Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: It's vault time. What's in the Vault today? In the
Speaker 1: Vault today is going to be part one of a
Speaker 1: two parter that we did back in August of This
Speaker 1: one originally aired August, and it's The trans Humanist Rapture War,
Speaker 1: Part one, The trans Humanist Rapture War. I remember this one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mostly remember. This one's kind of a blur for me,
Speaker 1: but I remember we we got to get into a
Speaker 1: lot of cool trans humanist territory and also discuss UH
Speaker 1: ideas of the Christian rapture and some of the overlap
Speaker 1: between these two ideas about our future. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it had to do with UH, with
Speaker 1: parallels between sort of technological utopianism and ideas that are
Speaker 1: contained in popular world religions. Yeah, so this one will
Speaker 1: be an exciting one to re air. This will actually
Speaker 1: be an exciting topic if we want to, we may
Speaker 1: be able to revisit because I feel like, even though
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, it hasn't even been two years
Speaker 1: since this one aired, we've we've covered a lot of
Speaker 1: additional ground. Uh that that is, that is in this
Speaker 1: topic area. Oh heck, you could do a whole podcast
Speaker 1: itself on on like techno utopianism and this whole cast
Speaker 1: of thinking. Yeah, all right, well let's dive in. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works
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. Any
Speaker 1: time in your life have you ever had the feeling
Speaker 1: the things are about to come to a very serious conclusion.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean like the meeting you're in right now,
Speaker 1: I mean the world. Did you ever get that feeling
Speaker 1: like you're living in the end times? This has got
Speaker 1: to be the last of days? No um. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: feel I sometimes I wonder what if the next moment
Speaker 1: is going to be the last moment? Like, but it's
Speaker 1: always there's always going to be some sort of harbinger
Speaker 1: of destruction, right, So I don't I look up into
Speaker 1: the sky and think, Hey, what would it be like
Speaker 1: to see the you know, civilization busting near earth object
Speaker 1: entering the atmosphere? I think about things like that, But
Speaker 1: even then I'll have like a few more minutes to
Speaker 1: process it. It all does have to come to an
Speaker 1: end at some point, so it makes you wonder if
Speaker 1: that end is near. And in fact, I think some
Speaker 1: 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 any 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 huh, because I
Speaker 1: always would think, well, 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 not 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 pre run
Speaker 1: every now and then. But but yeah, we're materially privileged.
Speaker 1: But uh, but I also mean privileged in terms of
Speaker 1: I happen to be the person who's of the generation
Speaker 1: that's alive when it all comes to the end. So
Speaker 1: today's episode is going to be about the field of eschatology,
Speaker 1: which is both theological and ostensibly secular, but it's the
Speaker 1: study of the end of times. What what happens when
Speaker 1: there is a conclusion to it all the either the
Speaker 1: end of the human species or a very significant transition
Speaker 1: of the human species into another kind of being, or
Speaker 1: a very significant transition of the human species into a
Speaker 1: very different kind of situation or station, either ushering in
Speaker 1: a utopia that brings happiness and prosperity for all, or
Speaker 1: you know, an apocalyptic vision. Uh. And we can get
Speaker 1: into what these words mean in a minute, but that
Speaker 1: brings destruction and calamity and uh, you know road warrior
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's so much of
Speaker 1: it hinges on this feeling that we're talking about, where
Speaker 1: it just it seems like something's gotta give, something's gotta break,
Speaker 1: something's gotta change for better or worse. It it always
Speaker 1: takes me back to to the Yates poem. Right, surely
Speaker 1: the second coming is at hand, like, surely something is
Speaker 1: about to get the falcon cannot hear the falcon? Or man,
Speaker 1: something's going wrong. Yeah, passionate enthusiasm among the worst, right,
Speaker 1: passionate passionate intensity intensity? Yes, that's even better. Yeah, what's
Speaker 1: the exact line. The the best lack all conviction, and
Speaker 1: the worst are filled with passionate intensity. I very often
Speaker 1: find that's true. You know, some of the some of
Speaker 1: the best people I know with the best opinions don't
Speaker 1: speak up that often. But man, people who have bad
Speaker 1: opinions are allowed as heck, well, they don't have to
Speaker 1: worry as much about saying the wrong thing, do that. No, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it helps when you're never wrong. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: let's let's let's get into it here. Um, first of all,
Speaker 1: let's just talk a little bit about basic human utopianism.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to share a fact with you, Robert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I always assumed that the you in the word utopia
Speaker 1: comes from the Greek prefix meaning good, as in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, euphoria, the good feeling. But that is not
Speaker 1: actually where it comes from too. So the title Utopia,
Speaker 1: of course, can be traced back to Thomas Moore's book
Speaker 1: Utopia and the sort of fictional but also philosophical treatise
Speaker 1: on what a perfect society might look like. You could
Speaker 1: look at it as a sort of update to Plato's
Speaker 1: Republic in a way, or a laying out of the
Speaker 1: groundwork of you know, how could we achieve a perfect world?
