Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And Hey, Robert, I've got a question for you. Hit me.
Speaker 1: Any time in your life have you ever had the
Speaker 1: feeling the things are about to come to a very
Speaker 1: serious conclusion? And I don't mean like the meeting you're
Speaker 1: in right now, I mean the world. Did you ever
Speaker 1: get that feeling like you're living in the end times?
Speaker 1: This has got to be the last of days? No um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I feel I sometimes I wonder what if the
Speaker 1: next moment is going to be the last moment? Like,
Speaker 1: but it's always there's always going to be some sort
Speaker 1: of harbinger of destruction, right, So I don't I look
Speaker 1: up into the sky and think, Hey, what would it
Speaker 1: be like to see the you know, civilization busting near earth,
Speaker 1: object entering the atmosphere. I think about things like that,
Speaker 1: but even then I'll have like a few more minutes
Speaker 1: to process it. It all does have to come to
Speaker 1: an end at some point, so it makes you wonder
Speaker 1: if that end is near, And in fact, I think
Speaker 1: some people have made statistical arguments that if you assume, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a random observer, not a privileged observer. Uh. The
Speaker 1: the statistical argument is that humanity has got to be
Speaker 1: ending pretty soon because if human if the human population
Speaker 1: continues to grow, that many, many more randomly selected observers
Speaker 1: will be among those born in the future than those
Speaker 1: that are living you know, right now or have lived
Speaker 1: in the past. And so if we you assume that
Speaker 1: you are the middle of the road random observer and
Speaker 1: not one of the tail end, then humanity has got
Speaker 1: to end pretty soon. I don't really because I always
Speaker 1: would think, well, if I'm not a privileged observer, why
Speaker 1: do I get to live in the end times? Like,
Speaker 1: surely I'm at least living in like the penultimate age
Speaker 1: and on the ultimate age of man. Well, that instinct
Speaker 1: of yours is I would say, fairly unique, because it
Speaker 1: is very common for people to think that they are
Speaker 1: living in a very privileged time. Have you noticed that? Yeah, well, no,
Speaker 1: I think I'm living in a privileged time. I mean
Speaker 1: compared with before. I don't mean materially privileged. I think
Speaker 1: that's true too. I think we are some of the
Speaker 1: luckiest people and the golden age of television, Joe, have
Speaker 1: you seen these shows? Yeah, I'm assuming you're referring to
Speaker 1: the fact that we can still get quantumly rerunning every
Speaker 1: now and then. But but yeah, we're materially privileged. But
Speaker 1: but I also mean privileged in terms of I happen
Speaker 1: to be the person who's of the generation that's alive
Speaker 1: when it all comes to the end. So today's episode
Speaker 1: is going to be about the field of eschatology, which
Speaker 1: is both theological and ostensibly secular, but it's the stuff
Speaker 1: of the end of times. What what happens when there
Speaker 1: is a conclusion to it all the either the end
Speaker 1: of the human species or a very significant transition of
Speaker 1: the human species into another kind of being, or a
Speaker 1: very significant transition of the human species into a very
Speaker 1: different kind of situation or station, either ushering in a
Speaker 1: utopia that brings happiness and prosperity for all, or you know,
Speaker 1: an apocalyptic vision. And we can get into what these
Speaker 1: words mean in a minute, but that brings destruction and
Speaker 1: calamity and uh, you know road warrior kind of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so much of it hinges on this
Speaker 1: feeling that we're talking about, where it just it seems
Speaker 1: like something's gotta give, something's gotta break, something's gotta change,
Speaker 1: for better or worse. It it always takes me back
Speaker 1: to to the Yates poem. Right, surely the second coming
Speaker 1: is at hand. Surely something is about to get the
Speaker 1: falcon cannot hear the falcon? Or man, something's going wrong? Yeah,
Speaker 1: pasionate enthusiasm among the worst? Right, passion passionate intensity intensity? Yes,
Speaker 1: that's even better. Yeah, what's the exact line. The the
Speaker 1: best lack all conviction, and the worst are filled with
Speaker 1: passionate intensity. I very often find that's true. You know,
Speaker 1: some of the some of the best people I know
Speaker 1: with the best opinions don't speak up that often. But man,
Speaker 1: people who have bad opinions are allowed as heck, well,
Speaker 1: they don't have to worry as much about saying the
Speaker 1: wrong thing, do that. No, Well, I mean it helps
Speaker 1: when you're never wrong. So let's let's let's get into
Speaker 1: it here. Um. First of all, let's just talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about basic human utopianism. You know, I want
Speaker 1: to share a fact with you, Robert. I always assumed
Speaker 1: that the you in the word utopia comes from the
Speaker 1: Greek prefix meaning good, as in uh, you know euphoria,
Speaker 1: the good feeling, but that is not actually where it
Speaker 1: comes from too. So the title Utopia, of course, can
Speaker 1: be traced back to Thomas Moore's book Utopia and this
Speaker 1: sort of fictional but also philosophical treatise on what a
Speaker 1: perfect society might look like. You could look at it
Speaker 1: as a sort of update to Plato's Republic in a way,
Speaker 1: or a laying out of the groundwork of you know,
Speaker 1: how could we achieve a perfect world? And so if
Speaker 1: utopia and that since had meant it had been the
Speaker 1: way I understood it, it would have meant good place.
Speaker 1: You know, utopia a good place. But the U is
Speaker 1: not actually eu as in good place, but it's you
Speaker 1: as in no place, because it didn't exist, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: well that makes sense. Yeah, so I think that's something
Speaker 1: that we should keep in mind. Going all the more reason,
Speaker 1: I guess that Microsoft word is always telling me that
Speaker 1: dystopia is not a word. Oh really, yeah, or at
Speaker 1: least I get that. I get that correction all the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, dystopia has come to have a meaning
Speaker 1: for us as the opposite of utopia, as as a
Speaker 1: dissident vision of the future. Right, But well, before we
Speaker 1: get to dystopia, walk me through utopia, all right. So,
Speaker 1: and really, in defining utopia, we essentially define dystopia human experiences.
