley: In that sense. Such a huge number. But then you forget how big the states is. So like in the grand scheme of things, it's not a huge number. But that's a lot of people. [01:09:00] Preston Meyer: And you're we're talking about a country that builds itself in a way that makes it super likely to have a near-death experience. But I think it's really interesting that this is nearly universal. These things have been recorded in nearly every culture group around this planet. I think the stats are 95% of culture groups, 95% have reported at least one instance of somebody reporting a near death experience. Okay. Yeah. And I found a really cool article came out just a few years ago in 2019 on an LDS study on the subject. So I'll post that in our Discord. It's kind of nifty. An awful lot of people who go through near death experience that there's a panic. And so it makes sense that when they suffer a clinical death, um, maybe they don't have this experience. Maybe they do a lot of them. Instead of reporting this near-death experience like we've described it, report nothing at all. That and then they come back. So there's nothing on the other side. Nothing even matters. I feel like that's exactly as valid as all of the others. I don't think there's any reason to believe that these experiences positive, negative or nothing at all really define anything beyond the self. It just makes sense to me. [01:10:27] Katie Dooley: And I know this is impossible to like test, but it'd be interesting to see if you could change it without. Like what a near death experience would be like without cultural and religious influence. Like, because you can't. [01:10:43] Preston Meyer: You always have culture. [01:10:44] Katie Dooley: Even an atheist has seen the movies and read the stories, right? So is there an afterlife or is it just that I think this is how it's supposed to go, and when your body goes into panic mode? [01:10:57] Preston Meyer: Right. Yeah. It's it's a tricky thing. [01:11:01] Katie Dooley: So anyway, again, you can't test it because even if you go to another country, they have their own guts and their own belief in the afterlife, so they would have that experience program in their brain, whether they are religious or not. Right? If you're someone living in India and you're an atheist, you could still have a religious death experience just from the cultural influence. Yeah, is my point. I hope that was clear. [01:11:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's there's a lot of different models that explain the phenomenon. And I'm a big fan of the expectancy model that you see what you hope or expect to see, if you see anything based on everything that you've just listed. Yeah, there's alternative models too, and I can't just list the one that I prefer. [01:11:45] Katie Dooley: All right, well, lay them on me. [01:11:47] Preston Meyer: There's the depersonalization model that posits that the trauma of an event causes something like a schizophrenic break. Depersonalizing the experience, the experience of impending death. The problem with this is that not everybody has an out of body experience when they have this near death experience, and the survivors almost never display anything that looks like they've had a personality break. [01:12:13] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but I think that's still a good explanation of an out of body experience. Like because. You know what the room was like when you were in it, and you know what your body looks like lying there. You know, so I think your brain projects that the as opposed to an actual spirit. Spirit watching. [01:12:35] Preston Meyer: There's the dissociation model, which I think is a better alternative to the depersonalization model. Yeah, that, but it's still it really only addresses the out of body experience. Then there's the birth model that tries to explain why you have this tunnel, part of the experience, that it's a revived memory of your birth experience. So the weird thing about that is that we're actually really close to about half and a half on. Some of these people were born vaginally, others were born through the cesarean. And that's that's one trouble that half of these half of these people weren't born in the typical way that you might expect anyway. I mean, cesarean section is getting a lot more common. So it's not I don't think it's fair to call it atypical. [01:13:26] Katie Dooley: Or I mean, you know, my brother came out feet first. So we're very reverse tunnel. [01:13:33] Preston Meyer: Briefly wore your mom as a hat. Also, it's noted by an awful lot of scholars that have issue with this birth model that infants are not equipped to process or remember being moved through the birth process. So the memory of the tunnel experience is not supposed to be even possible. [01:13:57] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I mean. [01:13:58] Preston Meyer: The mind is a puzzle. [01:13:59] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean, there's a few instances where people claim to have birth memories, but even then that's so hard to prove. Again, same thing is, I mean, how many times have you seen a birth, whether it's in sex ed or on TV or so you can say, yeah, I have a memory of birth, but like... [01:14:15] Preston Meyer: And it's, it's so easy to construct memories if you just build it an emotional connection to a thing that you've seen, you can build it into your memories so that later on when you reflect and say, oh yeah, no, I've got this memory stored. Yeah. It's wild. [01:14:31] Katie Dooley: I mean, I the it's not really addressing this, but I mean, people have talked about this before of like, what do you think happens when we die? Well, what do you think happens before we're born? Right. And probably that, you know, the first time you yeah, have any sort of cognitive function is not in utero. Right. [01:14:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's interesting stuff though. There are also models that get into the brain chemistry stuff. I don't think we're really prepared to discuss that. But we did talk about drugs a little while ago. Several episodes ago, High and Mighty, I think was the name of the episode. . [01:15:06] Katie Dooley: That was I mean, that's the question a year ago now. [01:15:08] Preston Meyer: Easily DMT might get you something pretty close to a near-death experience and honestly, it's likely that there's a combination of psychological and physiological elements that play into the near-death experience. But it's fascinating stuff. [01:15:23] Katie Dooley: This whole episode was fascinating. Not that I don't enjoy all of our episodes, but this was a particularly. [01:15:29] Preston Meyer: And so I really want to hear from our audience in our Discord some things that maybe we shouldn't have left out. And build some conversations around that. [01:15:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Or even funerals. Right, right. I've only I shouldn't say I've only ever been to Catholic funerals, but I've been to in relatively to a lot of Catholic funerals. So which is weird because I'm not Catholic. Um, but yeah, just different traditions and practices. And I'd love to hear people's opinions on things like the sky burial, which again, I think is very economical and ecological. Why don't we do that here? Why can't I just leave a body on my backyard? Why aren't there bear ghosts? Let's get to the real root of the problem. Bear ghosts! [01:16:18] Preston Meyer: You can also join the conversation on Facebook and Instagram. Our best conversations are on Discord, though we're also on YouTube and Patreon, where we can hopefully talk you into giving us some of your money in exchange for goods and services. [01:16:34] Katie Dooley: For bonus content. And of course, the subscription model is not your thing. We have our Spreadshop where you can buy some sweet merch. [01:16:42] Preston Meyer: I think that's about it for today. Thanks for joining us. [01:16:45] Katie Dooley: I wasa going to say stay alive everyone. [01:16:47] Preston Meyer: Yes, join us next time. [01:16:51] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. [01:16:52] Katie Dooley: Don't die, we need listeners | |||
| 25 Oct 2021 | Take it Outside | 00:51:05 | |
To wrap up Spooktober we are talking about exorcisms! Exorcisms are not exclusively Catholic or Christian but can be found in religious traditions around the globe. Exorcisms have been taking place for centuries. Are these demonic possessions real? Or is there something deeper taking place? Trigger Warning: We take a look at a few cases of people using claims of possession to abuse people. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
** Preston Meyer 00:12 it's Saturday night
Katie Dooley 00:17 because the night lost an entire day of my life
00:23 Hi Katie. Hi, Preston.
Preston Meyer 00:27 Man, it's spooky time the
Katie Dooley 00:29 spookiest of the spooky just in time for Halloween, right for Halloween.
Preston Meyer 00:36 The spooky season. We've got about a week left of it. And this is our last spooky season episode. For now, on the whole podcast.
Katie Dooley 00:50 I was gonna say it's actually an exorcism. I like how you brought our intro. Thanks. I didn't know I didn't know what I was gonna do after that. Yeah, so today we're talking about exorcisms or demonic possession and getting rid of it. Mm hmm. We have we put a trigger warning in our notes. Some of these get a little gross suddenly feel gross. And there's some abuse stuff later on which I'll remind another trigger warning right before then. But yeah, just keep that in mind. As we dive into spooky, spooky things, kooky, spooky,
Preston Meyer 01:29 spooky, scary skeletons.
Katie Dooley 01:33 So what the heck even is exorcism?
Preston Meyer 01:35 Oh, man, it's, it's kind of a big heavy thing. Broadly speaking, an exorcism is the act of removing demons or gins, or malevolent spirits or spiritual entities from a person, or sometimes a place, a group of people a amalgam body. Well, we'll see some weird examples of that. I'm excited.
Katie Dooley 02:03 So being in the western country, we mostly hear about exorcisms from a Christian and a predominantly Catholic perspective. But it is an ancient practice that can be found all over the world. And across basically every religion, we have examples from most major religions. Yeah, it's
Preston Meyer 02:26 almost universal, I guess. Seems to be connected to this ancient primal fear that we have in us that there's something that we need to get rid of. It's an odd thing to observe in our species.
Katie Dooley 02:40 It is. And then part of me wonders how that feeling, links to sin. But that's a different episode. Yes. There's always something inherently wrong with us. Right.
Preston Meyer 02:53 So the interesting thing about exorcism is that the word actually means to administer an oath to exercise something is to make somebody bound in an obligation. And the word actually isn't connected to exhortation. Like I initially suspected it was when I went looking for the definition, even though that would have made sense as you're exhorting the demon to say, I'm gone. But no, it's more of actually causing this unpleasant entity to enter into an agreement to willingly leave, which is kind of interesting.
Katie Dooley 03:37 It really, yeah, it really is. It's, you know, we see it about like casting out but you're right. It's really like more of a bargaining than a termination of a lease. Right. I found a quote in the Atlantic, from the Atlantic news website, on the frequency of exorcisms. And so that's one pastor by the name of Thomas This is a quote it says most of the exorcist I interviewed said they believe that demonic possession was becoming more common, which we'll talk about in a minute. And they say that a resurgence in magic, divination, witchcraft, and attempts to communicate with the dead as a primary cause. According to Catholic teaching, engaging with the occult involves accessing parts of the spiritual realm realm that may be inhabited by demonic forces. Those practices become the engine that allows the demons to come in. And I want to bring this up early in the episode because we just finished our occult episode and before that we did wicker and I, wicker in actually both of them, I just don't really know how there's any opportunity for the demons to come in. Wicked doesn't deal with demons at all. The occult, if you get into seances, that might be a bit of a gray area but alchemy doesn't deal with them. Once at all, no, not so much. I just thought it was interesting. I guess the misinformation,
Preston Meyer 05:06 a lot of fundamentalist Christians, and actually a lot of non fundamentalist Christians as well, I suppose, really are connected to this idea that if you're into any of these dark religions that these Christians are happy to label as such, you have either made a decision to deviate from Christianity, or have been tricked by the devil into this awful tradition. It's kind of a weird position to hold.
Katie Dooley 05:38 Well, again, it's a weird position to me, when, you know, we just talked about the occult being astrology and, and oh community, and
Preston Meyer 05:47 there's, there's so much to
Katie Dooley 05:50 those are the ones that stopped because again, they'll have to do anything to do with spirits or demons or anything at all. And then Wicca again has to have the god and the Goddess. And that's kind of the extent of their belief in supernatural and some Wiccans don't even believe in that. Right. So anyway, I just thought it was an interesting little tidbit for this.
Preston Meyer 06:15 Yeah, it's an interesting quotation. Christians generally believe that there is an ultimate good, and that it's personified in God and Jesus. And so necessarily the reciprocal must exist in the form of demons, the devil, and all evil. It's relatively easy to spot in the Bible. And it gets built on a lot more with theological thought of last few 1000 years, for sure. And there's this idea that a person who has been possessed is not considered to be evil, they are a victim. They're basically meant to be treated as though they have an illness that needs to be cured rather than this person who needs to be destroyed. Which so far sounds like a healthy ish perspective.
Katie Dooley 07:09 I mean, they're all healthy ish perspective, but we'll get into that ish part later. So in it's a little exorcisms look a little different from denomination to denomination. And again, we mostly see it from a Catholic perspective. If you you know, watch the exorcist. Or watch The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Exorcism movies are they're all predominantly Catholic exorcism. So in Catholicism, exorcist are a special specialty group of trained priests seals. That joke like Navy SEALs, or, like, I hope that it didn't translate it. Oh,
07:55 it did. I just hear just
Preston Meyer 07:58 even when people talk about Navy SEALs, I think of uniformed seals weird animals that should not be trusted with military duties. Because
Katie Dooley 08:07 some of them,
08:08 right? Yeah. That was ages ago. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 08:14 special group of ordained priests. So not every priest in the Catholic Church can perform exorcisms there's like an annual course to train exercises.
Preston Meyer 08:24 Yeah, it seems that since we have more and more need for exorcisms, they just have opened it up a lot more that, hey, more priests need this training.
Katie Dooley 08:37 But again, your local parish priests might not actually be.
Preston Meyer 08:40 And we'll talk about one of those a little later on too.
Katie Dooley 08:46 So again, in the Catholic tradition, we'll talk about other Christian traditions and then other traditions. Predominantly, the purchasing Michael is believed to be the strongest pair against the devil. And that's the use to help damn spot
Preston Meyer 09:03 right Michael is powerful. But so is the devil apparently. Yeah, Orthodox Christians believe that objects in addition to people can become possessed. And unlike the Catholic tradition, all Orthodox priests are trained to perform exorcisms because the need if even objects can be possessed, that need is going to be a little bit more frequent.
Katie Dooley 09:28 Yes, I also I this is just me off the top of my head. I don't know how big the Orthodox Jewish tradition is compared to the Catholic tradition.
Preston Meyer 09:39 Right circulation wise it is smaller. Yeah. So
Katie Dooley 09:41 if you have fewer priests because you have fewer congregants, and there's a higher need to make sure your priests are trained.
Preston Meyer 09:53 Ah, yeah, most Christian denominations performing exorcisms are required to get physical Want psychological evaluations done before going forward with an exorcism? Which seems like a pretty good idea healthy,
Katie Dooley 10:07 again, which we'll talk about. But it's
Preston Meyer 10:11 important to make sure that you're not dealing with totally separate underlying conditions. Rather than, you know, ignore something that's easy to fix with pharmacology or medical attention. Yes.
Katie Dooley 10:24 Because whether you believe in possession or not, I imagine an exorcism is quite traumatizing to go through.
Preston Meyer 10:31 In every situation that I have found. There is a fight. Right? So sometimes it's a light fight. But there's some sort of fight. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 10:41 A stronger prayer. Yeah. So just another note, to reiterate, is that in the last several centuries, many Christians have been blaming possessions on the increase of witchcraft. And so I actually searched possession rates for Wiccans to see if we can have ever reported possession by a demon and I couldn't find anything. So yeah,
Preston Meyer 11:08 yeah, to believe that you are possessed does require a pre existing belief that it is possible.
Katie Dooley 11:15 Yes, we get into sort of the atheist perspective. And the skepticism around exorcisms that's absolutely something that will come up is that this doesn't happen to people who don't believe in demons.
Preston Meyer 11:27 Or maybe they just don't recognize it, maybe. Okay. But to believe that you've been possessed by a demon, you have to believe that it's possible. That's how belief works.
Katie Dooley 11:39 Please see our previous episode on belief.
Preston Meyer 11:43 Yep. All right, King James, the same guy who authorized the English translation of the Bible for the Church of England back in 1611. Ish, was responsible for a book called demonology, which outlined relationship between demons and witches to help Christians cleanse their communities and ultimately, whose goal was to cleanse the nation, which definitely didn't go so beautifully.
Katie Dooley 12:10 Yeah.
Preston Meyer 12:13 King James was an interesting fellow say,
Katie Dooley 12:17 like randomly killing off your citizens doesn't feel like a good economic choice.
Preston Meyer 12:20 But it wasn't just about economics. He he was the defender of the faith and he absolutely needed to ensure the salvation of his nation. He was a lot more concerned about that than economics. Oh, good. Oh, good. Reminds me of some more people that we've seen more recently.
Katie Dooley 12:41 So interestingly, enough, exorcism is in all sorts of religions. So exorcism and Islam I actually found super interesting. Mostly when we get into gin.
Preston Meyer 12:57 Yeah, so exorcism, they're called as I am, or Rukia basically means healing. And there's nothing in the Quran about exorcism. But there are mentions of it in the Hadith. And there is a record that Muhammad drove out an evil spirit from a young boy. So it is part of that religious tradition. And Jinns are pretty nifty.
Katie Dooley 13:22 Yes, the jinn are spirits, so it's a big umbrella term. So Jin are not necessarily evil. There's a whole bunch of other terms I'm gonna run through, but I got really excited about gin, and spirits. And then I thought about Aladdin and the term Genie, which is absolutely where we get that's where the word comes from. I just say and my little our own personal Preston weird moment, and got really excited about making that connection. So if you want to picture a gin picture, good old Robin Williams, because Jen are described in the Quran as being made of smokeless and scorching fire.
Preston Meyer 14:00 It's pretty awesome. So it's a little bit weird that we have this blue almost entirely smoky Robin Williams.
Katie Dooley 14:09 Yes. He's very wispy. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 14:13 Not not the most true to source material, Genie, but definitely a lot of fun.
14:20 is I think what we're missing is fair. Yeah. Yeah. The tail instead of legs a lot of the time. So the blue Yeah.
Preston Meyer 14:30 Disney's color scheme at the time was definitely red and green or evil, blue and purple or friendly. I hate Yeah.
Katie Dooley 14:36 And then turns into red Genie later. So can happen starting up that way. Jana is derived from the root Arabic word Jen, which conveys the idea of concealing or failing. So again, that kind of wispy,
14:52 serious figure. Yes. So then
Katie Dooley 14:55 there are a whole bunch of other Arabic terms. You have shaytan we To our satanic beings, you have Marine is the demon boot is an evil spirit of for Risa is an angel. So that falls under the chin umbrella as well.
Preston Meyer 15:10 Yeah. And so when it comes to dealing with an exorcism, a sheikh places his hands on the head of the possessed person, and recites verses from the Quran, and hopefully this is going to be enough to get rid of these spirits that are traditionally very obedient to Allah. Which is kind of a perk.
Katie Dooley 15:32 Yeah, that's good. I mean, they as they shouldn't be full of great No, right?
Preston Meyer 15:37 In the, in the Christian tradition, they don't tend to be terribly obedient. No, they they really put up a fight. And we see a little bit of difference here between religious traditions.
Katie Dooley 15:48 So just wanted to clarify because we didn't actually talk about what a shake was in Islam episode, so a Sheikh is just the head of a household or some sort of leader. So you can be a community leader, you can be the head of your family household. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 16:05 those are kind of the two big ones. You could be the leader of a mosque. Yep.
Katie Dooley 16:09 So we do talk about a moms and their leaders of prayer. So if you're getting it down into the semantics, you're only in a mom when you are leading prayer. So the second you're done leading prayer, you are no longer an imam is how I read the definition. I
Preston Meyer 16:23 feel like there's a little bit of variety there. I'm wondering, like you could
Katie Dooley 16:27 probably a job title for a lot of people. So yes, you can be both a shake and a mom. And so yeah, just needs to be a head of a household, or other group or other group to help cast out these Jin.
Preston Meyer 16:44 Judaism also deals with this sort of issue. Demons are pretty often called do book, which is a shorter form of Dubuque Marula raw, which means clinging evil spirit. And so when we cut it down to just do book as is often done, it's basically just calling them cling on. Which I love. There's actually a lot of sweet little Jewish Easter Eggs in Star Trek. Oh, yeah. Interesting. And, yeah, some good fun there. The book are believed to be the lost souls of the dead, rather than any other sort of spiritual being. They're said to take bodies to accomplish some sort of task. So if they're going to perform a possession, they are hoping to accomplish something and then they will just leave on their own. Unless, of course, an exorcist gets there first.
Katie Dooley 17:46 Which I guess, depending on what they want to accomplish might be a good thing, especially if they want to accomplish murder.
Preston Meyer 17:51 That would be a good reason to call an exorcist before that gets
Katie Dooley 17:54 accomplished any unfinished business on Earth, right?
Preston Meyer 17:59 And it's not usually like, oh, well, I gotta find my taxes.
Katie Dooley 18:03 No, if I died, I'd leave that for my right my estate.
Preston Meyer 18:07 That's not a thing I enjoyed doing in my life. It's not the way I'm gonna spend my death. A Jewish exorcist is usually a rabbi trained in Kabbalist rituals, and they operate with the assistance of ideally 10 men in a circle around the person who is possessed. And the exorcist must purify himself according to Jewish ritual practices. And what I thought was interesting, because words, that's my thing. The group of men that help out the rabbi is called a minion. Which sounds an awful lot like the word minion in English. But of course, we can't have an army of little yellow dudes.
Katie Dooley 18:51 Oh, spirits.
Preston Meyer 18:53 Just shouting Banana, banana. So the word minion means count or number or quorum, so nothing terribly fancy there. But they will have many minions. Maybe I like the word. I'm happy. I found it.
Katie Dooley 19:14 I'm happy that you're happy, right?
Preston Meyer 19:19 So sometimes smoking out the demon is necessary. Sometimes that means wood smoke or sulfur. With the end goal, of course being able to learn the name of the demon and have a conversation with it.
Katie Dooley 19:33 Do you know how they know if a exorcism has been successful? How do they do? So you can find the body there's a part of your body where the Spirit will leave from. So it is often a bloody toenail or a fingernail and spirit will just pull you out of there. There are some reports of more gruesome exit wounds. That that's how you know the demons gone.
Preston Meyer 19:59 A few Like when you say the most common exit wound is evidenced by a bloody toenail. I feel like somebody probably kicked something real hard where they're putting up this fight. Oh, probably.
Katie Dooley 20:12 Which makes the gruesome ones more gruesome.
Preston Meyer 20:15 Right?
Katie Dooley 20:15 That's so we're tired, but like, well, messy. Shannon hole wounds and wounds. Yeah, I'll just leave it at that. Do you imagine a little demon shooting out of your penis?
Preston Meyer 20:29 That's not what I'm imagining what I'm imagining is abuse that's being written off as an exit wound.
Katie Dooley 20:35 Oh, well, yeah,
20:36 that's a real prime. I mean, I'm
Katie Dooley 20:37 an atheist. I don't believe in this. So yeah, probably. But just imagine a little genie.
Preston Meyer 20:44 Yeah, it's funnier. It is funnier. It's a lot funnier.
Katie Dooley 20:49 make light of a horrible situation. Yeah. We'll make a graphic for that.
Preston Meyer 20:59 Aladdin rubbing his lamp.
Katie Dooley 21:03 Wow. This is why there's a trigger warning. Just because we're gross. Oh, dear. So we've never talked about Taoism on the podcast yet?
Preston Meyer 21:17 Not really. We
Katie Dooley 21:18 have exorcisms too. Yeah. So Taoism is is a Chinese folk religion. It's kind of parallels with Shintoism.
Preston Meyer 21:26 It has a lot in common with Hinduism. But there's, I feel like there's more to it. In some ways,
Katie Dooley 21:32 I would agree. But it is sort of the indigenous religion of China. Yeah. So actually very similar to Judaism. It is mostly concerned about ghosts of the dead taking over bodies of the living.
Preston Meyer 21:47 Yeah, sometimes the person has said to use magic to deliberately put a spirit into somebody. And of course, this accusation is made against the witches by Christians and stuff, too. So it's, again, not terribly foreign to the things we've talked about before. The
Katie Dooley 22:02 process of exorcism is also quite similar to what we've seen before. So it's the ritual spells casting that with written symbols, as well as chanting
22:16 pretty basic stuff. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 22:17 All right. In Hinduism, demons are called a Soros. And they can be pretty nasty, as I guess they get to be in most traditions, I suppose. But praying to Hanuman gets you the best results for exorcism having apparently it's after centuries 1000s of years even. They just figured, oh, this one aspect of the all God. This one aspect is really good at doing this job.
Katie Dooley 22:50 I mean, it's kind of like the part of St. Peter, how many first did they try it? I know that this one was the most effective right? Planning man is your guy for that?
Preston Meyer 23:00 And hidden do medical tradition that the IRA VEDA that we've talked about before, includes a buta Vidya, which specifically deals with helping possessing demons just chill out? Relax? Yeah. And then of course, once they're chilled out, you can read a lot easier to get them out. Right? Yeah, just oh, I guess yeah, I've been hurting this person by
Katie Dooley 23:26 I feel like this is the most peaceful exorcism of all of them.
Preston Meyer 23:31 So far, based on the details that we've picked out here, and maybe cherry picking a little bit? Yeah.
Katie Dooley 23:38 I mean, also, just the information available, kind of goes in the order we've talked about. There's a whole bunch on Christian exorcisms. Yeah. And then for Buddhism, they don't actually really deal with malicious demons. But Buddhist monks can be called upon to dispel negative
Preston Meyer 23:57 energy, which is kind of as close as we get to an exorcism there. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 24:03 So what about me, Preston? Let's make this about me. Sure. I'm kidding. What if you believe in this so what is actually happening here if you don't believe that demons are real?
Preston Meyer 24:17 Well, if you don't believe demons are real, you're certainly not going to believe that you're experiencing a possession. That's doesn't even make sense,
Katie Dooley 24:27 right? So demonic possession is not recognized as a mental illness, right? But symptoms of possession can be similar to hysteria, mania, psychosis, Tourette's, epilepsy, schizophrenia, or dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. You can also have something called mono mania, which is kind of like hypochondria, so if you truly believe you're possessed by a demon You will start to manifest the symptoms of demon possession. So we know that my human mind is super powerful. We've barely scratched the surface on brain science. And we know that, even from our belief episode, perception is reality. So if you think you're possessed by a demon, you're possessed by a demon.
Preston Meyer 25:22 Right? We talked about this in our voodoo episode, that if you are made into a zombie, you are made to believe that you are made into a zombie. There's so much social pressure that and and your own belief system that you've internalized that if you believe that somebody has turned you into a zombie, there's no reason not to behave the way you've been taught that zombies exist. It's it's a weird feedback loop in culture.
Katie Dooley 25:50 Because it's like, yeah, I can understand how your brain again, if you think you're possessed, therefore you are possessed. But that doesn't mean demons exist, either. You know what I mean? It's tricky. Yeah, right. Historically, possessions have become, there's been an uptick recently in possessions. But historically, possessions have become less common as medical understanding has improved. We know what schizophrenia is, we know what Bipolar disorder is, we know what dissociative identity disorder is. But as the rare possessions do hit the news and made their way into popular culture possessions. In North America increased a whole bunch right around the time the excuses came out in the 60s and 70s. And this is also when we see a big influx of even New Age or alternative religion as well. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 26:43 Yeah, kind of hit in that. counterculture sweet spot. Which is just weird. Though, everything about our culture got real weird for a little while.
Katie Dooley 26:53 I wonder if possessions also increased sort of as like the death throes of Christianity. You know what I mean? Not that the Christianity's gone anywhere, but like, there was a sort of idealism of the 50s and the two and a half kids and a dog and a white picket fence and everyone went to church and it was I wonder if the possession was like a like a death throes where it's like, no, look, it is real. And because you're now doing yoga and smoking peyote, look what's happening, you know what I mean?
Preston Meyer 27:26 I think I follow you. I don't know if that's the case or not, but it'd be interesting to look further into I
Katie Dooley 27:32 am absolutely just spitballing one thing I did look into for my own welfare is are there any claims or cases of atheists being possessed by a demon and a confinement
Preston Meyer 27:50 but I guess asking the wrong people about those cases I
Katie Dooley 27:54 found that really offensive believe is that atheists are inherently possessed by a demon because they do not believe in God that was when I read
Preston Meyer 28:03 it's a really weird position to try and force on people and
Katie Dooley 28:07 then the other one I guess it's kind of similar as that your body is a vessel and if it's not filled with Jesus it is filled with Satan so moderately
28:22 that's that's not okay.
Katie Dooley 28:24 Okay, thank you. What's your Christian take on it?
Preston Meyer 28:29 My Christian take I don't believe that there is any empty vessel that's walking around
Katie Dooley 28:36 like empty you're filled with Jesus are filled with Saint but there's so
Preston Meyer 28:41 many other options like your own spirit, your own life,
Katie Dooley 28:45 you don't have those. Right? This you don't have those. You've
Preston Meyer 28:50 got electricity and blood coursing through your body that help manipulate your identity as you experience life. So there's something and that's just the stuff that's easy to prove.
Katie Dooley 29:07 So this is from that same Atlantic article, and this is Pastor Thomas again, and okay, trigger warning, trigger warning time. Nearly this is quote, nearly every Catholic exorcist I spoke with cited a history of abuse particular in particular sexual abuse as a major doorway for demons. Thomas said that as many as 80% of the people who come to him seeking in excess exorcism or sexual abuse survivors, according to these priests, sexual abuse is so traumatic, true that it creates a soul wound and makes a person more vulnerable to demons. So I have some problems with this. What
Preston Meyer 29:47 What problems do you have? Well, this
Katie Dooley 29:48 is your sassy comment that you should probably read aloud.
Preston Meyer 29:54 So, this idea that sexual abuse is tightly connected to this Experience of possession immediately brought to mind the idea that maybe that's why we see so many Catholics suffering from possessions. Shady because we have a embarrassingly large statistic number of priests who are having a real hard time keeping their vows of chastity and sexual. What's the word I'm looking for? Don't do kids
Katie Dooley 30:27 don't care what the chastity is long there's consent. Do not adult children. Right? So my thing is, I don't think it creates a soul wound. I think being sexually abused is trauma, and you're probably having a trauma response that people are then saying is possession. Well,
Preston Meyer 30:50 if your soul is your psyche, then that is a soul round. But it's not necessarily a wound through which something else enters. It's a wound in itself. At the very least, yeah. And, yeah, that's a problem. So in some parts of Europe, and necessarily following that the European diaspora, demonic possessions have been connected to hysteria, which is, if you know a lot about your medical history, a made up disorder that was treated most effectively with sexual abuse. So if these treatments failed, then you obviously had a demon was the perspective they had, or you
Katie Dooley 31:34 had been sexually abused, right.
Preston Meyer 31:38 It's such a disaster. And we've we've come a long way in our medical understanding, and that's great.
Katie Dooley 31:44 Yes, also creepy, and really weird on this same vein is that possessions are more common in women and marginalized groups. And spirits, this is something read spirits are more likely to be male than female. So I had two concerns, to comment on. One, it's kind of weird to me that we're gendering our demons.
Preston Meyer 32:09 I think an awful lot of religions are, if they're interested in spirits do recognize a difference of some kind, between male and female, whether they're the departed dead, who had a gender in life that is more easy to discern, or if there's something else about them that feels familiar to what we see in life.
Katie Dooley 32:32 And then number two, what does this say about gender roles? And how we treat marginalized groups in society?
Preston Meyer 32:39 You mean most people that heard other people are male? Know, not that there aren't women who are abusive, but we hear an awful lot more about male abusers. Yeah, this
Katie Dooley 32:54 sounds to me, like possession and trauma go hand in hand.
Preston Meyer 33:01 There, they definitely seem to be connected.
Katie Dooley 33:04 Alright, so the DSM five in this is, if you I recently learned about the DSM five, it's the go to manual for identifying mental health disorders. It's a mental health dictionary, if you will. It does list dissociative trance disorder as a mental health condition, which is defined as a single or episodic alteration in the state of consciousness characterized by the replacement of customary sense of personal identity by a new identity. This is attributed to the influences of a spirit power deity or the person.
Preston Meyer 33:41 So exorcisms are not exorcisms possessions are in the medical dictionary. As far as people self diagnosing, and then oh, no, no, this is actually what's happening.
Katie Dooley 33:56 Yes, that's helpful. Yeah. I mean, it's just a more specific type of mono mania. Sure, yeah. Or even potentially, very specific type of dissociative identity disorder. I gotcha. So anyway, so that is interesting.
34:13 Yes.
Katie Dooley 34:17 It is a medical condition, I guess. So. I guess the conclusion that we're not we're not done yet. But that positions are real. Sure, mark that.
Preston Meyer 34:28 I wanted to look at a few specific examples of possessions and exorcisms throughout history, mostly just the last 100 or so years. There's there's some gooders that I think are fun to look at. So the first one I pulled up is from 1906 in South Africa, a 16 year old orphan girl named Clara germana seal, confessed to her priest that she was possessed after having made a pact with the devil. Cool. Write something good out of it. One would hope. I don't think she did, though. Nuns reported that she could mysteriously speak a wide variety of languages that they could recognize, but not explain. Like one of them was Polish. There's not a lot of Polish in South Africa in 1906. But theoretically, I mean, maybe this deal with the devil. She really wanted to talk to this one person. She couldn't maybe
Katie Dooley 35:25 be a hyper polyglot. So she could say she's a hyper polyglot, maybe.
Preston Meyer 35:31 She was also reportedly able to describe the sins of strangers. And she had incredible strength. So describing sins of strangers, pretty easy guests say, Father of the parish touches himself. You know what, probably
Katie Dooley 35:48 everyone masturbation, you're probably
Preston Meyer 35:51 you're gonna be right most of the time. She's also said to occasionally float about five feet above the ground. So no small amount. They're kind of a big deal. No, yeah. And also sometimes turn into a snake. So what? That's
Katie Dooley 36:18 why are there no photos of this?
Preston Meyer 36:21 It's 1906. There were photos in 1906. South Africa was a pretty relatively speaking poor country at this time, so there would have been cameras around but probably not lots. But
Katie Dooley 36:33 wouldn't you want to I find a camera and go find a snake girl.
Preston Meyer 36:39 Yeah, for sure. So anyway, after she'd confessed this to a priest, there was an exorcism that lasted two days for this girl. And after trying to choke out the priests, Clara was declared healed. She lived for only six more years dying of heart failure at the age of 22. So whatever she got from the devil, it wasn't a long term prize. No, that's too bad.
Katie Dooley 37:07 919 49 America, probably one of the most famous exorcisms of all time. Anonymous 14 year old boy now typically referred to as Roland dough was the inspiration.
Preston Meyer 37:24 Was this priest also a baker?
Katie Dooley 37:26 Literally? I'm watching shits Creek and I laugh about rollin shit all the time. Right? Rolando? Use me now typically referred to as Rolando was the inspiration for PDR blade. He's famous novel, The Exorcist Of course. Interestingly, interestingly enough, one of the attending priests father, Walter H. Halloran refused to go on record saying whether the boy was truly possessed. Many of the details aligned closely with what you have seen in the movie or read in the book, flying objects shaking bed guttural noises, an aversion to anything holy, etc.
Preston Meyer 38:07 Yeah. So the little bit of looking at a did into this particular exorcism. The the record that the priests did offer is almost exactly what made it into this book. But the forensic evidence and other non clerical witnesses were like, Nah, man, that's all crap. Right? That's not how it went down. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 38:31 And then, in subsequent interviews, he wouldn't say, yeah, if the boy was actually possessed, so which is really weird, especially because that's you like your job, right?
Preston Meyer 38:44 Oh, well. Alright, little more recently 1974 sounds while right. A fella named Michael Taylor started spending a bunch of time with the leader of their prayer fellowship, Marie Robinson. It wasn't long before Mike's wife called them out in a crowded prayer meeting. Yeah, exactly. He was she was pretty stressed out about their relationship. And Mike freaked out and started shouting gibberish and attacking Marie, for which he was forgiven the next day, thankfully, I guess. But Mike's behavior only got worse. And the local vicar was called to perform an exorcism. The Anglican priest teamed up with a Methodist elder to get the job done. They decided that Mike had dozens of demons in him. And in an all night ritual, they cast out a whole bunch individually, one after the other instead of you know, a mass exorcism to get rid of the scores of demons and I'm kind of a weird choice, but whatever. That's what they did.
Katie Dooley 39:44 I mean, they're really really tough demons, Preston probably.
Preston Meyer 39:47 I mean, that's only you can
Katie Dooley 39:49 cheat on his wife.
Preston Meyer 39:52 Everybody, in the record that I found, refuse to say that he was actually sleeping with Marie but There was definitely some doubt anyway, they're casting out demons one by one. And unfortunately they got tired before they could be bothered to cast out the demons of insanity and murder. So they let them go home to his wife so that they could you know, sleep it off and get some rest feel better and then start again the next day. And Michael Taylor went home strangled and disfigured his wife and their poodle out their poodle Yeah. Before he was found naked and covered in blood just chilling out on the street.
Katie Dooley 40:36 I wouldn't want to be that cop right you know, it'd be just like a guy covered naked with his wiener hanging out covered in blood i i know i drive by or another beat cop
Preston Meyer 40:53 Yeah, that's that's the scary uncomfortable situation. So unfortunately, Mike was acquitted based on grounds of insanity because they didn't dispel the demon of insanity so he got off on an insanity plea where
Katie Dooley 41:08 were the priests and be like, maybe we shouldn't let them off or maybe they were like let him off because it's just insanity demon will take care of
Preston Meyer 41:16 you know, the murder demons still there too. So problems. He only spent four years in hospital, which I mean, only four years is a long time in hospital, but also apparently not long enough. He has since been convicted for indecent conduct with a minor so
Katie Dooley 41:35 they didn't dispelled a kitty diddling demon either.
Preston Meyer 41:39 Right. Problems, lots of oversight. I mean, there's some things you wish you should have started with.
Katie Dooley 41:45 Murdering kitty diddling for sure should have been the first to go, right because like a harmless insane person. It's just pitiable, right?
Preston Meyer 41:55 Yeah, good old Michael Taylor. He's his story is a little bit more complex than this a little bit more interesting if you want to look them up later.
Katie Dooley 42:02 All right, Panama in 2020. Recent stuff very recent. A few villagers ran to a hospital for help after escaping an exorcism ritual that ended up with the death of a woman and five of her young children, as well as a teenage girl that lived next to them. The escapees told the authorities that their captors intended to kill them if they didn't give up their demons and repent their sins. This is not a voluntary exorcism of
Preston Meyer 42:33 theirs. It's such a short list of voluntary exorcism. Well,
Katie Dooley 42:37 I guess that depends on who you think you're talking to the person or not because, yeah, little Linda Blair knew something was wrong with her. Sure. I don't think she wanted to be exercised if she could have avoided it. Right. But this is sounds basically like kidnapping or human trafficking and then some weird, yeah,
Preston Meyer 42:57 now you're gonna obey me or be killed? Yeah. Kind of messed up. Yeah, you're messed up. All right, just this year 2021, Washington, DC. Reverend David Fulton, a Catholic priest serving a couple of parishes in rural Nebraska decided that he needed to participate in the terrorist attack on the US Capitol that happened January 6 of this year. He told reporters on the scene that day that he had performed an exorcism on the Capitol because a demon had taken hold of Congress. Was
Katie Dooley 43:28 it a demon or just a bunch of hillbillies?
Preston Meyer 43:34 Some people have a hard time telling the difference problem. It is a problem. The Archdiocese of Omaha has since rebuked him, because he has not in fact attended the annual training of how to be an exorcist didn't know what he's doing.
Katie Dooley 43:51 Did he know about the parents for St. Michael? No, probably not.
Preston Meyer 43:58 He hasn't received the training. And he showed up in his work clothes, which was called a misuse of His ministry that misrepresented the church of Rome. filed and did his exorcism succeed. Only gonna say probably not.
Katie Dooley 44:16 Was there anything? Do you have an exercise? Well,
Preston Meyer 44:20 the demon that broadly controls the whole of Congress, or even a majority of it just doesn't make any sense
Katie Dooley 44:30 theologically was possessed. Maybe physical building.
Preston Meyer 44:33 I mean, demons can exist in spaces, I guess, depending on your theology. Who knows what his real goal was.
Katie Dooley 44:40 We have one more story is from Bobby Jindal, who is the governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016. I just want to point out that this is not slander. He's told this story himself. Yeah. So I don't know why because it makes him look like a horrible person. So the famously homophobic and xenophobic and Jindal was baptized Catholic while attending Brown University. And he quickly showed a dangerous level of zeal. Gentle notice that his friend Susan was acting differently, usually exhibiting a cell in a mood. He decided to get his friends from the Campus Crusade for Christ. We already have a problem with that. To help out with an exorcism, like a bunch of 18 year old boys were like, Let's exercise a girl. This is already problem, right? Oh, God, it gets worse. They restrained her. I remember a bunch of colleges boys, Bibles and crosses in her face, offended by her screaming profanities, and her efforts to escape. So it turns out Preston Suzanne was tired and solid and acting differently. Because she was going through cancer treatments as a university. I mean, cancer, should he anyway. But to be that young and going to university and going to cancer treatments, that would suck, you'd be tired. And and it turns out Jindal is just a day. No kidding.
46:09 Yeah. So
Katie Dooley 46:13 yeah.
Preston Meyer 46:15 Yeah. I mean, if you see the way he behaved as governor, I mean, it. It fits.
Katie Dooley 46:23 I mean, I wouldn't be his friend anymore. No,
Preston Meyer 46:28 yeah. I wouldn't be his friend either.
Katie Dooley 46:34 So yeah, that one's really yucky. Actually, that's assault.
Preston Meyer 46:37 Yeah, it really is. Trigger warning. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 46:42 Those trigger warning on that link, that's assault.
Preston Meyer 46:46 So there just seem to be a few different kinds of possessions. You can have somebody who is sick and actually needs medical attention, but instead gets mistreated, like we just talked about. Or you could have somebody who is unpopular and becomes the victim of abusive rituals, like the Panama one, right? Just messed up. Our sometimes you can have somebody who is acting out for attention and ends up getting what they want, and maybe a little bit more like Clara. Actually, we think Roland Doe
Katie Dooley 47:15 was one of those as well, I
Preston Meyer 47:17 think you're probably right. The weird thing is that these claims of having some undesired lifeforce in the body are medically reasonable. If something is inside your brain that makes it hard to live the way you would normally do. That could be a brain tumor. It could be a fever, viral, bacterial, who knows whatever. There's all kinds of illnesses that are things in your body that shouldn't be there. And if you believe that living things have spirits, then there is an extra spirit in your body. But we also have an awful lot of gut bacteria, that is also that same sort of issue. But benign, is it sentient? Probably not. But these things can affect people's lives. And definitely see a doctor.
48:14 Always get a second opinion. Yeah, for sure. Always. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 48:19 And I would sort of piggyback off that and say, like, we know so much more about mental illness. And that belief in your brain are super, super powerful. So absolutely. Like if you think you can be possessed by demons and you think you're possessed by a demon, then yeah, you're absolutely, I'd say you're manifesting that. But if you believe that it's true, I believe that while you're not wrong. Ray, like I couldn't convince you otherwise, that it's all in your head. So,
Preston Meyer 48:54 right. It's all tricky stuff. And the, the interesting thing is that anciently like going back 3000 years, all of your medically literate people for like, 99% of the time were your religious leaders, your priests and whatnot. But today, there are very few religious leaders that are medically literate.
Katie Dooley 49:20 There's very little overlap. Yeah. And
Preston Meyer 49:23 so, see a medical doctor. And if your problems can't be solved,
49:32 I don't know how to help that.
Preston Meyer 49:36 I've been, I've been asked to perform one exorcism ever. And before she asked us to perform an exorcism for her, she did say, Hey, I also have schizophrenia. And so I kind of talked her out of that and we did not perform when exorcism
Katie Dooley 49:54 realized it wouldn't work on schizophrenia. Right? Good. But you know, it does work on schizophrenia medication I
Preston Meyer 50:06 see a doctor see that's the thesis of this whole thing so doctor
Katie Dooley 50:09 and generally don't be afraid of demons but do enjoy the exorcist this week or something kooky spooky.
Preston Meyer 50:20 Yeah, enjoy the spooky season. Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of the podcast.
50:26 You know what else? What's that
Katie Dooley 50:28 our listeners can enjoy? What? They can enjoy our Discord. Absolutely they can enjoy our social media. Yeah, they can enjoy our Patreon Oh, and we have merch we have merch they can enjoy our merch. So while you're watching The Exorcist, go online and do all that to help support the podcast. Please be with you. By the late Middle Ages is doomed to fail. | |||
| 03 Jan 2022 | A Marketing Epiphany | 00:51:53 | |
The 12 Days of Christmas is such a popular song, but Katie has a bone to pick with the retail industry. The 12 Days of Christmas are not a countdown to Christmas. They are the days from Christmas to Epiphany. Join us as we explore the various celebrations and memorials that make up this extended holy week, as well as the secular traditions attached to them. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website Be sure to check out Blackbird Farm and Apothecary on Facebook and Instagram.
[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: Happy new year, Preston.
[00:00:13] Preston Meyer: What now?
[00:00:15] Katie Dooley: Happy new year, Preston?
[00:00:17] Preston Meyer: What a new year already. Wow! Where has the time gone?
[00:00:24] Katie Dooley: I mean.
[00:00:24] Preston Meyer: This is the third year of the Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[00:00:27] Katie Dooley: Yes. Not three years worth of episodes, but we have touched three years with our great content.
[00:00:36] Preston Meyer: Right? I'm pretty proud of us.
[00:00:38] Katie Dooley: Happy New Year, everyone, and thank you for listening to.
[00:00:43] Preston Meyer: Without our audience, this wouldn't even be possible.
[00:00:47] Katie Dooley: Oh. I was going to say thank you for listening to.
[00:00:52] Preston Meyer: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[00:00:56] Katie Dooley: That's the soft open I wanted. Thank you.
[00:00:58] Preston Meyer: I'm with you now.
[00:01:00] Katie Dooley: I know you are. This is something that I get so [assionate about.
[00:01:09] Preston Meyer: This is your pet peeve.
[00:01:10] Katie Dooley: It is. And I'm not even a Christian. Today we're talking about the 12 Days of Christmas, and I've also included Epiphany in this as well, because why not? Why wouldn't you?
[00:01:26] Preston Meyer: Part of the 12 Days of Christmas, kind of.
[00:01:29] Katie Dooley: Yes. I mean, when else? We may as well lump them all together. But one of my biggest pet peeves is we see this in retail. Always is, you either see the 12 Days of Christmas as the first 12 days of December, or the 12 days leading up to Christmas, both are incorrect. None of those are the 12 days of Christmas. The 12 days of Christmas are the 12 days after Christmas.
[00:02:00] Preston Meyer: Um, yeah. It's kind of weird to see how much this mistake is made.
[00:02:06] Katie Dooley: I hope next year, all of you. Next December, when all of you see this, you just shake your fist at it. Because now you know, now you're a little bit better because, you know the 12 Days of Christmas.
[00:02:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah, this episode isn't late. This episode is right on time.
[00:02:22] Katie Dooley: Perfectly on time. Y'all wondering why we're still covering Christmas in the New Year.
[00:02:30] Preston Meyer: There's a lot of people who haven't celebrated Christmas yet the entire Eastern Orthodox tradition celebrates Christmas after the 12 days of Christmas have ended.
[00:02:44] Katie Dooley: Yes, you might hear, depending on where you are in the world. We're in Alberta, but if you're anywhere sort of western Canada, you might hear the term Ukrainian Christmas, because generally we...
[00:02:55] Preston Meyer: Have a huge Ukrainian population.
[00:02:56] Katie Dooley: We have a huge Ukrainian population here. But generally. If you're Ukrainian, you are part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and they celebrate Christmas on January 6th,
[00:03:06] Preston Meyer: Seventh,
[00:03:07] Katie Dooley: Seventh. I've seen I saw both dates in my research.
[00:03:10] Preston Meyer: So really I've never seen anybody put Ukrainian Christmas on the sixth. That's epiphany.
[00:03:17] Katie Dooley: Oh. All right.
[00:03:19] Preston Meyer: And Orthodox Christmas is the day after the Western epiphany.
[00:03:24] Katie Dooley: Yes. We're going to get into all these calendars.
[00:03:28] Preston Meyer: Things get confusing, but we're going to help straighten that out.
[00:03:30] Katie Dooley: And I actually, for the longest time, just thought Epiphany and Ukrainian Christmas were the same thing, but it's actually a calendar difference. But we'll get there.
[00:03:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah so what are the 12 days of Christmas? Is it just the countdown or is it?
[00:03:44] Katie Dooley: It's that horrible song, which I have some notes on that too.
[00:03:49] Preston Meyer: We'll get to that.
[00:03:50] Katie Dooley: So they're so again, they're the 12 days following Christmas, ending on the sixth with the day after being epiphany. And every day of the 12 days is actually a saint's day. So you could really party hard if you wanted to.
[00:04:02] Preston Meyer: I mean, every day is a saint's day.
[00:04:04] Katie Dooley: Every day is a saint's day, but you could just have feast days after feast days. I need to be Catholic. I'd get a lot of time off work if I wanted.
[00:04:15] Preston Meyer: I mean, there's different tiers of sainted feast days, and there's there's memorials for minor saints that they're never going to be counted as holidays. And then they kind of spectrum range up to the actual, this is a real holiday that you should be taking time off work for.
[00:04:35] Katie Dooley: So of course, day number one, December 25th. What who do we celebrate on that day? Preston?
[00:04:41] Preston Meyer: Oh, good old saint Jesus.
[00:04:43] Katie Dooley: Oh, Saint Jesus. Do we call him Saint Jesus?
[00:04:45] Preston Meyer: Oh, he's the Holy Messiah. Okay. Holy and saint are actually synonymous.
[00:04:49] Katie Dooley: I just like that. Saint Jesus sounds like a rapper.
[00:04:54] Preston Meyer: A little bit. Yeah, Christmas is all about Jesus. We talked about this before. That's not the day he was born, but it's the day that we celebrate it.
[00:05:07] Katie Dooley: Day number two is the 26th or Boxing Day if you are Canadian or British.
[00:05:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah, Boxing Day is not a worldwide thing. I just learned by looking at my calendar. Nunavut celebrates Boxing Day a couple of days after the rest.
[00:05:27] Katie Dooley: I think I've seen that.
[00:05:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's so weird. I don't know how that decision was made.
[00:05:33] Katie Dooley: And I, wrongly assumed that Boxing Day was a big deal in the States because I looked to them as this isn't particularly, but as more consumerist than we are with, you know, Black Friday. It was a big thing down there before it became a big thing up here. And I was talking to a friend and I was like, yeah, Boxing Day and Boxing Day sales. And she's like, what are you talking about? I couldn't believe it. Um, so yeah, if you're one of our American listeners, we have a huge shopping day, post-Christmas called Boxing Day. And, uh, now it's not as big as Black Friday, but it used to be just as big as Black Friday, where we'd have crazy sales and people would line up and nobody would get stabbed because we we're Canadian, eh, but yeah.
[00:06:18] Preston Meyer: Right. We're too polite. I remember when I was growing up, there was always this joke that Ukrainian Christmas comes after Boxing Day because they're smarter than the rest of us and do all their Christmas shopping when there's the sales. I like it.
[00:06:32] Katie Dooley: I have a point to make towards that, but when we get to Ukrainian Christmas, we'll chat. Boxing day, in addition to a great shopping day, is also Saint Stephen's Day.
[00:06:43] Preston Meyer: Do you remember who Saint Stephen is?
[00:06:44] Katie Dooley: No, you tell me.
[00:06:45] Preston Meyer: So he's the first Christian martyr that we get described in the book of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament. He was stoned to death. And so the people who made him a canonized saint thought it would be apropriate, maybe with a little bit sense of irony, to make him the patron saint of stonemasons.
[00:07:08] Katie Dooley: No, I don't like.
[00:07:11] Preston Meyer: It's kind of rude, right?
[00:07:13] Katie Dooley: And I don't mean to go on a tangent, but it's kind of like the Christian thing to do. And this is one thing where I really like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is like, you don't put this torture device on a pedestal, whereas most Christians are like, yeah, a cross. I'm like, that's literally.
[00:07:31] Preston Meyer: What art of Jesus' story makes you think he likes cross?
[00:07:33] Katie Dooley: Yeah. That's like being like, I like this gun.
[00:07:37] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:07:38] Katie Dooley: So yeah, I get it in their weird, twisted sense of humor um, but I'm also like.
[00:07:44] Preston Meyer: No, I think it's a little bit of the whole, bless them that curse you business. That's part of Christian...
[00:07:51] Katie Dooley: Taking back your power.
[00:07:52] Preston Meyer: A little bit. Okay. So being a patron saint of people who work with rocks, blessing those people who are conveniently close to rocks who may occasionally throw them.
[00:08:02] Katie Dooley: Okay. I'm also curious about your point that you wrote here about the Good King Wenceslas story, one of my favorite carols.
[00:08:11] Preston Meyer: I didn't write that. I don't even know that song. What? Yeah, you wrote that?
[00:08:16] Katie Dooley: I was just trying to pass the conversation back to you.
[00:08:19] Preston Meyer: Unfortunately, I have no, I don't know the song. I don't know the story. This is all on you.
[00:08:24] Katie Dooley: What? I'm not gonna sing because.
[00:08:28] Preston Meyer: I'd never heard the song sung until I moved down to the States for a couple of years.
[00:08:33] Katie Dooley: Wow. It's one of my favorite carols, and I've loved it since I was a kid. Also, I feel like I've mentioned this in a podcast before. Random fact about me not: a Christian. We celebrate Christmas, as you know, as in a secular way. Love religious Christmas carols. Love them. I hate secular carols. I Saw Three Ships, slaps. Good King Wenceslas, banging. Hark, the herald angel, chefs kiss.
[00:09:01] Preston Meyer: I Saw Shree Ships, I heard it on the Barenaked Ladies Barenaked for the Holidays Christmas album. Holiday album. It's not just Christmas. Half the tracks are Hanukkah, but that's that was my only context for years. And then I heard somebody sing it once in church when I was living down in the States. Apparently they just have a lot more Christmas carols down there than we don't ever pay attention to up here.
[00:09:28] Katie Dooley: I feel like our our radio probably tries to lean more secular anyway. Probably so. Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen, when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.
[00:09:42] Preston Meyer: I get you.
[00:09:43] Katie Dooley: Brightly shone the moon that night. Though the frost was cruel. When a poor man came in sight. Gathering winter fuel. So he's like a land baron. And he teaches his page to give back to the poor.
[00:09:59] Preston Meyer: Nice.
[00:10:00] Katie Dooley: So they, like, get this this poor man food and and wood.
[00:10:04] Preston Meyer: I feel on good. Half of the Christmas tradition is scaring rich people into being a little bit more generous to the poor.
[00:10:11] Katie Dooley: Yeah, so now that makes more. That first line makes more sense to me on the feast of Stephen. I never actually know what that meant.
[00:10:18] Preston Meyer: Now is the song older than Charles Dickens.
[00:10:21] Katie Dooley: Um, if I had to guess, and I'm pulling out my phone right now, I'd guess there's probably about the same vintage.
[00:10:28] Preston Meyer: Okay. It just from what I caught of all of that and will probably not retain it feels kind of that sort of era.
[00:10:39] Katie Dooley: Oh, they're actually older. Uh oh. Wait, the first song. Hold on. The tune comes from the 13th century.
[00:10:48] Preston Meyer: Okay. Reusing tunes is a pretty.
[00:10:51] Katie Dooley: 1853 English hymn writer wrote the Wenceslas lyrics.
[00:10:56] Preston Meyer: Okay, so it kind of recently.
[00:10:58] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it's one of my faves.
[00:11:00] Preston Meyer: Okay, cool. Well, now we know.
[00:11:02] Katie Dooley: I feel like it's taking us a long time to get through these 12 days.
[00:11:06] Preston Meyer: Uh, we're we're, uh, on day two.
[00:11:08] Katie Dooley: Day two. Uh, day three.
[00:11:10] Preston Meyer: There's there's another saint that I want to look.
[00:11:13] Katie Dooley: Oh, sure. Yes, please.
[00:11:14] Preston Meyer: Because we're talking about all these saints being celebrated. So there's also the feast of Saint Dionysius or Dennis. He was the pope from 259 to 268 CE. And they decided we're going to make him a saint, because he really fought to defend the principles of the Trinity. I don't think it's really that interesting beyond that though, to be honest.
[00:11:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah so we'll just give it to Saint Stephen. Day three! We're up to December 27th is Saint John the Evangelist Day. Um, it is also shared with Saint Fabiola.
[00:11:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Fabiola's just one of those special saints. She got married a couple of times, was widowed a couple of times, and then she's like, you know what? I'm gonna become a Christian now. And studied under Saint Jerome of Bible fame.
[00:12:08] Katie Dooley: December 28th. Day four is the feast of the Holy Innocents.
[00:12:12] Preston Meyer: Now, we talked about these innocents a little while ago.
[00:12:15] Katie Dooley: In our last episode. Yep,
[00:12:16] Preston Meyer: Who were supposed to have been killed by King Herod, and that may or may not have happened, but this whole day is actually blocked off. No other Saints get this day. It's just for these kids that may or may not have been killed by King Herod.
[00:12:33] Katie Dooley: Oh, it's like Gretzky's 99 jersey is blocked. Can't be 99 again.
[00:12:37] Preston Meyer: It has been retired. Yep.
[00:12:41] Katie Dooley: December 29th, day five is Saint Thomas Becket. Wasn't he one of the bad saints?
[00:12:47] Preston Meyer: He wasn't one that we've done an episode on.
[00:12:50] Katie Dooley: But he's not a great guy, isn't he?
[00:12:52] Preston Meyer: I mean, not great, but better than some.
[00:12:57] Katie Dooley: Okay. It's also shared with Saint Egwin. Tell me a little more about these saints.
[00:13:02] Preston Meyer: So Saint Egwin was Bishop of Worcester way back in the good old days, and not really terribly notable Out of all of the saints that aren't either. A lot of calendars will list Saint Egwin as the saint of the day and completely leave off Saint Felix, who was pope from 269 to 274 CE. Saint Felix is kind of interesting to me. He also really defended the Trinity in the early days of the Catholic Church, but also really fought to get people to believe that Jesus was the incarnation of this phantasmic word Which is really theologically true.
[00:13:46] Katie Dooley: The good word.
[00:13:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah, it's tricky stuff.
[00:13:51] Katie Dooley: December I was like trying to say day and December at the same time. December 31st day seven, New Years Eve. It is Pope Sylvester the First. And then you also get your regular New Year's traditions around the world celebrated this day, obviously.
[00:14:08] Preston Meyer: There's actually a lot of saints marked on December 31st, mostly minor fellas that barely get what we call that memorial on this day. Like I didn't even put the list together for this one for this.
[00:14:22] Katie Dooley: Too long?
[00:14:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It was too onerous of a task.
[00:14:26] Katie Dooley: Everyone wants this day.
[00:14:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The end of the year is kind of a weird time for that, I guess.
[00:14:32] Katie Dooley: Now we're into the new year, January 1st, day eight. This is Mary, mother of Jesus.
[00:14:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and they didn't block this day off for other saints. Even though Mary has a really special place in the Christian canon of saints. So we have Saint Vincent Maria Strambi, who was a Passionist priest only about 200 years ago.
[00:14:56] Katie Dooley: What does that mean?
[00:14:58] Preston Meyer: So the Passionist order is a special group that's just really into the suffering of Jesus.
[00:15:05] Katie Dooley: I was going to say this sounds extreme and mean.
[00:15:09] Preston Meyer: They're not super extreme,
[00:15:11] Katie Dooley: But they put a lot of... They put a lot of stock in the passion a lot.
[00:15:17] Preston Meyer: I mean, that's that's the that's the name.
[00:15:19] Katie Dooley: Day nine, January 2nd is Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory Nazianzus.
[00:15:27] Preston Meyer: Not Nazi-anus?
[00:15:31] Katie Dooley: Well, what do you say it like that! Now I can't unsee that.
[00:15:35] Preston Meyer: Ah, what a time in history where we can look at these names and make them seem so much more silly.
[00:15:44] Katie Dooley: Saint Gregory, who had no problem with his name in the fourth century. But now.
[00:15:49] Preston Meyer: Right. Basil and Greg, they were two great important fourth-century Christian thinkers who were also best friends.
[00:15:59] Katie Dooley: Like us!
[00:16:01] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:16:01] Katie Dooley: I mean, I'm not a great Christian thinker. You are, but we're best friends.
[00:16:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And so they're honored together sharing this day.
[00:16:10] Katie Dooley: What would be our Saint day? Our launch our launch day?
[00:16:15] Preston Meyer: October 4th.
[00:16:15] Katie Dooley: I got way too sentimental. Day 10th January third is the feast of the Holy name of Jesus. Tell me more about this one, Preston.
[00:16:29] Preston Meyer: Uh, so.
[00:16:29] Katie Dooley: This sounds very theological.
[00:16:31] Preston Meyer: It's meant to commemorate the day that Jesus was officially named in the temple in Jerusalem when he had been circumcised. The problem I have with this is we're looking at day ten. Christmas being day one. But according to the law, he would have been eight days old when he was circumcised.
[00:16:54] Katie Dooley: You're supposed to be circumcised eight days in, is what you're saying. Okay.
[00:16:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But we're on day ten.
[00:17:02] Katie Dooley: What if there was a Sunday in there and you're not allowed to do any work? Would it get bumped?
[00:17:07] Preston Meyer: I don't know if moyles count this as work that gets bumped, but maybe. I doubt it though.
[00:17:14] Katie Dooley: We should call a moyle.
[00:17:16] Preston Meyer: I guess so. But I mean, even in the text of Luke chapter two, it says that he was named in circumcised eight days after he was born. It's actually pretty explicit about that. So, even though even if it would have been bumped traditionally. The text we have here says it wasn't. But we know that Luke was also probably not right about...
[00:17:42] Katie Dooley: A lot of things.
[00:17:43] Preston Meyer: The Census?
[00:17:45] Katie Dooley: Yeah, he had a lot of trouble with dates.
[00:17:48] Preston Meyer: A little bit. He had some issues with historical facts, and Luke wasn't actually a Jew himself, so.
[00:17:55] Katie Dooley: He might not have...
[00:17:57] Preston Meyer: There could be some errors here, but the fact that we have in the canon of Scripture. This tradition that it was eight days later. And yet the liturgical calendar says, uh, traditionally we're going to say it's on the eighth day of Christmas. It just feels weird. Oh, well, that's my thoughts on that.
[00:18:24] Katie Dooley: But there's also a couple others. So even Jesus shares his day with some people.
[00:18:28] Preston Meyer: Well, Jesus gets so many days he's gonna have to share a couple of them.
[00:18:31] Katie Dooley: That's fair. So there's, uh, Pope Anterous
[00:18:36] Preston Meyer: Telesphorus.
[00:18:37] Katie Dooley: Telesphorus. So there's a couple popes. Anteros, Telesphorus. There's a couple saints, Saint Giuseppe, Maria Tomasi and Saint Genevieve the Virgin as well, that are all done on this day.
[00:18:51] Preston Meyer: Out of all of these, and as you noticed, Jesus shares this feast day with a bunch of people. The one that I think is kind of interesting is Telesphorus, he was the Pope from 126 to 137 CE, and he's the dude responsible for the midnight Christmas mass. Just kind of a nifty thing. He's also the dude who decided and made it officially the tradition of the church moving forward and affects us all today. Easter must be celebrated on Sunday. Which makes some good sense, but he's the dude who made the decision. All right. Day 11. We're getting real close to the end.
[00:19:30] Katie Dooley: January 4th.
[00:19:31] Preston Meyer: The fourth day of January is the feast day of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American saint. I thought that was kind of cool. She lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. She shares this feast day with Saint Angela of Foligno, Italy, who was around in the 13th century. And I thought she was actually more interesting than Elizabeth Seton. She had all kinds of visions, and she wrote them in great detail for the church. And thanks to all of her mystical revelations, she was titled Mistress of Theologians.
[00:20:07] Katie Dooley: Not an appropriate name now.
[00:20:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the that word is...
[00:20:10] Katie Dooley: That didn't age that didn't age well.
[00:20:14] Preston Meyer: But I thought it was interesting.
[00:20:15] Katie Dooley: Well, you know, and day 12 is January 5th, epiphany Eve. It is Saint John Neumann. Isn't that an actor?
[00:20:26] Preston Meyer: Maybe, I don't know.
[00:20:29] Katie Dooley: And he was the first bishop in America. So these last couple saint days are Americans.
[00:20:34] Preston Meyer: A little bit, yeah.
[00:20:35] Katie Dooley: And then, of course, he serves it with an old person as well, Saint Edward the Confessor. And some people also celebrate Saint Simeon Stylites.
[00:20:45] Preston Meyer: He lived on a small platform on top of a pillar for 37 years.
[00:20:49] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:20:49] Preston Meyer: That's that's a miracle on its own. So I did some googling on this Edward the Confessor thing because I pulled up all of these. I looked them all up on the actual Vatican website, and then some of them they did. I had to look up other sources for some of these articles as well, after I found them on the Vatican website, because they changed the names on the Vatican website.
[00:21:12] Katie Dooley: Weird.
[00:21:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Like Saint Giuseppe Maria on the Vatican website. They called him Joseph Mary. I feel weird about that. He was an Italian fella.
[00:21:23] Katie Dooley: You don't need to anglicize it for us, right?
[00:21:26] Preston Meyer: We get it. We know Giuseppe means Joseph, but his name is Giuseppe. Saint Edward the Confessor was the king of the English, not the King of England, but the King of the English from 1043 to 1066. And he really fought hard to defend the Christian faith in what would become England. He's the last King Edward before King Edward the first of England.
[00:21:53] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:21:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's not confusing at all.
[00:21:55] Katie Dooley: No, I'm following.
[00:21:57] Preston Meyer: The Anglo-Saxons have three Edward's. They didn't get numbered. And then when it became England officially, then Edward started getting numbered. But if you want to mess with anybody when you talk about our most recent King Edward, add three to his number.
[00:22:15] Katie Dooley: So I love... This is like one of those other things that like ties into people not knowing what the 12 Days of Christmas are. And just like one of those nerdy facts that I get really excited about Shakespeare's 12th Night is about the 12th day of Christmas.
[00:22:33] Preston Meyer: No way!
[00:22:34] Katie Dooley: Yes. So Twelfth Night, that's what it's referring to is this last day in the series of events. It is. It's a very popular British tradition. We don't see it much over here in North America, and I really didn't see any records of it anywhere else.
[00:22:49] Preston Meyer: That's a great time to party before epiphany.
[00:22:51] Katie Dooley: Yeah and Twelfth Night is like, much like the play is a very rowdy celebration. Or if you're not a Twelfth Night fan, if you're not a Shakespeare fan, She's the Man with Amanda Bynes is based off of Twelfth Night. Twelfth Night with soccer. And, you know, in both instances there's cross-dressing. And so that was a popular tradition. Men would dress up as women. Women would dress up as men. Role reversal is like a big part of this. So even the rich would feed the poor and serve the poor, not just, you know, take a basket to the food bank. They would actually serve the poor. Yeah. So it's, uh. It's. I've always wanted to have a Twelfth Night party, but it's always, like, too close to Christmas, you know? You're just, like, done by then. I know, yeah, it's only 12 days. I know, but, like, you're so done, it's like I'm not ready for another party. But I've always wanted to have, like, a rowdy Twelfth Night party. Sure. Do you like nightmares, Preston?
[00:23:57] Preston Meyer: Uh, I like weird dreams. I don't know if anybody likes nightmares.
[00:24:02] Katie Dooley: So if anyone wants nightmare fuel. One of the traditions of Twelfth Night or is the Twelfth Night cake or the King cake. And there's also a version of this for Mardi Gras. So if you do Google King cake, you'll probably be in North America and get Mardi Gras cakes.
[00:24:22] Preston Meyer: I'm already thinking of a pie with crows in it, but that's not a cake.
[00:24:25] Katie Dooley: So like historically they'd put like a bean or a pea in the cake and you'd eat the cake and whoever got the bean or the pea would win money or a prize.
[00:24:35] Preston Meyer: That doesn't sound terrible.
[00:24:36] Katie Dooley: Yes, but now you people put people put like the little plastic babies in the King cake. So there's just like this little face, like peeking out of the cake at you. And it is actually, uh, I'm gonna show you some.
[00:24:50] Preston Meyer: Is this a celebration of King Herod?
[00:24:52] Katie Dooley: No. The king Jesus.
[00:24:55] Preston Meyer: Um, if you're eating babies. Because let's be real, if you're putting a baby in a cake, there is a risk of you eating this baby. It sounds more of a celebration of King Herod than Jesus. And we're going to have to share this photo that Katie's pulling.
[00:25:11] Katie Dooley: There's several terrifying photos, like this one with the back end of a baby just hanging out of your cake, or this one where the baby looks like he's suffocating.
[00:25:20] Preston Meyer: Let it be noted that in many countries, what we're talking about here is a crime.
[00:25:26] Katie Dooley: Here's this one that.
[00:25:28] Preston Meyer: You can't be putting toys in food. There's a reason that America missed out on Kinder Surprise for so long.
[00:25:34] Katie Dooley: I think it's still not allowed there.
[00:25:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Because you can't be putting food in or toys in food.
[00:25:42] Katie Dooley: Or food in toys for that matter. It's not a great idea.
[00:25:44] Preston Meyer: I mean, food and toys is a different rule.
[00:25:48] Katie Dooley: Look at this one. It's little butt hanging out.
[00:25:51] Preston Meyer: All right. Yeah. Discord, if you want to see these pictures. In fact, speaking of Discord.
[00:25:58] Katie Dooley: Ooh. Mid-episode. Advertisement I love it.
[00:26:03] Preston Meyer: We are doing a giveaway and Discord is the only place to find this one. And we're really happy to be working with Blackbird Farm and Apothecary for this additional contest. We're putting up a Peace be With You cutting board that Katie lovingly designed and I think is just fantastic. And our friends at Blackbird Farm and Apothecary actually put it on wood for us, and we're looking forward to sharing it with one lucky listener.
[00:26:35] Katie Dooley: One lucky Discord member.
[00:26:37] Preston Meyer: Yes, you must be on Discord to obtain this prize.
[00:26:41] Katie Dooley: Winner will be announced on January 7th.
[00:26:44] Preston Meyer: May the odds ever be in your favor.
[00:26:46] Katie Dooley: Oh, I love that. So yes, that's Twelfth Night. That's a great party. If you want another reason to celebrate. And it ties directly in with this string of days from the 25th all the way to the seventh.
[00:27:02] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. So epiphany is January 6th. Sometimes it's called Three Kings Day because, according to Matthew chapter two, a handful of kings or a king and his buddies. We don't know how many kings, but the traditional number is three because of the gifts. We've talked about this in our previous episode. This is supposed to be the day that traditionally they showed up to visit Mary and baby Jesus and baby Jesus' Stepdad.
[00:27:32] Katie Dooley: Oh poor Joseph.
[00:27:35] Preston Meyer: Joseph doesn't get nearly enough credit.
[00:27:37] Katie Dooley: For raising another man's baby!
[00:27:40] Preston Meyer: Right? The guy's a champ. Because of the gifts that these kings the Magi brought to Jesus. Sometimes epiphany is called Little Christmas because of this story, and sometimes people will commemorate it by giving additional gifts, and sometimes they're perfectly satisfied with the big Christmas they had only two weeks ago. What I thought was really nifty, and I hadn't heard this before until I actually did some looking into it. There are some people who add to this tradition the title of the Day of Lights because of the light that was the shining star that the Magi followed to find the baby Jesus in the first place, which kind of ties it all into that Festival of Lights theme that we had going at the end of last year.
[00:28:30] Katie Dooley: Yeah, just all of the religions have their Festival of Lights, right now, or at least in the last 4 to 6 weeks.
[00:28:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So it's kind of cool a little continuity for us. And as you know, I like words. Epiphany means manifestation or appearance. So the title for this feast day refers to Jesus first appearance to the Gentiles. Of course, in reality, these Gentile magi appeared to Jesus.
[00:29:03] Katie Dooley: Yes, Jesus wasn't going anywhere.
[00:29:05] Preston Meyer: No, he was not exactly walking about according to most traditions.
[00:29:11] Katie Dooley: Homunculus.
[00:29:12] Preston Meyer: Right? There's the homunculus tradition where Jesus was walking and talking immediately after he was born. I feel weird about that. But if that's what you believe, that's what you believe.