Speaker 1: And so if utopia and that since had meant it
Speaker 1: had been the way I understood it, it would have
Speaker 1: meant good place. You know, you utopia a good place.
Speaker 1: But the U is not actually eu as in good place,
Speaker 1: but it's you 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, really, yeah, or at least
Speaker 1: 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. It's the opposite of utopia, as this dissident
Speaker 1: vision of the future. Right. But well, before we get
Speaker 1: to dystopia, walk me through utopia, Robert. All right, So,
Speaker 1: and really, intofining 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: what was the ways we think about the world, cosmology, society, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And so we ink of human existence, if we think
Speaker 1: of human existence has to 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 transform
Speaker 1: their existence socially, bodily, technologically, etcetera, all as as a
Speaker 1: ways to try and and better ourselves and better the
Speaker 1: way that we live on this world. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that's true. And of course, if you look at the
Speaker 1: basic human project of civilization as one that tends towards
Speaker 1: creating a better life for all of us, it's easy
Speaker 1: to look at that and conclude, well, than a successful
Speaker 1: 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 and then eventually we can get there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In this case, you know, the city is not just
Speaker 1: a literal city, but the city is the model for
Speaker 1: the you know, all things civilization. Now, I would argue
Speaker 1: I think that one reason we sense attention here, Like
Speaker 1: you might say, well, I don't expect us to ever
Speaker 1: reach utopia. But I do advocate civilization continuing to try
Speaker 1: to improve 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. There 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 going to be who hot? Some people are
Speaker 1: gonna be too cold? Some people what? People want to
Speaker 1: wear a hoodie in the office. Some people want to
Speaker 1: sit there and sweat. Now, one way you could get
Speaker 1: out of this bind is by saying, you know, this
Speaker 1: project of continually trying to improve human civilization is going
Speaker 1: to be cut short, and it is going to be
Speaker 1: cut short by supernatural forces. So you're talking about a
Speaker 1: an apocalypse of spiritual apocalypse. Yes, And I think it
Speaker 1: is very worth mentioning something about the etymology here the
Speaker 1: word apocalypse. Now, the word apocalypse originally did not mean
Speaker 1: mad max uh. It originally meant an unveiling or a revelation. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, the Book of Revelation in the Bible, in
Speaker 1: the New Testament is sometimes known as the Apocalypse of John,
Speaker 1: means the same thing, the revelation to John John wrote down.
Speaker 1: So it's a vision that he had all these cryptic
Speaker 1: things 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 of 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 change is 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 we'll 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 over all things evil. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different Christian visions of the
Speaker 1: end times, and we'll talk about them in this episode today,
Speaker 1: but they typically involve both very negative events and ultimately
Speaker 1: a 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 guzzoline. So it's also worth stressing here
Speaker 1: that plenty of religions do not depend on such a
Speaker 1: linear time frame and instead have a cyclical and certainly
Speaker 1: we see this in the older religions, the pre Christian religions.
Speaker 1: Plenty of religions are more concerned with cosmological origins underlying
Speaker 1: everyday reality and less of any notion on ending. So
Speaker 1: for in for example, for example, in Hinduism, the universe
Speaker 1: is continually created, preserve, destroyed, and created again. It's an
Speaker 1: endless cycle, and the process of creation moves and these
Speaker 1: large overarching cycles, and each cycle has four great um
Speaker 1: epochs of time. The concept of reincarnation works alongside this
Speaker 1: is 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 even
Speaker 1: like a bouncy house where it's it's inflated in the
Speaker 1: morning and the nsipuke in it all day, described out
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 Ryan process it. Think of like extreme
Speaker 1: survivalist situations. Uh, and the and the and the resulting
Speaker 1: pantheon of gods, the resulting time frame of events that
Speaker 1: 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 eschatological 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: eschatological 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 going to get to the
Speaker 1: Christian models here in a minute, but before we get there,
Speaker 1: I want to just touch base on on some Buddhist
Speaker 1: ideas here. So there's a recurring theme in Hinduism and
Speaker 1: Buddhism that one may escape the endless cycle of death
Speaker 1: and rebirth, the wheel of sam Sara and attain liberation um.
