The Holy Ghost (and Bears!)

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Dan Beecher (0:31)

Here's the thing, if nothing else, bears can't kill 42 boys.

You're going to have a couple get away. You're going to have a couple get away.

Dan McClellan (0:42)

Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (0:49)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (0:50)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:02)

Oh man, life is good. We're, the end of the show, we're tackling one of the ones, one of the things that I have been asked, we have been asked to tackle since the beginning.

It is, it's not much of a tackle. It is just one of the weirdest stories in the book.

Dan McClellan (1:25)

Two little verses, yeah.

Dan Beecher (1:27)

And boy, does it just throw you for a loop when you first encounter it, and then every subsequent time thereafter.

So we're going to get to that. That'll be a fun chapter and verse. But first, it's a big dog. We're going, we're going heavy. We're hitting heavy.

Dan McClellan (1:46)

Okay.

Dan Beecher (1:47)

And diving into what is that?

Dan McClellan (1:55)

But we're talking about the Holy Spirit.

Dan Beecher (1:58)

The Holy Spigot.

Dan McClellan (1:59)

The Spirit of God. Yes.

Dan Beecher (2:00)

The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Dan McClellan (2:04)

And not to be confused with the Holy Hand Grenade.

But the Spiritu Santo is there, I don't know how many places are named as Spiritu Santo. Now that I think about it, I've been to like multiple places named that, including a place in Vanuatu in Melanesia.

But yeah.

Yeah, the Holy Spirit. Let's talk a little bit about it. I'm gonna actually suggest that to understand what's going on with the way the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit is working in the Bible, we need to understand a little bit about how people conceptualize of a human spirit. Okay. Because it's modeled after the human spirit. And this is actually something that I discuss at some length in my book, Adonized Divine Images, which is an open access volume that is freely available online. But one of the-

Dan Beecher (2:58)

You're foolishly giving it away. Just foolishly.

Dan McClellan (3:01)

Yes, I've gone over many times about how the only compensation that I have from that book is actually the book that I'm holding in my hand right now. The contract said remuneration, 10 hard copies of your book. I gave nine of them away. This is all that remains. So when I spoke at a university in Kansas a couple weeks ago, and they were like, we'll get a bunch of your books here to sell, make you a little money. And I was like, not making me any money.

I don't see any of that.

Dan Beecher (3:34)

Do it if you want to. It's got nothing to do with me.

Dan McClellan (3:38)

Yeah, so people are like, oh, they sold out of your book. And I was like, you can get it for free online.

Dan Beecher (3:43)

You should pull a Taylor Swift and rewrite exactly the same book, and then you'll own it.

Dan McClellan (3:49)

Well, I actually, I had a bunch of people request audio versions, and I went to the publisher, and I was like, I will record myself reading it for free, as long as I can distribute it for free. And I have not heard back from them yet.

Dan Beecher (4:04)

Okay, that's great. Anyway, so once upon a time, there was this spirit thing.

Dan McClellan (4:11)

Yeah, so to understand this in a way that I think will be most helpful, I'm gonna go all the way back to infancy, because one of the cool things about human infants is that we develop quite quickly a concept of the self.

And it is based on some evolutionarily installed hardware.

One of these things is the mirror neuron system, where we see other people moving and doing things, and we just have this kind of intuitive sense that they're like us. And so we actually learn how to move from watching other people move. And we map their movements onto our body, and then we map our movements onto their body. And we begin to perceive that we have thoughts and goals and intentions. So we're like, I want the ball or the cookie, and I can reach my hand out to grab it. And we see other people reaching out, and we're like, oh, they want the thing that they're grabbing for. And we begin to project the perception of goal-oriented action onto other people. And this mirror neuron system is this just awesome thing that is in our brains that helps us to learn how to do things.