August 23, 2016 • 48 mins
What do the transhumanist visions and singularitarians have in common with Christian rapture doctrine, apocalyptic prophesies and far-future saviors? Join Robert and Joe as they explore the space for common ground -- and conflict -- between genetically modified cyborgs and Heaven-teleported believers in this two-part episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Joe McCormick.
And Hey, Robert, I've got a question for you. Hit me.
Any time in your life have you ever had the
(00:24):
feeling the things are about to come to a very
serious conclusion? And I don't mean like the meeting you're
in right now, I mean the world. Did you ever
get that feeling like you're living in the end times?
This has got to be the last of days? No um.
Sometimes I feel I sometimes I wonder what if the
(00:47):
next moment is going to be the last moment? Like,
but it's always there's always going to be some sort
of harbinger of destruction, right, So I don't I look
up into the sky and think, Hey, what would it
be like to see the you know, civilization busting near earth,
object entering the atmosphere. I think about things like that,
but even then I'll have like a few more minutes
(01:10):
to process it. It all does have to come to
an end at some point, so it makes you wonder
if that end is near, And in fact, I think
some people have made statistical arguments that if you assume, okay,
I'm a random observer, not a privileged observer. Uh. The
the statistical argument is that humanity has got to be
ending pretty soon because if human if the human population
(01:33):
continues to grow, that many, many more randomly selected observers
will be among those born in the future than those
that are living you know, right now or have lived
in the past. And so if we you assume that
you are the middle of the road random observer and
not one of the tail end, then humanity has got
(01:54):
to end pretty soon. I don't really because I always
would think, well, if I'm not a privileged observer, why
do I get to live in the end times? Like,
surely I'm at least living in like the penultimate age
and on the ultimate age of man. Well, that instinct
of yours is I would say, fairly unique, because it
is very common for people to think that they are
(02:15):
living in a very privileged time. Have you noticed that? Yeah, well, no,
I think I'm living in a privileged time. I mean
compared with before. I don't mean materially privileged. I think
that's true too. I think we are some of the
luckiest people and the golden age of television, Joe, have
you seen these shows? Yeah, I'm assuming you're referring to
the fact that we can still get quantumly rerunning every
now and then. But but yeah, we're materially privileged. But
(02:39):
but I also mean privileged in terms of I happen
to be the person who's of the generation that's alive
when it all comes to the end. So today's episode
is going to be about the field of eschatology, which
is both theological and ostensibly secular, but it's the stuff
(03:00):
of the end of times. What what happens when there
is a conclusion to it all the either the end
of the human species or a very significant transition of
the human species into another kind of being, or a
very significant transition of the human species into a very
different kind of situation or station, either ushering in a
(03:22):
utopia that brings happiness and prosperity for all, or you know,
an apocalyptic vision. And we can get into what these
words mean in a minute, but that brings destruction and
calamity and uh, you know road warrior kind of stuff. Yeah,
I mean, it's so much of it hinges on this
feeling that we're talking about, where it just it seems
(03:43):
like something's gotta give, something's gotta break, something's gotta change,
for better or worse. It it always takes me back
to to the Yates poem. Right, surely the second coming
is at hand. Surely something is about to get the
falcon cannot hear the falcon? Or man, something's going wrong? Yeah,
pasionate enthusiasm among the worst? Right, passion passionate intensity intensity? Yes,
(04:05):
that's even better. Yeah, what's the exact line. The the
best lack all conviction, and the worst are filled with
passionate intensity. I very often find that's true. You know,
some of the some of the best people I know
with the best opinions don't speak up that often. But man,
people who have bad opinions are allowed as heck, well,
(04:27):
they don't have to worry as much about saying the
wrong thing, do that. No, Well, I mean it helps
when you're never wrong. So let's let's let's get into
it here. Um. First of all, let's just talk a
little bit about basic human utopianism. You know, I want
to share a fact with you, Robert. I always assumed
that the you in the word utopia comes from the
(04:49):
Greek prefix meaning good, as in uh, you know euphoria,
the good feeling, but that is not actually where it
comes from too. So the title Utopia, of course, can
be traced back to Thomas Moore's book Utopia and this
sort of fictional but also philosophical treatise on what a
perfect society might look like. You could look at it
as a sort of update to Plato's Republic in a way,
(05:11):
or a laying out of the groundwork of you know,
how could we achieve a perfect world? And so if
utopia and that since had meant it had been the
way I understood it, it would have meant good place.
You know, utopia a good place. But the U is
not actually eu as in good place, but it's you
as in no place, because it didn't exist, right, Okay,
(05:35):
well that makes sense. Yeah, so I think that's something
that we should keep in mind. Going all the more reason,
I guess that Microsoft word is always telling me that
dystopia is not a word. Oh really, yeah, or at
least I get that. I get that correction all the time.
I mean, obviously, dystopia has come to have a meaning
for us as the opposite of utopia, as as a
dissident vision of the future. Right, But well, before we
(05:57):
get to dystopia, walk me through utopia, all right. So,
and really, in defining utopia, we essentially define dystopia human experiences.
Of course, you can think of it as the spark
on the line right between the expanse of the past
and the expanse of the future. It's like, you know,
it's like like a cartoon fuse to a bomb, right,
and we're just sparking along. And humans have thrived in
(06:21):
large part by their ability to perceive and mold that future.
All right. We developed new ways of doing this, doing
the things we always did, hunting, farm and crafting, as
well as the ways we think about the world, cosmology, society, etcetera.
And so we think of human existence. If we think
of human existence, has this spark upon the fuse of time,
we judge the soon to ignite, and the igniting based
(06:44):
on the charred and flaming remnants of what proceeded is
and we we we come to look beyond and imagine
near and far futures on this very line. And so
humans across cultures and times have sought to radically trams
formed their existence socially, bodily, technologically, etcetera. All as ares
(07:07):
a ways to try and and better ourselves and better
the way that we live on this world. Yeah, I
think that's true. And of course, if you look at
the basic human project of civilization as one that tends
towards creating a better life for all of us, it's
easy to look at that and conclude, well, than a
successful execution of this project would end in utopia. Yeah. Yeah,
(07:31):
it's it's kind of like the it's it's the notion
that if a city is essentially engineering engineering exercise, there
should be some idealized version of the city that we're
aspiring to. I mean, eventually we can get there. In
this case, you know, the city is not just a
literal city, but the city is the model for the
you know, all things civilization. Now, I would argue, I
(07:53):
think that one reason we sense attention here, Like you
might say, well, I don't expect us to ever reach utopia,
but I do advocate civilization continuing to try to improve
the lives of everyone for as long as possible. Uh.
Doesn't that seem a contradiction. I would say that the
main contradiction lies in the incoherence of the idea of perfection.
You can't create a perfect society, because that idea doesn't
(08:16):
make sense. They are inherent tensions in society. People want
different things, and so there there is no such thing
as a perfect society for everyone. Yeah. I mean, you
could make this more or less idealized building in which
people are going to live and work. But then what
are you gonna set the thermostat to right? Because some
people are gonna be too hot, some people are gonna
(08:37):
be too cold some people what people want to wear
a hoodie in the office. Some people want to sit
there and sweat. Now, one way you could get out
of this bind is by saying, you know, this project
of continually trying to improve human civilization is going to
be cut short, and it is going to be cut
short by supernatural forces. So you're talking about a an
(08:57):
apocalypse of spiritual apocalypse, Yes, and I think it is
very worth mentioning something about the etymology here. The word apocalypse. Now,
the word apocalypse originally did not mean mad max uh.
It originally meant an unveiling or a revelation. So, for instance,
the Book of Revelation in the Bible in the New
Testament is sometimes known as the apocalypse of John. Means
(09:19):
the same thing the Revelation to John John wrote down,
so it's vision that he had all these cryptic things
that are playing out at the end of time exactly.