Speaker 1: And you can interpret such liberation as it's as its
Speaker 1: own form of ending or perfection even but it's also
Speaker 1: kind of a it's a form of escape, perform an
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, yeah, asynchronous timelines. That being said, um,
Speaker 1: there is a pretty cool um idea out there, and
Speaker 1: that is the belief system within Buddhism 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: trust me. No, Robert, you have a number in our notes,
Speaker 1: I can tell us. Okay, I have a number, and
Speaker 1: this is a This one comes from a from my
Speaker 1: belief Japanese model. There's a sect of Buddhist monks there
Speaker 1: that are devoted to my trio and I and I
Speaker 1: forgive me, I do not recall the Japanese name from
Speaker 1: my trea off the top of my head. But it
Speaker 1: is what five billion years in the future. My reading
Speaker 1: that those are a lot of zeros. Uh No, that
Speaker 1: would be five trillion, trillion, six seventy billion years. So
Speaker 1: it's no way sixties seven, six and seventy billion years.
Speaker 1: It's a colossal number. And it's from that this would
Speaker 1: be this is gonna be like a far future time
Speaker 1: when people live to incredible ages. I want to say
Speaker 1: eighty thousand years old. So huge numbers involved here, and
Speaker 1: my treo would be the ultimate successor to our current Buddha.
Speaker 1: Um sidhard Gotama got him a Buddha and uh this
Speaker 1: Buddha will achieve complete enlightenment and teach pure dharma here
Speaker 1: on earth and I just want to read a quick quote.
Speaker 1: This is from book of My Tree of the Future
Speaker 1: Buddha by Alan Spenberg, says quote, the prospect of a
Speaker 1: future Buddha, yet another in the long line of Buddhas,
Speaker 1: offers an attractive possibility. Although liberation from suffering is possible
Speaker 1: for anyone at any time, according to Buddhist those being
Speaker 1: fortunate enough to live at a time when a Buddha
Speaker 1: is active in the world are far more likely to
Speaker 1: realize the arduous goal of ringing all craving to cessation.
Speaker 1: Though perhaps initially a minor figure in the early Buddhist tradition,
Speaker 1: my tread thus comes to represent a hope for the future,
Speaker 1: a time when all human beings could once again enjoy
Speaker 1: the spiritual and physical environment most favorable to enlightenment and
Speaker 1: the release from worldly suffering. I think that's fascinating because
Speaker 1: the very positive situation here, that the utopia that's being
Speaker 1: brought about isn't one necessarily of material fulfillment, but one
Speaker 1: of the realization of the lack of necessity for material fulfillment.
Speaker 1: Very often, when you see like a heaven or just
Speaker 1: any kind of very positive, spiritually imagined future situation, people
Speaker 1: people speak of material comforts. Yeah, yeah, and indeed this, uh,
Speaker 1: this particular idea, I guess would only entail material comforts,
Speaker 1: and insofar as they enable you to seek inner enlightenment
Speaker 1: and realize that you don't need material comes right. 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 prev going
Speaker 1: to keep in mind as we we play with this
Speaker 1: topic here today is that there's so much shared circuitry
Speaker 1: involved with both ideas. So, you know, it's it's easy
Speaker 1: for for for an atheist to stand on one side
Speaker 1: and scoff at some of these spiritual ideas of utopia
Speaker 1: and salvation and destruction. But when you break it down,
Speaker 1: how different is the underlying experience of those ideas? How
Speaker 1: different is that from some of these secular ideas we're
Speaker 1: discussing now, well, that's a to question. I think we
Speaker 1: should discuss them and explore. Well, as far as secular
Speaker 1: apocalypses go, we really don't even have to to mention
Speaker 1: many of them. I mean that they're pretty obvious. The
Speaker 1: idea of nuclear annihilation, of global cataclysm green goo, greg goo. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if this one's a thing, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go and say it, brown goo. Who knows? Um? Singularity? Um?
Speaker 1: I I love our Scott Baker's idea of a semantic apocalypse,
Speaker 1: which one is that semantic apocalypse is basically just the
Speaker 1: death of meaning. Where we reached this point from where
Speaker 1: we have a certain neuroscientific understanding of the human experience,
Speaker 1: and uh, we realize that all human consciousness is a
Speaker 1: coin trick, and we explain the coin trick. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a Nietzsche in despair. Yeah, well, all of
Speaker 1: those are possible things that people could predict happening, you know.