[00:29:23] Katie Dooley: Now is this one of those words like I can say, oh, I've had an epiphany. I've learned something about myself or life. Do we get the word epiphany from Christianity, or was it, you know, or they apply the word.
[00:29:39] Preston Meyer: The Greek word is used for anything appearing to you. A realization counts as a manifestation of thought. So it's completely independent from the Christian tradition, but not different from it.
[00:29:56] Katie Dooley: So if you... Okay you've had Christmas. We've now had 12 bonus days of Christmas. What if I want to keep partying Preston?
[00:30:07] Preston Meyer: Wow. Then it's a great time to switch over to the Julian calendar and start all over. Because January 7th on the Gregorian calendar is December 25th on the Julian calendar. So you can have your Russian or Ukrainian, whatever your Orthodox Christmas, the day after Epiphany.
[00:30:27] Katie Dooley: And then do you say the 12 days of Christmas again?
[00:30:29] Preston Meyer: Absolutely! The Orthodox tradition has the 12 days of Christmas, just like the Catholic tradition. And epiphany falls on January 19th.
[00:30:38] Katie Dooley: Nice. So I was actually confused by this for a long time. I think I mentioned it earlier in the episode that I thought that they just celebrated Christmas on Epiphany, but it's different. It's an entirely different calendar, like we talked about both the Jewish and Muslim and Hindu solar, sorry, lunar calendars. There's the Julian calendar, which is what the Orthodox Church follows. So it's totally different. And then I just included this little anecdote because I think it's cute. But my mom was raised Ukrainian Orthodox. She was raised to Ukrainian immigrants. And so growing up they had Canadian Christmas on December 25th. And that would be like the presents and Santa and secular day. She grew up poor, so there weren't a lot of presents, but that was, you know, that day. And then they had Ukrainian Christmas, which is when the priests came and you went to church, and it was very solemn and theological. And so that's how they did it as Ukrainian immigrants. And I thought that was a cute story.
[00:31:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah it's nice. Yeah. It took quite a long time to get everybody to convert from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. A lot of Europe, Western Europe made the change a couple hundred years ago. And then basically at the end of the First World War, the Soviet bloc said, oh yeah, we're going to make the switch.
[00:32:00] Katie Dooley: That not... Wow, yeah, that's recent.
[00:32:05] Preston Meyer: I mean, it's only 100 years ago.
[00:32:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:32:07] Preston Meyer: And so that's kind of interesting. If you look, I'm sure you noticed in junior high going through the Russian Revolution in history, there was two dates for pretty much everything. Yeah, that's because they were in the middle of that era where they needed to acknowledge both calendars.
[00:32:24] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:32:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:32:26] Katie Dooley: That's. Man. Yeah. So my Gito would have was born in the late 1800s. So in Ukraine. So he would have been born now I wonder if his birth dates even tight. Because he would have been born on born under the Julian calendar. Wow.
[00:32:43] Preston Meyer: And England would have been like, bro, you're two weeks off. And so what's weird to me...
[00:32:50] Katie Dooley: Bro, you're two weeks off!
[00:32:53] Preston Meyer: What's weird to me is that when everybody was finally on the same page using the Gregorian calendar instead of the Julian calendar, and by everybody I mean countries ruled by Christians, because that's the subject of discussion here. When that's change was really accepted by all of the Christian nations, a whole bunch out east, that the Orthodox groups never adjusted their liturgical calendar. It would have made a lot of sense to just skip two weeks of holidays. You know, pick a time in the year when you've got two weeks that you are fine dispensing with one time, and then their calendar could have lined up with the rest of us, and Christmas and Easter would have been at the same time, and everything would have been hunky dory. But they're like, no, we're not skipping any feast days for any saints at all. We're not changing our liturgical calendar. And so now they're off by two weeks from the rest of us.
[00:33:58] Katie Dooley: And then you get these confusing Ukrainian Christmases. Even though I'm only one generation removed, I had no idea.
[00:34:09] Preston Meyer: I feel like an awful lot of people don't know. An awful lot of people, even growing up, I went to a Ukrainian school, and a lot of people didn't realize why Christmas was two weeks off. It was just Ukrainian Christmas is a different Christmas two weeks later, that's the deal.
[00:34:26] Katie Dooley: Like, I literally thought they were like, no epiphanies, the important one, because that's when we realized Jesus was around. But it's not that at all and now you know that too.
[00:34:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah, so hopefully that helped anybody who wasn't familiar with the calendar change and the huge ramifications that that has had on the whole planet.
[00:34:47] Katie Dooley: I literally think we'll have to do an episode just on calendars, because we bring them up so often, maybe a bonus episode because it's not really religious, but it's important back information.
[00:34:59] Preston Meyer: Sure. Okay, let's do it.
[00:35:02] Katie Dooley: Now. I think we would be remiss to do an episode on the 12 Days of Christmas.
[00:35:08] Preston Meyer: And not address the song.
[00:35:09] Katie Dooley: And not address that song. I remember in elementary school we would be like in rows by grades. And I don't know if it's just like to burn off energy, but like every there were like grade ones would be an odd row and grade twos would be even grade threes would be odd. And you'd have to. Shut up. And so then you'd have to like, stand up and sit down on the odd numbers or on the evening numbers.
[00:35:36] Preston Meyer: Oh, that sounds like the worst parody of mass. Stand up. Kneel. Stand up. Sit.
[00:35:40] Katie Dooley: Well. I think it was just like to make us burn off steam, but, like, so by the time you hit 12, it was like chaos and just I can't imagine the teachers enjoyed it, but...
[00:35:54] Preston Meyer: I mean just to make everybody do it. Somebody must have thought it was a good enough idea. But you might be right that maybe they didn't enjoy it as much as felt a little bit of satisfaction.
[00:36:05] Katie Dooley: The song itself is basically a secular song.
[00:36:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:36:12] Katie Dooley: There was an internet theory bopping around that it was a hidden code to pass around the tenets of Christianity when they weren't allowed to. But the song's not actually old enough for this, and a historian, William Studwell, said "This was not originally a Catholic song. No matter what you hear on the internet. Neutral reference books say this is nonsense. If there was such a catechism device, a secret code, it was derived from the original secular song. It's a derivation," a derivation derivative I'm reading. "It's a derivative, not the source." So as fun as that little piece of information is, it wasn't originally intended that way, but you can actually find what people have written into the song symbolically. The partridge in a pear tree is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
[00:37:13] Preston Meyer: Which sounds like a really. It feels a little gross to me.
[00:37:16] Katie Dooley: What about it?
[00:37:17] Preston Meyer: Well, of all of the great things that one can ascribe to Jesus at the Christmas season.
[00:37:25] Katie Dooley: The lion. The lamb, him.
[00:37:27] Preston Meyer: Hanging from a tree like a partridge in a pear tree is not the...
[00:37:33] Katie Dooley: Wait is the partridge dead?
[00:37:36] Preston Meyer: I would hope not for the sake of the song.
[00:37:38] Katie Dooley: I thought it was just a bird sitting in a tree.
[00:37:40] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:37:41] Preston Meyer: But if you're saying that the bird in the tree is Jesus, the tree is the cross.
[00:37:45] Katie Dooley: Oh, okay. I see what you're saying.
[00:37:47] Preston Meyer: Definitely. For sure. I mean, I get how somebody would have fit that in there and felt like this is an okay thing to share with the world, I get that. But it's Christmas, not Easter, and that feels icky.
[00:38:01] Katie Dooley: Fair. The two turtle doves are the old and the New Testament. Again, this is all "supposedly".
[00:38:07] Preston Meyer: Right. Somebody did put some serious thought into making these parallels. And there's a functionality to it, a purpose for it.
[00:38:16] Katie Dooley: Just I'm going to just put "supposedly" in front of every sentence guys, because I'm not going to. Three French hens, and this one is interesting to me because you could have done a lot of things and they didn't pick what I thought they did. So it's the three virtues of faith, hope and charity. Not the three Magi, not the Trinity.
[00:38:37] Preston Meyer: Well, I could see more likely the Magi than the Trinity for the three French hens than France generally being counted as a Gentile nation. I actually would have been really cool. But the three theological virtues. They're all right.
[00:38:53] Katie Dooley: Okay. Four calling birds or the four Gospels of Math, Mark, Luke and John. Math. I just said! Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Whoa!
[00:39:06] Katie Dooley: Four calling birds. That makes sense. I'm on board with this one.
[00:39:10] Katie Dooley: Okay. The five golden rings are the first five books of the Old Testament.
[00:39:19] Preston Meyer: I can accept that I don't love it, but I get it.
[00:39:22] Katie Dooley: Okay. Six geese a-laying are the six days of creation before God rested on the seventh day.
[00:39:31] Preston Meyer: Now this one took me some thinking, but I get it. The eggs being associated with an act of creation, so I accept. Okay, I don't love it, but I'm on board.
[00:39:43] Katie Dooley: It felt like they really had to think about that one.
[00:39:45] Preston Meyer: Oh, I'm sure all this took a lot of deep thought. Somebody worked on this for a long time, I think,
[00:39:49] Katie Dooley: Oh, this one i'm gonna need you to elaborate on seven swans a-swimming is the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. What are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit? Sorry, off the top of your head.
[00:40:00] Preston Meyer: That depends a lot on your author. Um, we're probably talking about Paul here. Really, he's the one who lists gifts to the spirit in the New Testament as a thing that people refer to pretty often. And the swans, they're like really big doves. I don't know, because when you talk about the Holy Spirit, if you're going to think of a bird, it's usually the dove.
[00:40:25] Katie Dooley: Seven doves a-swimming.
[00:40:30] Preston Meyer: But I don't love that ones.
[00:40:31] Katie Dooley: Okay. Uh, eight maids a-milking are the eight Beatitudes. Beatitudes? I've heard of beatification, but beatitude sounds like.
[00:40:44] Preston Meyer: Blessed are the peacemakers, that kind of thing. I think this is relying entirely on the number and has nothing to do with the maids a-milking.
[00:40:53] Katie Dooley: Are the maids virtuous?
[00:40:55] Preston Meyer: Probably. I mean, at the time this was written, maid simply meant an unmarried woman.
[00:41:02] Katie Dooley: Nine ladies dancing are the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit.
[00:41:06] Preston Meyer: Relying entirely again on numbers. Not a whole lot of creativity here.
[00:41:10] Katie Dooley: Ten Lords a-leaping are the Ten Commandments.
[00:41:14] Preston Meyer: Same thing, numbers.
[00:41:17] Katie Dooley: 11 pipers piping. This one, I understand, is 11 faithful disciples.
[00:41:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that one's pretty easy to be on board with.
[00:41:23] Katie Dooley: Because we got rid of Judas.
[00:41:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:41:27] Katie Dooley: Judas, no. And 12 drummers drummer. The 12 points of belief in the Apostles Creed.
[00:41:35] Preston Meyer: It's not a stretch. Not a far stretch. It's a little bit of a stretch, but it's not a far stretch. It's all right.
[00:41:42] Katie Dooley: So some fun facts about this song is that remember it's cumulative. So at the end of the 12 days this the recipient has received 364 gifts. Because on the 12th day of Christmas she got 12 drummers, 11 lords, ten. It's cumulative. So by day two she has... Five. Four gifts because she's got two partridges in a pear tree and two turtle doves by the second day.
[00:42:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah. You're right.
[00:42:15] Katie Dooley: So she gets 364 gifts.
[00:42:19] Preston Meyer: Which is almost a whole year.
[00:42:21] Katie Dooley: I know. I feel like there's something very symbolic about all of this.
[00:42:25] Preston Meyer: I honestly, I think it's a coincidence. I would even venture to guess that the person who wrote this song just was looking for a song that builds up on itself and had no intention of the 12th day.
[00:42:38] Katie Dooley: That was one of the theories I read, is that it's really just a children's memory song.
[00:42:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I'm on.. That's the boat that I'm on.
[00:42:48] Katie Dooley: And then you can find reports. So people have like totaled what this would cost.
[00:42:54] Preston Meyer: I mean, there's several tiers here that are owning people.
[00:42:58] Katie Dooley: Yes. Several of these are illegal. Um, unless you're just like, paying the drummers for a show and you're paying 12 drummers for...
[00:43:08] Preston Meyer: And an hour's wages for the performance, a lot more affordable than owning a person.
[00:43:13] Katie Dooley: Yeah and you're actually, like, not allowed to own a person in most places.
[00:43:16] Preston Meyer: Well. Today in North America it is illegal.
[00:43:22] Katie Dooley: All right. So the cost and so because the pandemic, the cost of the 12 days of Christmas actually decreased significantly.
[00:43:31] Preston Meyer: Oh yeah. Is it because we're paying people less?
[00:43:36] Katie Dooley: Wow. I mean, there's a lot of variants, but the one that I'm just pulling up straight from Google. According to the 2020 Christmas Price Index by PNC Financial Services Group, the 12 days of Christmas will set you back $16,000. But according to PNC, the cost of Christmas decreased by nearly 60%. So in 2019, the same 364 gifts would have cost you $38,000.
[00:44:06] Preston Meyer: Wow. They didn't give details on which dropped that price the most.
[00:44:11] Katie Dooley: A oh, if you're so. Eight maids a milking, for example, is the federal minimum wage. So they're putting that at $58. So. Wow. Fascinating.
[00:44:24] Preston Meyer: That good, eh?
[00:44:25] Katie Dooley: There's a whole there's a whole Wikipedia thing called the Christmas price index. And it goes back all the way to 1984 to tell you how much Christmas costs.
[00:44:35] Preston Meyer: And we're just talking about these 12.
[00:44:37] Katie Dooley: 12. 364 items.
[00:44:40] Preston Meyer: These 12 listed entries.
[00:44:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it dropped massively in 2020. And the only other time we saw a drop was in 2000. Oh no, that's not true. 1995. There was a big recession in the 90s, and then 2002, there was a big. Oh, so this is all from the Wikipedia article. The price of each item is set as follows. The pear tree comes from a nursery in Philadelphia. The partridge, turtledove, French hen. prices are determined by the Cincinnati Zoo. The price of a canary at Petco is used for the calling bird.
[00:45:16] Preston Meyer: Wait wait wait. So we went to a pet store for the canary. But we're asking a zoo how much they value the other birds because.
[00:45:24] Katie Dooley: They don't think you can get doves and partridges at a pet store.
[00:45:28] Preston Meyer: Well, then check a market in, I don't know, somewhere in the Middle East that probably does.
[00:45:33] Katie Dooley: All right. But you couldn't import that, right? And quarantining the animals because you're not killing them. Right. Yeah.
[00:45:42] Preston Meyer: Fair point, I guess zoo it is.
[00:45:47] Katie Dooley: Bah humbug. Right. Gordon Jewelers sets the price for the golden rings.
[00:45:53] Preston Meyer: Now, are we talking like finger rings or hoops?
[00:45:55] Katie Dooley: So these are finger rings, but they also see that the song might actually refer to ring-necked pheasants as opposed to actual jewelry.
[00:46:06] Preston Meyer: Well, so does this index.
[00:46:09] Katie Dooley: No. They do. They do gold jewelry.
[00:46:12] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:46:13] Katie Dooley: The maids are assumed to be unskilled laborers earning the federal minimum wage.
[00:46:19] Preston Meyer: I mean, rude, but fair.
[00:46:20] Katie Dooley: Oh. That's amazing. The Philadelphia Dance Company provides the estimate for the salary of ladies dancing.
[00:46:26] Preston Meyer: How about the lords, a-leaping?
[00:46:27] Katie Dooley: The Philadelphia Ballet estimates the salary for the leaping Lords. Okay. And so this is obviously done in Pennsylvania. The going rate for drummers and pipers is that of the, uh, excuse me, the Pennsylvania Musicians Union.
[00:46:41] Preston Meyer: I.. .As reliable as any other. Are the drummer is the same?
[00:46:47] Katie Dooley: Yes. So drum drummers and pipers are from the Pennsylvania music unions. So my guess is that it was the performers that tanked it in 2020 when they couldn't perform.
[00:46:58] Preston Meyer: I think you're probably right.
[00:46:58] Katie Dooley: That would be my guess.
[00:46:59] Preston Meyer: That makes sense.
[00:47:00] Katie Dooley: Let's see if there's anything.
[00:47:02] Preston Meyer: So they couldn't perform as a group so they could be, um, bought for private events pretty affordably.
[00:47:10] Katie Dooley: So there are some controversies. For example. So the Lords a leaping are ballet dancers. And there's a criticism that they're not real lords. Right. They're male ballet dancers, but there are no lords in the United States. And I imagine that the Lords in England are not fond of leaping.
[00:47:32] Preston Meyer: So I'm I'm comfortable with that.
[00:47:35] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Okay. No, here it is. The 2020 index did not include the nine ladies dancing, ten lords a leaping, 11 pipers piping, 12 drummers drumming. Due to Covid-19 restrictions on live performances.
[00:47:45] Preston Meyer: It fits straight up. Just didn't include them instead of discounting them. That really accounts for a 60% drop.
[00:47:51] Katie Dooley: Wow. I mean, because they're a huge portion of the song, both, there's a lot of them and they're very significant gifts.
[00:48:00] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:48:02] Katie Dooley: Wow, I really enjoyed that rabbit hole. That warmed my little Christmas heart.
[00:48:09] Preston Meyer: And now, you know.
[00:48:11] Katie Dooley: So next year, check the price of Christmas and bring it to your family on 12th Night for some ridiculous fun.
[00:48:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Not on Christmas. You're early.
[00:48:24] Katie Dooley: Or not anything... Pre-December 25th. That's the only thing you take away from this episode. Now I'm getting on my little soapbox. If the only thing you take away from this episode. Is that the 12 days of Christmas are after Christmas. I'll be happy. I'm way too aggressive about.
[00:48:42] Preston Meyer: It. And this episode was specially requested.
[00:48:45] Katie Dooley: It was. I was like, was it? It was. I brought this up with my mom. We were talking about epiphany and how people get the 12 days of Christmas wrong. And she said you should do an episode on that. And so here we are, mom. And I don't even think I swore.
[00:49:02] Preston Meyer: Honestly, it's not that that's not the kind of thing that jumps out at me. So I think you're.
[00:49:06] Katie Dooley: I know, but that's why we have explicit episodes, because I swear so much.
[00:49:10] Preston Meyer: You don't swear so much. You swear sometimes.
[00:49:12] Katie Dooley: But I do say big ones.
[00:49:14] Preston Meyer: I guess you say the words that are more likely to offend people with sensitive thoughts on language.
[00:49:23] Katie Dooley: I like words, but not the same words as Preston. So please follow us on Discord. Get entered for this great contest by Blackbird Farm and Apothecary. Check out our Patreon and help support us this year. We have big plans and want to expand, and we can only do it with your help. And if the subscription model is not your jam, we have our Spreadshirt is our merch store filled with lots of great, beautifully designed merchandise.
[00:49:57] Preston Meyer: If you saw that cutting board picture and you loved the logo, but you didn't win the contest because we'll announce that soon, you can get it on a t-shirt, a bag, a mug, and we've got loads of other designs too that we're happy to share with you.
[00:50:11] Both Speakers: Peace be with you.
[00:50:37] Katie Dooley: We have a fabulous, another fabulous contest sponsored by Blackbird Farm and Apothecary.
[00:50:44] Preston Meyer: They've been very generous with helping us out a little bit, and we want to return the favor. We're running another contest.
[00:50:54] Katie Dooley: This time we are giving away a Peace be with you Cutting Board. And it's going to be a little different. Last time, we got you to like and share on social media, but we're pushing our Discord this time.
[00:51:08] Preston Meyer: So we want you to get on board Discord and you'll see the rules for the giveaway there.
[00:51:14] Katie Dooley: All you have to do is take a picture, show us that you're following Blackbird Apothecary and Farm on either Facebook or Instagram and post it in our discord to enter.
[00:51:23] Preston Meyer: And what's the prize?
[00:51:25] Katie Dooley: I already said a peace be with you cutting board.
[00:51:27] Preston Meyer: Gotta emphasize that.
[00:51:28] Katie Dooley: A Peace be with you Cutting board! Cut your meat on our fingers. Was that a good ad?
[00:51:37] Preston Meyer: I love it
[00:51:38] Katie Dooley: Thank you so much. Winner will be announced on Discord on January 7th. | |||
| 05 Oct 2020 | Welcome to the Holy Watermelon Podcast | 00:04:16 | |
It's nice to meet you! We love talking about all things religion and how it impacts our lives and our world. We want to start a healthy conversation around religious traditions and behaviours and challenge some ideas. The Holy Watermelon podcast is a comparative religious studies podcast. That means we talk about all religions across the globe - their histories, beliefs and practices. Whether you want to learn more about your faith, challenge your preconceived notions of religion, or have some fun facts for your next dinner party, there is a Holy Watermelon episode for you.
Meet the Hosts Preston is a Religious Studies graduate, which is to say that he studies religions (with a minor in Christian Theology). Combining this education with certificates and diplomas from theological schools, he is prepared to tackle not only the wide world of religion but the tough issues of his own Christian community. Katie calls herself a religious studies hobbyist. With one university course, and dozens of books and documentaries under her belt, her curiosity keeps her asking “why?”. As an atheist, Katie has always found it fascinating how people choose which supernatural beliefs they believe in and how it influences their decisions.
All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website | |||
| 01 Aug 2022 | The Man in Red | 00:55:23 | |
Religious communism isn't just for the weird new cult that bought up a farm down the road. People often forget, especially in the west, that Christianity was strictly communist in the first century, and that the Jewish nation from which they were born enjoyed a tightly regulated, moderately socialist dictatorship. Join us for an exploration of these and other groups who decided not to put arbitrary economic qualifications on "Love your neighbour." Socialism isn't the bogeyman vaguely remembered from the Cold War--those governing parties used the title without admiring or espousing the core principle: common ownership of all goods and services. Religious groups often do a much better job of applying socialist and communist principles; but, like the "Second World," they tend to lean heavily into authoritarianism, the real enemy of freedom. We take a look at Communal cults, hippie communes, ancient Hellenic and Vedic communal groups, and of course Christian groups--not just the Anabaptists, but the Latter-day Saints (Mormons), too. We also talk about some of the big Christian thinkers that have influenced western culture on the subject before the rise of Leninism. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
Ep 48 The Man in Red[00:00:10] Katie Dooley: I just need to reach the limit to know.
[00:00:12] Preston Meyer: Pretty confident it's not going to happen in regular dialogue.
[00:00:15] Katie Dooley: Yeah, we'd have to get pretty passionate about this. Hey, Preston. Nope.
[00:00:24] Preston Meyer: It needs to be right over that leg. Otherwise, it's coming down.
[00:00:27] Katie Dooley: That's what she said.
[00:00:30] Preston Meyer: Hi, Katie.
[00:00:33] Katie Dooley: Hi, Preston.
[00:00:36] Preston Meyer: Oh, man. What are we doing?
[00:00:40] Katie Dooley: What are we doing today? Sharing the wealth.
[00:00:43] Preston Meyer: Wealth of knowledge on the...
[00:00:45] Both Speakers: Holy Watermelon podcast!
[00:00:49] Preston Meyer: It's a bit of a stretch, but here we are.
[00:00:51] Katie Dooley: We could share other wealth, too.
[00:00:52] Preston Meyer: Sure. If I had someone to share.
[00:00:56] Katie Dooley: That's fair.
[00:00:59] Preston Meyer: Uh, yeah. Today we're going to talk about communism and socialism more broadly.
[00:01:05] Katie Dooley: Cue the Soviet national anthem, please.
[00:01:11] Preston Meyer: Uh, but this is not an economics podcast. So we're going to focus more on how this sort of nonsense gets tied to religion. And when I say nonsense, I mean people's reactions to communism.
[00:01:25] Katie Dooley: Or even that we look to our religious leaders to make political or economic decisions for us. In this day and age blows my mind. I guess it's a residual from a time when you would have. But you don't need to ask your priest who to vote for politically anymore. You can decide that for yourself.
[00:01:44] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah. No. The church I belong to is fairly diverse, and there's people on both sides of this political divide.
[00:01:53] Katie Dooley: I think in most religions there's people on both sides of the economic political divide.
[00:02:01] Preston Meyer: In the good ones, I would expect so. But if there's anything that makes the conservative religious crowd freak out as much as allowing personal autonomy for women and homosexuals and anybody who isn't the straight white dude in charge, basically, it's the idea of communism. And I mean, all the best cults lean pretty hard into communism.
[00:02:30] Katie Dooley: I mean, yeah!
[00:02:31] Preston Meyer: Join our little farm and everything's gonna be dandy.
[00:02:34] Katie Dooley: Com-- here, words, guy. Did you know communism and commune come from the same root word?
[00:02:40] Preston Meyer: I'm not the tiniest bit surprised. This is what I fully expected.
[00:02:46] Katie Dooley: If you've ever talked about living on a commune, I have, you might have some communist tendencies. Community also.
[00:02:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that which is common.
[00:03:00] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:03:00] Preston Meyer: It's a good thing. Yeah. And it's really frustrating because most of the the most visible forms of communism that we've seen over the years also rely very heavily on authoritarianism so much to the point that a lot of people get really confused and think one is the same as the other.
[00:03:20] Katie Dooley: Well, they kind of come back full circle. There's a point where the line blurs and then you're just, I think even right and left-wing politics do that, where if you get so extreme action. Yeah, exactly. Eventually meet in the middle. So yeah. And in some of our examples. Right. We know communes can work. But then you get the problem where it's so big. Now you need a hierarchy which is counterintuitive to a commune.
[00:03:47] Preston Meyer: I mean you can have authoritarian communism like we've seen plenty of and there's plenty of anarchist communism.
[00:03:55] Katie Dooley: Right.
[00:03:56] Preston Meyer: And anarchist communism in large groups is doomed to fail, for sure. You do need leadership. There needs to be somebody making decisions on how you're interacting financially with the world outside your commune. All kinds of stuff. But when they're dictators, that's when you're going to have a real problem.
[00:04:17] Preston Meyer: But it's hard because how do you get people to agree? You need a final decision-maker. You see this in business all the time. People trying to do lateral leadership in business. But you need a final decision-maker or nothing gets done. Yeah. So democracy is pretty great for a lot of reasons. Absolutely. Yeah and a lot of people love saying, oh, communism is so dangerous because they've they've tied it to authoritarianism, libertarianism more or less the opposite of authoritarianism, combined with capitalism, more or less the opposite of communism has also caused all of the same terrible problems.
[00:04:58] Katie Dooley: Yeah. It's weird. It's like moderation, like we talk about on our podcast is somehow a good thing,
[00:05:05] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:05:07] Katie Dooley: Weird.
[00:05:08] Preston Meyer: Funny how that works. Ah, now we should talk about some definitions of what we're really talking about here. Unfortunately, much like the word religion, socialism also is kind of a tricky thing to peg down.
[00:05:21] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:05:22] Preston Meyer: If you want a concise definition and one that's broadly accurate, you're going to have a bad time. It just doesn't work that way.
[00:05:29] Katie Dooley: But Preston's gonna try.
[00:05:31] Preston Meyer: There's there's so many different forms of socialism, but generally the one thing they have in common is the idea of social ownership of services or products. And there's a lot of different ways that that gets implemented as well. Communism is a kind of Socialism, a very specific kind, that it is fairly counted separately in most conversations where communism is group ownership of everything, everything, without exception, that the public library would be the idea of a place where you could get the car that you need this week, as well as the books and video games and whatnot. Doesn't sound that terrible if implemented correctly and equitably and justly, which is where things fall apart because people suck.
[00:06:25] Katie Dooley: Yeah, same reason capitalism falls apart is because people suck.
[00:06:30] Preston Meyer: Exactly. Wealth distribution super important to socialism. Generally, we're distributing wealth to elevate the poor. Eliminating poverty is fully impossible. The most frustrating thing about poverty is that it is a relative measure, which means that it will be redefined as circumstances evolve. Right now, poverty for us is people have a hard time surviving. It would be pretty nice if poverty could be redefined to people who have just a little bit less. That'd be cool. But that's not our reality right now.
[00:07:05] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I think in Canada, living below the poverty line means you make I think it's less than 40,000 a year. But obviously 30 years ago, that number would have been different.
[00:07:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Has... Well, the difference there is that what is the buying power of the dollar?
[00:07:20] Katie Dooley: Inflation.
[00:07:20] Preston Meyer: What is it that you need to to live the good life. All kinds of things.
[00:07:27] Katie Dooley: Yeah. What is the basic standard of living where you are, where you are living in Toronto is much more expensive than in Saskatchewan.
[00:07:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:07:34] Katie Dooley: So that changes the poverty line just within the country.
[00:07:38] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. So if we can eliminate the can't afford to live class, not by wiping them out but by elevating that poverty group. That's a win for every decent human being. But of course, there's people who want to fight against even that. And that sucks. The variety of socialist philosophies and social economic policies way too diverse. To be more specific on what com... What socialism is, really. It's a lot of things, a lot of different ideas.
[00:08:11] Katie Dooley: Is it a spectrum?
[00:08:13] Preston Meyer: Absolutely.
[00:08:14] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:08:17] Preston Meyer: Ideologies range from totalitarian to anarchist. Like I said before, that word I was looking for. I did write it down in my notes.
[00:08:23] Katie Dooley: Good, good.
[00:08:25] Preston Meyer: But a lot of people really think of socialism as this boogeyman.
[00:08:30] Katie Dooley: Russia
[00:08:31] Preston Meyer: Right? Mostly Russia. People also talk about Cuba, China, all that nonsense. The Soviet Union and everybody who modeled their political philosophy and economic philosophy off of them, was essentially founded on Marxist ideas to begin with, but the way they operated their authoritarian command market was fully corrupt. And I mean, you look at Stalin, super murderous. That's not an accident. That's just terrible people in charge, and they hoarded wealth themselves so that they could look good while they traveled abroad. And a lot of economists are recognizing, oh, yeah, that wasn't actually socialism. It was just really, really messed up capitalism.
[00:09:13] Katie Dooley: Yep. Yeah. Because they kept the poor, poor.
[00:09:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And I mean, Russia hasn't changed a whole lot since the fall of the Soviet Union. You still have a very small number of very rich people and everyone else has nothing.
[00:09:27] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:09:28] Preston Meyer: That's not communism, that's capitalism.
[00:09:31] Katie Dooley: But there are some good examples of communism communes or socialist socialism in action. Hippie communes.
[00:09:42] Preston Meyer: So much fun.
[00:09:43] Katie Dooley: So much fun. If you like marijuana or LSD or planting plants and singing songs.
[00:09:50] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:09:52] Katie Dooley: These were obviously incredibly popular in the 19 and 1960s and 70s during the hippie movement, but you can still find commune living today. There are about 3000 communes in the United States in these decades.
[00:10:06] Preston Meyer: That's a lot.
[00:10:07] Katie Dooley: It is if you think, even if you think that, I think I have the stats somewhere in here that there was about ten, ten or so families to a commune. Okay. So let's say 40 to 60 people times 3000. It's 20,000 people living in communes. Is that right?
[00:10:07] Preston Meyer: Sure, sure. That's a conservative estimate?
[00:10:27] Katie Dooley: Probably.
[00:10:28] Katie Dooley: Yeah. It was a lot of people.
[00:10:30] Katie Dooley: A lot of people.
[00:10:31] Preston Meyer: And when communes are smaller, it's pretty easy to make sure everything is just and equitable, but a little harder to have some real economic power for dealing with outsiders.
[00:10:42] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. Which we'll get into. Commune life is characterized by members sharing basically everything in some weirder communes or cults. This even includes sexual partners.
[00:10:54] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:10:55] Katie Dooley: Not that I want to judge polygamy or polyamory, but if you're in a danger call and aren't consenting,
[00:11:02] Preston Meyer: That's when you've got problems. Authoritarian versus libertarian communism.
[00:11:07] Katie Dooley: The idea is that you share the necessities for life, whether that be food, clothing, resources or skills. If you're living in a commune, it is expected that you're an active contributor to the function of said commune.
[00:11:19] Preston Meyer: Much like in capitalism, we expect people to contribute.
[00:11:23] Katie Dooley: Have you ever looked into cooperative housing? I can't say that I have. I have recently for a client, but someone told me about cooperative housing years ago, and there's some in our city and it's basically that, so you get subsidized rent, but whatever skills you have, it's expected you bring them to the. It's typically apartment or townhouse-style condominiums, so rent's way cheaper. But if you're a handyman,
[00:11:48] Preston Meyer: You're gonna be helping out.
[00:11:49] Katie Dooley: You're gonna be helping out.
[00:11:50] Preston Meyer: That's fine, that makes sense.
[00:11:52] Katie Dooley: I kind of love that because rent is very high in the city.
[00:11:55] Preston Meyer: Right? Should we start a commune?
[00:11:58] Katie Dooley: I mean, we could definitely add it to part of our Holy Watermelon foundation.
[00:12:05] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:12:05] Katie Dooley: Communal living. It is easy, like Preston said, for tribes or for communes to develop a tribe mentality. But people have always, almost always lived communally, dating back as far as early Neolithic tribes. So really, this idea of...
[00:12:21] Preston Meyer: Capitalism is new.
[00:12:22] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:12:23] Preston Meyer: And clearly problematic. Communism while has its problems, has worked for a long time.
[00:12:31] Katie Dooley: So hippie communes weren't necessarily found in religion. They were basically mini cults. But I'm not saying that that they were danger cults necessarily. But you do get this hive mentality of obviously protecting what's yours. And working together.
[00:12:45] Preston Meyer: And and there's usually a charismatic figure that pulled everybody together to be like...
[00:12:50] Katie Dooley: Let's do this thing. Yeah.
[00:12:50] Preston Meyer: Doesn't mean it's dangerous. It just has made a lot of people very uncomfortable.
[00:12:58] Katie Dooley: I have a friend and I kind of love it. She wants to start, like a commune with her girlfriends where there's, like, 5 or 6 houses altogether. And the idea is that she stays married to her husband. But husbands don't do anything. So when she actually needs help, all her girlfriends would be there to help.
[00:13:20] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:13:20] Katie Dooley: And she wouldn't have to rely on the honey-do list that never gets done anymore. And I was like, I love that. Sorry, Bryant. And I'm talking to a husband right now. So you're probably also offended by that.
[00:13:34] Preston Meyer: I can easily choose not to be offended.
[00:13:34] Katie Dooley: Thank you.
[00:13:38] Preston Meyer: But, yeah, there's perks to communal living, for sure. Um, in fact, a lot of religious groups have leaned into communal living over the course of history, even as deliberately separate from the rest of the the broader community. Usually we see them in things like monasteries, which exist in a lot of religious traditions. The Indo-Aryan ashrams have been around since at least 1500 BCE. So a good three and a half millennia, I was going to say centuries. That's the wrong word.
[00:14:12] Katie Dooley: That's long, longer.
[00:14:12] Preston Meyer: Three and a half millennia, these ashrams have been around.
[00:14:15] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:14:16] Preston Meyer: Pythagoras started a vegetarian commune when he was about 50, which is kind of cool. I mean, he did also have a pretty serious cult-like following.
[00:14:25] Katie Dooley: I mean, I love the Pythagorean theorem, so...
[00:14:28] Preston Meyer: I mean, that's handy. He was his religion was very science and math-based, mostly.
[00:14:37] Katie Dooley: Do we have to do an episode on him?
[00:14:39] Preston Meyer: I think we might have to.
[00:14:40] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:14:40] Preston Meyer: But is... He he did live a culty life. It was kind of cool.
[00:14:45] Katie Dooley: The vegetarian piece intrigues me mildly.
[00:14:48] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, you don't have to go off into the woods to hunt stuff.
[00:14:52] Katie Dooley: I guess so back then. Yeah. Fair.
[00:14:56] Preston Meyer: Buddhists have also been building monasteries since around the same time the late sixth century, so that's kind of cool. BCE, sixth century BCE.
[00:15:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah. When you're that close to zero, you got to clarify.
[00:15:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The Qumran community, the the group that's famous for producing the Dead Sea Scrolls, was also a puritanical commune. There, like those other Jews, are far too liberal for us, those city Jews and their Greekness, even though, I mean, the people of Jerusalem weren't super Greek. There were Greek elements, but it was.
[00:15:31] Katie Dooley: Way too Greek for them ,fair enough.
[00:15:32] Preston Meyer: For the Qumran community. And then, of course, Christians famously picked up the tradition very early in their history with building up monasteries all over the place and having monks and friars and whatnot.
[00:15:46] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. And then, I mean, I guess this is historical, but then we see a whole bunch of modern-day cults living communally, too.
[00:15:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So there's a pretty strong historical element of communes that are seen as people that are in the mainstream, more or less looking at these communes as people living the ideal, closer to God life. And here we are in 21st century North America, where most people of faith look at communists and the communist tradition as fully evil, which is just weird.
[00:16:26] Katie Dooley: Which kind of back onto the word thing. If you ask the average person on the street is community a good thing, and to define community, they would basically be defining communism.
[00:16:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:16:40] Katie Dooley: Right? Our community league asks for volunteers and helpers, whether that's a food drive or to paint the skating rink or whatever. And to know your neighbors and to help your neighbors. While it's not communal ownership, there's like maybe social communism that's...
[00:16:58] Preston Meyer: Even the stock market buying shares in a company. That's a form of socialism, which gets even worse when you have governments bailing out these companies that actually don't need the help. That's another really frustrating form of socialism.
[00:17:18] Katie Dooley: I, uh, I read some meme somewhere, and some lady was losing her shit about paying $0.05 for a bag and was calling everyone communists and socialists. And the cashier was like, ma'am, paying for a bag of capitalism. Me giving you a bag for free is socialism.
[00:17:35] Preston Meyer: Yep.
[00:17:37] Katie Dooley: Because I treat everyone equally then. Not based on whether they have money or not.
[00:17:41] Preston Meyer: Mhm. People way too often get way too confused about what socialism is.
[00:17:50] Katie Dooley: I mean, I, I don't think it's any secret that we're in Alberta. And I think that's a huge problem here where people will spew their beliefs and then say they vote for the Conservative Party. And it's like those things don't match because you don't realize that they don't match, especially in very conservative Alberta.
[00:18:10] Preston Meyer: The civic religion is really frustrating that a lot of people don't realize that they are sticking with their party for what amounts to religious...
[00:18:21] Katie Dooley: Reasons. Yeah, that's a different episode.
[00:18:23] Preston Meyer: Their commitment is fully religious just without any thought. There's lots of people who go to church every Sunday or twice a year, or anywhere in between, without thinking about the details. And people will go to the ballot box in the exact same mindset. Yeah, it's it's frustrating. But anyway, these these monasteries, the idea is to separate yourself from the ungodly pursuits of the wider public culture, especially like we saw in the Qumran community. That's pretty easy narrative to get yourself figured out around. Asceticism is thought to be the the ideal, and it is definitely the deal with these things. You renounce all personal possessions, you give everything you have to support the community, and then you work to meet the needs of that community, and you'll get the benefits coming back at you.
[00:19:16] Katie Dooley: And then ideally, you receive what you put in, in return. You're the handyman. And then you need an electrician because that's dangerous. And he just does it for you because you did something for him. Or someone baked you a pie.
[00:19:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Your life is comfortable because you're helping out in a community. Communism. Or at least socialism.
[00:19:39] Katie Dooley: Right.
[00:19:40] Preston Meyer: And I want to I want to look a little bit deeper into how some of these traditions get preserved in Christianity, in a few different forms.
[00:19:48] Katie Dooley: Sure.
[00:19:50] Preston Meyer: So mainstream Christianity has typically really emphasized this phrase of be in the world, but not of the world means interact with your neighbors. But don't be like your neighbors.
[00:20:04] Katie Dooley: Be better than your neighbours.
[00:20:05] Preston Meyer: Exactly. And a lot of people are really bad at that.
[00:20:09] Katie Dooley: Please see our last episode!
[00:20:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So anyway, capitalism as well as prosperity churches have shown that they sometimes don't even really work that hard to walk that line. It's frustrating, but a few groups have fully embraced communism in a way that actually separates them from the world. Leaning the other way to fail in this be in the world, but not of the world. And it's kind of become a weird popular form of Christian totalitarianism, especially within the Anabaptist movement. We've got a few different Hutterite branches. There's a lot of Hutterites in the plains of Canada and the United States.
[00:20:57] Katie Dooley: The northwest United States. Yeah.
[00:21:00] Preston Meyer: So Jacob Hutter established the first Hutterer colonies that later came to be known as the Hutterites, back in 1528. So almost 500 years ago.
[00:21:10] Katie Dooley: A very long time ago.
[00:21:11] Preston Meyer: Big anniversary coming up for them.
[00:21:13] Katie Dooley: Nice. Will they celebrate? No one knows.
[00:21:16] Preston Meyer: Not likely. I don't well, yeah, maybe. I don't know, I'm guessing. And with zero real feeling behind the the guess. But after centuries of moving around the world, they went to Russia after they got pushed out of Germany and then ended up here in North America. And there's about 570 Hutterite colonies around the world. There might be a little bit bigger, a little bit smaller. It fluctuates. And there's some in Japan, apparently.
[00:21:46] Katie Dooley: Yes. That was really interesting. They like, aren't related. They just are just a group of Japanese people that got, like, the stamp of approval to be Hutterites.
[00:21:56] Preston Meyer: That's cool.
[00:21:56] Katie Dooley: We'll talk about that more when we get to our Hutterite episode. But yeah, so 569 of the colonies are here, and there's one in Japan.
[00:22:07] Preston Meyer: Okay, that's pretty cool. Uh, so everything is owned by the colony in these situations. They are fully communist. And then there's a minister who's in charge, and he gets to make a lot of the of the decisions, most of the financial decisions and arranging who goes what, who gets what is the job of the secretary actually most and there's a little bit of variation from one group to the next.
[00:22:35] Katie Dooley: Did you look into how this person is appointed, elected? Hired? Does it change every year? I'm just curious. We can.
[00:22:45] Preston Meyer: I actually don't know the answer to that.
[00:22:46] Katie Dooley: Just again, kind of back to that fairness thing. If to keep it from being a dictatorship, to have turnover elected democratically or I'm just.
[00:22:58] Preston Meyer: I don't know the answer to that.
[00:22:59] Katie Dooley: We'll look into it.
[00:23:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So company owns everything. And they cite a couple of passages in the Acts of the Apostles in the Christian Bible, where it says that they had all things in common. This, describing the church and as much as a lot of Christian thinkers like to deny that communism was ever practiced in Christianity. It absolutely was. It's in black and white in the Acts of the Apostles. It's super obvious. If you're intellectually honest, you'll see it.
[00:23:35] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:23:36] Preston Meyer: And so the Hutterites really jumped onto this and said, this is the way we want to live our life. This is the way God wants us to live it. So we're going to do it. And we've got 500 years of this tradition working for them.
[00:23:49] Katie Dooley: Mostly.
[00:23:51] Preston Meyer: I mean, there's weirdness. There are some bad actors, as there are in any group, but they still are economically surviving just fine.
[00:24:00] Katie Dooley: That's true. They actually where we are, there are some very wealthy colonies. They... You can find them at farmers markets. They're big farm communities. So they produce, meat. Very, very wealthy communities. They don't have to pay taxes because they are a religious group. So some people don't like supporting the Hutterites here because they make a bunch of money, don't have to pay taxes. Fun fact that I've included Hutterites are so closed off you can't just like, convert to Hutterite-ism.
[00:24:29] Preston Meyer: Joining a colony is so hard.
[00:24:30] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it's not like I could walk into a Christian church and they'd slurp me up, right? So Hutterites generally don't want you.
[00:24:39] Preston Meyer: They're they're very suspicious of...
[00:24:42] Katie Dooley: Why someone would want to. It's they are one of the most inbred communities in the world.
[00:24:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's it's tricky when the when the colony gets too big, they split. And they will very often look to other communities that aren't so closely genetically related to hopefully keep them safe, genetically speaking.
[00:25:04] Katie Dooley: Yeah, they'll typically send their daughters out to a new community. And they do. They keep really close track of genetics because it's an issue.
[00:25:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they do keep close track. There's this urban myth that's been going around for decades at least.
[00:25:20] Katie Dooley: Which I just heard today.
[00:25:22] Preston Meyer: Of, you know, you'll hear somebody say, oh, yeah, the Hutterites picked me up, put me in the back of their truck, and paid me 50 bucks to knock up a few of their daughters. There's some huge problems with the idea of that happening...
[00:25:34] Katie Dooley: Theologically.
[00:25:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's it's strictly forbidden to have sex outside of marriage in the Hutterite tradition, as in almost every Christian tradition.
[00:25:44] Katie Dooley: And Adultery?
[00:25:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Like we got a lot of reasons why this is a bad policy. And everybody who has made the claim who has said, oh, yes, I've experienced this because you hear a lot about, oh, yeah, my uncle told me, but everybody who says I have done this, they can't substantiate their claim at all.
[00:26:05] Katie Dooley: Fair.
[00:26:06] Preston Meyer: If you are one of these people who has told people and you can back it up, I guess I'd like to hear about that.
[00:26:15] Katie Dooley: I would like to. Parts of it.
[00:26:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I don't need the gross details, but, you know, whatever. Let's move on. Uh, yeah. So Hutterites are allowed to leave, generally speaking. But it's hard to leave a Hutterite colony because everything you have is owned by the company of the colony. So you don't get to take a whole lot with you when you go. And some families are more generous than others. You know, some might give you a little bit of money to see you on your way so that you don't freeze overnight kind of deal. But that's not the norm. Which does make it look a little bit culty sometimes.
[00:26:58] Katie Dooley: We also don't I mean, if you're one of the ones coming to the farmers markets every week, you probably do speak English, but they don't speak English.
[00:27:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they speak German usually,
[00:27:08] Katie Dooley: And it's like a... But it's not like German German.
[00:27:12] Preston Meyer: No, it's Hutterite German.
[00:27:13] Katie Dooley: It's Hutterite German. So I kind of compare it to like Yiddish was this amalgamation of German and Hebrew.
[00:27:19] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:27:20] Katie Dooley: And that's kind of what Hutterite German is.
[00:27:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's kind of nifty.
[00:27:25] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it is pretty cool.
[00:27:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's, uh, it's kind of cool. And then if a Hutterite wants to keep going to church when they leave a Hutterite colony, they very often will end up joining a Mennonite church. They're theologically identical, or at least very similar, of course. Variety, diversity, because people. The Mennonites are closely connected. I want to say Hutter was...
[00:27:56] Katie Dooley: Hutter and Menno knew each other.
[00:27:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they had a lot of agreements on things but didn't agree on the communal living.
[00:28:03] Katie Dooley: Right.
[00:28:04] Preston Meyer: And so it's an easy conversion for Hutterites when they leave the colony. I'm curious if a Mennonite would be more welcomed to join a Hutterite colony than the average other outsider.
[00:28:19] Katie Dooley: I don't know. I'd love to interview a Hutterite.
[00:28:22] Preston Meyer: Sure, I might be able to hook that up. We'll see.
[00:28:24] Katie Dooley: All right.
[00:28:26] Preston Meyer: It's kind of cool.
[00:28:29] Katie Dooley: Amish you a very merry Christmas.
[00:28:34] Preston Meyer: Do the Amish celebrate Christmas?
[00:28:35] Katie Dooley: I don't actually know.
[00:28:37] Preston Meyer: You know what they definitely don't do? Is put electric lights around a tree.
[00:28:41] Katie Dooley: Absolutely not. So the Amish are another Anabaptist group that live communally. The big difference between the Amish and the Hutterites is the Amish are scared of technology, whereas the Hutterites 100% use GPS combines.
[00:28:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah for sure. Because why not?
[00:29:00] Katie Dooley: Because work is meant to make you sweat.
[00:29:02] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. This idea comes from Genesis, where you'll get your bread by the sweat of your brow. And the Hutterites are like, well, we can do it better. And the Amish are like, but we're going to be better. So, you know, you got perks either way.
[00:29:17] Katie Dooley: And then the Hutterites wipe their brow with all their money.
[00:29:20] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:29:21] Katie Dooley: Because they can produce more.
[00:29:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but it's not just the Anabaptists that are into communal living historically. Back in the 1830s, Joseph Smith was way into communism. So a few a couple years ago, I was talking to the missionary that was teaching me before I was baptized. I haven't actually seen either of them...
[00:29:50] Katie Dooley: A couple of years ago? I feel like this... you were only baptized a couple of years?
[00:29:54] Preston Meyer: No, I was talking to him a couple years ago.
[00:29:55] Katie Dooley: Oh, the ones who baptized okay, it sounds like you were only baptized. I understand. I'm with you.
[00:30:00] Preston Meyer: I was baptized 20 years ago. Give or take a little change.
[00:30:04] Katie Dooley: And a couple years ago.
[00:30:06] Preston Meyer: A couple years ago, talking to one of the missionaries. That was the one I was teaching me, and she, well, she had started this conversation with communism is bad. And it was a really weird conversation because, like, I hadn't said anything pro-communism up to this point. And then I'm like, well, you do know Joseph Smith was a communist, right? And she's naturally a big fan of Joseph Smith. She immediately blocked me. I've never heard from her since.
[00:30:41] Katie Dooley: Oh, no.
[00:30:44] Preston Meyer: And it was such a weird exchange.
[00:30:47] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:30:48] Preston Meyer: I mean, to be that immediately offended by the statement Joseph Smith was a communist. Feels like you don't know anything about it.
[00:31:00] Katie Dooley: Yes. Yeah.
[00:31:03] Preston Meyer: But in the early 1830s, very shortly after establishing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which at the time was just the Church of Christ, Joseph instituted the United Order, which was also known by a couple of other pseudonyms, for legal reasons. They wanted to actually keep it super hush hush that it was a communist group. But if you read the church's publications, the the Doctrine and Covenants is a good example where they lay out a whole bunch of specific commands, telling the bishop, you're going to deal with these things, all kinds of stuff like that. It's super obvious that it was communism. To deny that is fully ludicrous, that everybody was meant to be equal in all measures of wealth. Every member of the church, without exception, and bishops, were to receive everything that you had that you didn't need and would redistribute so that everybody's needs were met. That is communism.
[00:32:03] Katie Dooley: Well even today, from my understanding, jump in obviously if I'm misinformed. But we know the LDS church has a tithe, a mandatory tithe, and a high tithe. But you also have your food stores and I know you have your fast day, but I mean, it looks like from the outside, if you're a member of the church, you're pretty well taken care of if you're in a decent community or ward.
[00:32:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's a little different when you have a bishop who is super anti-socialist and is super withholding.
[00:32:39] Katie Dooley: But the food stores are like a real thing.
[00:32:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And you just you talk to the Relief Society president and they'll give you your checklist of. Yeah, I want four cans of pork and beans and two turkeys and three watermelons and four blocks of cheese.
[00:32:57] Katie Dooley: Thank you for saying watermelon.
[00:33:00] Preston Meyer: And then you take that checklist to the bishop's storehouse and you get that stuff for free. Yeah, as long as the bishop consents.
[00:33:08] Katie Dooley: Oh, interesting. So would there be a reason to store food and not give it away?
[00:33:14] Preston Meyer: None at all.
[00:33:14] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:33:17] Preston Meyer: What's food for? Eating.
[00:33:19] Katie Dooley: Is it for eating? Um. Because then you have your fast day. And is it the money you save from not eating? Or the food you would save from not eating, you donate? I guess the Bishop's storehouse manages what they need.
[00:33:32] Preston Meyer: Generally it's money, and everybody's encouraged to give generously. The the baseline suggestion is. Yeah, the money that you would have saved by not eating. Pass it along so that somebody else can eat when they don't get to normally. And if you're serious about helping out your neighbors and you have the means, a generous fast offering is pretty standard. Yeah, of course, the church didn't stick around with this united order for very long. Few elders abused the system, and also Joseph Smith made some really poor banking decisions. And then the whole church is just like, screw it. This United Order thing is not okay because I'm greedy. I want to keep my stuff for me. I work hard. I'm a capitalist. Communism is not okay for me because I want to be rich and I don't care about you guys. And that's the way we see capitalism work.
[00:34:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Modernly, we have Koinonia Farm, and I found this in our research. It's looks like a nondenominational Christian farm in Georgia, where you can go and save for some good old-fashioned communal living.
[00:34:50] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:34:50] Katie Dooley: The the word, the name comes from the Greek word meaning common or shared life. But it's it looks like it's, um, more like a retreat. Like you'd stay for two months or four months or six months, and then you'd...
[00:35:05] Preston Meyer: So it lets you try out communal life.
[00:35:07] Katie Dooley: I mean, I'm sure there's people who are long-term tenants, but to get back to the earth and to Jesus.
[00:35:14] Preston Meyer: Okay, that's kind of nifty.
[00:35:16] Katie Dooley: I mean, we should go for a week.
[00:35:21] Preston Meyer: Is it really communal living if you're only going to do it for a week?
[00:35:24] Katie Dooley: I guess it depends on how much money they take from us.
[00:35:29] Preston Meyer: I guess so. It's it's really weird. I mentioned this before. There's a lot of scholarly debate about whether the first generation of Christians practiced communism.
[00:35:39] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:35:40] Preston Meyer: I don't understand why it's a debate.
[00:35:42] Katie Dooley: Because, I mean, even if you just looked at the date, everyone was still living well, for the most part communally. Then I guess we obviously had imperialism and emperors and things like that. But for the most part, Any sort of small town or village would be pretty communal.
[00:36:00] Preston Meyer: Pretty communal, like not full community owns everything business, but...
[00:36:05] Katie Dooley: A lot of help your neighbor and.
[00:36:07] Preston Meyer: Oh for sure, a lot of that.
[00:36:09] Katie Dooley: Becky knows how to bake and because there would be a Becky in the first century.
[00:36:13] Preston Meyer: There would be a lot of socialist action. Yeah, not necessarily socialist government policies everywhere, but that's a... It's not a big step away from communism. Anyway, it's it really bugs me that there is scholarly debate on whether there was communism practiced in early Christianity. It just doesn't feel like there's intellectual honesty in that argument. The Acts of the Apostles in every Christian Bible outlines in the first five chapters that they did not hold personal property. It it was banned. And chapter five specifically tells the story of a couple who were killed for withholding their wealth from the church.
[00:36:56] Katie Dooley: Jesus whipped the bankers.
[00:36:58] Preston Meyer: He did because they were trying to make a profit off of a religiously mandated system. So yeah, Jesus was pissed off about that. The only genuine debate that scholars can have on the matter and still be intellectually honest, is how long communism persisted in the church. Some people say that it was less than a month, which.
[00:37:23] Katie Dooley: That just feels like a pain.
[00:37:25] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:37:26] Katie Dooley: I'm not giving you my property for three weeks or less.
[00:37:29] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:37:29] Katie Dooley: It's just more of a administrative headache.
[00:37:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah, some people say that it was just because a bunch of people were in town too long for the Pentecost, which, if you read the Acts of the Apostles, that that argument falls flat on its face, real hard. The Pentecost was five weeks after or 50 days, not five weeks, 50 days, about seven weeks after Passover when Jesus died. It was this great outpouring of the spirit and great miracles were seen. And so people who stuck around to see that stuck around a little bit longer to see what's going on with this community. And so a lot of people argue that they just asked for donations to help house these people for the extra few days or whatever it was. That's nonsense. If you're killing people for withholding money, that's communism. A lot of people like to say, well, Paul said that God prefers a willing giver and that if you don't want to, if you don't want to give, you shouldn't give. Well, if you're a biblical literalist, God killed this couple for withholding money. And any other position other than this whole book is fiction. The reasonable intellectual conclusion is the church killed these people for withholding their money. So enforced communism was a real thing and would not have happened if they were looking at a very short, temporary thing. That's nonsense. But in this setting, Israel and Judah had legislated some pretty intense socialist policies. The corners of every field were the right of every beggar. Nobody was ever going to go hungry because farmers were not allowed to harvest from the corners of their fields. And now you see a lot of farmers not even ceding the corners of their fields because yay, capitalism! Charging interest on debts was forbidden.
[00:39:42] Katie Dooley: Usury, yeah.
[00:39:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, the Jewish population changed their policy on that in the Middle Ages, around the Renaissance.
[00:39:50] Katie Dooley: I guess the line in the Bible that I heard in religious studies is like, you're not allowed to charge interest to your own people or to your to the people. And Christians took that as everyone, and Jews just took it as other Jews. Which I kind of love.
[00:40:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, the The Merchant of Venice is a a great popular story that you see this come up as an issue. Also, all debts were to be forgiven every seven years, regardless of how long the debt was in place or how big it was.
[00:40:25] Katie Dooley: That could come back.
[00:40:26] Preston Meyer: Right? That'd be just fine. Oh, no. I went seven years without paying off my student loans. Thanks. Oh my mortgage, 25-year term. Nope.
[00:40:38] Katie Dooley: Interest rates would go up.
[00:40:40] Preston Meyer: Ah, but I mean, if we're going to use the Bible to defend this seven-year cycle, we're going to get rid of interest I mean, loans are super predatory right now anyway, and it's probably only going to get worse.
[00:40:55] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:40:57] Preston Meyer: Also, there were different sacrifices to be offered by poor people for the same blessings that everyone else did.
[00:41:03] Katie Dooley: So you didn't have to bring a whole cow. If you couldn't afford a whole cow.
[00:41:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah, if you're if you're poor and you can only catch a pigeon,
[00:41:11] Katie Dooley: Awwww
[00:41:11] Preston Meyer: Then that's okay.
[00:41:12] Katie Dooley: Awww
[00:41:13] Preston Meyer: That's a valid sacrifice.
[00:41:14] Katie Dooley: I appreciate that.
[00:41:15] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:41:16] Katie Dooley: It's kind of cute.
[00:41:17] Preston Meyer: A pigeon is a way easier...
[00:41:18] Katie Dooley: You know, like when a kid, when a kid pays for a candy with some pebbles and a button and you're like, you can have the candy.
[00:41:23] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah, so this hardcore capitalism was really not okay in the eyes of the Jewish people until, you know, more recently when that was how they needed to survive. Because Christians have sucked for a long time as neighbours. The Jesus we have on record was not really vocal about political or economic policies, but I mean to say that he was socialist is a very fair representation of fact. He demanded the unqualified liberation of prisoners.
[00:42:01] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:42:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. He commanded people to sell everything they had, and then give all of that money from the sale to poor people.
[00:42:10] Katie Dooley: That's pretty extreme, because now you're poor.
[00:42:12] Preston Meyer: Right? And he commanded this fairly often, by the looks of it. He condemned people who tried to profit from religious and civil laws, like, you know, do your job. Cool. But if you want to get rich off of doing this thing that we straight up need as a community. No, that's not cool.
[00:42:32] Katie Dooley: Scientology getting rich off of religious.
[00:42:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. And Jesus also never condemned the poor for being lazy. He never told them to get jobs, never told them to solve your own problems, you're poor. Like we see so many Christians doing today.
[00:42:48] Katie Dooley: I mean, people in general.
[00:42:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, well, okay, there's there's an awful lot of people who have no value or worship for Jesus who hate the poor. Fine, but...
[00:43:00] Katie Dooley: When you're when your dude is telling you something and you're not listening. Yeah, absolutely. That's a different story.
[00:43:05] Preston Meyer: There's there's an awful lot of people in love with Jesus who don't love Jesus enough to even learn what he says, let alone do as he says. And that's frustrating to me.
[00:43:23] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah. Now we're going to talk about some specific communists.
[00:43:29] Preston Meyer: So we talked about the fellow Saint Thomas More a little while ago. He was a saint who maybe.
[00:43:34] Katie Dooley: Shouldn't have been a saint, but not for this reason.
[00:43:39] Preston Meyer: No, there's there's more,
[00:43:40] Katie Dooley: There's more. So we talked about his love of book burning specifically. That's why he wasn't allowed to be a saint, right?
[00:43:49] Preston Meyer: Well, yeah, it's weird calling him a saint when he's like, no, if you read the Bible, you're a bad Christian.
[00:43:54] Katie Dooley: Oh, right, yeah.
[00:43:55] Preston Meyer: And I mean, there's a lot of Christians in North America today who seem to have jumped on that bandwagon.
[00:44:01] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So he was the first person I thought this was super interesting. He was the first person to use the word Utopia was the title of one of his books. It's a pun from the Greek word utopos, meaning good place and outopus meaning nowhere.
[00:44:18] Preston Meyer: A place that is so great it couldn't possibly exist, wouldn't exist.
[00:44:21] Katie Dooley: So in this novel, he talks about communal ownership, equal education for men and women, religious tolerance. Except they still hate atheists. So like anything other than an atheist is fine and legal euthanasia like these are some very 20. Like we're still debating this today. 20th and 21st century ideas of.
[00:44:40] Preston Meyer: I mean our federal government has legalized euthanasia.
[00:44:43] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:44:44] Preston Meyer: It's it's a little bit weird how easy it is.
[00:44:47] Katie Dooley: It's very easy.
[00:44:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah. In fact, our government basically encourages people with mental disabilities or mental illnesses to just go ahead and kill yourself. It's it's kind of gross.
[00:45:00] Katie Dooley: That's too much. Yeah. No, that's actually terrible. But, uh, yeah. Someone I am acquainted with, her father in law has chosen this this assisted death. So. Yeah. Interesting. Uh, he has cancer. So not the gross stuff of. Oh. You're sick. Goodbye. I mean, I guess he is sick, but obviously it's terminal cancer, so. Saint Thomas More is known and he was executed for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, making Henry the eighth head of the Church of England. So he was sainted for his martyrdom. But yeah, he had all of these very like what we would call left policies now of utopia and sharing everything and women getting an education. What the fuck?
[00:45:43] Preston Meyer: Right? What a mess.
[00:45:44] Katie Dooley: What a mess, women getting educated. I'm kidding.
[00:45:48] Preston Meyer: Speaking of the 1500s and the the weird beginnings of Protestantism in Europe, there's a fella named John Calvin. We've mentioned him a couple of times before.
[00:45:58] Katie Dooley: Yeah, we have. Weird guy.
[00:46:01] Preston Meyer: I mean, a little bit. He was a French pastor who didn't stay in France. He traveled around a lot, learned a lot, and really jumped on board this Reformation business. In addition to claiming that the Catholic Church couldn't possibly be Catholic because they hate the diversity of thought. He also claimed that all people are predestined to eternal glory or damnation. Nothing you can do will ever change your fate. This is one of the things that people highlight when they think of Calvinist theology.
[00:46:30] Katie Dooley: Calvinism is pretty brutal.
[00:46:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and it's not that he liked this idea. He did. He has said on a couple of occasions. He doesn't think that it's a terribly hopeful theology, but he can't see any way around it. He's convinced that this is the way it is, and I think most Calvinists feel exactly the same way. It's not hopeful. It's not great. But this is what we believe.
[00:46:51] Katie Dooley: I mean, I'm kind of the same with atheism. People are like, so you think there's nothing after death that must be horrible? I'm like, yeah, it kind of is. I don't like it. But yeah.
[00:47:01] Katie Dooley: Right?
[00:47:02] Katie Dooley: Shit.
[00:47:03] Preston Meyer: Makes sense. He declared that there are only two sacraments baptism and the Lord's Supper, though he also was very strictly anti-transubstantiation. He's like saying the bread is flesh is crazy, but the bread is important, the wine is important.
[00:47:20] Katie Dooley: But it is not literally..
[00:47:21] Preston Meyer: It's not literally Jesus.
[00:47:25] Katie Dooley: Because that's cannibalism.
[00:47:27] Preston Meyer: Right? And cannibalism is not a bandwagon that we should be excited to jump on. But I mean, it's not the worst possible thing to be teaching people. It's just really weird.
[00:47:42] Katie Dooley: Only if there's consent to be eaten.
[00:47:45] Preston Meyer: And there's a growing market in this field, so we've got that one. I mean, as far as the story of Jesus, if you believe in transubstantiation, there is consent to be eaten. He did say, eat this.
[00:48:00] Katie Dooley: This is my body and this is my... Fair. Yep.
[00:48:05] Preston Meyer: So there's not a consent problem here. So that's good.
[00:48:08] Katie Dooley: Good.
[00:48:09] Preston Meyer: Anyway, Calvin was one of the early advocates for the complete separation of church and state.
[00:48:13] Katie Dooley: Love it.
[00:48:14] Preston Meyer: Right? Except for when he actually talked about it. Turns out, as much as he said he liked the separation, he could not actually wrap his head around it. He also, he said that rulers who turn against God should be deposed and that the state should execute heretics. So that's still...
[00:48:32] Katie Dooley: That's confusing.
[00:48:33] Preston Meyer: Not separation.
[00:48:34] Katie Dooley: That's not. Nope.
[00:48:37] Preston Meyer: But an interesting fella. Anyway, he was also one of the first Christians to defend capitalism and usury, yeah.
[00:48:46] Katie Dooley: He sounds like a confused man.
[00:48:49] Preston Meyer: I mean, he thought of himself as an intellectual and pragmatic guy. Like some of these things, they just don't make sense in the world anymore. So let's abandon them. Thanks, John. He did like the idea of democracy, but definitely felt that it was important to preserve aristocracy. And so combining those two. So like, yeah, you can have the vote, but these people's votes are more important. Calvinism very popular in the States, especially if you want to look at how their electoral system is built. It's a disaster. And I'm not a fan, but I mean, the country hasn't actually burned down yet. Yet, Yeah. Interesting. John Calvin's an interesting fella. And a lot of people really like his thoughts. And some of them are easy to get on board with. Others are like, what? How is your day going, John? Anyway.
[00:49:48] Katie Dooley: I liked how sassy he was for sure. I do have some respect for him for that.
[00:49:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Recognizing that a lot of the relics are problematic and weird and and very weird. Go and check out that episode. You Want A Piece of [00:50:14] Katie Dooley: Red scare. Yeah. [00:50:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The communists are our enemies. Those godless communists, I mean. Yeah. Russia and China were their state religion to say was focus on the community and the head of state. There is no God was the official stance of these states. So. Okay, godless communists is more or less factual, but their economic policies wasn't why they were the enemy. [00:50:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah. [00:50:45] Preston Meyer: Oh, well, it's it's weird that there are so many Christians who are way too happy to say that God only wants your willing gifts when God wants all of our best. If you believe in God, he wants you to be a specific way. And sure you can rebel against that. That doesn't mean that God wants you to be super awful to each other. It's easier to just say there's no God than try and be a believer in a God that definitely is your own fiction. [00:51:24] Katie Dooley: Yes. And then, you know the doctrine. We talked about the piece of the Bible we've talked about. Then it's like, well, why wouldn't it be willing then? Right. So there's sure maybe he doesn't want you to give unwillingly, but why? What are you unwilling to give? You know, do you give your like, why wouldn't you give your money to the homeless man on the street corner? Why are you unwilling to do that? Yeah. And if you have your own poverty, that's a different story. But if you're in a place to do it, why would. Right. So, sure, maybe he doesn't want you to be give unwillingly, but it sounds like there should be no reason for you to be not willing to give. [00:51:59] Preston Meyer: It's another thing that really frustrates me in this, this whole thing is that, like the missionary that refuses to talk to me anymore. There's... It's a really weird position to to stand in where you can say, I'm a Christian. I believe the Bible and everything in it, but socialism is evil. No, no. If you think socialism is bad, Then you can't possibly have cared very much about the things Jesus says. [00:52:33] Katie Dooley: Or you don't understand what socialism is. [00:52:35] Preston Meyer: Right. And there is a fair bit of that. A lot of people just jump on the Red scare socialism bad without putting any thought into it. That's embarrassing, but it is a reality. It's frustrating to see people stand up at the pulpit and knowingly contradict Jesus and then say, follow me and still wear the label of Christian. That's gross to me, but I see it a lot more often than I would like. [00:53:06] Katie Dooley: I'm sure. I just see it in like pop culture and social media, the things you see about churches, you see. I mean, we'll do a whole episode on prosperity gospel one day, and that's super gross. [00:53:19] Preston Meyer: Learn more about communism. Learn more about socialism. Learn more about the world around you. [00:53:25] Katie Dooley: Christianity. [00:53:26] Preston Meyer: And if you really believe in a thing then learn more about that thing. If you're going to be reading the Bible. Read it to see what's in it. Read it to learn what's in it. Not just looking for something that validates your prejudices. [00:53:46] Katie Dooley: I like that that was a good summary. [00:53:48] Preston Meyer: And we've also got Katie's first real Bible study on our Patreon. [00:53:53] Katie Dooley: Two Bible studies on our Patreon. [00:53:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we're we're a couple episodes in now. We're having some good times with that. [00:53:59] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I'm all the way to First Kings. [00:54:03] Preston Meyer: Very nice. [00:54:04] Katie Dooley: So there you go. If you want to know more about the Bible specifically, we are doing. Katie does a Bible study on Patreon. Patreon. If you want to share the wealth. [00:54:17] Preston Meyer: Let's make this a real business. [00:54:19] Katie Dooley: You want to share with the poor. I'm kidding. We do have our Patreon. It does help us keep this podcast going and hopefully be producing more content more frequently. If the subscription model is not your thing, we also have our Spreadshirt. [00:54:33] Preston Meyer: So much good merch. [00:54:34] Katie Dooley: So much good merch. We have new merch launching as well all the time. So that's the the socialism plug for money. But also please join us on our social media which is free. [00:54:47] Preston Meyer: Right? Yay socialism. [00:54:49] Katie Dooley: Socialism. Social media. Socialism. Right. What? [00:54:54] Preston Meyer: What a coincidence. [00:54:55] Katie Dooley: We're building a community on discord. Uh, yes. Check out our discord. Instagram. Facebook. We have some great conversations on Discord in particular. And that's all for this week. [00:55:08] Preston Meyer: Thanks for joining us. [00:55:10] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 03 Jul 2023 | Plates of Palmyra | 00:45:51 | |
The Book of Mormon has a better story than you might think, though not quite what you might have heard in Stone & Parker's musical of the same name. Rather than a tome of collected works, each the subject of contentious discussion in council, The Book of Mormon is an abridgement of a continuous historical record, with a couple appendices of original content and other summarized histories. Of course, this book is incomplete, and we look into the story of how the first portion went missing before publication, as well as the translation process. In September 1823, young Joseph Smith, Jr. was visited by an angel named Moroni who had the ancient record of his extinct people, and he needed Joseph to translate and publish his record so that people would renew their faith in Christ. After several trials of Joseph's fidelity, and several years, Joseph obtained the tome, written on sheets of gold to stand the ravages of time. Several scribes helped Joseph throughout the translation process, and though most of them expressed irreconcilable conflict with Joseph personally at one point or another, they each vehemently defended their testimony of the divine work they helped to accomplish in the Book of Mormon. The climax of the abridged narrative has the angelic visitation of Jesus Christ himself, followed by a brief summary of the peaceful following centuries, and ending with the complete genocide of the faithful. This text, sacred to the various churches of the Latter-day Saint movement, is the subject of intense scrutiny, and we're here to help in our own little way. It's worth noting that the "Mormon Bible" is a poor label for the Book of Mormon, since the church officially sticks with the King James Version of the Bible (KJV) in English-speaking congregations. All this and more... Support us on Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram | |||
| 06 Nov 2023 | Spellbound Puritans | 00:48:42 | |
As we close out the spooky season, it's time to talk about Puritanism and the extremism that led to witch hunts and barbaric murders of innocents. The Puritan movement was born from the Church of England, with the idea that King Henry VIII and the new English national episcopalian congregation hadn't reformed nearly enough after breaking away from the Imperial Church of Rome. Like the Pharisees before them, they sought to purify their faith from every element of external influence. They preferred the leadership of a council of elders (a presbyterian model), and simpler, plainer buildings in which to worship. Rather than fearing demonic possession, this new flavor of literate extremists feared a devil who could trick people into signing contracts of eternal damnation. To these unorthodox believers, anybody so deceived would be a witch who would certainly spell the doom of their community and their Puritan way of life. When this group settled in America, they effectivel established a theocracy over their colonies, exiling any who deviated too far from the community standards, unless they were found to be a witch, which their tradition had criminalized to the point of public execution. In 1692, when Betty Parris and Abigail Williams accused Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne, and the slave Tituba of being witches, things were already tense in Salem, Massachusetts. Their accusation set off a chain of witch trials and executions that lasted over a year. This 'Satanic Panic' saw more than 200 accusations, 22 executions (including 2 dogs), and 5 more women who died in jail before their trials. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshirt. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 24 Oct 2022 | Trick or Treat: God Edition | 00:34:20 | |
Trickster gods are often depicted as malevolent, or as plucky antihero sidekicks (looking at you, Loki). Some are more benevolent, seeking to teach through the medium of struggle. Tricksters can lead even the pious off their course, sometimes to test their wills, or to teach them a better way to live. Join us as we explore the great tricksters of the old traditions. Lewis Hyde calls them "Boundary-Crossers," and for good reason; these guys won't be controlled, if they have their way. These characters aren't quite the chaos monsters of the last episode, but chaos serves their ends well--or at least, the appearance of chaos.... We examine Momus, Loki, Kokopelli, Gwydion, Lugh, Sun Wukong the Money King, Eshu, and Anansi; and we tell a couple spider stories along the way. All this and more... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website | |||
| 24 May 2021 | No... Not Even Satan | 00:57:25 | |
Atheism and agnosticism can sound like scary words. These two concepts are often misunderstood as something more nefarious than they actually are. There is a misconception that they worship Satan, or that they hate God. They don’t believe that any god exists at all. In this episode, we discuss some famous atheists, like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Ricky Gervais. We also chat about the discrimination that still exists for atheists and how some religious people feel their faith is under attack. Remember, the burden of proof is on the believer. In addition to atheism, we chat about agnosticism (or don’t-know-ism). Perhaps there is a god, but the human brain can’t even comprehend it. Agnostics are often willing to believe in a greater power, but hesitant to believe in specific truth claims that we see in organized religion. Secularism and humanism are also closely linked to atheism. Secularism is the removal of religion from decision-making. Religious secularists do exist, however, because Jesus said to love your neighbour! Humanism is a people-first belief system that affirms human freedom and progress. Humanism dates back to 1500 BCE and it removes the excuse of “god isn’t helping”. Humanists generally do not accept any supernatural beliefs, religious or otherwise. Tune in to learn more about these belief (or lack of belief) systems!
Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram
**** Katie Dooley 00:09 atheist I'm not real. So clearly this episodes, who told you you're not real people on the internet? There was a meme that went out said that atheists don't believe in God, so we shouldn't believe in them. Right? So this episode is not even real.
Preston Meyer 00:32 Okay, there is a linguistic point of view where I can see that what they say, could make sense, even though it's a faulty perspective, you know, of believing in is trusting if you don't trust God, Why should I trust you kind of thing, though, that's not actually socially constructive.
Katie Dooley 00:53 So if you haven't picked up on it yet, we're talking about atheism today. Yay, me.
Preston Meyer 01:00 Hi, I'm Preston, I. Welcome to the holy watermelon podcast.
Katie Dooley 01:06 I finally get some representation up in here.
Preston Meyer 01:09 Right.
Katie Dooley 01:12 Yeah, so we're talking about atheism, and agnosticism. And we've thrown in some other buzzwords terms, concepts that are often linked with those to
Preston Meyer 01:23 help fill out this. This episode.
Katie Dooley 01:25 I said before we press record, and I'll say it again now that record has been pressed is I don't know if I'm excited, because representation or concern that this is gonna be a really boring episode, because I think I can sum it up in my very first sentence of notes.
Preston Meyer 01:43 Go for it.
Katie Dooley 01:45 atheists don't believe in a higher power. No, not even Satan. And no, we don't hate God either. Finn,
Preston Meyer 01:54 atheism as a slightly stronger position than that though. It's the ISM of there is no God. Yeah, like it's a declaration to say I'm an atheist is to deny God not just I don't think so. I don't believe that there is it's there isn't?
Katie Dooley 02:12 No, no. But so often, the misconceptions, let's just tackle them right now, the misconception is that either we worship Satan,
Preston Meyer 02:23 which doesn't make any sense. We don't believe
Katie Dooley 02:24 in just like God, we do not believe in Satan. If God doesn't exist, or the others that we hate God and see former point.
Preston Meyer 02:35 It's the fan club that's hated.
Katie Dooley 02:39 Thank God, we don't believe God exists. So, yeah, now that it's clear, that's about that's atheism bi.
Preston Meyer 02:50 But there's so much more to it. There's a lot of things that fit into this discussion of nonbelief. It's, it's a, it's a heavy bag.
Katie Dooley 03:04 It is. Where do we want to start?
Preston Meyer 03:10 That's a great question.
Katie Dooley 03:11 I do like the Steven Roberts quote, is, I think it makes atheism somehow more relatable. Sure. So let's start there. So Stephen F. Roberts said, I contend that we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer God than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible Gods you will understand why I dismiss yours. And lots of other famous atheists speak to that point. We collectively believe in about 3000 different gods. So if you follow the Abrahamic religion, you don't believe in 2999. And I don't believe in 3000. And that's the difference. So we're both very similar in that regard.
Preston Meyer 03:55 Right. As somebody who believes in a lot less than 3000 Gods it makes us a pretty easy, common ground to find.
Katie Dooley 04:14 That's it. What else do you want to say?
Preston Meyer 04:16 What other famous atheists do you have on your sleeve?
Katie Dooley 04:19 I mean, my favorite atheist, famous atheist is Richard Dawkins. He wrote a fantastic book called The God Delusion, which I highly recommend if you're sure he's written other books, too, but The God Delusion is sort of his, you know, Pinnacle as well as doing a ton of speaking and He I forget what exactly he did for a living he was like a professor of biology of science and so he always spoke to evolution and and that just turned into him becoming a speaker on I think, probably originally against creationism and then into atheism. So that's how he got
Preston Meyer 04:58 the natural course. of frustration to
Katie Dooley 05:02 write. I love that. Yeah. So he, I highly recommend The God Delusion. If you are an atheist and have trouble articulating, if you're thinking about atheism or if you have someone in your life that's atheist and you think they're slaughtering goats every weekend, probably.
Preston Meyer 05:17 That's the thing for people who believe in God.
Katie Dooley 05:21 We won't do that we're actually really boring people.
Preston Meyer 05:24 You've got a few more of your favorite atheists listed here and what else you got?
Katie Dooley 05:28 Oh, Christopher Hitchens, another one. I haven't read a ton of Christopher Hitchens. But he and Richard Dawkins and speak all the time. I'm less of a fan of Sam Harris, but he's also the only one left alive.
Preston Meyer 05:42 The only other atheist left.
Katie Dooley 05:46 When it speaks so free, and he's written books on it, he wrote a letter to a Christian nation. He got in a big fight with Ben Affleck on Islam. Oh, yeah. Famously. Apparently, he's turned into quite the far right. Extremist, though. So yeah.
Preston Meyer 06:03 A far right extremists that isn't a Christian.
Katie Dooley 06:05 I know. That's what I said to Brian. Because Brian said, you know, he's, like, gone off the deep end. And I was like, Oh, I didn't know that. And I was like, but he's an atheist. Not and we'll get into this, not that there aren't militant or extreme atheists. But anyway, other famous ones. I mean, it's not really their realm, but Ricky Gervais is a very, he's quite open about being an atheist. And is it pen the tall one of the magician's of pen and one that actually Angela? Angela talks a lot as well about atheism. So they're, they're great to, you know, search on YouTube and watch some of their debates and arguments. So I think those are the ones off the top of my head that I gravitate towards.
Preston Meyer 06:54 Yeah. So a pretty good crew.
Katie Dooley 06:59 Unless you think we're all devil worshippers.
Preston Meyer 07:01 Let's see, this just doesn't make sense. That's an entirely
Katie Dooley 07:05 different topic. Yeah. Richard Dawkins, has used the example of a Thor ism. Kind of a parody religion, but it's basically like not believing in Thor. Right to explain the concept of atheism. So do you believe Thor is real? Most people don't I'm sure there are some Neo Norse
Preston Meyer 07:29 well, and you got a handful of people that are willing to accept that Thor may have been historically real person like the historic Jesus. Absolutely. But to be up there in the clouds. That's an entirely different matter
Katie Dooley 07:41 an entirely different matter. So he uses a Thor ism to basically describe atheism. Oh, you don't believe the oars in the clouds with his hammer? Oh, okay. Cool. Neither do we. He's also we talked last last episode about Russell's teapot he says the Russell's teapot example what sense? You can't disprove that there isn't a teapot floating around space. So ergo, there must be a teapot. Yeah, those are some famous atheists.
Preston Meyer 08:18 There's a handful of atheist organizations that have popped up over the years as well for probably not all the same reason, I think there's probably some diversity in the reason there. You've got groups that feel like there's oppression against atheists. If you're familiar with American politics at all, you will definitely have heard that it's not okay to have a non Christian in the White House. Oh, my goodness.
Katie Dooley 08:45 Well, I was gonna save it for you. Go for it, set it up so nicely. So in a God Delusion, and I wasn't gonna dig through the book to find it. But it is in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. There was a study done, and they pulled people on, who are like how much they would trust someone in a political position. If they were basically anything other than a white man, heterosexual man. So they like, you know, what, how much would you trust someone if they were a black man, and so little less than white man? How much would you trust them if they were Muslim? Okay, well, a little less than that. Then how much would you trust them? If they're a white woman? Well, a little less than that. And it would go and go and go. The lowest, like trust was atheist. So they would trust and I mean, none of these are problems. But when you think of who historically? No, I mean, like, there's nothing wrong with being gay, right? But when you think of how intolerant people can be the fact that you can be a gay Muslim woman, and you're trusted more in power than someone who just doesn't believe in God. Yeah, it was like mind blowing that I didn't realize that it was still such an issue. And again, not that there's anything wrong with being a gay Muslim woman, but, you know, we see it prevalent Islamophobia and homophobia and sexism constantly. So you think people would, you know, statistically have a problem with those more than an atheist when I think, I don't know what stats are for number of atheists in the world, but I think it's quite predominant. That's crazy to me that people just like lose trust, because someone doesn't believe in a deity.
Preston Meyer 10:43 Employers are forbidden from asking you your religion. But there's an awful lot of people who just know in their community, it's a lot better if you put it on your resume, because then you'll get the job over somebody who doesn't. Yeah. And so some of these atheist collective groups that are organized, are actively fighting this discrimination.
Katie Dooley 11:06 Yeah, I think it was The God Delusion as well talked about, or maybe it was just an interview with Richard Dawkins, but that you're talking about how he's like 95% sure that Barack Obama is an atheist, but he had to put on the Christian rent to get elected and like, I mean, the way Donald Trump behaved I don't. Shit if he's a Christian, he's a terrible Christian.
Preston Meyer 11:29 If he was genuinely a Christian, remember when he actually had military and armed forces come in? Tear gas punch people, so you could take a picture in front of a church, or a church in which he had never set foot according to the priests that worked there? If he was a Christian, I think he would have taken a picture in front of the church he attends.
Katie Dooley 11:51 Right? Yeah. So I think that's a problem to pretend to be religious for political gain. Right. I actually have a great example that I'll loop back to that. I mean, honestly, it's the theists who are like, trying to take God out of school, for sure. And
Preston Meyer 12:11 yet people like to blame that on the influx of foreigners in the country. No. Atheists, my
Katie Dooley 12:16 mom did that once. We call her out. She was like, it's these people coming to our country. And I was like, Mom, they all believe in God. It's the atheists. It's me. If we ate this dreaded day, get out. Yes, so there was I never actually watched this documentary on Netflix about a lady who was like at the forefront of taking the Lord's prayer out of schools, just the death threats that she
Preston Meyer 12:44 gets, and people issue death threats over the dumbest things.
Katie Dooley 12:49 But if there isn't gotten schools, Preston will be slaughtering lambs. I don't know what people what do you if you have a problem with atheists? Can you please email me and tell me what you think we do with our free time? I'm just really curious. No, truly, I'm like, I eat potato chips. And
Preston Meyer 13:09 if you're worried about your children, not receiving a religious education in school, remember that as a parent, it's your job to teach your children anything that they're not learning somewhere else.
Katie Dooley 13:22 Great parenting. Yeah, so atheists kind of sort of organized like Preston said, they're groups with a goal, generally. making things more secular and removing religion from them. So they're more accessible to I'd argue all religions. Yeah, right. When you take the Christian Lord's prayer to school, it's more accessible to people of other religions. And atheists and agnostics. Yeah. And then there's, I mean, there's your online atheists and keyboard warriors. I'm not going to pretend like there aren't extreme atheists and I know people have a problem with them. But there's extreme Christians and extreme Muslims and extreme feminists and
Preston Meyer 14:06 whatever. I don't know if there's an idea out there that somebody hasn't taken to the extreme. Like, there are people fighting over which is the best My Little Pony character, the everything, somebody's taken to the extreme.
Katie Dooley 14:26 And but I say, my note is that Katie says what the nurses think that the majority of atheists just kind of chill on their own with no formal organization. We just exist. Okay, so we're kind of boring.
Preston Meyer 14:44 I don't think you're boring. The reason that we're able to do this show together,
Katie Dooley 14:49 you're the best. How about you tell me why you believers are so antagonistic towards us? Just staring into the best thing, but
Preston Meyer 15:06 it's for some Christians, they feel that they are under attack from atheists. I think an awful lot of Christians realize that they're not personally being attacked, but an awful lot do and Richard Dawkins is kind of one of the more aggressive voices out there too. And being a public figure, it's easy to recognize. And it's weird that atheists, especially the non aggressive ones, who are the majority typically just have a simple request. Evidence.
Katie Dooley 15:47 Yes, like we talked about in parody religions, the burden of proof is on the believer,
Preston Meyer 15:51 right. And it's a lack of compelling evidence makes it hard to adopt a new belief. And the vast majority of Christians have gone into this conversation without providing any compelling evidence to their audience, which is super frustrating. And it's more frustrating when the average believer has found enough evidence to satisfy their own demands for evidence. And yet those little pieces of evidence aren't enough for the people they're talking to. That can be very frustrating, until you recognize the nature of your evidence and realize that it's not really usually something that's easy to share in a way that is going to compel anybody else, as we talked about the deal of witnesses and perspective about perception being reality, in our previous episodes, it's you can't force somebody else to believe when your evidence is not meeting the standards of your audience.
Katie Dooley 17:04 Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, we spent a whole episode on this, but and then how people process information. Right, right. So even if you have evidence that would stack up and I mean, we see this now with fake news and, and not fake news that people are either believing things that aren't real or not believing things that are real. So even if evidence does stack up, you still can't force someone to believe because of how, because of their own biases and how they process information.
Preston Meyer 17:36 Exactly. If new information is at odds with something that you refuse to let go of, then you're definitely not going to accept this new information. And that, more commonly a problem among believers and non believers. I really like so Nietzsche is a famous atheist
Katie Dooley 18:03 like the well. He's like the OG atheist, but not really, they credit like atheist philosophy to him.
Preston Meyer 18:10 He's a pretty great voice in the the early discussions of hate No, there is no God. And one of his great quotes that so many people love to just quote the first three words of a much longer, fully excellent, quote, God is dead. God is dead, and people like to stop there. The rest of the quote is solid gold. Okay? And I'm gonna read it for you.
Katie Dooley 18:39 Now the babies in me as well. No, I'm kidding.
Preston Meyer 18:43 God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned, and has bled to death under our knives? Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement? What sacred game shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become Gods simply to appear worthy of it? This guy was a great writer.
Katie Dooley 19:23 Wow. One Ring to rule them all
Preston Meyer 19:26 right. And so he used this phrase to express his idea that the Enlightenment had eliminated the possibility of the existence of God. How he got there is rather complicated and I don't feel like the enlightenment does eliminate the possibility of the existence of God. But obviously, people disagree with me and that's okay.
Katie Dooley 19:54 That's why we're here.
Preston Meyer 19:57 But what's really interesting is that in this position that he holds the burden then falls on atheists to deal with the mystery of teaching morality in a vast wasteland of subjectivity and relativity. It's a spectrum now. And we have to figure out how we can proceed in this world. Things were a little simpler when I had a god to say what's right and what's wrong. I mean, that the whole of society agreed upon. And now that's not our reality.
Katie Dooley 20:31 Even without atheism, though, that's our reality with the hundreds of 1000s of denominations of Christianity. Right, right. I mean, within Christianity, some denominations say it's fine to be gay, some say it's not fine to be gay. Some say sex before marriage, it's fine. Some say psycho performer and isn't the worst thing you could possibly do. And those are all moral questions. Yeah. So I think this kind of comes back to our, one of our very early episodes on where morality comes from, and what is I think was or what is religion episode? And, you know, I don't think our morals come from modern religions.
Preston Meyer 21:12 And I somewhat disagree. Well, morality isn't one monolithic things. Morality itself is a spectrum. What even the the average Christian would be considered quite immoral to somebody who holds themselves to the old Mosaic Law where eating shrimp is I think you shouldn't do. So it's, it's a spectrum and there's differing standards in different groups.
Katie Dooley 21:47 Right, but then, ergo, it can come from religion alone, maybe that's what all can feed
Preston Meyer 21:57 comes from people. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 21:59 And feelings. For sure.
Preston Meyer 22:03 Because people have feelings.
Katie Dooley 22:04 Yes. We are emotional beings.
Preston Meyer 22:06 Kind of an awful lot.
Katie Dooley 22:10 Anything anything else you want to ask me as I resident atheist like that? We're pretty boring. I think you just don't believe
Preston Meyer 22:18 I mean, it is it's that simple. That's how much further can you dive into a shallow pool?
Katie Dooley 22:24 Wow. What do you say?
Preston Meyer 22:27 There's more to you than but atheism itself is a shallow pool.
Katie Dooley 22:34 Yeah, so I were thinking you were saying worshippers just remember all that the isms monotheism, one polytheism, many pan everything a nothing at all, nothing at all. Satanism is what you're looking for.
Preston Meyer 22:48 And we'll talk about that another day. So adjacent to atheism, we have agnosticism so where atheism literally means no god is agnosticism is don't know ism. Literally,
Katie Dooley 23:07 hi. I wrote that this is kind
Preston Meyer 23:12 of a cop out. But it's a genuine position that a lot of people know. I know. And I find my
Katie Dooley 23:16 agnostic moments to. So basically, agnostic is the idea that we can't know if there's a God or not fair. And Preston made the note didn't What did I make the know? How can we know anything is real or not? Right? It's it's more that if there is a God, we can't comprehend it? And I've made claims that I generally think there isn't. But if there is something so beyond,
Preston Meyer 23:44 it's more complex than the way people present it. Yeah, absolutely. It's not anything that we have. The vast majority of theists tend to agree with you as well. Especially in the Catholic Catholic dogma, it's God is unknowable. We have little snippets here and there, but you're straight. I'm not even supposed to try for most people. Which is also a position that I don't love.
Katie Dooley 24:12 No, because then what's the point? Right, right. And that's kind of where I tend towards atheism, because if it's so profound, we can't comprehend it, then it then goes back to why are we following these rules? Right, because we could be 100% wrong on these rules. If we can't comprehend a higher power, so I digress in that, but
Preston Meyer 24:34 But yeah, basically, the idea is, typically for most agnostics, the human brain can't comprehend God and that we don't know what's going on. Usually agnostics or people who are are willing to believe generally, in some greater creative force, but are hesitant to believe in specific truth claims, especially the more specific you get the more questionable they can be. And thanks to what we've learned in science, you can make some pretty specific claims that can outright be disproven.
Katie Dooley 25:06 Are these the people who say they're spiritual but not religious.
Preston Meyer 25:10 I think some people who say that they're spiritual, but not religious definitely fall into this category. It's the easiest cop out.
Katie Dooley 25:21 I mean, I think this kind of goes, I've said it before. Sorry, everyone. I said before, I don't think you should be moderate in your beliefs. So if you're going well, we can't know either way, like, have you actually thought about it? And I'm not saying you still won't come to the conclusion of agnosticism. But that's always my first question is have you actually sat down and really rumbled with the possibility one way or the other?
Preston Meyer 25:47 One, there's the struggle of you can, through your own meditation, come to accept the idea that, yeah, there's a God and still be bombarded with all of these different voices saying, this is God or this is God or that's God, and not be able to determine where to go from
Katie Dooley 26:06 there. Absolutely. And I think, I mean, most people avoid that. Yeah, most people don't know anything about a religion other than their own. That's true. Because there's a lot and I, I would be curious, what the average whatever, not whatever, just the average believer and not saying any one in particular, what their thoughts would be exploring other religions genuinely. I mean, I know you've done it, but you've always had an interest in it, but like just some random Joe off the street antonym a book on Sikhism, and see what that does for an awakening and enlightenment. Already, because this goes back to Thor ism. If you can read up on Sikhism and go This is weird. Why would anyone believe this now? I think that's something to reflect on. Okay. Well, here's what I think weird,
Preston Meyer 26:56 right? A lot of people have much more difficulty examining their own beliefs than others. Oh, absolutely. Because I believe it because it's true, which is, of course, an argument that gets nobody anywhere at all. Yeah.
27:16 Shall we the teapot,
Preston Meyer 27:18 right? Take a lot of looking because we don't know where it is. It's somewhere between Earth and Mars, I think is where Russell said it was. Yeah, yeah. It's orbiting. So yeah, it's orbiting the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars. That's an awful lot of space.
Katie Dooley 27:37 We'll find it one day, I believe. Yeah, so that's basically it. Sounds like you're really this is gonna be boring episode.
Preston Meyer 27:50 Like we're making it not boring. And we're definitely informative.
Katie Dooley 27:55 For sure. And now that everyone knows I don't slaughter goats in my free time. I can breathe a sigh of relief. I wanted to throw two other terms. And in particular, so we're going to chat about secularism and humanism, and I'm mentioning both now because often people who are essentially atheist identify themselves as secular humanists. And so we're gonna dive into those terms. And I think part of that is because of all the nasty connotations that come with atheism is to rename yourself something a little, a little nicer,
Preston Meyer 28:34 make it sound like you have an ism that isn't a negative. All right.
Katie Dooley 28:37 But Preston, I were talking about this and I think you need to just own your label, whatever it is, because then it just leaves room for the bad. Sure. Great. We're talking about this. I know someone who calls himself a Christ follower instead of a Christian because of all the the baggage that now comes with Christianity, but I don't think that helps Christianity.
Preston Meyer 28:59 No, it doesn't.
Katie Dooley 29:01 Or we same thing we use the example of this, you know, when we're snacking before the episode of people who say they believe in equality, but aren't feminists Well, that doesn't help the cause of feminism in that it's been historically that women have been at a disadvantage. So to just be like, Oh, equality, this brush is the idea that women have been historically disadvantaged under the rug. So
Preston Meyer 29:26 there's, there's a good reason for both of these people, even if they're not really on board with critical thought.
Katie Dooley 29:39 Get our garbage feminist, but you can't like and there's garbage atheists
Preston Meyer 29:44 and garbage Christians.
Katie Dooley 29:45 Oh, are we going to address Hitler? Let's do it. Cool. So one of everyone's like, favorite argument against atheism is that Hitler was an atheist. Which is like actually debatable.
Preston Meyer 30:02 He was extremely superstitious and believed a lot of things.
Katie Dooley 30:06 Yes. And he was raised Catholic. And I've just bring he was raised Catholic. And one of the arguments, I sort of thought saw where it was like, it doesn't matter if he's an atheist is that he used his Christianity to gain power. This goes back to was Obama actually Christian was Donald Trump actually, Christian. If you're using religion to gain power doesn't matter if you're an atheist, because you're, you're using religion to be a bad person, right? In the case of Hitler. So that's just for everyone who's gonna be like, sending us messages, those messages that says that Hitler was an atheist.
Preston Meyer 30:44 I'm really uncomfortable with the parallels between Trump and Hitler.
Katie Dooley 30:48 Yeah, that's a different episode.
Preston Meyer 30:51 I'm so glad that he's not President. I don't have strong positive feelings for Biden, but they're not the strong negative feelings I had for Trump.
Katie Dooley 31:01 Yeah, so there's the Hitler. Hitler atheist debate that we so frequently hear. Anyway, back to secularism, secularism, we most commonly hear it as the idea of step by step, the separation of church and state. So you live living in a secular country, it means you're removing religion from decision making is sort of more specifically what the term means,
Preston Meyer 31:29 which is intensely difficult to do when you have an awful lot of Christians in your government.
Katie Dooley 31:35 Well, that was one of my points is that? Well, the United States and even Canada says that they're secular countries, because there are so many religious people in power. There's absolutely religious influence in decision making. Most I'd say probably most prominently is abortion laws, is if it were a secular issue, it would be legal. And then if you're religious, and that's against your religion, then you just don't get an abortion,
Preston Meyer 32:03 which it and it should be that simple.
Katie Dooley 32:06 And same with gay marriage, right?
Preston Meyer 32:08 If you don't believe in gay marriage, don't kill gay married
Katie Dooley 32:12 someone of the same gender. So that would be an example of removing religious decision making from we have an awful
Preston Meyer 32:21 lot of public servants all around the world. Not in any one specific country, though, there's, you're guaranteed to find some specific examples. If you look around yourself, that an awful lot of public servants feel that they're not actually meant to serve the public. They're only there to serve their friends. And that's not okay.
Katie Dooley 32:44 Yes. Yes, you are correct. Yeah. I don't know how you fix that. It's just holding your people in public office accountable.
Preston Meyer 32:53 Yeah. But thanks to the fact that say write the laws,
Katie Dooley 32:58 but they always want to get hired again, remember that
Preston Meyer 33:00 they do, which is why they do just enough nice things right before they call an election.
Katie Dooley 33:06 Which is why we need to hold them accountable throughout their term, which Yeah, I mean, you can I'm not great at and I you should be better at. So you can be. I mean, generally, you're not religious, if you're a secular speaker, you can absolutely be religious and be a secularist is again, the idea that you remove religion from decision making, so you can advocate for public decision making. Obviously, if you're religious, you'd probably make your private decisions based off a religion, but you can advocate for secularism in public spaces.
Preston Meyer 33:38 Absolutely. One of the most important teachings of Jesus, according to Jesus himself, is the need to take care of your neighbors, regardless of any reason why you might not want to, you have to take care of your neighbors. That's a pretty good reason to be a secularist recognize that you have neighbors that don't believe the same things you do, and that you still need to take care of their needs. Yes. And
Katie Dooley 34:03 I guess to expand on that, that people wouldn't be all lacking because of their religious beliefs. Same thing, we think of it in public spheres. But, you know, because you're a different religion, you still have access to same health care and education and opportunities that someone maybe the mainstream faith has, it doesn't matter regardless of your religion, you still have the same job opportunities, whatever, you don't need to be fearing for your life, right or livelihood because you are of a particular faith. Yeah. So you're talking about the US and Canada not being as secular as they claim? And I made a note that says to anyone complaining about Sharia law, you better look in the mirror.
Preston Meyer 34:55 For sure. We have religious laws in in pretty much every English speaking country, I can't speak for the others, but I betcha they're there.
Katie Dooley 35:08 Yeah, I mean, I know Russia and China have had like, militant atheist political programs, which are not good.
Preston Meyer 35:16 And yet they both still discriminate against homosexuals, right, which most people like to mostly blame on Christianity.
Katie Dooley 35:26 And I don't know, I know, the Scandinavian countries are predominantly atheists. So I don't know what their political decision making is like to comment particularly. But yeah, you're right. Any, any of these western countries for sure. Western Hemisphere countries, definitely have religious influence in their public decision making
Preston Meyer 35:46 for sure. I think secularism, as an idea is kind of interesting that in, it's a western idea, it's like religion, which the word exists as a western idea, as something that's separate from the mundane. We talked about in Shintoism, how the state of Japan made Buddhism, the state religion, even though everybody was a Shinto list, because they didn't see Shinto as a religion, meaning that there was no secularism, because they didn't distinguish between the two.
Katie Dooley 36:29 Because it was so ingrained, yeah, I wonder if that's because we're younger countries, maybe. Right, because we had our indigenous peoples here. And then we were more diversity of belief. That's what I mean by that, is because we're younger countries were colonized and, you know, basically populate through immigration. Whereas if you look at, you know, I think like Iceland, in particular, where everyone's still blond and blue eyed because they haven't had those levels of immigration, and it's such an ancient country, you wouldn't, you're in Japan to right where you wouldn't necessarily, that's why people in Iceland still believe in ours, because they haven't had the same outside influences, as, again, Canada, United States was, were built entirely on outside influences. Probably unfortunately,
Preston Meyer 37:19 I think it's really nifty that you picked Iceland as your example, that they have changed so little that when they first were colonized, Norse and Icelandic were the same language. And the people of Norway continued to evolve and their language continued to evolve to the point that they're not the same language, but there's some mutual intelligibility there, but the Icelandic language of today is the same as Norris was 1000 and a half years ago. That's why Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Katie Dooley 37:52 Someone a lady from Iceland was telling me about how they name themselves is that you? You take like, so you take your if you're a boy, you take your dad's first name is your last name. And if you're a girl, you take your mom's first name as your last name, so no one has the same last name and a family. But because she grew up in Canada, she has her dad's. Like, it's like her grandpa's first name as her last name. Because we go, we're patriarchal and how we name so she's moved since moved back to Iceland. And everyone's like, Why is this here tonight? That doesn't make any sense because it's son of she her name is son of when it shouldn't be daughter. Anyway,
Preston Meyer 38:38 yeah, that's, that's weird. And that's a easy enough fix. I don't know of any courts, that straight up won't allow you to change your name.
Katie Dooley 38:47 No, but she was born and raised in Canada and intends to come back to Canada. It's just a funny cultural,
Preston Meyer 38:52 it's weird that her parents didn't just stick with the former nomenclature, because you can write whatever you want on the birth certificate, or when a registered kid odd and interesting things. And so the secularists that we have here in the West, are trying to I want to say split, but I want you to understand that I'm not trying to say break. There, there needs to be a division between religious life and secular life, there needs to be a lack of specific religious doctrine in government. When we have such a diverse plurality of people here,
Katie Dooley 39:41 I think part of the problem and this is just off the top of my head is that we also live in such an individualistic society really do us it's even worse than Canada, where we put the individual in ahead of the group. So it's really hard to think of this as maybe where secularism is kind of scary, because we want what's best For us not what's best for everyone when secularism absolutely is best for everyone because it encompasses nothing and therefore, therefore everyone can take part whereas to encompass everything would be very difficult and to encompass one or two is unfair.
Preston Meyer 40:17 It's so weird to me how many people are opposed to the idea of not having dogma forced down their throats? I don't get it.
Katie Dooley 40:33 It's because the people who they would be the ones doing the fourth thing,
Preston Meyer 40:38 and that is the goal that people who seek out power are the people that you don't want to have power.
Katie Dooley 40:48 Right are the people who are like okay without being forced down their throats, because their dogma and they want to force it on someone else come back to my Sharia law comment is like, well, you know, any, you see at any one go on Facebook and told me like, well, we don't want Sharia law. It's like, well, we have pretty, you know, Christian law here. Yeah. So what's wrong with Sharia law? Right? You don't understand Sharia law? B, and B, how is it so different than what we have now? Right? So because it's not their, their version being shoved down the throats, they want their version? So someone else's version instead of having no version, which is secularism. I hope that was a great explanation slash analogy.
Preston Meyer 41:34 So George Holyoke, the guy who coined the word secularism, back in 1851, argued that secularism is not an argument against Christianity. It is one independent of it. It does not question the pretentions of Christianity, it advances others. Secularism does not say there is no light or guidance elsewhere, but maintains that there is light and guidance in secular truth, whose conditions and sanctions exist independently, and act forever. secular knowledge is manifestly that kind of knowledge which is founded in this life, which relates to the conduct of this life conduces to the welfare of this life, and is capable of being tested by the experience of this life. I like that packet of it. I mean, it's a lot of things, but basically, it's to simplify it, it's we worry about the things that we can see in this life to govern this life, that it's not okay to govern somebody else based on something that they don't believe in. And that can also get a little bit complicated if you are trying to convince somebody that murder is bad if they don't believe in bad, but I think most people can understand that there is desirable and undesirable even if there's different standards on that.
Katie Dooley 43:08 Or a spectrum of standards. Absolutely. Take a shot every time we say the word spectrum.
Preston Meyer 43:17 It's a spectrum. So of course, there's, like we said before, there's extremes and everything. You have hard secularists and soft secularists. Oh, right. And so these two categories are actually more similar than they are different. Hard secularism considers religious propositions to be epistemology, epistemologically illegitimate, they seek to deny them as much as possible. Whereas soft secularism is really simple, just all about tolerance and liberalism. Which isn't the big l these are the Liberals lib tard. It's little L liberalism of we should be free to make our choices and take care. Yeah, yeah.
Katie Dooley 44:13 All right. So often, secularism is paired with human it's something like so people identify themselves as secular humanists or you can just be a humanist and I know humanist chaplains exist. So there is some organization under humanism. But again, it's not, I guess, I mean, anything could be a religion, but there's no deity in humanism,
Preston Meyer 44:40 but depends on how you define deity. See our former episodes.
Katie Dooley 44:47 Humanism is a philosophical term that focuses on human agency and intelligence as the best way to progress. So it's a human first philosophy V. Again, religion perhaps?
Preston Meyer 45:03 Yeah, it's, it's been the word humanism has been used in a few different ways by a few different groups over the years. But generally, each of the different movements agree on the importance of affirming human freedom and progress.
Katie Dooley 45:17 Humanism goes, you can do it, no, there's just so much happening. Humanism actually goes as far back as the 1500s. And by 1500s, I mean 1500 BCE
Preston Meyer 45:33 1000s of years old, years old, 100
Katie Dooley 45:36 talking about humanism. And so Confucianism is one that is kind of a humanist philosophy for sure puts Confucius, Confucius, Confucius at the center of it. And then even the Rigveda talks about humans and human agency and things like that. So it's a very old term, but it has become I would definitely say more popular as we try to navigate this atheistic spectrum.
Preston Meyer 46:04 And of course, the because of these ideas, the burden of human improvement falls on us individually and societally so that we can rely on each other and science and not on excuses of Oh, God isn't helping us.
Katie Dooley 46:25 Yeah, I think that's really important. I even see things and I'd be curious, your thoughts on? You know, when people say, well, prayer doesn't work unless you do like so then. If you just do the work, then why do you need prayer? I mean,
Preston Meyer 46:42 there's, do you want an answer to this question?
Katie Dooley 46:47 Is it for this episode, I want to get fits
Preston Meyer 46:49 into this.
Katie Dooley 46:51 That's one thing I you know, seeing where, you know, it's great to pray, but you need to do the work. It's like, well, then stay away.
Preston Meyer 47:00 Absolutely. Well, even even in the Bible, we are told Yeah, go on, pray, and then get up and work.
Katie Dooley 47:09 So then in my world prayer, just like superfluous Sure,
Preston Meyer 47:13 I'm okay with you currently holding that position. Cuz I might have an explanation for you on another day, or next finds utility in prayer, whether or not it actually does the trick.
Katie Dooley 47:29 Interesting. We can do our episode on prayer. Another important note, and I think this is secular humanism, in particular, rejects anything supernatural. So not just religion, but also sort of sciences, anything metaphysical. I have any type of woowoo here. So I could easily identify as a secular humanist. In addition to an atheist. I actually would separate those, I would say I'm an atheist and a secular humanist, personally, but like, some people pick one or the other. But like, like that, it's it's definitely more all encompassing. So you have a note about, oh, yeah, stick humanists.
Preston Meyer 48:17 Yes, there are theistic humanists. There's been plenty of philosophers, especially through the Enlightenment who kind of made the idea popular again, I guess. And there was one fella, and we'll talk more about him later. His name is Thomas Moore. He was sainted by the Catholic Church. He was knighted in England.
Katie Dooley 48:40 See one of these saints you think shouldn't be a saint. i There's no
Preston Meyer 48:44 reason in my mind that he should ever have been sainted. But here we are. Here we are. He was an English fella. And he was a Catholic in a time where it was not so great to be Catholic by the end of his life anyway. He made it his life's mission to prevent the publication of the Bible. He was a Catholic who was sainted. He prevented the publication of the Bible to the point of burning people's lives and livelihoods. But he was also a humanists. Or so his, any of these words, his literature affirms a humanist philosophy. Of course, if you were on the the opposite side of him in literally any battlefield, you were going to have a bad day. Luckily, more modern humanists don't follow his example.
Katie Dooley 49:54 Or otherwise.
Preston Meyer 49:56 Yeah. Right, but he's my Favorite to bring up as a famous theistic humanist? Garbage because he's garbage. The best humanists are definitely secular and typically non theistic or atheistic.
Katie Dooley 50:17 Thank you for the compliment or like the best at being
Preston Meyer 50:20 a human just the best of being human.
Katie Dooley 50:22 Okay? I just thought even like the best people are like, thank you.
Preston Meyer 50:29 And there's also following that line of religious humanists, there are people who treat humanism as their religion, like you mentioned, humanist chaplains, where it's, you have a ministry, this is your life, kind of thing
Katie Dooley 50:44 I mentioned, why I left, why stayed in our epistemology episode, which I think was two or three episodes ago now. And the son that left he became a human humanist chaplain. Because he like the, I guess, like the camaraderie and community that religion gives without having a god to believe in or theology or pretend you are, and just something that could be more open to more people. And I don't think he would have turned away anyone who was religious, it just wasn't focused on a deity or theology, like you said, but more on community and volunteerism. And so,
Preston Meyer 51:24 yeah, there's, there's a bunch of humanist groups. And there's even an international humanist and ethical union that kind of ties a lot of these groups together for larger meetings and conferences and whatnot. And they have an official statement on how humanism is defined. That says, humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values. In the spirit of reason, and free inquiry, through human capabilities, it is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.
Katie Dooley 52:19 I would say you're probably a theistic humanist, you don't claim to fall into that definition because of your religious beliefs. But I think you're definitely on the let's make a humane world and build ethics that our company can uncover all encompassing to all people. I would call you, a secular Christian humanists. I'm pretty comfortable with that. Nice. High five.
Preston Meyer 52:47 Yeah. Humanism is it's a weird thing to see somebody speak out against? I haven't seen it yet. But I've suspect that as I continue looking through the world, I might I don't
Katie Dooley 53:06 know if anyone would speak out against it. But I definitely think there are people who aren't humanists. Oh, yeah, I don't think I wouldn't be like, I disagree with that. But there's people who think, Well, God, God will provide right and that would be against that would be not a humanist perspective. But I can't see anyone be liking your humanists Do you must be evil. But yeah, there's definitely people who don't prescribe to it because of their faith or
Preston Meyer 53:33 see the reason I expect to hear somebody revile humanism is there's a handful of spots in the Bible where it says, Don't trust in the arm of flesh, only trust in God. And so the people who prefer to quote that over the more helpful parts of the Bible, are more likely to be anti humanist. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 53:54 and I mean, if you're one of those people who also believe that this is the hell, this is the worst and everything after will be better,
Preston Meyer 54:02 they'll probably be pretty opposed to this movement as well. So in theory, again, I haven't actually found anybody to reach out humanism yet, but if you are,
Katie Dooley 54:11 please send me an email. Any final thought fun all this nonbelief
Preston Meyer 54:20 it ties in with our previous episode on epistemology a few? Well, several episodes ago now I guess, that belief is kind of a complex thing. And if you want to hate somebody for not believing in a thing that you fail to provide evidence for. That's on you.
Katie Dooley 54:43 Also add and when you don't believe in, here's the grocery list of religions and deities. Yeah, for so for someone for not believing in yours. That's
Preston Meyer 54:53 also very nice. You have to acknowledge the validity of their position. Right, and there's loads of atheists It's who kind of suck. But there's an awful lot more atheists that are perfectly fine people as good as any Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or Jew.
Katie Dooley 55:10 I also don't think people, especially if they're on the other side, unbeliever, I also don't think, again, just thinking to like my social media world, people don't realize how many atheists are in their world,
Preston Meyer 55:22 right? If an awful lot of people just don't talk about religion, which makes it hard to tell,
Katie Dooley 55:28 and I think people often assume that, again, especially, I hate to say it, but you know, the average Canadian white person, oh, they're probably Christian. Right? So instead of going, well, maybe they don't believe me, they believe in something entirely different. I think people just sort of project their beliefs on people that look look like them specific. Absolutely. And so when I've seen the odd anti theist comment on my Facebook feed, I'm like, do not realize that there's a lot of us. Right, and we're like your friends and neighbors.
Preston Meyer 56:04 I have enough differences with people in my own religious community that, that I certainly can't go around out in public and imagine that everyone thinks the same as I do.
Katie Dooley 56:17 Cool. Well, I just want to reiterate that we don't believe in Satan. And we don't hate God. Because there is no God. Or Satan. Yeah. That's all I got.
Preston Meyer 56:32 Yeah. Oh,
Katie Dooley 56:33 we have we have to ship things. Ship promo.
Preston Meyer 56:39 We definitely have to promote checkout or Facebook or Instagram. Feel free to email us. What's our email address, Katie,
Katie Dooley 56:46 holy watermelon pod@gmail.com.
Preston Meyer 56:49 And on our social media, you can find links to our Discord server where we try to have great conversations. And I think that's about it right now.
Katie Dooley 57:02 Yeah, social media. Oh, leave us a review on on Apple podcasts. That'd be really great.
Preston Meyer 57:08 Thank you so much for joining us. Peace be with you. | |||
| 20 Dec 2021 | Josh & the Wise Guys | 00:46:53 | |
The birth of Jesus. The Nativity. Christmas. In this episode, we cover the story of Jesus' birth and sift through what is plausible and what must be fiction.
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** Katie Dooley 00:09 atheist Bailey's nervy that I want to wish you a Merry Christmas.
Preston Meyer 00:17 Merry Christmas everyone.
Katie Dooley 00:21 Yeah, no more. And where are they? Now? We're happy holidays. We're wishing you Merry Christmas on this episode of The Holy watermelon podcast. But generally speaking, happy holidays is a superior term.
Preston Meyer 00:39 Yes. But today we're going to talk specifically about the Nativity. So Merry Christmas. How are we getting this out just in time so that if you've pre listened to it, you can share some of this episode with your family on Christmas Day as part of your Christmas observation, if that's the thing that your family does,
Katie Dooley 00:59 or just wow them with your knowledge, right.
Preston Meyer 01:04 Maybe play it in the background while you're eating.
Katie Dooley 01:08 We'll do that. Christmas carols this year. Calming sound of my voice. My entire family stand outside
Preston Meyer 01:16 of changers doors with a booth.
Katie Dooley 01:21 Everyone should everyone do that? More
Preston Meyer 01:23 fun than Christmas Carol.
Katie Dooley 01:29 So let's start with words I guess so. So the word nativity, as defined by Merriam Webster, which we know precedent doesn't like bear in mind. It's
Preston Meyer 01:41 the inferior English dictionary. Yeah, it's
Katie Dooley 01:45 the duty as the process or circumstances the circumstance of being born, a horoscope at or of the time of one's birth, or the place of your origin, specifically refers to the birth of Jesus. I have never heard it used in any other context. But
Preston Meyer 02:02 I've heard a couple of times, and I guess a more literary context, when people are trying to sound a little more French fancy, they'll say the land of my nativity. But most people don't. Really,
Katie Dooley 02:16 nobody says
Preston Meyer 02:20 Saskatchewan is the land of my nativity. Business. But so sorry. That's the way it goes. Like Mewtwo says, it doesn't matter the circumstances of your birth.
Katie Dooley 02:36 The earliest so we'll take that word, and we'll talk about the earliest celebration of Christmas is recorded as 336. See, yeah,
Preston Meyer 02:45 the the Catholic Well, the, the universal ish Christian church at the time, didn't really have it as a congregational celebration until then. But they did decide to drop it, basically where it is today, a week before the first of January. I don't know how they made that decision. But that's what they did. And we'll
Katie Dooley 03:06 get into a little later how Jesus was definitely not born on December 25. But they just kind of, it's not arbitrary. They didn't arbitrarily pick today, but they absolutely picked the day that Christmas would be celebrated. So
Preston Meyer 03:21 we'll get into that. Well, I mean, they could have picked any time in that week. And for that goal, how they picked the 25th the nose,
Katie Dooley 03:31 and they like the sound of the five,
Preston Meyer 03:33 maybe, maybe that's half the trick right there. So 336 C, is when we have the first recorded congregational celebration of Christmas, they didn't actually celebrate it in the Christian church in Rome, until about the end of the third century. So just shortly before that time, but it wasn't until about 40 years after that in 379, when they had the First Congregational Christmas feast in Constantinople. So this kind of spread kind of slowly, considering it was a fairly organized church at this time. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 04:16 And even we'll get into some other dates that are quite recent for a religion as old as Christianity for things that are celebrated. But let's quickly chat about there are some Christian groups that don't celebrate Christmas. What?
Preston Meyer 04:32 Yeah, we talked about this a little bit last year that groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians and a few other I guess call them fringe groups because they don't fit into the big categories of Catholic orthodox Protestant
Katie Dooley 04:48 on Sundays keep studying considered themselves Christian, which I disagree with, but and they're self identifying. So
Preston Meyer 04:55 a lot of them are told by other Christians. You're not Christian. Which, of course, is a frustrating bit of the way people deal with each other. But yeah, there's a good handful that don't celebrate Christmas. And I think it's worth noting that a good handful of the early Catholic Church Fathers like origin, condemned the practice of celebrating birthdays, and also did not celebrate Christmas, a birthday kind of deal,
Katie Dooley 05:25 or Jesus. Birthday celebrated?
Preston Meyer 05:29 Oh, yeah, it's, it's kind of weird. Remember, we talked about this last year that birthday celebrations was very much pagan thing, pagan being a pejorative for anybody who's not Christian or Jewish. And so it was just a thing that the faithful worshipers of the God of Abraham just didn't do birthdays, because it was celebration of other gods and that just wasn't cool. So that's where we're at.
Katie Dooley 06:04 Getting into the story a little bit more the the Nativity is described in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, which I'll let you handle most of that resident theologian, but I found it really interesting that all records of Jesus's birth place in Bethlehem, including Islam. So a big misconception, I think we've talked about this a little bit is that Muslims somehow don't believe in Jesus or whatever they do. They love Jesus as a prophet, and they do have like his origin story in, in their writings as well. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 06:39 Interestingly enough, the Koran is also interested in the figure of Mary as well. So it's not just Jesus. That's where
Katie Dooley 06:46 the excuse me, that's where the very common you see a lot. South Asians Muslims with daughters named Miriam. Yeah, exactly.
Preston Meyer 06:56 It's interesting, though, even though we don't have any records saying anything other than Jesus was born in Bethlehem. There's a good handful of scholars now who are starting to think that maybe Jesus was born in Nazareth. Interesting. I, I still can't get on board with it. But there's a couple of scholars who argue it. So if you're interested in reading up on that, go for it.
Katie Dooley 07:21 Now, they also never really tell us his birth date. Nope. Most people believe that the date of the 25th is them. Christianizing a pagan holiday? I think it would be what you will. Yeah. That would that falls around there, or there's obviously Solstice, as well, right around this time. There's also I have notes on this later. I don't know where they are. But it's also aligns with the Zoroastrian holiday as well.
Preston Meyer 07:51 Yeah. If you're one of those people who thinks that Christian Christmas is deliberately a strike against Hanukkah? No, that's not true at all. It's basically just a coincidence, it's definitely a lot more of a strike against the pagans. So December 25, is the solstice on the old Roman calendar. So celebrating the birth of the light of the world does fit pretty nicely into this time when the days start getting longer again.
Katie Dooley 08:21 And there's also a lot of other festivals with light,
Preston Meyer 08:25 so many, I'm sure you've noticed, if you've been listening,
Katie Dooley 08:30 it goes back to that metaphor of the darkest time of the year, and then the light arrives. Exactly. So which is a really nice metaphor, obviously, because every religion has borrowed. But now, the actual date, I remember this was years ago, I was listening to some documentary, and they were sort of saying that they, whatever the scholars that we're talking, we're quite positive that Jesus's birthday was in April, not in December. And you've brought up some really good points on passages in the Bible that kind of pointed to a more temperate time of year. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 09:09 the shepherds being out in the fields with their flocks, rather than keeping them sheltered in the cold rainy winter. I mean, it's it's not like a Canadian winter, but it's still cold and rainy and, and gross. I guess there's parts of Canada that are like that, not where we are, where we are, where we are, it's white and awful. But that does lead more into a a temperate time of year. And the idea that it was a census that all the world must be taxed, as Luke describes in chapter two, doesn't hold up against good historical scholarship scrutiny. There's so far we haven't found any records of huge census through the Empire at this time. And it doesn't mean there wasn't one. But because of the decent records that we have the time it means it's very likely there was not a census at this time,
Katie Dooley 10:10 as you say, censuses are literally meant for record keeping. And I recognize that it's 2000 years old, but we do have records older than that. Yeah. So
Preston Meyer 10:19 it's probably not the case that there was a census, like Luke suggests, well, and
Katie Dooley 10:24 even people debate the year, we sort of put it at zero, not that 01. And then one ad, but or see scholars actually placed the year even earlier than one year, whichever one you want to pick,
Preston Meyer 10:39 a lot of scholars will put Jesus birthday, somewhere between six and four BCE, some of them will go even earlier. Oh, wow. They're not the majority, as far as I've been able to observe. And very often anywhere between April 1 And September 30. It's kind of a big window, good old six months. The problem with having this early birthday for Jesus is that every single scholar, who is said it has to be several years BCE, is making a kind of embarrassing error, assuming that Herod the Great is still alive for the event. And it makes sense that that's coming into their calculations, because Matthew says, of course, Herod was still alive until a little while after Jesus was born. But we're very certain that Herod was dead by to see. So tricky problems. Unfortunately, Matthew's account isn't terribly reliable. Matthew Chapter Two follows kind of trope, I guess, of Jewish literature, where a great religious figure is persecuted at his birth by a notoriously evil ruler, we have this kind of thing going on with Moses and the Pharaoh in Egypt. And this trope gets repeated again with Abraham, the king they've picked for this story is good old King Nimrod. And this is actually used a fair bit through good old, Judaic religious literature. It's kind of interesting, but it makes and the more we find it, the more it makes it look like Matthew, chapter two is just fiction.
12:23 Yeah.
Katie Dooley 12:27 There's a few parts of both of these Gospels where where we go, you just made this up. The census being a big one. So I wanted to dive into that a little
Preston Meyer 12:38 bit. So Luke is quite separated from the story he's trying to tell. But he did gather information from a lot of sources. And he starts his story by saying, Hey, have compiled all these stories from all these different people to give you his his one intended reader, who would then spread it out? One story about Jesus from beginning to end kind of deal. Problem is, it looks like he didn't vet his sources very well.
Katie Dooley 13:09 So the problem with the census is that it's asking Mary and Joseph to go back to their ancestral home, which is basically unheard of. Right. So to put it in perspective, my family is historically from Ireland. That would be me having to go back to Ireland where I have never lived to participate in a census. In a census that doesn't count women. So poor Mary was just thrown on a donkey because Joseph was a dick. What's rule number one of religion?
Preston Meyer 13:48 Don't be a dick. Yeah, we've got some issues here. So yeah, they're very likely was no census at the time. And if there was, this still doesn't explain why Joseph brought Mary to Bethlehem. It's a lot more likely that there was a religious festival, where they would be expected to attend the temple, which is honestly just a couple hours walk from where Jesus was supposed to have been born in Bethlehem. So that makes perfect sense.
Katie Dooley 14:21 Would this potentially be in linked with a festival or maybe just location of the temple, like a pre birth ritual? Because they have those in Judaism? Right, you're expected to there's a woman there's more
Preston Meyer 14:36 ritual specifically prescribed for after the birth. And usually, it's usually it is go to the temple and be circumcised receive your name. And that is part of the story that's after the birth. And so that could have been the reason why they traveled to Bethlehem. To be at the temple for that. I don't actually know of any sources saying that that had to happen at the temple though. So I could just be missing a thing there.
Katie Dooley 15:12 Yeah, I just I mean, I'm thinking of like Mormons traveled to go to the temple if you're not near a temple, yeah.
Preston Meyer 15:18 But that's more of an adult. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 15:22 You're nine months pregnant better get over here, right waddle your way here on a donkey.
Preston Meyer 15:26 Right? Actually, speaking of Mormonism, there is a passage in the Book of Mormon, that actually says that Jesus was born very, very, very shortly after the beginning of the year, which means that since the year and in this calendar is starting at the Spring Equinox, that places this specific time at the Passover, which gives us a festival and a reason to be at Jerusalem at this time, interesting. So that does help back up the idea that a lot of scholars have that springtime is the time
Katie Dooley 16:11 the basically the only people that argue that Luke must be right, regarding the central the census, excuse me, are fundamentalists who believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God.
Preston Meyer 16:22 Yeah. So which I mean, if you've read the book, you know that God didn't write it.
Katie Dooley 16:28 I hope you'd write. I was just gonna say something me. I would hope God would right away more exciting. But this is me just coming off all the temple measurements. But
Preston Meyer 16:39 I mean, yes, there are very dry but but it's got bore, it's got murder, it's got sags, it's got involuntary sex. Book,
16:53 it's a different name for that.
Preston Meyer 16:56 Hoping to keep it a little more PG back? Yes, the Bible has re been it's a problem over there already.
Katie Dooley 17:09 So speaking of sex, you know, who didn't have any sex marry?
Preston Meyer 17:14 That's a weird, weird bit of the story.
Katie Dooley 17:17 I thought you're gonna see that was a weird segue.
Preston Meyer 17:19 That's a perfectly reasonable, well done. There's this huge tradition built up that Mary could never ever, ever have sex no matter what, even after Jesus was born. And there's just no good theological reason for that. And Mary,
Katie Dooley 17:36 come on, right? She carried this on, oh, God, you can let her have some fun. afterwards.
Preston Meyer 17:43 Jesus has brothers and sisters. The Bible is very clear on that detail. Some versions, some translations of the text, kind of fudge that away and clean up so that it doesn't look like that's the case. That is a serious problem. And then there's a bunch of theologians, they're like, no, no, they're the kids from Joseph's other marriage, which we've never been given any reason to believe that he actually had any other wives.
Katie Dooley 18:13 I'm quoting this from Wikipedia on the virgin birth, honestly, because they think it's just great wording. Jesus was conceived by his mother Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit without sexual intercourse.
Preston Meyer 18:26 And that's basically what we get from both Luke and Matthew, that she was undefiled until after the birth of Jesus, because you know, she kept the law, you're not supposed to have sex before you're married. But that also is cited when we talk about Jesus being both divine and human, which is an important pair of aspects of his identity. Yes. And
Katie Dooley 18:55 back to the point about Islam earlier, the virgin birth is also mentioned in the Quran.
Preston Meyer 19:01 Christianity had a pretty solid influence on the genesis of Islam. Absolutely.
Katie Dooley 19:10 Now, there's also and when I was, you know, first learning about religion in general, I thought these were the same things. So there's the virgin birth, and there's the Immaculate Conception. And they're two different things.
Preston Meyer 19:22 They sure are. The Immaculate Conception is, I mean, it looks like a virgin birth, except for the fact that we know Mary's mother wasn't a virgin because he might conception is about the birth of Mary, her conception and birth.
Katie Dooley 19:40 Yes, so Mary also doesn't have a father biologically speaking. I
Preston Meyer 19:45 mean, she by Eliza posts, too, but yeah, the story gets real weird. So in an effort to make Mary more holy and further separate Jesus from this new idea of original Sin, a story was devised that Mary was born to a woman named Anna, or Hannah, if you're keen on Old Testament characters, and her old sterile husband, joking. And he was supposed to be a way for just long enough to let us know for sure that Hannah hadn't been having sex before Mary was born. And it's all kind of weird. And it's it's testified of in a couple of the proto gospels. There's the gospel of Mary and the proto gospel of James. And that's it. It's a lot of work to come up with this idea that we have to separate Jesus. Further from this idea that doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense to begin with.
Katie Dooley 20:48 I just truly believe that these women are running the two greatest scams of all time.
Preston Meyer 20:57 See, that will be easy to jump on board with if the story of Hannah was at all reliable. I'm pretty sure every bit of information that we have about Mary's family is fiction, written centuries after she died. Even naming her Anna as we have it in the common tradition today. It is stealing the character of Hannah from the Old Testament, who was barren, couldn't have a baby went to the temple, prayed real hard. And then got her baby and gave her to the temple. That's exactly the story. plagiarized almost word for word. It feels like oh, wow, for Mary.
Katie Dooley 21:41 Now, before we jump on to our next section, the word immaculate. I just like One fun fact. I remember learning and no never and your words guy so immaculate. So we talked about oh, like your home is immaculate, meaning like it's really clean and put together. Immaculate actually means untouched by a man. Right? So if you're which just makes me giggle. Your home is immaculate. Where did your husband go? My house is immaculate when my husband's gone. in all senses of the word. Yeah, it's very clean when he's not around. So yeah, that's we've kind of bastardized the term immaculate to mean, you know, pristine or perfect, but no, it means untouched by a man. So that take you remember the Immaculate Conception and see
Preston Meyer 22:39 this little problem now? Where in my head, it's not just he didn't touch it with his hand. Oh, wow. And one can hope that this is the state of at least most of your home. Oh, well.
Katie Dooley 22:59 Cut the tape right. Now.
Preston Meyer 23:04 Another interesting bit that shows up in Matthew chapter two. And remember, I'm very convinced that this whole story of Matthew chapter two is fiction is the Magi. The three wise men or kings in the English tradition for no good reason at all. And there's a very good chance that they were Zoroastrian priests based on the words that we have. If these were real people that were really present for the story.
Katie Dooley 23:36 Well, and just to jump ahead a bit, they actually never give a number in the Bible. So we have decided it was three, partially because of the three gifts. Yeah, and we know three is important number in Christianity, but they never actually say that three, so you're right. Or assume it's three. smart guys,
Preston Meyer 23:57 right? The story is, the story goes that we got three ish fellows that were from the east. So it would make sense that there were Zoroastrians from Persia, that that does. If
Katie Dooley 24:14 we're sticking with the term. Yeah, we're sticking with the term Magi and I also this brings so much more meaning to the song We Three Kings orient higher, right?
Preston Meyer 24:25 But not even the far oriented just orient from where they are, which of course only means east. Zoroastrianism is pretty deep into astrology. And so it gets linked to the occult and magic, and here are magicians. It fits in the Greek text is pretty explicit. It does call them mages, and so not translating that as sorceress feels weird. Wiseman is definitely downplaying the magic bit. Yeah, mere
Katie Dooley 24:59 delivery At least shifting away from wizards. Yeah. Oh, and here's that point I made earlier, there is a major Zoroastrian holiday Yalda on December 21. So I was just really fascinated how these kind of all link together. Hmm.
Preston Meyer 25:17 Yeah, it's a curious thing. And so these Magi are regulars and most representations of the Nativity, if you don't have somebody bringing gifts you have said is woefully incomplete or historically accurate. I like it. Yeah, so these three wise men are said to have brought gold frankincense and myrrh, man. Do you know?
Katie Dooley 25:52 Did you know Preston that the first visual depiction of a Nativity scene was from 1223 by St. Francis of Assisi. That was the first time we visualized this donkey and the three guys and a little baby in a manger. So
Preston Meyer 26:09 that's less than 800 years ago. Yeah, that's pretty new relative to the Christian tradition. Yeah, it's kind of nifty. All right, going back to these three gifts, the gold, frankincense and myrrh. So these gifts are symbolic, as is the entirety of Matthew chapter two. And gold is treasure for the king. Frankincense is burned in priestly ritual prayers. And Myrrh is a decent painkiller representing the great healer that is Jesus. Of course, all of these gifts are useful in real life. Anybody who's dropping babies in a barn clearly needs more gold.
Katie Dooley 26:48 Dropping babies. I like that term.
Preston Meyer 26:52 Anything that covers that barn birth smell combo is definitely appreciated for the frankincense. Yeah, yeah. And painkillers. great gift for any woman who's just given birth. So this these birthday gifts do make some good sense.
Katie Dooley 27:12 Also very expensive, even though right? Yeah, all of these things are not cheap. We
Preston Meyer 27:17 have much cheaper painkillers now that actually do the job better. So yeah, no, it's good. Yeah. Exactly. So it's, it's interesting, the Gospel of Matthew is the only one that mentions them out of not just the four biblical gospels. But out of the larger collection of gospels. There's a couple other references to these that are obviously taking from Matthew's story. And that's all we get. And we don't even have the volumes of these three gifts. It's just, there's some tiny gold piece. Yeah. And it's for the narrative value of these symbols. Of course, from a story that isn't historically reliable, definitely meant to be more symbolic. All right.
Katie Dooley 28:13 Tell us a story, Preston.
Preston Meyer 28:15 All right. Let's get into the reworking of Luke chapter two, that I can explain some more of the bits if they inspire questions after the story. I was gonna say,
Katie Dooley 28:30 Yeah, I'll do it in full so people can play it at Christmas. Yes.
Preston Meyer 28:33 Alright. So this is drawn from Luke chapter two. Miriam is a young Jewish girl living in the northern province. You know, it is Galilee, which is just a generic designation as lame as the Northwest Territories. Miriam has been engaged to marry this fella Joseph, and he's a decent guy, not terribly old, no other wives. And he's honest to the point that it gets him in trouble. Sometimes. Things are tough when an engagement lasts a whole year, particularly when sex is forbidden until after the official marriage ceremony. Miriam and Joseph are separately visited by heavenly messengers who tell them that Miriam's going to have a baby boy, Joseph has warned that he is not allowed to call them Joseph Jr. And the worst news is the baby isn't even his. That kind of news could get marry him killed in some communities and could certainly invalidate their marriage if he took her to court over it. The messenger tells Joseph that it's okay because the child is the Son of God, and that Joseph needs to stay with Miriam. Miriam decides to stay with her cousin Elizabeth, and avoid her local congregation for a while to keep things on the down low. Several months pass and the Passover is a big deal. And since King Josiah eliminated all the satellite altars in the nation a few centuries ago, Joseph and Miriam need to travel south to Jerusalem for their occasional pilgrimage. You Even though Miriam is ready to pop, Joseph has a bunch of cousins in Bethlehem. So they figured they'd have a place to eat and sleep but the family estate, just a few hours walk from the temple. Unfortunately, the cousins are not impressed that Mary was pregnant before the wedding. And telling that it isn't Joseph's baby isn't the kind of thing that's going to make things better from area. But they get lucky. They're not left out in the rain, there's animal shelter nearby. And all the shepherds have taken their flocks out into the countryside for that sweet spring grazing. While Miriam and Joseph are dealing with the labor that may have been accelerated by an 80 mile donkey ride, those shepherds are visited by a Heavenly Messenger who tells them that they need to get to Bethlehem and worship the newborn king. When they get there a little bit, a little baby boy named Joshua is commonly resting in his mother's arms, and the little fella grows up to change the world. That's the Christmas story. Thanks. Yeah, it's the idea that it was a trip for tax purposes, like we've addressed before, is just crazy, Miriam would have stayed home. For sure, especially when the trip would have been terrible when you're pregnant. And there's no way that they didn't already consider the possibility that they wouldn't get to stay at the family estate anyway. And as the word in is almost universally applied to this story, that there's no room in the in most, most versions of the story say and, and it's weird that the word would better be translated as a state of family estate, the place that the family had been living in probably for generations. It's not referring to a public house, but a private family dwelling. The Bible does tell us that shepherds are out in the fields with their flocks, like I said before, less common in cold rainy weather. And whether there were any sources video visiting from the use is unfortunately, impossible to know, did he do? Since that part of the story used to illustrate the special nature of the Christ child isn't super historically reliable, but it is important for our next episode. Because we've got a fan request. Yes,
Katie Dooley 32:33 we're gonna be talking about the 12 days of Christmas, which has already enraged me a few times this December.
Preston Meyer 32:43 I mean, it's, it's too late now to stop the people from using it incorrectly as they have. But
Katie Dooley 32:49 next year, next year, there's gonna be a mass correction, because everyone listen to our podcast. You're gonna share it with your friends. We're gonna have to.
Preston Meyer 33:03 Yeah, so Matthew also goes on to say that after King Herod found out about the baby, he had this mass slaughter planned for the area. And so Jesus and his family had to take off to Egypt. So far, this whole story is seen as very unlikely. The detail of the persecuted child trope, Matthew leaned into that pretty heavily. The author suggested that this fleeing to Egypt, and then back again, would be a fulfillment of prophecy. And it's completely unnecessary. That's a weird interpretation of Scripture, because the prophecy that he's referring to isn't a prophecy at all, but a reference to Israel coming out of Egypt 1000s of years before with the Exodus, this kind of weird. Christianity has a couple of traditions that just don't actually make sense. Coming from a Christian,
Katie Dooley 34:10 that's why we keep you around so I don't get in trouble.
Preston Meyer 34:15 And this whole story about Herod having all the young boys killed, is also really not very likely. Such a massacre was never mentioned by the contemporary historian, Flavius Josephus. A lot of people call him Josephus and I will hate that until the day I die.
Katie Dooley 34:36 Wow. Yes, very passionate.
Preston Meyer 34:39 Josephus is not that pronunciation doesn't happen in Latin. Josephus, Josephus. Joseph, or Yosef is even more likely Okay. Josephus is just kind of an anglicized deal. His name was Yosef, Ben Matthew. Good historian guy, very popular at the time, even though some of his texts have been fiddled around with by the Christians who kept publishing them. That's just the way it goes. But good old Josephus pulled no punches when talking about what an evil douche nozzle, Herod was being a half Jewish king that ended the line of the Maccabean dynasty that we talked about a couple of weeks ago with a Hanukkah story. So if even he didn't mention, a perfectly good reason to hate this dude, when he was willing to tell so many other stories of why you should hate this dude means that story might not have been real. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 35:41 I mean, do you think someone would record something so horrible,
Preston Meyer 35:45 right? It's not clear whether the story had the Magi led by the star to Nazareth or to Bethlehem, Bethlehem being a small suburb of Jerusalem. Nazareth being a very small town that was probably going by a different name up in the north province. And so it's possible that they could have killed 30 kids, and that never hit the news. But it just doesn't seem likely. But if you're really committed to the idea that the biblical story has to be history perfect, then this is what you bought into. We don't have any records outside the biblical texts that testify of the town Nazareth, before the third century. See. So we do know that archaeologically, this, the place that we now call Nazareth has basically always had a city there or a town at least. But some lean tos. Yeah, we've got archaeological evidence of solid structures, people lived in a little bit better than lean to
Katie Dooley 36:59 going away for her by like, before the third century, would there have been anything there?
Preston Meyer 37:05 Oh, yeah. There was stuff there. Just there's no record of it going by that name. I sewers. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting. The Christians, when they started spreading out, they were distinguished from other Jews, not by the name, Christian, but by the name, Nazarene. And in fact, as far as I know, that's how Christians are referred to in Arabic is not Christian. But that's interesting. Yeah. So there's a strong tradition tied to this place that probably never even actually had that name designated to that town. During that time, the time when that name was used. Yeah. It's kind of interesting stuff.
Katie Dooley 37:56 So, I mean, you've kind of mentioned that you think Matthew is mostly fiction. So
Preston Meyer 38:02 Matthew, chapter two, Matthew, chapter two. The early theories of Jesus are a lot less reliable than his adulthood stories.
Katie Dooley 38:11 So like, my question is, and obviously, this little bit matters on your belief and how much is true? How much of this did they go back and write because he became important later in life? You know what I mean? I mean, like, nobody cares about your childhood didn't tell you've done something. All
Preston Meyer 38:30 of the gospels were written a while after that. So it's, that's just the way it goes. History didn't make him important until he was important. And then they're like, Oh, now we need to ask people about what happened. Tell me more about Jesus. And then we get some stories that are less reliable.
Katie Dooley 38:54 little sketchy.
Preston Meyer 38:58 Yeah, it's, it's frustrating. And, uh, definitely give us some pretty solid ground for atheists like yourself to stand on.
Katie Dooley 39:08 I mean, the one the one point I really like, can't suspend my disbelief on is the virgin birth. I just really think Mary is the best liar of all time. got away with it. Well done, girl.
Preston Meyer 39:21 It's interesting that there are scholars who have even decided that there's a name for the secret father of Jesus. Oh, I like that. And his name, according to the scholars is Penn Terra, which is a wicked sounding name. Yeah,
39:38 it's not a bad. Yeah, that's amazing. So
Preston Meyer 39:42 it's loads of scholars for ages, instead of saying there was no Jesus, or instead of saying, oh, yeah, they just made up this story about his birth or like, no, she definitely had sex with somebody else and lied about it. Which I mean, you've gotten offer a lot of options when you want to say the biblical text isn't true. Naming the guy Panthera is bold.
Katie Dooley 40:07 I mean, like, I get it, it's like, I get out because there's a lot of whatever mystical or fantastical things in the bylaws, the Bible, it's what makes it spiritual and divine. And I'm like, but it's never happened before nor haven't said. And again, I recognize that's like, the whole point. But like, you just biologically, you can't do that. There must be some dude, or even it was Joseph. And they're just like, all keeping the
Preston Meyer 40:36 virgin birth is an option today
Katie Dooley 40:41 by injecting a sperm,
Preston Meyer 40:43 right, yeah, it's medically possible. Yeah. And we still need sperm. Right? So adding a little Miracle Touch. I mean, that's starting to look even less special of him here.
Katie Dooley 41:01 I think she just she just got frisky. And she was like, we have to lie about it. And he was like, Okay, well. I don't want to get stoned to death.
Preston Meyer 41:14 Yeah, there were some parts of the Jewish community where that would be a risk. But it's hard to say, after the fact separated by 2000 years, whether or not their
Katie Dooley 41:23 community easily 60 years when people are going back, write the story. It's 60 years is a long time. I don't think it was a full 60 years. And it was the first gospel right?
Preston Meyer 41:33 The first gospel was written probably less than 10 years after Jesus died. But the Gospel of John is said to Britain been written about 60 years after he died. Yeah. So we've got time for people to figure out these stories. Screw up some stories, like
Katie Dooley 41:52 you said, 60 years is, especially then when people didn't live as long. Right? Like, I'm just 30. Right? So for me to write about someone that died 60 years or six years ago. Yeah, that's three years before I was born.
Preston Meyer 42:08 Yes, that is the case. However, I'm
Katie Dooley 42:10 just doing complicated math on this podcast, guys.
Preston Meyer 42:14 So John, the Revelator, or John the Apostle, or John the Evangelist, whoever wrote the Gospel, according to John would have been a very, very old man. He was pretty surely younger than Jesus by a few years. Hard to say how much he may have been older. That seems unlikely. But that would have put him still close to 90 when
Katie Dooley 42:37 he wrote it is almost unheard of 2000 years ago. Yeah, it was weird for people to live in weird now. Like our life expectancy now is 82. I think in Canada. Yeah. So
Preston Meyer 42:49 contrary to popular belief, the average life expectancy of the human race has never actually been 30. We had a lot of infant mortality, historically speaking, until brings down the average that brings down your average average.