So a revelation it could reveal knowledge, visions, understanding, or
very often predictions about the future. And I think because
of associations with predictions about the future and the Book
(09:42):
of Revelation itself, the word apocalypse is a word that
has come to be associated with end to times events,
either the end of the world, the end of humanity,
or some radical change in station and the fortune of humankind.
And we should go ahead and say when you use
the word apocalypse, that changes usually for the worst. Right.
(10:02):
People don't usually say apocalypse in a positive way, like
there will be an apocalypse and will it will lead
to utopia, which is interesting considering the fact that the
the origin of the word stems from a story that
is supposedly about the the victory of the eventual victory
of all things good overall things evil. Right. Yeah, there
are a lot of different Christian visions of the end times,
(10:22):
and we'll talk about them in this episode today, but
they typically involve both very negative events and ultimately a
perfectly positive event but so the popular version of apocalypse. Yeah,
we we associate with kind of post apocalyptic movies. Again,
The Road Warrior perfect example, great movie. Human civilization as
we formerly know it has ended and everything has just
(10:44):
gone to hell. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold right,
and you need guzzline. So it's also worth stressing here
that plenty of religions do not depend on such a
linear time frame right. Instead have a sickle coal and
certainly we see this in the older religions, the pre
Christian religions. Plenty of religions are more concerned with cosmological
(11:06):
origins underlying everyday reality and less of any notion on ending.
So for in for example, for example, in Hinduism, the
universe is continually created, preserve, destroyed, and created again. It's
an endless cycle, and the process of creation moves and
these large overarching cycles, and each cycle has four great
um epochs of time. The concept of reincarnation works alongside this,
(11:28):
as life flows into life, flows into life. I like
this because it mirrors some different hypotheses about the ultimate
nature of the universe. Now we don't know yet what
the ultimate nature of the universe is, but there are
some cosmological models in which, for example, our local universe
maybe a bouncing universe where it it collapses into a
(11:50):
singularity and then re explodes back into a universe with
distributed matter and energy all over the place, or event
like a bounty house where it's it's inflated in the
morning and then nipuke in it all day described that
with chlorox bleach and deflated the evening. Yes, it is
kind of like that too, But there is another apocalyptic
(12:11):
spiritual event that I wanted to call attention to just
because it's so cool. I can't pretend to understand it
all that well because it's Norse mythology, and Norse mythology,
I feel like is is a more impenetrable to the
outsider type of mythology than things like Greek mythology or
do you find that too. There's I mean, I feel
like I can get it a lot more when I
(12:32):
listened to death Metal. Okay, I think that's that's how
I tend to try and process it. Think of like
extreme survivalist situations, uh, and the and the and the
resulting pantheon of gods, the resulting time frame of events
that would that would shape that and be shaped by that. Well, yeah,
in that popular sense of apocalyptic, Norse mythology has some
(12:54):
great apocalyptic events that they've got Ragnarok and it's this
epic escottological battle involving God's monsters, chaos. There's this disastrous
cataclysmic winter, the mountains crumble, this giant sea serpent comes
up and spits venom over all the earth and poisons
the waters, and there's this huge slog down, bloody battle
(13:17):
where most of the gods get killed. Uh, it's brutal,
but hey, it would be an extreme bummer of a
religion that just ends with a cataclysmic disaster for everyone
and has nothing positive to come of it. So so
many religions also sort of have spiritual utopias in their
scatological framework, right, that the end times will result in
(13:39):
some kind of very positive situation for many people at least,
that's right now. Obviously we're gonna get to Christian models
here in a minute, but before we get there, I
want to just touch base on on some Buddhist ideas here.
So there's a recurring theme in Hinduism and Buddhism that
one may escape the endless psychle of death and rebirth
(14:01):
the wheel of sam Sara and attain liberation. Um. And
you can interpret such liberation as it's as its own
form of ending or perfection even but it's also kind
of a it's a form of escape or form of
ending that can be acquired at any point along the line.
So there's not you don't have to wait till the
end times or some distant future to attain liberation to
(14:24):
reach nirvana. So the inner journey as opposed to a
physical world journey asynchronous timelines. That being said, Um, there
is a pretty cool um idea out there, and that
is the belief system within Buddhism. Uh. That's a millennial
Buddhist in particular. Uh. They have this uh, this character
(14:46):
known as my Trea, and my Trea is the Bodhisattva,
the being, an enlightenment of the future who will arrive
on Earth. Generally, I've seen some numbers thrown out there,
but just it's gonna be a long time in the future.
Try no, Robert, you have a number on our notes. Okay,
I have a number, and this is a this one
comes from a from my belief Japanese model. There's a
(15:09):
sect of Buddhist monks. They're are devoted to my trio
and I and I forgive me, I do not recall
the Japanese name from my trio off the top of
my head. But it is what five billion years in
the future. My reading that those are a lot of zeros.
Uh No, that would be five trilli, five trillion, six
hundred and seventy billion years. So it's no way sixties seven, yeah,
(15:33):
six hundred and seventy billion years. It's a colossal number.
And it's from that this would be this is gonna
be like a far future time when people live to
incredible ages. I want to say eighty thousand years old,
So huge numbers involved here, and my trio would be
the ultimate successor to our current Buddha. Um Sharda got him,
(15:54):
got him a Buddha and uh this Buddha will achieve
complete enlightenment and teach pure dharma here on earth. And
I just want to read a quick quote. This is
from book of my Trea, The Future Buddha by Alan
Spenberg says quote, the prospect of a future Buddha, yet
another in the long line of Buddhas, offers an attractive possibility.
(16:16):
Although liberation from suffering is possible for anyone at any time.
According to Buddhist those being fortunate enough to live at
a time when a Buddha is active in the world
are far more likely to realize the arduous goal of
bringing all craving to cessation. Though perhaps initially a minor
figure in the early Buddhist tradition, my Trea thus comes
(16:36):
to represent a hope for the future, a time when
all human beings could once again enjoy the spiritual and
physical environment most favorable to enlightenment and the release from
worldly suffering. I think that's fascinating because the very positive
situation here, that the utopia that's being brought about isn't
one necessarily of material fulfillment, but one of the realization
(17:00):
of the lack of necessity for material fulfillment. Very often,
when you see like a heaven or just any kind
of very positive, spiritually imagined future situation, people people speak
of material comforts. Yeah. Yeah, And indeed this, uh, this
particular idea, I guess would only entail material comforts and
(17:22):
insofar as they enable you to seek in or enlightenment
and realize that you don't need material coming rights. Okay,
So a lot of what we're gonna be talking about
in this episode is not just spiritual, religious supernatural frameworks
for eschatology, but actually secular and very often scientific or
technological frameworks for eschatology. And there are just like we
(17:45):
talked about religious apocalypses and religious future utopias, there are
secular apocalypses and secular future utopias. Yeah. And I think
the fascinating thing here and and and something preving to
keep in mind as we we play with this topic
here today is that there's so much shared um circuitry
involved both ideas. So you know, it's it's easy for
(18:08):
for for an atheist to stand on one side and
scoff at some of these spiritual ideas of utopia and
salvation and destruction. But when you break it down, how
different is the underlying experience of those ideas? How different
is that from some of these secular ideas we're discussing. Now, Well,
that's a good question. I think we should discuss them
(18:30):
and explore. Well, as far as secular apocalypses go, we
really only don't even have to to mention many of them.
I mean, they're pretty obvious. The idea of nuclear annihilation
of global cataclysm green Goo, greg Goo. Um, I don't
even know if this one is a thing, but I'm
gonna go and say it. Brown goo, who knows? Um singularity?
(18:50):
Um I I love our Scott Baker's idea of a
semantic apocalypse, which one is that semantic apocalypse is basically
just the death of meaning. Where we reach this point
from where we have a certain neuroscientific understanding of the
human experience, and uh, we realize that all human consciousness
is a coin trick, and we explain the coin trick.