Speaker 1: So you've got green goo, grey 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 section
Speaker 1: from a book I've been reading. Actually, it's a book
Speaker 1: by the physicist Sean Carroll called The Big Picture, and
Speaker 1: he's talking about the physical cosmological model of what's going
Speaker 1: to happen to the universe after a while. So he
Speaker 1: talks about the accelerating expansion of the universe, and that's
Speaker 1: fueled by the pull of vacuum energy, you know, the
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. Okay, that's well,
Speaker 1: that's well after the age of my Trea. Yeah, good
Speaker 1: to know. Yeah, though, who knows how long my Treya lives.
Speaker 1: Just throwing that out there. My Trea could could have
Speaker 1: something to say about these stars burning up all their fuel.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Carol continues. By then, other galaxies will have
Speaker 1: moved far away, and our local group of galaxies will
Speaker 1: be populated by planets, dead stars, and black holes. One
Speaker 1: by one, those planets and dead stars will fall into
Speaker 1: the black holes, which in turn will join into one
Speaker 1: supermassive black hole. Ultimately, as Stephen Hawking taught us, even
Speaker 1: those black holes will evaporate. After about one google or
Speaker 1: tend to the one hundred years, all of the black
Speaker 1: holes in our observable universe will have evaporated into a
Speaker 1: thin mist of particles which will grow more and more
Speaker 1: dilute as space continues to expand. The end result of
Speaker 1: this are most likely scenario for the future of the
Speaker 1: universe is nothing but cold empty space, which will last
Speaker 1: literally forever. Well that's uh, that's nice and dark, literally
Speaker 1: and figuratively. So then again, it sounds like that mist
Speaker 1: of particles. That sounds kind of refreshing. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but also it's you're dealing with such a long period
Speaker 1: of time here, it's kind of it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the idea of the humanless universal, lifeless universe. It's really
Speaker 1: more just returned to normal normalcy universe, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: we were not around for ages and ages and ages
Speaker 1: for the vast major already of cosmological time. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: what's it mattered that we're not going to survive in
Speaker 1: the long run either. Well, I'm just trying to offer
Speaker 1: an example of how you don't have to get far
Speaker 1: out into left field with crazy technological predictions in order
Speaker 1: to say that at some point there will be an end.
Speaker 1: There will be an endpoint to humanity. Uh that you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to survive the energy evaporation death of
Speaker 1: the universe unless in a post my Trea world we
Speaker 1: have figured out ways technologically to escape into alternate universes.
Speaker 1: So true, in those doors to alternate universes, maybe our salvation,
Speaker 1: but you might not have to walk through a door
Speaker 1: to reach a very different kind of world that might
Speaker 1: be much better than the one we have. Because there
Speaker 1: are 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 going
Speaker 1: to be able to find peace. Um. So we have
Speaker 1: various models from this, I mean some of the ones
Speaker 1: that are more scientifically based. We have various ideas about
Speaker 1: what a post scarcity society might be. Transhumanist existence, um,
Speaker 1: the the the essential Star Trek model of life on
Speaker 1: Earth right where everybody's gotten to the point where we
Speaker 1: get along. We have technology that we have holio decks,
Speaker 1: and we have machines that will just create whatever food
Speaker 1: we need on demand, new ages of human consciousness, uh,
Speaker 1: and various positive spins on the technological singularity Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: if you don't know that much about the singularity, or
Speaker 1: even if you do, we're gonna be talking about that
Speaker 1: at more length later on, and how that fits into
Speaker 1: ideas of religious eschatology. And then, of course, there are
Speaker 1: so many different secular models of utopia that are that
Speaker 1: are that are based on how we can build a
Speaker 1: better society um, various utopian cults, various utopian mindsets that
Speaker 1: have been thrown out air, new political models, ways of
Speaker 1: organizing ourselves, ways of building that better city that rely
Speaker 1: less on technology and more on simply the ordering of
Speaker 1: ourselves and the ordering of the inner self. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will explore the Christian rapture. All right, we're back
Speaker 1: to rap about the Christian Rapture. I wonder if there
Speaker 1: has been any Christian hip hop that has expressly concerned
Speaker 1: itself with the rapture. I would love to hear about it.
Speaker 1: Quite sure that has happened. Well, you know there's that
Speaker 1: Blondie song, right ra sure? No, is that about the rapture? No?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. But it's very weird, is that
Speaker 1: the one? I think that's the one about the man
Speaker 1: for Mars. He's eating cars, and now he goes out
Speaker 1: and needs guitars. I'm not sure which which part of
Speaker 1: the back Book of Revelation she's referring to. There. The
Speaker 1: Book of Revelation is full of wonderfully strange imagry, and
Speaker 1: that would that would fit right in actually, But okay,
Speaker 1: so the Christian rapture. I wanna just put you in
Speaker 1: a scenario. You're on a plane. There may or may
Speaker 1: not be snakes on the plane, doesn't matter either way.