Katie Dooley 43:09 Actually, just thinking about that, when before you even said it. I was like, Yeah, but there's so many people who die. Yeah. That even if the most people in Canada live till 90, there's enough people who died, bring it down, whatever that young is, whether it's a kid or a 30 year old or 40 year old.
Preston Meyer 43:25 Yeah. So it's always been normal to at least make it into your 60s if you made it to puberty. Unless you of course, you were actively engaged in Mortal Kombat. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 43:39 Cool. Um, what are your final thoughts on this Christmas story?
Preston Meyer 43:48 Well, Luke did try really hard to compile good information from a wide variety of sources. And either he or some later editor clearly made some mistakes, especially about the taxes and the census. And definitely some other time sensitive historical details some benchmarks on when things happened, probably is very real possibility. But unfortunately, the entirety of Matthew chapter two, I have to dismiss his fiction. It's a great story. But it's the dangerous kind of fiction that leads scholars, priests and laymen alike into making misleading assumptions that undermine the integrity of the whole narrative. And that's frustrating. Yeah. But it's all about directing people's attention to Jesus and appreciating him even more than normal for one special day, even if it's several months removed from appropriate time.
Katie Dooley 44:55 Right. You can follow us
Preston Meyer 44:59 on Instagram Facebook on 201 YouTube.
Katie Dooley 45:03 Yeah, it's court check out our Patreon and our Spreadshirt we're putting up new Patreon content we put up a fun little radio show called Miami Christ the other day. So much fun recording some interviews planned for the new year that will not be public release and only for our patrons. So check us out on there. And then we have a fabulous another fabulous contest sponsored by Blackbird farm and apothecary, they've been
Preston Meyer 45:33 very generous with helping us out a little bit and we want to return the favor. We're running another contest.
Katie Dooley 45:43 This time we are giving away a PSP with you cutting board and it's going to be a little different last time we got you to like can share on social media, but we're pushing our Discord this
Preston Meyer 45:56 time. So we want you to get on board discord, and you'll see the rules for the giveaway there.
Katie Dooley 46:02 All you have to do is take pictures show us that you're following Blackbird apothecary and farm on either Facebook or Instagram and POSTED IN OUR DISCORD center.
Preston Meyer 46:11 And what's the prize?
Katie Dooley 46:13 I already said a peace be with you cutting board
Preston Meyer 46:15 gotta emphasize that a piece.
Katie Dooley 46:17 You got your meat on our fingers.
46:24 Was that a good ad?
Katie Dooley 46:25 I love it. Thank you so much. winner will be announced on Discord on January 7.
Preston Meyer 46:32 So be sure to check out our friends at Blackbird farm and apothecary on Facebook and Instagram. Peace be with you. By the late Middle Ages consumed | |||
| 05 Jul 2021 | Taking the Gods to School | 01:00:26 | |
A lot of people spent a lot of time getting prayer removed from the public school system. Now it seems getting religion back in schools is a hot topic. Katie and Preston chat about the benefits of having comparative religion in the classroom.
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***** Katie Dooley 00:00 A traditional Jewish atheist. Hi, Katie. Hi, Preston. How are you doing? Ready for this episode?
Preston Meyer 00:17 Right? This is going to be a little contentious?
Katie Dooley 00:20 I think so we're
Preston Meyer 00:21 not between us. But our our parishioners might feel like they can disagree with us a lot more than they have in the past.
Katie Dooley 00:29 Well, that's what we want, isn't it?
Preston Meyer 00:31 So if we can start a conversation, that's great.
Katie Dooley 00:34 This is very much a op ed, as I called it, an hour or so ago of an episode. We're gonna talk about whether religion shouldn't be in schools. Welcome
Preston Meyer 00:49 to the holy watermelon podcast was pretty good thing. I like that. Having religion in schools is a tricky thing. And it's, it's different than teaching about religion in schools, that's for sure.
Katie Dooley 01:07 Yes. And that's sort of what we have to be very clear about and I saw one I guess position that said religion should be taught in schools but faith should not be taught in schools and I like that's a pretty good for I think our Preston, I agree. So yeah, if you disagree with drop us a line on Discord, but I think that's a pretty good summary of of our opinion on is that religion absolutely should be taught in schools, and we'll run through it both Preston I think that should look like, but you can't teach faith rightly for.
Preston Meyer 01:43 In America, there's a release. Well, it's not really strict, but it's strict. There's there's laws in the Constitution and the First Amendment to the national constitution, preventing favoritism to any religion. But we don't really have those same privileges in Canada in the same format,
Katie Dooley 02:03 which it's funny because they be all and this obviously, I've never been to school in America. This is all just from observation. I feel like we're less likely to break those rules. Not that we don't don't get me wrong, but just from I've been on our Discord even posting some articles and news articles that have come up out of the states.
Preston Meyer 02:25 We've had some pretty good discussions on Discord.
Katie Dooley 02:27 But where religion creeps back into schools where people want to bring him back, or what have you. And you don't get those same news articles here as well, not
Preston Meyer 02:38 so much. No, again, I'm
Katie Dooley 02:40 not saying it doesn't happen. And we're in actually an interesting situation as being in Alberta where they wanted to add religion to the curriculum, and it was terrible, or they're doing it terribly. But we'll get into all that. Yeah. Too much until we have a foundation.
Preston Meyer 02:57 The devil is in the details there. That's for sure. Devil I get it. What I think is really interesting is even in America, where there is a strict disestablishment preventing favoritism of any religion in any government, body or branch or employee thing like the schools, yeah, it's meant for public service. It's not meant to favor any religion. But that tends to not work out so great. Of course, there used to be 10 of the original colonies, actually did have state religions before they did this disestablishment nonsense. And it's interesting that there still is favoritism for religions. Obviously, most of the nation, the United States, is very interested in preserving a Christian identity, especially at starting with the height of the Cold War. There, they started adding more overtly Christian ideas into government related things. In 1954, they added one nation under God to the Pledge of Allegiance they have In God We Trust on their money. And that has nothing to do with the the need to be specifically Christian. But it's also super obvious if you look around studying religious traditions. Christians are the only ones who pretend God is actually the Divine Name and of course all of that had way more to do with fighting the godless communists
Katie Dooley 04:44 well and even just regular religious discrimination throughout the states and yeah and Canada's Well, we I mean, we don't have in God we trust on our money. We got Liz on our money,
Preston Meyer 04:54 we actually do have a little parallel to In God We Trust on Canadian money on Most of our coinage, you'll see D G, Regina, on on our coins, not so much on our bills. And that stands for de Gracia. Regina, by the grace of God our queen. Yeah. And so they'll show me
Katie Dooley 05:16 I guess I mean, I even if you extrapolate we have lives on our money. Well she's the head of the Anglican Church. So
Preston Meyer 05:22 Right. So while we don't have an established state religion like many nations do we still have God on our money here with a religious figurehead on the coin
Katie Dooley 05:35 Interesting. Yeah, I guess I've never thought of it just. I've personified clearly I call her Liz, Elizabeth. I'm her buddy, that I don't even, you know, it's easy to forget that you're right. She is a religious figurehead.
Preston Meyer 05:58 Learning new things all the time.
Katie Dooley 05:59 So how do I do this? Do we want to go through some of the debate points and then talk about how we would see religious studies in schools? If you were talking points.
Preston Meyer 06:08 You want to Yeah, I want to start with a thing that I've mentioned before. And I want to I want to explain it one more time for odd for our audience. And I've had to explain it for my family on more than one occasion. When I started university, I said I'm going in for religious studies. And everyone's like, Well, are you going to start a church or something along those lines?
Katie Dooley 06:30 I just need to jump in. Because I did. I didn't do nearly as much religious studies as Preston. But I took religious studies in school and everyone went but you're an atheist? Continue,
Preston Meyer 06:41 and they don't understand the appeal. Yeah. So there's the, the, the field of Religious Studies is, it's an anthropological sociological field. It's just hyper specific sociology, right? It's the study of real of behaviors, and beliefs that religious people are seeing involved with. And that's wildly different from theology, which I also did study in university. But so theology is the study of God or gods, or the supernatural even is, broadly speaking, sometimes kind of fits in there. Sometimes
Katie Dooley 07:26 it's very, is it fair to say it's very much a doctrinal study.
Preston Meyer 07:33 I've gotten after people for the misuse of the word doctrine. If anything is ever taught by anybody, it is doctrine. But its theology is definitely hyper focused on the doctrines of a faith.
Katie Dooley 07:52 And I guess it comes from a place of belief, not that I put you take a theology class, but it wouldn't make sense for me to go to a theological college, right? Pastor, right?
Preston Meyer 08:03 I don't believe that, right? Whereas Religious Studies is studying people and groups of people and the things that they do that may or may not be because of the theology they subscribe to.
Katie Dooley 08:17 So so this is a religious studies podcast.
Preston Meyer 08:21 Yeah, I occasionally, I'll get a little theological, but we're sticking mostly to religious studies, studies of people and the things that they do, because of their beliefs.
Katie Dooley 08:34 I mean, clearly, whereby we both think religious studies should be taught in school. Yeah, that's what we're gonna go into some of these debating points that we found online. And we'll talk about both sides. But so you'll get our bias in this for sure. I'm not gonna pretend like we're not in favor of it.
Preston Meyer 08:54 Yeah, as somebody who's, you know, actively engaged in teaching our congregants about religious studies. The The only argument that I could think of that sounded like it made any sense was, if everybody learns about religions in school, and it's mandatory, then they won't have use for the Holy watermelon. But I feel like most people don't pay attention to everything they're supposed to be learning in school anyway. So there's still a need for
Katie Dooley 09:30 on school topics. Right? How much fun would it be to study for school by listening to the podcast, right? I mean, I listen to a learning Portuguese podcast and you can take Portuguese in schools. Yeah. It's great.
Preston Meyer 09:47 So I actually I did have to go looking for things that people would actually want to complain about this idea of teaching religious studies in school for because I from my my own thoughts. I couldn't think of anything that didn't sound like a straw man that was just useless and stupid talking heads nonsense. But we found, we found some ideas.
Katie Dooley 10:14 I say, Should we pull up the negative side? Yeah, let's,
Preston Meyer 10:16 let's bring up those that I found two arguments against that don't sound awful. But I don't love them either. So one of the things that sounds like it's not crazy nonsense, is the argument that the appearance of state sponsorship or establishment of those religions, is really a turn off. That is somebody who's going to be teaching about Islam and Christianity and Judaism and schools, and those are going to look like they're favored. And a lot of others are going to be glossed over. Because realistically speaking, there's so many different religious traditions, you're not going to learn about all of them at any one year of social studies.
Katie Dooley 11:06 No, but and this is where we'll get into how I think, a good religious study in the public school system model? Well, look, I just feel like my big counterpoint that I'm gonna bring up frequently, is, I guess, you know, Religious Studies is so vast, but And again, I can only speak from a Canadian school system perspective. But you know, we, off the top of my head throughout my 12 years of public school we did Greece, we did China, we did Japan, we did Russia.
Preston Meyer 11:37 And how often did you talk about the influence of religion on those nations?
Katie Dooley 11:41 We didn't talk about them at all. But like, you could argue, well, there's 200 countries in the world, and you've only picked four, right? And especially now, I mean, curriculums don't change often, which is unfortunate. But in thinking about diversity, right? Like, nobody in North America learns anything about Africa. That's true, right? And Ethiopia was one of the like, founding world nations like right up there with the Ottoman Empire. And we don't learn anything about it. Right. So why did we pick? Why don't we pick Ethiopia? Why don't we pick? Obviously, we learn about Germany because of World War One and two, you know, why don't we learn about Australia as a strange little island colony? Why don't we learn about Central America or South America? Like, you can argue that for a lot of topics? So just to say, Well, you can't do them all? Well, yeah, no, you can't. We can't go over every war in 12 years of public school and younger grades, it's inappropriate to go over some of the wars. Absolutely. I think that's just a cop out. Yeah. Because school is meant to get you learning how to learn. And just interest and I will say interest exposed to enough topics that you can make a somewhat, and I still don't think even it's that great, but a somewhat informed decision on what you want to do after school. So including religious studies in that I think is beneficial,
Preston Meyer 13:11 took me ages to decide I was going to go to university for religious studies after I finished high school.
Katie Dooley 13:16 And I think I like I wish it was included. Pressing, you can speak to this, I don't think there are a lot of religious studies jobs,
Preston Meyer 13:26 no, not a lot.
Katie Dooley 13:28 Not until you get your doctor and become a scholar, or start working in the theological position. So to be able to pursue and that's I mean, not to get all sentimental, but why I'm excited about Holy watermelons that I can actually pursue something that I'm interested in, because I did I mean, if I, I switched post secondary schools, I'm not going to get into my history, but I would have undergrad did undergrad minored I would have minored in religious studies, if I could. Anyway, I felt like I feel like that was a big digression. I'm so sorry.
Preston Meyer 14:05 Another complaint that people have an argument against teaching religion, or religious ideas in school, is the perception that there's a need to conform for fear of exclusion, that a lot of kids are going to feel pressure. And if you pay attention to kids on the school ground, that's happening without religious education,
Katie Dooley 14:32 I think. I mean, again, I I disagree with that point. Because you're right, the exclusion is already happening. And now people don't understand why. Exactly. So I think of two examples in particular. And this is partially where I grew up, but Muslims and Christmas concerts as a kid now they call them winter concerts, which is better, but the Muslim kids would always sit out and nobody really understood why because we We were 10. And we had no concept of it and, and even me, you know, not believing in a Christian God, whatever, like I still, we still celebrate Christmas and Santa came and Santa still shows up with presents. So it wasn't so exclusive story for me, but nobody understood why these handful of teachers obviously did, but the other kids didn't. And then even older social dance, the dreaded social dance, in high school, where you learn like, to waltz and to step and same thing the Muslim kids sit out because you're not supposed to, and they religion touch people of the opposite gender. And I mean, I had a better grasp, obviously, by high school, but you know, just in feedback and doing this podcast, not everybody does understand why that it's a different religion. And this is our belief. So they're being excluded. And no one knows why. Which I think is worse than having that conversation about what they believe. And finding other better or different ways to include them, then, as has the school or the teacher or the authority thinker. There's other ways, when you would dress, why they're separate. Now you can find ways to include them instead of just being like, Oh, we don't talk about it. Right? I think is the, the better solution.
Preston Meyer 16:30 Yeah. And it's, it's not like these kids aren't learning about different faith ideas. at young ages, they're exposed to Sunday school, as soon as the parents send them off, usually at a pretty young age, or the equivalent of Sunday school, depending on what your group is. There's theological education for children. So the idea of them being exposed to these are some of the other ideas that some of your peers have, shouldn't be that hard for them to grasp.
Katie Dooley 17:01 And I mean, I remember as early as elementary, Christian friends inviting me to Sunday school, like already starting to evangelize. Right? Which impressive and a little concerning. But, you know, I remember having conversations about God. As early as I'd probably say eat, and I didn't grow up in a religious household. So it was coming from friends. One of my best friends growing up was a pastor's kid. Which I talked about, extensively in this discord. About the first time I learned about the crucifixion, I didn't sleep for an entire night. But, you know, we worry. We worry about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but kids are also
Preston Meyer 17:47 getting, there's all kinds of peer pressure,
Katie Dooley 17:51 and information. So again, to not have teachers come out with facts or parents to be concerned to not have those conversations with kids. And, like, I was so lucky. Like, my dad, is the reason I'm even into this and doing the podcast, right? Because we would just always have those conversations. And then I was a lot of it when 911 happened. So you know, yeah, to hide kids from this doesn't make any sense because it's happening constantly.
Preston Meyer 18:20 It's the first complaint that did actually come to my mind as a complaint that sounds like just it can't possibly be a legitimate concern, but it straight up is a primary concern for a lot of people. And I don't feel it, but I recognize it. Is that the concern of if you expose these kids to these to the faiths other than their own, they'll just stop believing what we're teaching them at home and if that so if that's gonna happen that's gonna happen. Yeah. And is that really the worst thing
Katie Dooley 19:06 and this comes back to I don't know how often I've talked about my ice cream analogy I think I've talked about mice criminology once on the podcast and this is where I get really excited about religious studies is that I asked you Preston what your I mean presses doesn't count because I asked Preston what his favorite ice cream flavor is, and he says chocolate and I go well what about straw and goes well, I've never tried it. So well how do you know chocolates? Your favorite if you've never tried strawberry?
Preston Meyer 19:36 Black Cherry all the way.
Katie Dooley 19:38 But like, have you tried other flavors? And so that's always been I feel like pet peeve is almost too strong. Because it's like as a parent it's what you believe is written right for your family. But I don't think you know if you want to compare with political spectrums, you go well, what do you think capitalism is the best we'll do you know? About other, or North Korea, would you like the sounds of democracy? All you don't even know what democracy is? You can't make an informed decision. And religious religion period affects so much of how you live your life and make your decisions that I think it's unfair to not have some exposure to other religions. And if you're worried your kids are going to convert, then maybe your beliefs aren't that good. Mic drop. I'm not dropping the mic, Brian, it's fine. Still? Like drop?
Preston Meyer 20:40 Yeah, it's we talked about the nature of belief before. And if you believe a thing, then hearing where other people are coming from isn't going to mess with that. And if you don't believe a thing, then maybe you'll hear something that does resonate. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 21:01 Why struggle with your belief when there might be something that solves the right to have some sort of existential crisis because your religion doesn't fit? And there's hundreds to pick from that, right? Don't waste your time, your life's too short for that.
Preston Meyer 21:18 Right? mentioned being a parent to a kid that just doesn't believe what you're trying to force them on force onto them for years and years. And that's why they're a crappy kid. And then somehow, they get exposed to a thing that they can latch on to that does make them not a crappy kid.
Katie Dooley 21:37 Well, I mean, we're going to talk about religious trauma. i That's essentially, you know,
Preston Meyer 21:44 so there, there can be some serious advantages to teaching about what religions believe, and what they do because of their beliefs in school.
Katie Dooley 21:54 And again, this is not a faith based education. So Muslims don't eat pork. They pray to the Abrahamic God. Ma, Muhammad was the prophet. Like, that's what they're teaching not you need to pray five times a day in this fashion, right. That's why religious studies
Preston Meyer 22:17 and these kids are already in diverse communities in most cases, that I've, I've been to small towns where they're still diversity of religion.
Katie Dooley 22:29 If they're not in diverse communities, they need it even more.
Preston Meyer 22:32 Absolutely. Because they're gonna leave their town at some point and NBN they'll be in for a serious shock.
Katie Dooley 22:39 Or, I mean, again, just spend 15 minutes on Facebook, right? Again, I don't I mentioned this, I think in our Islam episode, where someone said, Well, I disagree with I don't know what Islam is, but I disagree with it. It's like that's, that's not a fair position.
Preston Meyer 22:57 That's ignorant by any definition.
Katie Dooley 23:00 You might not disagree with it. And again, this comes back to my very silly ice cream analogy, but you might not dislike it. You've just never tried it. Right. Like Kadian sushi for far too long in my life. Which role fish? Why would I eat that? Not eating raw fish. And now I regret the first 18 years of my life.
Preston Meyer 23:25 Those are strong words.
Katie Dooley 23:28 Have you eaten sushi?
Preston Meyer 23:30 Yeah, I've had some great sushi. I've had some bad sushi. There's loads of space where you can go wrong with sushi, but there's some great sushi out there. Being exposed to ideas that are not part of your own religious tradition, are also really helpful for challenging misconceptions and prejudices, and straight up reduce ignorance. These are huge important things with everybody wants their kids to be good neighbors. And then so many people fight the idea that they should learn anything about their neighbor. It's I just don't get it.
Katie Dooley 24:22 Well, and it's, I remember someone saying years ago, it's so much it's it's hard to hate someone whose story you know,
Preston Meyer 24:29 right? I like that. Right? What
Katie Dooley 24:32 a that's a good phrase, powerful statement. And Right, that's exactly what this is. And anytime. I mean, being in North America, Muslims get a lot of flack
Preston Meyer 24:44 from ignorant people. Absolutely. And that's
Katie Dooley 24:46 why I'm saying like you just ask them for a recipe. Hope you're in.
Preston Meyer 24:52 It's amazing the friendships you can make over food
Katie Dooley 24:58 and Every Muslim person I've met is so hospitable. We'll give you that recipe and learn some great stuff along the way.
Preston Meyer 25:12 I have some regrets. I've got a friend of mine. I haven't seen a lot of him lately, of course, because yay world events. But super cool guy. He's a professional chef. Yeah, he's done some cooking in some fantastic places, places I just hope to travel to someday at another time, but he's he's asked me for recipes, because of my studies, is specifically looking for old, old, old timey homestyle cooking recipes from the Middle East. Now, this gentleman is ethnically from the Middle East. But he's asking me to help him in his research. And super cool, builds our friendship a little bit. I still haven't found anything that he doesn't already know. But it's pretty cool way to build a relationship.
Katie Dooley 26:11 One of the other, it's actually funny, there's two to four arguments that I found that I actually kind of disagree with. Sure. One is that it's a positive topic.
Preston Meyer 26:25 It's tricky, that's for sure.
Katie Dooley 26:27 And then, and we didn't find the rebuttal on that being a negative topic. And then the other one said, it teaches ethical values. Oh, I'll start with positive topic. So again, this was a for teaching religious studies in school. So when I'd argue that it's not a particularly positive topic, and then B, I'd say why does it matter? Because we learn about a whole bunch of horrible stuff in school. So that's where I'd started. Honestly, it doesn't matter if it's positive topic or not. Because you learn about World War Two, you learn about the Russian Revolution, French Revolution. I mean, obviously, this some of this is geographical if you're American, you learn about the Civil War. Revolutionary warn you that a whole bunch of terrible stuff. Vietnam, we learned about this is all social studies math, horrible. But I mean, you know, we read Death of a Salesman and Hamlet and Macbeth and just
Preston Meyer 27:21 To Kill a Mockingbird.
Katie Dooley 27:25 I mean, it kind of ends happy,
Preston Meyer 27:27 but it makes people uncomfortable. That's true, which is the point of the book. And there's a good reason that every 15 year old kid should have read this book,
Katie Dooley 27:35 literally just read it for the first time in my life, like maybe two months ago, really loved it. It was great.
Preston Meyer 27:41 It was part of my grade 10 curriculum. I think it might have been grade nine, but I think it was 10. And, I mean, I liked the book. It there's there's parts of it that are hard to read, and hard to accept as a 15 year old kid, but it's also really important lessons.
Katie Dooley 28:01 Absolutely. So that's why I say this, even as an argument isn't really agreed argument. And then. So the positivity aspect is that we've covered a lot of horrible stuff in religion, period. So every religion has a sullied past. Yeah, their religious books say not great things, any of them. And, yeah, there's usually a lot of murder.
Preston Meyer 28:31 Yeah, you're coming up in your readings to up great murder with a railroad spike. Oh, exciting.
Katie Dooley 28:35 Well, and I just I finished Deuteronomy, so you have to marry your rapist. Okay, you
Preston Meyer 28:41 don't have to marry your rapist, I strongly recommend it. So I do want to dive into this a little bit and it fits into religious education. But part so there's a lot of laws in the in the Torah are ours, the Hebrew Bible, and that they're not all old laws. By this point, they're old. But they're not all taught by Moses laws. A lot of the material is newer developments as a legal code need to develop as the
Katie Dooley 29:14 nation. Oh, absolutely. You can tell that. Yeah, they're more modern air quotes last for the time. Yeah, absolutely.
Preston Meyer 29:21 But the specific bit about marry your rapist. A lot of people quote this as the worst possible thing for phantom feminism. And it's not meant to be an every case sort of thing. It's an issue of there was a cultural problem among these people where you didn't want to marry somebody who wasn't a virgin. Right? Yeah. And so. Yeah. And so, a woman who is raped would have the option to force her rapist to marry her, so that he would be forced to support her that It would certainly not cohabitate in most situations. It's a punishment for the rapist, not the victim. And she can ask for a bill of divorce if she were to find somebody who was okay with not marrying a virgin later on. Good. Happy. I mean, we're talking about a theoretical person here, but it was definitely some real people in history to
Katie Dooley 30:29 anyway, whether it's positive or not as part of this conversation. I think the education still does happen. Absolutely. And then the point on teachers ethical values. Well, fun fact, that's a whole episode. That's coming in two weeks.
Preston Meyer 30:46 Yeah, that's, that's a really loaded full of baggage set of words there.
Katie Dooley 30:55 I think. If they mean, in the terms that you said, and other points is that it makes you more understanding person. It helps get rid of prejudices. And that's ethical. Cool, but to say that the religions themselves have ethical values you need to learn within
Preston Meyer 31:16 them, then you've started teaching radiology, pretty
Katie Dooley 31:21 money, because a little bit. Again, no holy book is purely good. Right? There's a lot of garbage. And I mean, garbage Jessen, not nice things.
Preston Meyer 31:35 I was talking to somebody a little while ago, who genuinely believed that the story of lat and his daughters was meant to be a story of role model, that you're supposed to look up to him and, and behave like this.
Katie Dooley 31:51 I mean, lot didn't do anything.
Preston Meyer 31:54 Well, he had sex with his daughters, they know they raped him, they raped him while he was drunk. victim blame what? That whole story. This guy believed that this was meant to be a role model story, which, I mean, there's a lot of terrible things in the Bible. Not all of them are role models story.
Katie Dooley 32:18 Yeah, so if it's, you know, the Golden Rule, which again, shows up in any in most religious books in some wording or another cool, but to say that, yeah, it's it starts to muddy with what a what is morals and ethics? Hmm. and stuff. And then you can get into that gray area of theology, as well. I think there's probably some really good conversations and debates students can have about some of the content. But to say, here's this passage, and it's ethical, would be a bad teacher. I think you could have a debate and say, Do you think this statement is ethical and divide the room, but I don't think a teacher pulling some scripture or doctrine and saying this is ethical. I don't think that's ethical.
Preston Meyer 33:12 I like it things are such a heavy topic that we've selected for this week. But religion is always in the classroom, until you have a classroom where nobody believes in any gods or any supernatural power. Religion is in the classroom. Because it's part of your identity, if it's something that you believe, which means it's going to come up in discussion, somebody's going to have questions. And realistically, among teenagers, there's definitely plenty of prejudice. And teachers are going to have to address that well. And
Katie Dooley 33:50 I'm even thinking I remember one social science class I had with the most awesome teacher, she was awesome. And she was it was political points. You know, it was should the the one I remember in particular, was should gay marriage be legal? Because it wasn't Yeah,
Preston Meyer 34:15 that's a whole discussion. First classroom issue is
Katie Dooley 34:19 shoes. My Word of the Week is bitch, and she was a bit she, and I remember because, for me, I absolutely think it should be legal. And I was so worried because I will
Preston Meyer 34:33 just say that one more time and enunciate very carefully.
Katie Dooley 34:36 I absolutely think it should be legal. Okay. Why didn't you
Preston Meyer 34:40 I just felt like your your words were a little soft.
Katie Dooley 34:44 I absolutely think it was should be legal. And I remember I was so massive and 17 I was like, Oh man, I just was so worried that the whole class she actually made us physically get up and move. Yes, yes or no?
Preston Meyer 34:59 Oh, split them.
Katie Dooley 35:00 I'm physically Yeah. And I was like, so scared that I was be the only one on the yes side. I was like, No, I need to be on the yes side. And there was in a class of 30, there was only three people on the no side. And two of the three were definitely devoutly religious. Of course, I don't. And then one honestly, I think was just toxic masculinity. If I, I honestly don't remember any of the other questions, and the room split more evenly besides that question, but Right, that's a political question. With religious in the fluids like, that's what, that's the reason two thirds of the the nose were on the no side. So to say, you know, it's not in the classroom is impossible. And then in, you know, bigger scale, adult scale, it affects your day to day life. And that's political decision making, and how can you live in a secular society? And, you know, fair enough, you can't? I understand that. As a believer, it would be hard to be like, what's best for everyone? For some people? So absolutely. Your religious beliefs ended up in your political voting, which affects everyone. So to have an outside perspective to go, No, I don't believe in abortion. But why do other people believe in or
Preston Meyer 36:35 I shouldn't say I love that word.
Katie Dooley 36:38 I don't support abortion.
Preston Meyer 36:41 Those are two very different.
Katie Dooley 36:44 I don't support abortion. But why might I want to, you know, give that access to someone else.
Preston Meyer 36:55 Which, like, that's an awful lot of people voted for Trump, or literally any Republican candidate in any jurisdiction, or even just conservative leaning whatever the title is, because they don't think that abortion should be legal, but specifically super visible in American politics. A lot of people hate anybody who identifies or announces that they vote in the liberal direction. Because they see them as nothing more than child murderers, which is terribly ignorant.
Katie Dooley 37:36 Yeah, so even even that is where I would say having a religious education is important to realize that not everyone's religious, and then some of the stuff and this was covered on another podcast, behind the bastards covered it. But fabulous podcast, check it out, if I remember to put a link in the description to the episode. But the anti abortion movement
Preston Meyer 38:04 wasn't always there. No, it's kind of a new thing. It's like from the 50s. There's nothing in the Bible that explicitly specifically forbids abortion.
Katie Dooley 38:15 And it comes in I should, if, if you're listening to this, and I haven't put in the show notes, send me a message. But it's rooted in racism is women couldn't segregate? They shut down. abortions, because if you're a single black woman, with a child, you now can't afford upward mobility. So when you couldn't separate them from your, your public life, you could
Preston Meyer 38:49 stratify them more economically.
Katie Dooley 38:51 So that's where modern day anti abortion laws even come from. So to know that, to be taught in a history class, alongside religious studies, I think is important in the world we're heading into.
Preston Meyer 39:06 Absolutely. People do terrible things to each other all the time, our history is full of it. And an awful lot of that list of horrible things, is religiously motivated. Leaving religion out of social studies doesn't make any sense to me.
Katie Dooley 39:24 Well, and then the interesting is, and we've had this conversation before, is things are, on the surface, religiously motivated, and I've had this conversation where
Preston Meyer 39:35 that's how they defend it to themselves.
Katie Dooley 39:38 Because right, what was it that I read? I forget, it's called like, Is religion evil or religion bad? very literal title. And it was it was defending religion. So it was actually quite contrary to my personal beliefs. And and I said, but I still think religion is bad because it exacerbates what's existing and view and I rant I don't If you remember this conversation, you and I ran through a whole bunch of world events that was like, Well, this was made worse by religion you're like, but here's the political socio economic stuff behind it. And while I don't disagree with you, I still think religion exacerbates it. But again, to have to be able to unmask that right to be able to look at a situation like Northern Ireland, Catholics versus Protestants and a to go, these are basically the same religion.
Preston Meyer 40:32 Pretty close. And then be
Katie Dooley 40:35 so we look at it as a religious war, but it's actually a socio economic conflict that started in the 1600s,
Preston Meyer 40:43 but just happens to have an official religious line that divides down.
Katie Dooley 40:48 So what if you brought religious studies into Irish schools to talk about the actual difference between Catholic and Protestant and no, that's not a Catholic and Protestant issue, it's a To Have and Have Not issue. And you're, and you're mad at the wrong person, you've been mad at the wrong person for 400 years, right? Which the length of time becomes a problem and
Preston Meyer 41:13 important. We see
Katie Dooley 41:15 the same thing in Israel and Palestine right now. It is absolutely a religious conflict. But yeah, absolutely started with a socio economic, we gave away your land, and we shouldn't have.
Preston Meyer 41:32 But now we're so many generations down the line, that there's serious, strong feelings on both sides instead of one.
Katie Dooley 41:41 Absolutely. And understanding why it's being funded by the American government is.
Preston Meyer 41:49 Yeah, the allied forces of the First World War have put an awful lot of energy and money into destabilizing the Middle East. And it's it's not about religion at all. It's about we had this empire that we fought in the First World War and we need to keep them from unifying,
Katie Dooley 42:07 though there is a un I don't know how big it is, I should look it up. There is a group of evangelical Christians that want Israel to come about because they think it'll bring the second time Absolutely. And that's a huge like, they are a huge fan, and you can go on like, on your site, you can go and really weird of angelical tours of Israel. That's like, this is where Jesus is gonna show up. But yeah, there's like a huge funding of Israel, because they, some people think it's gonna bring about the Second Coming. So again, here's a huge ly impactful religious conversation we need to be having, because it's hurting a lot of people and people don't want to have the religious conversation. Because they're scared they're gonna offend someone and then you can't have the socio economic conversation or whatever fact political ethical, political, economic, all the Yos. conversation around it, because
Preston Meyer 43:05 because it's touchy, people's feelings get hurt. riled up, right. Anything that fires off that little amygdala in the back of your head is makes for a hard conversation. And some people respond very poorly to that thing firing off, and others not so much. I'm not
Katie Dooley 43:25 a great debater. Like someone give me angry, and I forget everything that I know. That's frustrating. I know this is wrong. And that's all my brain goes is that's all it says. And it makes me really mad. Because, like everything I have in my arsenal just goes away. And I just get mad. Your brain I get. No, I get mad because I can't explain why. Why I'm right.
Preston Meyer 43:50 Your brains too busy being offended,
Katie Dooley 43:52 I guess, to practice?
Preston Meyer 43:57 What else have we got here on our list?
Katie Dooley 43:58 I mean, I want to touch on what I actually think. Religious Studies curriculum. Yeah, look like but I don't know if there's any other debate points, you want to know. Go for it. Cool. So I wanted to talk about what I think a comprehensive Religious Studies curriculum could look like. And jump in if you have any thoughts for sure. Again, this is from a Canadian education perspective. So I'm, I apologize for American listeners. But in Canada, we have a class called Social Studies, you take it grades one through 12. And it covers history, economics, politics. Yeah, it covers those things. And you do a little bit more every year. And I think the US divides history, but I'm sure they teach social
Preston Meyer 44:44 studies when I was in high school we split social studies into geography and history we come and then I did both things and not everybody did.
Katie Dooley 44:54 Yeah, so the we just do different units. Like I said earlier in the episode, you know, one you didn't is China and you maybe do that for two or three months, and then you switch to you learn about China. And then maybe you learn about capitalism as a concept. And then maybe you learn about World War after that her are First Nations and anyways, break broken down to modules. So I think having religious studies as a piece of social studies, is the best way to just incorporate into the class and teach age appropriate stuff. And just like you teach China one year, maybe one year you teach Hinduism, and then you explore some concepts around religion. In addition to that,
Preston Meyer 45:38 yeah, it makes sense. wouldn't start with Greek mythology and Hellenism with the earliest years since Zeus is a little rapey. But we learned about
Katie Dooley 45:47 Greece in grade six, not not age appropriate. Yeah. That's something right. We have to,
Preston Meyer 45:54 you know, age appropriate. left out, though. Yes, absolutely.
Katie Dooley 45:57 We did China in in grade five or six as well. It's not like we learned.
Preston Meyer 46:03 Yeah, I bet you didn't cover Taoism at all?
Katie Dooley 46:05 No, we didn't. But we also didn't learn about all the horrible things about China, either, right? Or, again, and this is a problem. But, you know, the big topic in Canada right now is that we didn't learn about residential schools. And maybe you don't teach six year olds about residential schools because it is horrific. But Junior High in high school, it's just start being introduced as concepts. Junior High seems like an appropriate age. area. It's just like, you don't teach six and seven year olds about World War Two. Right? The the genocide of the Jews, but you'd absolutely learn about a high school and you absolutely should learn about in high school. So same thing, grade one, everyone believes different things. Let's talk about Christmas and Hanukkah, and Diwali, and
Preston Meyer 46:49 Eid? Sure. I like it
Katie Dooley 46:52 fun. And we learn about all the different celebrations that people have. I like it, right. And then in high school, we can talk about, you know, Islamophobia, and, you know, tougher harder topics.
Preston Meyer 47:11 Sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Right? And then
Katie Dooley 47:13 it's not its own class. And I know, I know, a lot of parents struggle with the idea of religion being taught in schools or having a course on religion. So that's why I think it should just be folded into social studies. I also think it should be mandatory by me.
Preston Meyer 47:33 No exemptions. It's, I agree with you completely. The idea that parents pull their kids out of sex ed, for example, these are the kids that need sex ed the most.
Katie Dooley 47:48 And I bring up the the mandatory because that is one especially because like I said our curriculum, new curriculum, not very good curriculum. rollout was supposed to include religious studies, they're talking about revamping it. So I don't know what that looks like. And a lot of parents I saw on Facebook, I don't have kids, but a lot of my parent friends said, I'm okay with that. As long as it's I can exempt my kid or you know, it shouldn't be mandatory or whatever. But Preston's exactly right. The people who would pull their kids are the kids who need it the most,
Preston Meyer 48:18 for sure. It's just the idea that somebody would want their kids to not learn a thing. Sounds obscene to me.
Katie Dooley 48:33 I saw I don't know what they're so scared of, again, as long as it's religious studies, if it's theological. Absolutely. I don't think that should be in schools. But if it is a secular approach to religious studies, I don't understand what he would be concerned
Preston Meyer 48:48 about. Yeah, no, I'm one of those people that was not allowed to be in sex ed. But actually, okay, so, super weird. I was allowed to be in sex ed in grade four when it was in my elementary school, because they just talked about cubes and grade four, I guess, I don't know. But when it came up again, in grade nine, or 10, I think it was grade nine. My mom was like, No, you can't go in there. Anything you want to learn, you can ask me about No, that's wildly inappropriate one. Because you know, that you're not going to have the right questions to get any of the information you need from your parents when you're 14 or 15.
Katie Dooley 49:30 There's so much wrong with that. Also,
Preston Meyer 49:33 there's, there's loads of questions that maybe you do have, that you are not going to feel comfortable asking your parents at 14 or 15. It doesn't matter what kind of relationship
Katie Dooley 49:43 but like, your parents might not want to answer those, right? Cuz kitchens keep getting freakier and
Preston Meyer 49:50 I can I know for sure that my parents would have answered those questions. If you were
Katie Dooley 49:56 like, Mom, what's a Dirty Sanchez? She'd be like, let me show you. I don't know. I'm not kidding. She'd be like, let me tell you. But that's what I mean. Like, there'd be a quote like, maybe this is just me and someone who does not want kids is like, there are things I don't want to tell you. From my own comfort level, not that you shouldn't know them. One, I want you to be prepared when someone asks for a Dirty Sanchez, but I do not want to be the one to tell you what that is.
Preston Meyer 50:26 From videos that I've seen of what sex ed is, in some places. There's an awful lot of material that you shouldn't be learning from your parents. And it's far better in a classroom setting where you're usually safe with anonymity with the anonymous question box thing. And in a large tiniest one, yeah.
Katie Dooley 50:54 My friends, a teacher. And obviously, you should teach a sex ed and she put one on Instagram and it said, Is it true that girls shed their skin when they get their period? I'm sure it was just a troll, but
Preston Meyer 51:13 not really, but
Katie Dooley 51:16 your skin comes off? Like a lizard. Day seven. I'm surprised your wife hasn't shown you. Dead skin. Sorry.
Preston Meyer 51:30 It's important.
Katie Dooley 51:31 Yes. And same thing, right? Like I, I think if it started young, and age appropriately, like I said, if you get to teach kids that some some kids are visited by Santa, and that's really cool. And then some kids can have this massive feast with their family. And that's really cool. And I are some kids get to open small presents for seven nights in a row. And that's really cool. And you're like 16 can just be excited for everyone. And then And then obviously build up to it, then I don't even think you would need a private, private question. Answer period. But if you did, right, like, I cool, but we don't we talk about you know, that's two things. You shouldn't talk about our politics and religion. Well, we still cover politics in school,
Preston Meyer 52:21 and sometimes in ineffective ways. Like, honestly, that needs to be revamped the, the way I was taught about the Russian Revolution, and then the fall of the Soviet Republic, or the Soviet Union was honestly pretty disastrous. I've learned a lot better information about that since I finished high school, that there's it's not just communism that failed. It was authoritarian dictatorship and, and corruption that destroyed nations, and still is. And everyone's just like, yeah, no, it's communism. Like it is a lot more complicated than that.
Katie Dooley 53:01 And I I understand that. The concern about teacher bias, yeah, but it shows up in politics, it shows up in your economics class. And if you're a teacher that is so devoutly one religion, that you feel like you can't teach other religions effectively, he probably shouldn't be a teacher, because that's your job is to disseminate information. But be then swapped with a teacher that can
Preston Meyer 53:29 right, you'll find somebody if you look, right.
Katie Dooley 53:34 To say that it's divisive, or or you know, something that we shouldn't talk about is we talked about a lot of things we shouldn't know about in school. And that's why universities are cesspools of of divergent knowledge.
Preston Meyer 53:51 Yeah. You know,
Katie Dooley 53:53 universities, the weirdest like voting pattern unit, universe ridings, with universities in them, where students live have like the most divergent voting patterns in the tire province. I mean, there's your most you're more likely to get Rhino party in pirate party. Yeah, I want to party votes in a university writing than anywhere else. Of course.
Preston Meyer 54:14 There's our our former Premier runs in a university writing.
Katie Dooley 54:22 She does very well.
Preston Meyer 54:25 And, yeah. It's interesting to see how people who are actively learning behave differently from people who have said I'm done with education for now.
Katie Dooley 54:42 Maybe it's our wrap up question. How do you think religious studies would change? I do you have more thoughts?
Preston Meyer 54:50 No, no, go ahead with your question. I'm just scrolling down to see if there's anything else we
Katie Dooley 54:53 think religious studies like learning religious studies in school would change Other people's behaviors. And I don't know, if you want to talk about that a student level or familial level or academic level, but
Preston Meyer 55:10 not sure. Okay. It's like learning anything, it can have a variety of effects, I guess. But I think if people are learning more about the people around them, they're gonna be a lot less awful to each other. If they can figure out where their prejudices come from, or have somebody explain it to them, which is awful lot more helpful, then they can evaluate them in a way that makes them a lot easier to shed.
Katie Dooley 55:48 Like your skin after a period.
Preston Meyer 55:53 Yeah, you can find out who the lizard people really are.
Katie Dooley 55:58 My skin sloughing,
Preston Meyer 56:00 gross. It's this world is really complicated. And if we can understand the diversity between us, and even within a single religious tradition, there's diversity. And there's realistically not going to be a lot of time to explore internal diversity in junior high social studies class, for example. But just introducing that idea can help. Like you've got people who are so tired of the oppressive Christian religions in a community, that it's easy to lose track that not all Christians believe the same things and behave the same way. You've got the Westboro Baptist Church. And then you've got a lot of pretty liberal
Katie Dooley 56:57 in that we posted about the first transgender leader in the Lutheran church, right, so everything from a transgender Reverend to Westboro Baptist,
Preston Meyer 57:08 which is, of course, our go to example of a bad Christian Church, fat, there's, there's so much diversity, it's a spectrum,
Katie Dooley 57:18 take a shot.
Preston Meyer 57:22 And the world is such a cool place that even in groups that you find unfavorable, for any reason, there's going to be people in that group that turns out you actually like a lot. If you're willing to get past what is sometimes and obvious in your face difference. But people suck.
Katie Dooley 57:49 I thought that was gonna end really positive and you ended it.
Preston Meyer 57:51 So don't be a dick.
Katie Dooley 57:55 I mean, love your neighbor.
Preston Meyer 57:58 I mean, this ultimately, the Golden Rule boils down to that love your neighbor, figure out why your behavior sucks, how it would feel if it were thrown at you. And then stop doing that.
Katie Dooley 58:12 And you know what? I'm gonna get curious. Absolutely. Curious. Because, I mean, we've covered them all quite broadly. But well, we only covered them all. We're working on it are the major the big ones, quite broadly. And as a as an outsider, yeah, sure. They all have some weird beliefs. But they're not that weird. In the end, right, no one is so other in these, these big ones, that you couldn't wrap your head around everyone. They all have their quirks. There's some odd things, but that's what makes them their group.
Preston Meyer 58:51 Yeah. Unless your religion says that you need to find a random stranger and set them on fire in a park. Like you're gonna find some overlap in that allows you to be friends with that person. Absolutely. If you find a person common ground. Yeah. And if you do find a person that likes to light strangers on fire in the park, run, fix that problem.
Katie Dooley 59:19 Oh, well, I think that was a pretty good one sided debates.
Preston Meyer 59:22 Yeah. I mean, I wish that we could disagree a little bit more on this. But I mean, I feel like we were mostly on the same page.
Katie Dooley 59:31 We covered some of the other outside arguments.
Preston Meyer 59:33 I feel like there are people who disagree with us, and we would love to have you join the conversation. We have great discussions from time to time on Discord. If we can make those a little bit more frequent. I'm totally game. And we have good times. We share ridiculous memes.
Katie Dooley 59:49 Yes, so we are always content continuing. We are always continuing this conversation on our Discord. And if you want us to keep creating more awesome real legit studies content, please check out our Patreon or our merch shop and get some sick some bitchin. Holy watermelon merch. Please be with you. | |||
| 15 Jan 2024 | The Legend of (Persian) Zoro | 00:41:44 | |
Zarathustra is the mythical hero at the foundation of Mazdaism, and thus it is better known as Zoroastrianism. Because ancient sources disagree on when this camel herder lived, it's nearly impossible to prove that he ever did, though there must have been an original founder of this ancient Persian religious tradition, the man's true name is certainly lost to time. Some Christians (especially the Jesuits) like to claim that Zoro was a biblical character, though there are different opinions on which one. This episode's story time is "The Cypress of Kashmar." As we explore this ancient tradition, we map out the conflict betwen Asha and Druj (and Nasa), and the Amesha Spenta (archangels) that support the righteous Ahura Mazda. The Yasna is terribly important, so we talk about that, too. Naturally, we have to discuss the ideas that were adopted by exilic Judaism, and that persisted and evolved with the rise of Christianity. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 19 Jun 2023 | The Next Guy is a Book | 00:40:52 | |
What is the Granth Sahib? What is the Adi Granth? The Guru Granth Sahib is the last and eternal Guru, an authoritative collection of sacred verses from not only the greatest Sikh leaders, but also from faithful Muslims and Hindus. Like other sacred texts, this collection has an interesting history, including a contested editorial process. Who are them men who recorded their revelations in sacred song? How does this collection bridge the gaps between conflicting traditions in India? How has the Sikhi made its mark in the subcontinent and around the world? The Adi Granth was completed in 1604, as a compilation of the best, surest writings of the previous four Gurus, along with those of the incumbent leader. The Granth Sahib is the same collection with additions of later Gurus. In addition to these writings, we have the blessed verses of other great religious thinkers, including Sufi Muslims, and Hindus; those 15 elevated Devotees (Bhagats), with 11 Bards (Bhatts), and 4 other faithful admirers and seekers of light are honoured with the inclusion of their songs of worship along with the hymns of the Gurus. For a scriptural canon, it is shockingly inclusive, and organized in a truly unique scheme. In this episode, we explore the nature of the hymns, their content, and the contention surrounding textual variants that exist across Sikh communities. Some great scholarly work has been done in this field, and we just scratch the surface. All this and more... Support us on Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram | |||
| 01 Jul 2024 | The Imperial Church | 00:53:51 | |
The Church of Rome doesn't represent all of Christianity, but it is a major portion of the global population, so it's time for us to look at their foundation, and what makes them distinct from other groups. We explore the history of the Catholic Church, including the history of apostolic codenames, and the trouble with apostolic succession. The long history of Anti-Popes and "Lucky" Popes is fascinating. We navigate the spreading chasm between early Christian-Judaism and the non-Christian Rabbinical tradition, coinciding with the development of new heresies with the influx of non-Jewish converts. Councils with and without Imperial support helped to form the post-Messianic theology, and brought us, step-by-step to the Church of Rome we know today. We also explore the tradition of imperialism, and the structure of the organization today. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 04 Jul 2022 | High & Mighty | 00:52:05 | |
The puritanical roots of western colonialism may have obscured this for some, but several religious traditions are tightly tied to the use of hallucinogenic substances. Some may find that their origins are reliant on them. In this week's episode, we explore the phenomenon, as well as a quick survey of those who might protest too much... and this time, Katie's had a bit to drink. Entheogens are a trippy way into religion--or at least cosmic faith. Religious intoxicants aren't exactly common, but they're certainly not an oddity in the wide array of traditions on this planet. Sacraments can take a great variety of forms, from DMT to mescaline, to cannabis (marijuana), to mushrooms. Who are we to judge what others have believed for millennia? We look at sacraments of the Rastafarians, Indo-Arab Aryans, Wixáritari, and the Greeks. We also examine the American "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" of 1993. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website
[00:00:01] Katie Dooley: Hey Preston.
[00:00:12] Preston Meyer: Hey, Katie. You look a little, uh, prepared.
[00:00:16] Katie Dooley: I am very prepared for today's episode. Accidentally prepared. Um, I'm so sorry. On today's episode of.
[00:00:29] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[00:00:32] Katie Dooley: So today we're talking about drugs and religion. I had a cider on an empty stomach, so I'm a little tipsy recording this. Oops. But let's just get. I'm just getting into character. Just getting into character for the today's episode. So sorry. Um.
[00:00:56] Preston Meyer: What's terrible is that if there's going to be positive feedback about. Hey, Katie should be tipsy more often for this show. We'll have so many episodes to record before this actually airs that it'll be a little bit weird going back to it.
[00:01:11] Katie Dooley: I like it. I approve. So people, including Katie have been altering their state of mind for a very long time. And for many different reasons. Some religions are entirely based on drug use, which we'll get into. And every religion has a stance on whether or not you should be taking drugs or alcohol. So I say this episode is about drugs, but we do address alcohol consumption as well.
[00:01:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah, so kind of interesting to go through and research all of this. I've learned a little bit more than I knew before.
[00:01:40] Katie Dooley: Yeah, absolutely. Especially I mean, I knew Christianity was a gray area of religion, but Hindu has a great stance.
[00:01:47] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:01:49] Katie Dooley: Which we'll get into.
[00:01:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Let's start taking a look at those religions that are more generally opposed.
[00:01:58] Katie Dooley: Yeah. We're going to talk about, um, just the larger world religions that we talked about last year, as opposed because there's hundreds of religions that would take us forever to go through each stance. But we're going to go through the big, uh, I think big six today.
[00:02:15] Preston Meyer: All right. So Buddhism, if you remember our Buddhism episode numbers, is a big thing. And on the Eightfold Path there is a principle of right livelihood. And there's a few businesses they should avoid to be a quote unquote, good Buddhist.
[00:02:33] Katie Dooley: Yes. So to have your right livelihood.
[00:02:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:02:37] Katie Dooley: Now, quick, run through. Don't trade in weapons. Don't trade in human beings. Meat.
[00:02:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It expands into slave trading, prostitution.
[00:02:52] Katie Dooley: And human trafficking.
[00:02:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Just generally...
[00:02:55] Katie Dooley: Don't buy and sell other people.
[00:02:57] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:02:58] Katie Dooley: It's terrible. Businesses in meat. Meat referring to the bodies of beings after they are killed. So, or breeding animals specifically for slaughter. So this is where obviously vegetarianism comes into Buddhism.
[00:03:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:03:13] Katie Dooley: And then the one that is relevant to this episode is Businesses in Intoxicants. So manufacturing or selling alcohol or drugs is prohibited. And then lastly businesses in poison. So any producing any toxics toxic chemicals designed to kill.
[00:03:33] Preston Meyer: I mean as far as right livelihood, it's pretty easy to get behind most of these. I mean, I like meat, so I can't say I agree with all of them.
[00:03:43] Katie Dooley: And I mean, I would say as an atheist, obviously, you know, the LDS church, which we'll get to, has a much firmer stance on intoxicants. But I also think intoxicants are a gray area. So, but the other three are great. Don't tell humans. Don't sell guns. Don't sell toxins. That's pretty good.
[00:04:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So there's also in the five precepts, the statement that I undertake the training rule to abstain from fermented drink that causes heedlessness.
[00:04:15] Katie Dooley: Am I a little heedless right now?
[00:04:17] Preston Meyer: I mean, a little bit, yeah, but that's okay. But generally, if something would make you careless when you should be careful, that is a problem. Of course, situations vary an awful lot, and we're pretty safe here in the studio today.
[00:04:37] Katie Dooley: Right? So basically, Buddhists do not encourage any consumption of drugs or alcohol in any way. Uh, I made a note in this. This goes across all the religions will talk about. That doesn't mean there aren't Buddhists out there who do drugs.
[00:04:51] Preston Meyer: There's groups that differ from others. There's always exceptions to the norm. And of course, there's bad actors. We're not terribly concerned about the bad actors today.
[00:05:02] Katie Dooley: And I mean, I was yeah, I wasn't going to use the term bad whatever, because, I mean clearly we know I don't have a problem with drugs, drugs or alcohol. I don't do drugs. I feel like, can you clarify that? But I don't have problems with people who do them. So yeah. Yeah. There'll just be people who don't prescribe to this rule and still will be religious. So anyway. So don't don't at us on Discord and say, well, I know a Buddhist that drinks alcohol. Of course you do. Of course you do.
[00:05:36] Preston Meyer: Yep. Next on our list we have Islam. Alcohol and drugs are very strictly forbidden in the vast majority of Islamic traditions. The word is haram. They're pretty straightforward on it, especially opium and alcohol. A lot of other drugs are kind of newer introductions into the culture. And there's various judgments on these substances, but they're not so 100% firm as the ancient prohibition.
[00:06:09] Katie Dooley: Which would be in the Quran or the hadiths.
[00:06:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah, exactly. Coffee, kind of a new introduction into the tradition. And for a while, coffee was judged to be haram, because it's a stimulant. It does affect the brain. And so a lot of people were, like, I'm really uncomfortable with that. We're going to put a rule against it. But that judgment has been overturned in most Muslim groups.
[00:06:32] Katie Dooley: Well, and I agree. And and we've clarified a little bit on social media again about the LDS church and and pop. Um, and you know, I've heard people say before, well, because it's caffeinated it affects your brain. It's like even if it's uncaffeinated, the sugar will affect your brain. Like there's so much that affects what goes on in your brain that there'd be a lot of stuff that would be disallowed if we just went on, does it affect your brain or not?
[00:07:03] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:07:04] Katie Dooley: And then what's positive for some people is negative for others. I mean, everyone knows a paranoid cannabis user, right? Where it's fine for some people, then some people get super fucking paranoid.
[00:07:17] Preston Meyer: Paranoia associated with cannabis makes perfect sense when the most dangerous thing about cannabis is being caught with it when it's illegal.
[00:07:25] Katie Dooley: Fair or how hungry you're going to be.
[00:07:27] Preston Meyer: I mean, cannabis use does not help with weight gain.
[00:07:36] Katie Dooley: I tossed this in here because I learned this recently, and I don't know when we're going to get a chance to talk about it again. So even though it's completely unrelated. Did you know that cats are halal and dogs are haram? So I know we talked about like, you can't eat a dog. Muslims aren't even allowed to own a dog.
[00:07:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I actually did know that.
[00:07:54] Katie Dooley: Oh wow, I did not know that. But they can have pet cats, but not pet dogs. Mm.
[00:08:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's kind of interesting. I'm a cat person myself anyway.
[00:08:04] Katie Dooley: I'm a.
[00:08:05] Preston Meyer: We know you're a dog.
[00:08:06] Katie Dooley: We know where I stand on that. Get out of my house.
[00:08:09] Preston Meyer: It's not that I don't like dogs. I do just happen to have a preference.
[00:08:14] Katie Dooley: You have the wrong preference.
[00:08:20] Preston Meyer: All right.
[00:08:21] Katie Dooley: Oh, boy.
[00:08:22] Preston Meyer: Back to the subject at hand.
[00:08:24] Katie Dooley: So Islam was pretty short because they are very cut and dry, black and white.
[00:08:29] Preston Meyer: And simple. Yeah.
[00:08:30] Katie Dooley: But Judaism has a lot more gray area. And then Christianity has even more gray area than that.
[00:08:38] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:08:39] Katie Dooley: So. If you're Jewish, you believe that your body belongs to God. And therefore they encourage that you don't harm yourself.
[00:08:50] Preston Meyer: Makes sense. I mean, that's good advice anyway.
[00:08:54] Katie Dooley: Yes. So they, you know, they discourage excessive risk-taking, uh, with your health or your behaviours. So obviously, like, heroin would fall under this. But now, like I said, we have some gray areas.
[00:09:08] Preston Meyer: I feel like you're stepping way too close to that stereotype of Jews live boring lives. Be an accountant.
[00:09:17] Katie Dooley: I mean.
[00:09:19] Preston Meyer: It's a stereotype, and it's not fair.
[00:09:21] Katie Dooley: Thank you. That's exactly what I was going to say, Preston. Um, but that means. Right? Like. I mean, cannabis is legal in Canada. So how harmful is it? Obviously, you know, maybe excessive use, just like excessive alcohol. You don't want to, but if you imbibe, sometimes it's not particularly risky. So now we have this gray area in Judaism.
[00:09:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, I actually recently found some stuff that are some articles that talked about how they found cannabis residue in some of the holy spaces in Old Israel.
[00:09:58] Katie Dooley: Cool.
[00:09:59] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Dating way back to about 800 BC. They found some residue that's like. Yeah with this here, we're pretty sure it was part of religious use, which is entirely possible. They were all about having a little smoke censers thing in the temple and all over Israel you would have smaller altars where they would burn stuff for the gods, which we'll get back to a little bit later. And also alcohol, pretty normal thing in Judaism. Wine for every Sabbath. Pretty standard deal.
[00:10:39] Katie Dooley: There is ritual and religious use of alcohol in Judaism. The most common being Purim and Simchat Torah, which is the Ritual reading the Torah on the Shabbat.
[00:10:55] Preston Meyer: And if you watched One of Us with us at our movie night a little while ago, you'll notice that they have no problem with cigarettes in the Hasidic community.
[00:11:03] Katie Dooley: Lots of smokers in that movie.
[00:11:05] Preston Meyer: And I feel pretty comfortable assuming generally this is true of most Jewish communities.
[00:11:11] Katie Dooley: Which is actually interesting to me because we know how bad it is for your health. But I guess it's such a long-term decline, right? You're not going to overdose on cigarettes
[00:11:23] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:11:23] Katie Dooley: It's a long it's a long game.
[00:11:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So and then of course there was the nazirites like Samson or myself for a very short time back when we were first starting this podcast of this oath to never drink or consume anything made from grapes. So the Nazirites were kind of an exception to the standard Jewish practice. Don't drink wine.
[00:11:48] Katie Dooley: But it is a very niche. There aren't any...
[00:11:51] Preston Meyer: There's not a lot of nazarites.
[00:11:53] Katie Dooley: Running around right now. But an interesting exception to the rule to make note of. Then we have Christianity, which, thanks to Protestantism, which we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks. Um, there's different takes.
[00:12:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:12:07] Katie Dooley: Different takes.
[00:12:07] Preston Meyer: A lot of different opinions from a lot of different sources. The, the puritanical movement got way into...
[00:12:16] Katie Dooley: Prohibition. Teetotalers!
[00:12:18] Preston Meyer: Yes. The Teetotalers and their prohibition.
[00:12:21] Katie Dooley: Yeah. That was a religious backed uh, initiative. So predominantly that was Baptists and Methodists that were big influences on the temperance movement. And we all know how well that worked.
[00:12:36] Preston Meyer: It just meant more violence and crime as people continued to drink, but got in bigger fights.
[00:12:42] Katie Dooley: And more people went blind because they were drinking.
[00:12:44] Preston Meyer: Moonshine.
[00:12:45] Katie Dooley: Moonshine.
[00:12:46] Preston Meyer: Bad moonshine.
[00:12:47] Katie Dooley: Don't drink bad moonshine. Christians do across the board have the general stance like don't do hard drugs. I think most people have the general stance of don't do hard drugs.
[00:12:56] Preston Meyer: Don't do things that aren't healthy for you, more or less. Yeah.
[00:13:00] Katie Dooley: So it really comes down to, um, alcohol consumption in Christianity. I think cannabis use is probably not discussed too, too much. I don't I feel like that's like cigarette smoking where they probably just don't care unless you are one of the more. I don't know if conservative is the right term to use, but like a Latter Day Saints don't drink. I'm sure their stance on cannabis is the same.
[00:13:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Pretty much. Well, so the don't drink thing. There's exceptions to that in the LDS tradition.
[00:13:31] Katie Dooley: Really?
[00:13:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:13:32] Katie Dooley: Tell me. I did not know this. I know, like you can, if I like, cooked with wine. My chicken. You're allowed to eat my chicken.
[00:13:41] Preston Meyer: And there's very, very little alcohol left in it by the time you consume it. So cooking with alcohol? Not a problem because eating alcohol ends up not usually being part of that practice. Uh, but the communion that is done every Sunday is usually water in the tradition.
[00:14:03] Katie Dooley: Right, that's what I thought yeah.
[00:14:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah. But there are cases. Well, generally speaking, it can be any liquid, but water is preferred. But you actually are allowed to use wine as long as the wine is produced by a member of the church. And so there are several congregations around the world that regularly use Latter Day Saint-produced wine for the communion.
[00:14:27] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:14:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:14:29] Katie Dooley: I think it's interesting that a Latter Day Saint would be interested in making wine. Right. Because you've grown up being told no.
[00:14:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and I think that's why it's such a small.
[00:14:41] Katie Dooley: Small portion.
[00:14:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:14:42] Katie Dooley: You should make some wine, Preston.
[00:14:44] Preston Meyer: Honestly, I have no interest because I hate the taste of the wines that I have tried.
[00:14:49] Katie Dooley: Um, I like, want to figure this out.
[00:14:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's a it's a real thing and it's it's not even really an exception to the rule. It's a reversion to the standard when everybody's comfortable with it kind of thing.
[00:15:08] Katie Dooley: I feel like you don't know the answer to the question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Would there be members of the church who would decline member made wine?
[00:15:17] Preston Meyer: Very likely.
[00:15:18] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:15:20] Preston Meyer: I can't say I've gone and done a survey, but.
[00:15:23] Katie Dooley: Does it need to be like a consensus? Like we're going to drink Bob's wine? Or if you want Bob's wine, you can have it. If not, there's water.
[00:15:31] Preston Meyer: I feel like the situation would be bishop approves wine. Somebody goes, I don't want this red stuff. And then afterwards goes to the bishop and say, don't do that. And then they have a long talk with the bishop and the bishop says it's okay. And then the naysayer is like, well, I'm not gonna. And then they have to decide if they're going to change it to be more inclusive and they probably would.
[00:15:56] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:15:57] Preston Meyer: Thank you. That's how I see that.
[00:15:59] Katie Dooley: Thank you for that uh sideshow.
[00:16:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:16:05] Katie Dooley: General rule. Most Christian denominations again, there are a few exceptions, like the LDS church figures since JC, Jesus Christ drank wine, that it's okay to drink wine and alcohol in moderation.
[00:16:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And the way it's developed in the LDS tradition is kind of interesting that, um, a lot of people think that Joseph Smith said, don't drink wine, don't drink any alcohol. Not true. He specifically forbade what is classified as strong drinks. We're talking like whiskey. Yeah. So wine doesn't qualify as a strong drink, and it's fine. Beer doesn't count as a strong drink and was fine.
[00:16:47] Katie Dooley: He's literally saying this to someone who's tipsy on cider on an empty stomach. So, yes!
[00:16:56] Preston Meyer: But it wasn't until Brigham Young was the head of the church and they were... They decided to crack down on things just a little bit more and really decided, okay, this rule against drunkenness isn't enough because people are still drinking and getting more drunk than they should be. And so we're just gonna say, no, cut it out outright. Let's just say no more alcohol.
[00:17:23] Katie Dooley: How? I don't know if you know... How much time... How close was this to the temperance movement? Because I feel like a lot of this was happening at the same time where, looking back, I'm sure, as mental health was just collapsing and everyone was drinking to excess, because that was where the temperance movements began, as you know.
[00:17:40] Preston Meyer: What year is are we looking at for the at for the temperance movement?
[00:17:43] Katie Dooley: I don't have my phone on me because I'm a good podcaster?
[00:17:48] Preston Meyer: All right, well, let's whip out my Google.
[00:17:50] Katie Dooley: Ew, Preston.
[00:17:53] Preston Meyer: That's not what I call it.
[00:17:55] Katie Dooley: Oh, wow.
[00:17:57] Katie Dooley: Cause I just feel like a lot of this overlapped.
[00:18:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah, this would have been before the the widespread temperance movement.
[00:18:04] Katie Dooley: But, like, how long before?
[00:18:06] Preston Meyer: A couple of decades.
[00:18:07] Katie Dooley: Okay. But not like 200 years before.
[00:18:10] Preston Meyer: No.
[00:18:10] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:18:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Yes. Tradition isn't that old. We're just reaching 200 years now.
[00:18:17] Katie Dooley: Oh. Happy birthday. Yeah, I just felt like there was a whole, like, movement, but I guess two decades in the grand scheme of things isn't that far apart. So they were just ahead of the curve.
[00:18:30] Preston Meyer: Sure. I mean, outright banning tobacco, which did happen during Joseph Smith's time, was way ahead of the curve.
[00:18:38] Katie Dooley: Wow. We didn't even know it caused cause cancer then.
[00:18:41] Preston Meyer: Right? We didn't really have a good idea of any of the health.
[00:18:45] Katie Dooley: Interesting. That is actually interesting.
[00:18:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, because he banned it in the 1830s. And we learned the harmful effects of tobacco and what, the 90s.
[00:18:53] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah. No, that is actually really interesting because, I mean, you can visibly see the harm that alcohol. Alcohol.
[00:19:03] Preston Meyer: We've got a long history with alcohol. It's kind of obvious.
[00:19:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Right. And I mean, if you look at old temperance things, it was because they were drunk men in the... And I know a lot of this is propaganda, but drunk men in the streets and beating their wives and missing work and spending all their money on alcohol, like we can visibly see the ramifications of drinking to excess. But like smoking, we don't see it until. Yeah, you know, 40 years later and you're dying of lung cancer. So that is actually super interesting that he banned it in the 1830s.
[00:19:32] Preston Meyer: Well, and it's kind of nifty that in the same breath almost as saying, hey, don't use tobacco for chew or smoke or anything like that. He does lay out why it's so useful for us that it's good for treating bruises, which apparently had been a thing for a long time that nobody does anymore.
[00:19:52] Katie Dooley: Like you just put it on.
[00:19:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:19:55] Katie Dooley: A bruise?
[00:19:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I think you paste it.
[00:19:57] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:19:58] Preston Meyer: And then, yeah. But nobody does that anymore.
[00:20:02] Katie Dooley: I don't even know where you get tobacco leaves to make a paste. I know where you can get dried tobacco to smoke, but not...
[00:20:10] Preston Meyer: Well, you might be able to try it out with snuff, but I bet you it's probably not going to work.
[00:20:16] Katie Dooley: Snuff has too many chemicals in it, for sure.
[00:20:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I don't think you want that on your skin.
[00:20:21] Katie Dooley: You don't? No. Okay.
[00:20:26] Preston Meyer: Anyway.
[00:20:28] Katie Dooley: So what about religions that like drugs?
[00:20:33] Preston Meyer: Oh, man. So there's a whole bunch of them, and I'm going to drop a new word on you.
[00:20:39] Katie Dooley: Okay. I love words.
[00:20:40] Preston Meyer: The new word is entheogen.
[00:20:43] Katie Dooley: Entheogen.
[00:20:44] Preston Meyer: And it is a pretty new word as people have been studying psychedelics and religion together. A fellow named Carl Ruck kind of coined this word. Entheos is the Greek word that more or less means full of God, or God is within. Uh, the word enthusiasm. If you're feeling enthusiastic, you got God in you. That's what the word means.
[00:21:08] Katie Dooley: Oh, really? Wow.
[00:21:09] Preston Meyer: And so the entheogen is that you are becoming full of God with this substance. So it's used to describe psychoactive plants and funguses fungi that have been used to facilitate spiritual experiences. Carl Ruck said, in a strict sense, only those vision producing drugs that can be shown to have figured in shamanic or religious rites would be designated entheogens, but in a looser sense the term could also be applied to other drugs, both natural and artificial, that induce alterations of consciousness. Similar to those documented for for ritual ingestion of traditional entheogens. So now you have a new word.
[00:21:53] Katie Dooley: Cool. Thank you so much.
[00:21:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:21:54] Katie Dooley: Put that in my back pocket.
[00:21:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The idea is that they when talking about religious drug trips. They don't want to use the word hallucinogen because it's just I guess doesn't match exactly what the function is. And psychedelics also doesn't pair nicely in this field of study I guess.
[00:22:19] Katie Dooley: It is it is interesting and I don't know if you I added some notes sort of to that point of like there's almost like an intent of why you're using drugs and neither of us are drug users. So if you're if you're listening, post on Discord, but it sounds like there's like this intent to why you're doing it can actually change for sure the experience you're having. I think some of that is also your background too. So we'll talk about a study they did at Johns Hopkins.
[00:22:48] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah.
[00:22:48] Katie Dooley: Did you read that?
[00:22:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah I did.
[00:22:49] Katie Dooley: Yeah. They gave a bunch of drugs to religious leaders so...
[00:22:53] Preston Meyer: We'll get into that. All right. So most famously, the Rastafari are very pro-cannabis.
[00:23:03] Katie Dooley: Yep. It's probably the most famous drug religion.
[00:23:07] Preston Meyer: And only famous, really because of Bob Marley. And then later on, Snoop Dogg.
[00:23:13] Katie Dooley: And just like, I think there's this North American drug culture that, like.
[00:23:20] Preston Meyer: That latched on to those two figures very strongly.
[00:23:23] Katie Dooley: Those two figures, but also like for so many years, until recently, we had the Marijuana Party of Canada where it's like, okay, so now I'm like allowed to do it, right? So if I say I'm a Rastafari. Then I can do it. You know what I mean? Like, just as an excuse to smoke weed. As opposed to actually being in the belief system and the culture of.
[00:23:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:23:47] Katie Dooley: Rastafarianism.
[00:23:48] Preston Meyer: So an excellent example of the negative form of cultural appropriation.
[00:23:55] Katie Dooley: Yes. And it will one day do. It's on our list of full episode on Rastafari. Super misunderstood because we do that to predominantly black religions. Thanks racism.
[00:24:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's a bummer.
[00:24:10] Katie Dooley: Yeah, just like Voodoo. It's... people think it's one thing and it's another.
[00:24:15] Preston Meyer: Right. It doesn't help that Rastafarianism is relatively new. Like it's about 100 years old. Like, not even yet, which is a little bit weird and easy to forget sometimes. But cannabis is very important. Just in the same way that there was special incense that we burned in the temples and at the altars in Judaism, and starting to look like there's evidence that that included cannabis. The Rastafari tradition leans heavily into this idea. Before we had archeological evidence to back it up.
[00:24:50] Katie Dooley: You're on to something.
[00:24:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's kind of cool. Scholastically speaking anyway. And most Rastafarians, I think, identify as Jewish or Jewish adjacent, which is kind of cool. They do use the Hebrew Bible, and there's a good handful of passages in it that reinforce the practice pretty nicely. So there's a part in Genesis chapter three that says, thou shalt eat the herb of the field. So yeah, that's.
[00:25:20] Katie Dooley: That's I mean, it's not a crop.