(19:12):
It's kind of a Nietzsche in despair. Well, all of
those are possible things that people could predict happening, you know.
So you've got green goo, gray goo. You know, people
talking about nanotechnology or something that could take over the world.
We don't even have that kind of nanotechnology yet and
maybe we never could. Uh, it could just be something
impossible that people are dreaming up. But on the other hand, ultimately,
(19:36):
if we assume that our current understanding of physics is
basically correct, and we think it probably is, I mean,
there's a lot we don't know, but what we do
know we're pretty confident about, and that the laws of
physics don't change with time. Our scientific picture of the
universe does very firmly predict one type of scaton that
is unsurvivable. Right, And I want to read a say,
(20:00):
action from a book I've been reading. Actually, it's a
book by the physicist Sean Carroll called The Big Picture,
and he's talking about the physical cosmological model of what's
going to happen to the universe after a while. So
he talks about the accelerating expansion of the universe, and
that's fueled by the pull of vacuum energy, you know,
the energy out there that's causing the galaxies to expand
(20:22):
farther and farther apart. Uh, And that all tells us
more or less what's going to happen, he writes, quote,
it's possible, and in some sense would be simplest for
the accelerated expansion to simply continue without end. That leads
to a somewhat lonely future for our universe. Right now,
the night sky is alive with brightly shining stars and
(20:43):
galaxies that can't last forever. Stars use up their fuel
and will eventually fade to black. Astronomers estimate that the
last dim star will wink out around one quadrillion or
ten to the fifteen years from now. That's well, that's
well after the age of my Trea. Yeah, good to know. Yeah, though,
who knows how long my Treia lives. Throwing that out there,
(21:06):
my Trea could could have something to say about these
stars burning up all their fuel. But anyway, Carol continues.
By then, other galaxies will have moved far away, and
our local group of galaxies will be populated by planets,
dead stars, and black holes. One by one, those planets
and dead stars will fall into the black holes, which
in turn will join into one supermassive black hole. Ultimately,
(21:30):
as Stephen Hawking taught us, even those black holes will evaporate.
After about one google or tend to the one hundred years,
all of the black holes in our observable universe will
have evaporated into a thin mist of particles, which will
grow more and more dilute as space continues to expand.
The end result of this are most likely scenario for
(21:52):
the future of the universe is nothing but cold empty space,
which will last literally forever. Well that's um, that's nice
and dark, but literally and figuratively Yeah, but then again,
it sounds like that mist of particles. That sounds kind
of refreshing, yeah, I mean, but also it's you're dealing
(22:13):
with such a long period of time here, it's kind
of it's kind of like the idea of the humanless universal,
lifeless universe. It's really more just return to normal normalcy
in the universe, right, I mean, we were not around
for ages and ages and ages for the vast majority
of cosmological time. So what's it mattered that we're not
(22:33):
going to survive in the long run either. Well, I'm
just trying to offer an example of how you don't
have to get far out into left field with crazy
technological predictions in order to say that at some point
there will be an end. There will be an endpoint
to humanity. Uh that you know, it's it's hard to
survive the energy evaporation death of the universe unless in
(22:55):
a post in my tray a world we have figured
out ways technologically to escape into alternate universes. So true,
in those doors to alternate universes, maybe our salvation, but
you might not have to walk through a door to
reach a very different kind of world that might be
much better than the one we have, because there are
also secular visions of utopias right there, most certainly are
(23:16):
it doesn't have to be heaven. It can be we
can make heaven here on earth, according to some people. Yeah,
I mean, in a way, a lot of these remind
me of the my Trea vision, the idea that you're
gonna you're gonna have a world where people are gonna
be able to find peace. Um. So we have various
models from this, I mean, some of the ones that
are more scientifically based. We have various ideas about what
(23:38):
a post scarcity society might be, transhumanist existence, um, the
the the essential Star Trek model of life on Earth,
right where everybody's gotten to the point where we get along.
We have technology that we have holio decks, and we
have machines that will just create whatever food we need
on demand, new ages of human consciousness. Um than various
(24:01):
positive spins on the technological singularity. Yeah. Now, if you
don't know that much about the singularity, or even if
you do, we're gonna be talking about that at more
length later on, and how that fits into ideas of
religious eschatology. And then of course there are so many
different secular models of utopia that are that are that
are based on how we can build a better society
(24:23):
um various utopian cults, various utopian mindsets that have been
thrown out, their new political models, ways of organizing ourselves,
ways of building that better city that rely less on
technology and more on simply the ordering of ourselves and
the ordering of the inner self. Alright, we're gonna take
(24:44):
a quick break, and when we come back, we will
explore the Christian rapture. All right, we're back to wrap
about the Christian Rapture. I wonder if there has been
any Christian hip hop that has expressly concerned itself with
the rapture. I would love to hear about it. Quite
(25:05):
sure that has happened. Well, you know there's that Blondie song, right, rapture?
Is that about the Rapture? No? I don't think so.
But it's very weird, is that the one? I think
that's the one about the man for Mars. He's eating
cars and now he goes out and needs guitars. I'm
not sure which which part of the back book of
(25:25):
Revelation she's referring to there. The Book of Revelation is
full of wonderfully strange imagry, and that would that would
fit right in actually, But okay, so the Christian rapture,
I wanna just put you in a scenario. You're on
a plane. There may or may not be snakes on
the plane, doesn't matter either way. Suddenly many people on
(25:45):
the plane have disappeared, possibly including the pilot and co pilot,
but thankfully for you this time, not the pilot and
co pilot. Right, is this a Langaliers thing? No, but
I am describing a scene from a popular novel, and
we'll get to that in just a minute. So the
people are gone where you would have normally found them. Uh,
instead of people sitting in their seats eating bags of
(26:07):
peanuts watching Terminator Genesis, Uh, you find little piles of clothes.
And a friend of mine. This is a funny Ones
actually told me that he watched a low budget Christian
apocalypse movie in which there's this this scene happens, people
disappear in their clothes are left behind. But he says
that the clothes were not only empty, but neatly starched
and folded, and in some shots you could see that
(26:29):
they still had price tags attached to them. But anyway,
people start screaming, wailing, where did their loved Ones go
and at first it's a mystery, but then uh, it
gradually becomes a parent that what the people who disappeared
had in common was their firm belief in Jesus Christ.
And this is this is a scene from Left Behind,
(26:49):
a popular work of Christian schatological fantasy fiction by Tim
Lahay and Jerry B. Jenkins. You've probably heard of this before, Robert,
I assume you're pretty familiar with Left Behind. Yes, I
am familiar with Left Behind, though though I have to
say I don't think it really picked up steam in
the church community. I was a part of as like
(27:09):
as a as a kid and junior high in high
school student. Until after I was kind of, um, you know,
after I was less active in that community where we
were more into uh, this present darkness by I think
it's frank And that essentially was kind of the whole
series of books that had to do a spiritual warfare.
So it was more concerned with the idea that kind
(27:31):
of a screw tape scenario was always playing out all
around us. And then there are angels and demons like
duking it out for your mind and your Yeah, so
that was big. I think those came out in like
eighty five. Initially, and Left Behind the first Left Behind
book came out in nine, so I think it was out,
but it was just really beginning to build steam. Okay, Well,
(27:53):
so this scenario I've described and Left Behind this is
it is part of a work of Christian fantasy fiction.
But the idea is not just something that the author's
dreamed up. It's been a popular element of Christian eschatology
for many years. So where does this idea of the
rapture come from? That this is the rapture? People are
(28:13):
are they disappear? They've been raptured up. So I would
say it's a complex doctrine with varying theological interpretations, but
the general rapture belief is usually linked most directly to
a passage in First Thessalonians chapter four, where where the
author of the letter, presumed to be Paul, rights for
(28:35):
the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,
with the voice of the archangel and with the trump
of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.