Speaker 1: Of course, you can think of it as the spark
Speaker 1: on the line right between the expanse of the past
Speaker 1: and the expanse of the future. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like like a cartoon fuse to a bomb, right,
Speaker 1: and we're just sparking along. And humans have thrived in
Speaker 1: large part by their ability to perceive and mold that future.
Speaker 1: All right. We developed new ways of doing this, doing
Speaker 1: the things we always did, hunting, farm and crafting, as
Speaker 1: well as the ways we think about the world, cosmology, society, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And so we think of human existence. If we think
Speaker 1: of human existence, has this spark upon the fuse of time,
Speaker 1: we judge the soon to ignite, and the igniting based
Speaker 1: on the charred and flaming remnants of what proceeded is
Speaker 1: and we we we come to look beyond and imagine
Speaker 1: near and far futures on this very line. And so
Speaker 1: humans across cultures and times have sought to radically trams
Speaker 1: formed their existence socially, bodily, technologically, etcetera. All as ares
Speaker 1: a ways to try and and better ourselves and better
Speaker 1: the way that we live on this world. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's true. And of course, if you look at
Speaker 1: the basic human project of civilization as one that tends
Speaker 1: towards creating a better life for all of us, it's
Speaker 1: easy to look at that and conclude, well, than a
Speaker 1: successful execution of this project would end in utopia. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like the it's it's the notion
Speaker 1: that if a city is essentially engineering engineering exercise, there
Speaker 1: should be some idealized version of the city that we're
Speaker 1: aspiring to. I mean, eventually we can get there. In
Speaker 1: this case, you know, the city is not just a
Speaker 1: literal city, but the city is the model for the
Speaker 1: you know, all things civilization. Now, I would argue, I
Speaker 1: think that one reason we sense attention here, Like you
Speaker 1: might say, well, I don't expect us to ever reach utopia,
Speaker 1: but I do advocate civilization continuing to try to improve
Speaker 1: the lives of everyone for as long as possible. Uh.
Speaker 1: Doesn't that seem a contradiction. I would say that the
Speaker 1: main contradiction lies in the incoherence of the idea of perfection.
Speaker 1: You can't create a perfect society, because that idea doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. They are inherent tensions in society. People want
Speaker 1: different things, and so there there is no such thing
Speaker 1: as a perfect society for everyone. Yeah. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could make this more or less idealized building in which
Speaker 1: people are going to live and work. But then what
Speaker 1: are you gonna set the thermostat to right? Because some
Speaker 1: people are gonna be too hot, some people are gonna
Speaker 1: be too cold some people what people want to wear
Speaker 1: a hoodie in the office. Some people want to sit
Speaker 1: there and sweat. Now, one way you could get out
Speaker 1: of this bind is by saying, you know, this project
Speaker 1: of continually trying to improve human civilization is going to
Speaker 1: be cut short, and it is going to be cut
Speaker 1: short by supernatural forces. So you're talking about a an
Speaker 1: apocalypse of spiritual apocalypse, Yes, and I think it is
Speaker 1: very worth mentioning something about the etymology here. The word apocalypse. Now,
Speaker 1: the word apocalypse originally did not mean mad max uh.
Speaker 1: It originally meant an unveiling or a revelation. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: the Book of Revelation in the Bible in the New
Speaker 1: Testament is sometimes known as the apocalypse of John. Means
Speaker 1: the same thing the Revelation to John John wrote down,
Speaker 1: so it's vision that he had all these cryptic things
Speaker 1: that are playing out at the end of time exactly.
Speaker 1: So a revelation it could reveal knowledge, visions, understanding, or
Speaker 1: very often predictions about the future. And I think because
Speaker 1: of associations with predictions about the future and the Book
Speaker 1: of Revelation itself, the word apocalypse is a word that
Speaker 1: has come to be associated with end to times events,
Speaker 1: either the end of the world, the end of humanity,
Speaker 1: or some radical change in station and the fortune of humankind.
Speaker 1: And we should go ahead and say when you use
Speaker 1: the word apocalypse, that changes usually for the worst. Right.
Speaker 1: People don't usually say apocalypse in a positive way, like
Speaker 1: there will be an apocalypse and will it will lead
Speaker 1: to utopia, which is interesting considering the fact that the
Speaker 1: the origin of the word stems from a story that
Speaker 1: is supposedly about the the victory of the eventual victory
Speaker 1: of all things good overall things evil. Right. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different Christian visions of the end times,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about them in this episode today, but
Speaker 1: they typically involve both very negative events and ultimately a
Speaker 1: perfectly positive event but so the popular version of apocalypse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we associate with kind of post apocalyptic movies. Again,
Speaker 1: The Road Warrior perfect example, great movie. Human civilization as
Speaker 1: we formerly know it has ended and everything has just
Speaker 1: gone to hell. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold right,
Speaker 1: and you need guzzline. So it's also worth stressing here
Speaker 1: that plenty of religions do not depend on such a
Speaker 1: linear time frame right. Instead have a sickle coal and
Speaker 1: certainly we see this in the older religions, the pre
Speaker 1: Christian religions. Plenty of religions are more concerned with cosmological
Speaker 1: origins underlying everyday reality and less of any notion on ending.