Speaker 1: Suddenly many people on the plane have disappeared, possibly including
Speaker 1: the pilot and co pilot, but thankfully for you this time,
Speaker 1: not the pilot and copilot. Is this a lingual ears thing? No,
Speaker 1: But I am describing a scene from a popular novel,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that in just a minute. So
Speaker 1: the 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
Speaker 1: clothes and a friend of mine. This is a funny.
Speaker 1: Once actually told me that he watched a low budget
Speaker 1: Christian apocalypse movie in which there's this this scene happens,
Speaker 1: people disappear and their clothes are left behind. But he
Speaker 1: says that the clothes were not only empty, but neatly
Speaker 1: starched and folded, and in some shot you could see
Speaker 1: that 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, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: I am familiar with Left Behind, though though I have
Speaker 1: to say I don't think it really picked up steam
Speaker 1: in the church community I was a part of as
Speaker 1: like as a as a kid and junior high in
Speaker 1: high school student. Until after I was kind of, um,
Speaker 1: you know, after I was less active in that community
Speaker 1: where we were more into uh, this present darkness by
Speaker 1: I think it's frank and that essentially was kind of
Speaker 1: the whole series of books that had to do a
Speaker 1: viiritual warfare. So it was more concerned with the idea
Speaker 1: that kind of a a screw tape scenario was always
Speaker 1: playing out all around us. And then there are angels
Speaker 1: and demons like duking it out for your mind and yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was big. I think those came out in
Speaker 1: like eighty five initially, and Left Behind the first Left
Speaker 1: Behind book came out in nine, so I think it
Speaker 1: was out, but it was just really beginning to build steam.
Speaker 1: Huh Okay. Well, so this scenario I've described and Left
Speaker 1: Behind this is it is part of a work of
Speaker 1: Christian fantasy fiction. But the idea is not just something
Speaker 1: that the author's dreamed up. It's been a popular element
Speaker 1: of Christian eschatology for many years. So where does this
Speaker 1: idea of the rapture come from? That this is the rapture?
Speaker 1: People are are they disappear? They've been raptured up. So
Speaker 1: I would say it's a complex doctrine with varying theological interpretations,
Speaker 1: but the general rapture belief is usually linked most directly
Speaker 1: to a passage in First Thessalonians chapter four, where where
Speaker 1: the author of the letter, presumed to be Paul, writes
Speaker 1: for 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 actually people often use the rapture
Speaker 1: as a term to signify the Christian escaton that you know,
Speaker 1: the end of days, but it's actually just one event, uh,
Speaker 1: sort of a moment from this whole complex system of
Speaker 1: Christian eschatology. But the idea is that upon the moment
Speaker 1: of the earthly return of Christ, dead Christians will be resurrected,
Speaker 1: and living Christians will be miraculously sucked up into the
Speaker 1: sky to meet the Lord, who is presumably descending from
Speaker 1: above at the same moment. But there are some elements
Speaker 1: of Christian eschatology that match very much what we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier with the idea of of apocalypses and
Speaker 1: and utopias. So I mean, because that sounds like an
Speaker 1: apocalypse for for pretty much everybody, Like that's going to
Speaker 1: end the workday, no matter no matter what. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: always It's always played for horror in the Christian Apocalypse movies, right,
Speaker 1: you know, people people start screaming, they don't know what's happened.
Speaker 1: It is, uh, I guess it is assumed to be
Speaker 1: a very positive event for the people who have been raptured,
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 the 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, which you know,
Speaker 1: is arguably a better moral stance than fantasies of hell
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 is kind of like I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, And today we're gonna be focusing
Speaker 1: on what would be called Christian futurists. These are people
Speaker 1: who think biblical prophecies are going to be fulfilled sometime
Speaker 1: in the future. There are also other types of people
Speaker 1: who interpret the Bible differently their pretors, who believe that
Speaker 1: these prophecies were fulfilled during the events described in the
Speaker 1: New Testament, or in the early years of the Church,
Speaker 1: or sometime in the past. Uh. They're also those who
Speaker 1: believe it's all a bit metaphorical. Really, But there are
Speaker 1: very few broad concepts and distinctions in Christian futurists eschatological
Speaker 1: thinking that that we can relate to in this episode.