Then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught
up together with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air. So shall we ever be with
the Lord, wherefore comfort one another with these words. So
(28:58):
technically the rapture is that actually people often use the
rapture as a term to signify the Christian escaton that
you know, the end of days, but it's actually just
one event, uh, sort of a moment from this whole
complex system of Christian eschatology. But the idea is that
upon the moment of the earthly return of Christ, dead
Christians will be resurrected and living Christians will be miraculously
(29:22):
sucked up into the sky to meet the Lord, who
is presumably descending from above at the same moment. But
there are some elements of Christian eschatology that match very
much what we were talking about earlier with the idea
of of apocalypses and and utopias. So I mean, because
that sounds like an apocalypse for for pretty much everybody,
(29:43):
Like that's going to end the work day, no matter,
no matter what. Yeah, it's always it's always played for
horror in the Christian apocalypse movies, right, you know, people
people start screaming, they don't know what's happened. It is, uh,
I guess it is assumed to be a very positive
event for the people who have been wrapp p sured,
But for those left on earth it is not a
very positive event. Now this is my own two sense,
(30:05):
but I wonder, I wonder if that the rapture narrative
as it's been popularized, uh in current society, if it
speaks to a desire for a kind of public, passive,
aggressive rectification of faith, you know, in an age of
perceived marginalization of traditional ridgious beliefs. So you get, you
get liberation from a weary world with just a hint
(30:26):
of a middle finger to those that are left behind
it didn't who didn't believe in what you believed and
didn't have the same faith that you had. What you
know is arguably a better moral stance than fantasies of health,
fire and an eternal torment for those who don't agree
with you. But still, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't try
to psycho and I'm sure everybody's got different attitudes toward it,
(30:47):
but I'm sure for some people there is an element
of that that's kind of like I'm out of here,
So yeah, you know, I suck it. And today we're
gonna be focusing on what would be called Christian futurists.
These are people who think biblical prophecies are going to
be fulfilled sometime in the future. There are also other
types of people who interpret the Bible differently, their pretorics,
(31:08):
who believe that these prophecies were fulfilled during the events
described in the New Testament, or in the early years
of the Church or sometime in the past. Uh. They're
also those who believe it's all a bit metaphorical. Really,
but there are very few broad concepts and distinctions in
Christian futurists eschatological thinking that that we can relate to
(31:28):
in this episode. So one is this big, the big event,
the main show, the second coming of Christ. So Christians
believe that that Jesus Christ was martyred, rose from the dead,
ascended to heaven, and at some point after his ascension
as described in the Bible, Christ will return to Earth
or perhaps in some sense has already returned literal or metaphorical,
(31:49):
but in any case, he comes back, and he's not
here just to visit. There's some schatological purpose to his return,
and there are different views on what that is, but
usually it involved some sort of putting the hammer down,
like there is an act of final judgment, Jesus is
back in this time. It's personal. Yeah, But then there's
this concept of the tribulation. So many Christians also believe
(32:11):
that immediately before the second Coming of Christ, there will
be a time of great suffering. You know, it's often
described as war, persecution, hardship, hunger, pain, disease, destruction, and
this very bad period, this road warrior period, as as
you might want to associate it, is known as the tribulation.
(32:32):
This is your apocalyptic aspect. And in the pop culture
since the term it's it's about as close as Christianity
gets to full road warrior. In a way, you can
think of it as kind of like the fattening of
the pig for for for slaughter. Right, If you think
of of hardship and warfare and human suffering is kind
of like the fertile soil from which you know, faith
(32:52):
and especially like strong faith can emerge, then that's uh
that that's kind of how sometimes interpret this vision. And
I think that's actually a concept you see throughout the
theological history of Christianity. There there's very much emphasis on
hardship causing people to strengthen their their faith or their
or their religious character. But so where does this idea
(33:15):
of the tribulation comes from. It comes from the preaching
of Jesus, essentially in the Book of Matthew, for example,
and he's talking about right before the Son of Man returns.
He says, for then shall be great tribulations such as
was not since the beginning of the world to this time,
no nor ever shall be and except those days should
(33:35):
be shortened. There should no flesh be saved, but for
the elect sake, those days shall be shortened. So something's
gonna gonna cut off the tribulation. What's going to happen?
What will it be shortened by? Well, perhaps it is
the millennium. This is another concept from Christians chatology, and
it's a period of utopian rule on earth where Christ
(33:56):
himself or Christian goodness generally will rule for the earth
for one thousand years. So sometimes this is interpreted as
a long period of time represented metaphorically by the idea
of a thousand years. Sometimes it's literally a thousand years.
But this comes primarily from the Book of Revelation, chapter twenty,
in which it said that those who have been martyred
(34:16):
for not having taken the mark of the beast on
their hands or their foreheads will be resurrected and rule
with Christ for a thousand years now. There are tons
of different ways that you can put all these concepts together.
They're there are different ideas about in what order they come.
Their pre millennialists who think that Christ's second coming will
happen right before the millennium begins. There are post millennialists
(34:40):
who think that Christ's second coming and final judgment will
happen at the end of the millennium. And they're also
among the pre millennialists. Some who think the rapture is
going to happen before the tribulation, in the middle of
the tribulation, or that the rapture won't literally happen at all.
So so there's a great diversity of opinion. I don't
want to represent them as all thinking the same thing.
(35:01):
And of course I should also stress that there are
plenty of Christians who don't really buy into any of
this end times framework. You know, they're a millennialists that
they're not they're not looking forward to any kind of
apocalypse or utopia on Earth in any sense. Yeah, I mean,
you know, obviously it's going to vary from from sec
to sect, from individual to individual. But it's I think
(35:22):
it's definitely hard to argue that at the at the
end of the date, is anything that occurs in like
a book of revelation. Is anything concerning the end times
really affect your day to date a much? You know? Yeah, um, well,
I know it might. It might. And I want to
make a case actually why some people would say that
belief in the end time, whether religious or secular, does
(35:46):
actually affect the way we live our lives. Well, I
guess it depends on when you were you're throwing out
that end time, when you're throwing out that cataclysmic event,
when you're throwing out that utopia, if you think it's
gonna occur near enough in the future that you can
actively structure your life in accordance to it, I mean
that's one thing. Well that that is a point that
will be echoed by somebody I want to quote in
(36:08):
a bit. Okay, okay, So, Robert, we we've talked about utopias, apocalypse,
is the the end times? The schatological views of of
what's coming down the road, how soon it's coming, and
is it gonna be good or is it going to
be bad? But these ideas are not, of course limited
to religious believers, right right, Yeah, We've had plenty of
(36:29):
concepts that have been thrown out there in terms in
terms of uh, you know, secular utopia, even a scientific utopia.
I mean you can, if you you can trace fictionalized
versions of this journey all the way back to the
epic of Gilgamesh, humanity's earliest surviving piece of literature, dating
back to the second millennium BC, in which are our
hero wants the secret of immortality and failing that, realizes
(36:52):
that the greatest naim is to just build a city,
just building an awesome city instead, and then that's even
you know that that's also really hard work. Well there
that project of civilization, right yeah, But but even in
just the e a good Google mess, we see that
quest for more life and a better system for living
as a people. Now, um, I was reading a wonderful
(37:12):
two thousand twelve article from James J. Hughes titled the
Politics of trans human Humanism and the Techno Millennial Imagination
sixty six through uh, and he traces trans humanism and
trans humanist thought back to into the European Enlightenment in
the seventeen hundreds. Now sorry to interrupt, but you and
(37:33):
Christian did an episode about trans humanism recently, right, Yeah,
we we may have done a couple of them now
that I think about it. Um, well, it's kind of
been a summer of trans humanism, if you will. So
we you know, talked that we did an episode that
was devoted to just the general idea of trans humanism
and some of the different sects of trans humanism that
are present in the world. But can you give us
(37:53):
a one sentence digest basically that through science and technology
we can create a better expression of the human form
and or human society, so we can we can live longer,
we can live happier, we can And this is where
that the definition varies because you have you have some
people whose idea of trans humanism is far more individual based.