Speaker 1: So for in for example, for example, in Hinduism, the
Speaker 1: universe is continually created, preserve, destroyed, and created again. It's
Speaker 1: an endless cycle, and the process of creation moves and
Speaker 1: these large overarching cycles, and each cycle has four great
Speaker 1: um epochs of time. The concept of reincarnation works alongside this,
Speaker 1: as life flows into life, flows into life. I like
Speaker 1: this because it mirrors some different hypotheses about the ultimate
Speaker 1: nature of the universe. Now we don't know yet what
Speaker 1: the ultimate nature of the universe is, but there are
Speaker 1: some cosmological models in which, for example, our local universe
Speaker 1: maybe a bouncing universe where it it collapses into a
Speaker 1: singularity and then re explodes back into a universe with
Speaker 1: distributed matter and energy all over the place, or event
Speaker 1: like a bounty house where it's it's inflated in the
Speaker 1: morning and then nipuke in it all day described that
Speaker 1: with chlorox bleach and deflated the evening. Yes, it is
Speaker 1: kind of like that too, But there is another apocalyptic
Speaker 1: spiritual event that I wanted to call attention to just
Speaker 1: because it's so cool. I can't pretend to understand it
Speaker 1: all that well because it's Norse mythology, and Norse mythology,
Speaker 1: I feel like is is a more impenetrable to the
Speaker 1: outsider type of mythology than things like Greek mythology or
Speaker 1: do you find that too. There's I mean, I feel
Speaker 1: like I can get it a lot more when I
Speaker 1: listened to death Metal. Okay, I think that's that's how
Speaker 1: I tend to try and process it. Think of like
Speaker 1: extreme survivalist situations, uh, and the and the and the
Speaker 1: resulting pantheon of gods, the resulting time frame of events
Speaker 1: that would that would shape that and be shaped by that. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: in that popular sense of apocalyptic, Norse mythology has some
Speaker 1: great apocalyptic events that they've got Ragnarok and it's this
Speaker 1: epic escottological battle involving God's monsters, chaos. There's this disastrous
Speaker 1: cataclysmic winter, the mountains crumble, this giant sea serpent comes
Speaker 1: up and spits venom over all the earth and poisons
Speaker 1: the waters, and there's this huge slog down, bloody battle
Speaker 1: where most of the gods get killed. Uh, it's brutal,
Speaker 1: but hey, it would be an extreme bummer of a
Speaker 1: religion that just ends with a cataclysmic disaster for everyone
Speaker 1: and has nothing positive to come of it. So so
Speaker 1: many religions also sort of have spiritual utopias in their
Speaker 1: scatological framework, right, that the end times will result in
Speaker 1: some kind of very positive situation for many people at least,
Speaker 1: that's right now. Obviously we're gonna get to Christian models
Speaker 1: here in a minute, but before we get there, I
Speaker 1: want to just touch base on on some Buddhist ideas here.
Speaker 1: So there's a recurring theme in Hinduism and Buddhism that
Speaker 1: one may escape the endless psychle of death and rebirth
Speaker 1: the wheel of sam Sara and attain liberation. Um. And
Speaker 1: you can interpret such liberation as it's as its own
Speaker 1: form of ending or perfection even but it's also kind
Speaker 1: of a it's a form of escape or form of
Speaker 1: ending that can be acquired at any point along the line.
Speaker 1: So there's not you don't have to wait till the
Speaker 1: end times or some distant future to attain liberation to
Speaker 1: reach nirvana. So the inner journey as opposed to a
Speaker 1: physical world journey asynchronous timelines. That being said, Um, there
Speaker 1: is a pretty cool um idea out there, and that
Speaker 1: is the belief system within Buddhism. Uh. That's a millennial
Speaker 1: Buddhist in particular. Uh. They have this uh, this character
Speaker 1: known as my Trea, and my Trea is the Bodhisattva,
Speaker 1: the being, an enlightenment of the future who will arrive
Speaker 1: on Earth. Generally, I've seen some numbers thrown out there,
Speaker 1: but just it's gonna be a long time in the future.
Speaker 1: Try no, Robert, you have a number on our notes. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have a number, and this is a this one
Speaker 1: comes from a from my belief Japanese model. There's a
Speaker 1: sect of Buddhist monks. They're are devoted to my trio
Speaker 1: and I and I forgive me, I do not recall
Speaker 1: the Japanese name from my trio off the top of
Speaker 1: my head. But it is what five billion years in
Speaker 1: the future. My reading that those are a lot of zeros.
Speaker 1: Uh No, that would be five trilli, five trillion, six
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy billion years. So it's no way sixties seven, yeah,
Speaker 1: six hundred and seventy billion years. It's a colossal number.
Speaker 1: And it's from that this would be this is gonna
Speaker 1: be like a far future time when people live to
Speaker 1: incredible ages. I want to say eighty thousand years old,
Speaker 1: So huge numbers involved here, and my trio would be
Speaker 1: the ultimate successor to our current Buddha. Um Sharda got him,
Speaker 1: got him a Buddha and uh this Buddha will achieve
Speaker 1: complete enlightenment and teach pure dharma here on earth. And
Speaker 1: I just want to read a quick quote. This is
Speaker 1: from book of my Trea, The Future Buddha by Alan
Speaker 1: Spenberg says quote, the prospect of a future Buddha, yet
Speaker 1: another in the long line of Buddhas, offers an attractive possibility.
Speaker 1: Although liberation from suffering is possible for anyone at any time.
Speaker 1: According to Buddhist those being fortunate enough to live at
Speaker 1: a time when a Buddha is active in the world
Speaker 1: are far more likely to realize the arduous goal of
Speaker 1: bringing all craving to cessation. Though perhaps initially a minor
Speaker 1: figure in the early Buddhist tradition, my Trea thus comes
Speaker 1: to represent a hope for the future, a time when
Speaker 1: all human beings could once again enjoy the spiritual and
Speaker 1: physical environment most favorable to enlightenment and the release from
Speaker 1: worldly suffering. I think that's fascinating because the very positive
Speaker 1: situation here, that the utopia that's being brought about isn't
Speaker 1: one necessarily of material fulfillment, but one of the realization
Speaker 1: of the lack of necessity for material fulfillment. Very often,
Speaker 1: when you see like a heaven or just any kind
Speaker 1: of very positive, spiritually imagined future situation, people people speak
Speaker 1: of material comforts. Yeah. Yeah, And indeed this, uh, this
Speaker 1: particular idea, I guess would only entail material comforts and
Speaker 1: insofar as they enable you to seek in or enlightenment
Speaker 1: and realize that you don't need material coming rights. Okay,
Speaker 1: So a lot of what we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: in this episode is not just spiritual, religious supernatural frameworks
Speaker 1: for eschatology, but actually secular and very often scientific or
Speaker 1: technological frameworks for eschatology. And there are just like we
Speaker 1: talked about religious apocalypses and religious future utopias, there are
Speaker 1: secular apocalypses and secular future utopias. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: the fascinating thing here and and and something preving to
Speaker 1: keep in mind as we we play with this topic
Speaker 1: here today is that there's so much shared um circuitry
Speaker 1: involved both ideas. So you know, it's it's easy for
Speaker 1: for for an atheist to stand on one side and
Speaker 1: scoff at some of these spiritual ideas of utopia and
Speaker 1: salvation and destruction. But when you break it down, how
Speaker 1: different is the underlying experience of those ideas? How different
Speaker 1: is that from some of these secular ideas we're discussing. Now, Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. I think we should discuss them
Speaker 1: and explore. Well, as far as secular apocalypses go, we
Speaker 1: really only don't even have to to mention many of them.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're pretty obvious. The idea of nuclear annihilation
Speaker 1: of global cataclysm green Goo, greg Goo. Um, I don't
Speaker 1: even know if this one is a thing, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go and say it. Brown goo, who knows? Um singularity?