[00:25:22] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:25:22] Katie Dooley: They said herb.
[00:25:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah, that's the trick. It's pretty wide open. It can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. It certainly can't be used against Rastafarianism.
[00:25:32] Katie Dooley: There aren't a lot of field herbs.
[00:25:34] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:25:35] Katie Dooley: Truly.
[00:25:36] Preston Meyer: We got dill.
[00:25:37] Katie Dooley: That is. Yeah.
[00:25:40] Preston Meyer: Then in Exodus chapter ten, it says, eat every herb of the land. Now that's a little bit more explicit of if it's there, it's good. So easy enough to jump on board with that and go with this. And then in Proverbs chapter 15, there's a great line that says better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. So basically that means that it's good to have a meal without any meat, which is nonstandard in the Jewish tradition. If there is love of the table, then to have the expected meat and be surrounded with people that suck or who hate you.
[00:26:28] Katie Dooley: Ah well, good thing we're having a vegetarian meal with love tonight.
[00:26:32] Preston Meyer: Yay!
[00:26:34] Katie Dooley: I don't know. We're having pizza. There could be meat on it.
[00:26:36] Preston Meyer: I expect there to be meat.
[00:26:39] Katie Dooley: If you have your say.
[00:26:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah, exactly.
[00:26:44] Katie Dooley: It's important to note that Rastafari discouraged the use of other drugs and alcohol, and that cannabis isn't meant to be used lightly or recreationally. It is a sacrament to connect with God. You don't just like blaze it, 420.
[00:27:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:27:04] Katie Dooley: Can you tell that I don't.
[00:27:07] Preston Meyer: Uh, don't have the lingo, not part of the culture.
[00:27:10] Katie Dooley: Right.
[00:27:10] Preston Meyer: Basically, the cannabis is meant to be smoked at groundings and a couple other things sometimes, but it's a special religious thing. Not a pastime, not a thing to do because you're bored or it's Friday night and let's light up. It's obviously very different from a lot of the appropriation that we have seen.
[00:27:36] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. In addition to smoking cannabis, which is the most common way to partake at these grounding ceremonies, they often use it as a tea or in or as a cooking herb.
[00:27:49] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. And there's I mean there's so many different things that you can do with cannabis. Moving on to the Hindus, what they do is kind of novel. In India there's this thing called bhang, which sounds a lot like bong but isn't.
[00:28:05] Katie Dooley: B-h-a-n-g, bhang.
[00:28:07] Preston Meyer: So bhang is a paste made from cannabis leaves. And it's legal because it's the leaves, not the flowers or the fruits or the buds.
[00:28:17] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:28:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's weird that they've defined cannabis legally as a specific parts of the plant in India, to being the flowers and the fruits and also the stems is part of it too.
[00:28:33] Katie Dooley: Is illegal?
[00:28:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:28:35] Katie Dooley: But the leaves are good to go.
[00:28:36] Preston Meyer: The leaves are good to go.
[00:28:40] Katie Dooley: Well, so they can smear it on toast or drink it mixed with milk.
[00:28:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's like your Nesquik, except green and thick.
[00:28:51] Katie Dooley: I mean, I don't like the smell of cannabis, so I can't imagine that tasting good, but...
[00:28:56] Preston Meyer: That's my problem.
[00:28:58] Katie Dooley: Just like I don't understand why Preston doesn't like wine. I'm sure someone's thinking I'm crazy.
[00:29:04] Preston Meyer: Sure. Yeah. So bhang is typically associated with Krishna, who is one of the great figures of Hinduism, pretty widely worshiped as well as the holiday Holi, especially in northern India. You'll find it a much bigger deal, which is kind of interesting. But that's not all, Hinduism also diversifies!
[00:29:28] Katie Dooley: Yes, So the Rigveda. So this is one of their religious texts, mentions the spiritual use of a psychedelic drink called soma. So the quote from the book says, we have drunk soma and become immortal. We have attained the light and discovered the gods. What can our enemies mouths do to harm us now?
[00:29:45] Preston Meyer: So this is a really empowering drug. My instinct is to jump to, like, PCP, but I don't know for sure. And it's actually still a mystery.
[00:29:59] Katie Dooley: Yeah, there's... We don't really know what Soma is. It's the name of the drink as well as the name of the plant, but also the god associated with them according to the Vedas.
[00:30:10] Preston Meyer: But without a good handy drawing in the book.
[00:30:14] Katie Dooley: We don't. We don't know what they're referring to.
[00:30:17] Preston Meyer: I... it's it's kind of weird that it has fallen out of common use so that it has become a mystery. Maybe there's somebody in the depths of the Indian rainforest that knows and still uses it, and we just haven't made contact with them. I don't know. But as it stands right now, we only have guesses on what soma is.
[00:30:40] Katie Dooley: What are some of those guesses?
[00:30:43] Preston Meyer: We've got guesses that maybe it's the ephedra flower, or maybe the harmala or esfand flower, which sounds like a terrible idea because that stuff will kill cows.
[00:30:53] Katie Dooley: Cool.
[00:30:56] Preston Meyer: That's some mighty potent stuff. Uh, there's also the gold cap, psilocybin mushrooms, the magic mushrooms you hear so much about. Right. A lot of people think that might be the key ingredient. And then there's also the Amanita mushrooms, which those are the.
[00:31:14] Katie Dooley: Mushrooms.
[00:31:14] Preston Meyer: The ridiculous mushrooms of Mario, the red with the white spots. And those things are so incredibly, powerfully intoxicant that when it passes through your system and into your bladder and you pee it out. It'll still offer a trip to whoever's willing to drink that urine. But not just that guy. He can pee it out. It can go through this cycle five times and still have an intoxicant effect.
[00:31:39] Katie Dooley: Wow. I don't I don't think I'd want to be the first person to take it.
[00:31:46] Preston Meyer: Right? It can be lethal to the first person. Not always.
[00:31:51] Katie Dooley: How do you get their pee, then?
[00:31:52] Preston Meyer: Okay, so in some places, there's stories of people who are just so poor, but so desperate for a trip that they'll go out with a wooden bowl and catch it when somebody comes out of the party to take a leak. And then they'll hide in their little dark corner and they'll they'll enjoy it for themselves. And you can recycle it for so long. This is actually a thing that we saw as really handy for the Viking Berserkers. That they would have somebody consume the mushrooms, and then the Berserkers would drink that person's urine and intoxicated enough that they could go through the battle and not worry about pain and blood loss, but without the risk of the red mushroom firsthand.
[00:32:46] Katie Dooley: I don't know if I think that's disturbing or super cool.
[00:32:49] Preston Meyer: I mean.
[00:32:50] Katie Dooley: I'm kind.
[00:32:50] Preston Meyer: It's interesting.
[00:32:51] Katie Dooley: Yeah, that's a better word. It's a more politically correct word.
[00:32:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah. We actually didn't talk about the Berserkers in our Norse mythology episode.
[00:32:59] Katie Dooley: No.
[00:33:00] Preston Meyer: Uh, the Berserkers are kind of cool. That's... I mean, it's not really an aspect of their religion, but their interpersonal, cultural tradition where they would send people who would where would they call them bear shirts? That's what Berserker means, where they would have a pelt of a bear with the head on, and that would be kind of their hood. And yeah, they would they would do this. And they were so raving mad that they were called shield biters because this was a thing they would also do. Crazy stuff.
[00:33:33] Katie Dooley: That is. Drugs, man. Drugs.
[00:33:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:33:39] Katie Dooley: We just talked about the Buddhist, Preston.
[00:33:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It turns out there's exceptions.
[00:33:44] Katie Dooley: What? Exceptions to rules. No.
[00:33:48] Preston Meyer: Not all groups are so teetotaly. Uh, most groups do advise against mind-altering drugs of all kinds. But some tantric and casual traditions actually encourage the use of Amanita mushrooms, the ones that make people into shield biters.
[00:34:08] Katie Dooley: Oh, okay. That's terrifying.
[00:34:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah. They're particularly popular among Mahasiddha Buddhists. About a thousand years ago, from the eighth to the 12th century, it was really common. But there's also a growing advocacy among Western Buddhists lately.
[00:34:25] Katie Dooley: What? Western people want to do more drugs? No.
[00:34:27] Preston Meyer: Right. And just use religion as an excuse. Mhm.
[00:34:35] Katie Dooley: Well, it's an interesting exception to the rule.
[00:34:37] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:34:38] Katie Dooley: Another one. And we, we talk about this pretty broadly because there are so many divisions to North American indigenous religion. It really depends on what tribe you're a part of, what part of North America you're a part of. But we had to talk about peyote.
[00:34:54] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:34:57] Katie Dooley: So not common in Canada because it's a cactus. So we don't have peyote up here. So this is not a part of Canadian North American indigenous religions.
[00:35:07] Preston Meyer: You got to go a little further south.
[00:35:08] Katie Dooley: A little further south. That's like Arizona, New Mexico.
[00:35:12] Preston Meyer: Northern Mexico and the states that border it.
[00:35:16] Katie Dooley: Is where you'll find peyote used in their indigenous religion practices.
[00:35:21] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:35:22] Katie Dooley: So it is a cactus that produces mescaline and has been used ritually for more than 5000 years.
[00:35:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:35:30] Katie Dooley: A peyote trip usually takes up your whole day.
[00:35:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we're talking like ten, 12 hours.
[00:35:36] Katie Dooley: You know, the double rainbow meme?
[00:35:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:35:38] Katie Dooley: He was on peyote.
[00:35:39] Preston Meyer: That's not even surprising.
[00:35:41] Katie Dooley: Just. Wow.
[00:35:44] Both Speakers: Double rainbow.
[00:35:47] Katie Dooley: All the way across the sky. Yeah, he was on peyote. So, but it's nature, right? We're eating a cactus. I don't actually know how you take peyote.
[00:36:00] Preston Meyer: I don't know how it's prepared, but you just straight up eat it.
[00:36:06] Katie Dooley: I'm sure you could. Yeah. There's no solidly reliable stats on precise mescaline content in a particular peyote button.
[00:36:13] Preston Meyer: Because natural things are always unpredictable. Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:19] Katie Dooley: It is known to cause auditory and visual hallucinations. While the double rainbow was real, I'm sure he saw a lot more than that.
[00:36:26] Preston Meyer: He very likely did.
[00:36:28] Katie Dooley: And is credited with all sorts of spiritual insights.
[00:36:32] Preston Meyer: You just feel close to God. Sometimes you'll hear the whisperings of God. At the very least, you're definitely going to hear your subconscious reach out and become a lot more part of your conscious life for a minute.
[00:36:49] Katie Dooley: Research shows that peyote, in isolation from other substances, has no long-term cognitive effects, and does not create a physical dependency. That's actually kind of cool.
[00:36:59] Preston Meyer: Right? But like anything else that you really like, there's a possibility for a psychological dependency.
[00:37:07] Katie Dooley: Right. You want that whatever, escape.
[00:37:09] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Chasing the dragon. Right?
[00:37:12] Katie Dooley: I wouldn't know, but some people would.
[00:37:16] Preston Meyer: A phrase that I've only ever heard from a DARE presentation.
[00:37:20] Katie Dooley: I was going to say from cops in junior high. Yeah. So mescaline is a controlled substance in both the US and Canada, but peyote is legal for religious and personal use. Get a little peyote cactus in your house just go. It is. Peyote is commercially available as anilinium from dispensaries, where it is advertised to treat hysteria.
[00:37:47] Preston Meyer: Which, of course is a nonsense diagnosis.
[00:37:51] Katie Dooley: Just so you can get whatever you want to get a vibrator, peyote, just cite hysteria.
[00:37:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Good times. As I dug into this, I thought it was really nifty to find that, though. I'm going to try and say this. I have not said it many times before. The Wixaritari religious tradition, which is centered in northern Mexico and also the also the bordering American states has four primary gods. There's more as you get into the more complicated doctrines. But there there's the eagle, the deer, corn and peyote.
[00:38:32] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:38:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So peyote is not just like a sacrament.
[00:38:36] Katie Dooley: It's a god.
[00:38:37] Preston Meyer: One of their important gods.
[00:38:39] Katie Dooley: God they get to munch on just like corn and deer, I would guess. You don't munch on an eagle.
[00:38:45] Preston Meyer: No, no, you don't munch on an eagle. Or at least I've never heard of it being a thing. But I thought that was really nifty.
[00:38:56] Katie Dooley: Yeah, that is really interesting.
[00:38:59] Preston Meyer: But even back in the ancient Greeks, they were into their mind-altering substances, too. The Eleusinian Mysteries used kykeon. There's a few different formulas that are associated with kykeon, but the common intent is to get you drunk. Historians think that ergot, a psychoactive fungus, commonly tainted their barley, and that that was actually the thing that made.
[00:39:25] Katie Dooley: The trip interesting.
[00:39:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:39:28] Katie Dooley: That's cool. Rye beer that gets you high, right?
[00:39:32] Preston Meyer: Mushroom beer.
[00:39:33] Katie Dooley: Mushroom beer. Isn't that just kombucha?
[00:39:37] Preston Meyer: I don't know, what kombucha?
[00:39:38] Katie Dooley: Kombucha is made from mushrooms. Oh, we're gonna we're gonna go on a kombucha trip when we're done.
[00:39:44] Preston Meyer: Oh, are we now?
[00:39:46] Katie Dooley: It's like mushroom tea. But I'm gonna show you a scoby, and you'll hate me for the rest of your life.
[00:39:53] Preston Meyer: Well, we'll see how that goes. Okay, this may be the last episode.
[00:39:56] Katie Dooley: Maybe the last episode. Uh, don't Google Scobys unless you want to be disturbed.
[00:40:03] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:40:03] Katie Dooley: But I'm gonna show you. You don't get a choice, Preston.
[00:40:06] Preston Meyer: Um, also, in old Greece, oracles, especially the Delphic oracles, also used to trip on some mystery substance. Some people say it was mists that would just come out of the ground.
[00:40:19] Katie Dooley: No
[00:40:19] Preston Meyer: That's unless we're talking about spores coming from mushrooms in the ground, in their tents and huts and whatnot. I think that's really unlikely. I think there's more to it.
[00:40:27] Katie Dooley: Smoking something.
[00:40:29] Preston Meyer: Probably, but it's an undetermined substance. We don't know what's up. But generally speaking, scholars are pretty sure they were high on something.
[00:40:39] Katie Dooley: What is the union of plants?
[00:40:42] Preston Meyer: Ah the union of the plants was a Brazilian Christian group very syncretic. They combined a lot of their pre-colonization indigenous religion elements into Christianity in Brazil, and then have spread around the world since 1961, when they were founded. And so there's a bunch in the USA and they love huasca tea or ayahuasca. It's not technically tea. It's not made from the tea plant, but they make a beverage out of it the same way you would make tea.
[00:41:19] Katie Dooley: It's a herbal tea. Then if it's not made from the tea plant.
[00:41:22] Preston Meyer: I guess and so for all those Mormons who are like, I don't only drink herbal tea. Watch yourself. Right.
[00:41:30] Katie Dooley: Because you won't get high.
[00:41:32] Preston Meyer: Uh, so ayahuasca is made from the leaves of the mariri and chacruna plants, and it contains a lot of DMT, which isn't a terrible thing for the body. Your body does naturally produce a little bit of DMT. Not nearly the levels you see in these plants. And it's part of a sacrament of the church. Super important. Um, just like the Rastafarian cannabis, it's not meant to be abused. It's just for the sacrament in the church. Uh, UCLA actually says that these people are healthier than the average Americans. So that's kind of interesting.
[00:42:18] Katie Dooley: I feel like that's not a great...
[00:42:20] Preston Meyer: I mean, it's a low bar.
[00:42:20] Katie Dooley: Baseline, but that's good.
[00:42:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So over the years, especially since through the 90s, it became a really big problem. American police seized a lot of huasca tea as it crossed the border. And then for years, years of fighting in the courts. In 2006, the Supreme Court decided that since it's connected to a religion, it's actually a good excuse for breaking the laws against drug imports and consumption, which sounds a little bit funky, but they cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was a thing that was signed into law very shortly after Bill Clinton took over as president of the US. Yeah, and deviating a little bit from our main course, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is actually kind of kind of interesting. It promises the free exercise of religion can break existing laws. If there is no good reason for the government to enforce the laws in a way that would be detrimental to the group being policed. So if I'm doing drugs for a religious purpose and it doesn't hurt anybody, I get to keep doing it even though it's illegal.
[00:43:37] Katie Dooley: Which is why I'm kind of on the let's decriminalize all dwugs. Dwugs, drugs, let's decriminalize all drugs. Because truthfully, for the most part, you're only hurting yourself. Which is I'm not saying that's a good thing but then it breaks this this chain of supply.
[00:43:56] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. If drugs are legal you get a much safer chain of supply and you.
[00:44:04] Katie Dooley: Can monitor and.
[00:44:06] Preston Meyer: And it's a lot less scary to get help.
[00:44:08] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:44:09] Preston Meyer: All kinds of benefits. So basically if your church regularly or traditionally uses mescaline or DMT or cannabis. If it's not causing any harm, you have the green light according to the Supreme Court of the United States of America, if you're outside of America, you're going to have to rely on a different authority or figure something else out.
[00:44:30] Katie Dooley: Stick with cannabis in Canada, it's fine.
[00:44:32] Preston Meyer: Right? Which I thought was really interesting as I read up on this. This is a defense that polygamists are very likely to use because if it's not hurting anybody, we're going to exercise our freedom of religion.
[00:44:44] Katie Dooley: I have no problem with polygamy, right?
[00:44:47] Preston Meyer: Honestly, it it feels really weird to me that we have any laws at all that refer to marriage, all of the bad things about marriage, like using it to control people who are too young, because we have decided to allow old people to marry 13-year-old girls. If we don't have laws about marriage, that doesn't mean, oh yeah, now we can have old people marry seven-year-olds. It means that a marriage has no power over those people.
[00:45:16] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Interesting. I just think as long as it's consenting adults and I mean, we've definitely all watched the TLC like Sister Wives.
[00:45:25] Preston Meyer: No, I have not.
[00:45:28] Katie Dooley: I'm surprised, I'm shocked. But there's a few. There's a few of them and they're all like FLDS.
[00:45:32] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:45:32] Katie Dooley: And I wonder how happy they are if they're just doing it for religious reasons. Um, but if you were like, ah, literally like, I would like a second wife and everyone's on board and like, as long as you don't feel like you're pressured to, for religious reasons, go hard, my friend. I remember watching years ago an episode of QI with Stephen Fry. It's a British game show. Um, I highly recommend if you haven't checked it out. And he basically was like, how is polygamy illegal with consenting adults and adultery is legal when it's non-consensual for obviously the person that's being cheated on.
[00:46:09] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:46:10] Katie Dooley: He's like that like, that makes no sense.
[00:46:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:46:13] Katie Dooley: Not that I think people should go to jail or be for adultery, but, like.
[00:46:17] Preston Meyer: Change the other law.
[00:46:19] Katie Dooley: I don't know. Again, as long as you're a consenting adult, I don't care.
[00:46:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I have a couple of friends that are openly polyamorous and a few more friends that openly advocate for it without being into it themselves. So it's I think I am seeing a lot more outside of religious contexts.
[00:46:38] Katie Dooley: And I think that's the key piece is, you know, you see all these sad sister wives on television. It's like, how, how into this are you? Uh, but I also believe that there are polyamorous people out there. I don't... It's valid.Um, so yeah why not go hard. Go hard all seven of you like together? Not that there's only seven polyamorous people. I'm picturing that one of our listeners is in a seven-way relationship.
[00:47:08] Preston Meyer: Uh, generally speaking, there are a lot of scholars who think that these drug trips are the seeds of religion. That religion wouldn't have existed without these kinds of hallucinations. Easy enough to speculate on. I think it gets a lot trickier when you try and get specific. I don't.
[00:47:27] Katie Dooley: I mean, I think some of this comes it's hard because everything's so old, right? But I like I know enough people that are artists in whatever sense that will get high to create art.
[00:47:39] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:47:39] Katie Dooley: So maybe you get high and then wrote your gospel. Right? And you fleshed it out when you were sober. Ernest Hemingway said, write drunk, edit sober. So.
[00:47:49] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:47:50] Katie Dooley: Um, I've tried that for design. It was terrible.
[00:47:54] Preston Meyer: I bet.
[00:47:55] Katie Dooley: Yeah. It's brutal. Uh, right. So I think there I mean, it's all speculation, right? But, uh, you know, there could be something that's 5000 years old and someone smoked a bunch of peyote and then wrote a religious book. We don't know. We don't know.
[00:48:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's all guesses. Most of history is guesswork until we find hard, concrete evidence. And even then, it's tricky to interpret the concrete evidence that we get.
[00:48:28] Katie Dooley: And then throw in drugs, which happen all in your head.
[00:48:32] Preston Meyer: Right? It's tricky.
[00:48:35] Katie Dooley: Which makes a 2017 study by Johns Hopkins a super interesting study. So what they did is they found about two dozen religious leaders and just gave them a bunch of magic mushrooms. It was more controlled than that. But that was the premise.
[00:48:50] Preston Meyer: There was a control group, too.
[00:48:53] Katie Dooley: And they picked religious leaders across multiple religions. The only two they struggled to find was a Muslim imam, which isn't surprising.
[00:49:02] Preston Meyer: Because they would be pretty strictly against it.
[00:49:04] Katie Dooley: And a Hindu priest, which I thought was weird because Hindus pretty loosey goosey about drug use.
[00:49:09] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Oh, well.
[00:49:11] Katie Dooley: But they couldn't find them. So generally, the participants reported having deep, transcendental, transcendental religious experiences as opposed to just like a wild acid trip. No double rainbows here.
[00:49:26] Preston Meyer: But maybe other colors. Maybe just not in the convenient rainbow shape.
[00:49:31] Katie Dooley: Right. So they all had these deep religious experiences as opposed to just being high and eating snacks.
[00:49:39] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:49:40] Katie Dooley: You can tell Preston I have no experience whatsoever. They also reported a more universal view on religion. So this was a trend that they viewed each other as different paths to the same goal as opposed to. I mean obviously if you're willing to take mushrooms you're a pretty chill clergy member. But uh, as opposed to opponents, they saw the, I guess, like the bigger picture and that we're all the same man.
[00:50:13] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:50:14] Katie Dooley: So I thought that.
[00:50:14] Preston Meyer: The Dude Abides.
[00:50:15] Katie Dooley: The Dude Abides. So I thought that was also really interesting, especially when we get into I mean, obviously in North America we see a lot of Christian fundamentalism and they're hard line. And and then here they're leaders getting high and they're like, nah man it's good.
[00:50:30] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah it's kind of a cool study.
[00:50:35] Katie Dooley: I thought it was great. I recommend reading up on it.
[00:50:38] Preston Meyer: So yeah tricky thing to talk about when we don't have any first-hand experience for the vast majority of things we've talked about today.
[00:50:45] Katie Dooley: Right?
[00:50:47] Preston Meyer: Uh, armchair scholarship it is.
[00:50:52] Katie Dooley: Uh, but if you've used drugs to have a religious experience, we'd love to interview you for the Holy Watermelon podcast.
[00:50:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I think that'd be a good time.
[00:51:00] Katie Dooley: Yeah. What else do we need at the Holy Watermelon Podcast, Preston.
[00:51:05] Preston Meyer: Oh, if you want to tell us more without throwing your voice out for the whole world, you can join us on our Discord and just share your words without the voice behind them. We have some good discussions on Discord, great memes and all. We've got our merch on Spreadshop that's getting to be pretty good and we've got all of our social media, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all the things. Can't forget Patreon. We would love your support. If you don't want to buy shirts or tote bags, but just want to get maybe some extra content that we are putting together. Patreon is the way to go.
[00:51:47] Katie Dooley: Love it! Blaze it!
[00:51:49] Preston Meyer: Thanks for joining us
[00:51:51] Both Speakers: Peace be with you! | |||
| 16 Jan 2023 | Cash Blessings | 01:05:38 | |
There might be nothing more American than the emergence of Capitalist Jesus and the Prosperity Gospel. This episode explores the men behind the phenomenon, and the scriptural passages that are abused to defend it. Not all Pentecostal Christians fall into this trap, but these pastors have millions of followers around the world. Many of them are fundamentalists in some ways, though radically anti-scriptural in other (more important) ways. Mesmerism and the New Thought Movement are significant stones in this foundation, and Televangelism--especially the Word of Faith ministries--has brought a global audience to these hateful preachers, including Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin, Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, and Creflo Dollar. Oral Roberts led a tremendous empire, including a whole university (more successful than Trump's), and he was the personal mentor of Kenneth Copeland, who raised big money for Angel Flight 44, only to refuse to fly relief to Haiti. Of course there are high profile prostitution scandals, and preachers who later admit that they've never taken the time to read the Bible until they were locked up with nothing but time and their 'favorite book' after fraud convictions. Some of these men will demand you go into debt to pay tithes, others later claim that tithing isn't biblical (Creflo Dollar). All of these preachers, and more, are comfortable asking you to fund their lavish lifestyle, while their fancy words let them off the hook for any return on your investment. Senate financial probes, and fraud charges aren't enough to protect the most vulnerable people among us. Only education can fix this problem; Holy Watermelon is here to help. Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram In this episode, we also mentioned John Oliver's take on televangelists, and PreachersNSneakers | |||
| 13 Mar 2023 | Is He Caliphied? | 00:40:38 | |
What qualifies a man to lead the Ummah? Islam, like any religious tradition, is not monolithic. Let's explore the history of schisms and the personalities behind them in the early Islamic period. After Muhammad's death in 632 CE, there was a succession crisis; for some, it was a bigger crisis than for others. The first to be elected to take over leadership was Abu Bakr, the prophet's father-in-law. For decades, the followers of Muhammad were fairly united, until one of his sons-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, took over as the fourth caliph. This was followed by a great schism between what would come to be known as the Sunni and Shia Muslims. The Shia have splintered further since the 7th century: The Ismailis adhere to inheritance of a lost son, and the Twelvers hope for the return of a mysterious claim of a hidden child. Despite the many schisms that established the disunity of Islamic thought, there is much that they retain in common. We also explore the traditions that fuel the authoritarian fundamental extremists that so many are rightly worried about. All this and more... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord | |||
| 05 Jun 2023 | Repeat After Me | 00:50:20 | |
What is the Quran? It is among the most published texts in the world, and among the most vilified in the global west. Who was really responsible for the book as we know it today, and how did imperial power play into its history? Why is it that so many interpretations of the text are considered authoritative, and what efforts were made to ensure the acceptance of such ambiguity? The recitations of the prophet Mohammad are controversial, not only in our globalized community, but within early Islam. According to the myth (foundational narrative), Mohammad never wrote down the recitations he received from Allah (the Abrahamic God) through the angelic intermediary. He may even have discouraged his companions from writing them, though if that's the case, they weren't discouraged for long. After Abu Bakr compiled an edition of the things Mohammad heard from the angel Gabriel, Uthman put a lot of effort into codifying the most ambiguous text possible--not to create confusion, but to accomodate the varied recitations held sacred by Muslims in several communities. This codex wasn't initially popular with everybody, but the heavy hand of authoritative leadership nearly eliminated every unauthorized version of the Quran, leaving only the one (generously ambiguous) text to rule them all. In this episode, we explore the nature of the recitations, their content, and the contention surrounding textual variants that exist between versions of the Quran. A lot of great scholarly work has dug into this content, and we just scratch the surface. All this and more... Support us on Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram | |||
| 27 Feb 2023 | THOTs & Prayers | 01:02:53 | |
Sex and sexuality among believers isn't as monolithic as you might think, and of course there's the outlying "bad actors" to keep this spectrum broad. The Torah has some strict rules about who Jewish men should avoid, but isn't too quick to prescribe punishment for premarital sex. The Christian New Testament has some rules about minding your own business. Islamic tradition has some strong words about oral sex. And so much more.... The word 'abomination' gets a brief exploration, the sort of thing you might not expect. Marianismo is a growing problem among religious communities, though it's been around for a long time, too. We also explore "purity culture" and the "Madonna-Whore" complex of Freudian fame. The Dharmic religions have another angle on sexuality, and the Buddha encourages the faithful to avoid such attachments. The sexy theme of the month wouldn't be complete if we didn't take a quick look at the Kama Sutra.
Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram
[00:00:00] Katie Dooley: Hey everyone, trigger warning on this episode there will be some sexual assault content.
[00:00:18] Preston Meyer: You also don't know how to start this episode.
[00:00:20] Katie Dooley: Nope. Sure don't because it's awkward. It's like that sex talk with your parents, but it's that sex talk with your friend.
[00:00:28] Preston Meyer: That's fair.
[00:00:29] Katie Dooley: I'm Katie.
[00:00:30] Preston Meyer: Hi, I'm Preston.
[00:00:32] Katie Dooley: And this is...
[00:00:33] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon podcast.
[00:00:36] Katie Dooley: We're kicking it up a notch. We talked about Saint Valentine a couple weeks ago. Now we're talking about sex.
[00:00:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we're done with the courtship, and now we're into the exciting bit.
[00:00:46] Katie Dooley: But not with each other.
[00:00:49] Preston Meyer: Yes. Important details.
[00:00:52] Katie Dooley: We're just friends, listeners, if you've ever wondered.
[00:00:57] Preston Meyer: Both married to other people.
[00:00:59] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:01:00] Preston Meyer: Well, it's there's there's a lot of people that that's not a barrier for, but...
[00:01:05] Katie Dooley: Fair. It is for our monogamous Protestant relationships.
[00:01:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:01:13] Katie Dooley: But nonetheless, we're gonna have a sex talk.
[00:01:16] Preston Meyer: Yep. A lot of religions are very strict on sexual purity. Of course, there's a spectrum. You've got some Christians who are way into free love. Don't get too close to your pastor. If he's really encouraging free love. Um, you're probably in a danger cult.
[00:01:40] Katie Dooley: Um, yes. Most religions think that sex should only be between a married man and his wife. Female wife. Yeah.
[00:01:51] Preston Meyer: Wife does imply female, but.
[00:01:53] Katie Dooley: Well, you know.
[00:01:54] Preston Meyer: You know, there's some, uh. Ambiguity now, and that's people are going to do what they're going to do.
[00:02:01] Katie Dooley: And people going to fuck what they want to fuck.
[00:02:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, but there are rules depending on who you hang out with.
[00:02:08] Katie Dooley: Yeah, depending on what your sky daddy says and the people that interpret that.
[00:02:14] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:02:19] Katie Dooley: Uh, wow. Well, I feel like a kid again.
[00:02:22] Preston Meyer: Let's let's take a look at the the judaist tradition, that premarital sex is really not a huge deal according to the Torah. There's no strong verbiage banning it. Obviously, it's not encouraged. That's just not something we find in Scripture. I guess.
[00:02:45] Katie Dooley: But You're not going to burn in hell forever for it.
[00:02:47] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, the idea of burning in hell for having sex feels fully ludicrous. But a lot of churches are happy to teach that we're not there yet. We're still talking about Judaism. The more Orthodox you get, the more it is discouraged. That's basically the deal.
[00:03:09] Katie Dooley: Yeah. If you remember from our Judaism episode very long time ago, you have your like reform, your conservative and your Orthodox, and that would kind of be the exact scale of liberal to conservative.
[00:03:22] Preston Meyer: Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. In Exodus chapter 22. So just very shortly after the Ten Commandments block, which is, of course, more than ten commandments all on its own, and there's hundreds more. There's a little explanation that if a man seduces an unmarried woman, he is expected to marry her later, or at least pay her for the privilege, if the father forbids the marriage, which may look a little bit like prostitution.
[00:03:55] Katie Dooley: Yeah, that's sounds... especially the way you worded it, preston. Paying for the privilege.
[00:03:59] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Generally, this payment is expected to be the value of the dowry. And that's just the deal. They lived in a culture where very often, um, if a woman was not a virgin, um, at the with the new definition of virgin, then she would remain a definite. She would remain a virgin in the old definition of virgin for a very long time.
[00:04:26] Katie Dooley: If she wasn't a virgin and a very good liar. Looking at you, Mary.
[00:04:35] Preston Meyer: A lot of people like to find fault in the code that, through faulty interpretation, requires a woman to marry her rapist, which is, yeah, really problematic way to read that. A legal code would never reward somebody for committing such a terrible crime.
[00:04:54] Katie Dooley: So this is like consenting teenagers that are misbehaving.
[00:05:00] Preston Meyer: Offer that first part. Yeah. If you seduce an unmarried woman, that's what that situation is, generally speaking. For the cases of rape that kind of fall into this category is taking a real loose definition of seduce, of course, the man can be required to marry the woman, not the woman is required to marry the man. It's more or less up to her and her family. Does she have a chance of getting married after this? Then she's not going to go and marry the rapist. But if she really doesn't have great prospects, she can force him to support her financially for the rest of their lives.
[00:05:45] Katie Dooley: I like that.
[00:05:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it seems perfectly reasonable.
[00:05:48] Katie Dooley: That should still be a thing.
[00:05:49] Preston Meyer: But on the books it is technically a marriage, one that can be annulled. Not really a big deal. If her prospects change in the future. She doesn't have to see her rapist again, but he must continue paying to support her.
[00:06:07] Katie Dooley: What else does the Torah say, Preston?
[00:06:10] Preston Meyer: Uh, the Torah does explicitly demand that sexual partners both consent to the activity. Rape is one of the most serious sins. It doesn't get rewarded with, "Oh, yeah, now you get to keep her." Nonsense. Okay.
[00:06:26] Katie Dooley: The Torah also likes people to make babies.
[00:06:30] Preston Meyer: This is true.
[00:06:31] Katie Dooley: This one gets quoted a lot. Also in fundamental christianism.
[00:06:36] Preston Meyer: It's the first commandment. Adam and Eve are told, go and replenish the earth, which means fill it with babies.
[00:06:44] Katie Dooley: So everyone's a-cozyin'
[00:06:46] Preston Meyer: Sure. I. I've seen so many memes in the last month of people who just deliberately misunderstand the Bible. There's no way this is an accident or a failure of intelligence. They're deliberately misunderstanding it. To say that adam and Eve only had three sons, and so something hinky is going on there, either magical between the brothers or they're having sex with their mom. Not only is it strictly forbidden in the Bible, but it's not a major leap to just believe that they had sisters.
[00:07:25] Katie Dooley: Or to take what it's worth and know that it is a fictitious story. Genesis 1:28, a classic! I put in brackets. Classic. "And God bless them. And God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth."
[00:07:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So, um, the bad thing that comes out of there that later needs to be clarified expressly is that bestiality is forbidden, and this passage does not encourage it.
[00:08:06] Katie Dooley: Oh, subdue it does not mean have sex with it?
[00:08:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That's it's bad. Not just because it's, you know, an unclean thing. No, it's an abuse of an animal. And in fact, there's an awful lot of relationships that are forbidden in the Bible. Generally, they're worded as do not have sexual relationships, or slightly more euphemistically, but these also do apply to who you can marry. Every single one of these laws is addressed to men, and just expected that women are going to follow pretty much the same laws. First, incest straight-up forbidden. Now that we don't need to marry brothers and sisters because, you know, there's more than eight people on the planet. It's a bad idea. It's been proven to be a bad idea.
[00:09:04] Katie Dooley: Most of the royal families.
[00:09:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Bad times.
[00:09:10] Katie Dooley: It's why Charles isn't a very attractive man because his parents were cousins.
[00:09:15] Preston Meyer: This is a on paper, true fact. According to the Torah, your cousins are fine. Even first cousins. But aunts, step-moms and half-sisters are off limits. This also includes your in-laws, which is actually why the whole category of in-laws exists is because they are now legally your family.
[00:09:40] Katie Dooley: That's what in-law means.
[00:09:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but we don't treat it that way when we talk about it in regular conversation today. Right? It's just, oh, this is what we call the family that we married into now without actually considering the ramifications of it that.
[00:09:55] Katie Dooley: I can never. I'm not even going to say it on air.
[00:10:00] Preston Meyer: Way too many people. Cheat on their significant other with their in-laws. It happens all the time and it is really just embarrassing for the whole family.
[00:10:15] Katie Dooley: I hate Uncle Jamie. Love, Actually. Happens in Love, Actually.
[00:10:20] Preston Meyer: Okay. I didn't watch it. I think I saw the last five minutes of it once. I'll probably get around to it. Maybe not. Who knows? Homosexual anal sex is, legally speaking, disgusting. That's the verbiage that's used. And that just doesn't feel like divine communication to me. That feels like somebody added their own personal commentary, right?
[00:10:46] Katie Dooley: I mean when you have creepeth in a few books before, now you're talking... Creepeth. I like that a lot.
[00:10:54] Preston Meyer: Uh, the animal that creepeth there actually specifically talking about reptiles.
[00:10:58] Katie Dooley: Don't fuck a lizard.
[00:11:02] Preston Meyer: I mean that's definitely on the list. You also don't eat lizards if you're following the the Jewish dietary code.
[00:11:11] Katie Dooley: All right.
[00:11:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean most of the world's not super concerned about that. Most of the world doesn't follow those dietary codes anymore.
[00:11:20] Katie Dooley: I literally thought you were talking about sex.
[00:11:22] Preston Meyer: Nope.
[00:11:25] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:11:29] Preston Meyer: Thanks for that. Bestiality is forbidden. Sex during menstruation is bad, technically, making the man ritually unclean for seven days. Menstruation already makes women ritually unclean for seven days. This doesn't mean that they're sinful or, like, awful or bad or any moral judgment. It's just you should bathe before you go to the temple. And here's the time to make sure that you're not gross. That's basically the deal, because some people smell bad and it's very often the men.
[00:12:04] Katie Dooley: So often the men.
[00:12:06] Preston Meyer: That's basically the deal. So this just means that he needs to clean himself physically and wait a week before he can go to the temple, as we had talked about a few months ago in our talk about how celibacy came about in the Catholic tradition, normally he would just need to wash after sex and then wait for sunset, and then he's good to go again to the temple. He could do whatever he wants alternatively too. Generally speaking, Jews are forbidden from having sex with Gentiles. Depends on who you hang out with on how strictly they follow that rule. And to be fair, that's true of all of these rules.
[00:12:50] Katie Dooley: It's a spectrum.
[00:12:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And priests are also forbidden from having sex with divorcees or converts. Yeah, I don't know why I stumbled through that word.
[00:13:01] Katie Dooley: I just don't. That's an interesting rule.
[00:13:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The idea is that if she has a baby, is it his? If she's a new convert, then it's possible that she wasn't following all the expected rules before being joined to the priest. Um, but for somebody who has been a divorcee or a convert for a long time, I feel like that rule is less necessary, even with this specific thought behind it. There might be more thoughts about it. Who knows? And I'm sure there's different expectations among different groups there too. Not that there's a whole lot of Cohens doing their temple duty anymore anyway. But there are definitely some people who will expect the rabbis to live up to these standards as well. Which makes some sense. They're not the same thing, but I get it. It's also forbidden to have sex with anybody who is born from parents while they were found to have been cheating on their partners, which is a really worrying thing.
[00:14:08] Katie Dooley: It is like that took me a minute to wrap my head around and also unfair for that poor child.
[00:14:14] Preston Meyer: So. Yeah, they. Yeah. So these bastards get a pass if their partners are also bastards. Or if one of your parents cheated on the other and that's how you came to be then.
[00:14:30] Katie Dooley: You gotta find another one like you. Wow.
[00:14:34] Preston Meyer: And. Theoretically. Your child, if born without that stigma, will be able to be free and be with whoever they want.
[00:14:47] Katie Dooley: Okay, cursed for a generation.
[00:14:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, just the one generation. Also, we find a lot in the Bible. Talk of concubines. Concubine is literally somebody who lives in your house that you get to have sex with.
[00:15:07] Katie Dooley: That you're not married to them.
[00:15:08] Preston Meyer: Right? That you're not married to.
[00:15:09] Katie Dooley: I was like I have a concubine? No.
[00:15:11] Preston Meyer: You don't.
[00:15:12] Katie Dooley: I have a husband.
[00:15:13] Preston Meyer: You used to have a concubine. You no longer do. And that's all the word means. People have come up with all this kind of. Well, she's tied to him in some way. That's not technically a marriage. I mean, usually that's what we call slavery. Usually, if a man had a female slave, she would be a concubine. That's kind of the deal there.
[00:15:41] Katie Dooley: I found a cool Jewish term called ona. Ona is a Jewish law that states a husband must satisfy his wife's sexual needs. I like that.
[00:15:53] Preston Meyer: It's a good rule.
[00:15:54] Katie Dooley: And this is regardless of whether or not they can or want to get pregnant. So that's pretty cool because a lot of religions say only for babies.
[00:16:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that causes all kinds of problems.
[00:16:05] Katie Dooley: Like the Duggars, I said it. Check out our bonus episode, "Josh Duggar is a Creep" on Patreon.
[00:16:17] Preston Meyer: Yes, that was some fun.
[00:16:20] Katie Dooley: No it wasn't.
[00:16:21] Preston Meyer: There was some fun. It was also a lot of ick. But there was some fun.
[00:16:27] Katie Dooley: You think this episode has a trigger warning...?
[00:16:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, men cannot force their wives to have sex. So it's actually a lot less of an obligation the other way around for women to satisfy all of their husband needs. There's a lot of social pressure, historically speaking, but it's not a law. But, we've talked about the the nature of the Bible and in our Patreon exclusive Bible study where Katie goes through the Bible for the first time, learning all of the weird and wonderful things in there. There is porn.
[00:17:08] Katie Dooley: I read some of it researching this and that's my comment in the notes I wrote nothing else: is the Song of Songs is a horny old book.
[00:17:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the The Hebrew Bible is the collection of all of the literature that's important to the nation. It includes fiction. It includes philosophical musings.
[00:17:30] Katie Dooley: Temple instructions.
[00:17:32] Preston Meyer: And porn. Well, I mean, it's not really graphic porn. Even the best euphemisms for penis are really well coded so that a lot of people don't even think it means penis, which I think is just really creative poetry.
[00:17:51] Katie Dooley: Like Jesus's urtleneck. Does that come up in Song of Songs?
[00:17:55] Preston Meyer: It does not.
[00:17:56] Katie Dooley: Does someone's turtleneck come up in the Song of Songs? Come up!
[00:18:04] Preston Meyer: The protagonists through a big chunk of this poem is King Solomon. That doesn't mean he wrote it. It just means he's the protagonist of the story, even though a lot of people are convinced he wrote it for some reason.
[00:18:18] Katie Dooley: Is this King Solomon fanfic?
[00:18:20] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:18:21] Katie Dooley: Like erotic fanfic. I love it.
[00:18:24] Preston Meyer: It is extremely erotic fanfic.
[00:18:26] Katie Dooley: I just love that someone wrote erotic fanfic 2000 years ago.
[00:18:29] Preston Meyer: In poetic form.
[00:18:31] Katie Dooley: Man. It's a Tina Belcher move.
[00:18:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but it was so well written according to the people who decided that it got to be in the book, that it got to be in the book forever.
[00:18:43] Katie Dooley: They cut out a lot of gospels of other people and kept a horny old poem.
[00:18:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, because it was so popular in the nation, presumably at least among the upper class who got to make the decision anyway. But the best euphemism where they talk about his big veiny penis. They describe the blue sapphires in his loins. I mean, a lot of versions will say his thighs or whatever, but.
[00:19:17] Katie Dooley: They mean his big veiny dick.
[00:19:18] Preston Meyer: That's a translation choice to distract from big, veiny dick.
[00:19:24] Katie Dooley: Oh, boy.
[00:19:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah, somebody else said it and I love the wording. And I'll repeat it forever without remembering who's first said it. But while Christians like to sing about how great it's going to be to be dead, which has its own implications, Jewish music and poetry for thousands of years have been man, it really rocks to be alive. And it's hard to disagree. And sometimes that celebration includes some very specific, explicit talk of...
[00:19:56] Katie Dooley: Dick references.
[00:19:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Good times.
[00:20:01] Katie Dooley: Well, let's move through the Abrahamic religions to Christianity, which is, as it always is, a mixed bag.
[00:20:09] Preston Meyer: Yes. There's nothing you can say about Christianity that actually encompasses all of Christianity.
[00:20:16] Katie Dooley: Even saying that Jesus of the son is the Son of God. Yeah, there's a handful, very few, but there are a few that don't think he's divine anyway. But we're here to talk about sex.
[00:20:31] Preston Meyer: So, you know, split opinions all over the place.
[00:20:35] Katie Dooley: Traditionally, though, most Christian leaders will tell you that sex should only happen within a marriage.
[00:20:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's pretty much the standard.
[00:20:43] Katie Dooley: Mostly between a man and a woman, though some Christian denominations are getting more accepting.
[00:20:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Diversity is interesting. 57% of American Christians are okay with premarital sex in a committed romantic relationship, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Um, which does fall in line with the standards that we found in Judaism, where as long as you're interested in pursuing a long-term relationship, you're going to be fine.
[00:21:14] Katie Dooley: Though I bet if you asked church leaders, you would not get a 57% consensus on that. That's just Christians who are being bad and pretending they're not being bad. I don't think it's bad. You do you, boo.
[00:21:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Not everybody can agree on what the rules are. So not everybody's going to follow the same rules. That's the deal. A lot of these beliefs are influenced by the Hebrew Bible, and there's not a lot written in the New Testament about sex, particularly, um, there are talks of adulterers like the woman caught in adultery who Jesus was perfectly fine, saying, well, unless you're actually perfect, mind your business. So that was nice.
[00:21:59] Katie Dooley: Is that the he throw the first stone.... good one Jesus.
[00:22:05] Preston Meyer: The tricky bit about that particular section of scripture is that it is not found in any of the oldest versions of the Gospel of John.
[00:22:14] Katie Dooley: I was going to say I remember reading somewhere that that I think it was the Reza Aslan book, Zealot that even the wording of it was kind of weird. So they believe it was added after. Not actually a...
[00:22:26] Preston Meyer: The oldest manuscripts we have don't include that story. So it's interesting that it got included when it was a time when people were very happy to say, you're the wrong kind of Christian, go away. It's just interesting bit of history.
[00:22:41] Katie Dooley: I think it's a good story.
[00:22:42] Preston Meyer: It's a positive thing to include in this story that, you know, the whole deal of Jesus is that we forgive people and we can be better. So if it fits the narrative really well. And we also have another part of the story where he says, if you're going to lust after somebody, you've already had sex with them in your heart.
[00:23:03] Katie Dooley: This will cause problems in some fundamental Christian groups later, which we'll talk about. Women cover up now. I'm kidding.
[00:23:14] Preston Meyer: Get that thought out of here.
[00:23:16] Katie Dooley: I mean cover up your bodies because men are visual creatures. I don't know what that makes women, but men are visual creatures. So anyway.
[00:23:27] Preston Meyer: It's weird that so much of our culture includes this story, that men and women are coded so completely differently.
[00:23:35] Katie Dooley: I mean, I read a lot in this research and I didn't put anything in it, but like talking about different levels of sexual desire, I'm like, are we still talking about that? Because Turning Red talked about how horny teen girls are and I loved it.
[00:23:52] Preston Meyer: I never watched it, but I'm glad somebody addressed it. Yeah, because I was a teen at the time that this film is set. I am aware of that much.
[00:24:00] Katie Dooley: I know that's why I loved it. I was like, this is about me. Only ten years ago...
[00:24:06] Preston Meyer: It's not about me. So it's not drawing me in with the same power, I guess.
[00:24:11] Katie Dooley: But it talked about how horny pre-teen girls are, and I was like, yes, accurate.
[00:24:15] Preston Meyer: Which, I mean, you're not selling me on it that I need to watch it, that it doesn't feel like it's for me or about me.
[00:24:25] Katie Dooley: It's heartwarming. They just at least there's lust after a boy band, which we all did.
[00:24:31] Preston Meyer: I mean, not me, but. Not all men, Katie.
[00:24:41] Katie Dooley: Anyway, as I was saying, um, we're not coded that differently. Women have eyes. Yeah, and, like, looking at. Henry Cavill, if you're listening, please be on the podcast.
[00:24:59] Preston Meyer: Speaking of how we are coated, not terribly differently. There is this idea that's called Marianismo, which is basically just the alternative, the well, the exact opposite of machismo, which I thought was really interesting.
[00:25:16] Katie Dooley: I've never heard the term before.
[00:25:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it doesn't come up terribly often in regular conversation. It is the ideal feminine. In their book The Maria Paradox, therapists Gil and Vasquez recorded the beliefs they found among many of their patients that they claim are the core of Marianismo and they are all just awful. I mean, differing degrees, but they're not good news. The first. Don't forget the place of a woman.
[00:25:47] Katie Dooley: Where is that?
[00:25:49] Preston Meyer: The kitchen?
[00:25:50] Katie Dooley: Get out of my house.
[00:25:52] Preston Meyer: The bedroom.
[00:25:56] Katie Dooley: Well, you know why I can't cook as good as my husband.
[00:25:58] Preston Meyer: The home broadly, I don't know. So, tricky business in the workplace. You got to establish what you mean.
[00:26:07] Katie Dooley: Wherever the fuck they want to be.
[00:26:09] Preston Meyer: Right. That's the real truth of it. But these ideas persist. Next on our list. Don't give up your traditions, okay? I can. How about thoughtfully evaluate your traditions. Not everything needs to be kept going. Like if you're cutting the tips off your roasts before you throw them in the oven. Just because you watch your mom and your grandma do it. There might not be a reason. If the whole thing fits in the roaster, throw the whole thing in without cutting it.
[00:26:46] Katie Dooley: Preston likes his roast tips.
[00:26:48] Preston Meyer: Why not? Uh, next. Don't be an old maid, independent, or have your own opinions. Don't do it. Katie, it's not worth it.
[00:27:00] Katie Dooley: Ah, I wanna say something, but that's an opinion.
[00:27:06] Preston Meyer: Uh, yeah. Why is that a healthy way to live your life?
[00:27:11] Katie Dooley: Well, that's good that you want an independent wife with her own opinions.
[00:27:15] Preston Meyer: I think it's really, really useful. Um, next on your list. Don't put your needs first. I mean. I understand the social utility of taking care of the people around you, but sometimes you got to take care of you.
[00:27:31] Katie Dooley: There's a reason that the airplanes say you put on your mask first before your kids. Always put your needs first. I mean, within reason. If you're not picking your kids up from school because you're at the spa, maybe you need to reevaluate. But, um put on your airplane mask first, oxygen mask?
[00:27:53] Preston Meyer: I was just thinking of way worse examples than the spa to keep you from picking up your kids. They don't need to be aired publicly.
[00:28:01] Katie Dooley: Join us on Discord to see how perverse Preston is.
[00:28:05] Preston Meyer: I was just thinking of drugs. Not anything terribly perverted. Just, you know, crack. I don't know why. That's the thing my friend jumped to from spa. But here we are.
[00:28:19] Katie Dooley: Don't wish to be anything but a housewife. I mean, to be fair, I did ask Bryant if I could be a housewife today because I was really sick of work but...
[00:28:30] Preston Meyer: But you also have other aspirations and they don't make you less of a good person. They don't make you less of a woman.
[00:28:40] Katie Dooley: [00:28:40]Thank you. Yeah. [00:28:41] Also, ladies, don't forget sex is to make babies, not pleasure.
[00:28:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's a problem. We've already addressed that.
[00:28:53] Katie Dooley: I was scrolling Instagram Reels because, as one does. And I came across this comedian who was clearly like a doctor or a gynecologist or a former one, and this pregnant lady came in and she was freaking out and she didn't know what was wrong with her. And she had an orgasm, her first orgasm, and she was pregnant and she didn't know what was wrong with her. Isn't that the most depressing thing?
[00:29:17] Preston Meyer: It is depressing. I mean, it's a little funny, but it is depressing.
[00:29:22] Katie Dooley: How'd they make a baby? I mean.
[00:29:25] Preston Meyer: I think, you know, at this point, I think, you know.
[00:29:29] Katie Dooley: It's so sad.
[00:29:31] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. Some people become horse girls. Other people go a long time without ever knowing. Oh well.
[00:29:45] Katie Dooley: Moment of silence, please. I said silence. Carry on. Don't be unhappy with your man, no matter what he does to you, ladies.
[00:30:02] Preston Meyer: This is extremely problematic.
[00:30:06] Katie Dooley: Incredibly problematic.
[00:30:08] Preston Meyer: Oh well.
[00:30:09] Katie Dooley: I wonder why rates of abuse are so high in some of these fundamentalist communities.
[00:30:14] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Don't ask anyone other than your husband for help under any circumstances. Because of course, really what's behind that is you're not allowed to talk to other men. Which is a huge problem.
[00:30:30] Katie Dooley: So for our listeners, my husband works out of town like quite frequently, and if I didn't have Preston and a whole slew of other men, that sounds terrible. Um, nothing would get done around this house. The number of times press has moved heavy shit for me. A++ friend.
[00:30:48] Preston Meyer: Thanks. Uh, yeah. It's it's okay to talk to people of the opposite gender or whatever. You don't have to be isolated to a tiny group of the population around you. You can spread that out a little bit more.
[00:31:05] Katie Dooley: Don't discuss your personal problems outside the house. Don't get therapy or call the police.
[00:31:11] Preston Meyer: Right? What could go wrong? There's a degree to which I agree with this. But there comes a time when you need to seek outside help. And the last on the list don't change.
[00:31:28] Katie Dooley: Very vague and also impossible.
[00:31:32] Preston Meyer: Right? Like, yeah, I get it. A lot of people end up disappointed when the person they married changes in the wrong way that they weren't expecting. And then you're not the one I married. Sure, you can't expect people to not change, though.
[00:31:49] Katie Dooley: She will get haggard and old that is guaranteed. Especially if you treat her according to this list.
[00:31:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:31:58] Katie Dooley: She'll stay younger longer if you give her orgasms. Facts.
[00:32:02] Preston Meyer: Sounds good to me.
[00:32:04] Katie Dooley: Facts.
[00:32:06] Preston Meyer: And that's marianismo. The opposite of machismo. That needs no explanation at all.
[00:32:13] Katie Dooley: So now we're going to talk about Christian purity culture. I think we could do a whole lot on this. There's a lot I left out.
[00:32:18] Preston Meyer: I mean we'll get the heart of it here, we'll see what happens.
[00:32:21] Katie Dooley: I was going to say, if you want a full episode on purity culture after this little tidbit, drop a note in our discord in our Christianity channel.
[00:32:29] Preston Meyer: Hmm'hmm.
[00:32:31] Katie Dooley: So Preston's kind of alluded to it with the marianismo. But there is this idea of biblical womanhood that to do God's will, women need to submit to their husbands in every aspect of their life. This includes what to wear, what their schedule looks like, and being ready and willing to satisfy his sexual needs.
[00:32:54] Preston Meyer: I mean, somebody's a winner here, and it's not the woman
[00:33:00] Katie Dooley: The Duggars allude to this in some episodes of like. Preparing for marriage. And this is also why she is 37 Children.
[00:33:07] Preston Meyer: That's too many.
[00:33:09] Katie Dooley: I don't think it's actually 19.
[00:33:11] Preston Meyer: I think that sounds more correct.
[00:33:13] Katie Dooley: But there was a lot of women out there with a lot of kids because of this.
[00:33:17] Preston Meyer: Was it 19 and counting? Was that the name of it?
[00:33:20] Katie Dooley: I think by the end it started at like 14 kids and counting. Pew pew pew pew pew.
[00:33:27] Preston Meyer: Ah. The good thing about that is that it gets easier with time.
[00:33:31] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I think that's just the thing. It's just like a slip and slide by the end.
[00:33:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I think.
[00:33:36] Katie Dooley: The whole uterus comes out by the end and you gotta take.
[00:33:40] Preston Meyer: There comes a time when the whole thing just collapses and says, please, no, more.
[00:33:44] Katie Dooley: Like a cow. You take like a broom handle back in.
[00:33:48] Preston Meyer: It's a terrible image.
[00:33:50] Katie Dooley: I know, but I'm pretty sure that's where she's at now. Anyway.
[00:33:56] Preston Meyer: Thanks for that.
[00:33:58] Katie Dooley: Whoa. So I figured this is a type of grooming. It starts at a young age with purity culture. There's purity balls and purity rings and purity vows and Jesus. And this is very important, is that Jesus is your boyfriend. So boys don't have an equivalent. Jesus is your boyfriend. So there's no dating, only courtship.
[00:34:23] Preston Meyer: Um, what?
[00:34:24] Katie Dooley: No dating, only courtship, which is just like, basically the young man is trying to impress your father on chaperon dates so that he will. Your father will sell you to this boy.
[00:34:34] Preston Meyer: I mean, that's what it adds up to. Yeah, sure. Not cool.
[00:34:39] Katie Dooley: So, I mean, obviously there's a lot, like you said, go turn on the Duggars on TLC. Lots of Christians still like purity culture. But now purity culture really became a thing in the 90s. And now we're starting to see all the negative effects of, like, people hating themselves.
[00:34:54] Preston Meyer: And everyone around them.
[00:34:56] Katie Dooley: And everyone around them.
[00:34:57] Preston Meyer: It's just not healthy.
[00:34:58] Katie Dooley: 20 years later, it's more like 30 years later. Ew.
[00:35:02] Preston Meyer: Time is terrible.
[00:35:03] Katie Dooley: I was a child of the 90s, I'm like, no, but, uh, there are lots and lots of articles on how bad purity culture is, which is where I think we could do a full episode, because I didn't even have the gum analogy, which now I'm going to have to explain the gum analogy.
[00:35:18] Preston Meyer: I think we've talked about that before on the show.
[00:35:20] Katie Dooley: Well, if we haven't, Preston, would you want a piece of gum that's been chewed by someone else?
[00:35:26] Preston Meyer: I mean, in truth, that depends on who the person is.
[00:35:32] Katie Dooley: Yeah, so you wouldn't want a woman who's had sex with another man.
[00:35:36] Preston Meyer: Is that the same as chewed-up gum?
[00:35:37] Katie Dooley: It's exactly the same as chewed-up gum. Ew! It's not.
[00:35:41] Preston Meyer: Gross. That's a gross analogy. It's not okay. Especially if you know you're into the Christian context that this comes from where forgiveness is actually a far more important doctrine.
[00:35:56] Katie Dooley: It's like these people don't know JC at all.
[00:35:58] Preston Meyer: Yes, that's the reality.
[00:36:01] Katie Dooley: Um, so I don't I don't anyway, purity culture is a set of beliefs that emphasize the importance of sexual purity. And again, this is really popular in fundamentalist evangelical communities. Premarital sex: bad.
[00:36:16] Preston Meyer: Terrible sin. Like the idea in these groups is that the only thing you could do worse than that is commit murder.
[00:36:25] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:36:26] Preston Meyer: And some people are still willing to get really angry at people for having sex outside of marriage and then go commit murder.
[00:36:37] Katie Dooley: Right. Yes. So basically, you know, they're very much that you'll hear is that like the greatest gift of oall is giving your virginity your husband, and you're taking that away from him.
[00:36:51] Preston Meyer: It's not healthy.
[00:36:52] Katie Dooley: Like Preston mentioned, men and women are definitely held to different standards here. Women are expected to be chaste and modest, and men become these protectors of virginity. And it's really weird and gross that.
[00:37:06] Preston Meyer: Men are still expected to be chaste and modest, too.
[00:37:09] Katie Dooley: Absolutely. But...
[00:37:09] Preston Meyer: It's not a double standard but there there's a little bit more forgiveness for them.
[00:37:15] Katie Dooley: They can get away with it, with it, without anyone knowing.
[00:37:19] Preston Meyer: Pretty much. Yeah. I mean, that's if they get caught. There is the public shame thing sometimes depending on the group, but mostly the rules are still the same. It's just one gets forgiven a lot more easily.
[00:37:33] Katie Dooley: Uh, and again, this is a lot of like where men are visual creatures and don't lead your brothers into sin and all that garbage.
[00:37:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. What did Jesus say on the subject?
[00:37:44] Katie Dooley: JC said, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.
[00:37:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So don't go shouting at other people about how they're dressed. Just pull your eyeballs out.
[00:37:53] Katie Dooley: I forget Matthew 5:28.
[00:37:56] Preston Meyer: I am so terrible at citations, I don't remember exactly.
[00:37:59] Katie Dooley: That's one I try to remember unless.
[00:38:01] Preston Meyer: Unless it's written down.
[00:38:03] Katie Dooley: Oh, I'm super close.
[00:38:04] Preston Meyer: But that is the context of the point.
[00:38:09] Katie Dooley: I'm real close, but I don't actually see the quote.
[00:38:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah, 5:28 was, uh, the hole in your heart business.
[00:38:16] Katie Dooley: Anyway, that's a good one to remember, everyone.
[00:38:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Jesus said, if you can't stop looking at a girl, pull out your eyeballs.
[00:38:26] Katie Dooley: Love it. Yeah. Good job. Good guy, Jesus. Yeah. So like you said, we know that there's lots of negative mental health consequences, guilt and shame. And, um, we know part of this is we know abstinence only sex ed doesn't work. That plays into this a little bit.
[00:38:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's only failed everywhere. It's been done.
[00:38:47] Katie Dooley: Terribly. Yeah. It's bad. And there's a lot, like you said, a lot of these pieces of, like, states that often have abstinence only sex ed have really high pregnancy rates and no abortion laws.
[00:38:59] Preston Meyer: When you say no abortion laws, you do mean anti-abortion laws.
[00:39:04] Katie Dooley: Yeah. As in abortion is not protected by the law but you're right. I said that backwards.
[00:39:11] Preston Meyer: Um, it's a problem. Yeah.
[00:39:13] Katie Dooley: Purity rings, uh, were very popular in the 2000 with the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato all wearing purity rings. Guess how many of them kept that pledge?
[00:39:29] Preston Meyer: Zero.
[00:39:30] Katie Dooley: Zero is correct.
[00:39:34] Preston Meyer: Uh, there are less famous people who have kept that pledge. Probably not lots and lots, but there are some.
[00:39:41] Katie Dooley: I mean, there's something about being a celebrity and having attractive people throw themselves at you. That the average human... I couldn't pay someone to have sex with me. Until my husband came along. Oh, boy, that was a personal overshare.
[00:39:57] Preston Meyer: Thanks.
[00:39:58] Katie Dooley: Thanks, Bryant. Uh, also purity balls. Super creepy. Super creepy. Have you watched a purity ball?
[00:40:08] Preston Meyer: I've seen a video of one, and I am so glad that's not part of my experience growing up.
[00:40:14] Katie Dooley: So to paint a picture though, there are some great YouTube videos. And maybe if we remember, we'll pop some into the Christianity discord when this releases, today. They're like kind of 10 to 12 year old girls. They're very young.
[00:40:31] Preston Meyer: So not really worried about sex at the moment.
[00:40:33] Katie Dooley: No, probably not even fully understanding what sex is probably.
[00:40:37] Preston Meyer: I mean, considering where these are happening, very likely.
[00:40:41] Katie Dooley: So also creepy that like, you know, we talk these people talk about drag queens grooming children and you're having a purity ball. Anyway, they wear little white dresses and they walk down an aisle with their fathers. And they make a vow to each other...
[00:41:00] Preston Meyer: Because you wouldn't cheat on your dad, right?
[00:41:02] Katie Dooley: You wouldn't cheat on your daddy. And so you promised to your daddy that you're not going to have sex before marriage. And then he promises to protect your chastity and dignity, and he gives you your purity ring. And if that's not the creepiest fucking thing you've ever heard.
[00:41:23] Preston Meyer: Okay, so I can I can get on board on with the whole father's side of what his pledge is of protecting her. With my preferred interpretation, protecting her from things she doesn't want to have happen.
[00:41:40] Katie Dooley: I like that.
[00:41:41] Preston Meyer: And I think that's okay, but, beyond that, you get into some really sticky problems.
[00:41:51] Katie Dooley: Yes. Also, I just like to note that these purity balls also typically have just the biggest fucking crucifix you've ever seen. And I just think that adds to the creepiness.
[00:42:04] Preston Meyer: That's fair.
[00:42:05] Katie Dooley: That's just me.
[00:42:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah. What's really unfortunate is how very frequently these men who pledge to protect their daughters, fail to protect their daughters from family and sometimes themselves.
[00:42:22] Katie Dooley: Oh, you mean like the Duggars?
[00:42:24] Preston Meyer: That's a good example.
[00:42:25] Katie Dooley: Thank you.
[00:42:28] Preston Meyer: It's weird how often they come up today, but we got what we got.
[00:42:31] Katie Dooley: They're just the perfect example of all that is wrong with this.
[00:42:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, and kind of connected to this whole purity culture thing is what Sigmund Freud liked to call the Madonna-Whore complex.
[00:42:47] Katie Dooley: Like a virgin touched for the very first time.
[00:42:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Madonna really played up this whole complex thing that that was her bit.
[00:42:58] Katie Dooley: But you do meet the Madonna, Mother Mary, not the singer.
[00:43:03] Preston Meyer: Well, now we're on both.
[00:43:04] Katie Dooley: Now we're talking about both. I love this. See how my singing has brought us all together?
[00:43:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And I feel like purity culture is actually really influenced how Madonna-Whore complex comes out and becomes visible in the world. It's it's been a thing for a while, but. And purity culture has too. It's just not the same as it was 200 years ago or whatever. But it was originally labelled the Madonna-Whore Complex by Sigmund Freud. And though he's wrong about a lot of things, including his explanation for where this all comes from, it's still a reality that is seen all over the world today. The idea is that men see women as one of two feminine archetypes that are pretty much the same ways we see women in the Bible, unfortunately, is that you have either the saintly mother or the dirty whore.
[00:44:02] Katie Dooley: Women in the streets but a freak in the sheets.
[00:44:08] Preston Meyer: Ah, and such a thing is a problem for people who have this complex. People who see the world through this lens refuse to acknowledge that the people they admire are sexual beings, and they refuse to acknowledge the people who satisfy any sexual appetite are worthy of love, and said they think that they're unworthy of love. It's really a problem when you start just having this harsh dichotomy in the world and most harsh dichotomies are a problem. Let's be real. Freud had all this idea that it's connected to how every man has an Oedipus complex and ridiculous things like that.
[00:44:52] Katie Dooley: You don't want to have sex with your mom?
[00:44:54] Preston Meyer: No. Um, but there are still a lot of people who struggle with this way of looking at the world that obviously, if you are interested in sex, you're a whore and you're a terrible person. And I could never have you in my family to raise my kids. Or the alternative of now you've married somebody that you've been chasing for a while, who's lived this whole purity life that you're told is supposed to be great. And once you have sex with her, you lose interest in her romantically because now she's a whore and has no value. It's terrible.
[00:45:35] Katie Dooley: Yeah, well, I mean, that's another thing we didn't even talk about for purity culture is that there's so much pressure on the wedding night that often it's really bad.
[00:45:45] Preston Meyer: I mean. It's an unfortunate reality that most people have really bad sex. Their wedding night, whereas this could have been solved with better education, maybe a little bit of practice.
[00:46:04] Katie Dooley: But then they also feel kind of like you said, but they feel shame on their wedding night, even though because they've been told it's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad bad, and signing a piece of paper all of a sudden can't change 20 plus years of.
[00:46:17] Preston Meyer: Sex is terrible,
[00:46:17] Preston Meyer: Sex is bad you'll get pregnant and die! Mean Girls.
[00:46:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Ah. Of course, this complex is not limited to men. Women also have been known to see men in this same dichotomy. It seems to be a lot less common, but it's out there. It happens because men and women aren't coded that differently.
[00:46:44] Katie Dooley: Gentlemen in the streets but a freak in the sheets.
[00:46:51] Preston Meyer: Thanks.
[00:46:51] Katie Dooley: I don't even know what I'm saying.
[00:46:53] Preston Meyer: So contrary to Freud, modern suggestions connect this in the two ways women are described in Christian Bibles and also popular southeastern European mythologies. It's more about the stories we keep telling are part of the problem. So tell better stories. Live better lives. And maybe the next generation would just be a little bit less messed up. That'd be nice, right?
[00:47:19] Katie Dooley: So moving on to Islam. We unpacked a lot with Christianity.
[00:47:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, to be fair. Everybody in our Western hemisphere has to be exposed to the pressure of the Christian norm. Making it the norm feels weird, but that's what we have. But you're also going to be exposed to Muslims if you live on this planet at some point.
[00:47:47] Katie Dooley: Like the other Abrahamic traditions, Islam, likes sex to be confined to marriage only. Uh, Muslim women are only permitted to marry Muslim men. But Muslim men can marry a woman of any Abrahamic faith.
[00:48:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's this is a pretty good example of a weird double standard. Uh, the idea is that a child must follow the faith of the father. But this gets tricky, because in Judaism, your mother has to be a Jew. So if a Muslim man marries a Jewish woman, you do have some conflict.
[00:48:27] Katie Dooley: You've had a Christian!
[00:48:30] Preston Meyer: That has happened. It's not like it doesn't cause problems.
[00:48:35] Katie Dooley: That sounds quite problematic.
[00:48:36] Preston Meyer: Islam does discourage celibacy, unlike some Christian traditions that we've talked about before. And much like in Judaism, Islamic tradition dictates that a person is ritually unclean after sex. This means that they're forbidden from touching the Quran or participating in the salaat those mandatory prayers until they have cleaned up that which is good. Yeah, clean up after sex. It's the healthy thing to do.
[00:49:04] Katie Dooley: Don't touch things in your house when you're covered in milkshake.
[00:49:12] Preston Meyer: Thanks for that.
[00:49:13] Katie Dooley: Well, you're welcome.
[00:49:17] Preston Meyer: Ah, yay discord chats! For those of you listening carefully, this may be a clue to what day this was actually recorded. Uh, and the same also applies during menstruation. Just clean up, and then you can participate in salat and actually touch the Quran to read it.
[00:49:38] Katie Dooley: Of course we know Islam is quite a modest religion, and people are quite familiar with the hijab, which is worn by some Muslim women. And so the only men allowed to see a Muslim woman's hair she chooses to wear the hijab are her or her husband and men that she can't be married to. So her brothers, her uncles on her mom's side. That's kind of it.
[00:50:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And on some parts of the Jewish world also live by a very similar rule. We got good old Moira Rose and her many wigs as a pretty visible example. In popular culture.
[00:50:14] Katie Dooley: Uh, men, though in Islam, also have dress requirements that encourage modesty. There are parts of their body that they're not allowed to show. Public nudity is haram.
[00:50:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That's fair. It's also forbidden for partners to share details of their intimacy with others. We talked about this in Marianismo could be problematic, but you know.
[00:50:39] Katie Dooley: Only if he's bad to you but if he's good to you, then that's something to share over a chai.
[00:50:46] Preston Meyer: Sure. While it must be prefaced that there is diversity of thought on the subject, many imams are happy to tell global audiences that if a man has no beard, he is womanly and is inviting others to sin by committing sodomy. Not everybody agrees on this. That's a good thing, because a beard isn't what makes a man.
[00:51:11] Katie Dooley: Nope. What if you can't grow a beard? What do you mean, just grow a sad, patchy thing?
[00:51:18] Preston Meyer: Then you flaunt it. You let it be weird and patchy and you keep that hair on. That's the rule of the law that a lot of Muslim subcultures really enforce in really unfortunate ways. Anal sex is also strictly forbidden in Islam.
[00:51:39] Katie Dooley: Even between a man and a woman. No anal sex?
[00:51:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Um, oral sex is also a huge no, no. Uh, well, okay, this there's some variety on that that some schools of thought say it's okay as long as you don't swallow anything, but others are like, no, the whole deal is haram.
