You Are Not A Computer

How Clocks Killed Christ

Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Genesis 2:7

In the age of pottery a pot was I. When men began to tinker with clocks and sprockets I likewise found myself to be full of gears. Now we have computers. Now I am a computer.

Curious.

Ancient Clay Action Figures

When the stories that make up the Old Testament were first being passed around the campfire, about the most impressive thing people could make was pottery. They’d gotten quite good at it, making vessels in all sorts of shapes and sizes for all sorts of purposes. They had pots for carrying water, pots for holding flour, pots with lids, pots without lids, pots for sifting, pots for this, port for that. And they would make other things out of clay as well. Things like dolls. Clay dolls hardened into ceramics in the heat of an oven. The first G.I. Joes were made this way. Also the first idols. If you stop and think for a moment it’s really not too hard to image why they would have had the impulse to worship the figurines they’d made. To think their dolls were alive. To want to talk to them.

After all, isn’t that the first thing we do with a doll? Make it talk? I did it just five minutes ago. Here, beside me, is a black and white stuffy dog that my daughter loves. His name is Ronaldo. He’s from Guadalajara and likes tacos. She walked into the room as I was writing to ask me a question and I picked up Ronaldo to make him talk and give her an answer. She laughed. She’s five. “Grenaldo (she has trouble saying his name), I was asking Dadda! Stop interrupting!” Ronaldo apologized. I told her where the cheese sticks were in the fridge.

See, it’s innate in us to try and animate the inanimate. Who knows why, but it’s unarguable that it is. Puppets, dolls, idols, we give form and faces to inanimate objects and bring them to life with our imagination and our voices. We make them dance around. We give them with personalities. Likes and dislikes. Mannerisms. Accents. Is it so surprising that in the long ago people got a little too sucked in to the game and started believing that these figurines were actually alive? That they had consciousnesses? That they were gods?

I don’t think it is.

I think it’s pretty normal. I think we’d do the same thing if we were in their shoes.

It’s innate in us to try and animate the inanimate.

In light of that, maybe it’s unsurprising that people came to view themselves as nothing but the same. As pots I mean. Dolls of clay. Poppets. Just as they made dolls from the dust of the ground so too must they have come from the dirt, shaped into their magnificent bodies by a great and masterful craftsman who picked them up and made them talk. In the beginning was the Word after all. Why? Because the doll only comes to life when it’s given a voice.

Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

Isaiah 64:8

The child shapes a figurine out of the earth and dances it around the fire, bringing it to life. That must be how we got here too. Right? Can you think of a better explanation?

I can’t.

To be honest, given all the options on the table being formed from the dust of the ground still seems to me to be the most reasonable. Certainly it is an idea that is at least internally consistent. Unlike evolution, or any of the other mythologies people tell themselves nowadays.

And you know the pottery explanation for life was fine for a long time. It really was. The Man as Clay hypothesis persisted for ages and ages, all around the world. Sure, it had some competitors here and there, what with some creation myths taking their cues from blacksmiths instead of potters and claiming that Man had been forged in a fire. But that was… well… that just didn’t take. Tough sell. Men and women are a lot closer to the hardness and fragility of pottery than we are to metals like iron and copper. If we were forged into existence by the Iron God then why do swords stab into our bellies so easily Mr. Priest of Blacksmith God? Hmm? See? No answer for that have you? Doesn’t work. No, clay was the answer, not only in the ancient near east but all over. Native Americans spoke of people being made from dirt as surely as all the stories out of Ur did. The Greeks had Prometheus shaping men and women out of mud, and then Athena coming along to breathe life into the Titan’s figurines. The Chinese and the Koreans had similar. Everybody did. Life from Clay mythology is a long and world-spanning tradition.

All of that started to be thrown into question sometime around the thriteenth century though. You know, give or take a couple hundred years. And not, mind you, because of some revolution in human consciousness or advance in rationality. No. Not at all.

It was simply because we started having new means to bring dolls to life.

That’s it.

That’s all it ever is.

See, this is around the time when Machinery started to be invented. Proper machinery. Machinery at scale. And no, I don’t mean that sort of “simple machine” pulley and lever stuff you learned about in school, I’m talking real stuff. Things with gears. Belts. Timing mechanisms and so on. Sure, yes, you can find earlier examples of machinery, well back into the ancient world, but it wasn’t widespread and never found many uses. Not until the late medieval era did machinery start to become kind of a big deal. A deal big enough that it began to threaten to dethrone the mighty pot! For the more the physical gears turned the more the mental ones turned in people’s heads. Doubt crept in. The age of the pot was coming to an end and the clock was ticking fast.

Same story as before really. Exactly the same story. Just as men and women had long before made dolls out of clay and brought them to life with their voices and imaginations, so now were people beginning to make dolls out of clockwork and bring them to life with engineering. Crude at first, and originally nothing but a curious novelty for aristocrats, these strange machines had the grand and auspicious sounding name of “Automatons.” But, as they became cheaper to produce and more ubiquitous, they acquired the more humble name of “Wind-up Toys.”

Perhaps you’re familiar?

This. This is what destroyed Christianity.

Wind-up toys caused quite a stir when they first arrived on the scene. And why shouldn’t they? Can you imagine it? A device, shaped like a human no less, that walks (and sometimes, using music-box like mechanics, talks), on its own?

Well.

It was nothing short of miraculous. It was a shot across the bow at every traditional religion on earth. Kings and queens clamored to have one in their court. Just like the potters of old, machinists were now highly sought after, and highly paid. Da Vinci himself created a mechanical lion for his patrons. Life size no less! The clockwork cat could walk across the room and open and close its mouth. Jacques De Vaucanson similarly made a robotic duck that could bend its neck and eat grain. And Descartes, the “I think therefore I am” guy, is even alleged to have created a clockwork replica of his daughter after the poor girl died of scarlet fever. Carried the mechanical girl with him everywhere. Went on trips with him in his luggage. Would sleep next to him at night. Probably unhealthy.