Speaker 1: Um I I love our Scott Baker's idea of a
Speaker 1: semantic apocalypse, which one is that semantic apocalypse is basically
Speaker 1: just the death of meaning. Where we reach this point
Speaker 1: from where we have a certain neuroscientific understanding of the
Speaker 1: human experience, and uh, we realize that all human consciousness
Speaker 1: is a coin trick, and we explain the coin trick.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a Nietzsche in despair. Well, all of
Speaker 1: those are possible things that people could predict happening, you know.
Speaker 1: So you've got green goo, gray goo. You know, people
Speaker 1: talking about nanotechnology or something that could take over the world.
Speaker 1: We don't even have that kind of nanotechnology yet and
Speaker 1: maybe we never could. Uh, it could just be something
Speaker 1: impossible that people are dreaming up. But on the other hand, ultimately,
Speaker 1: if we assume that our current understanding of physics is
Speaker 1: basically correct, and we think it probably is, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot we don't know, but what we do
Speaker 1: know we're pretty confident about, and that the laws of
Speaker 1: physics don't change with time. Our scientific picture of the
Speaker 1: universe does very firmly predict one type of scaton that
Speaker 1: is unsurvivable. Right, And I want to read a say,
Speaker 1: action from a book I've been reading. Actually, it's a
Speaker 1: book by the physicist Sean Carroll called The Big Picture,
Speaker 1: and he's talking about the physical cosmological model of what's
Speaker 1: going to happen to the universe after a while. So
Speaker 1: he talks about the accelerating expansion of the universe, and
Speaker 1: that's fueled by the pull of vacuum energy, you know,
Speaker 1: the energy out there that's causing the galaxies to expand
Speaker 1: farther and farther apart. Uh, And that all tells us
Speaker 1: more or less what's going to happen, he writes, quote,
Speaker 1: it's possible, and in some sense would be simplest for
Speaker 1: the accelerated expansion to simply continue without end. That leads
Speaker 1: to a somewhat lonely future for our universe. Right now,
Speaker 1: the night sky is alive with brightly shining stars and
Speaker 1: galaxies that can't last forever. Stars use up their fuel
Speaker 1: and will eventually fade to black. Astronomers estimate that the
Speaker 1: last dim star will wink out around one quadrillion or
Speaker 1: ten to the fifteen years from now. That's well, that's
Speaker 1: well after the age of my Trea. Yeah, good to know. Yeah, though,
Speaker 1: who knows how long my Treia lives. Throwing that out there,
Speaker 1: my Trea could could have something to say about these
Speaker 1: stars burning up all their fuel. But anyway, Carol continues.
Speaker 1: By then, other galaxies will have moved far away, and
Speaker 1: our local group of galaxies will be populated by planets,
Speaker 1: dead stars, and black holes. One by one, those planets
Speaker 1: and dead stars will fall into the black holes, which
Speaker 1: in turn will join into one supermassive black hole. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: as Stephen Hawking taught us, even those black holes will evaporate.
Speaker 1: After about one google or tend to the one hundred years,
Speaker 1: all of the black holes in our observable universe will
Speaker 1: have evaporated into a thin mist of particles, which will
Speaker 1: grow more and more dilute as space continues to expand.
Speaker 1: The end result of this are most likely scenario for
Speaker 1: the future of the universe is nothing but cold empty space,
Speaker 1: which will last literally forever. Well that's um, that's nice
Speaker 1: and dark, but literally and figuratively Yeah, but then again,
Speaker 1: it sounds like that mist of particles. That sounds kind
Speaker 1: of refreshing, yeah, I mean, but also it's you're dealing
Speaker 1: with such a long period of time here, it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's kind of like the idea of the humanless universal,
Speaker 1: lifeless universe. It's really more just return to normal normalcy
Speaker 1: in the universe, right, I mean, we were not around
Speaker 1: for ages and ages and ages for the vast majority
Speaker 1: of cosmological time. So what's it mattered that we're not
Speaker 1: going to survive in the long run either. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to offer an example of how you don't
Speaker 1: have to get far out into left field with crazy
Speaker 1: technological predictions in order to say that at some point
Speaker 1: there will be an end. There will be an endpoint
Speaker 1: to humanity. Uh that you know, it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: survive the energy evaporation death of the universe unless in
Speaker 1: a post in my tray a world we have figured
Speaker 1: out ways technologically to escape into alternate universes. So true,
Speaker 1: in those doors to alternate universes, maybe our salvation, but
Speaker 1: you might not have to walk through a door to
Speaker 1: reach a very different kind of world that might be
Speaker 1: much better than the one we have, because there are
Speaker 1: also secular visions of utopias right there, most certainly are
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be heaven. It can be we
Speaker 1: can make heaven here on earth, according to some people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, in a way, a lot of these remind
Speaker 1: me of the my Trea vision, the idea that you're
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna have a world where people are gonna
Speaker 1: be able to find peace. Um. So we have various
Speaker 1: models from this, I mean, some of the ones that
Speaker 1: are more scientifically based. We have various ideas about what
Speaker 1: a post scarcity society might be, transhumanist existence, um, the
Speaker 1: the the essential Star Trek model of life on Earth,
Speaker 1: right where everybody's gotten to the point where we get along.