(38:16):
So it's like, hey, some people are gonna live forever
and have spaceships and that's great. Other people are gonna say, well,
we're not really transhumanist unless everybody can live forever and
everybody has access to spaceships, and you've solved some of
these other problems. So it gets, it gets, it turns
into a mire rather quickly, right, But it's the idea
(38:37):
of transcending the human animal and well, so do you
want to transcend into the species level or just modify
your own body to transcend your birth nature. Yeah, it's
kind of the same idea that you see with your
topian models in general, where people will say, hey, this
is where we are now, this is where we would
like to be, and then in addition to squabbles about
(38:59):
where you want to go, there's the inevitable problem of
how you get there. Okay, But back to James Hughes,
what's his argument? Okay, So he says that a lot
of transumutism dates back to the European Enlightenment of the
seventeen hundreds, which allowed the same millennialist dreams we've discussed
in religious terms. Uh, these aspirations to grow, to grow
(39:21):
who we are, but instead of doing it on you know,
based on faith, based on the divine intervention or some
other model. It's it all has to do with reason
and science and technology. So machines will free us from
our labor, medicine will rid us of disease, and peace
will wash across the land. It's a basic enlightenment tenants
there um and of course some help also acknowledge that
(39:43):
we might have some of the Enlightenment thinkers said, okay,
we might have to also fight a whole bunch of
awful wars. Really there, Yeah, so we might have to
go through a tribulation. Yeah, exactly to the millennium. And
in generally the details of the ascension, the science of
the rapture, if you will, is ever varied, argued, and
and sometimes glossed over all altogether. Um. But Hughes says, quote,
(40:05):
it was in this stew of often contradictory ideas about
the nature of progress that modern techno millennialism was forged.
And you have a number of individuals, early individuals who
are getting involved in these ideas m Benjamin Franklin, William Godwin,
or just two that argue that humans would eventually conquer oppression, inequality, disease,
(40:26):
and death. Um. What about did Tero ditto is interesting?
Um seventeen sixty nine. Uh. In his work, UH, the
alan Bert's Dream proposed that human brains might be taken
apart and then put back together, that intelligent animals and
animal human hybrids might be possible. And this one's the
(40:46):
big kicker. Sophisticated machines might have mine. Oh I'm gonna
talk about that in a minute, because there is plenty
of artificial intelligence eschatology now, the post enlightenment quest for
better life, for utopia even um, obviously we could spend
(41:06):
multiple podcasts if we wanted to just talking about that,
all the the individual expressions of this, uh of this,
this this grasping. But in short, you see a number
of different social movements, right, you see you see everything
from anarchism and liberalism, social democracy, Marxist lenin Leninism, fat fascism, etcetera. Right,
(41:28):
all these different models of this is what we need
to do. This is how we need to reorganize ourselves.
Cast out the old, embrace the new, and we're gonna
be better for it. And of course none of them
really worked out quite as intended, even the ones that
arguably worked, Right, Well, what's your beef with social democracy? No?
(41:49):
I love social democracy, but uh, let's just say that
we're done always we're still working out the kinks. Yeah,
I can see that. And of course we would be
remiss if we didn't mention eugenics, right, I mean, that's
a utopian vision that's now widely regarded as a as
an utterly bankrupt and evil idea. Yeah, it's and it's
(42:12):
fascinating because in a post it's like a postar in
a post oar winning world eugenics. If you strip away
all the horrible things that came out of it, if
you just like, basically, if you stripped the meat off
of the carcass of eugenics and you just look at
the bones, you can say, well, that seems to make
a certain amount of sense, right treat you know, basically,
(42:34):
selectively breed humanity to improve the expression of the human species.
It's something that that sounds fine until you think about process, right,
you know, so what is the process of doing that? Well,
that requires either killing people who you think harbor less
desirable genes or not allowing them to breed, or not
(42:57):
allowing them to breed at the same rate as people
who you think possessed desirable genes. Also in the process
is the idea of selection. Who gets to pick which
genes are desirable. Some people might think, well, it's not
just genes that prevent certain diseases and make people live
longer and stuff like that. Some people might think that
certain uh, you know, continental origins are more preferable than others,
(43:20):
and so you get into really nasty territory. But I
think what's interesting here is that eugenics is really not
that different from the idea of the Christian rapture, right,
because then in eugenics, it's basically this idea that selected
races and gene lineages are going to be lifted up
and essentially the rest are doomed. So it's an it's
(43:42):
an an elevation. It's an ascension of certain models of
humanity in the same way that a Christian rapture means
the elevation and survival of certain very particular modes of
human thought, faith, and reason. Well, yeah, this does sort
of highlight that they're they're very different ways of thinking
about out the idea of of utopia and apocalypse at
(44:03):
the end of times? Is it egalitarian in nature? Like?
Does does the destruction that's coming or the great blessing
that's coming apply to everyone or does it only apply
to some One person's utopia is another person's apocalypse? Right?
It could be very much and often within the same system.
Is now fast forward a bit, skip over a lot
(44:23):
of stuff, and you kind of get to our what
can we condemn eugenics? And move on. Yeah. Yeah, having
condemned eugenics and moving moving on, we get into another
area here, uh, certainly into more of our current transhumanist
ideas and a lot of the fascinating material that we've
even discussed on the show about genetic engineering, genetic manipulation
UM that are in many ways not that different from
(44:46):
some some some of the goals and aspirations of eugenics,
but achieved or potentially achieved through you know, far less
morally reprehensible. Means, the idea of simply selecting how genes
are expressed in our children, creating genetically modified UM expressions
(45:09):
that are more ideal without actively harming anybody. Okay, so yeah,
it's essentially taking the core nut of eugenics but applying
it in an individual consent level and saying we're not
killing anybody or telling anybody they can't breed. Yeah. And
on top of this, we have you know, various other
(45:29):
models of transhumanist um ascension, right, technological augmentation, cyborgs, virtual worlds,
space exploration, colonization, because let's remember you on a lot
of the ideas of exploration and particularly colonization of other worlds,
it's about the long term survival of human race, right.
And in fact, there's a there's a two twelve book
(45:50):
that came out from Corey dr Ow and Charles Stross
titled The Rapture of the Nerds, which which I have
not read some interesting things about it, but it's it
is in effect that that term is referring to a
trans humanist elevation of at least certain individuals and some
of the problems that occur there. Yeah, well, I mean,
(46:11):
I certainly I don't know to what extent this makes
the idea of trans humanism religious in nature. And that's
something we can talk about, is you know, to what
extent does a similarity to a religious idea make an
idea of religious I don't know if I would say
trans humanism is a religion or not. You might be
able to make that argument, But in any case, I
(46:31):
I do see parallels to, for example, the idea in
Christianity of resurrection bodies, you know, the idea that those
who are dead in Christ upon Christ's return will be
resurrected in in bodies made of like a like a
better spiritual material. It sounds a lot like trans human
body modification to me, Like you have your body remade
(46:52):
in a way that will never age, will never die,
will somehow still be you, but won't be that crappy
body you had before. Yeah, don't think it's so much
that the trans humanism is religious in nature. But some
of these religious models we've been discussing, they share the
same energy as as trans humanism, Like they're similar fears,
similar aspirations about who we are and where we're going.
(47:16):
All right, everybody, We actually have much more on this topic,
but we went so long we're splitting it into two episodes,
So come back next time and we will continue this
discussion of of rapture, trans humanism, utopianism, and then of
course how we as humans deal with these these prophecies,
both secular and spiritual, when they do not come to pass.