[00:51:59] Katie Dooley: Can you make the noise for our audience? That probably has never been in a real episode, but we sound check with it all the time.
[00:52:09] Preston Meyer: Is that everything you wanted it to be?
[00:52:11] Katie Dooley: I guess so we'll see what kind of complaints we get this week.
[00:52:16] Preston Meyer: Uh, well. It happened.
[00:52:18] Katie Dooley: How do you write that out? That'd be a good episode name.
[00:52:21] Preston Meyer: I have no idea how you would spell that. Uh, but so far, we've just stuck to the Abrahamic faiths. That's not a great global representation. So let's take a just one step further to the east.
[00:52:36] Katie Dooley: All right.
[00:52:37] Preston Meyer: So the dharmic religions also have something to say, generally a lot less sex-positive with some exceptions.
[00:52:47] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I was actually just thinking we're going to have to do an episode maybe next day on religions that are more sex positive because the big ones aren't.
[00:53:01] Preston Meyer: I mean, the fun part of that is most of the most sex positive religious groups are danger cults.
[00:53:10] Katie Dooley: That's true.
[00:53:11] Preston Meyer: Not all, but definitely most.
[00:53:14] Katie Dooley: Well, we'll find some. This time next year, guys. Sex cults.
[00:53:22] Preston Meyer: Perfect. Uh, so generally speaking, Buddhism is really not such a fan. Any sort of craving is the cause of suffering. That's what the Buddha said. Not in English. So it's not a perfect word for word what he said, but you get the idea. There aren't really strict laws that universally apply to all Buddhists, but monastic traditions do have strict laws against sex of any kind. No exceptions, not even for procreation. So I guess the idea is, if you're really committed to getting off this rock and escaping the reality is we know it. And becoming one with Brahma that you just wouldn't be trying to repopulate the marble. Masturbation is also counted as serious sexual misconduct. There's only four things that generally will get you kicked out of most monasteries. There's probably some that have additional rules. These are the big four for the vast majority. There's also, you know, having sex to start with, also murder, theft and falsely claiming a superhuman superhuman ability.
[00:54:34] Katie Dooley: Okay, but if you truthfully claim a superhuman ability, you're fine?
[00:54:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. If you can prove it. The rock on. All right. But if you claim that you are so pious that you can float above the ground, you better show that off. If you can't prove it, you're out of the monastery. Yeah. Uh, in one Japanese Buddhist tradition, sex isn't so bad. I thought it was actually kind of interesting to find that there is this particular exception to the norm. As long as you don't think about it all the time. Because, of course, craving is suffering, so you should avoid it. But sex isn't so bad. Many such Buddhists live long-term relationships with prostitutes and geishas, which I was surprised, like once you got a relationship, you've got a bond, you've got an attachment. Attachment is the problem. Yeah, but we still have it. They're avoiding the attachment of marriage. They just keep going to the same prostitute and whatever. If your religion doesn't say it's bad, what else is there to say that it's bad? Also, some groups make distinctions, generally between the bad that is sex in general and a more specific, worse homosexual activity. Most don't make that distinction, but some do. I mean, just don't have sex at all. End the species that's that's the goal.
[00:56:09] Katie Dooley: In Hinduism, sex is broadly expected to be for procreation, but sex for pleasure is also generally expected, especially within marriage. Extramarital sex is taboo. Most people agree with that.
[00:56:22] Preston Meyer: Well, I mean, extramarital includes premarital. Yeah, like any sex outside marriage. Yeah. Adulterous adultery is definitely part of that and is worse than taboo, that's straight up. You're going to have a really bad time and it's not going to last very long.
[00:56:40] Katie Dooley: While it is expected that a woman's hymen should break and bleed on the wedding night, that flood is seen as destructive, so a Brahmin is called to bless the sheets in the union after the fact to ensure a long and happy marriage.
[00:56:53] Preston Meyer: What a weird thing to do.
[00:56:54] Katie Dooley: They've done that all over the world for a very long time. I just... Feel so invasive.
[00:56:59] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah. Oh, well, in a way somewhat similar to the levirate marriage of Judaism. When a woman is united with her brother-in-law to raise children to belong to her dead husband, the common Hindu expectation is that the bride belongs to the family of her dead husband, and will either remain unmarried or will be united with a near relative to raise children for her dead husband's family. Similar but different.
[00:57:27] Katie Dooley: Yes, but I added this even though it doesn't have too terribly much to do with sex, but the practice of sati. Have you heard of this?
[00:57:37] Preston Meyer: I'm sure I have.
[00:57:38] Katie Dooley: But it is the practice of self-immolation for a widow, she would throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre to die with him.
[00:57:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That doesn't make things better.
[00:57:51] Katie Dooley: Yes and no. Like, really bad for the woman. Yeah, but the practice started to remove the woman from the inheritance. But then also with widespread poverty, nobody wants to look after the widow and being a time when women just stayed at home and raised kids and looked after the house, she had no skills to make money. So it was just removing "a burden" air quotes, not a real burden. People have value, um, from society. So while there were lots of problems with the British colonizing colonization of India, they did actually put in laws to prohibit sati.
[00:58:30] Preston Meyer: Not that it doesn't happen. It's just.
[00:58:32] Katie Dooley: I think it's pretty uncommon now. But they also have a billion people. So I'm not saying we should bring it back.
[00:58:40] Preston Meyer: Didn't India just surpass China as the most populous nation?
[00:58:44] Katie Dooley: I think so.
[00:58:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Not that one thing is connected to the other. It's just a novel thing.
[00:58:52] Katie Dooley: But let's get into what everyone's really here for. Preston, the Kama Sutra.
[00:58:57] Preston Meyer: Ooh, the sexiest book of all time.
[00:59:00] Katie Dooley: Sexiest book in the world. So a sutra is a writing. Yeah, and kama means desire or longing.
[00:59:10] Preston Meyer: Hmmmm, sexy book.
[00:59:12] Katie Dooley: Sexy book.
[00:59:13] Katie Dooley: Uh, sorry Preston, contrary to popular belief, the Kama Sutra is not entirely about sex.
[00:59:17] Preston Meyer: I mean. It is sex only penile/vaginal interaction.
[00:59:25] Katie Dooley: Um, no. But it also includes details on how to find a partner, how to court that partner.
[00:59:32] Preston Meyer: Throw a rock. You'll hit somebody. They'll make a noise. You found her.
[00:59:36] Katie Dooley: Wow. Is that how you landed, Amanda?
[00:59:41] Preston Meyer: Uh. No.
[00:59:45] Katie Dooley: Also how to keep them happy, some of which is sexual, but it also includes chapters on the philosophy of love and self-care.
[00:59:54] Preston Meyer: That's an all-encompassing book more people should read. You can also get it as a manga. Yeah, you probably shouldn't, but you could.
[01:00:05] Katie Dooley: I want to now.
[01:00:06] Preston Meyer: Okay, I actually spotted it in, uh, one of the used bookstores.
[01:00:10] Katie Dooley: Ew, don't get it from a used bookstore. Buy it new.
[01:00:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:00:14] Katie Dooley: Spend the extra $20.
[01:00:17] Preston Meyer: If the pages are stuck together, that means they learn something.
[01:00:19] Katie Dooley: No. Buy it. Let's do this. So. Wow. So as I mentioned, kama means longing, desire or wish. And it's one of the four goals of life in Hinduism. While it does typically refer to sexual desire, it can also broadly refer to any sort of passion, affection, or love. The first mention of the Kama Sutra dates back to 900, somewhere between 900 BCE and 700 BCE and it's a mixture of poetry and prose, and it incorporates Hindu mythology.
[01:00:56] Preston Meyer: The stories that you need to get you there. It's not like it's. I'm not throwing shade. Shade. The Bible's got it, too.
[01:01:09] Katie Dooley: I know. I know. Uh, and if you'll remember from our Religious Posers episode, the Kama Sutra uses asanas, the physical poses, Just like yoga.
[01:01:22] Preston Meyer: If you're looking for a new idea, this book might just have it for you.
[01:01:27] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So the Kama Sutra is like this. Yeah. It's also a physical side of yoga.
[01:01:37] Preston Meyer: That's great.
[01:01:38] Katie Dooley: Maybe we should do it for our book club. No.
[01:01:42] Preston Meyer: That doesn't seem like a good choice.
[01:01:44] Katie Dooley: That doesn't sound like something we should share. Uh. But, Preston, what if someone did want to get in on our book club? Not about the Kama Sutra.
[01:01:55] Preston Meyer: Well, definitely our Patreon. That's the number one way. Also, if you want to maintain a discussion with us about what you want to read. Discord is a great way to connect so we can talk about that rather than just signing up to our Patreon. Valuable. Helpful helps us pay for all of this, but we want to hear from you!
[01:02:19] Katie Dooley: Also on our Patreon we have bonus episodes and early release for everything. Um, and if the subscription model isn't for you, we have some sick merch on Spreadshirt.
[01:02:29] Preston Meyer: So much fun, great things.
[01:02:31] Katie Dooley: And we'd like to thank our patron Lisa for supporting the show.
[01:02:36] Preston Meyer: Thank you, Lisa!
[01:02:38] Both Speakers: Peace be with you. | |||
| 11 Oct 2021 | The Cursed Occultism Episode | 00:53:22 | |
After having to record 3 times, it was starting to look like the Dark Forces were trying to keep us from revealing the truth, but Katie and Preston are committed to bringing you the best religious education they can.
Occultism is a big, nebulous, misunderstood topic. It’s actually an umbrella term for a bunch of ideas that don’t belong to any one religion. The word occult refers to secrets. Occult practices are things that are greater than what you can observe with your senses, but also something that requires you to master a skill. Practices like alchemy, astrology, divination, magic, tarot, and reiki would all be considered occult. Occult practices gained popular during the 1960s and 1970s as part of the counter-culture movement. In this episode, we also touch on Hermeticism, which is a religion based on secret knowledge. And lastly, what’s the occult without some Nazis? The Nazis had some wild beliefs about Atlantis and Hitler having hooves. Tune in to find out more about Hermeticism, Alchemy, Astrology, and more.
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*** Katie Dooley 00:09 atheist secret secret of God a secret. Hey, Preston, Katie, you know what happens? When you dive too deep into the alcohol?
Preston Meyer 00:19 Bad things are happening to deer? Yes, seriously
Katie Dooley 00:23 bad things like your audio disappearing from your first recording.
Preston Meyer 00:29 And then your second and then the second
Katie Dooley 00:31 recording. So yeah, guys, don't be careful. This is our warning. This episode is cursed. Cursed episode. That's the title. This is a cursed episode. That's what I'm gonna call it. Yeah, that's right. So that's what we're talking about this week on the
Preston Meyer 00:47 holy watermelon podcast.
Katie Dooley 00:50 Three is a magical number. So hopefully third time is the time. All right, so we've had some spooky conversations. Yeah, so far.
Preston Meyer 01:04 And now we're really leaning into spook Tober
Katie Dooley 01:07 October and the alcohol is really super vague, right?
Preston Meyer 01:11 This huge umbrella for a whole bunch of ideas that aren't really exclusive to one specific religion. It's just kind of this nebulous thing though. The word occult comes from the Latin occultists which means hidden, usually referring to knowledge of a particular kind of secrets.
Katie Dooley 01:32 Secret Secret, secret. Yes, so the occult is anything sort of supernatural but not religious is I mean, we know religious is religion, excuse me, is also a pretty broad and vacuous term but anything has kind of a half decent definition is anything supernatural, that wouldn't be considered. Divine. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 02:02 it's, I mean, it fits into the discussion of religion pretty slowly. But what is a cult is not always, like dogmatic kind of religion, but sometimes a little bit. It's like religion a little bit tricky.
Katie Dooley 02:27 So some of the things that fall under the call it would be alchemy, astrology, magic, spiritualism. Any type of like psychic medium divination, this I mean, I was thinking about this the other day. This is why the Harry Potter books are so contentious because like, every subject they learn, isn't called.
Preston Meyer 02:48 Right? didn't even bother teaching math and Hogwarts. Did
Katie Dooley 02:52 they? Um, they had one called arithmetic z, which is not arithmetic. No, it's the magic of numbers, which I think is super cool, but they don't really talk about it just that Hermione takes it as an option because she took every option in the third book.
Preston Meyer 03:06 The fact that the study of numbers, whether it's magical or mathematical, is optional. feels a little weird.
Katie Dooley 03:17 You're clearly someone who likes numbers then because it's someone who hates members. Thank God, it's optional.
Preston Meyer 03:23 If we're talking like 1112 13 year old kids not taking
Katie Dooley 03:28 mine. No, I was saying are you talking about Hogwarts? Yeah, okay. It's like it's it's real life. I guess it depends if you're muggle born or not. Cuz then you would have done regular school.
Preston Meyer 03:41 So the muggle borns would have done regular school until what the end of grade six in North American Standards five. Yeah, sure. Yeah, cuz I guess when you turn 11 is when you start Hogwarts, you'd be skipping grade six as well. So you wouldn't even have done algebra yet. In most curriculums here.
Katie Dooley 03:58 Sure. Magic. Why do you need math? Do you have religion? Why do you need science? We're digressing? Pretty. We're digressing pretty hard here. As precedents and occult traditions are can be very similar to other religious traditions in that it's greater than what you can observe with your carnal senses.
Preston Meyer 04:23 Yeah, they they differ a little bit that they require mastery of some kind. Like your average Calvinist Christian, doesn't worry about mastering anything. He's a lot more worried about just making it through life and hoping that he's not already consigned to eternal damnation. But with no thought of mastery of any supernatural thing at all right. And so that's kind of the thing that makes the cult interesting is that they'll based Yeah, it's very skill based. It's pretty fascinating that way. And almost everything that is Since directly theological does end up fitting into this realm of pseudoscience, just because there's actions that promise effects, but they can't really be reliably reproduced in laboratory settings, it's so tricky way to go.
Katie Dooley 05:20 And if that's our definition, then a lot of things actually fall under the occult. And we have another definition that we'll chat about later. That's actually from a pastor about the the occult. And yeah, if it's just something fantastical, that can't be explained with science, there's a lot. Oh, yeah, that may, we would normally wouldn't consider being a cult that could be
Preston Meyer 05:42 you ever hear how there's a story going around? That you've probably heard that scientists don't know how bees can fly? This idea has been going around for
Katie Dooley 05:54 a long time, because they're chubby and adorable. Not even a little bit aerodynamic.
Preston Meyer 05:59 Yeah. And their wings are tiny. So I learned the secret behind this ridiculous statement. There was one scientist back in the 1930s. who's like, huh, I don't get it.
Katie Dooley 06:14 Damn, okay. Yeah. And
Preston Meyer 06:15 every other scientist who works in the field of aerodynamics is like, come on, you can figure this out. And the one scientist who said, I don't get it did later on say, Oh, this is how it works. Yeah. And for some reason, here we are, almost 100 years later. And people are still quoting, this idea that scientists don't know how bumblebees can fly. Science is tricky, but it's not that tricky. Tricky.
Katie Dooley 06:50 So with that being said, there are instances of the occult, all throughout history, in all human societies. This is not a western idea and Eastern idea or a heathen idea or whatever, that they're everywhere, everywhere they call to everywhere, always.
Preston Meyer 07:12 It's interesting that it's got a negative. It's got a lot of negative press in the West. Whereas out east, it's not even looked at as weird. It's just like, Yep, this is part of life.
Katie Dooley 07:28 This is part of what we do. Yeah, we we definitely have made it a lot darker than it is and as we explained by tomorrow, hopefully you see that as well. That's it's not just like our last two episodes, disappointingly not oaky. spooky, but
Preston Meyer 07:48 but it does show up an awful lot in our horror stories, because it's so poorly understood by so many people, that it does make a nice element to add to a scary story make it a little bit cooler. Sometimes.
Katie Dooley 08:05 The conversation we had about voodoo though, right? Yes. Many major religions have a mystic branch which could be considered a cult. So there's Kabbalah in Judaism and Sufi Islam and Islam. And there's others in other religions as well. It's not just those two. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 08:21 I think one of the bigger ones of Christianity, historically speaking, would be the Rosicrucian tradition, right? And historically, an awful lot of Freemasons are Christian. And there's just a tiniest little bit of occultism in Freemasonry as well, depending on your your branch of Freemasonry, I guess.
Katie Dooley 08:43 Yeah, and how deep you go, just like anything,
Preston Meyer 08:46 right? That everything is a matter of depth. It's a spectrum, spectrum, take a drink.
Katie Dooley 08:55 Feel Levi was a French esotericism that popularized the term cultism. So this is from Wikipedia. It says unlike older forms of esotericism, occultism, does not reject scientific progress or modernity, modernity, excuse me, Levi had stressed the need to solve the conflict between science and religion. Something that he believed could be achieved by turning to what he thought was the ancient wisdom found in magic. So if you think of something like alchemy, there, there is a it doesn't work, but there's a scientific process to it to do something magical. So I can see how he's bridging that gap,
Preston Meyer 09:32 for sure. So with things like this, we get into the realm of sound therapy, Reiki, some parts of even the generally accepted, alternative medicines can get a little bit funky in this area.
Katie Dooley 09:50 And again, this is another one of those definitions where it's, you know, can't quite be explained but there's something happening and there's a process to it, but it can't be repeated in a lab which is The problem with some of these, and yeah, I would call that cult. I'm less angry about this now the third time around. But I mean, it's still a good point to bring up is that, you know, in few been on the social media at all in the last, let's say six months, you get these people who are so against vaccines, because there's no scientific process, but then they're willing to try crystal healing or essential oils. And then they are fundamental Christians on top of it. And it's like, Kay, well, one science, one is the occult, and one is religion. So it's weird to me that you pick the occult over? That's right. I said, crystal healing has a cult.
Preston Meyer 10:53 Yeah, I mean, technically, it is a little bit funky and doesn't hold up in laboratory settings at all.
Katie Dooley 11:04 And here's the other definition quote that I alluded to from this is from Steve Bong, the lead pastor of Summit, Christian church. He says the occult is any practices that leverage supernatural powers or knowledge apart from Jesus Christ. Again, this is where I don't quite understand how you know if it's Jesus or the devil, but it comes back to the not quite science, not quite magic, definitely not religion.
Preston Meyer 11:30 Right? It's so weird that this is how he's drawing a line, when the average Christian believes that everything good comes from God, and everything that's not good doesn't come from God. And then we get into the question of is a thing good. And that's an entirely very
Katie Dooley 11:52 terrifying slope into an existential
Preston Meyer 11:56 crisis right. Now, you have some practices that tend towards fraud a lot more than others. But an awful lot of religions end up slipping down that slope, too. So absolutely. What's, what is the line? It's a little too tricky for even one expert to say, Hey, this is the deal.
Katie Dooley 12:19 Well, and then. I mean, I think there's no leader on time but the gift of discernment. That's quite a popular thing to talk about, especially in fundamental Christianity. Well, it how do you know that's a gift from God or not, and be like, I mean, you tell me but isn't Jesus supposed to be the only one we're all walking around with supernatural powers? And
Preston Meyer 12:39 anybody who is blessed by him can meet all the prophets and the apostles in the Bible also doing miracles pretty often Okay,
Katie Dooley 12:47 so that's fair, but like a 21st century 23 year old can be blessed by Jesus to put in theory, okay. It's just whether how do we know it was Jesus or not? That's the real trick. On the same website, this made me lol. It said a cultist include Freemasons, witches, psychics, mediums, Satanists, necromancers and voodoo practitioners, which I just found very close minded, to say the least. It
Preston Meyer 13:19 sounds like a list of villains. Yes. Right. This is produced with an agenda for sure.
Katie Dooley 13:24 Absolutely. Because, I mean, I guess you could put some voodoo practices under the occult, but they would just call them voodoo practices, right. It's not like this other thing. Only if you are a LaVeyan. Satanist. Would you fall under the occult if you're basically an atheist, Satanist? No. And I mean, most Freemasons and I think most traditions are pretty normal. Yeah, I think there's I'm sure there's a few. There's a few Dodd ones and everything. But for sure.
Preston Meyer 13:59 And, like we said earlier, matter of depths definitely comes into play here.
Katie Dooley 14:04 I mean, you can go too far in anything. You go too far and on to the dragons.
Preston Meyer 14:08 So that was a thing.
Katie Dooley 14:12 This didn't come up. Previously, we haven't
Preston Meyer 14:17 done an episode on Dungeons and Dragons, but Dungeons
Katie Dooley 14:19 and Dragons in the occult.
Preston Meyer 14:20 I'm sure somebody has done it. We can get into it further later. Okay. But there was a whole season of Riverdale. Archie and friends get way too much into what is not legally speaking Dungeons and Dragons. And people die. Wow. Yeah. Which, honestly, is just playing up the Satanic Panic from decades past where the stories went around that people would get way too into Gentians and dragons and commit crimes.
Katie Dooley 14:51 If you've ever met anyone who's played Dungeons and Dragons, you know, that's highly unlikely. Anyway, so we're going to talk about some specific branches of the occult, starting with astrology. Astrology
Preston Meyer 15:06 is a really fascinating thing. And it's unfortunate that astrology really solidified its claim on the name before astronomy became a separate thing,
Katie Dooley 15:18 because we've all miss spoken.
Preston Meyer 15:21 Yeah, for sure, because astrology does mean the study of the stars. But it's different than astronomy, because we're studying the stars to make ideas about what's happening here on the Earth, with people's lives and world changing event
Katie Dooley 15:38 personalities. And he can marry it's a good fit. I'm so smart and Aries I did not. He's a Virgo.
Preston Meyer 15:46 I don't even know what my wife star sign is. Because I don't remember what all of the star signs sign up would be a cancer. I believe you.
Katie Dooley 15:59 I only know this because my birthday is after hers. And that's the star sign before mine. That makes sense.
Preston Meyer 16:09 I'm a Gemini cuz I remember when I was like 10, that was important to everybody.
Katie Dooley 16:16 That's when horoscopes got real big.
Preston Meyer 16:19 Yeah, it's weird that it's become a popular thing. And I haven't looked at the stats recently to see if it's actually currently on the rise. But there was a time when astrology was dying out pretty obviously. And then it just kind of made its comeback. It's super weird. Looking back historically, emperors, kings, and definitely some American presidents have all found it terribly valuable to get into astrology and to consult astrologists it helped them make important decisions about running governments. Whether or not now is the right time to go to war kind of business isn't helpful. It doesn't do it. It started to lose popularity when scientists started proving during the Enlightenment era, that there wasn't any evidence that the earth was the center of the universe. And so that helped a little bit. It really lost steam on the scientific method and systematic trial and error and evaluation showed that it was completely unreliable and predicting anything at all ever.
Katie Dooley 17:34 What do you mean not all Leo's will marry Aries
Preston Meyer 17:37 right now. Yeah, it's it's just crazy talk. Most people are familiar with the use of astrology to excuse fault someone's personality. Oh, she's not a bitch. She's just a Scorpio.
Katie Dooley 17:55 You know, you know it's not in our notes I just thought of is Mercury retrograde? That's a huge excuse for people. I'm tired. Mercury's in retrograde. There's actually a website called is mercury in retrograde.com. And literally, you have to type in and be like yes or no. It is pretty great. I think we are in retrograde right now. I'm feeling a
Preston Meyer 18:21 little tired. It has more to do with my sleep patterns lately.
Katie Dooley 18:24 And mercury? Sure.
Preston Meyer 18:27 Maybe it's just because there's a ship stuck in the Swiss canal. Again, oh, maybe
Katie Dooley 18:32 the ship is stuck because of mercury. Maybe.
Preston Meyer 18:35 Because there's a another website. Basically, the exact same idea just is the ship stuck. So talking about, you know how the star signs don't really line up with anyone's personality, really in real life. The signs in the skies are also read to find messages from the gods and to predict important events. And so astrologists would help out national leaders with big decision making relative to these ideas. which sounded really helpful 1000s of years ago, probably until people realized, oh, no, that doesn't actually work.
Katie Dooley 19:17 The whole world doesn't orbit around me.
Preston Meyer 19:22 There have always been criticisms against astrology because of the obvious things that are wrong with it. People usually bring up the issue of freewill, the fact that everyone is able to make choices, or at least we feel like we can and the fact that we can discuss whether or not we have free will, helps the argument that we do have free will rather than everything being determined by the stars.
Katie Dooley 19:48 I chose not to marry an Aries
Preston Meyer 19:50 right? Did that specific option actually come up?
Katie Dooley 19:56 Do you mean the conversation of you're not an Aries? Should we be like Ever Sure,
Preston Meyer 20:01 let's go. That's not what I meant.
Katie Dooley 20:02 I don't know what you should know. I didn't. I didn't I didn't bet him that way either.
Preston Meyer 20:08 Yeah. Do you ever date an Aries at all? No,
Katie Dooley 20:11 that's fine. Oh, okay.
Preston Meyer 20:14 Nice. Somebody's really worried about astronomy. Alright, astrology. Yeah. Wow. Here we are. And I made the mistake. Another argument that has come up against astrology is the fact that people with wildly varied birthdays can die in the same battle, meaning the star sign at the time of your birth does not have really a very measurable difference on your actual fate.
Katie Dooley 20:44 No, don't.
Preston Meyer 20:46 But it looks like its present popularity really relies. And I've said this a few times about a few things on the counterculture from the 60s and 70s. It's now in almost every newspaper. If they're making any real money, it's, it's usually in there. They're paying somebody to make stuff up or maybe they're ripping off of older publications.
Katie Dooley 21:11 You mean they're an actual astrologist hired by the New York Times to write horoscopes? Yeah, I think so. Actual astrologers. Yeah. Okay. Not just some board I'd heard.
Preston Meyer 21:24 I mean, I'm education does it take to be an astrologist?
Katie Dooley 21:30 I'm gonna look this up on or off. I'm really curious. Now.
Preston Meyer 21:33 I think if you're professionally paid to write horoscopes, you're as much of an astrologist as anyone else could be.
Katie Dooley 21:42 Shady Preston, I didn't realize that's where you're going.
Preston Meyer 21:45 That's, that's my feelings on Wow. So I'm curious whether or not flat earthers buy into astrology, an awful lot of flat that Flat Earthers talk about this solid dome that's above the earth and the stars are just kind of painted more or less on this dome. And it doesn't help that this idea is taken from a translation choice. From the Old Testament, they from the Hebrew Bible. And I just haven't been able to have a conversation long enough with a flat earther on the subject to get into this particular question. Do
Katie Dooley 22:27 you think they would? What's your hypothesis? I
Preston Meyer 22:30 don't. I don't feel like I can make a proper hypothesis. I don't I would guess. Maybe. Oh, wow. I mean, if you're gonna buy into flat Earth, there's a decent chance you'll buy into it. So really glad that
Katie Dooley 22:47 you're you're not on the fence about this even a little bit. You just have a really strong, I'm close
Preston Meyer 22:52 to the fence. But um, it's true. I'm not on the
Katie Dooley 22:59 I think they would like yeah, I'd say more likely yes, then
Preston Meyer 23:03 no, that is my current operating hypothesis until I have a chance to test it and finer. Not actually, it's not an opportunity I'm really hunting for if it shows itself all I'll engage you
Katie Dooley 23:19 if you guys know anyone that's a flat earther send them our email. Yeah. Now, my favorite occult practice. If one could have a favorite occult practice, Alchemy, turning metals into gold, right? You think science. But science tells us it's impossible.
Preston Meyer 23:40 No, no, science doesn't tell us it's impossible. It's very difficult. Very difficult. Hugely energy consuming. And extremely dangerous. Yeah.
23:52 Probably why like, I love those three things.
Preston Meyer 23:58 Yeah, Alchemy is it's pretty nifty the idea of turning one metal into another metal it's it was really popular is like this great magnum opus. So finding the the philosopher's stone and turning lead into gold or mercury into silver or whatever you have into something better. And then, as tests failed and failed, people said, Ah, it's impossible. And then the Manhattan Project says, Hey, we actually can turn these things into other elements. And but bad bombing? Yeah.
Katie Dooley 24:42 results. So alchemy is based on four four classical elements, earth, air, wind and fire. So everything they're not actually wrong. It's just rudimentary is that everything is made up of a careful balance of these elements. Yes. The stones were sent to me a fire. And yeah, the Manhattan Project prove that yeah, there's fire in those rows fired. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 25:11 Yeah. And I think it's really interesting that the, the properties ascribe to these these fundamental elements of earth water, wind and, or air rather. And water. I put so much thought into I don't even know if I said all four. Water, fire, air and earth. Yes. Those are the four. Very good. Yeah. Let's say quick, I'm good. So the idea that these elements have these properties that we're now actually really exploring, like, the question of particles and waves, are they the even the same thing, but behaving in a particular manner at a particular time? It's all really tricky and really fascinating. And these questions aren't new questions. They're just being asked in new ways as we learn more. I think it's really interesting that alchemy is as weird and magical and mystical and philosophical as it is. There's a lot of good science attached to it. Even though it's not always part of the practice.
Katie Dooley 26:28 I'm sure they made a lot of scientific progress trying to turn metal into gold. Oh, not what they wanted to do. But I'm sure they learned a lot.
Preston Meyer 26:35 I think you're right. It's, it's pretty fascinating to me,
Katie Dooley 26:40 right? I like he says my favorites. Alright. So the last President mentioned, the Philosopher's Stone is the basis of this and it is considered the perfect transmutation of the elements. And the set to bring immortality. The elixir of life is supposed to be
Preston Meyer 27:02 the Philosopher's Stone dissolve dissolved,
Katie Dooley 27:05 I was thought of as the word I was looking for Thank you dissolved into it, that the stone physical hard stone does not exist anymore. Right.
Preston Meyer 27:14 And the real question is, did it ever, but there's an awful lot of philosophers and, and Old School scholars, who are very convinced that it was a real thing. And that's why the old Biblical patriarchs live to be more than 900 years old, in some cases, because they had this thing that kept them alive for so long. And now it's lost to us. And that's why nobody lives to be more than 120 years old anymore.
Katie Dooley 27:46 You know, who found the Philosopher's Stone?
Preston Meyer 27:49 Indiana Jones, yeah.
Katie Dooley 27:50 This is a fun aside before every part of the Philosopher's Stone was published. Like shortly before Indiana Jones, and the Philosopher's Stone was published.
Preston Meyer 28:03 I always thought that was fascinating. I discovered that years ago and then forgot about it. And thinking of it again, it's just brings me a little bit of happiness that there was a book published to an American audience that said, Indiana Jones and the Philosopher's Stone, and then very shortly later, the American publishers are like, Americans don't know what the Philosopher's Stone answer let's call a Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,
Katie Dooley 28:28 maybe it was because of the poor Indiana Jones sales may have nothing to do with the quality of that novel series.
Preston Meyer 28:34 Maybe.
Katie Dooley 28:39 Alchemy is not strictly limited to Western traditions. Hindu and Buddhism, also include alchemy. The Buddhists are said to possess the philosopher's stone and Tibetan Buddhism. It's actually a brilliant pearl. I imagine like a big like baseball Pearl, like a honkin, Pearl.
Preston Meyer 28:58 I think that's fair. It's gotta be special, right? Yeah. And I mean, how many times have you misplace something that's regular Pearl sized?
Katie Dooley 29:07 Frequently, all of my pearls are gone.
Preston Meyer 29:13 Yeah, so I would want something that's important to be a little closer to baseball sight. At least if you loosen the couch cushions you'll notice it.
Katie Dooley 29:22 And in Hinduism, some figures are described as possessing or using a stone that has the same properties as the Philosopher's Stone.
Preston Meyer 29:34 Yes, pretty much everywhere. And I think that's really cool. Alchemy is also really often associated with fear G divine works that how God operates in the universe. So it's basically theology is the the method of creating the universe. And so alchemy is attached to this, and it's study is also the study of the The nature of birth, death and resurrection. So I thought that was actually kind of interesting. The philosophy of alchemy is some pretty nifty stuff and can get very theological. And going back to my love of words, it's no accident that alchemy sounds a fair bit like chemistry. The owl if you want to break up the word just shows evidence that we've looked at it through a Muslim Arabic lens for a long time. And show me all meaning that yes, yes. And shimmy is basically just the French word for chemistry.
Katie Dooley 30:45 The chemistry Yeah.
Preston Meyer 30:49 But fancy and foreign and missing. Oh,
Katie Dooley 30:52 I love it. Yeah. So they basically have the same meaning. Yeah. Which is funny. Yeah, but they're very different. Yes.
Preston Meyer 31:02 So very different.
Katie Dooley 31:04 To funny. No, I like I like your word asides. President. Me
Preston Meyer 31:09 too. I think words are great. Next, on our list, we have magic. We've talked a fair bit about this over the last month, so I don't want to spend a whole lot more time on it. But basically, magic is the use of rituals to affect something in a way that seems unlikely to an outsider, often relying on the assistance of spirits or gods or anything supernatural.
Katie Dooley 31:36 This can also include incantations, I want to say like potion making, but that's not the right thing when they'll make
Preston Meyer 31:47 elixirs Yeah, I
Katie Dooley 31:48 guess so. Were the like more? Yeah, mortar and pestle up powders and things like that. To see are wicked. But yeah, all of those practices would fall under magic. Spiritualism also kind of a fun one. This would be your taro and your crystal balls and your seances and your psychic mediums. What else would fall under spiritualism? We G boards.
Preston Meyer 32:18 Man we G boards are some really potent part of our popular culture.
Katie Dooley 32:24 Absolutely. Yeah. So all that communicating with the dead essentially, our spirits is falls under here. So this is super common. Around the World. This is not a Western Eastern thing. Everyone wants to talk to their dead relatives.
Preston Meyer 32:42 Yeah, it's everywhere. Every religion deals with it in some manner or another. And there's, there's some traditions that are like, hey, you need to be really careful about this and others are like, You're gonna be fine as long as you're talking to the people you want to talk to.
Katie Dooley 33:00 And I'm just gonna say and then if you look at like Chinese folk tradition, that's the basis of theirs talking to dead relatives. Yeah. So
Preston Meyer 33:10 yes, I was um, Shinto and voodoo traditions all based
Katie Dooley 33:13 upon. Yeah. And all in your ancestor. So what am I have big questions, and I alluded to it earlier in the episode is how do I separate talking to an evil spirit, or having this as the evil or malicious gift as opposed to being a gift from God? Because this is a huge topic, right? If you if you Google, the occult, I would say is the majority easily 60% of the websites are about how bad it is. From Christian websites telling you to stay away from it's actually really hard to research.
Preston Meyer 33:47 So being told as a kid don't touch the Ouija board, you'll invite dark spirits into the house. And I'm like, or maybe maybe alone
Katie Dooley 33:57 if we get a friendly one. Well, we get Casper
Preston Meyer 34:01 right that's that's gotta be an option. They can all be evil, we can
Katie Dooley 34:05 all become bad once we die, right?
Preston Meyer 34:10 Spiritualism is so vague and, and big. And within every tradition, there's going to be some acknowledgement that there's good spirits and bad spirits that you can interact with. Because in real life, walking down the street, there's good people and bad people you can interact with. Absolutely.
Katie Dooley 34:30 It's really interesting to me that these were I don't remember the exact numbers but statistics out of America is the majority of Americans are religious. And the majority of Americans also believe in ghosts and spirits, which I mean, even considering they tell you those people that's true. That's absolutely true. Kind of weird to be concerned. They tell you to like don't go near it. But then there's people like Sylvia Browne called his way into it because Wayne fans makes a ton of money off of it. So even when there's definitely there's definitely overlap between religious America and people who are paying Sylvia Browne to talk to relatives.
Preston Meyer 35:12 Absolutely true. Absolutely. And it's weird because if you read into the Hebrew Bible, it specifically forbids dealing with people who have familiar spirits that they deal with. And really, that's the only the only strong basis we have for why Christians and Jews would be uncomfortable with fortune tellers and, and witches and whatnot, is this idea that my book says don't do that. But if you don't believe in the book, what reason? Do you have to believe that idea? Right?
Katie Dooley 35:51 Excuse me? Yeah, it's
Preston Meyer 35:52 a little weird. And, of course, when it comes to spiritualism, there are so many scam artists and have been for hundreds of years. Recently, we have stories like Tiffany, Butch, we talked about a little while ago. And famously, we've got Ed and Lorraine Warren, the couple that's the center of the conjuring series, which is, interestingly enough, the second highest grossing horror franchise in all of human history, second only to Godzilla, which makes a little bit of sense there. He's been around for
Katie Dooley 36:27 a while has been present. I just had a great idea. Yeah. What if we go and get our poems read and do a bonus episode on it? Oh, I like that. Yeah. Okay. Just go to some weird psychic ladies basement. Sure. And we won't tell them that we're not married to each other. Ah, okay. I
Preston Meyer 36:49 know where this can happen.
Katie Dooley 36:51 Okay. I mean, like, literally just drive down the basement and you'll find the psychic, but this is true. Okay. Okay. I really excited now. Unless, sir, yeah, if you guys fancy idea, drop a line artist card, but I'm really excited. So even if you think it's lame, I'm probably gonna do it.
Preston Meyer 37:10 Next on our list, we have hermeticism, which is kind of a big thing, an awful lot of the time when people talk about via call, this is what they want there a lot of the time. And this is a tradition that seems to have popped up in Egypt in the first century of the Common Era, under influence of Jewish and Christian mystic doctrines. And also Greek philosophy. There's a really interesting amalgamation of these things. And the great thing about synchronisation is that when smart people pick the best parts from a bunch of popular things, the result is pretty compelling. And it lasts a long time. We still have hermeticism, today, 2000 years later,
Katie Dooley 37:52 and it's pilot, we're, we'll do a full episode on hermeticism because it definitely warrants it. And there's things that are from the Hermetic tradition that you don't even know, right down, you know, I didn't know one another, another Christian site bashing the occult. So hermeticism is, is centered around Hermes, Tristan Augustus, he's he's sort of the central figure. He is a syncretic combination of Hermes and thoughts. Two very similar gods from Greek and Gyptian. Tradition, tradition. Thank you. So here's a made up person. Smash two people together. Yep. And so here's the code. I think this one is for podcasts as well. followers may name Hermes Trismegistus, whose life is shrouded in mystery. He didn't have a life. Remember, he's not unreal. As the one who unites all all cult teachings and practices, some believed he was a god, others demigod, still other views him as a philosopher and strove to live by His teachings. Again, not real just makes me a little bit angry, also really funny that they're just warping. Like it doesn't take a lot of googling to figure out that Hermes Trismegistus is a made up person.
Preston Meyer 39:09 No, if you google him the first entry and the little sidebar, when you use Google on a desktop device, it will straight up say, this is an amalgam character, so
Katie Dooley 39:19 it just bothers me that they're like, making shit up to push their beliefs on the alcohol anyway. My notes is I just can't handle people making up stuff to foster a weird agenda, which is true. I can't handle that.
Preston Meyer 39:35 Right. It's, it's frustrating. Trismegistus is a really interesting name to me. Hermes, seems like it's just the the Roman equivalent of mercury who is part of this amalgam. But trust me justice is a name with a real meaning for sure. It means thrice great. And if you compare this to the The grammatical precedent we have of the Holy of Holies, or the Sanctum Sanctorum, or king of kings, which mean like the most holy place or the highest King, we're here we got a tripling instead of a doubling. So this dude has got to be the absolute greatest, he's got to be the shit. Exactly. And that's a really bold name for a made up character. That's the head of your traditional ideas. But I like it, it's a little, it's a little special.
Katie Dooley 40:33 I like it, I think it's great. So her medicine is considered by religion by some just like Jenna ism is, it's better fits into the pair religion category, because it can actually be quite compatible with all other religions. And so many people are only interested in the philosophy or the mat magic ignoring the theological piece of hermeticism. Yeah, it's,
Preston Meyer 40:59 it's easy to adopt a thing if you want to just dump some parts that don't fit with your existing worldview. Absolutely.
Katie Dooley 41:05 And a good example, is actually the term good vibes, which I literally saw on a coffee mug the other day, it was like hermeticism deals with good and bad vibrations, that is a hermetic idea. So you can see how, like you said, I sat on a coffee mug the other day, this is something that is just the philosophy of it, it's become part of our culture without having to attach to the theology of it,
Preston Meyer 41:32 right. And we've actually got a good handful of little ideas that seem to have originated with hermetic traditions that have crept in in common use the phrase as above, so below has become pretty popular. And this of the original statement is that which is above is like to that which is below. And that which is below is like to that which is above. And that means that we are able to understand heaven, based on what we are able to perceive here and predict heaven based on what we see here. And that's a pretty interesting way to go through life. Instead of an awful lot of people who say that heaven is completely unimaginable, you couldn't possibly understand it and your current state, which just sounds like a really rough way of saying, Stop thinking about it, or you'll realize it's nonsense.
Katie Dooley 42:30 Yeah, that's sorry, I'm sorry, a little rebellious. Katie is like, well, if it's so great, I can understand why do I care? Like why do i Sure, okay. If I can understand, and I'm not gonna give it two shits about it, if I can understand it, is it even worth my Yeah. Is it worth my time to care? Okay, doesn't sound like it. Right.
Preston Meyer 42:53 So, an interesting way to look into the future and the world around you, I guess. There's, I've talked about this before how some pantheistic Christian theology is derived from just adopting ideas from other Eastern traditions over the course of the counterculture movement, there are some Christian traditions that have adopted the pantheistic idea directly from hermetic traditions. And so those ones, if you're worried about how long or where the source of this idea is, you can look at how long they've been talking about it. And if they've been doing it for more than 100 years, more than likely Hermetic tradition. And those handful of Christian traditions that actually talk about reincarnation, definitely are taking this from the hermetic texts more than from other Eastern traditions. precedent.
Katie Dooley 43:49 Yeah, they did something bad would you do? I went down a rabbit hole. Oh, no. Where did you go? So when you google occultism Nazi occultism comes up a lot. Oh, no. So I learned all about Nazi occultism and it was a wild ride. I bet. Did you know? Hitler had whose? I
Preston Meyer 44:14 have never heard that before. Oops.
Katie Dooley 44:18 I can make Clippy clap knows. Who's, that's why I always wore shoes to hide. So on top of that, Nazi occultism is based in Arabic. I hate this word. Very awesome. Very ossipee Thank you. Not so cultism is based in Ariana Sufi, which is an esoteric ideology, which you'll remember from our Wicca episode. esotericism is hard to define but it's basically secrets understood by small group people. So airy, airy ossipee is the wisdom of the Aryans implying that somehow area ends are better or smarter than other people
Preston Meyer 45:03 always think that's funny because Hitler seems to have a wild idea of who the Aryans were. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 45:09 he's definitely confused with like the Vikings, for sure.
Preston Meyer 45:13 But I was like, we know the Aryans are the people who brought the Vedic religion to India. And since that's the only place in the whole world where we see that religious tradition, historically speaking, it's a lot more likely they were a lot closer to India than, say, the opposite end of Europe.
Katie Dooley 45:34 Right? They're all a little darker than he thinks they were. That's for sure. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 45:39 I think most scholars agree that they were probably Persian indo Arab, somewhere around there. But it's like, the Far North Western Europe is a big to get that
Katie Dooley 45:51 blond and blue eyed. Ya know? They're also claims that Hitler was a demon, either not in addition to its so the person that he actually dedicated my income to has, like gone on record saying that when Hitler spoke about the final solution, his voice changed, his character changed. I was like talking to an entirely different person. My guess is that he's just a psychopath. But claims about
Preston Meyer 46:20 something I'm really passionate about, you might notice a change in my tone, talking
Katie Dooley 46:24 like, say, 10 I'm really passionate about the cult. Yeah. I'm so sorry. Yeah. And then, in addition to that, there were a lot of really weird fringe beliefs throughout the Nazi movement, including that Aryans are descended from aliens, they were really fascinated with the Holy Grail as seen in Indiana Johnson, and the Last Crusade, I was gonna say Indiana Jones And The Holy Grail. That's not real. Lucifer, astrology, Atlantis, just like really into some weird ass theories. And I was reading in like, how, how? And then I remember that q&a And the thing, so yeah.
Preston Meyer 47:20 Right, it makes it a little bit more understandable. It's
Katie Dooley 47:23 like if you're that far gone already than Atlantis is actually not that much further to go. Right.
Preston Meyer 47:28 So shortly from that point, it's interesting to me that the Nazis were such great bad guys for Indiana Jones because of their occult interests. It wasn't just because they're the bad guys in the time where we have Indiana Jones, it's because of what they were into.
Katie Dooley 47:47 And I mean, it just helps make the Indiana Jones stories more fantastical. A little bit. chicken or egg?
Preston Meyer 47:53 Generally speaking, or in this in this
Katie Dooley 47:58 did, were you more likely to become a Nazi because you already work cuckoo bananas, or to Nazis become cuckoo bananas. You know, I mean, like, would you already believe in Atlantis and you're like, let's and then some guy comes and says, let's kill all the Jews. You're like, yeah, okay, can gamble with that. Or we like I agree with killing all the Jews. And then they're like, What do you think of Atlantis? And they're like, Yeah, okay.
Preston Meyer 48:20 I think both. I think some people joined up because they were already troubled. And some people became more troubled because of their association with the party. I don't have a solitary answer.
Katie Dooley 48:35 I mean, you're probably right. But it is probably both. And some people never would have gone as far as Atlantis.
Preston Meyer 48:42 Right? There's nobody who bought into everything. 100% Or sorry. There's, you can't say that the whole group bought into everything.
Katie Dooley 48:51 I mean, we know that there were Nazis that didn't even agree with what the Nazis were doing. It was their own. You
Preston Meyer 48:56 had people who are actually party members who did not think it was okay.
Katie Dooley 49:00 What am I trying to say? I'm self preservation. Yeah, for sure. So what I was looking for, it's a spectrum. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 49:10 That's twice in one episode. Wow. Awesome. Sweet. It's, it's a wide varied world, and it's really quite fascinating. But occult traditions don't tend to be specifically religious on their own. Instead, they're usually treated as a science or more accurately, a pseudoscience, used in conjunction with an altogether independent dogma. Usually, the thing that bothers most monotheists, as far as I've been able to observe, is that these pursuits are perceived to distract from the worship of the one true God. And sometimes also suggest that there is an alternative path to immortal glory or salvation. There's actually a reasonably entertaining movie that came out a couple of decades ago, called the last sin eater. And the idea that there is somebody other than Jesus who can take away your sins is not terribly foreign to this idea. Scandalous, right. And it stresses a lot of people out makes people uncomfortable about how much they know about their faith, and what they need to know about their faith to really feel like they're faithful. And just makes people uncomfortable. Yeah. There's
Katie Dooley 50:35 also the risk of letting the devils in, right, which we'll talk about in two weeks.
Preston Meyer 50:43 We're gonna have some good fun with that, as we creep ever closer to Halloween.
Katie Dooley 50:51 I, my final thoughts are that the occult is not actually something to be feared. And it's so vague that when people say Don't dabble in the call, ask them to be more specific, for sure, just to see the look on their faces, because most of them don't know what they're talking about. And I can see that. So I didn't know what she was talking about until we researched this, right.
Preston Meyer 51:13 It's such a wide, wonderful world. And there is a little bit of mystery and magic to it, depending on how you define those words. And there's no reason to go around stressing and being afraid of all of these things that you're not familiar with. And hopefully we can help out with that and help you become more aware of what's really going on
Katie Dooley 51:37 see mystifying the mystical, Katie and Preston. Together, we fight crime and ignorance. And mostly, it's definitely not crime. I'm not built for that. vigilantism
Preston Meyer 51:49 is discouraged. But fighting ignorance, I think is a good pursuit. And I'd like to thank you all for joining us as we've been doing this for as of this episode, a whole year. Well, you
Katie Dooley 52:09 it's fantastic holding hands. Everyone knows
Preston Meyer 52:11 the visual medium, working out.
Katie Dooley 52:16 Yeah, so we thank you all so much for a great year. And we want to keep going. And the best way to do that is to support us any way you can, which can look different. You can follow us on social media, like comment share, you can join our Discord channel where we've been having some really great conversations recently. Or we've
Preston Meyer 52:35 got Patreon. We would love to make a little bit money doing this. So we can do it full time and maybe even do this weekly, instead of bi weekly just thinking that today to be great. Yeah. And if a subscription model doesn't work for you guys, there's always Spreadshirt
Katie Dooley 52:53 we have all our great merch.
Preston Meyer 52:56 And we're slowly building up our collection of things so that you can have more and more options as we develop. We're pretty excited about that. And so thanks for joining us. Please be with you. By the late Middle Ages | |||
| 28 Aug 2023 | Tomorrow is a Latter Day | 00:56:13 | |
Brigham Young gets a lot of credit as the "American Moses," but it's nothing compared to the work Joseph Smith did to earn that title. Moses led the people for many years, from place to place, but he never entered the Promised Land--like Joseph Smith. Joshua was the one who led the final trek into their new home--THAT'S Brigham's parallel. The Latter Day Saint movement (Utah Mormonism, et al) lives within the broader category of millennial restorationism. Not your typical Protestants, these guys believe in an angelic restoration of the church after a complete apostacy from the divinely appointed church. The volcanic explosion of Mount Tambora in 1815 is credited with not only the bad weather that brought us Frankenstein's monster, but also with moving the Smith family from Vermont to where they would find the Golden Codex of Mormon. Who was Joseph Smith? What did the early Mormons believe? What's the deal with polygamy? After considering the Smith family connection to Methodist and Presbyterian churches in the Second Great Awakening, we take time to explore the principal Mormon sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination, Endowment, and Marriage. Polygyny (a subset of polygamy) deserves some special attention, and we deliver. Joseph Smith reported countless angelic and divine visitations, and it was an angel that instructed him relative to the Book of Mormon as early as 1823. It's worth noting that the "Mormon Bible" is a poor label for the Book of Mormon, since the church officially sticks with the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible in English-speaking congregations. In 1844, Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were assassinated while in jail, murdered by an angry mob. We explore some of the details that led to their martyrdom. This week's episode is the first half of a two-part exploration of the Mormon tradition. Next time we'll talk about the splits before and after the assassination, and what makes the Brighamite Majority LDS Church in Utah (Latter-Day Saints, with a hyphen) different from the others. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshirt. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 19 Oct 2020 | Who's Your Sky Daddy? | 00:49:20 | |
In this episode, we take a closer look at the complex concepts of gods and worship. We start by defining God and then discuss how historical figures, like George Washington, have been worshipped in certain situations. We also explore the historical practice of deification, focusing on the worship of emperors and monarchs. Moving on, we discuss divine intervention in American history and how historical figures are sometimes treated like deities. Our perspectives on worship highlight its submissive nature and stress the importance of having a real connection to a deity or hero. We touch on monotheism and the challenges it poses, examining the history of religious leaders being treated as gods. Lastly, we explore various gods and entities, including the portrayal of ancient gods in modern times, and discuss the potential problems associated with excessive or harmful worship practices.
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** Katie Dooley 00:11 Alright, welcome to the next episode of The Holy watermelon podcast. Preston, what are we talking about today? Because it's all you,
Preston Meyer 00:21 we are talking about what is it God? And without looking at our show notes, what do you How would you describe or define a god?
Katie Dooley 00:30 Oh, no. I would describe a god as an invisible being that controls our lives. So pretty strong Yes. Yes, that has some sort of control over the outcomes of things, life. Stuff we pray for and asked to happen. Okay, outcomes of the Superbowl and whether we're gonna get a rain for harvest. Okay.
Preston Meyer 01:12 But it has to be invisible. Does it have to be here?
Katie Dooley 01:17 No, it definitely doesn't have to be here. But that's just the feminist in me. And I don't know of any visible Gods unless we're talking about
Preston Meyer 01:28 idols. What about George Washington? I
Katie Dooley 01:31 wouldn't consider him because
Preston Meyer 01:35 believe it or not a lot of people do.
Katie Dooley 01:40 Oh, wasn't his slave owner?
Preston Meyer 01:43 He was a slave owner. That's okay. Yeah, absolutely. Back in a time when that was the economic norm. If you had any sort of power at all, you definitely own somebody.
Katie Dooley 01:57 I mean, back in
Preston Meyer 01:58 those days, that's the way it was still on people. Right? I mean, you can get a slave from Africa for 400 bucks. cheaper if you, you know, hunt around a little better than the average person grows. We don't condone slavery, no, slavery is bad. Owning another person treating them as property instead of a person is definitely not okay. And there's a reason it's not normal anymore. But it used to be. And that sucks. But absolutely, George Washington is worshipped as a god, if you go to Washington, DC, there's this huge painting. And I wish I can remember the the name of the building it's in. There's somebody out there who'd be happy to share that information of the deification is huge painting of George Washington becoming a god. And there's a shrine in Hawaii of all places, that has a portion of it dedicated to George Washington. It's also very close to a nearly identical shrine for Abraham Lincoln, who was also worshipped as a god. It does not seem weird.
Katie Dooley 03:10 It does. It sounds like anyone or anything could be a god. And I know. For poor listeners, the next few episodes are going to be very big and very vague with no answer. So we're just going to talk around what a god is for the next 45 minutes to lay the foundation for the next episodes because this is information that although there's no answer to people need to know,
Preston Meyer 03:38 a religion can't exist without these ideas, whether they use the same vocabulary there has to be in some measure these ideas
Katie Dooley 03:47 and that's the worship of person, place or thing, right.
Preston Meyer 03:51 The worship of a noun object.
Katie Dooley 03:57 Yeah, an object.
Preston Meyer 03:59 Yeah, yeah. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 04:01 you just need to be a noun. Should we replace the word God with a noun? Like what? No, just like noun. So thank God. Oh, my Oh my God. Oh, my noun. I mean, that's a t shirt idea. Doesn't go in the opposite Brian, just remind me Oh, my noun. Oh, my noun.
Preston Meyer 04:19 So a quick Google search, which I've done more than once as I've taken Theology and Religious Studies in the university
Katie Dooley 04:32 Preston goes to the computer what
Preston Meyer 04:34 is so much of education is it might not start with a googling but it will definitely include a googling
Katie Dooley 04:42 this sounds like such a newbie question right but it got
Preston Meyer 04:46 well and for a lot of boys that's how they're gonna get any sort of answer from that question and a Google search of God I mean, you're gonna get the Judeo Christian God come up for sure because the English speaking world, mostly Judeo Christian. But that the definition also includes the idea that a god is anything that is worshipped, which could be a hero, a champion of an emperor, almost every Emperor is worshipped as a god, if you look back historically, they had a cult around their personality, which is a little creepy, but also a great way to keep control over your empire.
Katie Dooley 05:26 I imagine, I don't know, I haven't done any research into especially in Egyptian gods, those are probably all pass emperors. Not all
Preston Meyer 05:35 of them, but definitely many of them. There was the cult, immediately surrounding the Pharaoh, the pharaoh was absolutely worshipped as a god a little bit more intensely than a lot of other national religions. But a really cool example, to investigate and dig deep into Egyptian religion is also not a static thing. Things change from generation to generation. And over long periods of time, they changed a lot, which is why it's less weird to look at George Washington and see that he was worshipped as a god, actually.
Katie Dooley 06:08 I mean, I immediately think of and still probably the most modern idea that our monarchs have divine right? Absolutely. So in a country like the United States that by the time George Washington came around, didn't have a monarch, I imagine there'd be people who still believe that he had some divine right to lead and that there was some divine intervention in them winning the revolution under George Washington. Absolutely. I guess that's less of a stretch. But most
Preston Meyer 06:41 Americans genuinely believe that there was something very special and divine about the coming about of the American Revolution. There's the whole idea of what's the word now. Manifest Destiny, that the idea that we're here and we're awesome, because that was always meant to be, which I mean, every religion relies on that idea a little bit though most of them are going to say it the way American propaganda put it into print very strongly. But where was I going? Lost it.
Katie Dooley 07:18 Manifest Destiny and divine this around? Oh, yeah. Yeah, to mention for the revolution,
Preston Meyer 07:24 so most Americans buy into it, completely. Immigrants even usually love it, then it's it's all part of that idea of the American dream. Christians usually will ascribe some measure of revelatory power that helped the Founding Fathers build America, and then the Mormons straight up, would teach actively, that God inspired the founding fathers to create, which is sounds a little bit weird. But also, if you believe in God, it's relatively easy to believe that a country that ended up being so great and powerful, did get help.
Katie Dooley 08:03 I can see the, the belief that there was some divine intervention, right? I mean, people pray for a Super Bowl win. So if your team wins, and yeah, you might believe that there's some divine intervention. I just, it's harder for me to comprehend the jump from a divine intervention to George Washington is a deity worth of worship, like you don't go to church on Sunday to your you're not a Washington night. And you go and you pray to George Washington that your kids get to be healthier and get an A on their test, in the same way, but I guess that's where we're gonna dive into what is a God if you venerate a person? And there are idols of these people? Does that elevate them to God status Preston?
Preston Meyer 08:55 So the real question that we can't say all of you have to believe one single answer that I got can be literally anything but in the field of Religious Studies of a thing is worshipped as a god. We can't say that it's not a god. It's you
Katie Dooley 09:15 define what worship is?
Preston Meyer 09:17 I think we absolutely do have to define what worship is because this could get real weird real fast. Yeah. So what do you think worship? What what constitutes worship? Watch,
Katie Dooley 09:30 this is good to come up with a worship my dog or something weird. Totally AM. Worship trying to think in terms of Western religion. Sure. Because all those I'm an atheist. We're in Canada. So most people are familiar with worship. So it's definitely something elevated. Something that you like worship, I guess,
Preston Meyer 09:55 you can't use the word worship and your definition. To
Katie Dooley 09:58 worship is when you Worship in some ways, I don't see that it's something you're submissive to, right. So you're you're praying, you're asking for guidance or a specific outcome, you definitely think they have control over your life and your immediate outcomes. So again, back to like the Super Bowl, or but also after life outcome, and that if you do what the god entity deity wants, those good things will come to you.
Preston Meyer 10:37 Okay, so how about four year old Katie looking up to dad? Is that interesting?
Katie Dooley 10:47 Yeah, interesting. Oh, creepy. borderline creepy. But yeah, I guess that does fit that definition. And if anyone knows me and my dog, I'm definitely she's the alpha. So whatever she wants, she gets in hopes that she doesn't murder me in my sleep.
Preston Meyer 11:09 So when looking at Gods and what is it, God helps a lot to have something concrete, to have a connection to that God, you've got your heroes. For example, you look at the way you see people behave in superhero movies, and the way they react to their superheroes. They either see them as scary villains, or even if they're good, or they see them as gods, people who have great power, who deserve veneration. And an awful lot of the gods that we see in various national pantheons started out that way. An excellent example of a mortal person who came to be worshipped as a god is Jesus. There's there's no way around that he was a moral person, he died. He is currently worshipped as a god. Pretty solid example. There's also examples like Zeus, there's not a whole lot of strong reason to believe that he was a historical figure. Everything we know about him comes from stories that are far outside of what we expect to be human behavior. But they are classic literature. And we can talk on another occasion on how the Iliad and the other writings of Homer and other Greek poets are pretty much analogous with the Hebrew Bible. It's just a national library. But there is a place in 90% Sure, it's the city of Crete where Zeus has a a tomb, that is said to be this is where Zeus is buried. And it's, that's what I'm looking for. Oh, hello. The hits. It's not an exception to the rule that most Gods either were people or they are simply anthropomorphized phenomena. Like you've got gods of the rain. This is especially well illustrated in old nope, old Japanese commie. That's you've got the spirit of the river, you got the spirit of the rain, you got the spirit of the earth, you have the spirit of mountain Fuji, you've got all these spirits, that we we call them commie because that's the word used in Japanese that means spirit or God or anything in between. There is a distinction, but it's not transmitted very effectively through the one word that you use to cover the whole umbrella. It's a little bit weird. And if I knew more about the Shintoism, and Japanese national religion, I'm sure I could answer questions about that better. But commies are a pretty good example of that. You've got even Mesopotamia, there's gods of the river. Things like that. Pretty standard here in North America, the local Native Americans, they have bear worship, for example, among countless other things. There's a spirit that is manifested in the bear. And then you've got gods of ideas, which aren't terribly different from Gods of this river in the mountain. But like, you've got chaos gods, you've got trickster gods, many of whom probably were actually people. But that's a
Katie Dooley 14:44 tricky thing to explore. And that's a Greek one, isn't it? Oh,
Preston Meyer 14:47 there's god of wine. Yeah, gotta drink a God of hallucinogens, more or less. And I wish I can remember his name right now. He was played by Stanley Tucci in the Percy Jackson Movie.
Katie Dooley 14:59 Is googling.
Preston Meyer 15:01 Oh man, it bugs me that I can't remember his name. I took a class on Greek mythology. As part of my degree. I enjoyed it. And I can't remember his name right now.
Katie Dooley 15:13 I'm on it. I'm on it.
Preston Meyer 15:15 It's gonna be really unhelpful if I'm wrong about him being played by Stanley Tucci. Diagnosis,
Katie Dooley 15:22 that's what I thought it was. But I didn't want to say it.
Preston Meyer 15:25 I'm embarrassed how long it took me to remember it because I've talked about diagnosis a few times, in present presenting to my classes and whatnot. And I actually really love their portrayal of him in Percy Jackson, based on the movie I have read, none of the books and I've only seen the two movies that I recognize most people hate. But I love that version of Dionysus, who can't get drunk anymore. He's, you know, AAA or whatever. And so he pours himself a glass of wine and turns into water. And there's some sort of lament about, you know, there's this other guy who can do the exact opposite Jesus. And so there's, you know, he's the God of revelry, and good times and whatnot, his party was back in the day would have been the biggest, most insane, fun that definitely would have transitioned, at some point into celebrating Aphrodite and a big old orgy, maybe I'm feeling confident that was good I can,
Katie Dooley 16:30 I can see how that can start as a real person who just had like
Preston Meyer 16:35 parties, and when you would have these parties to get him to come? Yeah, which definitely would have started while he was alive. And then
Katie Dooley 16:43 funeral would have been a big party in honor of, and
Preston Meyer 16:46 then just keep doing it every year. And there's, there's loads of gods that are like that, a lot of the gods that we can look back in history, we think we're probably people, a lot of them probably weren't. And they're just this idea of this, this element that became deified to to explain it to currents, like the lightning that eventually turned into a person like Thor, for example. Was he a person we straight up don't know. Odin, probably was, there's loads and loads and loads of material written over the centuries on this topic of need to read the word so I can say it properly. Loads of things written on you hemmer ism, which is this old word named after this old dude, who tried to explain how people became Gods after they died, or even sometimes before they died, and how these gods that we look at now we're actually people, and there's, there's loads of different people. There's loads of different reasons why a person would be deified. You've got teachers like Confucius, most people are looking look at Confucianism. Don't venerate him as a person of worship, in the way that we see worship in the Judeo Christian tradition. But if you're going to repeat something, that dude says for 1000s of yours, and get mad when somebody says this person's a fool, there's a degree of worship there.
Katie Dooley 18:25 Well, that's, but that's an interesting point to this idea that God is quite a broad term, which has, I mean, we were talking politics a little bit before we press play. And yeah, sometimes people are passionate about who their political leader is, whatever side you're on, and you get mad when someone disagrees. So are like worship, that I don't like that idea of worshipping these political party leaders bus, right?
Preston Meyer 18:56 Well, for example, yum. There's videos circulating on the internet, as there always is of Trump rallies. And you've got these dudes with shirts on, that are hoping and they're illustrating on the shirts of a dynasty of Trumps. You got Donald for four more years, and then Ivanka for eight years, immediately after, and then Donald Jr. Immediately after that for eight more years. And eventually, when Baron is old enough, get him for eight more years. And that's worship. The idea that Donald Trump is the best possible President America could ever have, and that nobody else or no other family should ever hold that office. That's worship. It's a dangerous, democracy destroying kind of turd, worship. Worship, I like that. And I bet you If you were to go and look through that chart I showed you of all of the different gods and how they're categorized a bunch of there's a turd God. somewhere, somewhere in the world some point in history scab
Katie Dooley 20:11 and ISIS. Sure.
Preston Meyer 20:15 I feel like there's a God who's responsible for making sure the latrines don't stink to bed or something, something connected.
Katie Dooley 20:23 I think that that's probably, yeah, how other gods started and said, that was not saying Trump's a great leader, but that there was a great leader that people sort of wanted to continue, especially in the time sort of before democracy when monarchs again divine right were more common. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 20:44 there's, there's all kinds of leaders, there's teachers, like, like I mentioned before, you've got military leaders, there's Chinese fella that I appear to have failed to record his name. I wrote him into my paper. There's there's Chinese generals that have been established as Gods after they died, even just because they fought against a power, even having lost their battles. They what they stood for, it became so important to the people that they said, Yeah, this person will be deified. Which seems super weird in a Western worldview. But that's a thing that happened.
Katie Dooley 21:33 But I immediately think being knighted by the Queen and also Catholic saints, especially in Catholicism, because you can worship someone. I think it's kind of odd, but in this sort of denomination of Christianity where it's okay to pray to a saint in a monotheistic religion. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get into that in a different episode. monotheism
Preston Meyer 21:55 is a tricky, tricky, tricky beast. That
Katie Dooley 22:01 is it because of the Trinity.
Preston Meyer 22:04 Honestly, the Christian monotheism makes no sense at all. There's no way you can defend it. It doesn't work
Katie Dooley 22:12 because of the Trinity. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 22:16 Jewish monotheism, the way it's been explained to me is, you've got one God, and that's the deal. There is no split next to it. Now, these ancient Israelite religion absolutely had a huge number of Gods so yeah, and then the exile around 600 ish BC, they very quickly modified their religion, to focus on one God while they lived in a world surrounded daily by people who really wanted them to not worship anything of their own, but worship Babylonian gods. So, history is super exciting. They're fun to look into. If you like the history of religion.
Katie Dooley 23:04 If you don't like the history of religion, you're listening to their own podcast. I know it's a laugh, so to butt. Heads up. It's coming.
Preston Meyer 23:16 And yes, you've got teachers, you've got military leaders and Emperor's, like I said before, almost every Emperor has been worshipped as a god. That includes Pope's
Katie Dooley 23:29 do we get a worship? Queen Elizabeth?
Preston Meyer 23:32 Absolutely. Yes, I like I am 100% certain that there are people who worship Queen Elizabeth, though it is actively discouraged in the Church of England of which she is the head. There are people who absolutely worship her. And I mean, it helps that she's been the queen for longer than my parents have been alive.
Katie Dooley 23:53 She was for coronated quarantine. The year my mom was born and my mom just turned to her mom 68 So she's been clean for 60 a long time. And I don't know if we're keeping this in Brian might be like, this is completely irrelevant. But I think I mean, little bit to the point of worship and worshiping the queen I mentioned to someone, you know, it won't be long before she's not on our $20 Bill anymore, not on our coins. And they said well, you can't take Queen Elizabeth all our coins. I said, Yeah, I can. We used to have to King George on there. And then George died and we put on Queen Elizabeth like, my grandpa was a coin collector. He had some coins with King George on it. It's just because after 68 years, nobody can imagine. Charles $20 bill but it's coming mean Elizabeth is old as balls. And I that might be a really great example of worship. If she does stay and I am not the Bank of Canada. I don't know who's in charge of this. But some people have said well, maybe they'll just keep her on the money because she's been on my Memphis along.
Preston Meyer 25:00 I really look forward to the day we have the kid from Mad Magazine on the back of the loony.
Katie Dooley 25:14 It's so true. I actually am. I mean, I don't want Queloz dies. He's pretty cool. But she has all those balls. I would love to see Charles on the money just for a shake up after I'm only 30. But like my mom's entire life, the Queen's been on her money. So let's have a shake. That was But Charles on it. Yeah, that's a modern example of when I'm like, Well, what happens when Charles goes on our money? I was like, don't happen. Yes, it probably will happen. Well, that's,
Preston Meyer 25:43 she's she's not on our money by virtue of Oh, yeah. She's super cool. Or by state in forest worship. She's there because she's the monarch, she will be replaced.
Katie Dooley 25:57 Last year is actually a lizard person and lose forever, which is another feat.
Preston Meyer 26:00 Yeah. For those conspiracy folks are right. And they're not a small number, which is embarrassing. But if, if they're right, then yeah, so probably between her but a lot longer to see your actual lizard face and put that on the money. Well, she can only go so long before she asked to reveal it. Right. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 26:22 I mean, she keeps shedding her skin eventually your lizard faces. Human body that she procured 68 years ago will eventually deteriorate? Yeah. So just back to the question, what is a God is there? I guess? I mean, clearly, there's no official definition. But there is a difference between my dad and the Queen, and Jesus. Right, or, you know, God, capital G.
Preston Meyer 26:55 But there's differences between Loki and Thor and Odin as well. And they're all worshipped as gods, though the worship of Loki is odd, especially to a culture where we want to worship a God that we expect to be righteous. Loki is never seen as a righteous figure.
Katie Dooley 27:15 I guess what I'm saying is, we worship the latter ones I listed on mass, and we have buildings dedicated right people, whereas there is not a building or shrine dedicated to daddy, Julie. Katie's Dad, I don't know if I want my last name on the podcast, right? And where am I? Right? It's not something we, you know, write literature about, and we don't pay tax or tithe to these people. So there is, but you care for them? I do and I buy him Christmas presents. Is
Preston Meyer 27:57 that not an offering even a sacrifice? Oh?
Katie Dooley 28:05 Yes, but how can you haven't got my dad a Christmas present, then?
Preston Meyer 28:10 Because I don't wish what and worship is in respect to things are more broadly recognized as the gods have just very often regionalised or localized?
Katie Dooley 28:22 You've got hyper localized family of five? Absolutely.
Preston Meyer 28:26 There's, if you look in the Middle East, for example, back 4000 years, you there's archaeological evidence of gods who are worshipped just in one town. Right? There's, there's loads of those very local gods. The Bible actually has words talking about household gods. So they were more likely more slightly more recent ancestors that were just past the cusp of memory.
Katie Dooley 28:58 Well, and I use ancestors, and that immediately makes me think of Chinese families that talk to their ancestors. So you don't even need to be you can be recently did. Right. And ancestor worship is Yeah, somebody asked you for things that they need. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 29:16 Hmm. Ancestor worship is pretty much normal around the world, based on the structure of the word. I like to do that sometimes dig into Etymology and where words come from, you worship something if you declare by word or by action that it has worth, which sounds way too broad,
Katie Dooley 29:43 vastly too broad, then I worship chocolate.
Preston Meyer 29:48 Right. And so we do have to, we have to narrow that in just a little bit. And the real question is, how much can you narrow it in before your definition? Isn't isn't right, the same question but has bothered academics for ages on what is religion except is that everyone you narrow it in too much you've got nobody but Christians which is a Christian anthropologists dealt with it for a while and that has caused its own problems. So narrowing in worship is tricky like the dollar has value that's the whole reason that it exists but the worship of the dollar there are people who live their lives around the dollar like it is their god some workaholics That's
Katie Dooley 30:41 the deal. Almost every Christmas movie is based off of that
Preston Meyer 30:45 is true like your Hallmark Christmas movies. The the first half of the movie is money. The second half of the movie is skipping that money man I wish I hadn't been worshipping money. And but it's a fun example because it's it's a thing that on the on the surface base level broad definition of worship doesn't apply
Katie Dooley 31:09 when money is universal. So everyone can kind of use this as a baseline. It's an
Preston Meyer 31:13 easy baseline to hit. But then you've got people who straight up do worship not not the dollar bill itself, but the accumulation of wealth. There's I haven't looked into it, there's probably more than one god that represents the accumulation of wealth. Half of our dragon stories. That's what that's what they are.