Speaker 1: We have technology that we have holio decks, and we
Speaker 1: have machines that will just create whatever food we need
Speaker 1: on demand, new ages of human consciousness. Um than various
Speaker 1: positive spins on the technological singularity. Yeah. Now, if you
Speaker 1: don't know that much about the singularity, or even if
Speaker 1: you do, we're gonna be talking about that at more
Speaker 1: length later on, and how that fits into ideas of
Speaker 1: religious eschatology. And then of course there are so many
Speaker 1: different secular models of utopia that are that are that
Speaker 1: are based on how we can build a better society
Speaker 1: um various utopian cults, various utopian mindsets that have been
Speaker 1: thrown out, their new political models, ways of organizing ourselves,
Speaker 1: ways of building that better city that rely less on
Speaker 1: technology and more on simply the ordering of ourselves and
Speaker 1: the ordering of the inner self. Alright, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we come back, we will
Speaker 1: explore the Christian rapture. All right, we're back to wrap
Speaker 1: about the Christian Rapture. I wonder if there has been
Speaker 1: any Christian hip hop that has expressly concerned itself with
Speaker 1: the rapture. I would love to hear about it. Quite
Speaker 1: sure that has happened. Well, you know there's that Blondie song, right, rapture?
Speaker 1: Is that about the Rapture? No? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: But it's very weird, is that the one? I think
Speaker 1: that's the one about the man for Mars. He's eating
Speaker 1: cars and now he goes out and needs guitars. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure which which part of the back book of
Speaker 1: Revelation she's referring to there. The Book of Revelation is
Speaker 1: full of wonderfully strange imagry, and that would that would
Speaker 1: fit right in actually, But okay, so the Christian rapture,
Speaker 1: I wanna just put you in a scenario. You're on
Speaker 1: a plane. There may or may not be snakes on
Speaker 1: the plane, doesn't matter either way. Suddenly many people on
Speaker 1: the plane have disappeared, possibly including the pilot and co pilot,
Speaker 1: but thankfully for you this time, not the pilot and
Speaker 1: co pilot. Right, is this a Langaliers thing? No, but
Speaker 1: I am describing a scene from a popular novel, and
Speaker 1: we'll get to that in just a minute. So the
Speaker 1: people are gone where you would have normally found them. Uh,
Speaker 1: instead of people sitting in their seats eating bags of
Speaker 1: peanuts watching Terminator Genesis, Uh, you find little piles of clothes.
Speaker 1: And a friend of mine. This is a funny Ones
Speaker 1: actually told me that he watched a low budget Christian
Speaker 1: apocalypse movie in which there's this this scene happens, people
Speaker 1: disappear in their clothes are left behind. But he says
Speaker 1: that the clothes were not only empty, but neatly starched
Speaker 1: and folded, and in some shots you could see that
Speaker 1: they still had price tags attached to them. But anyway,
Speaker 1: people start screaming, wailing, where did their loved Ones go
Speaker 1: and at first it's a mystery, but then uh, it
Speaker 1: gradually becomes a parent that what the people who disappeared
Speaker 1: had in common was their firm belief in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: And this is this is a scene from Left Behind,
Speaker 1: a popular work of Christian schatological fantasy fiction by Tim
Speaker 1: Lahay and Jerry B. Jenkins. You've probably heard of this before, Robert,
Speaker 1: I assume you're pretty familiar with Left Behind. Yes, I
Speaker 1: am familiar with Left Behind, though though I have to
Speaker 1: say I don't think it really picked up steam in
Speaker 1: the church community. I was a part of as like
Speaker 1: as a as a kid and junior high in high
Speaker 1: school student. Until after I was kind of, um, you know,
Speaker 1: after I was less active in that community where we
Speaker 1: were more into uh, this present darkness by I think
Speaker 1: it's frank And that essentially was kind of the whole
Speaker 1: series of books that had to do a spiritual warfare.
Speaker 1: So it was more concerned with the idea that kind
Speaker 1: of a screw tape scenario was always playing out all
Speaker 1: around us. And then there are angels and demons like
Speaker 1: duking it out for your mind and your Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that was big. I think those came out in like
Speaker 1: eighty five. Initially, and Left Behind the first Left Behind
Speaker 1: book came out in nine, so I think it was out,
Speaker 1: but it was just really beginning to build steam. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: so this scenario I've described and Left Behind this is
Speaker 1: it is part of a work of Christian fantasy fiction.
Speaker 1: But the idea is not just something that the author's
Speaker 1: dreamed up. It's been a popular element of Christian eschatology
Speaker 1: for many years. So where does this idea of the
Speaker 1: rapture come from? That this is the rapture? People are
Speaker 1: are they disappear? They've been raptured up. So I would
Speaker 1: say it's a complex doctrine with varying theological interpretations, but
Speaker 1: the general rapture belief is usually linked most directly to
Speaker 1: a passage in First Thessalonians chapter four, where where the
Speaker 1: author of the letter, presumed to be Paul, rights for
Speaker 1: the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,
Speaker 1: with the voice of the archangel and with the trump
Speaker 1: of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.
Speaker 1: Then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught
Speaker 1: up together with them in the clouds to meet the
Speaker 1: Lord in the air. So shall we ever be with
Speaker 1: the Lord, wherefore comfort one another with these words. So
Speaker 1: technically the rapture is that actually people often use the
Speaker 1: rapture as a term to signify the Christian escaton that
Speaker 1: you know, the end of days, but it's actually just
Speaker 1: one event, uh, sort of a moment from this whole
Speaker 1: complex system of Christian eschatology. But the idea is that
Speaker 1: upon the moment of the earthly return of Christ, dead
Speaker 1: Christians will be resurrected and living Christians will be miraculously
Speaker 1: sucked up into the sky to meet the Lord, who
Speaker 1: is presumably descending from above at the same moment. But
Speaker 1: there are some elements of Christian eschatology that match very
Speaker 1: much what we were talking about earlier with the idea
Speaker 1: of of apocalypses and and utopias. So I mean, because
Speaker 1: that sounds like an apocalypse for for pretty much everybody,
Speaker 1: Like that's going to end the work day, no matter,
Speaker 1: no matter what. Yeah, it's always it's always played for
Speaker 1: horror in the Christian apocalypse movies, right, you know, people
Speaker 1: people start screaming, they don't know what's happened. It is, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess it is assumed to be a very positive
Speaker 1: event for the people who have been wrapp p sured,
Speaker 1: But for those left on earth it is not a
Speaker 1: very positive event. Now this is my own two sense,
Speaker 1: but I wonder, I wonder if that the rapture narrative
Speaker 1: as it's been popularized, uh in current society, if it
Speaker 1: speaks to a desire for a kind of public, passive,
Speaker 1: aggressive rectification of faith, you know, in an age of
Speaker 1: perceived marginalization of traditional ridgious beliefs. So you get, you
Speaker 1: get liberation from a weary world with just a hint
Speaker 1: of a middle finger to those that are left behind
Speaker 1: it didn't who didn't believe in what you believed and
Speaker 1: didn't have the same faith that you had. What you
Speaker 1: know is arguably a better moral stance than fantasies of health,
Speaker 1: fire and an eternal torment for those who don't agree
Speaker 1: with you. But still, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't try
Speaker 1: to psycho and I'm sure everybody's got different attitudes toward it,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure for some people there is an element
Speaker 1: of that that's kind of like I'm out of here,
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, I suck it. And today we're
Speaker 1: gonna be focusing on what would be called Christian futurists.
