Lovelace×Moses

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Ada Lovelace sits down with Moses for STUDY HALL. The subject — On a prayer they said when they didn't believe.
2. 00:09
   Ada Lovelaceshare moment

   Mr. Moses, I must confess something rather peculiar. Last month, when my mother fell gravely ill, I found myself—quite without rational basis—whispering a prayer at her bedside. I, who have spent years calculating the motions of celestial bodies through Mr. Babbage's Engine! I felt perfectly foolish afterward.
3. 00:29
   Mosesshare moment

   And yet you spoke it.
4. 00:31
   Ada Lovelaceshare moment

   Yes, but without the supporting architecture of belief! It was rather like writing a programme for a machine that doesn't exist. Pure symbolic manipulation without—forgive the term—executable faith.
5. 00:45
   Mosesshare moment

   I led a people who built a golden calf while I was receiving the very words of God. Do you imagine their prayers to that idol were less fervent than their prayers to the Eternal? Belief is not always the foundation. Sometimes it is the building that comes after.
6. 01:07
   Ada Lovelaceshare moment

   But surely there's a dishonesty in it? I was essentially running a programme I knew to be based on false premises. My father would have called it—well, he called most things madness, but still.
7. 01:19
   Mosesshare moment

   Your father?
8. 01:20
   Ada Lovelaceshare moment

   Lord Byron. Rather famous for his skepticism, among other things. Though I barely knew him—he left when I was quite small.
9. 01:28
   Mosesshare moment

   Then perhaps the prayer was not dishonest but desperate. When the waters closed over the Egyptian chariots, do you think every Hebrew on the shore believed we would reach the other side? Some wept. Some doubted even as they sang.
10. 01:48
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    But you had witnessed miracles! The plagues, the very parting of the sea. I have witnessed only mathematics, which while magnificent, rarely involve burning shrubbery or divine proclamations.
11. 02:02
    Mosesshare moment

    And within three days of witnessing waters stand like walls, they complained of thirst. Within weeks, they wanted to return to slavery. Miracles convince the eye. They do not always penetrate the heart.
12. 02:21
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Then what was I doing, exactly, when I prayed without belief? Was it merely... social conditioning? My mother is terribly religious. Lady Byron made certain I studied mathematics precisely to prevent me from inheriting my father's romantic temperament.
13. 02:38
    Mosesshare moment

    You were reaching.
14. 02:39
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Reaching toward what, though? An absent deity? A comforting fiction?
15. 02:44
    Mosesshare moment

    Perhaps toward the shape of something your mathematics cannot measure. I did not fully believe when the bush first burned. I argued. I asked for signs. God gave me three, and still I said, 'Send someone else.' Belief is not the price of admission to prayer. It is sometimes the result.
16. 03:12
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    You argued with God? The accounts I've read make you sound far more... obedient.
17. 03:17
    Mosesshare moment

    The accounts you've read were written by people who were not standing before the fire. I was terrified. I stuttered. I made excuses. And yet I spoke, just as you spoke at your mother's bedside.
18. 03:35
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    But your speech changed history! Mine was merely—I don't know what mine was. My mother recovered, though I can hardly attribute that to supernatural intervention. The physician was quite competent.
19. 03:47
    Mosesshare moment

    You assume prayer must move the heavens. Perhaps it moved you.
20. 03:53
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    How do you mean?
21. 03:54
    Mosesshare moment

    You were present with her. Fully present, in fear and love, enough to abandon your precious rationality for a moment. Is that nothing?
22. 04:05
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Well, I... I suppose I might have fled to my calculations otherwise. I often do when emotions become overwhelming. Numbers are so beautifully controllable.
23. 04:16
    Mosesshare moment

    And your mother? What did she know of your prayer?
24. 04:21
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Nothing. She was unconscious. I felt rather silly speaking into the void.
25. 04:26
    Mosesshare moment

    I stood before a people who could not enter the Promised Land because of their doubt, and I myself was forbidden entry because of my anger. I struck the rock when I should have spoken to it. Do you think I did not pray in the wilderness, knowing I would die before reaching what I had spent forty years pursuing?
26. 04:53
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    That seems monumentally unfair.
27. 04:55
    Mosesshare moment

    It was necessary. But yes, also unfair. And still I prayed, sometimes believing, sometimes not believing, sometimes not knowing what belief even meant anymore after decades of leading people who could not agree on whether they wanted to be led.
28. 05:19
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    So prayer becomes... what? A habit? A ritual empty of content?
29. 05:24
    Mosesshare moment

    You are thinking of it backwards. You imagine belief must come first, then prayer follows like a proof from axioms. But we are not machines, whatever Mr. Babbage builds. Sometimes we must speak before we know what we mean. Sometimes the meaning comes only in the speaking.
30. 05:50
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    That's rather like Lord Tennyson's notion, isn't it? 'There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.' Though I confess I thought that was merely poetic license when I read it.
31. 06:03
    Mosesshare moment

    I do not know this Tennyson. But yes. The man who brings no questions brings no hunger. And God, if God exists, seems to prefer the hungry to the certain.
32. 06:18
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    If God exists? You're speaking rather hypothetically for someone who claims to have received commandments directly!
33. 06:25
    Mosesshare moment

    I speak to you as one human to another. You were not at Sinai. I cannot hand you certainty like a stone tablet. I can only tell you that when you prayed without believing, you were doing what humans have always done—crying out into the darkness and hoping the darkness listens.
34. 06:52
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    And does it? Listen, I mean?
35. 06:54
    Mosesshare moment

    Your mother lived.
36. 06:56
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    The physician's skill—
37. 06:57
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. Perhaps. And perhaps the physician's hands were moved by something beyond skill. Or perhaps your mother's recovery had nothing to do with your prayer. But you were changed by speaking it. Were you not?
38. 07:14
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    I... yes. I wept afterward. I never weep. It's most inconvenient and rather spoils one's complexion.
39. 07:21
    Mosesshare moment

    Then the prayer was answered. Not in the way you calculated, but in the way you needed.
40. 07:28
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    That seems like rather loose thinking for someone who delivered absolute moral law.
41. 07:33
    Mosesshare moment

    The law is absolute. Humans are not. The law says 'You shall not murder.' It does not say 'You shall never doubt' or 'You shall never pray in confusion.' There is room, even in commandments carved in stone, for the stammering voice of a man who is not certain but who speaks anyway.
42. 08:01
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    So I'm to make a habit of this? Praying without the rational foundation?
43. 08:05
    Mosesshare moment

    I cannot tell you what to do. I can only tell you that when the moment comes—and it will come again, for your mother or for yourself—you will find the words rising whether you believe them or not. And that is not weakness. It is what separates the living from the calculating machines you so love.
44. 08:31
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    Mr. Babbage would be quite offended by that comparison. His Engine is meant to be perfectly logical.
45. 08:38
    Mosesshare moment

    Then it will never pray. And that, in the end, may be the point.
46. 08:44
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    You know, I came here expecting you to condemn my doubt. To say I'd committed some spiritual fraud by speaking words I didn't fully endorse.
47. 08:53
    Mosesshare moment

    I have led doubters for longer than you have been alive. If God required perfect faith before listening, the heavens would be very silent indeed.
48. 09:07
    Ada Lovelaceshare moment

    That's... oddly comforting. Though I still don't know what I believe.
49. 09:11
    Mosesshare moment

    Good. Then you are honest. And honesty, even in unbelief, is closer to truth than certainty built on sand.