Speaker 1: So one is this big, the big event, the main show,
Speaker 1: the second Coming of Christ. So Christians believe that that
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ was martyred, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven,
Speaker 1: and at some point after his ascension as described in
Speaker 1: the Bible, Christ will return to Earth, or perhaps in
Speaker 1: some sense has already returned literal or metaphorical. But in
Speaker 1: any case, he comes back, and he's not here just
Speaker 1: to visit. There's some schatological purpose to his return, and
Speaker 1: there are different views on what that is, but usually
Speaker 1: it involves some sort of putting the hammer down, like
Speaker 1: there is an act of final judgment. Jesus is back
Speaker 1: in this time. It's personal. Yeah, But then there's this
Speaker 1: concept of the tribulation. So many Christians also believe that
Speaker 1: immediately before the second coming of Christ, there will be
Speaker 1: a time of great suffering. You know, it's often described
Speaker 1: as war, persecution, hardship, hunger, pain, disease, destruction, and this
Speaker 1: very bad period, this road warrior periods, as you might
Speaker 1: want to associate it is known as the tribulation. This
Speaker 1: is your apocalyptic aspect. And in the pop culture since
Speaker 1: the term it's it's about as close as Christianity gets
Speaker 1: to full road warrior. In a way, you can think
Speaker 1: of it as kind of like the fattening of the
Speaker 1: pig for for for slaughter. Right, If you think of
Speaker 1: of hardship and warfare and human suffering is kind of
Speaker 1: like the fertile soil from which you know, faith and
Speaker 1: especially like strong faith can emerge, then that's Uh, that
Speaker 1: that's kind of how I sometimes interpret this vision. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's actually a concept you see throughout
Speaker 1: the theological history of Christianity. There there's very much emphasis
Speaker 1: on hardship causing people to strengthen their their faith or
Speaker 1: their or their religious character. But so where does this
Speaker 1: idea of the tribulation comes from. It comes from the
Speaker 1: preaching 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 tribut relations such
Speaker 1: as was not since the beginning of the world to
Speaker 1: this time, no nor ever shall be And except those
Speaker 1: days should be shortened. There should no flesh be saved,
Speaker 1: but for the elect sake, those days shall be shortened.
Speaker 1: So something's gonna gonna cut off the tribulation. What's going
Speaker 1: to happen? What will it be shortened by? Well, perhaps
Speaker 1: it is the millennium. This is another concept from Christians chatology,
Speaker 1: and it's a period of utopian rule on earth where
Speaker 1: Christ himself or Christian Goodness generally will rule over the
Speaker 1: earth for one thousand years. So sometimes this is interpreted
Speaker 1: as a long period of time represented metaphorically by the
Speaker 1: idea 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 can
Speaker 1: steps together. They're there are different ideas about in what
Speaker 1: order they come. Their pre millennialists who think that Christ's
Speaker 1: second coming will happen right before the millennium begins. There
Speaker 1: are post millennialists who think that Christ's second coming and
Speaker 1: final judgment will happen at the end of the millennium.
Speaker 1: And they're also among the pre millennialists. Some who think
Speaker 1: the rapture is going to happen before the tribulation, in
Speaker 1: the middle of the tribulation, or that the rapture won't
Speaker 1: literally happen at all. So so there's a great diversity
Speaker 1: of opinion. I don't want to represent them as all
Speaker 1: thinking the same thing, And of course I should also
Speaker 1: stress that there are plenty of Christians who don't really
Speaker 1: buy into any of this in times framework. You know,
Speaker 1: they're a millennialists that they're not they're not looking forward
Speaker 1: to any kind of apocalypse or utopia on earth in
Speaker 1: any sense. Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously it's going
Speaker 1: to vary from from sack to sack, from individual to individual,
Speaker 1: but it's I think it's definitely hard to argue that
Speaker 1: at the at the end of the date is anything
Speaker 1: that occurs and like a book of refel relation, does
Speaker 1: anything concerning the end times really affect your day to
Speaker 1: day that much? You know? Yeah, well I don't know,
Speaker 1: it might, it might, And I want to make a
Speaker 1: case actually why some people would say that belief in
Speaker 1: the end time, whether religious or secular, does actually affect
Speaker 1: the way we live our lives. Well, I guess it
Speaker 1: depends on when you were you're throwing out that end time,
Speaker 1: when you're throwing out that cataclysmic event, when you're throwing
Speaker 1: out that utopia, if you think it's gonna occur near
Speaker 1: enough in the future that you can actively structure your
Speaker 1: life in accordance to it, I mean, that's one thing.