Speaker 1: These are people who think biblical prophecies are going to
Speaker 1: be fulfilled sometime in the future. There are also other
Speaker 1: types of people who interpret the Bible differently, their pretorics,
Speaker 1: who believe that these prophecies were fulfilled during the events
Speaker 1: described in the New Testament, or in the early years
Speaker 1: of the Church or sometime in the past. Uh. They're
Speaker 1: also those who believe it's all a bit metaphorical. Really,
Speaker 1: but there are very few broad concepts and distinctions in
Speaker 1: Christian futurists eschatological thinking that that we can relate to
Speaker 1: in this episode. So one is this big, the big event,
Speaker 1: the main show, the second coming of Christ. So Christians
Speaker 1: believe that that Jesus Christ was martyred, rose from the dead,
Speaker 1: ascended to heaven, and at some point after his ascension
Speaker 1: as described in the Bible, Christ will return to Earth
Speaker 1: or perhaps in some sense has already returned literal or metaphorical,
Speaker 1: but in any case, he comes back, and he's not
Speaker 1: here just to visit. There's some schatological purpose to his return,
Speaker 1: and there are different views on what that is, but
Speaker 1: usually it involved some sort of putting the hammer down,
Speaker 1: like there is an act of final judgment, Jesus is
Speaker 1: back in this time. It's personal. Yeah, But then there's
Speaker 1: this concept of the tribulation. So many Christians also believe
Speaker 1: that immediately before the second Coming of Christ, there will
Speaker 1: be a time of great suffering. You know, it's often
Speaker 1: described as war, persecution, hardship, hunger, pain, disease, destruction, and
Speaker 1: this very bad period, this road warrior period, as as
Speaker 1: you might want to associate it, is known as the tribulation.
Speaker 1: This is your apocalyptic aspect. And in the pop culture
Speaker 1: since the term it's it's about as close as Christianity
Speaker 1: gets to full road warrior. In a way, you can
Speaker 1: think of it as kind of like the fattening of
Speaker 1: the pig for for for slaughter. Right, If you think
Speaker 1: of of hardship and warfare and human suffering is kind
Speaker 1: of like the fertile soil from which you know, faith
Speaker 1: and especially like strong faith can emerge, then that's uh
Speaker 1: that that's kind of how sometimes interpret this vision. And
Speaker 1: I think that's actually a concept you see throughout the
Speaker 1: theological history of Christianity. There there's very much emphasis on
Speaker 1: hardship causing people to strengthen their their faith or their
Speaker 1: or their religious character. But so where does this idea
Speaker 1: of the tribulation comes from. It comes from the preaching
Speaker 1: of Jesus, essentially in the Book of Matthew, for example,
Speaker 1: and he's talking about right before the Son of Man returns.
Speaker 1: He says, for then shall be great tribulations such as
Speaker 1: was not since the beginning of the world to this time,
Speaker 1: no nor ever shall be and except those days should
Speaker 1: be shortened. There should no flesh be saved, but for
Speaker 1: the elect sake, those days shall be shortened. So something's
Speaker 1: gonna gonna cut off the tribulation. What's going to happen?
Speaker 1: What will it be shortened by? Well, perhaps it is
Speaker 1: the millennium. This is another concept from Christians chatology, and
Speaker 1: it's a period of utopian rule on earth where Christ
Speaker 1: himself or Christian goodness generally will rule for the earth
Speaker 1: for one thousand years. So sometimes this is interpreted as
Speaker 1: a long period of time represented metaphorically by the idea
Speaker 1: of a thousand years. Sometimes it's literally a thousand years.
Speaker 1: But this comes primarily from the Book of Revelation, chapter twenty,
Speaker 1: in which it said that those who have been martyred
Speaker 1: for not having taken the mark of the beast on
Speaker 1: their hands or their foreheads will be resurrected and rule
Speaker 1: with Christ for a thousand years now. There are tons
Speaker 1: of different ways that you can put all these concepts together.
Speaker 1: They're there are different ideas about in what order they come.
Speaker 1: Their pre millennialists who think that Christ's second coming will
Speaker 1: happen right before the millennium begins. There are post millennialists
Speaker 1: who think that Christ's second coming and final judgment will
Speaker 1: happen at the end of the millennium. And they're also
Speaker 1: among the pre millennialists. Some who think the rapture is
Speaker 1: going to happen before the tribulation, in the middle of
Speaker 1: the tribulation, or that the rapture won't literally happen at all.
Speaker 1: So so there's a great diversity of opinion. I don't
Speaker 1: want to represent them as all thinking the same thing.
