Engines of Our Worship

I have recently been converted to a radio show that everyone, it seems, has known about for years and simply never told me. It is John H. Lienhard's Engines of Our Ingenuity, which can be heard online daily here. Its main focus is the way technology has advanced over the centuries, though it will delve into other areas of history and culture as well.

One particular episode is worth mentioning here, since we often get into topics of religion and such. That episode is "Ritual Origins".

Let me summarize: We have always assumed (or at least the Modern Enlightened People have always assumed) that the symbols of faith have been derived from objects of practical use. For example, the Christian cross is a symbol of our faith, but we got that symbol from the very real crucifixion of Christ.

Likewise, we assume that the Egyptian use of balancing scales in their mythology comes from the practical use of scales. In this case, we believe that Egyptians went to market, saw their goods measured out using scales, and then mused on the concept of balance. "Balance is good in the market," they may have told themselves, "but it is also good in life. Perhaps the gods have their own scales against which to measure my life." Thus the mythology begins and expands.

Not so, says Lienhard. No, the spiritual meaning of the scale comes before the practical application. The scale was part of the mythology before it became a part of the marketplace. People saw its use in a religious setting, and then decided that it could be used in a physical setting.

It's a mistake to look at these transactions as weighing and measuring. The concept of balance reaches far beyond that. The scale originated as an expression of that concept. It was created in the laboratory of ritual observance. It found no role as an instrument of commerce and science until much later in human history.

And we are not simply speaking of scales here, but many other devices and ideas:

There's no end to examples like this. The great structures of the ancient world weren't built to satisfy functional ends. No one ever lived in the colossal Egyptian burial constructions. They were born of ritual, and so too were the great Gothic cathedrals of the 13th century.

Lienhard's conclusion is that:

Technology and metaphor thus travel a two-way street. We begin to understand that when we realize that invention flows from something much more abstract than a wish to fulfill practical needs. The people who've actually created the great material artifacts of our world have been propelled by far deeper forces. They've been driven by the need to express a primal understanding that quite outreaches objective explanation.

I must admit that I was surprised at reading this particular episode. I am, of course, a believer in the Divine, and even nod my head when Plato speaks of Perfect Forms for everything. Our world is a fallen imitation, I would argue, drifting away from the perfect, not getting closer to it. While we understand what a perfect circle may be, we have never seen it, and nor will we in this world. That understanding of the circle, I believe, is part of the divine. Part of the Forms.

But still, I am amongst a tradition that seeks to make ordinary things wonderful as a way of explaining what I cannot explain in full. A circle is a very ordinary thing, and something seen every day! Therefore I use it to explain something abstract — the Forms. Even Christ would use examples from every day life and infuse them with meaning.

Thus I assumed that this was the way of things. Our minds use what we have to reach farther. But this is, apparently, not always the case. In the examples Leinhard gives, people are creating as a spiritual expression, not adapting the mundane to illustrate.

In other words, things are working exactly as Plato imagined. We begin with the Divine and corrupt it. We begin exploring the spiritual side of balance, and then turn what we learn to commerce.

It's really what I believed all along. Having felt love, I knew that it was not simply a sublimation of lust as the Enlightened would say, but that lust is a corruption of love. Some may say I am having a "chicken and egg" argument here, but there is something critically important to the way you perceive the world. Are we a falling away from God's perfect design, or a rising up from animals? Is religion a falling away from Perfect Truth, or a rising up from social engineering?

Is what matters in us the Soul or the Dirt? Which was more critical in our development?

Once I read this text, I was surprised, but then I realized that it made perfect sense. All that is good in my life has come from above, not below.

-Paul Lytle,
Primum Mobile Magazine

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