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So basically one of the things that I've asked you to do is the environmental
scan and one of the things we do in this course, RS 100, is we learn to see
religion in everything. And so this is just one of my exercises for how do you
see religion in common, everyday life you'll remember that was behind the
environmental scan. Which reminds, me many of you need to get going on the
bulleting boards that are there, bulletin boards are very important, they drive
this class. Stay on the bulletin boards and you'll understand exactly where you
need to be. At any rate, so let me just talk about religion and culture or
religion and pop culture. I am going to look at some science fiction, fantasy
and in terms of the big picture of human destiny. Now I've already, I may have
shown you this slide in a past presentation, but this is to me is indicative of
many of the things that are always happening with religion. You've got ancient
traditions coming together with modern innovation. That's what's known as
Synchrotism. Notice the sunglasses on these ancient Indian tribal dancers and so
the sunglasses are a new addition but that's part of what Synchrotism is, the
flowing together of two different streams into a new expression sometimes very
ancient, sometimes very modern stuff. Here's this is an example of the tenacity
of religious myths. Even though we no longer biologically accept that there was
a literal Adam and Eve, it still plays a big part in our culture. Myths as
stories, and in this case this is a typical advertising shoot where it has a
very seductive Eve, who is aware and a Adam who is a little bit dumb and in the
shadows. Here's another one, once again notice the sensuous, sort of adumbrated
Adam and the wide awake Eve. It becomes an interesting cultural metaphor in our
society I think to see how much that Adam and Eve story plays out. Just another
Eve looking for her Adam. Locating religion, I went over this before, but I
think it's an important thing to remind you of. That I locate religion in human,
mental activity and so therefore people's ultimate concern, or the way they make
meaning out of the fact of existence, you are all existent beings, how do you
make sense out of it. It is that sense making apparatus, I think, that accounts
for religion. Religion often times are very sophisticated and task masters that
making sense out of reality which is a big part of their appeal. So I've talked
about the Symbolizations of the Sacred that is in the Methods and Madness
exercise; by the way if you noticed I opened up the quiz which is due Monday at
noon. So get to work on those flash cards, and getting that test, I think I
enabled it for twice, then I am going to take an average of the two scores. So
anyway, Myth, Ritual, Symbols are the characteristic symbolizations of the
sacred. And I'm going to look at some of those things today. I think I went over
this fairly extensively last time. But that I did the reciprocity and the
spirituality, in religion and culture some people don't want to refer to
themselves as religious so they refer to themselves as spiritual. I think those
are all contained in this aspect that we call culture and it's interesting to
look at spiritualities that are hidden within culture and they seem very much
aspects of culture and at any rate let me move on to the next slide. I think
this is an important category to think about the relationship of the world, the
self, and God or a spirituality and you can see this creates a spectrum that can
go either way. You can start over here at this side, the Metaphysic side. And
you can collapse it into anthropology which is basically what modern
intellectual has done. We don't really focus on God so much in our intellectual
discourse, we are more focused on humans the anthropological reality. Some
people have collapsed it all the way down into cosmology and that becomes the
very reductionistic approach where you have it then become very materialistic
and mechanistic and you explain the world from that standpoint. That's what
Skinner and Dawkins the behavioral psychologist and the current evangelical
atheist Dawkins basically they want to explain everything in terms of particles
in motion. Whereas you can go the other direction and you can become an
idealist, and idealist is thinking that this world, the cosmos, is just a dim
shadow of the true reality we are caught in the shadows and the true reality is
metaphysical or the mind of god. Therefore it is spiritual, and the two great
exponents of that are Plato and Shankara. Plato from the western tradition and
Shankara from our tradition. So that's just a reminder of what's in the Methods
and Madness stuff. I want to focus on science fiction really quickly. My
favorite science fiction film of all time I think is 2001 a Space Odyssey not
that I don't enjoy the whole Star Wars thing and any other science fiction films
but it is the quintessential paradigm of how to do a science fiction movie in
terms of realism. Before Stanley Kubrick made 2001 in 1968 basically you could I