Speaker 1: And of course I should also stress that there are
Speaker 1: plenty of Christians who don't really buy into any of
Speaker 1: this end times framework. You know, they're a millennialists that
Speaker 1: they're not they're not looking forward to any kind of
Speaker 1: apocalypse or utopia on Earth in any sense. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously it's going to vary from from sec
Speaker 1: to sect, from individual to individual. But it's I think
Speaker 1: it's definitely hard to argue that at the at the
Speaker 1: end of the date, is anything that occurs in like
Speaker 1: a book of revelation. Is anything concerning the end times
Speaker 1: really affect your day to date a much? You know? Yeah, um, well,
Speaker 1: I know it might. It might. And I want to
Speaker 1: make a case actually why some people would say that
Speaker 1: belief in the end time, whether religious or secular, does
Speaker 1: actually affect the way we live our lives. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess it depends on when you were you're throwing out
Speaker 1: that end time, when you're throwing out that cataclysmic event,
Speaker 1: when you're throwing out that utopia, if you think it's
Speaker 1: gonna occur near enough in the future that you can
Speaker 1: actively structure your life in accordance to it, I mean
Speaker 1: that's one thing. Well that that is a point that
Speaker 1: will be echoed by somebody I want to quote in
Speaker 1: a bit. Okay, okay, So, Robert, we we've talked about utopias, apocalypse,
Speaker 1: is the the end times? The schatological views of of
Speaker 1: what's coming down the road, how soon it's coming, and
Speaker 1: is it gonna be good or is it going to
Speaker 1: be bad? But these ideas are not, of course limited
Speaker 1: to religious believers, right right, Yeah, We've had plenty of
Speaker 1: concepts that have been thrown out there in terms in
Speaker 1: terms of uh, you know, secular utopia, even a scientific utopia.
Speaker 1: I mean you can, if you you can trace fictionalized
Speaker 1: versions of this journey all the way back to the
Speaker 1: epic of Gilgamesh, humanity's earliest surviving piece of literature, dating
Speaker 1: back to the second millennium BC, in which are our
Speaker 1: hero wants the secret of immortality and failing that, realizes
Speaker 1: that the greatest naim is to just build a city,
Speaker 1: just building an awesome city instead, and then that's even
Speaker 1: you know that that's also really hard work. Well there
Speaker 1: that project of civilization, right yeah, But but even in
Speaker 1: just the e a good Google mess, we see that
Speaker 1: quest for more life and a better system for living
Speaker 1: as a people. Now, um, I was reading a wonderful
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve article from James J. Hughes titled the
Speaker 1: Politics of trans human Humanism and the Techno Millennial Imagination
Speaker 1: sixty six through uh, and he traces trans humanism and
Speaker 1: trans humanist thought back to into the European Enlightenment in
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds. Now sorry to interrupt, but you and
Speaker 1: Christian did an episode about trans humanism recently, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we may have done a couple of them now
Speaker 1: that I think about it. Um, well, it's kind of
Speaker 1: been a summer of trans humanism, if you will. So
Speaker 1: we you know, talked that we did an episode that
Speaker 1: was devoted to just the general idea of trans humanism
Speaker 1: and some of the different sects of trans humanism that
Speaker 1: are present in the world. But can you give us
Speaker 1: a one sentence digest basically that through science and technology
Speaker 1: we can create a better expression of the human form
Speaker 1: and or human society, so we can we can live longer,
Speaker 1: we can live happier, we can And this is where
Speaker 1: that the definition varies because you have you have some
Speaker 1: people whose idea of trans humanism is far more individual based.
Speaker 1: So it's like, hey, some people are gonna live forever
Speaker 1: and have spaceships and that's great. Other people are gonna say, well,
Speaker 1: we're not really transhumanist unless everybody can live forever and
Speaker 1: everybody has access to spaceships, and you've solved some of
Speaker 1: these other problems. So it gets, it gets, it turns
Speaker 1: into a mire rather quickly, right, But it's the idea
Speaker 1: of transcending the human animal and well, so do you
Speaker 1: want to transcend into the species level or just modify
Speaker 1: your own body to transcend your birth nature. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the same idea that you see with your
Speaker 1: topian models in general, where people will say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is where we are now, this is where we would
Speaker 1: like to be, and then in addition to squabbles about
Speaker 1: where you want to go, there's the inevitable problem of
Speaker 1: how you get there. Okay, But back to James Hughes,
Speaker 1: what's his argument? Okay, So he says that a lot
Speaker 1: of transumutism dates back to the European Enlightenment of the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, which allowed the same millennialist dreams we've discussed
Speaker 1: in religious terms. Uh, these aspirations to grow, to grow
Speaker 1: who we are, but instead of doing it on you know,
Speaker 1: based on faith, based on the divine intervention or some
Speaker 1: other model. It's it all has to do with reason
Speaker 1: and science and technology. So machines will free us from
Speaker 1: our labor, medicine will rid us of disease, and peace
Speaker 1: will wash across the land. It's a basic enlightenment tenants
Speaker 1: there um and of course some help also acknowledge that
Speaker 1: we might have some of the Enlightenment thinkers said, okay,
Speaker 1: we might have to also fight a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: awful wars. Really there, Yeah, so we might have to
Speaker 1: go through a tribulation. Yeah, exactly to the millennium. And
Speaker 1: in generally the details of the ascension, the science of
Speaker 1: the rapture, if you will, is ever varied, argued, and
Speaker 1: and sometimes glossed over all altogether. Um. But Hughes says, quote,
Speaker 1: it was in this stew of often contradictory ideas about
Speaker 1: the nature of progress that modern techno millennialism was forged.
Speaker 1: And you have a number of individuals, early individuals who
Speaker 1: are getting involved in these ideas m Benjamin Franklin, William Godwin,
Speaker 1: or just two that argue that humans would eventually conquer oppression, inequality, disease,
Speaker 1: and death. Um. What about did Tero ditto is interesting?
Speaker 1: Um seventeen sixty nine. Uh. In his work, UH, the
Speaker 1: alan Bert's Dream proposed that human brains might be taken
Speaker 1: apart and then put back together, that intelligent animals and
Speaker 1: animal human hybrids might be possible. And this one's the
Speaker 1: big kicker. Sophisticated machines might have mine. Oh I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk about that in a minute, because there is plenty
Speaker 1: of artificial intelligence eschatology now, the post enlightenment quest for
Speaker 1: better life, for utopia even um, obviously we could spend
Speaker 1: multiple podcasts if we wanted to just talking about that,
Speaker 1: all the the individual expressions of this, uh of this,
Speaker 1: this this grasping. But in short, you see a number
Speaker 1: of different social movements, right, you see you see everything
Speaker 1: from anarchism and liberalism, social democracy, Marxist lenin Leninism, fat fascism, etcetera. Right,
Speaker 1: all these different models of this is what we need
Speaker 1: to do. This is how we need to reorganize ourselves.