Katie Dooley 31:37 Dragons money.
Preston Meyer 31:38 Yeah, that's just sit on their pile of gold and tell you to piss off. Anytime you come looking for trouble.
Katie Dooley 31:49 Good old dragon.
Preston Meyer 31:49 The idea of God is just so broad. It's really tricky.
Katie Dooley 31:54 Yeah, like I said, this is an episode of this talking around an answer not actually getting to one.
Preston Meyer 32:01 Yeah. Every religion has an official. This is what Gods are there, boy. Yeah, pretty much like Christianity. Obviously. You've got Jesus, the other two gods of Christianity.
Katie Dooley 32:16 And then a whole bunch states if you're Catholic.
Preston Meyer 32:18 Oh, yeah. That's I mean, even
Katie Dooley 32:21 Mormonism arguably Joseph Smith, in a little bit, Brigham Young.
Preston Meyer 32:26 I mean, that's that's the tricky thing is just like the Anglican say, Don't worship the queen. Mormons do say don't worship Joseph Smith don't worship Brigham Young, don't worship Russell Nelson. But there is absolutely a level of hero worship. You venerate that person as having accomplished this thing. Or having been a good teacher or eggs, acknowledged the is particularly in Mormonism, the idea that they should be deified in the next life. But, and worshipping them is a tricky thing. But how,
Katie Dooley 33:05 how do you not and right, and there's a lot of I mean, this is almost every religion, right? You have Islam and Muhammad you have every denomination of Christianity, Martin Luther Lutherans, and even probably Moses in Judaism as they are the founders or you know, they took that tangent that whatever religion needed to take. So how do you not venerate them? To some extent? Or, or even the, you know, the Pope is, you know, the mouthpiece of God, how do you not
Preston Meyer 33:42 to deny them on a pedestal is insane, right? Yeah.
Katie Dooley 33:47 Absolutely. But they're even then there's still a separation between them. And yeah, I mean, these examples, the Judeo Christian gods.
Preston Meyer 33:58 Yeah. Religion is tricky. Yeah. And that's why
Katie Dooley 34:01 we're talking about it because people don't have these conversations. Right. And I think maybe quickly to wrap up is perhaps when is worship dangerous or whatever. So and we'll we're going to do a full episode on cults. Or maybe in not even the realm of cults. But when does worship go too far? There were I don't know if there were confirmed allegations that you know, Pope John Paul flogged himself. Is that worship gone too far? Yeah, so the clearly there's varying degrees of worship and at some point, it becomes religious and maybe that's the defining factor and I don't want to get say anything too concrete, but whatever. We worship money, we worship our friends and family. Katie worships her dog. But at some point, it becomes so devotional. My dog's coughing in the background. It becomes so devotional that now sir It takes that pivot to religion. And then there's probably another pivot where actually becomes dangerous and you're harming yourself and or others thoughts.
Preston Meyer 35:11 I liked the phrase devotional worship, for example, worshipping the dollar. Not a thing that people do like as far as worshiping this pile of coins in my hand that makes up $1. Devotional sounds
Katie Dooley 35:24 conscientious, you're like, yeah, get my dad a birthday present. I hope he's gonna give me a better birthday present, because he's my daddy. But it's not like conscious, I'm going to constantly give and give and whatever I submit myself for,
Preston Meyer 35:45 that's the exact same the relationship you just described, exchanging gifts with your father. That's the way most Christians look at their relationship with God. Yeah, you offer your devotions, which is, in many religions, nothing more than prayer. And so I
Katie Dooley 36:00 guess I'd say it's like routine. And it's, it's very conscientious, where, you know, if my dad didn't give me a birthday present, and be like, Okay,
Preston Meyer 36:09 that's a bummer.
Katie Dooley 36:11 That's a bummer. But this is like, yeah, I guess conscientious. And then there's like, obviously, there's like this afterlife piece to it. which no one can know. There's
Preston Meyer 36:23 no solid evidence.
Katie Dooley 36:27 Rats. Yeah, I think there's like this, this routine, devotional, conscientious aspect to it that's different than, you know, some of these sort of everyday relationships we're talking about. And then there's this danger point, probably along the way. Yeah, I
Preston Meyer 36:48 think worship is definitely defined by the way it affects your behavior. Like, the way you treat your dog is different than the way you'll treat the money in your wallet, you will happily part with the money in your wallet, knowing that more will come. And you'll get something in exchange for that. partying with Paige is going to suck when that happens.
Katie Dooley 37:13 I just say one day, she's gonna move out.
Preston Meyer 37:18 And that helps make things easier. And if you look at the story of Jesus, for example, in the book of Acts, he moved out. I mean, he died, he came back, so we're gonna skip that part of the story. But then he just took off into the clouds, right. So he's
Katie Dooley 37:37 I don't know anyone that's moved out like that before. And I yeah, that brings obviously a level of comfort to people knowing that he will come back one day, and you'll get to see him at the end of all things. Maybe.
Preston Meyer 37:52 That's the story. That's the hope. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 37:57 Talking about time that devote
Preston Meyer 37:59 your life. Yeah. So a lot of your worship of the old, the old gods, the god of thunder, the God of the river that really affected your life and you would behave in particular ways to help the way that affected your life. You would pray that the river would not dry up because sometimes they would you pray for the rain to come because sometimes it wouldn't you pray for the lightning not to come because that keeps setting your house on fire. That's a personal, deeply personal issue.
Katie Dooley 38:27 Yes, you getting electrocuted is a deeply personal issue.
Preston Meyer 38:33 Yeah, well, I mean, and also having your little grass huts set on fire that blows that in dangers more than just you. So lightning, hella bad. And so you would pray for god of thunder lightning, whichever, like Thor, to not strike your home or your village or your crops. You would have Gods like Hades, who is villainized way more than he should be? The Hercules movie is terrible. Because historically, Zeus is a dickbag raping any pretty girl as
Katie Dooley 39:07 a swan goose I was gonna say she Yeah. And then
Preston Meyer 39:11 he's taken loads of shapes and raved lower than just humans.
Katie Dooley 39:17 Oh, by
Preston Meyer 39:20 the way, they treat Hera in that movie is honestly super disappointing that Hercules movie could have been way more fun. And Hades is never a bad guy. The story of the rape of Persephone, if you read the story, he never rapes her based on the current definition of rape. He seduced her and convinced her to come live with him. That's not different than most relationships today.
Katie Dooley 39:50 mean that's why I'm here.
Preston Meyer 39:54 My relationship isn't wildly different. I
Katie Dooley 39:57 used to do so she Cities.
Preston Meyer 40:00 I feel like there was a lot of effort both ways, which is why it worked.
Katie Dooley 40:05 Yes, stay tuned for our podcasts on relationships cool.
Preston Meyer 40:11 But so, Hades is the keeper of the dead. He's not Santos, the, the god of death. He is the keeper of the dead and also of various other elements of the underground. And so he would be a God that is prayed to to preserve and care for your departed dead, like great, great grandma, things like that. And absolutely should not have been the villain of their Kilis movie. Zeus is far easier to villainize because we know well enough that we should villainize right.
Katie Dooley 40:47 So what's Preston is saying between Percy Jackson and Disney movies is don't get your religious education, from movies.
Preston Meyer 40:56 And we'll talk about popular culture and religion later. Greek religion is well, one not monolithic, and to always poorly represented in popular culture, but we like to romanticize things, it's to a Christian based population, it's kind of important that we stick with the narrative of God is good. And so Zeus being the God of the gods, has to be a good guy. And so he's so jovial and bright orange and whatnot, and actually looks a little too much like Trump in the Disney movie, in the Disney movie, whereas you've got Satan who because he lives underground in Dante's Divine Comedy. He has to be a parallel to Hades who therefore must be evil. So popular culture really messes with religion, and actually changes religion, which I'm straying too far from our current topic of gods can be literally anything. And they are changeable. You've got all kinds of gods who are seen as one thing in one place and seen as something else somewhere else. You've got gods who are deified before they die, you've got gods who are deified centuries after they've died. The little less common but has actually happened. And literally anything can be a god, literally anything can be worshipped to that devotional religious level. And most of it shouldn't be. I mean, it's super easy to say none of it should be worshipped to every religious devotional level. I feel like that's your position. But there are things that drive us to be better. Absolutely. And I feel like that is something that is a little harder to discourage.
Katie Dooley 43:13 I, I guess that sort of goes back to my previous point, of anything taken too far.
Preston Meyer 43:22 Absolutely. I mean, that's part of the phrase too far. You can take it so far. And it still be okay. Like, even if you worship Xenu I mean, it's something I have a hard time defending the whole religion that built up Xenu is a topic for another day. Yeah, to the
Katie Dooley 43:41 point where you, you know, XENU exists, you've gone too far. Yeah, it's like 10 $50,000 to figure out anyways, another day. And maybe I feel like we need to do a full episode on worship, because there's so many varying degrees of worship, and different types of worship, and that it'll just be an interesting sort of cultural snapshot. But yeah, anything taken too far as bad. Anything can be a god.
Preston Meyer 44:11 What about Albert Einstein?
Katie Dooley 44:14 What about?
Preston Meyer 44:17 I'm very confident that the veneration that is heaped upon him, counts as devotional worship,
Katie Dooley 44:25 probably and I actually, perhaps even lump Addison in there because he didn't even figure it out. Tesla did.
Preston Meyer 44:34 Yeah, Edison definitely has a lot that I can't say fair share of worship, because it's definitely not fair that he has accrued a lot more worship than he ever deserved. But
Katie Dooley 44:51 I wonder I don't know enough about Thomas Edison. That's not my wheelhouse, but sort of same idea.
Preston Meyer 44:57 He paid for a lot of really good sign tends to be done. But he's not the genius that a lot of people like to write them up to be. There's a great episode of Doctor Who on that subject.
Katie Dooley 45:09 I guess my final points are, know what you're worshiping. Just be aware of what you're doing in your worship. Make sure not to hurt yourself or others. That sounds like a sex talk. Treat worshipping gods like sex, know what you're doing. Be ready.
Preston Meyer 45:34 Use protection, use
Katie Dooley 45:36 protection, check in occasionally make sure everything's still good. Not that you've gone too far or not enough, right? Because their spiritual well being even though I'm an atheist, that you need to take care of your spiritual well being make sure you're doing enough. Make sure not doing too much. Those are my final thoughts on worship. And no, we never answered what a god is. It can be anything. Whatever makes you happy and floats your boat, Flying Spaghetti Monster, love flying spaghetti monster, that's when I can actually get right.
Preston Meyer 46:05 He's as real as the God of the team's River. There's a god of the temperature. I guarantee it. If you were to look it up, you'd find his name or her. I'm going to be honest, I didn't look it up and can't say if it's male or female. But since every river in the old world has a god associated with it, you'll find one. Somewhere you might have to look for longer than this podcast has time and patience for old father 10s of school. That's his name. That's actually a reasonably common thing. But I couldn't feel confident enough to say yeah, that's totally it. Many rivers have the gods named right after the river. That's pretty normal. But a lot of God's rivers have their own independent name. There
Katie Dooley 46:50 is a statue of father Thames to see any final thoughts from you, Preston?
Preston Meyer 46:57 I have so many ideas that we've we've generated a lot of Gods on the idea of a land. Britannia, for example, is the god goddess. Britannia is the goddess of Britain, of Great Britain. I have to believe you on Portlandia.
Katie Dooley 47:17 There's a beautiful big statue over Borland. If you watch literally any
Preston Meyer 47:21 of the live action Spider Man movies, the first thing you see is the goddess Colombia, the goddess of North America, or maybe all of America, I'm pretty sure it's just north. But that's, that's the thing I'm gonna have to look up. But that's the thing. Colombia is the goddess of North America, or America. Columbia is the goddess of America. And that's a little bit weird, because guess where she got her name? Christopher Columbus, a total dick bag.
Katie Dooley 47:57 Total bag of dicks. But that makes the right that goes back to her to our points,
Preston Meyer 48:02 lots of dark blood, lots of dogs. Lots of gods are total big bags in and of themselves. And sometimes we romanticize them and create a whole new character that sometimes needs to be nothing like the original, including swapping genders. Gods are tricky. Gods can be literally anything, they can be a fiction created to cover an idea or represent an idea. And a god can be literally anything that you want to worship. If you want to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That's your God. If you want to worship your dog, or a bag of beans, that's an option to you. And we will talk later about the God of sesame seeds.
Katie Dooley 48:50 Oh, I'm excited. All right, so stay tuned for our next episode. Next episode is going to be equally vague and vague on what is religion. Shalom. I don't remember how I signed off last time
Preston Meyer 49:09 with you | |||
| 30 Dec 2024 | Heart and Stomach | 01:05:56 | |
Over millennia, countless dietary traditions have formed around the world; many are tied strictly to religious traditions, and have thereby been empowered to stand the test of time (with some scientific speculation). We examine the details that outline kosher food, and how it's much stricter than halal diets (which are hardly monolithic). We also look at the Christian narrative that discards the Kashrut laws. Some keep it simple and categorically refuse to eat meat of any kind. Taking proper care of your kitchen is important for a lot of reasons, you shouldn't have to fear religious discipline to keep it clean, though religious tradition certainly informs the standards of cleanliness for many. There's an ancient tradition that separates fish from other meat, too. In addition to all the rules about what to eat, there are also some strict rules about when to eat, and feasts are an important part of every serious religion. Whether we fast or celebrate the harvest, we do it together, and strengthen the community. All this and more... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 20 Nov 2023 | Pretty Fly for a Mennonite - an Interview with Andrew Penner | 01:03:52 | |
Andrew Penner grew up in the Mennonite tradition of the Anabaptist movement. The Anabaptists have a colorful history of subversion from the Catholic Church, despite their commitment to pacifism. There's an awful lot to learn on these subjects, including the connection with the Amish and Hutterite branches, as well as the variation within the Mennonite conferences. (Jakob Amman and Jakob Hutter were a little more extreme than Menno Simons.) Early Anabaptist beliefs are outlined in the 1527 Schleitheim Confession of Faith, so we discuss these points with Andrew, and get the lowdown on their importance in Menoism, in contrast with the greater network of Anabaptism. Andrew relates these subjects to his own experiences and his family history, and he shares with us how this is affected by his being a Freemason, too. You can WATCH this interview on YouTube This interview continues on Patreon
Find Holy Watermelon merch at Spreadshop Join the Community on Discord Get more great religion facts in your feed on Facebook and Instagram | |||
| 08 Nov 2021 | Religious Posers | 00:53:04 | |
This week we are talking about Yoga & Hinduism! Is yoga a fun athletic activity or a religious practice? Yoga is one of the six darshanas of Hinduism - a very important pillar in the religion. It is a practice so old we actually don't know where it came from. We have it wrong in the west. Yoga is first and foremost a meditation practice to release yourself of your worldly concerns. The practice of yoga is the union of the self and lord (referring to Shiva, the Destroyer God). Practicing yoga is supposed to make you more godly. What we call yoga is actually a smaller part of a bigger religious practice. Asana is the physical posture aspect, and serious yogis disapprove of using yogic methods for worldly purposes (fitness). However, if you're just practicing asana to improve your health, as long as you recognize it is not the goal or purpose of yoga. In this episode, we also discuss other religions' relationship with yoga. Some religions are totally fine with incorporating it (like Jainism and Buddhism) and some religions ban it altogether. Because of the religious aspect of yoga, yoga in schools is a point of contention as well. Learn more about the origins of yoga, its role in Hinduism, and how we can be respectful of its origins as Western practitioners. All this and more.... Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt Join the Community on Discord Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram Learn more on our official website ** Preston Meyer 00:09 atheist and agnostic as well as I used to do yoga, right? A little bit. Yeah. Were you any good at it?
Katie Dooley 00:15 No, that's fine. I
Preston Meyer 00:18 can handle feeling like a poser.
Katie Dooley 00:20 Exactly. I'm Katie.
Preston Meyer 00:23 I'm Preston.
Katie Dooley 00:24 Welcome to the holy watermelon podcast. No, I was terrible at yoga. I got sick of not getting any better at it. Oh, is my problem. Okay. I see the value in doing it. I'm sure it helps a lot of people. Sure.
Preston Meyer 00:42 But what's the difference between yoga and pilates?
Katie Dooley 00:45 Pilates? Traditional Pilates actually uses machinery. Okay. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, you can do Pilates without machines. But like, my
Preston Meyer 00:55 knowledge of Pilates is strictly limited to one episode of corner. Yes, that came out like 15 years ago. And you couldn't call it Pilates because everyone thought of Pilate, the guy who is responsible for Jesus death. So they called it mat class, which, since that's the only thing I knew about Pilates, there's no visible difference.
Katie Dooley 01:14 I don't know. If I'm being completely honest, I know more about yoga and even more. So we wanted to tackle this because Yoga is a really big part of Hinduism. And most people, I think, don't even realize how much it is part of Hinduism. So when I was going through the notes, I had some just questions came to my mind things to keep in the back of my mind. And I don't know if we have any answers for these, we'll see what we can do. But I was thinking, you know, does doing yoga make you Hindu? Or are you actively practicing Hindu traditions? If you're practicing Hindu traditions, does that make you Hindu? Can you separate your workout from a religious tradition? And what if we did something like this to a different faith, like Christianity, for example, and I say what what we did what we do to this is westernizing, commercialized which we'll get into, but
Preston Meyer 02:15 you mean like Christmas?
Katie Dooley 02:16 I mean, maybe yeah, that's a great, it's a great parallel. Let's just, I want everyone to keep those questions in the back of the mind, back of your mind while you're listening to this episode. Yeah. I like it. Do you have any initial thoughts before we dive in?
Preston Meyer 02:36 It's like anything related to religion. It's tricky.
Katie Dooley 02:41 And a spectrum, right.
Preston Meyer 02:48 Yoga is incredibly old. As far as its origins, we don't actually know there's a couple of schools of thought on whether it's actually the same thing that came with the Vedic religions from the Aryans as they came into the Indus Valley. And there's some scholars who think, no, it was probably already among the Indian people, before the Aryans brought their religion. And so there's no way to know exactly. It's a little bit frustrating that way.
Katie Dooley 03:22 You'll get one of the six stars, Shanna, of Hinduism, which is literally a school is the school of thought it literally translates to seeing. So it's one of the six big pillars. Yeah, it's a very big deal. And it's if you read this, I read the Bhagavad Gita earlier this year, they mentioned yoga, constantly in it. This is not just an exercise in their
Preston Meyer 03:49 world, it's a deeply religious activity.
Katie Dooley 03:52 So in the West, in North America, we have westernized the term yoga to basically refer to Hatha Yoga. If you're a yogi, there are other types of yoga but generally we're referring to Hatha Yoga, posture based physical exercises and relaxation and some meditation. Traditionally, yoga is a meditation practice to help you release you from the from your worldly possessions.
Preston Meyer 04:19 Stop thinking about material things and just be a spirit on the wind.
Katie Dooley 04:27 And you know, I this is extra ironic. Why is that because Western yoga which I don't love that term, but we're gonna refer to it as that is gate kept by upper middle class white women. And it's highly commercialized,
Preston Meyer 04:44 you gotta have the mat. You got to have Lululemon pants. Yeah, if you're
Katie Dooley 04:48 spending $120 on yoga pants, you're not doing it right because you're supposed to be released from from that.
Preston Meyer 04:57 Anyway Oh, the irony but a world
Katie Dooley 05:04 so I do think it's a great fitness practice, not for me, but I have tried it. But I think it is negligent of us to disregard its Hindu origins and to Western ISIS into origins. Absolutely.
Preston Meyer 05:22 There's, there's often talk about cultural appropriation. And I have mixed feelings about actual appropriation like converting your practices from one thing to another, in theory should be fine. But cultural misappropriation where you straight up bastardize something is a huge problem.
Katie Dooley 05:49 Yeah. And the other two terms are phrase appropriation versus appreciation. Yeah, right. And so not sure I like appropriation and misappropriation to Yeah.
Preston Meyer 05:56 So that we've got three things, you can appreciate the thing and not make it yours. You can take a thing and make it yours legitimately. Or you can take a thing and really abuse it and wreck it. Like taking a whole culture and saying you're really no good for anything except for on Halloween when I can dress up as you and make fun of you. That's a problem.
Katie Dooley 06:18 That is a huge problem yet. Absolutely. And so this is one of the latter ones I'd say.
Preston Meyer 06:28 I'm currently personally at an intellectual point where I have it somewhere in between appropriation and misappropriation, and I guess you're actively doing it.
Katie Dooley 06:37 Yeah. And I mean, I guess some of it depends on who you talk to you right? Like, yeah, I don't want to be so narrow. Of course, there could be white, Anglo Saxon descended Hindus, right. You can absolutely convert to Hinduism. So I don't want to be like, that are pretty pale. Yeah. Well, I mean, you can be whatever of thanks to what, like settlers and invaders. Right. But even you know, here in Canada, where you and I are both a pretty British descent. Yep. You know, we could absolutely convert to Islam convert to Hinduism, we could convert to Islam to right, but convert to Hinduism. And that would fall on the appreciation scale, because it's your religion. But I would say the majority is more.
Preston Meyer 07:20 So a little less friendly. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 07:24 Yeah, I think there's definitely people who, of course, there has to be people who air quotes to do it. Right. But yeah, I think we're it's it's disrespectful to say it's doesn't have a religious foundation. Right.
Preston Meyer 07:41 Kind of frustrating to see something so completely divorced from its origins.
Katie Dooley 07:47 Well, and we're gonna, later in this episode, get into some of the debates of, you know, yoga in schools, because is it religious, or is it not religious?
Preston Meyer 07:59 And I've got thoughts on
Katie Dooley 08:01 I do, I do too, and they're very confused.
Preston Meyer 08:06 Yeah, yeah. So in the, from the pasu, Pata sutra, it says, In this system, yoga is the union of the self and the Lord. And I want to clarify for our predominantly Christian background audience, even if you're not Christian, you're familiar with the Christian background, being in North America and the English speaking world. The Lord here is not Jesus, or YeHoVaH, Yeshua, or Yawei. It's the Lord here is definitely Shiva, the destroyer god of Hinduism, he's the one who takes old things and breaks them down to become stronger, newer, better things, which makes some good sense if you know anything about you. Or you know, the need to exercise and become better
Katie Dooley 09:01 breaking down my muscle knots and turning them into something better,
Preston Meyer 09:05 right? Something lean and useful. Oh, I wish from the Linga Purana that says by the word yoga is meant to Nirvana, the condition of Shiva. So if we are going to approach Shiva and be like him, yoga is the way to do that.
Katie Dooley 09:27 It's basically telling you to be godlike. It doesn't get much more spiritual than that, I don't think right and those two those two stuck it's just stuck out stuck out to me. The most reading through the scriptures on yoga is like okay, this is like,
Preston Meyer 09:48 Haha, sure. Pretty strong words and actually pretty well organized thoughts. Yeah, I like it. And I think
Katie Dooley 09:56 they're not you know, they're worded in a way that any religious person could find a parallel in their in their faith if they're not Hindu they're accessible faith state thank you yeah right condition right by the word no yoga is meant Nirvana the condition of Shiva like that sounds like the talking about Jesus.
Preston Meyer 10:14 Right? That's being heavenly. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 10:18 So serious Yogi's agree in disapproving the use of yoga yogic methods for worldly purposes. And this is some of this is just semantics, which is where the school debate which we'll get into long kind of gets kind of gray area. So yoga as you find it in a gym is actually Asana, which is a piece of yoga. Sure, the physical Asana is the physical posture aspect of yoga. So Hindu america.org says while practicing Asana for improved health is perfectly acceptable, it is not the goal or purpose of yoga.
Preston Meyer 11:06 It's just a thing to do. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 11:08 so it's like a square is a rectangle, I need to make sure to do this all the time, but a rectangle is not a square. So Asana is the square and yoga is the rectangle.
Preston Meyer 11:19 Gotcha. I know because I make
Katie Dooley 11:22 this reference every other. And then another quote from Prashant L E. N. Gauri, and gar, pardon me, Prashant en gar, who is a prominent figure in yoga says we cannot expect that millions are practicing real yoga just because millions of people claim to be doing yoga all over the world. But a spread all over the world is now yoga. It is not even non yoga. It is on yoga poles are strong. Those are heightened words.
Preston Meyer 11:56 That's like, is on yoga like the step before straight up anti yoga. What?
Katie Dooley 12:04 At that point, anything that's just eating chips on the couch? Which I'm
Preston Meyer 12:11 pretty good at that too.
Katie Dooley 12:13 But I guess Yeah, absolutely. If the goal of yoga is to become more godly, and to basically, in your meditation, enter the spirit world, leave your worldly possessions behind, then yeah, downward dog ain't doing that. No, I am not more in my body than when I'm doing dog. Tell us to change
Preston Meyer 12:40 some some serious physical stress until you get really good at it. So there's this feeling among Hindus in the west or so I've been told that we have wrecked yoga so much, and turned it into this weird commercialized thing that we don't really see it as the amazing gift that it was from India, and the Vedic tradition. Unfortunately, there are negative stereotypes for people of South Asian descent. And it's this issue of not giving credit where it is due. And letting those negative stereotypes be at the forefront. And yoga as this entirely separate thing. It's just hey, thanks for that one thing, and everything about you is trash. Not
Katie Dooley 13:28 even thanking them for the one thing, it's like, Wow, where did this yoga come from? Innovation, and then still stereotyping? Yeah, South Asian people, it's, it's
Preston Meyer 13:40 a problem. Whereas it's like,
Katie Dooley 13:43 no, they, they they the Oh, geez. Right? This billion dollar industry,
Preston Meyer 13:50 this huge thing that you love that you say is redefining who you are, came from somewhere else
Katie Dooley 13:58 that you probably have no time for and couldn't even find on a map.
Preston Meyer 14:02 You know, I want to say most people could find India on a map. But I've watched a lot of results of studies of hate placed this country on a map. And turns out an awful lot of people are really terrible at geography. So I think you're right. Did you know I can name every country in the world? But can you place every one of them correctly on them? I
Katie Dooley 14:24 can get most of them. Okay, I'll show Yeah, sure.
Preston Meyer 14:31 I remember there was a great little bit on the Animaniacs where was it? Yakko. He had a song for all the countries in the world. Now. Of course, it's out of date, a bunch of these countries have ceased to exist or change
Katie Dooley 14:43 their names. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Everyone's like is the Animaniacs I was like, No, I use a map. Anyway, I digress. So I found this quote, kind of eerie enforce this idea that we've just pulled out all the Hinduism from yoga, from a website calm. I'm almost scared, they're gonna look at us from yoga cliques.com, which is a incredibly, they have a shop with Chrome, incredibly commercial yoga site and the lady behind it is an upper middle class white woman. And she writes both Buddhists and Hindus chant the sacred mantra ohm during their meditation, Omega to echo the sound of harmony in the universe, you can chant on power without being part of a religion, as the mantra isn't necessarily religious, but more about feeling connected to other people. And when I was reading sites like Hindu america.com, they said, No omens incredibly sacred.
Preston Meyer 15:47 But if you want to totally divorce it from its origins, you can say whatever you want, you can be wrong. Absolutely. And
Katie Dooley 15:55 then I wrote My Sassy comment in the notes, it says, I can also eat a Eucharist, cross myself out towards Mecca and separate my milk and dairy. But I think those groups would probably find it a little bit offensive for me to just do that frivolously, right. I mean, there was a while. I mean, I'm sure it still happens. But like, there were kids feeding Eucharist to pigeons on YouTube, and like, the Catholics were outraged, but you could go, you know, it's not necessarily religious, it's just a cracker. If maths hasn't been performed, it's literally just Transubstantiation that happens just to crackers. So right. So that's kind of where I was like, That's
Preston Meyer 16:40 right. We're doing the same thing to yoga.
Katie Dooley 16:42 Absolute. That's it. I mean, that's, this lady's comment is exactly that. I was like, that's not very nice. I didn't find it. Very nice. Yeah. Again, reading the other side from Hindus, where yoga comes from saying no ohm is a very sacred chant. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 17:01 So there's a lot to yoga, the main goal, which is associated with Shiva, escaping the cycle of reincarnation, by neutralizing your connection to karma, and the physical realm, and eventually reuniting with the divine, that good old Brahma. And I
Katie Dooley 17:19 mean, I guess it makes sense, you're probably if you're achieving the goal of yoga, that is probably closest to Nirvana, you can be in your physical body. So it's like practicing Exactly.
Preston Meyer 17:33 And religions, other than Hinduism, have some interesting relationships with yoga. Yoga is hugely important to Jainism, which makes sense since they've been sharing space in India for about 3000 years. And Buddhist traditions usually include yoga as well for the same reason. And it's also you know, an offshoot from Hinduism, as we've discussed before. So this idea of release from the reincarnation cycle still important?
Katie Dooley 18:06 Yep. Because that's prominent both, actually. I mean, as a, I guess, like a third party meditation is very poor. Like I'd say meditation is more important in Buddhism, than even yoga, but the proper error codes yoga, is this elevated meditation. So exactly, I'd probably say. Buddhist meditation is sort of the unblemished version of what sure we're looking at
Preston Meyer 18:34 what I thought was really interesting, oh, is about 1000 years ago, a Persian scholar introduced yoga into Islam, to had a hard time getting that actually accomplished. It was rejected by Sunni and Shia Muslims. But it did manage to actually become popular among some of the smaller minority sects. And Sufi tradition actually has incorporated yoga, which I think is an interesting thing. Unfortunately, 2004 Well, I say unfortunately, mixed feelings, fortunately, I
Katie Dooley 19:09 guess it depends on your perspective. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 19:11 I think it's interesting. And I don't fully agree with the choice. But in 2004, a fatwa from an Egyptian authority banned yoga because of its Hindu elements. The same thing happened in Malaysia and 2008. And again, in Indonesia in 2009. So a lot of these Muslim authorities are saying, hey, yoga is bad. It's blasphemy because it's very anti Muslim. Opinion. It's
Katie Dooley 19:41 a different religion and they're monotheistic. This is where we get this really weird gray area. And I've mentioned twice now but the the school banning specifically and it's happened elsewhere in the state, but very recently, Alabama, banned yoga in schools, because it's religious. and separation of church and state. So it's a really weird gray area, right? Because part of me goes, What's wrong with doing it? But then I also understand where you know, Hindu america.com says, You're doing it wrong. Right?
Preston Meyer 20:21 Did you want to get more into that now or later?
Katie Dooley 20:24 Well, we're gonna talk about more people banning yoga first.
Preston Meyer 20:29 All right. And Christianity has a, an interesting relationship with yoga.
Katie Dooley 20:38 Well, this is part of the I'm sure some part of the underlying undercurrent of the Alabama Christian forever belt state. Christian banning of are you like this is where they care about the separation of church and state is when it's Hinduism.
Preston Meyer 20:54 Nobody ever says hey, separate my religion from the state, it's always, hey, separate your religion from my state. Because people are deeply selfish almost all of the time.
Katie Dooley 21:08 Wow. Glad you have such a positive outlook on the world.
Preston Meyer 21:13 People are frustrating and COVID is all the evidence I need to back up my corner here. Remember, the full tradition of yoga is associated with Shiva. So it is reasonable to say that practicing yoga properly is an act of worshipping Shiva. And if you're familiar with any Christians, you're familiar with people who have asked their worship. If we have fast yoga, we might still be half as worshipping Shiva.
Katie Dooley 21:44 I, it's funny. We on our Instagram, just the other day, we talked about the Hindu celebration celebrating the god Durga, Goddess second gets a Goddess Durga. And the same day on Instagram. I saw a reel of someone doing a yoga thing.
22:03 opposed not a sequence
Katie Dooley 22:05 gives me yoga sequins in honor of the goddess Durga, and I was like, How is this not full blown? Hinduism like does this person? It was again, it was a middle aged white lady like Does she know?
Preston Meyer 22:22 One would hope that she is aware that it's full on Hinduism if she's doing a thing that's keen on Durga.
Katie Dooley 22:31 But I just be curious, like, if you message her comment, are you Hindu? What would she say? Probably should have done that.
Preston Meyer 22:39 I think you should have. opportunity missed.
Katie Dooley 22:44 I'm sorry. I'll go back,
Preston Meyer 22:45 I thought was really interesting to learn that the Vatican is also very specifically not fond of, you
Katie Dooley 22:52 know, the Vatican not liking something.
Preston Meyer 22:57 They kill all the fun unless you go into the secret rooms late at night.
Katie Dooley 23:03 Hopefully we'll find out more on another, right.
Preston Meyer 23:07 So in 1989, so a good little while ago, this year I was born. And the pope released this document or the Vatican released it. It's called, or at Jonas, for us. It's also commonly called aspects of Christian meditation. And it specifically opposes yoga as self centered, and says that the good feelings you get from yoga and other exercises are pretty much like masturbation. That you'd be better you would be a better Christian. If you only got good feelings from serving others.
Katie Dooley 23:42 I didn't I just say they don't like anything fun. Yeah, can you imagine only getting good feelings from serving others? No video games? I don't know board game.
Preston Meyer 23:53 You can go through life saying that. Oh, really? Any good thing that you feel doing something solo is bad. No
Katie Dooley 24:00 television? No. Wow. That's
Preston Meyer 24:05 rough. But that's that's their stance. And in 2003, they released a 90 page booklet. I'll call that a book. Yeah. Officially, it's a 90 page booklet. And it outlines all the ways that new age practices are absolutely antithetical to Christianity, including yoga, and crystal healing, and geomancy feng shui, and even meditation made it onto the list. And I thought that was surprising because when I was going to a Catholic College, meditation was actually an important process in prayer and scripture study. So it was weird to see meditation on this list.
Katie Dooley 24:51 What's the definition of New Age? Because when it's older than Christianity, does that actually count as New Age? No, I genuinely do not know what falls under the New Age umbrella. That's a real question.
Preston Meyer 25:05 I'm not sure either, should we give that a look?
Katie Dooley 25:07 Do a quick Google. But it just seems weird to be like, we're just throwing out this lame, no new age practices. And it's 2000 year, 3000 years older than Christianity. Like that's not a little bit older, that's a lot older.
Preston Meyer 25:23 So, from a quick Googling, New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs, which rapidly grew in the western world during the counterculture movement of late 60s and 70s. So Satanism
Katie Dooley 25:36 is New Age,
Preston Meyer 25:38 I guess. Although analytically often considered to be religious, those involved in it typically prefer the designation of spiritual or mind body spirit, and rarely use the term New Age themselves. That's more of a bookstore heading kind of thing. Near
Katie Dooley 25:58 almost derogatory. Yeah. I can see that. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 26:04 So seeing the Vatican, throw out the word New Age, and then kind of talk a little bit of nonsense. isn't that surprising? Oh, well, here we are.
Katie Dooley 26:19 All right. Something about the physical badass. Yeah,
Preston Meyer 26:21 yeah, yeah. Yeah. So they're worried about how yoga focuses on the physical aspects of meditation. And it's like, I think focusing aspect focusing on the physical aspects of prayer. Which seems kind of weird, because an awful lot of Christians are really worried about the physical aspects of prayer. You know, the whole cross yourself or me all? Yeah, how your posture, whether you're kneeling or standing with your hands, or together, your arms are folded or your fingers are crossed over? Or some people put a lot of thought into that. So is it that weird?
Katie Dooley 27:03 I mean, Catholics especially, there's a whole stand up, sit down, kneel for success.
Preston Meyer 27:09 Yeah. And I guess what they said, was that they're worried about how all of this could result in the cult of the body. Which, considering how the average Christian talks about sex, that's already an issue. Yeah, I thought it was actually really interesting. And if you haven't even brought it up yet, the word yoga means yoke, like a binding harness, that helps bring workers together. So it's kind of weird that a lot of Christians are offended by this idea, as though it can't possibly have any safe overlap with the idea of sharing a yoke with Christ. But it can
Katie Dooley 28:03 elaborate
Preston Meyer 28:05 Well, if you're a non Christian, if you're unifying yourself with the the spirit of the universe or and bringing yourself to be at peace with your situation in present would that not be a thing that you can use to help align yourself with Christ as well?
Katie Dooley 28:21 On it's interesting that they talk about the call to the body when yoga is about, again, traditionally about releasing yourself from your worldly possessions abandoning abandoning your body so you can stop being reincarnated and joining Brahma as the spirit.
Preston Meyer 28:36 Yeah. So as we found looking at a lot of different religious polemics, it's really easy to build up what we like to call a straw man. Something that's a serious misrepresentation of what's actually going on to really paint them as villains. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 28:58 Prayed moves.com A Christian alternative to yoga, which is basically just yoga with a different explanation says that yoga is the missionary arm of New Age spirituality. Many Christians have been drawn into mystical philosophy, philosophical and religious systems clearly disguised as praises.com. A Christian alternative yoga slash just yoga with a different explanation, says Yoga is the missionary arm of New Age spirituality. Many Christians have been drawn into New Age, spirituality and metaphysics through the doors of yoga and tai chi. Love that. Both are mystical, philosophical and religious systems cleverly disguised as just exercise. That's italicized.
Preston Meyer 29:47 Yeah. It's so weird to me that the person who wrote this thinks that somebody's using yoga as a missionary tool Well,
Katie Dooley 30:00 I think again, like, it's just as weird dichotomy that is yoga. It's like, but I'd say probably 80% of people who do yoga don't realize it's religious, right? Like we have. Like they're saying it's this problem, but it's like, actually the opposite. And it's still a problem. opposite problem.
Preston Meyer 30:20 Yeah, I've never even heard of anybody accusing Hindus of being a proselytizing tradition.
Katie Dooley 30:31 I mean, it's not like everyone after a yoga class is like, let's go to the temple, right? Grab from like, I've never. I've never yeah, there's never been any. And again, this is like Western yoga, where you go to the gym and take the class, but there's never been any evangelizing or theological discussions afterwards, I'd be into one, I'd be happy. If there's like a legit Hindu Yogi that will I'd go to that as long as he knows, I'm going just out of pure curiosity, right? Most people are a few upfront
Preston Meyer 31:07 about it. Right? I just, it's such a weird thing to say that all of this is about tricking you into joining their religion. But let's say they're half right, that there is a little bit of trying to push a new worldview on to the people who come to these classes. Is it really a bad thing if people start being a little bit more interested in their spiritual energy? And we'll however you define that
Katie Dooley 31:38 again, like it kind of goes back to you saying, you know, it can just help you be one with Jesus if that's your belief. Like it's all the same thing. This is where you know, I've always found religions funny that after at some point, they all just seem the same. And this is one of those instances. Did you know Christian yoga was founded by a Hindu leader a que moslem DAR.
Preston Meyer 32:08 I didn't until I found it. Listed on praised moves.com Which, I mean, that may be true. I didn't go in and double check. But praise moves.com said a bunch of really interesting things about yoga. And I thought I would share some of those with you. Yes, please. It's funny that so immediately after pointing out this Muslim dar fella, the the creator of praise moves, which is the Christian alternative to yoga. Wow, they come out right and say Christian yoga is yoga. It's still yoga, even if you are saying it's Christian. Saying this on the same site, where they're saying our prayers moves, which is Yoga is
Katie Dooley 33:00 not Yeah, when it is yeah.
Preston Meyer 33:08 Go on to say, we cannot combine religion, Hinduism with a relationship, knowing Jesus as Lord. Problem number one with that all worship combines religion with relationship, without exception. Yes. So, crackpots are easy to shoot down, I guess. I don't see any difference between praise moves and Christian yoga. None at all. I went looking. The difference, I guess, is that had to think real hard to call this a difference is that these praise moves are orchestrated, or LED, because they're not different than you. They're led by a Christian who claims to be a faithful Christian, or maybe just a crackpot, instead of being led by a real life maybe liberal Hindu yogi.
Katie Dooley 34:21 Wow, we should do some praise moves. We should do a praise move session on Discord. We could do that.
Preston Meyer 34:31 Just it's so weird.
Katie Dooley 34:33 I hate this next quote from from that website. And I hope you hate it to know what we've talked about. It says Yoga is a highly sensual in nature and opens the doors to focus on feelings more than on faith. So what's wrong with that, Preston?
Preston Meyer 34:55 Well, I think that can be true for anybody and everybody who practice says a bastardized Western yoga. Fair that it would be more about feelings than faith. Sure. But there are also so many opportunities for faithful people to focus on their faith in a day, including during quiet moments available in yoga classes. I don't know much about yoga, but I bet you it's not a super loud environment. It's not. Yeah, I guess you do have more experience here than I do. So it's just, I don't know. It's weird. If you're not thinking about or aware of how an exercise feels, what are you doing? Probably injuring yourself
Katie Dooley 35:47 100%. As someone who has done yoga, not very well, but also danced if you're not paying attention. Yeah, hurt yourself. So why does this get weirder, the more we
Preston Meyer 36:06 so maybe focusing on your feelings is a thing you should do sometimes. You can't spend your whole life focused on your faith, or you're not going to be terribly engaged in practicing the actions required by that faith. So you got to balance your life out a little bit,
Katie Dooley 36:23 you know, creates great balance in life. What's that yoga?
Preston Meyer 36:30 Maybe creates great balance in my body. It might help balance. Really, I'll go probably help out to like to more than fake Western yoga more
Katie Dooley 36:39 than Western yoga. Oh, 100%.
Preston Meyer 36:44 Yeah. So I was I was going through praise moves. I thought it really interesting that the founder of praise moves was so offended by the practice of breath manipulation, and the corpse pose in yoga, which she had lots of experience with. She apparently she was really involved with yoga, yoga. And by yoga, yoga, I mean, Western yoga. For many years, many years, she realized she was Wow, she got more to Christ. Oh, yeah.
Katie Dooley 37:15 But still loved yoga because of its great, exactly, or Asana.
Preston Meyer 37:18 But she was so offended by breath manipulation, and the corpse pose and yoga, that she decided to incorporate them into her praise. But made sure to include reading passages of Scripture and devotionals from trusted Christian leaders. So that it wasn't Hindu yoga. It was now a very forced Christian yoga.
Katie Dooley 37:42 I don't understand. Okay, so like, understand, I don't understand, but I understand the breadth manipulations, because they just think everything is sexual. I guess the like, I don't I'm with you. Yeah. Right. I'm, yeah, I'm there. I don't get it. But I'm there. But that's just actually science. Right? Like, I haven't looked into anything scholarly on yoga. But like, you can go to the gym and go on a cardio machine, and take a few deep breaths and watch your heart rate job. Yeah. Like, that's not hard to know that that is actually just science. Right?
Preston Meyer 38:28 Well, and if you're actually going to lose weight, the vast majority of the weight you lose comes out in your breath. As you burn the energy that you're storing in your body. You're releasing carbon dioxide, I guess. And that's the bulk of your weight loss. Interesting. Yeah. I didn't know that for for a while. As a kid. I thought Oh, yeah. Just poop it out. No, most of your poop is bacteria. Right. But if you're really going to be losing massive amounts, it's okay for me. Yeah. Cardio is great for weight loss, because it makes you breathe that out.
Katie Dooley 39:09 Yeah, it's kind of nifty. Yeah. So again, like, like I'm there with her. But it doesn't make sense. Because again, science manipulation is of the devil.
Preston Meyer 39:21 That's a weird position. Oh, weird. says a lot of weird things.
Katie Dooley 39:31 Even even when you're not doing yoga, there will be times in your life when you manipulate your breathing, for sure. So are you saying many times
Preston Meyer 39:43 you know what, I'm gonna I'm gonna play the advocate on this one and say, depending on why you're manipulating your breath, you could be deliberately deceptive and therefore sinning. Okay? But that's a bad Hold it for that.
Katie Dooley 40:02 You get caught doing yoga Preston, he might cause others to lose their faith or misunderstand yours.
Preston Meyer 40:11 Yeah, that was a really weird thing to read on that page. This
Katie Dooley 40:14 is don't get caught doing praise moves because people think you're a Hindu. No,
Preston Meyer 40:18 oh, that's that's the way I interpret. But their position on their website is that if you as a as a Christian or even any non Hindu, get caught doing yoga, people are gonna think either that you're a Hindu, or that they get to now believe something weird and nefarious about your faith. Which is obviously problematic, cuz you're still peddling this weird copy of yoga. You really think that a casual passerby is going to notice the difference between that and yoga? If they don't stick around to listen to the sermon? I don't think this is the same argument you think it is?
Katie Dooley 41:04 Oh, this is a wild argument.
Preston Meyer 41:09 Yeah, they're also strongly opposed to doing yoga in cemeteries. Is that common? I don't know how common cemetery yoga is. But there's probably a few reasons why people do it. I think the best agreeable reason is that cemeteries tend to be quiet.
Katie Dooley 41:30 Yeah, I mean, I have no problem with people doing yoga in cemeteries, but I can't imagine it's so common that you need to create a rule for that's kind of what I mean. Like, again. Yeah, it's basically a Rocky Park. So you know, I don't mean that people do yoga in cemeteries clutching my pearls sort of way. But like, I just can't imagine it's such a problem that right, you need to say it.
Preston Meyer 41:57 Yeah. If you want to do it out in a dog park, and you got your butt in the air during your downward dog, you're going to get sniffed by a dog. There's a lot less dogs a lot fewer dogs in a cemetery. Well, no, there's a lot of people in cemeteries, but they're not going around sniffing but no, they're
Katie Dooley 42:13 not gonna interrupt you.
Preston Meyer 42:19 Right. It's a weird rule to have. All right, go back to Alabama. Yeah,
Katie Dooley 42:25 we're here we are kind of we talked about what yoga is and what it isn't. And some of the objections. So again, the state of Alabama, banned yoga in schools fairly recently, probably four or five months ago, on the basis of it is a religious practice, and we have to separate church and state. And even when the article came out, I really didn't know how to feel about it. Because I know it is, you know, deeply rooted in Hinduism. So yeah, I'd probably classify it as religious. But again, it also just felt like this anti South Asian sentiment,
Preston Meyer 43:05 it feels like it. So yeah, I
Katie Dooley 43:07 don't know how to feel. I
Preston Meyer 43:10 have mixed feelings. I guess the I mean, yeah, on the one hand, encouraging a physical activity, absolutely necessary in school. For physical education, you got to be moving, hopefully get the kids that need to lose weight to lose some weight. And encouraging team sports is hugely helpful for mental development for kids. So I get that yoga is not a team sport. I don't think it's super helpful and quick results for weight loss, but it's a good physical activity.
Katie Dooley 43:46 I was gonna say, as someone who hated the team sports aspect, it was great when we gotta do the yoga when Sure. And then there's also studies that show yoga is great for improved focus. So I can see how that's beneficial in the schools and just general mindfulness, especially when you're an angsty hormone, brutal teenager. So yes, I think there's physical positives to it that are beneficial in schools, right? That aren't stupid soccer and volleyball, your 14 year old Katie, right and Basketball, basketball.
Preston Meyer 44:25 Yeah, so that aspect of it. I have positive thoughts on however, doing that, completely divorced from the very religious contexts that it's meant to be attached to is doing a disservice and don't love that. However, coming out the exact backwards way around that I still think is pretty valid. Decent reason to consider banning it is The idea that if you're going to teach the religious aspects of yoga, and then say, hey, now y'all have to practice this in school, you're now saying we're going to practice this religion in school. And that's not a thing that should be encouraged. Yeah.
Katie Dooley 45:17 So the, the stance I sort of found on I think it was the Hindu america.com or.org website specifically, but kind of across the board is that if it's the asana based study, so Asana being the physical postures, it's kosher and kind of keeping religious out of school rule, because we've distilled yoga so far from that from its into roots, that even most Hindus don't believe that Asana only is religious. Right. And then, as you said, the if we teach yoga, yoga, really yoga, then we are crossing that religious line in schools, but in the case of Alabama, I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually yoga. It was the asana movement, for sure.
Preston Meyer 46:03 Yeah, they were definitely talking about banning the not very Hindu anymore yoga. And that feels weird.
Katie Dooley 46:13 Yeah, again, it kind of comes back to like, here's this amazing gift from India that were a not acknowledging how awesome. Yeah, it's like, we know it's awesome, but not here. Because it came from a different country. And so yeah, it just feels like super racist, honestly, a little bit. It's like, being like we're not going to play. I'm trying to think of a game that came from another country. Most of them basketballs Canadian lacrosse is Canadian. What hockey's Canadian what else? What did we not invent?
Preston Meyer 46:53 We didn't invent monopoly. Okay.
Katie Dooley 46:57 I was thinking of sport, but okay. Soccer. Okay. Yeah, we're not gonna play soccer because it's why only indoor soccer I think South America.
Preston Meyer 47:06 I have no idea where soccer is originated from. I'm not saying it's the number one sport everywhere.
Katie Dooley 47:14 Right, but that's like saying we're not gonna play soccer because it's from not America.
Preston Meyer 47:19 Right. Weird.
Katie Dooley 47:24 I guess my final but probably wavering, ours that I don't think you shouldn't practice yoga. But I think we've done a huge disservice to literally everyone. So that's yoga practitioners, the actual Yogi's actual Yogi's, Hindus, India, these, you know, these middle aged white women, by whitewashing and saying it's not an aspect of religion. I think it's just one of these ways we've been able to kind of stay in our beliefs, you know what I mean? Instead of being like, no, that belief is really cool. And I like it. I'm gonna respect and appreciate it. We've just kind of go, Oh, that's not even a thing. And I don't like that. I think it keeps us close minded when we have this great opportunity to be open minded. Right?
Preston Meyer 48:17 It's just, it's kind of weird that with the exception of the Temple of Doom, which came out in what the 80s, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with the exception of that it's just really weird that we see yoga practice adopted by people that don't actually know anything else about Hinduism. Not the Temple Of Doom is a great example of Hinduism. But some people will make that association as well. This is a normal thing for them. And apart from that, yoga is the only thing most people know. And yet, they still want to separate yoga from the religion. And then practice yoga, as though it's not religious. It just feels really weird to me.
Katie Dooley 49:08 This is gonna sound I feel like, it sounds so childish, but it feels really rude. Right? Like, that's the best way I can put it. That feels really rude. It's like
Preston Meyer 49:17 when you see somebody that you know, isn't a Christian, wearing a crucifix? Like not just a cross, but like a crucifix? That's super weird.
Katie Dooley 49:29 Like me just nominal Eucharist, cuz I want to I don't do that. I just seem to, right, but especially for crackers. And so much less, less praying, right? But right, it's just like, at the end of the day, it just feels weird. And again, is this great opportunity to learn something about someone else in a different culture in different religion? And it's like people just burying their heads in the sand and going no, it's fine. I'm just gonna bend right? Well,
Preston Meyer 49:57 and then you have no relatively speaking a small number of people, but there are some people who will identify as Hindu because of their practice of yoga, simply because they are otherwise in a religious vacuum. So it's like, my only religious thing is doing yoga. I do it every Tuesday. So that's my religious practice. And I mean, does that make them Hindu?
Katie Dooley 50:26 Maybe? Now we're getting into identity, that's a different episode. It
Preston Meyer 50:31 is tricky and self identifying, you can do it wrong.
Katie Dooley 50:37 Then that gets into believe parmi goes, if that's what you say you are, then that's what you are, even if you do it wrong, right. But it's another episode now. Right?
Preston Meyer 50:46 But really, the ultimate goal of religious yoga is calming the mind and gaining insight to relieve suffering. And really, how important are the other details? Is it really incompatible with any other religion? I don't think so.
Katie Dooley 51:04 And that mean, that's always what Hindu has been so good as I've been honestly, it's been good at absorbing other religions, but it is congruent with other religions if you allow it to be
Preston Meyer 51:15 right. Unless, of course, you're Teresa of Calcutta. Bitch. She would definitely hate yoga, and especially this idea of relieving suffering since you know, she wanted more people to suffer more, more of the time. So that sucked. But that's not everybody. That's just Teresa of Calcutta and the parent who agree with her
Katie Dooley 51:41 or at least favorite saint. So my final word on this is sure, practice yoga, even if you're Christian, but don't pretend that it's not Hindu.
Preston Meyer 51:52 It's pretty, pretty solid. I like it. Well, thanks for joining us on this slightly tricky topic of yoga. I've learned a fair bit because I didn't know a lot about yoga before preparing for this. But it's been good, good.
Katie Dooley 52:11 We're learning right along with you. If you want to keep these awesome episodes going, we would always appreciate your support. You can check us out on Patreon to pay a small monthly fee to keep us going or if the subscription model is not your preferred method. We do have our merch store at on Spreadshirt so you can check us out and do a one time a merch purchase both help us profusely.
Preston Meyer 52:40 Check us out on Discord join the conversation. And we always want to hear from you guys. So thanks for joining us. Please be with you. By the late Middle Ages | |||
| 26 Apr 2021 | Fake Me To Church | 01:21:11 | |
TW: Cults are pretty icky and we talk about abuse in this episode in addition to Katie's potty mouth. What is a cult? Like religion, it’s very hard to define what a cult is. In this episode, we go over definitions we like and don’t like. A cult can be a group that is led by someone who doesn’t believe what he teaches but teaches to get gain or a group that you’re scared to leave. Did you know all religions start as cults? All* religions start as cults. Judaism is historically known as the cult of Yahweh or the cult of Israel. Fervent or zealous believers rallying around a charismatic leader – Christianity, anyone? Cults take ideas that may have been outside of the previous faith and incorporate them which alienates them from the original group. Getting involved in a cult usually starts with being told things you already believe. They tell you things that don’t sound crazy or reiterate things you already believe. Slowly new doctrines are added that are adjacent to your beliefs and over time you are far away from where you started. People who join cults are typically pretty normal people. Cults target people who are mentally healthy at a vulnerable part in their life, or at a crossroads. This brings long-term stability to the cult as opposed to members with chronic mental health issues. How do we determine if a cult is dangerous, or just an off-shoot of a major religion? We discuss the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control. BITE stands for behaviour control, information control, thought control and emotional control. If you want to learn more about cults, how they work and how to identify them, check out this episode!
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Both Hosts 00:00 Katie Dooley 00:18 Preston Meyer 00:20 Katie Dooley 00:24 Preston Meyer 00:28 Katie Dooley 00:32 Preston Meyer 00:35 Katie Dooley 00:47 Preston Meyer 01:03 Katie Dooley 01:05 Preston Meyer 01:11 Katie Dooley 01:12 Preston Meyer 01:13 Katie Dooley 01:14 Preston Meyer 01:37 Katie Dooley 02:15
Preston Meyer 02:51 What counts is conventional?
Katie Dooley 02:53 Right? Even big, recognized religions have some really weird belief. So you're... what's the definition of conventional then?
Preston Meyer 03:05 Yeah, like half of the words in this definition are no good. Conventional is entirely subjective. Religious, we've talked about this. We don't have a solid definition on that and organization.
Katie Dooley 03:19 Sure, I'll let organization pass.
Preston Meyer 03:22 There's a general consensus on what that word means. But when it's applied to religious organizations, there's a wide variety on how organized...
Katie Dooley 03:31 We just talked about Shinto, there really isn't any organization in Shinto. So, anyway, so that one was already...
Preston Meyer 03:40 Definition no good
Katie Dooley 03:41 Just me crumpling up paper but mouth noise. A sect is a deviant religious organization with traditional beliefs and practices. So again, every word in this is like...
Preston Meyer 03:43 There's problems. Most people that start sects think that the group from which they have separated themselves has deviated, and that they're realigning themselves with the correct path. That's usually the argument.
Katie Dooley 04:10 Even if we look at something as vast as Christianity and I think it's going to get picked on quite a bit this episode... When we look at something like Christianity, arguably has hundreds of sects that have broken off from the original, you know, religion that Peter founded in, you know, the first century. So does that mean that the Anabaptists are a sect? Does that mean that Lutherans are a sect? Does that mean? The Orthodox Church is a sect like, no, we wouldn't look at these and think they're deviant organizations, we call them denominations. Oh, when I mean, even if you're a Lutheran, you think anything that came after that would be a sect. Yeah. But you know, I don't think your average North American looks at the Pentecostals and go that's a deviant Christian sect you just "Oh, you're a Pentecostal, okay." And now cults and I even have a problem with this cult is a deviant religious organization with novel beliefs and practices. Which again,
Preston Meyer 04:47 Now, if you're a Catholic, as opposed to a religious scholar. Absolutely, every single one of these groups counts as a sect. What's novel?
Katie Dooley 05:32 We had this conversation in a previous episode, I don't even remember which, but all religions, even developed religions, sprout from existing religions. So there's no religion out there today with novel beliefs and practices. I shouldn't say no, I'm sure there's one or two kicking around. But anything that gets any sort of traction is not novel. And if we look at some of the big dangerous, scary cults, and we'll talk in more detail a little bit today, and then we'll do full episodes later on. But the Branch Davidians they're part of the Seventh Day Adventists. Jim Jones, I don't know he was a Christian preacher. I don't know what denomination of Christianity he was. The Rajneeshees, which we'll get into, but they are a branch of Hinduism it's not novel.
Preston Meyer 06:25 Right. They take ideas that may have been outside of their previously existing religious faith tradition, and incorporate them. And that usually alienates them from another group. So where they need to become a new, separate group. Yeah, that's not a novel thing, maybe novel to that tradition, but it's not a new idea,
Katie Dooley 06:51 Or they put different focus on different aspects of... Right? So even Seventh Day Adventists, as I want to call them a sect of Christianity, they focus on the seventh day. More than other groups might.
Preston Meyer 07:06 Right and they're just a subset of the Adventist movement that may not focus on the seventh day, but having Christ come back on the eighth day
Katie Dooley 07:17 Jehovah Witnesses and the 200,000 people, which is based off of... Or the 144,000 people based off the 12 tribes of Israel, right? They just have a particular focus on this little piece of their book.
Preston Meyer 07:33 Yep. Specifically, excluding those from the tribe of Dan. The revelation is an interesting book and the things that people like to highlight in it are really a fun way to explore how people have dangerous prejudices.
Katie Dooley 07:58 One thing I want to point out this episode, is that all* Because I actually did find someone that argued this point, all religions start as cults.
Preston Meyer 08:09 Pretty much, I mean, from the scholarly point of view of what a cult is, like even Judaism, i's known historically as the cult of Yahweh or the cult of Israel, that that was their unifying faith. And the word cult is used a lot differently in scholarly discourse than it is in common language.
Katie Dooley 08:34 One of the definitions I see pop up is a group of fervent or zealous believers rallying around the charismatic leader. So Jesus?
Preston Meyer 08:46 Jesus was pretty charismatic.
Katie Dooley 08:48 Muhammad?
Preston Meyer 08:49 Oh, for sure. And they rallied around them. So that fit.
Katie Dooley 08:54 Martin Luther. Henry the Eighth. L Ron Hubbard. So I think we have to be careful how we toss around the term cult, both from I mean, a scholarly perspective, we have to be clear when we're talking about under scholarly terms, like when we said Christianity started as a cult. And also when we're talking about it in the more common connotation of a dangerous group. We have to be clear, I think, sometimes cult is tossed around too loosely and we'll get into an example later on. When it's not actually dangerous. It's just maybe a new or different belief group, and then we label it a cult and maybe it shouldn't be labeled cult
Preston Meyer 09:49 The most useful and how useful it is is still tricky definition that applies to the common use of the word cult, as opposed to the scholarly use of the word would be a group that is led by somebody who doesn't believe what he teaches, but teaches to get gain. The trick is, as we talked about belief, it's hard enough to nail down what you actually know, as an individual, it is impossible to say with any certainty what somebody else truly believes, apart from measuring their actions against what they say. It's very complicated.
Katie Dooley 10:41 But last week, we're talking about the CES Letter. I was definitely reading it part of me was like, how many of the elders in the church really believe and how many of there are in for gain? Or like at what point or maybe they believe to a point and now they have all the information because they have access to it all. And do they still believe? Or do they not believe but they're in a position of power? So they stay? And I wonder that for the Catholic Church, too, it was just, you know, CES Letter was top of mind last week.
Preston Meyer 11:13 I think it's a perfectly valid question, a question that you're not likely to get a solid? ,
Katie Dooley 11:17 No, of course not. Because they would never. they would, they would never, I wouldn't say they never be truthful. But if they were there just for power, they would, they wouldn't be truthful, right? If they truly believed that everyone's gonna tell you they believe. So you can't weed that out.
Preston Meyer 11:33 The only thing you have to go on is measuring their actions against their words.
Katie Dooley 11:37 One definition I saw of a cult is a group that you're scared to leave. And I actually liked that definition.
Preston Meyer 11:44 It's pretty strong. I like it.
Katie Dooley 11:46 Because some cults aren't religious based. I would say when you get to the act of sort of this fervent level of belief, obviously it is. It has become religion religious, but they don't start that way. The most contemporary and still very newsworthy example is NXIVM, which is, it was a self help, premise. Nothing religious about it. They do do have a charismatic leader, but people weren't joining to get some divine revelation. They were joining for improvement and self growth and then it got really weird.
Preston Meyer 12:23 Absolutely. A friend of ours. I was talking to him earlier this week. And we were ribbing him a little bit that a self help group that he belongs to sounds a little bit culty. It's not Amway. It's not a marketing thing, though. Multilevel marketing can get very culty. Yeah. The one who wants to sound like it's only up and up to me, not that I'm jumping to join it. But he assured us that, yeah, they'd love to have you stay, but nobody is really pressured to stay. And it helps that there is no nothing outside themselves that they need to believe in, which I think is actually really nice. But that people are free to keep taking more and more courses or leave at any time. And that's definitely like you said, the fear of leaving, is how you can pretty reliably put that line of where is it a cult? How do people get involved in cults? Usually through friends.
Katie Dooley 13:36 I meant more from an epistemological sense, but sure, our friends are dicks. Don't listen to your friends. From a thought belief place. Especially, you know, Jim Jones literally had hundreds of people kill themselves. Or I mean, more accurately, I mean, yes, they drank it was murder. Murdered hundreds of people. How do we go from this as a nice church to go to, to drinking poison Flavor-Aid?
Preston Meyer 14:09 Well, either at the beginning of it, somebody's keeping secret, their nefarious plot, or they go crazy partway through this path. And so the trick is, how did you get to be part of this group that went insane? Usually it starts with being told things that you already believe. And that's I would say people are a lot more familiar with the idea of political cults today. Like, say the three percenters, the 3% Militia that's down in the States. Things like that, where they'll tell you things that don't sound crazy. They sound like things that you already believe or are immediately adjacent to something you believe so they're totally digestible and acceptable. And you usually stew in that pot for a little while, with new things being added every now and then that are adjacent to what you already believe. So they're acceptable and digestible. And over time, eventually, you've come to a place where you are believing something that you weren't believing before at all, and is probably at variance with that with what you used to believe. And if you had the opportunity to see yourself from without, you would definitely notice that you have joined a cult.
Katie Dooley 15:43 A couple of things that are common, that's not the word I want to look for are the same... common for people who end up in cults, and if you watch any sort of documentaries, YouTube videos, read any books on people who join cults. They're pretty normal people, they are doctors and teachers and lawyers and regular people in the community. Cults often target people when they're vulnerable. And cults actually prefer mentally healthy people in a vulnerable moment of their lives, as opposed to people who are mentally unhealthy, because people are mentally unhealthy are unstable. Whereas if you get someone who's typically mentally healthy, and is going through some sort of crisis, maybe they've lost their job or their girlfriend broke up with them, or, you know, this blip on the radar, that's the perfect point to have someone join a cult.
Preston Meyer 16:51 Most religions that are evangelical will also play along those lines as well. If you're looking for people to join at a point where they're at a crossroads is the time to do it. It's not just the danger religion.
Katie Dooley 17:06 I know, I want to say something that you might also want off the record. But you know how we got our Book of Mormon? There is all, so as Preston was saying, they don't give you all the details when you join, they make it sound awesome and light and fluffy. And you're at a point in your life where you want to be in a community or I think it's a desire for everyone to want to be part of something bigger than themselves. That's why I like theater so much not that I do anything with theater, but that's why I like going to the theater.
Preston Meyer 17:38 We have a drive in ourselves naturally that we need to belong to a group and the antisocial among us that thinks that they're the exception, typically just flocked to a different way of organizing. And very few people actually are truly happy and flourish when they're alone.
Katie Dooley 18:02 Yep. As we know, from this pandemic.bAnother tactic is love bombing. It is an abusive relationship tactic if you are being loved bombed.
Preston Meyer 18:16 How do you know if you're being loved bombed?
Katie Dooley 18:19 I think it probably be really hard to know if you're being loved bombed to be completely honest, because it's you at a vulnerable state. And it is the act of showing excessive amounts of affection and attention in a way to influence or manipulate behavior. So I think, I mean, that's not helpful if you're listening. But just knowing love bombing is a practice. If you're unsure, talk to someone you trust, or a therapist, because it is abuse to shower someone with love with the plans to manipulate them. But that's, again, you're find someone at a vulnerable state you love on them hard and they're more likely to do what you want them to do.
Preston Meyer 19:13 It's, like I mentioned before, it's almost impossible to know what it is somebody else's head. But sometimes you can catch little clues on when somebody is deliberately showering you with love, and then deliberately withholding it and usually love bombing is doing both of those. It's cyclical doing both of those things. And it's a good way.... Good is the wrong word. It's a reliable and proven method of gaining people, gaining control of people.
Katie Dooley 19:51 I have two other points for reasons people join/stay in cults. I guess I'll start with the this one is at some point after you're kind of in, there is the mob mentality hive mind social pressure piece. And I think that's how you can add pieces that, like you're talking about these adjacent pieces that maybe you didn't believe it, but now it's being introduced to you. And I think the social pressure makes it easier to accept or at least you less likely to speak out. I kind of liken it to your first drink at a high school party. Right? Everyone else is drinking, they're fine. They're saying, come on, do it. You kind of go, okay. What's it? Even if you're uncomfortable, you know, chances are...
Preston Meyer 20:43 Peer pressure is the weirdest thing. That outside of the moment, most people seem to believe that. I would recognize peer pressure. And I'll say no, when I want to say no. And then when you're in the moment, it's a lot more of a "oh, I wasn't prepared for this." Usually, it's usually a self protection thing I will protect myself from what will be emotional harm by just doing what everyone expects.
Katie Dooley 21:15 It's interesting that being ostracized by a group is it's probably like wired into our brains. It's totally wired into our brains is more painful to us than actually putting ourselves in harm's way.
Preston Meyer 21:28 Yeah, even if you're not fully committed to the group, even if you already see problems with the group. Being ostracized from that group still hurts. It's such a weird thing.
Katie Dooley 21:40 Yeah, it takes a long time to not give a fuck. I've done it a few times in my life, but it's never fun. And last, but not least, I think this one isn't actually talked about a lot. I didn't actually find any notes on it. But I was thinking about it while I was making the notes, is the sunk cost fallacy. This is actually an economic
Preston Meyer 22:01 Gambling kind of thing. The Slot Machine has to pay out because I've been dumping quarters into it for days,
Katie Dooley 22:07 You learned about it in economics 101, you know, a sunk cost is like, I don't know, I paid for some advertising and didn't work. Well, It's a sunk cost. Now you you move on, or you cut your losses and move on instead of try to make your advertising work. You go okay, it didn't work and move on. The problem with the sunk cost fallacy is, again, I think we're kind of wired to believe that
Preston Meyer 22:35 somebody's going to notice how much effort I've put into this work.
Katie Dooley 22:38 Yeah, it's like, at some point, it has to work, right? Because so maybe just a little bit more money or a little bit more time or whatever, and I'll get my returns.
Preston Meyer 22:48 Come on podcast, please work out.
Katie Dooley 22:49 Right? Maybe just one more episode, one more episode. And we'll make it big. And you'll leave a five star review on Apple. But that's exactly it. And it's hard for people to cut those ties and go, Okay, well, this didn't work and I've sunk in 10s of 1000s of dollars without getting a return. So that's an important thing to keep in mind, as well. Is it a sunk cost, evaluate that lots of things in life could be a sunk cost. So if you're concerned about leaving anything, because of the time you put in, if it's not working for you get rid of it.
Preston Meyer 23:37 Yeah, never evaluate your efforts looking backwards. When trying to decide whether or not you need to move forward.
Katie Dooley 23:52 This is I mean, this whole
Preston Meyer 23:55 You need to look at the rewards, not your efforts.
Katie Dooley 23:57 Yes and I think a really good example, this is kind of off topic, but a good example is marriage, right? People go well, I've been with him for 20 years. Well, you're unhappy. So what is what is 20 years matter?
Preston Meyer 24:10 Right?
Katie Dooley 24:11 You still got 20 years left easily? Or more probably. I'm like doing the math on how old you have to be if you're married. Yeah, if you're married at 25, you'd be 45. You got forty years left. So like, don't, don't be miserable. Because you sunk 20 years into it. Or if jobs are another big one. So that's a good fair, trying to wrap your head around sunk cost. Those are two good examples. So that's why people join and stay in cults.
Preston Meyer 24:45 It's kind of a bummer to have to think about all these negatives. There's not a whole lot of positivity in this episode. We'll try and keep it light but we're going to be dealing with some serious issues here.
Katie Dooley 24:58 Yeah, cults are in the case that we're mostly talking about today as in the negative, dangerous cults.
Preston Meyer 25:06 So yeah, cults are, obviously a problem. Anything that hurts you is a problem. And that's the big thing that is visible about cults is that they hurt people. The trick is finding out that they're cults before they hurt people.
Katie Dooley 25:26 Which is hard because the members aren't going to talk to outsiders. I think it's just regular cult education like this. On knowing when you're vulnerable, and some of these red flags we're later in the episode, getting into red flags, if you think someone you love is in a cult. But it's really as individuals being educated. Because you're right, nobody can know what's going on in your head. You might not share that you're feeling vulnerable. And you might not share that you've joined this new group of friends that
Preston Meyer 25:59 It's weird how many people...
Katie Dooley 26:01 Slaughter goats every Thursday night.
Preston Meyer 26:04 There's not a whole lot of bloodshed, sacrifice cult around, but there's still some, but not a lot. It's weird how many people keep a secret that they've joined a new group of friends. It's like some people do recognize that there's something weird about this group, but they're willing to bite the bullet and keep moving forward with it.
Katie Dooley 26:33 I don't know. I don't talk about like, I don't talk about my friends to my other friends. You know, I have like chunks of friends. And I don't talk about either my other groups of friends.
Preston Meyer 26:46 But when something big happens in your life, we talk about it and a change in your religious life. I mean, I understand, like, why a lot of people don't share their changes in their religious life with everybody they know. But friends, if they're close will usually mention this sort of thing. But I guess, I guess follow through this idea. If people are typically recruiting for cults from people who are in really hard positions in their life, maybe more preyed upon people, or those who wouldn't have others to tell? That might be part of it.
Katie Dooley 27:34 Okay, look at us in our self discovery. I have a note in the notes, there's a bullet point in the notes of cults that aren't harmful. As I mentioned, all religions start as cults, all offshoots of major religions, all major religions start as cults every denomination of Christianity started as a cult. And we don't look at Church of England as a cult of Henry the Eighth anymore, we just look at it as another denomination. And I think that's because it was, it was allowed to establish itself, they didn't have...
Preston Meyer 28:26 Allowed to establish itself. It was founded by the king. Not that it's the worst example. It's just, you have a very powerful charismatic leader.