(47:40):
In the meantime, reach out to us on all the
normal platforms. You'll find us a Stuff to Bow your
Mind dot com. You'll find us on Facebook and Twitter
as well as Tumbler and Instagram, and if you want
to email us you can do so. As always that
blow the mind at how stup works dot com for
(48:04):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Joe McCormick.
And Hey, Robert, I've got a question for you. Hit me.
Any time in your life have you ever had the
(00:24):
feeling the things are about to come to a very
serious conclusion? And I don't mean like the meeting you're
in right now, I mean the world. Did you ever
get that feeling like you're living in the end times?
This has got to be the last of days? No um.
Sometimes I feel I sometimes I wonder what if the
(00:47):
next moment is going to be the last moment? Like,
but it's always there's always going to be some sort
of harbinger of destruction, right, So I don't I look
up into the sky and think, Hey, what would it
be like to see the you know, civilization busting near earth,
object entering the atmosphere. I think about things like that,
but even then I'll have like a few more minutes
(01:10):
to process it. It all does have to come to
an end at some point, so it makes you wonder
if that end is near, And in fact, I think
some people have made statistical arguments that if you assume, okay,
I'm a random observer, not a privileged observer. Uh. The
the statistical argument is that humanity has got to be
ending pretty soon because if human if the human population
(01:33):
continues to grow, that many, many more randomly selected observers
will be among those born in the future than those
that are living you know, right now or have lived
in the past. And so if we you assume that
you are the middle of the road random observer and
not one of the tail end, then humanity has got
(01:54):
to end pretty soon. I don't really because I always
would think, well, if I'm not a privileged observer, why
do I get to live in the end times? Like,
surely I'm at least living in like the penultimate age
and on the ultimate age of man. Well, that instinct
of yours is I would say, fairly unique, because it
is very common for people to think that they are
(02:15):
living in a very privileged time. Have you noticed that? Yeah, well, no,
I think I'm living in a privileged time. I mean
compared with before. I don't mean materially privileged. I think
that's true too. I think we are some of the
luckiest people and the golden age of television, Joe, have
you seen these shows? Yeah, I'm assuming you're referring to
the fact that we can still get quantumly rerunning every
now and then. But but yeah, we're materially privileged. But
(02:39):
but I also mean privileged in terms of I happen
to be the person who's of the generation that's alive
when it all comes to the end. So today's episode
is going to be about the field of eschatology, which
is both theological and ostensibly secular, but it's the stuff
(03:00):
of the end of times. What what happens when there
is a conclusion to it all the either the end
of the human species or a very significant transition of
the human species into another kind of being, or a
very significant transition of the human species into a very
different kind of situation or station, either ushering in a
(03:22):
utopia that brings happiness and prosperity for all, or you know,
an apocalyptic vision. And we can get into what these
words mean in a minute, but that brings destruction and
calamity and uh, you know road warrior kind of stuff. Yeah,
I mean, it's so much of it hinges on this
feeling that we're talking about, where it just it seems
(03:43):
like something's gotta give, something's gotta break, something's gotta change,
for better or worse. It it always takes me back
to to the Yates poem. Right, surely the second coming
is at hand. Surely something is about to get the
falcon cannot hear the falcon? Or man, something's going wrong? Yeah,
pasionate enthusiasm among the worst? Right, passion passionate intensity intensity? Yes,
(04:05):
that's even better. Yeah, what's the exact line. The the
best lack all conviction, and the worst are filled with
passionate intensity. I very often find that's true. You know,
some of the some of the best people I know
with the best opinions don't speak up that often. But man,
people who have bad opinions are allowed as heck, well,
(04:27):
they don't have to worry as much about saying the
wrong thing, do that. No, Well, I mean it helps
when you're never wrong. So let's let's let's get into
it here. Um. First of all, let's just talk a
little bit about basic human utopianism. You know, I want
to share a fact with you, Robert. I always assumed
that the you in the word utopia comes from the
(04:49):
Greek prefix meaning good, as in uh, you know euphoria,
the good feeling, but that is not actually where it
comes from too. So the title Utopia, of course, can
be traced back to Thomas Moore's book Utopia and this
sort of fictional but also philosophical treatise on what a
perfect society might look like. You could look at it
as a sort of update to Plato's Republic in a way,
(05:11):
or a laying out of the groundwork of you know,
how could we achieve a perfect world? And so if
utopia and that since had meant it had been the
way I understood it, it would have meant good place.
You know, utopia a good place. But the U is
not actually eu as in good place, but it's you
as in no place, because it didn't exist, right, Okay,
(05:35):
well that makes sense. Yeah, so I think that's something
that we should keep in mind. Going all the more reason,
I guess that Microsoft word is always telling me that
dystopia is not a word. Oh really, yeah, or at
least I get that. I get that correction all the time.
I mean, obviously, dystopia has come to have a meaning
for us as the opposite of utopia, as as a
dissident vision of the future. Right, But well, before we
(05:57):
get to dystopia, walk me through utopia, all right. So,
and really, in defining utopia, we essentially define dystopia human experiences.
Of course, you can think of it as the spark
on the line right between the expanse of the past
and the expanse of the future. It's like, you know,
it's like like a cartoon fuse to a bomb, right,
and we're just sparking along. And humans have thrived in
(06:21):
large part by their ability to perceive and mold that future.
All right. We developed new ways of doing this, doing
the things we always did, hunting, farm and crafting, as
well as the ways we think about the world, cosmology, society, etcetera.
And so we think of human existence. If we think
of human existence, has this spark upon the fuse of time,
we judge the soon to ignite, and the igniting based
(06:44):
on the charred and flaming remnants of what proceeded is
and we we we come to look beyond and imagine
near and far futures on this very line. And so
humans across cultures and times have sought to radically trams
formed their existence socially, bodily, technologically, etcetera. All as ares
(07:07):
a ways to try and and better ourselves and better
the way that we live on this world. Yeah, I
think that's true. And of course, if you look at
the basic human project of civilization as one that tends
towards creating a better life for all of us, it's
easy to look at that and conclude, well, than a
successful execution of this project would end in utopia. Yeah. Yeah,
(07:31):
it's it's kind of like the it's it's the notion
that if a city is essentially engineering engineering exercise, there
should be some idealized version of the city that we're
aspiring to. I mean, eventually we can get there. In
this case, you know, the city is not just a
literal city, but the city is the model for the
you know, all things civilization. Now, I would argue, I
(07:53):
think that one reason we sense attention here, Like you
might say, well, I don't expect us to ever reach utopia,
but I do advocate civilization continuing to try to improve
the lives of everyone for as long as possible. Uh.
Doesn't that seem a contradiction. I would say that the
main contradiction lies in the incoherence of the idea of perfection.
You can't create a perfect society, because that idea doesn't
(08:16):
make sense. They are inherent tensions in society. People want
different things, and so there there is no such thing
as a perfect society for everyone. Yeah. I mean, you
could make this more or less idealized building in which
people are going to live and work. But then what
are you gonna set the thermostat to right? Because some
people are gonna be too hot, some people are gonna
(08:37):
be too cold some people what people want to wear
a hoodie in the office. Some people want to sit
there and sweat. Now, one way you could get out
of this bind is by saying, you know, this project
of continually trying to improve human civilization is going to
be cut short, and it is going to be cut
short by supernatural forces. So you're talking about a an
(08:57):
apocalypse of spiritual apocalypse, Yes, and I think it is
very worth mentioning something about the etymology here. The word apocalypse. Now,
the word apocalypse originally did not mean mad max uh.
It originally meant an unveiling or a revelation. So, for instance,
the Book of Revelation in the Bible in the New
Testament is sometimes known as the apocalypse of John. Means
(09:19):
the same thing the Revelation to John John wrote down,
so it's vision that he had all these cryptic things
that are playing out at the end of time exactly.
So a revelation it could reveal knowledge, visions, understanding, or
very often predictions about the future. And I think because
of associations with predictions about the future and the Book
(09:42):
of Revelation itself, the word apocalypse is a word that
has come to be associated with end to times events,
either the end of the world, the end of humanity,
or some radical change in station and the fortune of humankind.