Speaker 1: Cast out the old, embrace the new, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: be better for it. And of course none of them
Speaker 1: really worked out quite as intended, even the ones that
Speaker 1: arguably worked, Right, Well, what's your beef with social democracy? No?
Speaker 1: I love social democracy, but uh, let's just say that
Speaker 1: we're done always we're still working out the kinks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that. And of course we would be
Speaker 1: remiss if we didn't mention eugenics, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a utopian vision that's now widely regarded as a as
Speaker 1: an utterly bankrupt and evil idea. Yeah, it's and it's
Speaker 1: fascinating because in a post it's like a postar in
Speaker 1: a post oar winning world eugenics. If you strip away
Speaker 1: all the horrible things that came out of it, if
Speaker 1: you just like, basically, if you stripped the meat off
Speaker 1: of the carcass of eugenics and you just look at
Speaker 1: the bones, you can say, well, that seems to make
Speaker 1: a certain amount of sense, right treat you know, basically,
Speaker 1: selectively breed humanity to improve the expression of the human species.
Speaker 1: It's something that that sounds fine until you think about process, right,
Speaker 1: you know, so what is the process of doing that? Well,
Speaker 1: that requires either killing people who you think harbor less
Speaker 1: desirable genes or not allowing them to breed, or not
Speaker 1: allowing them to breed at the same rate as people
Speaker 1: who you think possessed desirable genes. Also in the process
Speaker 1: is the idea of selection. Who gets to pick which
Speaker 1: genes are desirable. Some people might think, well, it's not
Speaker 1: just genes that prevent certain diseases and make people live
Speaker 1: longer and stuff like that. Some people might think that
Speaker 1: certain uh, you know, continental origins are more preferable than others,
Speaker 1: and so you get into really nasty territory. But I
Speaker 1: think what's interesting here is that eugenics is really not
Speaker 1: that different from the idea of the Christian rapture, right,
Speaker 1: because then in eugenics, it's basically this idea that selected
Speaker 1: races and gene lineages are going to be lifted up
Speaker 1: and essentially the rest are doomed. So it's an it's
Speaker 1: an an elevation. It's an ascension of certain models of
Speaker 1: humanity in the same way that a Christian rapture means
Speaker 1: the elevation and survival of certain very particular modes of
Speaker 1: human thought, faith, and reason. Well, yeah, this does sort
Speaker 1: of highlight that they're they're very different ways of thinking
Speaker 1: about out the idea of of utopia and apocalypse at
Speaker 1: the end of times? Is it egalitarian in nature? Like?
Speaker 1: Does does the destruction that's coming or the great blessing
Speaker 1: that's coming apply to everyone or does it only apply
Speaker 1: to some One person's utopia is another person's apocalypse? Right?
Speaker 1: It could be very much and often within the same system.
Speaker 1: Is now fast forward a bit, skip over a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, and you kind of get to our what
Speaker 1: can we condemn eugenics? And move on. Yeah. Yeah, having
Speaker 1: condemned eugenics and moving moving on, we get into another
Speaker 1: area here, uh, certainly into more of our current transhumanist
Speaker 1: ideas and a lot of the fascinating material that we've
Speaker 1: even discussed on the show about genetic engineering, genetic manipulation
Speaker 1: UM that are in many ways not that different from
Speaker 1: some some some of the goals and aspirations of eugenics,
Speaker 1: but achieved or potentially achieved through you know, far less
Speaker 1: morally reprehensible. Means, the idea of simply selecting how genes
Speaker 1: are expressed in our children, creating genetically modified UM expressions
Speaker 1: that are more ideal without actively harming anybody. Okay, so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's essentially taking the core nut of eugenics but applying
Speaker 1: it in an individual consent level and saying we're not
Speaker 1: killing anybody or telling anybody they can't breed. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: on top of this, we have you know, various other
Speaker 1: models of transhumanist um ascension, right, technological augmentation, cyborgs, virtual worlds,
Speaker 1: space exploration, colonization, because let's remember you on a lot
Speaker 1: of the ideas of exploration and particularly colonization of other worlds,
Speaker 1: it's about the long term survival of human race, right.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's a there's a two twelve book
Speaker 1: that came out from Corey dr Ow and Charles Stross
Speaker 1: titled The Rapture of the Nerds, which which I have
Speaker 1: not read some interesting things about it, but it's it
Speaker 1: is in effect that that term is referring to a
Speaker 1: trans humanist elevation of at least certain individuals and some
Speaker 1: of the problems that occur there. Yeah, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I certainly I don't know to what extent this makes
Speaker 1: the idea of trans humanism religious in nature. And that's
Speaker 1: something we can talk about, is you know, to what
Speaker 1: extent does a similarity to a religious idea make an
Speaker 1: idea of religious I don't know if I would say
Speaker 1: trans humanism is a religion or not. You might be
Speaker 1: able to make that argument, But in any case, I
Speaker 1: I do see parallels to, for example, the idea in
Speaker 1: Christianity of resurrection bodies, you know, the idea that those
Speaker 1: who are dead in Christ upon Christ's return will be
Speaker 1: resurrected in in bodies made of like a like a
Speaker 1: better spiritual material. It sounds a lot like trans human
Speaker 1: body modification to me, Like you have your body remade
Speaker 1: in a way that will never age, will never die,
Speaker 1: will somehow still be you, but won't be that crappy
Speaker 1: body you had before. Yeah, don't think it's so much
Speaker 1: that the trans humanism is religious in nature. But some
Speaker 1: of these religious models we've been discussing, they share the
Speaker 1: same energy as as trans humanism, Like they're similar fears,
Speaker 1: similar aspirations about who we are and where we're going.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, We actually have much more on this topic,
Speaker 1: but we went so long we're splitting it into two episodes,
Speaker 1: So come back next time and we will continue this
Speaker 1: discussion of of rapture, trans humanism, utopianism, and then of
Speaker 1: course how we as humans deal with these these prophecies,
Speaker 1: both secular and spiritual, when they do not come to pass.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, reach out to us on all the
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