Katie Dooley 28:36 That's true. I mean, we can pick on Hutterites or something like that, but or Anabaptist and Quakers. They were allowed to establish themselves. And I mean, Church of England is a good example, because their beliefs weren't too too crazy minus divorce, which is really, we all know, that was the only reason Church of England was eveloped and where am I going with this? So we look at something like Christianity, which was a cult of Judaism and obviously, in the first century, they were persecuted, but eventually they took root and now a very acceptable religion.
Preston Meyer 29:13 It's the standard of North.... well, all of America not just North. South America is very Catholic.
Katie Dooley 29:21 So I just wonder if sometimes in the in the world we live in with media and social media have we created dangerous cults when there was no dangerous cult to begin with? It was just an offshoot.
Preston Meyer 29:38 Oh, for sure. There's, as we'll talk about later, there's a really strong us versus them thing that's really thrust upon you in most cults. It's not absent from most Western religions.
Katie Dooley 29:53 So, I'm going to touch on this. All of my I'm gonna... Disclaimer: All of my research is literally from the Netflix documentary. I did a little bit of supplementary reading for this episode and will, I'm sure we'll do a full episode but the Rajneesheemovement is a group of sannyasins which is a group of Hindus. And they originated in India, with their founder
Preston Meyer 30:25 Rajneesh
Katie Dooley 30:26 Rajneesh. I was gonna find his first name, but I didn't write it down. Bhagwan Rajneesh, Bhagwan is the title, just like Christ as a title.
Preston Meyer 30:38 It's interesting to me that this sannyasin group is the same group that Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha came from.
Katie Dooley 30:45 Absolutely, yeah. And they had a big sect in India. And they wanted to start communal living, and they had people from all over the world coming to India for these for this group. And so they bought acres of land in Oregon, in the United States, outside of a small town called Antelope. Now, for literally, I think it's like a six episode documentary, literally the first four episodes and I'm like, "they're not doing anything wrong." There. It's the people in Antelope who are going to make this worse.
Preston Meyer 31:19 White people suck. So the Rajneeshees, they were all red and orange, they're very like, then, obviously, they had like, South Asian people, but also white people, but very distinct looking, just because they all wore the same thing. And they were, like I said, trying to build a self sustaining commune outside of this small town, and like, I mean, small town, like, less than 100 people, small town, and they didn't like it. And the Rajneeshee started buying homes in the town so that they could get an electoral vote to lessen some of the pressures on them from the community. And they interviewed these people. And they're like, oh, they started buying the houses and like "you were selling the houses!!" Why are you mad at them? Someone has to sell a house for someone to be able to buy a house. And when you're selling a house, you have the option to not sell it to somebody who's offering to buy. That's true of all sales, pretty much. So I mean, digital age, there's a lot less of opportunity to see who is buying, but you still have the option.
Katie Dooley 32:31 Yeah, so it's just really like, it's the first four episodes, it really feels like these people are just scared of other and making it really hard on them. And I honestly think that if they had just left well enough alone, it wouldn't have escalated the way it did. I'm sure it would have ended at some point just because people get disillusioned. You're living in a commune in the 90s in Oregon, I'm sure when smartphones hit people would have you know, left.
Preston Meyer 33:02 Maybe it depends on how much they value what they have in their community. If everything you think you need is there, I mean, do you even need a smartphone?
Katie Dooley 33:12 Yes to listen to this podcast.
Preston Meyer 33:14 This podcast through your browser on your laptop can't you? See you don't need a smartphone.
Katie Dooley 33:27 Anyway, long story short. Both the townspeople and the Rajneeshee in the commune started arming themselves. And it was there was a political race to get votes and it escalated into the largest poisoning in American history. So it absolutely did become a violent, scary cult, but we think of but I encourage you to go watch the first few episodes and really look at it. Is this a scary group of people? Or is this just someone trying to start a new way of life for themselves?
Preston Meyer 34:00 What's the name of the show?
Katie Dooley 34:01 Wild Wild country. Thank you. I haven't said it yet. Wild Wild country I don't actually know if it's still on Netflix, but it was really good. Highly recommend it.
Preston Meyer 34:10 It's probably still on Netflix. Netflix does a lot of their own documentary thing.
Katie Dooley 34:14 Yes, it's a Netflix documentary. Also the organization around the Rajneeshee and this is, again from the 90s in Oregon, Osho International is still in existence today. Osho O-S-H-O.com So you can still like I said they're still around today not the commune obviously because that ended badly but the ideal ideologies of the Bhagwan are alive and well.
Preston Meyer 34:41 Yeah, they're still popular in the United States and Australia and all over Europe. Yeah. Kinda kind of weird. That what used to be labeled very publicly as this cult that makes people uncomfortable is now another I want to say world religion. But I mean, we've discussed this I don't like the label to begin with, but it is all over the world. So it's not huge. It's, it's around.
Katie Dooley 35:11 I was at a Tony Robbins conference and I'm pretty sure was like the only one in the entire room that was like, but he mentioned doing like meeting with Bhagwan and I was like !!!
Preston Meyer 35:26 Tony Robbins, super charismatic guy, but as far as I can tell, people aren't afraid to leave him. There's a sunk costs thing that also gets in people's head too.
Katie Dooley 35:39 I think. You know Tony Robbins is a good guy because he could have a cult like that, and he hasn't done it yet. So respect, right. 'Cause he could, like tomorrow, he could be like, we're flying to Guyana and I got a drink for you.
Preston Meyer 35:55 He's only a stone's throw away from NXIVM. But he doesn't throw that stone.
Katie Dooley 36:01 No, he has not branded anyone yet or sold anyone into sex trafficking. So good guy, Tony Robbins. Yeah. I feel like I'm gonna have to post a good guy Tony Robbins meme in the disclaimer. I'll probably make it but it's fine. Preston, I'm gonna hand it over to you for a little bit with, of course, my charming interjections about the BITE model. I love the BITE model. I'm so excited. It's kind of dumb that I'm excited about it. But the BITE model is basically how you tell if something's a cult. And Preston's gonna break it down for us. Wicca wicca
Preston Meyer 36:36 Yeah, it's it's actually a really well thought out way to evaluate religions or even non-religious groups, like even Bhawans cult group. He kind of sold it as a religious, less religion. Which I mean, that's such a nonsense phrase, that yeah, it was a parareligious group basically born out of that sannyasin tradition that was really digestible in a way that did appeal to people that were outside of the Hindu tradition, which is kind of nifty. But yeah, back into this BITE model. It's, and so B-I-T -E stands for behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control. So we're going to look at these different items and look at how they affect people. I guess
Katie Dooley 37:35 I will say if you're interested, that is quite extensive. we've summarized it.
Preston Meyer 37:41 Yeah, I've managed to crunch this down into small enough bites that
Katie Dooley 37:47 Haha bites, I get it, you did it.
Preston Meyer 37:51 Alright, so the first is behavior control. The big summary of this whole idea is that cults discourage individualism with rigid rules. So they regulate associations, they tell you, who you can hang out with, and sometimes force you to be isolated. They also regulate your clothing, your hairstyles, your diet, up into things like perpetual hunger or long term fasting, it's a little bit more intense than just saying, don't eat pork. It's like straight up, you don't get to eat for a while, which is a huge problem. They'll also regulate your sleep, they'll make you sleep weird hours, sometimes sometimes they'll straight up deprive you from sleep, just to regulate your behavior, which is torture.
Katie Dooley 38:43 Well, and also why regulating sleep in particular, makes you more suggestible to things. For sure or so tired that you actually can't think straight, right? We've all been that tired, unfortunately. So yeah, regulating sleep is a huge red flag
Preston Meyer 39:02 Big power move. They'll also, typically restrict your leisure and entertainment. Which sounds not too crazy, like most churches don't want you going to strip clubs or watching pornography, right? Or even sometimes the like, don't watch PG 13 movies. Definitely don't watch rated-R movies.
Katie Dooley 39:24 Don't read Harry Potter. It's the devil.
Preston Meyer 39:27 Yeah. So they'll go typically beyond that to the point where they actually control what you have opportunities to receive as entertainment material, and they will restrict your leisure time. Which that kind of control is where it gets a little bit scary, I think.
Katie Dooley 39:47 Yes and I... This is big in groups that either are communal, where you're supposed to work for the group or request a lot of volunteer hours from you. And it's kind of the same thing as the sleep thing where you're too busy to just stop and think about what's going on.
Preston Meyer 40:07 Yeah, there's a lot of that, in fact, the too busy to think about what's going on kind of shows up in all four of these themes,
Katie Dooley 40:16 And also an important one because it goes beyond religious cults, right? Something like NXIVM or the big one I can. I can't think of any others right now.
Preston Meyer 40:27 It's a pretty good example of a recent not quite religious cult, though. Yeah. So it's pretty fine that it keeps coming to mind.
Katie Dooley 40:33 Okay, I'll just keep going with NXIVM then. Again, we're you're just too busy to be like, Oh, I was branded with my iron this week. Ouch!
Preston Meyer 40:42 Maybe I should run away. Oh, man,
Katie Dooley 40:43 No, I got this shit to do.
Preston Meyer 40:47 Alright, another part of behavioral control that you'll see in a lot of cults is financial exploitation, where people will ask you for literally all of the money you have, usually incrementally, but they will make you poor, to make the group or the leader of the group exclusively, very wealthy. But there's also more than just financial exploitation, there's also building financial dependence, which is why they don't just recruit the rich, they'll also recruit anybody who they can force into a position where they rely on the group for their financial needs, which of course is a problem.
Katie Dooley 41:30 I think they would actually have a harder time. And I don't know what statistics are, but actually getting very wealthy people in to a cult, because very wealthy people tend to have financial planners. And at some point, your financial planner would go. Mine would, holla, Ron!
Preston Meyer 41:50 But see a lot of these people who would have financial planners, if they're halfway into a cult, and they're pretty committed already. There, a lot of the time, they're happier to leave their financial planner behind then leave the group. So a financial planner can be very helpful, but only if you actually value their advice, which is true in literally every scenario. And just generally, cults will typically manipulate you financially, one way or the other, they're gonna manipulate you,
Katie Dooley 42:33 Can I have five bucks,
Preston Meyer 42:34 If I had five bucks,
Katie Dooley 42:37 You would?
Preston Meyer 42:39 I would be willing to give you five bucks. Though I suspect that since you are more regularly employed than that you don't need the five bucks that I don't have as bad as I do.
Katie Dooley 42:53 I'll look after you if you give me five bucks.
Preston Meyer 42:56 You know what, at this point in my life, you got a deal
Katie Dooley 43:00 Oh it's starting guys, I'm so proud.
Preston Meyer 43:07 We'll see where this goes. Also, something that is almost universally used in the danger cult. As far as behavior control, is the idea of rewards and punishments to modify behavior. The carrot versus the stick. Both get used an awful lot. It's never just the carrot, but it's never just the stick. There's an awful lot of torture, you can be beaten, you can be burned, branded, or tattooed. Cutting is not outside the realm of what is common, and sometimes rape. Weirdly enough, there's enough cults that have been around where people have been forced to rape other people. Which is the kind of thing where you should know at this point that you need to leave this group. And an awful lot of people will stay with the group beyond that point. Not cool. You are also compelled to torture other people in other ways as well. And sometimes as we have seen in other handful of documentaries about say Scientology, you can be compelled to murder somebody
Katie Dooley 44:29 Whose been murdered in Scientology?
Preston Meyer 44:32 Oh, there's a long list.
Katie Dooley 44:33 Oh actually do know when I can't remember her name. But I do know one case in particular that you're talking about. You know, were what's that term for us now? For people who are enemies of Scientology?
Preston Meyer 44:49 I don't remember but we're them now. Yeah, we are. We have spoken out against Scientology.
Katie Dooley 44:57 I gonna spend the rest of the episode thinking about it.
Preston Meyer 45:00 There's yeah, there's a word oh well.
Katie Dooley 45:03 Move onto I and I'll Google it.
Preston Meyer 45:05 All right. Another big control move in cults is information control. Moving on to that second letter of our BITE. So information control is about discouraging criticism, typically with misinformation, and also preventing other important information from reaching the adherents. Did you find your word?
Katie Dooley 45:30 I did. We're suppressive persons now.
Preston Meyer 45:33 I'm okay with that. So information control, usually, oh, I'm not gonna say usually, pretty much always, I'm not aware of a situation where one of these dangerous cults doesn't use deception, where information is deliberately withheld or distorted, to render the collective group more acceptable to the individual. This will include systematic lying, and use of non-cult sources out of context, or outright misquoting people to make the group seem better than they really are. Usually, that will limit your access to outside information. Like don't use the internet, it's full of lies.
Katie Dooley 46:22 Scientologists aren't allowed to Google Scientology.
Preston Meyer 46:26 That doesn't surprise me at all. So you need to limit people's access to information that would make them at all question the group or their place in it. You need to keep members too busy to think or access information as well. So like I said, that theme is going to carry through there it is. Also, there's a strong tendency to encourage spying and have people report on each other when they see deviant behavior, or even questions that seem a little too invasive.
Katie Dooley 47:02 It's very effective. Because once you know, there's this tattletale system in place like if you're told to tattle on someone, you know that someone could tattle on you. So, like, you might never actually tell on someone but it...
Preston Meyer 47:16 You know, somebody will if you
Katie Dooley 47:17 Yeah, so just like, there's like a word I'm trying to think it just like automatically keeps people in line without actually necessarily having to do anything. Just to know that it's a possibility, keeps people in line.
Preston Meyer 47:31 Fear is the number one tool of cult leaders. And this is where it's pretty visible, I think. Because of course, people want to avoid torture, which is a perfectly
Katie Dooley 47:45 Unless you're a what is sadist? masochist? I get them backwards all the time.
Preston Meyer 47:53 Also, part of this whole reporting on each other, there's also the unethical use of confession. Like if you go to confess to your pastor or priest or whatever, that could be problematic, but usually isn't the in the bigger churches that typically are led by believers as opposed to how I said most cults are led by people who don't actually believe what they're teaching in a lot of cases. So these cases of unethical use of confession, will typically disrupt or outright dissolve your identity boundaries, which can be terrifying to somebody who is able to see what's going on. There's also commonly used tools of memory manipulation, which is gas lightning. I mean, yeah, that's a connected thing for sure. Making somebody question what they think they know is sometimes problematic. If what they think
Katie Dooley 49:02 I think it's questioning people's experiences, right. That's the problem. You know, saying, having a healthy debate about religion or politics, I don't think is a problem but saying no, that wasn't your experience is a huge problem.
Preston Meyer 49:14 Absolutely. And the last point I have here for unethical use of confession is withholding forgiveness. For those in the Christian tradition, it's typically understood that confession is connected to forgiveness that you can receive forgiveness through confession. There may or may not be extra steps involved, depending on what you've done. But outright withholding forgiveness after confession is a problem. Moving on to the third part of our bite model, T, go for it. What do you got?
Katie Dooley 49:55 I just want to say T like a cheerleader. People can't see me but making a T like a cheerleader.
Preston Meyer 50:02 Well done.
Katie Dooley 50:05 You did all the research you really I'll just chime in with my thoughts.
Preston Meyer 50:08 Honestly, I wasn't even aware of the BITE model until you brought it up to me.
Katie Dooley 50:11 I know but you still did all the research.
Preston Meyer 50:14 I did dig deeply into it to understand it. I don't know why that was so hard to say.
Katie Dooley 50:21 You almost said, I did dick deeply. And I was a little concerned.
Preston Meyer 50:25 Yeah, that's not your business. All right. The third thing is thought control. So you can ensure continued obedience by eliminating the individual, you do this by messing with their power to think. And so this is usually seen when cults require members to adopt doctrine as truth, which, realistically, almost every group, political, religious, or theatrical, there's things that you should believe to be an effective part of the community.
Katie Dooley 51:04 Yeah, even any mainstream Christian group is not down if you don't accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Right. Like that's, that's cost of entry.
Preston Meyer 51:14 Yeah. But if you are required to believe that everything that is said must be true. With the fear of punishment, if you don't, you got serious problems. And usually, these include a really strict us versus them good, good versus evil, everything is black or white, that cults don't typically, like playing around with allowing you to believe that there's a gray zone, you're either with the group or you're against the group, which I mean, is pretty much true of the dangerous groups anyway
Katie Dooley 51:53 Cults or otherwise, yes. And as we know, it's a spectrum. Everything like... Did I make a clear point?
Preston Meyer 52:04 I think you did. Everything is a spectrum, there is gray, it's okay.
Katie Dooley 52:08 I was like, Did you think I was referring to like cults on a spectrum or belief, I was talking about belief on a spectrum.
Preston Meyer 52:14 All the things exist on a spectrum.
Katie Dooley 52:18 I've just made this weird.
Preston Meyer 52:25 Very often, cults will require their members to take on a new name and identity. I knew a lady when I was living in New Jersey. Her name was Marjorie, she was an awesome lady, she fed us all the time. Super funny, jolly lady had a lot of fun hanging out with her. And when she was hanging out with Malcolm X, she lost her last name, she became Marjorie Number X, because the first person in the group gets to be X. And the second person with that same first name would be 2x. And then 3X. It's kind of weird. And I learned that from her because she was an interesting lady who was willing to share her experiences. Not that Malcolm X would be classified as a dangerous cult leader, by all standards, but by some absolutely was and he definitely employed this method of giving people new names and adjusting their identities. Another common factor is hypnosis, to help you alter your mental states, or also undermine critical thought, kind of a huge problem there. Even worse, is the idea of causing age regression deliberately. That's a really effective way to make people rely on you if you put them in the state of mind of a six year old, they have to look up to you as the provider. Huge problem.
Katie Dooley 54:01 Yeah, that's terrifying.
Preston Meyer 54:03 Yeah, it's, it's very scary. And also, very often, they'll will use hypnosis to alter your memories or create entirely new ones.
Katie Dooley 54:15 I also I don't know if you have this on here. But drugs use as well.
Preston Meyer 54:21 Don't have that on the list. But drugs are very useful tools in this hypnosis program. Because usually, drugs on their own, won't do the things but if you combine it with hypnosis, you're gonna get a lot of work done.
Katie Dooley 54:39 Yeah. If you could put people in states of paranoia or whatever, with drugs. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 54:43 Oh, yeah. Especially if you think if you can get people to think that everyone is out to get them outside of the group, and really make them feel safe in the group. You've got a believer for life, probably. Another thing that is commonly used to control thought, is helping people to control their own thoughts, with techniques that help them to rationalize where they're at, and stop all intrusive thoughts from coming at them before they really can take root. This will usually include chanting, or repetitive prayers. Meditating can be effective, but it's... if you've ever tried to sit down for five minutes and not think at all it's really hard to do today. And that does actually allow intrusive thoughts to come unless you've gotten really good at meditating in a way that you are able to let those intrusive thoughts go, rather than hold on to them when they come.
Katie Dooley 55:54 I think if you're that mindful, you wouldn't be in a cult. But I don't know. You're out there. And you're that mindful and you're in a cult, can you email me?
Preston Meyer 56:04 Tell us how that worked out. Yeah, meditating is a weird thing to be on this list. But it is on the list that the practice of forcing thoughts out of your mind, which most people think of when they think of meditation is the kind of meditation that is espoused by these cults.
Katie Dooley 56:23 I think some of it is like, probably run through this idea that God can hear your thoughts. So if you have any doubts better get out. Because I mean, obviously, in the context of religious cults are, that the leader can hear your thoughts or whatever. And if they can hear that you have doubts, and you can be the next one getting beaten.
Preston Meyer 56:45 Yeah, so you have to suppress those thoughts. Another thing that comes up a lot is speaking in tongues, which is a thing that you'll see an awful lot in, especially evangelical and Pentecostal churches, that... they serve a different purpose. They typically are outward signs, and you see them in churches. But in cults, it's more of a business of putting nonsense in your head and making you spout nonsense. Because when your mouth is engaged, typically your brain isn't engaged in something different. So kind of helpful, I wouldn't classify it as one of the more powerful tools, but it is a tool that is used because it is effective. And of course, singing, humming a nice way to keep the group unified, and thinking about what their mouth is engaged in. Next on the list, we have the idea that you just have to reject critical thinking, which, basically, outright, I have to implore everybody to never do.
Katie Dooley 57:58 Always think critically!
Preston Meyer 58:02 Just... you can avoid a lot of problems by thinking critically. This includes actually analyzing things rationally, absolutely prevented as much as possible by these groups. And they will outright forbid criticism, you don't get to criticize the leader, it's not your place. And you should stop thinking about things like that, or you're gonna get yourself in trouble.
Katie Dooley 58:31 I wouldn't do well in a cult.
Preston Meyer 58:33 That's a good thing.
Katie Dooley 58:35 Unless I was the leader of one!
Preston Meyer 58:38 We'll see how that works. But yeah, the number one thing I need to stop clapping my hands. The number one thing is that you have to label all thought that is outside of what is acceptable as unacceptable. That's a that's an annoying tautology. Let's try that again. Every other thought, not expressly given to you by the collective or the leader is unacceptable.
Katie Dooley 59:16 Unacceptable. I was trying to say at the same time because I knew what you were gonna say
Preston Meyer 59:25 Very nice. And the fourth letter and this BITE.
Katie Dooley 59:29 E!
Preston Meyer 59:31 Emotion control, that you can establish dependence by manipulating emotions. So the idea that somebody can mess with your emotions, a little bit scary. And people do it on the regular.
Katie Dooley 59:46 I think you have to be incredibly self aware to not have people mess with your emotions, even just as a regular human being. But yeah, so I think this one's probably a very effective tool.
Preston Meyer 59:58 Absolutely. Usually you'll see the idea that this group has a family. And they'll play that up really hard. Because when you think of family, hopefully you're thinking of positive emotions, and that you can establish long lasting positive connections with people. And that's exactly what they want to have happen in these cults.
Katie Dooley 1:00:23 Also important if you didn't come from a good family, because we all have that idea of family drilled into us. Right? So it works both ways. Like if you had a great family, then this is just another family. If you didn't have a good family, then this is the one for you!
Preston Meyer 1:00:35 Yeah, it's it's a messed up way to play around with people. But it works. It's probably the strongest tool in their belt, is the idea that you can depend on them like a family. And so part of this emotional control that you'll see is that some emotions are outright banned as evil or selfish, and that people's emotions should be blocked, especially homesickness and doubt. The idea that your emotions can be evil, and selfish and need to be suppressed, by all means, is something that I think is really not cool. I'm really uncomfortable with.
Katie Dooley 1:00:37 It's really unhealthy. There's no such thing as bad emotion.
Preston Meyer 1:01:33 Like even rage. Anger has its place. There's, obviously appropriate uses of your emotions, and inappropriate uses, conversely, but to say, an emotion is outright evil or selfish, is hugely problematic.
Katie Dooley 1:01:57 I think a lot of mental health problems happen because we don't let ourselves feel the full spectrum of emotion.
Preston Meyer 1:02:02 I think you're probably right.
Katie Dooley 1:02:02 So this is really bad advice.
Preston Meyer 1:02:Right? Often, though, these cults will make members feel like problems are their own fault, rather than the fault of the leader or the group, even if they are, in fact, completely constructed problems outside of your own control. And that's a really awful way to try and control somebody. They'll also typically promote feelings of shame, or guilt or unworthiness, and especially fear, to make you feel bad. So that when they make you feel good, there's a lot more weight on that. Especially the fear that they would give you of independent thought, fear of the world, fear of enemies, fear of damnation is fairly common. And fear of group disapproval. Yeah, you want to be accepted by the group that you're trying to belong to. And since a person in a cult doesn't recognize the dangers of belonging to that group, that disapproval is hugely problematic. And so that fear is a great controlling tool. They will also often I mentioned that there's the the misuse of confession, public confession of sins is pretty much never appropriate, I think. But it's often used by cults to control people, that if you do something bad, you'll have to say in front of everybody, don't do it. Katie Dooley 1:03:52 Preston Meyer 1:03:53 Katie Dooley 1:04:22 Preston Meyer 1:04:29 Katie Dooley 1:04:42 Preston Meyer 1:04:53 Katie Dooley 1:05:49 Preston Meyer 1:06:08 Katie Dooley 1:06:30 Preston Meyer 1:06:42 Katie Dooley 1:06:50 Preston Meyer 1:06:52 Katie Dooley 1:07:08 Preston Meyer 1:07:39 Katie Dooley 1:07:51 Preston Meyer 1:08:18 Katie Dooley 1:08:23 Preston Meyer 1:08:38 Katie Dooley 1:08:58 Preston Meyer 1:09:15 Katie Dooley 1:09:17 Preston Meyer 1:09:44 Katie Dooley 1:10:00 Preston Meyer 1:11:05 Katie Dooley 1:11:12 Preston Meyer 1:11:25 Katie Dooley 1:11:29 Preston Meyer 1:11:30 Katie Dooley 1:11:33 Preston Meyer 1:11:38 Katie Dooley 1:11:42 Preston Meyer 1:12:05 Katie Dooley 1:12:13 Preston Meyer 1:12:45 Katie Dooley 1:13:07 Preston Meyer 1:13:10 Katie Dooley 1:13:25 Preston Meyer 1:13:30 Katie Dooley 1:13:31 Preston Meyer 1:13:45 Katie Dooley 1:13:50 Preston Meyer 1:14:05 Katie Dooley 1:14:13 Preston Meyer 1:15:28 Katie Dooley 1:15:29 Preston Meyer 1:15:39 Katie Dooley 1:15:41 Preston Meyer 1:15:46 Katie Dooley 1:15:51 Preston Meyer 1:15:53 Katie Dooley 1:16:06 Preston Meyer 1:16:30 Katie Dooley 1:16:39 Preston Meyer 1:16:42 Katie Dooley 1:17:07 Preston Meyer 1:17:11 Katie Dooley 1:17:22 Preston Meyer 1:17:38 Katie Dooley 1:18:11 Preston Meyer 1:18:15 Katie Dooley 1:18:22 Preston Meyer 1:18:26 Katie Dooley 1:18:41 Preston Meyer 1:18:48 Katie Dooley 1:18:52 Preston Meyer 1:19:23 Katie Dooley 1:19:27 Preston Meyer 1:19:59 Katie Dooley 1:20:04 Preston Meyer 1:20:07 Both Hosts 1:20:08 Katie Dooley 1:20:13 Preston Meyer 1:20:17 Katie Dooley 1:20:29 Preston Meyer 1:20:37 Katie Dooley 1:20:38 Preston Meyer 1:20:53 Both Hosts 1:20:57 | |||
| 10 May 2021 | Abide With Me | 01:01:19 | |
In this episode, we talk about Parody Religions! These are religions based on pop culture or as a commentary on religion. If you've ever been curious about Dudeism, the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the Flying Spaghetti Monster and his noodly appendages, then this is the episode for you. Religious parody holds an important place in society, whether you are a diehard fan of Star Wars, or want people to think more critically about the role of religion in society. Even though they may seem a bit "out there", parody religions share many similarities with the world's major religions. And who are we to say that they aren't true believers? Should they be taken as seriously as mainstream religions? We discuss all this and more on this fan-requested episode of the Holy Watermelon Podcast!
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Katie Dooley 00:00 Hi Preston!
Preston Meyer 00:12 Hi, Katie.
Katie Dooley 00:12 How are you?
Preston Meyer 00:13 I'm doing great. How about you?
Katie Dooley 00:15 I'm snazzy. I'm excited for today's episode
Preston Meyer 00:21 of the...
Both Hosts 00:21 Holy watermelon podcast.
Katie Dooley 00:26 We've been on a spiritual journey pun intended. We've done all the world's religions, major religions. We talked much about belief, and why people believe the things they believe which there was no answer to that question so...
Preston Meyer 00:46 We've examined what a god is, what religion really is, and may or may not be, which of course, is still way too nebulous and tricky.
Katie Dooley 00:56 We got into cults. Last episode. Now, I think we're ready for the real hard-hitting content.
Preston Meyer 01:08 Oh, I'm ready for it. In fact, there's a nifty article that I want to tell you about. Before we get into-the most read article on explorefaith.org in 2005, written by John M. Sweeney, well-respected Catholic author. Would you guess what his article was on?
Katie Dooley 01:33 Probably Catholicism. Was there a pope thing happening then?
Preston Meyer 01:40 You know, I don't remember.
Katie Dooley 01:43 Maybe Benedict in 2005. You know what? That sounds close to right.
Preston Meyer 01:44 I was in high school when Benedict came in. Am I right? Oh, I'd have to google that.
Katie Dooley 01:47 I'm clearly not right.
Preston Meyer 01:55 I feel like Benedict was new in office in 2005. Yeah. So that's a fair guess I like it. No. In fact, Sweeney's most popular article on explorefaith.org in 2005, was on Jedism. The Jedi from Star Wars.
Katie Dooley 02:17 You're not just saying Judaism wrong? That's not how it's said. We've been over this one.
Preston Meyer 02:28 Now I'm just thinking of Spaceballs. She doesn't look Druish.
Katie Dooley 02:37 That's a good sneak peek of our episode. So first, I want to say thank you to our listener, Tim, for inspiring this episode. He specifically wanted us to talk about the Church of the Latter DayzDude, or more commonly known as Dudeism. And we figured we couldn't talk for a whole hour about The Big Lebowski, so we have put together a whole episode of parody religions for you today. Thanks, Tim!
Preston Meyer 03:07 Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Thanks for that suggestion. And we've found some great material to surround this whole topic. And if you remember from our episode, talking is hard for some reason. Right, amateurs. If you remember from our episode about religion, and what is religion, you'll remember it's way too hard to define. So you'll see some parts of these religions that will look an awful lot like their legitimate religions.
Katie Dooley 03:41 And who are we to say they're not legitimate? This is part of the big questions we'll be getting into today. But let's start with religious parody and religious satire at sort of a high level. And then we'll get into some of the fun specific ones like Jedism and Dudeism.
Preston Meyer 04:00 For sure. All right, you did a little bit of research on what most school teachers will tell you not to do. But it looks really good. And it's worded really well what do you got?
Katie Dooley 04:10 I feel accused. He means I went to Wikipedia.
Preston Meyer 04:21 Wikipedia is not a source in itself, but it is an excellent tool for research. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Katie Dooley 04:29 So basically, Wikipedia defines a parody religion or mock religion as something that challenges conventional or mainstream religious belief. It can parody several religions or it can...
Preston Meyer 04:51 Or it can be a little more focused.
Katie Dooley 04:54 I was gonna say or it could not be based off of any particular religion at all.
Preston Meyer 04:58 It could just be the idea of religion in general.
Katie Dooley 05:02 Yeah, I was gonna say commentary on religion. So that is, what a parody religion is, but as Preston mentioned, there are, this is where it's so convoluted there are beliefs and practices that look more conventionally religious, and then how do you separate someone who's perhaps just taking the piss, from someone who legitimately believes? And how can you tell, right? As per our belief episode, you can't tell someone that they're just, if they're telling you that they genuinely believe in Jedism, who are you to say that they're not or that they're wrong, or that it's a joke religion, this becomes convoluted.
Preston Meyer 05:55 It's tricky to say you have a place to tell them that their religion that is obviously new and constructed on popular culture is nonsense, and that they're wrong.
Katie Dooley 06:08 When yours was, but just 2000 years ago. I said it, I said what I said!
Preston Meyer 06:15 You can't tell somebody that they don't get to believe a thing. If their experience tells them that they do.
Katie Dooley 06:25 Well, and we'll get we'll touch on proof of burden today. And touch on proof of burden even more next episode... teaser! Yeah, we'll talk about proof of burden today in because that's a big part of parody religion, I think. And I have some favorites for that very reason. As an atheist, of course, so there's also religious satire, and if you've been on our Discord, I've been calling this episode satirical religions and satire is not quite the right term for it. But religious satire is a, it's a thing. And this feels as good of an episode as I need to bring it up.
Preston Meyer 07:08 For sure. And a little bit, like very similar, but slightly distinct from
Katie Dooley 07:15 Satire/parody let's all go back to high school English class.
Preston Meyer 07:19 A little bit different, but still connected, is the satire, which targets clergy, which doesn't show up a whole lot in parody religions, but you'll definitely see loads of this phenomenon. If you follow a handful of our favorite comedians, maybe.
Katie Dooley 07:41 And even you'll see it in political cartoons.
Preston Meyer 07:44 Yeah and so that that satire, which targets the clergy is definitely more of a political satire than a religious satire because you're targeting a person in a position of authority rather than the beliefs of the group.
Katie Dooley 07:59 So my understanding and jump in please, is that the difference between a parody religion is so a parody religion is I don't want to say entirely new ideas, because we know that's wrong, but it's its own entity, whereas religious satire is critiquing an existing religion in a hilarious way. And I honestly didn't even think about this example until I was reading up on it, but Life of Brian, and even to some extent, Monty Python, the Holy Grail is a great example of religious satire, where they essentially make fun of the life of Jesus.
Preston Meyer 08:36 I'm not the Messiah, He is the Messiah.
Katie Dooley 08:42 And this comes up more with satirical religions and with parody religions, but it's this idea of freedom of speech and how much we're allowed to have a commentary, especially this idea of making fun of a religion, how, what level is appropriate. I think you know, from our podcast, where we stand on that, I don't actually think religious satire is a bad thing.
Preston Meyer 09:12 I think it's healthy to be able to criticize both people for their actions, and the thoughts that they are willing to hurt others to protect. For sure.
Katie Dooley 09:29 And I also think, like, if you're going to be critiquing anything, especially something so serious, and where people can get hurt, why not do it with humor. It just makes it that much more comfortable.
Preston Meyer 09:42 It makes it more palatable too
Katie Dooley 09:44 Right? if you can laugh at yourself or your group or whatever, or even you know, at others, then that's a lot better than fighting each other, I think. That's my thought on religious satire. I think that's probably all we'll touch on it today.
Preston Meyer 10:04 Yeah. All right. So, as I alluded to in episodes past, and the beginning of this episode just a little bit, there's some big questions that I want to keep in mind as we look at these religious parodies and weird pseudo-religions, parareligions. Sure, why not? I like it. So, the real question, the big question with sub questions is, is it fair to call them religions all? Remember, we don't have one solid, everybody agrees on this definition of religion. So things get tricky already.
Katie Dooley 10:49 I, not having dived into the conversation yet.
Preston Meyer 10:58 Your verb usage.... awful.
Katie Dooley 11:02 Not having gotten into the meat of the conversation, my guess is that it's a spectrum. Spectrum. I think I said that too quietly spectrum, spectrum!
Preston Meyer 11:14 So some ideas that can help us with this question. Again, pretty subjective and tricky, but we're gonna go ahead anyway. Number one, are they real systems of deeply held beliefs. Some people genuinely deeply hold that Jesus is their Savior, or that Muhammad is the last prophet that there ever can be. And there's some similar tiered values we're going to see in some of these groups. There's also the question of belief that is hugely important to those people who like to undermine the claims of some of these groups, that they can only be joke religions, and should never be taken seriously. But does religion bear the prerequisite of full dogmatic belief in each of its doctrines? What about those people who belong to various churches that happen to doubt one or many of their doctrines, or are straight up skeptical of the whole thing, but still belong to the community? So maybe you don't have a connection to the Force, but you still identify as a Jedi? Who gets to tell you you're not a Jedi?
Katie Dooley 12:39 Nobody, Preston, nobody. I almost want to answer one of your questions now. I don't know if I, if I'm jumping the gun.
Preston Meyer 12:52 Go for it, are you going broadly? Are you thinking of a specific religion?
Katie Dooley 12:55 I can speak quite broadly. Preston has mentioned like how deeply do some people believe and of course, I've already said it, take a shot. It's a spectrum. So I'm sure for each of these parody religions that we're about to talk about. There are people who hold this deeply as a belief. 7 billion people, of course, there's someone who really, really really truly believes in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for example. But that being said, and Pastafarians are one of them, that they're parody religions as a critique of religion. So there's I'll point them out when we get to them, that there are these set of parody religions, we're going to talk about where the whole idea is that believing in a higher power can't be proven. So I would say in that group, which like I said, I'll point out, those beliefs are less deeply held because it's just a critique of.
Preston Meyer 13:57 Yes, some of the groups we're going to look at are definitely just exercises looking at Russell's Teapot, and others are actual committed philosophies.
Katie Dooley 14:09 Let's do the Russell's Teapot at the end, we'll do actual philosophy. I didn't separate them that way in the notes, but now I'm like, that would probably be a good way to do it. We're gonna... we're improvising, guys.
Preston Meyer 14:20 All right now according to the request that launched this whole idea, we're going to start with the Church of the Latter Day Dude
Katie Dooley 14:27 I love that name. Church the Latter Day Dude. Or Dudeism.
Preston Meyer 14:33 Right. So it's mostly inspired by the film The Big Lebowski.
Katie Dooley 14:38 Where he is called The Dude.
Preston Meyer 14:43 Good ol' Jeff Bridges, super chill most of the time.
Katie Dooley 14:48 And he's not a Dudeist himself, but he thinks it's pretty rad that dudeism exists.
Preston Meyer 14:54 Wouldn't you? If you did a movie and everyone is like we're starting a religion based off of your portrayal of this character in this movie, you'd be flattered too.
Katie Dooley 15:04 You know what? I didn't like The Big Lebowski.
Preston Meyer 15:09 Oh the movies not that good.
Katie Dooley 15:11 I feel like that's a really... I watched it with your wife, probably 10 years ago.
Preston Meyer 15:15 She hates it.
Katie Dooley 15:16 We both hated it. So, I don't want to digress too much, but
Preston Meyer 15:21 I had to watch it without her.
Katie Dooley 15:24 So Preston's wife and I went to school together. And we had a school project that was themed on The Big Lebowski, and so that, it sounds cool. But the teacher made us watch The Big Lebowski in class. And this is University, right, like two free classes of University for a movie, like that's elementary school stuff. And we just, we couldn't stand it. Sorry, probably to Tim. I assume you like The Big Lebowski if you're into Dudeism, and anyone else who's listening, but we're gonna cover it for you.
Preston Meyer 16:02 I got a side thought. I just realized this. So I'm sharing this with everybody all at the same time, through this wonderful medium of the podcast where none of this is actually contemporaneous. So I just realized just now, The Big Lebowski is basically the same thing as John Wick just replaced the dog with the carpet. And John Wick got several sequels.
Katie Dooley 16:40 I don't know what he's talking about.
Preston Meyer 16:44 Somebody out there in radio land knows what John Wick is.
Katie Dooley 16:47 No I know, somebody's gonna like hop on our Discord and be like, Katie, why don't you know what this is? Here's a link, but I don't know what you're talking about. But I'm sure it's a great analogy I'm really proud of you.
Preston Meyer 16:56 For those who know, they'll be like, oh, yeah, or maybe they'll disagree with me. And we can chat it up on our Discord server
Katie Dooley 17:03 Which we're clearly plugging. All right. Church of the Latter Day Dude is based off The Big Lebowski, as you said. It's also has some tenants of Taoism in it, which we didn't spend an episode on Taoism, but it's similar to Shintoism. A little bit like Buddhism, it's very...
Preston Meyer 17:23 It's more complicated than Shintoism. But similar in a lot of ways.
Katie Dooley 17:29 It's very reflective, and very meditative. So yeah, some, maybe we'll do an episode on Taoism one day, but it's very similar to Buddhism or Shintoism. In that you are trying to elevate yourself and remove yourself from the everyday cares and sufferings of the world.
Preston Meyer 17:56 It's kind of interesting that even though this is a new religion based on a pop culture phenomenon, the practitioners of Dudeism tend to take it pretty seriously.
Katie Dooley 18:07 This is one of those ones where, yeah, people take it very seriously. There's lots of books on it and lots of like doctrinal readings. They're all like, I mean, they're all very modern. In comparison, The Big Lebowski is fairly new compared to you know, the Bible.
Preston Meyer 18:27 For sure. That comparison, yeah.
Katie Dooley 18:33 So Dudeists have a doctrine that will actually look quite similar to the Buddhist doctrine. I actually saw a comparison side by side on life is suffering, you can overcome suffering. And what's the third point I'm missing?
Preston Meyer 18:54 Wasn't the third point, the escape is nirvana. Yeah and so there's those three same questions are asked relative to Dudeism, and what are those answers?
Katie Dooley 19:09 Dudeism is trying to liberate us from thinking that's too uptight. Life is suffering. Dudeism is trying to bring us to the state of just taking it easy, man. And how do we get to this state is by abiding. The Dude abides. So there's the mirror that's in Buddhism,
Preston Meyer 19:35 Right? It's nice and simple. Just relax. Let it be. It's very zen. That's pretty great. There's there's a lot of philosophies that have been picked through to pick out the most easy going bits to make this philosophy.
Katie Dooley 19:58 Yeah, their High Holy Day is March 6 is the Day of the Dude. It celebrates the release of The Big Lebowski in theatres.
Preston Meyer 20:14 If you're gonna pick any day, why not that?
Katie Dooley 20:16 I mean, how would you pick that?
Preston Meyer 20:20 All right. And even you can be ordained as a Dudeist Priest. There's about 600,000 in the world.
Katie Dooley 20:30 That's a very high number
Preston Meyer 20:32 Right? Like, that's, that's alarming. That's more than half a million.
Katie Dooley 20:37 Yes. 600,000 is more than 500,000. Very good.
Preston Meyer 20:41 But I just like, when the word million is useful. It helps to actually use it to understand scale. 600,000, just like this, that's a number you stop paying attention how big it is? More than half a million.
Katie Dooley 20:54 Yes. So because you can be an ordained do this. I think it's more common in the States. Canada has stricter laws on who can perform marriages than the States, but you can perform marriages as a Dudeist Priest.
Preston Meyer 21:13 Yeah, I think in Canada, it's just left up to the province, the provincial governments and where we are, those restrictions are quite tight.
Katie Dooley 21:23 Yeah. So I don't remember if it was Dudeism or Pastafarianism, where there have been some serious debates on like, who can perform like, is it alright, to ordain a Dudeist to perform a marriage? Like, is it actually a religious thing?
Preston Meyer 21:40 That's a great question that I think was related to the Spaghetti Monster. I think I actually have that in our notes.
Katie Dooley 21:50 Maybe that's what I'm thinking. Yeah. Cool. That's Dudeism. The dude abides.
Preston Meyer 21:55 The Dude abides. Nice and simple.
Katie Dooley 21:59 The Church of SubGenius. I don't think that's a Russell's Teapot is it?
Preston Meyer 22:04 I don't think it is.
Katie Dooley 22:05 It's pretty out there to be...
Preston Meyer 22:08 Yeah. The Church of the SubGenius is a really odd group. I couldn't really find lots of information that would be useful or interesting for this, but I did find a little bit.
Katie Dooley 22:24 It's a very like sci-fi based religion, not quite the it's obviously not like a Scientology. I don't think it has any cult tendencies. But it does have this weird scientific basis that I'll let Preston get into.
Preston Meyer 22:41 So the Church of the SubGenius was founded in the 1970s. Around this fictional character, I need to emphasize this person never existed
Katie Dooley 22:53 When I looked it up, I thought he existed. So yes, emphasize this.
Preston Meyer 22:58 So J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, Bob is always written with quotation marks around it. No exceptions, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, is a fictional salesman back in the 50s. It is claimed that while messing around with the TV, he received a vision from JHVH-1 that spelled J-H-V-H dash, the numeral one. Which sounds suspicious already, but that's not enough grounds to dismiss a thing. And the story within this Church of the SubGenius is that Bob's started the church back in 1953. Remember, the church was actually founded in the 70s.
Katie Dooley 23:56 I mean, I like that, a different origin story,
Preston Meyer 23:59 Right? It's totally fine to lie about your history. I mean, if you look at a lot of scholarly works, looking at Christianity, loads of people say that Jesus was a collective invention of his apostles, which is tricky and unpopular, but it's a position that a lot of people hold to. And so the number one founder of this group, there's there's a few names that are important to this group, but the fella named Drummond which is an assumed name, not his name from birth. Yeah, nobody's using the real names. Drummond was contacted by this "Bob" salesman, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs telepathically in 1972. And then a year later, Drummond reached out to a few more people. And over the course of a few years they actually collected. I want to say a couple of 100 people who are committed followers. We don't know how commited they were.
Katie Dooley 25:13 I was gonna ask how big this. I don't think it's very big.
Preston Meyer 25:16 It's not a huge group. But as far as I can tell, it's still around. Which is pretty impressive for this weird religion that popped up 50 years ago.
Katie Dooley 25:29 That's impressive. Yeah.
Preston Meyer 25:31 I mean, we've we've mentioned the Flying Spaghetti Monster a few times. I really doubt the Flying Spaghetti Monster is going anywhere. I think it's here to stay. At least for a while.
Katie Dooley 25:41 Physially going because he's flying... That was a bad joke.
Preston Meyer 25:49 A little bit, but I liked it. So one of the biggest, most important ideas of the Church of the SubGenius is that all conspiracies, all of them every single one is just a lesser conspiracy to the great conspiracy. And...
Katie Dooley 26:16 Party of me wants to comment on what the great conspiracy is, but that's not our place.
Preston Meyer 26:21 It's far too complicated for any one person to be able to nail down exactly what it is. Which sounds like a real problem.
Katie Dooley 26:30 II feel this make it cut out... But Bryant says that if you follow any conspiracy theory long and like far enough it all ends up in anti-semitism. It was all the Jews. That's the great conspiracy. It wasn't. Don't misquote me on that. But yeah, if you follow any chemtrails or lizardmen far enough it was the Jews! It wasn't. But that's what it is. That's the first thing I think of when you say the great conspiracy is anti-semitism.
Preston Meyer 26:43 It reminds me of Arrested Development. Some old guy wants to blame the dinosaurs as something that the Jews put there to confuse the Christians.
Katie Dooley 27:14 Great prank. I love that. Good!
Preston Meyer 27:19 It's actually kind of nifty. There was a pamphlet published by the Church of the SubGenius, in 1979, that criticized all popular concepts of God, but also all New Age spirituality, as part of this conspiracy thing to control people. And also, it's more especially New Age spirituality, of this idea of consumerism, that the two are inseparable. And they really wanted to basically jam up consumerism. I have to admit, I didn't look very hard. But I didn't find any testimonials for the Church of the SubGenius.
Katie Dooley 28:06 So we don't believe in it.
Preston Meyer 28:08 I mean, I don't. I think that there might be somebody that does.
Katie Dooley 28:17 Now, this next one, I feel like you're very excited for
Preston Meyer 28:21 I think it's pretty cool. I did all kinds of research on this.
Katie Dooley 28:26 Judaism, oh, Jedism!
Preston Meyer 28:30 It's only a couple of letters off, but they're important letter.
Katie Dooley 28:36 It's the whole Yahweh/Jehovah thing again.
Preston Meyer 28:40 I mean, there's a lot of books out there that draw parallels between the Christian or the Judeo-Christian faith, and Jediism and the force in general.
Katie Dooley 28:52 We had this conversation in our religion as pop culture episode, Jesus of the Silver Screen, I think it was episode four. It's been a minute, where we talk about how narratives are written. And the Bible and Star Wars follow the same narrative story or narrative structures. So yeah, of course, there are parallels
Preston Meyer 29:16 Well, the the monomyth, as described by several scholars, including Joseph Campbell, definitely looked at the big religions to construct what really is the layout of the monomyth and George Lucas deliberately sculpted his Star Wars story using Joseph Campbell's hero of 1000 faces. Yeah it's a story structure that's worked for 2000 plus years. Yeah. And so this religion that has popped up is basically just people saying
Katie Dooley 29:50 Something something.. dark side...
Preston Meyer 29:53 Don't join the dark side. Be a good person. Follow these handful of morals that we see associated with the Jedi. And that's it's pretty simple. Minimize your time dwelling on negative emotions. Don't become a Sith Lord.
Katie Dooley 30:13 Don't kill your wife with your negative emotions.
Preston Meyer 30:18 Rright? My wife and I just watched Revenge of the SItht like... no it wasn't Thursday, it must have been a Wednesday or Tuesday. It was this week.
Katie Dooley 30:32 I haven't seen that in years now I kind of want to watch it.
Preston Meyer 30:35 I mean, it's not that good. But we're doing a run through
Katie Dooley 30:38 It's better than Attack of the Clones
Preston Meyer 30:40 Yes.
Katie Dooley 30:41 So Jedism is incredibly popular.
Preston Meyer 30:45 Yes. I mean, Star Wars fans all around the world are huge in number.
Katie Dooley 30:50 There's difference between being a Star Wars fan and being a Jedi.
Preston Meyer 30:55 It's absolutely true. And so in 2001, we saw the scope of this issue. There was a worldwide phenomenon. Loads of countries had their census in 2001.
Katie Dooley 31:07 All this was right after Episode One came out. 2001 I was like wondering why the numbers were...
Preston Meyer 31:14 People were very excited about the newest Star Wars movie looking forward to the next one, hoping Jar Jar Binks had a smaller role in the next one. Luckily, he did. And in 2001, huge numbers of people reported on this census that they belong to the Jedi Order, or that they were Jedi, or that they were Jedi Knights variations using the word Jedi, is the important detail here. In 2001, Australia reported more than 70,000 Jedi on their census. Canada reported more about 21,000. New Zealand reported 53,000 Jedi in 2001. Scotland reported more than 14,000 Jedi, and England and Wales together reported more than 390,000 Jedi. It's the fourth largest religion in that census.
Katie Dooley 32:15 That's wild!
Preston Meyer 32:19 There are more Jedi in England and Wales at this time, according to the census than there were Sikhs, more than there were Buddhists. There are more Jedis than Jews in England and Wales at this time.
Katie Dooley 32:34 There's a lot of Jedis in the world.
Preston Meyer 32:37 And so the biggest numbers were recorded in England and Wales, which is pretty cool. What's really interesting to me is that there were more than 2000 people in Scotland said that Jedism is the religion they were raised with. Additionally, Scotland also reported 14 People in the census saying that they were Siths.
Katie Dooley 33:07 Not to be confused with Sikhs. How many people just like check the wrong box? There's no Sith box on the Census I hope!
Preston Meyer 33:17 They weren't checkboxes they were just write in your religion. And that's, like 600,000 people, as many Dudist priests, as there are today. There were that many people telling the world and their various national census reports that they were Jedis 20 years ago.
Katie Dooley 33:42 Well, and this is where we get back to that spectrum we were talking about of how many of these people believe truly and I imagine somewhere in that 2000 people they probably due if you're raised with it, and then I'm sure there's a huge portion that are just like, "Oh, it would be funny to put Jedi on the census"
Preston Meyer 34:03 I mean, there's definitely a bunch of people who just thought it'd be funny. Yeah, almost every one of these people, though, not all of them, but probably almost all of them probably identify as agnostic or atheist, realistically, but I bet you an awful lot of them genuinely believe in ghosts, or the possibility of ghosts, maybe that might be more correct to say.
Katie Dooley 34:26 Even just like the universal energy. Arguably, that's the force.
Preston Meyer 34:33 And this idea that you just shouldn't be a good person and not give in to negative emotions. I mean, that's a pretty easy thing to say, yeah, I believe that. That's good. So it's an interesting religion to look at.
Katie Dooley 34:48 I love the story you put about the founder of The Church of Jedism.
Preston Meyer 34:55 Oh, yes. Yes, in 2005. There was the temple of the Jedi Order that was registered in Texas. They were granted IRS tax exemption 10 years later, just 2015. And in 2006, just the year after the temple was set up in Texas, two Jedi delivered a protest letter to UN officials in recognition of International day of Tolerance. In their letter, they decided that it should be called the Interstellar Day of Tolerance, and cited the 2001 census showing 390,000 Jedi in England and Wales as a good reason to expand this title.
Katie Dooley 35:42 It didn't get changed did it?
Preston Meyer 35:44 Oh, of course not. But they tried real hard.
Katie Dooley 35:47 Fight for what you believe in and arguably they're true Jedi, as in they truly... Yeah if you're going to take that time out of your day to write a letter to the UN.
Preston Meyer 35:59 Right? The next year 2007 is a story that I love and I shared with your husband earlier. I just I crack up every time I think about it. Daniel Jones founded the church of Jedism with his brother, Barney just gone crazy as I try and read. They believe that the 2001 UK census recognized Jedism as a religion, and that there was more Jedi than Scientologists in Britain.
Katie Dooley 36:35 He's not wrong.
Preston Meyer 36:36 Right? That's pretty solid. In 2009, just couple years later, the fan band Jedi is are very welcome to shop in our stores. Although we would ask them to remove their hoods. Obi Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker, all appeared hoodless, without ever going over to the dark side. And we are only aware of the emperor as the one who never removed his hood.
Katie Dooley 37:05 Calling out the founders evil.
Preston Meyer 37:08 He's definitely pointing out some issues that may be Jones might have some more allegiance to the Sith and the Jedi. Even though we definitely see the Sith without their hoods to that he makes a strong argument as far as the movies go. And I think it's great.
Katie Dooley 37:31 Another movie religion. You should pair this episode with our Jesus of the Silver Screen episode just saying, if you haven't listened to that one. Listen to it after because it's that good one. And it relates to this lot is Matrixism. That's really hard to say Matrixism.
Preston Meyer 37:53 Yeah, the mouth doesn't like forming those sounds that close together.
Katie Dooley 37:57 Which is based off of..
Both Hosts 37:59 The matrix
Katie Dooley 38:00 Which is another... Neo is a Christ figure. So just like Luke Skywalker, so we're not... it's not a far stretch to see how this can be made into a religion. It was created in 2004, which I presume is when a bunch of the Matrix movies came out
Preston Meyer 38:23 Close. The first one came out in '99. And then two sequels came out almost back to back in 2003.
Katie Dooley 38:31 Okay, they were good movies. I remember those better than the most recent Star Wars.
Preston Meyer 38:36 Fair enough. The sequels were decent. My complaint is probably the same as most other people's that they really dumbed down the philosophical elements for the sequels.
Katie Dooley 38:49 It has the four tenants of Matrixism.
Preston Meyer 38:53 Are you saying tenant or tenet?
Katie Dooley 38:55 Tenants, tennant tenets, tenants? Tenants
Preston Meyer 38:59 Tenet, there's only one n in a principle.
Katie Dooley 39:02 Not David Tennant
Preston Meyer 39:03 Right, a tenant is somebody who lives and rents.
Katie Dooley 39:06 Or if your David Tennant the best doctor of the entire show. He's hands down my favorite. Anyway. That's different episode. The four tenets of Matrixism. Number one, they believe in a messianic prophecy, Neo is a Christ figure. Check. Number two, the use of psychedelic drugs is sacrament.
Preston Meyer 39:33 See, this makes a lot of people get a little uncomfortable. But is it that weird? I think it's actually pretty common for a lot of the really old primal religions.
Katie Dooley 39:43 I was going to say using drugs in religions not uncommon. Or is even... I'm sure there's instances in Christianity where it's been done.
Preston Meyer 39:54 Oh, probably. Rastafarianism is like relies heavily on cannabis. Which is pretty light compared to the harder psychedelics, but it's a perception altering...
Katie Dooley 40:10 Which honestly, in the context of the Matrix makes sense. I can see how that maybe won't make Matrixism for everyone, but I can see... I understand why it works in their belief system. Number three, a perception of reality as multi-layered and semi-subjective.
Preston Meyer 40:33 It's complicated and tricky. We've talked a lot about some of these ideas in our belief episode that what is subjective is a hard thing to argue against somebody who sees them differently.
Katie Dooley 40:52 Yeah, so basically, everything is subjective.
Preston Meyer 40:55 Pretty much. Reality is perception. It's a problem.
Katie Dooley 41:03 Absolutely. So I don't even think this is that weird, because we should probably just look at life in general as multi-layered and semi-subjective.
Preston Meyer 41:11 Yeah.
Katie Dooley 41:14 All religions should stick that one in actually.
Preston Meyer 41:17 That might help.
Katie Dooley 41:19 And then number four is the adherence to the principles of at least one of the world's major religions. That's interesting.
Preston Meyer 41:30 Yep. To be a true Matrixist... you have to believe in the principles of a religion.
Katie Dooley 41:45 I don't I don't know how to feel about that.
Preston Meyer 41:48 I'm curious how they outline what counts as acceptable principles.
Katie Dooley 41:52 Or religion.
Preston Meyer 41:53 Yeah, your question is as good as mine is.
Katie Dooley 41:57 Part of me is like well I don't like that because I don't want to adhere to anything but then I you know, I can... Can I pick and choose? There's like a handful, like, the dude abides!
Preston Meyer 42:07 Yeah, if you don't want to adhere to anything. Do you even want to adhere to Matrixism
Katie Dooley 42:11 I guess so guess? If I liked the first three then...
Preston Meyer 42:18 You like the the real movies but not the Animatrix.
Katie Dooley 42:24 This one hurts my head. I guess that's not surprising.
Preston Meyer 42:30 So there is a holy day for Matrixism, April 19, known as Bicycle Day. Which just That's a weird name for the day, considering that it marks the anniversary of Albert Hoffman's 1943 experiment with LSD. So the symbol, lots of these religions have symbols. And the Matrixist symbol is kind of obvious on the surface, but also has some baggage to it, I guess. It's the Japanese symbol, the kanji for red, which is reference to the red pill that one takes to be extracted from the Matrix. You get woke when you get red. And there's of course, the internet phenomenon of the red pill, which has some serious baggage on its own.
Katie Dooley 43:36 Yeah, different connotations now than when Matrixism started. So yeah, we'll just gloss over that. So with those three covered, four? So those pop culture we'll cover, we're going to go to the ones that are based off of Russell's Teapot, and we'll start with Russell's Teapot. So if you haven't heard the theory, we'll start there. So Russell's Teapot is this idea that there is a teapot orbiting the planets between Earth and Mars or the Moon and Mars.
Preston Meyer 44:20 Close it's not orbiting a planet. It's just chilling out between Earth and Mars.
Katie Dooley 44:25 I thought it was moving.
Preston Meyer 44:28 I'm sure it moves both Earth and Mars move.
Katie Dooley 44:30 And this is the start of the commentary on religion and burden of proof. It's used a lot in I mean, I guess arguments for atheism and agnosticism is that you can't disprove that there isn't a teapot between Earth and Mars.
Preston Meyer 44:52 Right. And I don't have to prove that there is.
Katie Dooley 44:56 Right? So this is where when we talk about burden of proof for falls on the note I found says it falls on the believer, not in this case of the atheist to prove that there's a teapot, right? You can't just say, well byou can't disprove that there's no teapot, right? You have to prove that there's a teapot.
Preston Meyer 45:15 That's the exact way that our legal system works out. If you want to accuse somebody of something, it's not up to them to prove that they didn't do it. It's up to you to prove they did. And so that same principle applies here that it's not up to the atheists and agnostics to find any evidence that there's no God. It's up to everybody who believes that He exists to prove it if they want to have this argument,
Katie Dooley 45:38 Or whatever you believe. So yeah, let's start. So that's the Russell's teapot theory. The most famous example I think, is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Pastafarianism. You're a Pastafarian if you prescribe to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. So the Flying Spaghetti Monster started as a, I guess, like a counterpoint to intelligent design, or creationism being taught in school.
Preston Meyer 46:13 Yeah, shut up in 2005, in an open letter addressed to the Kansas State Board of Education, after they decided to permit teaching intelligent design in science class, which, if you know anything about science, you know that intelligent design doesn't fit in there.
Katie Dooley 46:32 And so the argument that was made is that if you can teach creationism, then you can teach Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.
Preston Meyer 46:45 They should be given equal position, since they have equal scientific evidence.
Katie Dooley 46:49 Scientific backing. And one thing I've read, we don't have it in our notes, but that I've read in the past about Flying Spaghetti Monster as well, is that, from the commentary standpoint, is that you can use the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a filter for your beliefs. So if a Flying Spaghetti Monster told you to do it, does it make sense? Or is it still okay? Right. So if a Flying Spaghetti Monster tells you love your neighbor, okay, yeah, I can get behind that. That's not a terrible thing. It's the Flying Spaghetti Monster says you have to stay in your house when you're on the rag and saucy like me. You're like, that's kind of weird. I'm the only one that can have red sauce. I assume that's what he'd say he'd be jealous of your menstruation then it's a little like that's kind of weird Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Preston Meyer 47:54 That's great.
Katie Dooley 47:55 So that's and Pastafarians are also well known for religious garb, that... the big thing is that they wear colanders on their heads, in situations where you know, where people are, you know, arguing that they want to wear their religious garb. And just, you know, again, pointing it out. So you can get your driver's license with a colander on your head if you cite religious reasons for itl.
Preston Meyer 47:58 And it works in some places and not others. There are a loads of places where they have approved for your legal ID in various forms, whether it's your your gun license, your driver's license, whatever. There are loads of places that have said yes, it's okay for you to have your colander on your head because it's a religious garment. And basically as many others saying, no, that's nonsense.
Katie Dooley 48:58 Just like Dudism and Jedism, you can be ordained. You can perform weddings as a Pastafarian. I think you're a Pastafarian minister.
Preston Meyer 49:11 Yeah, it's actually one of the...
Katie Dooley 49:13 But as clergy of the Pastafarians you can perform weddings.
Preston Meyer 49:18 It's one of most the one of the loudest complaints against Pastafarianism is actually that the ordination mill, and there's a huge fight going on about who gets to say that this religion is a legitimate religion and this religion is just an ordination mill. Who gets to decide what criteria are valid criteria to do is to decide who gets to perform a marriage?
Katie Dooley 49:48 Well, and then we get into this, which this will be a whole different episode, but the idea of what the sanctity of marriage is and you know, this whole idea of like, it matters who performed your wedding. I get it. So where we are in Canada, it's quite strict because people make their livings marrying people. And that's why they're pretty strict about who's allowed to marry so that the people who do it for a living can make a living. And so that I get but other than that, it's like,
Preston Meyer 50:23 The province employs a dozen people, basically part time to do this. As far as job creation. It's not a strong action.
Katie Dooley 50:33 No, it's not. But
Preston Meyer 50:37 It's a move of authority. That's it. Just look at me swing around my dick. That's basically what the government's doing.
Katie Dooley 50:47 Yeah, so this is like, this is just, I think, the most popular example of commentary on religion. I'm into it. I like seeing the Flying Spaghetti Monsters on the backs of cars.
Preston Meyer 50:59 Right? There are holidays for Pastafarians too
Katie Dooley 51:04 I love these. I want to be a Pastafarian.
Preston Meyer 51:05 The best two, in my opinion, is Pastover and Ramandan.
Katie Dooley 51:14 I want to celebrate Ramandan,
Preston Meyer 51:17 Pastover, kind of obvious, eat pasta. Ramandan gets a little bit more specific. You gotta eat ramen, Gotta have those instant noodles.
Katie Dooley 51:32 Now I really want ramen... we have pho broth in our house too that I don't know what to do with. Hmm.
Preston Meyer 51:39 So the biggest highlight for Pastafarians that is pretty easy to get behind, I think, is the absolute rejection of dogma and formalism. That even the, the writings and the more well-published things that we know about Pastafarianism. They're all just suggestions anyway.
Katie Dooley 52:05 Well, and I think that comes back to it's basically an atheist religion.
Preston Meyer 52:08 Basically, it's deliberately a parody.
Katie Dooley 52:11 I understand that's an oxymoron. But yeah, it is meant to question religion. I love this one, too. The is that the Church of... It is the Invisible Pink Unicorn. So good. It's an internet meme, basically. Basically. And it's one of those things you can't prove it doesn't exist. It is both pink and invisible. At the same time, the quote from who I assume is the creator,
Preston Meyer 52:48 Not the creator, Sara.
Katie Dooley 52:50 Sara Eley she says Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. I believe that we know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith, we have faith that they are pink, we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.
Preston Meyer 53:14 It's pretty solid.
Katie Dooley 53:15 I mean, let's look at that. Let's take that lens and look at literally every religion we've talked about.
Preston Meyer 53:23 Right? And the adherence of the invisible pink unicorn had been around for decades. The Invisible Pink Unicorn first showed up in Usenet forums.
Katie Dooley 53:34 It's an internet meme. It's the first internet meme.
Preston Meyer 53:37 Yeah, this is so far back. This was 1990.
Katie Dooley 53:41 There was like three people on the internet in 1990.
Preston Meyer 53:44 I mean, at the time, the Internet was pretty much just for nerds. And the really creepy creepy people. The dangerous people and people running really big businesses who wanted to get on early enough to get their domain name before we got expensive.
Katie Dooley 54:03 That's really smart, actually.
Preston Meyer 54:04 Yeah. But those are nerds too.
Katie Dooley 54:08 www.holywatermelon.com. We bought it so don't try. I know someone's like furiously Googling, as I said that. No, we've bought it, we just don't have a website yet.
Preston Meyer 54:19 We're working on it. And yeah, it's paradoxical by being obvious that you can't prove that this unicorn does or doesn't exist, because and it's paradoxical in that, yeah, it's invisible and pink. It's loads of fun. It's a cool thought experiment. And there's a community built up around this paradox.
Katie Dooley 54:42 Well, I mean, this is basically Russell's teapot just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. Or insert anything. I just think that's a cute one. And the last one parody... Yeah, this is This one's interesting. We've talked about it before, on on the Jesus of the Silver Screen episode, Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, which is the John Oliver religion that he creates. I would actually call this more of a satire.
Preston Meyer 55:16 Oh, absolutely. The whole thing was an exercise in satire
Katie Dooley 55:19 As opposed to a parody on Christianity,
Preston Meyer 55:24 Especially those dirtbags that want to preach on TV and steal your money and collect your seed money for the prosperity
Katie Dooley 55:34 Yeah, we're gonna do a whole episode on prosperity gospel and seed faith. Yeah, so his is absolutely a commentary on. Sorry, I just read the quote. So it's called seed faith, which this idea is that you will plant a monetary seed and then God will reward you with your money. So John Oliver does this whole sketch I highly recommend about 40 minutes long, but because it's called seed faith. At the very end of the episode, he says, when someone sends you jizz through the mail, it's time to stop whatever you're doing. So someone literally sent him jizz.
Preston Meyer 56:13 He you got so many gifts and donations. So this church existed for about a month from August to September of 2015. And, yeah, it was just satire nonsense.
Katie Dooley 56:27 Oh, sorry. I'm just gonna, it was also a commentary on. So obviously, it was a satire of Christianity and seed faith, but also a commentary on what is a religion, and then how the IRS deals with religious institutions and how convoluted that all is. Sorry.
Preston Meyer 56:44 Yeah, it was it was a complicated, multifaceted, wonderful piece of satire that lasted a month. And he got all kinds of donations. He got giant penis statues, he got bags of seeds in reference to seed faith. He got jars of semen in reference to seed faith. He also raised $70,000, for Doctors Without Borders. Because, yeah, because because of his church status, he raised $70,000. He gave it all to Doctors Without Borders, which is awesome, I think. But yeah, that quote is a an excellent way to finish your one month long religious excursion.
Katie Dooley 57:28 And it's a good rule to live by. Whenever you receive jizz in the mail, stop doing whatever you're doing, reevaluate your life.
Preston Meyer 57:37 I love it. John Oliver, very clever guy,
Katie Dooley 57:42 To wrap up this episode, I want to revisit those questions. So we've talked about parody religions that are based in mostly pop culture, and we've talked about parody religions that are based in atheism. So...
Preston Meyer 58:00 Are they real religions?
Katie Dooley 58:01 Are they real religions?
Preston Meyer 58:05 Yeah, I think that it's, it's a lot easier to say yes than no.
Katie Dooley 58:11 Yeah and I think honestly, I think this goes back more to our belief episode, and you can't you can't tell someone what they believe it. You also can't can't even police it right? We can only do what we're doing now and having conversations around it. And I mean, I'll always go back to my point, as long as you're not hurting anyone who the fuck cares.
Preston Meyer 58:33 Right? And the question of belief, how important is that to religion? It doesn't matter if people really believe that somebody out there can wield the force for anybody to say that they belong to the Church of the Jedi.
Katie Dooley 58:52 I guess it depends on why you've gotten into religion. Yeah, which is a topic we actually haven't addressed. But yeah, if you're getting into it for community then it doesn't matter if you believe as long as you like the people you're with. If you're hoping to find a higher power, maybe these aren't the right ones for you.
Preston Meyer 59:10 Feel free to shop around.
Katie Dooley 59:12 Yeah, and some of them might be maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the higher power. I don't know. I mean, I guess it depends on what you're looking for maybe the forces is the higher power. i=If you're looking for answers to where we go when we die. I don't actually think any of these address that particularly well, but
Preston Meyer 59:30 Not really as far as I'm aware.
Katie Dooley 59:32 But I also think that's a really poor reason to get into religion if it just because you're scared to die. But yeah, so these ones probably aren't for you if that's that's your current concern. I hope it's not your current concern. Yeah, so that would be my answer of how important belief is and of course, there's I'm sure there's diehard Pink Unicorns out there. If you're a diehard member of the Church of the invisible pink unicorn can you please email us at holywatermelonpod@gmail.com? Because I would really like to speak with you.
Preston Meyer 1:00:11 Feel free to look us up on Facebook or Instagram
Katie Dooley 1:00:14 I love how we're getting on this and our Discord is also up on on those social media sites if you need our Discord link to join our server. We are having a ton of great conversations. And you can always request episodes like our good friend Tim did so thank you again Tim for this fantastic episode. I hope you enjoyed it.
Preston Meyer 1:00:35 And thank all of you for listening.
Both Hosts 1:00:39 Peace be with you. | |||
| 03 Jun 2024 | Cover Your Shame | 00:43:15 | |
Religious clothing is as varied as any other kind of fashion, but there are a few common themes that we will highlight: Chastity is encouraged in modesty, and it's weird that covering your hair is more important that loose-fitting tops; weirder still when covering your hair with more hair has religious pressure on the cultural misstep. Fancy hats are everywhere, in a wide variety of styles remind us to think of our gods, and tell others that we're focused on what's important to our grandparents. Temples and priesthoods are also associated with specific clothing, including Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Catholic, and Latter-day Saint (Brighamite Mormon) traditions. All this and more.... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 29 Jul 2024 | An August Assembly - an Interview with Dr. Sean Hannan | 01:10:41 | |
Dr. Sean Hannan did his post-graduate studies at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty of MacEwan University in Edmonton Alberta. His studies revolve around St. Augustine of Hippo, and the medieval mystics like Meister Eckhart von Hochheim. Augustine of Hippo was a profoundly significant character in the development of early Christian theology. It is said that (since Augustine was African), Catholicism is African. Augustine's ideas of salvation, and the nature of time are of particular interest. Augustine occupied himself with some of the deepest and most important theological questions, all informed from a well travelled series of religious investigations and conversions. What is the cause of evil? Can a traitorous priest perform a valid sacrament? Does God exist within time and space? Is the veneration of martyrs and saints valid practice within Christianity? Sean also teaches us about the women of mediaval mysticism, and the (maybe derivative) work of Meister Eckhart in that field. Since Dr. Hannan teaches classes on Humanism, we had to connect all this to his use of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, too. All this and more.... You can WATCH this interview on YouTube. Find the rest of the interview on Patreon. --- You can find Dr. Sean Hannan on Twitter (aka X), Humanities Commons, and Academia. --- Support the Holy Watermelon on Patreon, or get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Stay updated and learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||
| 16 Dec 2024 | Nativity Narratives - an Interview with Mina Angotti | 01:02:49 | |
Mina Angotti has a Master's degree in theology, focusing her studies on Mary, the Mother of Christ. Mina is a longtime friend of the show, and a devout Catholic. She's here to tell us about the details of the Nativity deduced from history, combined with a fundamentalist understanding of the Biblical source material. Learn about the shepherds and the magicians, the census and the cave, the faith and the fumbles. All this and more... Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop. Join the Community on Discord. Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. | |||