And we should go ahead and say when you use
the word apocalypse, that changes usually for the worst. Right.
(10:02):
People don't usually say apocalypse in a positive way, like
there will be an apocalypse and will it will lead
to utopia, which is interesting considering the fact that the
the origin of the word stems from a story that
is supposedly about the the victory of the eventual victory
of all things good overall things evil. Right. Yeah, there
are a lot of different Christian visions of the end times,
(10:22):
and we'll talk about them in this episode today, but
they typically involve both very negative events and ultimately a
perfectly positive event but so the popular version of apocalypse. Yeah,
we we associate with kind of post apocalyptic movies. Again,
The Road Warrior perfect example, great movie. Human civilization as
we formerly know it has ended and everything has just
(10:44):
gone to hell. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold right,
and you need guzzline. So it's also worth stressing here
that plenty of religions do not depend on such a
linear time frame right. Instead have a sickle coal and
certainly we see this in the older religions, the pre
Christian religions. Plenty of religions are more concerned with cosmological
(11:06):
origins underlying everyday reality and less of any notion on ending.
So for in for example, for example, in Hinduism, the
universe is continually created, preserve, destroyed, and created again. It's
an endless cycle, and the process of creation moves and
these large overarching cycles, and each cycle has four great
um epochs of time. The concept of reincarnation works alongside this,
(11:28):
as life flows into life, flows into life. I like
this because it mirrors some different hypotheses about the ultimate
nature of the universe. Now we don't know yet what
the ultimate nature of the universe is, but there are
some cosmological models in which, for example, our local universe
maybe a bouncing universe where it it collapses into a
(11:50):
singularity and then re explodes back into a universe with
distributed matter and energy all over the place, or event
like a bounty house where it's it's inflated in the
morning and then nipuke in it all day described that
with chlorox bleach and deflated the evening. Yes, it is
kind of like that too, But there is another apocalyptic
(12:11):
spiritual event that I wanted to call attention to just
because it's so cool. I can't pretend to understand it
all that well because it's Norse mythology, and Norse mythology,
I feel like is is a more impenetrable to the
outsider type of mythology than things like Greek mythology or
do you find that too. There's I mean, I feel
like I can get it a lot more when I
(12:32):
listened to death Metal. Okay, I think that's that's how
I tend to try and process it. Think of like
extreme survivalist situations, uh, and the and the and the
resulting pantheon of gods, the resulting time frame of events
that would that would shape that and be shaped by that. Well, yeah,
in that popular sense of apocalyptic, Norse mythology has some
(12:54):
great apocalyptic events that they've got Ragnarok and it's this
epic escottological battle involving God's monsters, chaos. There's this disastrous
cataclysmic winter, the mountains crumble, this giant sea serpent comes
up and spits venom over all the earth and poisons
the waters, and there's this huge slog down, bloody battle
(13:17):
where most of the gods get killed. Uh, it's brutal,
but hey, it would be an extreme bummer of a
religion that just ends with a cataclysmic disaster for everyone
and has nothing positive to come of it. So so
many religions also sort of have spiritual utopias in their
scatological framework, right, that the end times will result in
(13:39):
some kind of very positive situation for many people at least,
that's right now. Obviously we're gonna get to Christian models
here in a minute, but before we get there, I
want to just touch base on on some Buddhist ideas here.
So there's a recurring theme in Hinduism and Buddhism that
one may escape the endless psychle of death and rebirth
(14:01):
the wheel of sam Sara and attain liberation. Um. And
you can interpret such liberation as it's as its own
form of ending or perfection even but it's also kind
of a it's a form of escape or form of
ending that can be acquired at any point along the line.
So there's not you don't have to wait till the
end times or some distant future to attain liberation to
(14:24):
reach nirvana. So the inner journey as opposed to a
physical world journey asynchronous timelines. That being said, Um, there
is a pretty cool um idea out there, and that
is the belief system within Buddhism. Uh. That's a millennial
Buddhist in particular. Uh. They have this uh, this character
(14:46):
known as my Trea, and my Trea is the Bodhisattva,
the being, an enlightenment of the future who will arrive
on Earth. Generally, I've seen some numbers thrown out there,
but just it's gonna be a long time in the future.
Try no, Robert, you have a number on our notes. Okay,
I have a number, and this is a this one
comes from a from my belief Japanese model. There's a
(15:09):
sect of Buddhist monks. They're are devoted to my trio
and I and I forgive me, I do not recall
the Japanese name from my trio off the top of
my head. But it is what five billion years in
the future. My reading that those are a lot of zeros.
Uh No, that would be five trilli, five trillion, six
hundred and seventy billion years. So it's no way sixties seven, yeah,
(15:33):
six hundred and seventy billion years. It's a colossal number.
And it's from that this would be this is gonna
be like a far future time when people live to
incredible ages. I want to say eighty thousand years old,
So huge numbers involved here, and my trio would be
the ultimate successor to our current Buddha. Um Sharda got him,
(15:54):
got him a Buddha and uh this Buddha will achieve
complete enlightenment and teach pure dharma here on earth. And
I just want to read a quick quote. This is
from book of my Trea, The Future Buddha by Alan
Spenberg says quote, the prospect of a future Buddha, yet
another in the long line of Buddhas, offers an attractive possibility.
(16:16):
Although liberation from suffering is possible for anyone at any time.
According to Buddhist those being fortunate enough to live at
a time when a Buddha is active in the world
are far more likely to realize the arduous goal of
bringing all craving to cessation. Though perhaps initially a minor
figure in the early Buddhist tradition, my Trea thus comes
(16:36):
to represent a hope for the future, a time when
all human beings could once again enjoy the spiritual and
physical environment most favorable to enlightenment and the release from
worldly suffering. I think that's fascinating because the very positive
situation here, that the utopia that's being brought about isn't
one necessarily of material fulfillment, but one of the realization
(17:00):
of the lack of necessity for material fulfillment. Very often,
when you see like a heaven or just any kind
of very positive, spiritually imagined future situation, people people speak
of material comforts. Yeah. Yeah, And indeed this, uh, this
particular idea, I guess would only entail material comforts and
(17:22):
insofar as they enable you to seek in or enlightenment
and realize that you don't need material coming rights. Okay,
So a lot of what we're gonna be talking about
in this episode is not just spiritual, religious supernatural frameworks
for eschatology, but actually secular and very often scientific or
technological frameworks for eschatology. And there are just like we
(17:45):
talked about religious apocalypses and religious future utopias, there are
secular apocalypses and secular future utopias. Yeah. And I think
the fascinating thing here and and and something preving to
keep in mind as we we play with this topic
here today is that there's so much shared um circuitry
involved both ideas. So you know, it's it's easy for
(18:08):
for for an atheist to stand on one side and
scoff at some of these spiritual ideas of utopia and
salvation and destruction. But when you break it down, how
different is the underlying experience of those ideas? How different
is that from some of these secular ideas we're discussing. Now, Well,
that's a good question. I think we should discuss them
(18:30):
and explore. Well, as far as secular apocalypses go, we
really only don't even have to to mention many of them.
I mean, they're pretty obvious. The idea of nuclear annihilation
of global cataclysm green Goo, greg Goo. Um, I don't
even know if this one is a thing, but I'm
gonna go and say it. Brown goo, who knows? Um singularity?
(18:50):
Um I I love our Scott Baker's idea of a
semantic apocalypse, which one is that semantic apocalypse is basically
just the death of meaning. Where we reach this point
from where we have a certain neuroscientific understanding of the
human experience, and uh, we realize that all human consciousness
is a coin trick, and we explain the coin trick.
(19:12):
It's kind of a Nietzsche in despair. Well, all of
those are possible things that people could predict happening, you know.