Speaker 1: Well that that is a point that will be echoed
Speaker 1: by somebody. I want to quote in a bit. Okay, So, Robert,
Speaker 1: we we've talked about utopias, apocalypse is the end times,
Speaker 1: the s chatological views of of what's coming down the road,
Speaker 1: how soon it's coming, and is it going to be
Speaker 1: good or is it going to be bad. But these
Speaker 1: ideas are not, of course limited to religious believers, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: We've had plenty of concepts that have been thrown out
Speaker 1: there in terms in terms of uh, you know, secular utopia,
Speaker 1: even a scientific utopia. I mean you can, if you
Speaker 1: you can trace fictionalized versions of this journey all the
Speaker 1: way back to the epic of Gilgamesh, humanity's earliest surviving
Speaker 1: piece of literature, dating back to the second millennium BC,
Speaker 1: in which which are our hero wants the secret of
Speaker 1: immortality and failing that, realizes that the greatest aim is
Speaker 1: to just build a city, just build an awesome city instead,
Speaker 1: and then that's even you know that that's also really
Speaker 1: hard work. Well, there's that project of civilization, right yeah.
Speaker 1: But but even in just the epic Goodogamesh, we see
Speaker 1: that quest for more life and a better system for
Speaker 1: living as a people. Now, um I was reading a
Speaker 1: wonderful two thousand twelve article from James J. Hughes titled
Speaker 1: the Politics of trans human Humanism and the Techno Millennial
Speaker 1: Imagination sixty six through uh and he traces trans humanism
Speaker 1: and trans humanist thought back to and to the European
Speaker 1: Enlightenment in the sevent hundreds. Now, sorry to interrupt, but
Speaker 1: you and 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've 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: the definition varies, because you have you have some people
Speaker 1: 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 trans humanist unless everybody can live forever
Speaker 1: and everybody has access to to spaceships, and you've solved
Speaker 1: some of these other problems. So it gets it gets
Speaker 1: it turns into a mire rather quickly, right. But it's
Speaker 1: the idea of transcending the human animal. And well, so
Speaker 1: do you want to transcend into the species level or
Speaker 1: just modify your own body to transcend your birth nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of the same idea that you see with
Speaker 1: your topian models in general, where people will say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is where we are, now, this is where we
Speaker 1: would like to be. And then in addition to squabbles
Speaker 1: about where you want to go, there's the inevitable problem
Speaker 1: of 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 transhumutism 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 there. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course somehow also acknowledged that we might have
Speaker 1: some of the enlightenment. Thinker said, okay, we might have
Speaker 1: to also fight a whole bunch of awful wars there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we might have to go through a tribulation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly to the millennium. And in generally the details of
Speaker 1: the ascension, the science of the rapture, if you will,
Speaker 1: is ever varied, argued, and sometimes glossed over all altogether. Um.
Speaker 1: But Hughes says, quote, it was in this stew of
Speaker 1: often contradictory ideas about the nature of progress that modern
Speaker 1: technomillennialism was forged. And you have a number of individuals,
Speaker 1: early individuals who are getting involved in these ideas. Um.
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin, William Godwin, or just too that argued that
Speaker 1: humans would eventually conquer oppression, inequality, disease, and death. Um.
Speaker 1: What about ditto? Ditto is interesting? Um, seventeen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Uh in his work, uh De Almbert's Dream proposed that
Speaker 1: human brains might be taken apart and then put back together,
Speaker 1: that intelligent animals and animal human hybrids might be possible.
Speaker 1: And this one's the big kicker. Sophisticated machines might have mine. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about that in a minute, because
Speaker 1: there is plenty of artificial intelligence eschatology right now. The
Speaker 1: post Enlightenment quest for better life, for utopia even um,
Speaker 1: obviously we could spend multiple podcasts if we wanted to
Speaker 1: just talking about that, all the the individual expressions of this,
Speaker 1: uh of this, this this grasping. But in short, you
Speaker 1: see a number of different social movements, right, you see
Speaker 1: you see everything from anarchism and liberalism, social democracy, Marxist lenin, Leninism, fascism.