mean there were all kinds of science fiction films of course but they were not
characterized by their high production values. What Stanley Kubrick did is he
made it so real not only is it the paradigm of how you should make movies it has
become the model for star wars and every great movie made since in fact they
consciously acknowledge it as the model which the were trying to parody. But let
me go on to look at this basically what 2001 does, it tells the whole story of
the human race. It starts with this episode know as the dawn of man, these poor
vulnerable apes that are basically subject to the visitudes of nature. Tigers,
Saber tooth tigers attack them and eat them. They get beaten up by the bigger,
badder apes one day at the waterhole they go down to share the waterhole and the
other apes won't even share and they tell them to get there ugly faces out of
there and if they come back they'll give them a good *** whipping and so they're
pretty vulnerable until one day this monolith just shows up. It was obviously
placed there. It's not a product of nature. It's humming. It causes their minds
to expand its an incredible scene that displays. You can see their minds
expanding which basically is one of the great anthropological mysteries of why
humans have this expanded brain capacity in the neocortex, the two frontal lobes
that develop that mean you can raise chimpanzees and babies and for the first
couple months they seem like on the same page somebody had their hand raised up
is there a question. At any rate this monolith causes their minds to expand,
increases their brain size and suddenly they look around the world and they
start adapting nature they become the tool makers par-excellence the thing that
makes be tool makers par-excellence is that they not only make tools use them
other animals do, but they make tools to make other tools and its in this
expanded capacity they discover they can turn this femur bone into a bat and now
they have a weapon which makes them into hunter gathers there are all kinds of
scenes them getting animals and eating meat which also feeds the vast protein
needs of the expanding brain and so they go back to the waterhole and they go
yeah where's that *** whooping you promised us and so there they are they're
back and so then the primal alpha male of the other tribe attacks and he just
hits him with the club and there we start in this pattern of development that
leads to the hominization process, we become human there?s a primal *** and
it becomes very it creates a great impression upon civilization for the
development of mankind, at any rate the story goes on that they find a monolith
on the moon, and it's sending out a message to Jupiter and their on their way to
Jupiter notice right here though this is kind of interesting this is the
artificial intelligence computer, the HAL 9000 series, so basically HAL has
artificial intelligence he?s able to carry on conversation he runs the ship he?s
very proud of it he seems to have a built in personality that makes him proud of
all his duties at a certain point he discerns that a transmitter device is going
to fail so they go out to pull the transmitter device off the space ship and
they bring it inside and they find out that Hal?s wrong, it's not going to fail
and he says well there can only be one answer, human error. So this is a matter
of concern for them so they go into this little pod, this space pod so that HAL
can't hear them because he's all over the ship right, he runs the ship. And they
say what if HAL is wrong? Oh boy we'd be in trouble wouldn't we? Well what could
we do? Well, we'd have to disconnect his brain, his higher functions. And, yeah
that right Renell [talking to a student], I'm sorry I cant let you do that Dave.
So at any rate they thing they don't realize is that although HAL can't hear
them, there's HAL's eye and HAL reads lips so uh, he suggests that they replace
the device that he said was going to fail and they go out there in space and so
Frank the co-captain he goes out there and the HAL attacks him with this pod
because he has control over everything basically and he cuts off his oxygen
supply so HAL kills Frank and so when Dave tries to, sees what happens he goes
"hey HAL what happened". I don't know, or I can't answer that Dave. So he runs
and jumps into a pod and he goes out to try and rescue him , you know, Semper
Fi, and so yeah interestingly enough when he gets out there Hal wont let him
back in and he says "open the pod bay doors HAL" and that?s where when HAL says
"I can't do that Dave". Why the Hell not Hal?" "Because you're planning to
disconnect me and I can't let that happen." And so then basically here?s the
conflict between man and machine and its a great metaphor for systemic evil the
type of evil that happens when you have systems in place that themselves are not
evil but they can become evil and be used to evil means and so HAL is the system
that's preventing them from completing the mission largely because he thinks the
mission is too important for humans to deal with it they'll screw it up because