Speaker 1: It's right, all these different models of this is what
Speaker 1: we need to do. This is how we need to
Speaker 1: reorganize ourselves, cast out that the old, embrace the new,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna be better for it. And of course
Speaker 1: none of them really worked out quite as intended, even
Speaker 1: the ones that arguably worked right, Well, what's your beef
Speaker 1: with social democracy? No? I love social democracy. But uh,
Speaker 1: let's just say that we're done always we're still working
Speaker 1: out the kinks. Yeah, I can see that. And of
Speaker 1: course we would be remiss if we didn't mention eugenics, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a utopian vision that's now widely regarded
Speaker 1: as a as an utterly bankrupt and evil idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and it's fascinating because in a post it's like
Speaker 1: a postar in a post oar winning world eugenics. If
Speaker 1: you strip away all the horrible things that came out
Speaker 1: of it, if you just like basically, if you stripped
Speaker 1: the meat off of the carcass of eugenics and you
Speaker 1: just look at the bones, you can say, well, that
Speaker 1: seems to make a certain amount of sense, right, treat
Speaker 1: you know, basically selectively breed humanity to improve the expression
Speaker 1: of the human species. It's something that that that sounds
Speaker 1: fine until you think about process. You know, so what
Speaker 1: is the process of doing that? Well, that requires either
Speaker 1: killing people who you think harbor less desirable genes or
Speaker 1: not allowing them to breed, or not allowing them to
Speaker 1: breed at the same rate as people who you think
Speaker 1: possessed desirable genes. Also, in the process is the idea
Speaker 1: of selection. Who gets to pick which genes are desirable.
Speaker 1: Some people might think, well, it's not just genes that
Speaker 1: prevent certain diseases and make people live longer and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Some people might think that certain uh, you know,
Speaker 1: continental origins are more preferable than others, and so you
Speaker 1: get into really nasty territory. But I think what's interesting
Speaker 1: here is that eugenics is really not that different from
Speaker 1: the idea of the Christian rapture, right, because then in eugenics,
Speaker 1: it's basically this idea that selected races and gene lineages
Speaker 1: are going to be lifted up and essentially the rest
Speaker 1: are doomed. So it's an it's an an elevation. It's
Speaker 1: an ascension of certain models of humanity in the same
Speaker 1: way that a Christian rapture means the elevation and survival
Speaker 1: of certain very particular modes of human thought, faith, and reason. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this does sort of highlight that they're There are very
Speaker 1: different ways of thinking about the idea of of utopia
Speaker 1: and apocalypse at the end of times. Is is it
Speaker 1: egalitarian in nature? Like does does the destruction that's coming
Speaker 1: or the great blessing that's coming apply to everyone or
Speaker 1: does it only apply to some One person's utopia is
Speaker 1: another person's apocalypse, right, It could be very much and
Speaker 1: often within the same system. Is now fast forward a bit,
Speaker 1: skip over a lot of stuff, and you kind of
Speaker 1: get to our current Can we condemn eugenics and move on? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Having condemned eugenics and 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 of, you know, various
Speaker 1: other models of trans humanist um ascension, right, technological augmentation, cyborgs,
Speaker 1: virtual worlds, space exploration, colonization because let's remember, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of the ideas of exploration and particularly colonization
Speaker 1: of other worlds. It's about the long term survival of
Speaker 1: the human race, right. And in fact, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a two thousand twelve book that came out from Corey
Speaker 1: dr Ow and Charles Stross titled The Rapture of the Nerds,
Speaker 1: which which I have not read, uh my first and
Speaker 1: interesting things about it, but it is in effect that
Speaker 1: term is referring to a trans humanist elevation of at
Speaker 1: least certain individuals and some of the problems that occur there. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I certainly I don't know to what extent
Speaker 1: this makes the idea of trans humanism religious in nature.
Speaker 1: And that's something we can talk about, is you know,
Speaker 1: to what extent does a similarity to a religious idea
Speaker 1: make an idea of religious I don't know if I
Speaker 1: would say trans humanism is a religio gen or not.
Speaker 1: You might be able to make that argument, but in
Speaker 1: any case, I I do see parallels to, for example,
Speaker 1: the idea and Christianity of resurrection bodies. You know, the
Speaker 1: idea that the those who are dead in Christ, upon
Speaker 1: Christ's return will be resurrected in in bodies made of
Speaker 1: like a like a better spiritual material. It sounds a
Speaker 1: lot like trans human body modification to me, Like you
Speaker 1: have your body remade in a way that will never age,
Speaker 1: will never die, will somehow still be you, but won't
Speaker 1: be that crappy body you had before. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's so much that the trans humanism is religious
Speaker 1: in nature, but some of these religious models we've been
Speaker 1: discussing they share the same energy as as trans humanism,
Speaker 1: Like they're similar fears, similar aspirations about who we are
Speaker 1: and where we're going. All right, everybody, We actually have
Speaker 1: much more on this topic, but we went so long
Speaker 1: we're splitting it into two episodes, So come back next
Speaker 1: time and we will continue this discussion of of rat sure,
Speaker 1: trans humanism, utopianism, and then of course, how we as
Speaker 1: humans deal with these these prophecies, both secular and spiritual,
Speaker 1: when they do not come to pass. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: reach out to us on all the normal platforms you'll
Speaker 1: find us a stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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