So you've got green goo, gray goo. You know, people
talking about nanotechnology or something that could take over the world.
We don't even have that kind of nanotechnology yet and
maybe we never could. Uh, it could just be something
impossible that people are dreaming up. But on the other hand, ultimately,
(19:36):
if we assume that our current understanding of physics is
basically correct, and we think it probably is, I mean,
there's a lot we don't know, but what we do
know we're pretty confident about, and that the laws of
physics don't change with time. Our scientific picture of the
universe does very firmly predict one type of scaton that
is unsurvivable. Right, And I want to read a say,
(20:00):
action from a book I've been reading. Actually, it's a
book by the physicist Sean Carroll called The Big Picture,
and he's talking about the physical cosmological model of what's
going to happen to the universe after a while. So
he talks about the accelerating expansion of the universe, and
that's fueled by the pull of vacuum energy, you know,
the energy out there that's causing the galaxies to expand
(20:22):
farther and farther apart. Uh, And that all tells us
more or less what's going to happen, he writes, quote,
it's possible, and in some sense would be simplest for
the accelerated expansion to simply continue without end. That leads
to a somewhat lonely future for our universe. Right now,
the night sky is alive with brightly shining stars and
(20:43):
galaxies that can't last forever. Stars use up their fuel
and will eventually fade to black. Astronomers estimate that the
last dim star will wink out around one quadrillion or
ten to the fifteen years from now. That's well, that's
well after the age of my Trea. Yeah, good to know. Yeah, though,
who knows how long my Treia lives. Throwing that out there,
(21:06):
my Trea could could have something to say about these
stars burning up all their fuel. But anyway, Carol continues.
By then, other galaxies will have moved far away, and
our local group of galaxies will be populated by planets,
dead stars, and black holes. One by one, those planets
and dead stars will fall into the black holes, which
in turn will join into one supermassive black hole. Ultimately,
(21:30):
as Stephen Hawking taught us, even those black holes will evaporate.
After about one google or tend to the one hundred years,
all of the black holes in our observable universe will
have evaporated into a thin mist of particles, which will
grow more and more dilute as space continues to expand.
The end result of this are most likely scenario for
(21:52):
the future of the universe is nothing but cold empty space,
which will last literally forever. Well that's um, that's nice
and dark, but literally and figuratively Yeah, but then again,
it sounds like that mist of particles. That sounds kind
of refreshing, yeah, I mean, but also it's you're dealing
(22:13):
with such a long period of time here, it's kind
of it's kind of like the idea of the humanless universal,
lifeless universe. It's really more just return to normal normalcy
in the universe, right, I mean, we were not around
for ages and ages and ages for the vast majority
of cosmological time. So what's it mattered that we're not
(22:33):
going to survive in the long run either. Well, I'm
just trying to offer an example of how you don't
have to get far out into left field with crazy
technological predictions in order to say that at some point
there will be an end. There will be an endpoint
to humanity. Uh that you know, it's it's hard to
survive the energy evaporation death of the universe unless in
(22:55):
a post in my tray a world we have figured
out ways technologically to escape into alternate universes. So true,
in those doors to alternate universes, maybe our salvation, but
you might not have to walk through a door to
reach a very different kind of world that might be
much better than the one we have, because there are
also secular visions of utopias right there, most certainly are
(23:16):
it doesn't have to be heaven. It can be we
can make heaven here on earth, according to some people. Yeah,
I mean, in a way, a lot of these remind
me of the my Trea vision, the idea that you're
gonna you're gonna have a world where people are gonna
be able to find peace. Um. So we have various
models from this, I mean, some of the ones that
are more scientifically based. We have various ideas about what
(23:38):
a post scarcity society might be, transhumanist existence, um, the
the the essential Star Trek model of life on Earth,
right where everybody's gotten to the point where we get along.
We have technology that we have holio decks, and we
have machines that will just create whatever food we need
on demand, new ages of human consciousness. Um than various
(24:01):
positive spins on the technological singularity. Yeah. Now, if you
don't know that much about the singularity, or even if
you do, we're gonna be talking about that at more
length later on, and how that fits into ideas of
religious eschatology. And then of course there are so many
different secular models of utopia that are that are that
are based on how we can build a better society
(24:23):
um various utopian cults, various utopian mindsets that have been
thrown out, their new political models, ways of organizing ourselves,
ways of building that better city that rely less on
technology and more on simply the ordering of ourselves and
the ordering of the inner self. Alright, we're gonna take
(24:44):
a quick break, and when we come back, we will
explore the Christian rapture. All right, we're back to wrap
about the Christian Rapture. I wonder if there has been
any Christian hip hop that has expressly concerned itself with
the rapture. I would love to hear about it. Quite
(25:05):
sure that has happened. Well, you know there's that Blondie song, right, rapture?
Is that about the Rapture? No? I don't think so.
But it's very weird, is that the one? I think
that's the one about the man for Mars. He's eating
cars and now he goes out and needs guitars. I'm
not sure which which part of the back book of
(25:25):
Revelation she's referring to there. The Book of Revelation is
full of wonderfully strange imagry, and that would that would
fit right in actually, But okay, so the Christian rapture,
I wanna just put you in a scenario. You're on
a plane. There may or may not be snakes on
the plane, doesn't matter either way. Suddenly many people on
(25:45):
the plane have disappeared, possibly including the pilot and co pilot,
but thankfully for you this time, not the pilot and
co pilot. Right, is this a Langaliers thing? No, but
I am describing a scene from a popular novel, and
we'll get to that in just a minute. So the
people are gone where you would have normally found them. Uh,
instead of people sitting in their seats eating bags of
(26:07):
peanuts watching Terminator Genesis, Uh, you find little piles of clothes.
And a friend of mine. This is a funny Ones
actually told me that he watched a low budget Christian
apocalypse movie in which there's this this scene happens, people
disappear in their clothes are left behind. But he says
that the clothes were not only empty, but neatly starched
and folded, and in some shots you could see that
(26:29):
they still had price tags attached to them. But anyway,
people start screaming, wailing, where did their loved Ones go
and at first it's a mystery, but then uh, it
gradually becomes a parent that what the people who disappeared
had in common was their firm belief in Jesus Christ.
And this is this is a scene from Left Behind,
(26:49):
a popular work of Christian schatological fantasy fiction by Tim
Lahay and Jerry B. Jenkins. You've probably heard of this before, Robert,
I assume you're pretty familiar with Left Behind. Yes, I
am familiar with Left Behind, though though I have to
say I don't think it really picked up steam in
the church community. I was a part of as like
(27:09):
as a as a kid and junior high in high
school student. Until after I was kind of, um, you know,
after I was less active in that community where we
were more into uh, this present darkness by I think
it's frank And that essentially was kind of the whole
series of books that had to do a spiritual warfare.
So it was more concerned with the idea that kind
(27:31):
of a screw tape scenario was always playing out all
around us. And then there are angels and demons like
duking it out for your mind and your Yeah, so
that was big. I think those came out in like
eighty five. Initially, and Left Behind the first Left Behind
book came out in nine, so I think it was out,
but it was just really beginning to build steam. Okay, Well,
(27:53):
so this scenario I've described and Left Behind this is
it is part of a work of Christian fantasy fiction.
But the idea is not just something that the author's
dreamed up. It's been a popular element of Christian eschatology
for many years. So where does this idea of the
rapture come from? That this is the rapture? People are
(28:13):
are they disappear? They've been raptured up. So I would
say it's a complex doctrine with varying theological interpretations, but
the general rapture belief is usually linked most directly to
a passage in First Thessalonians chapter four, where where the
author of the letter, presumed to be Paul, rights for
(28:35):
the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,
with the voice of the archangel and with the trump
of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.
Then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught
up together with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air. So shall we ever be with
the Lord, wherefore comfort one another with these words. So
(28:58):
technically the rapture is that actually people often use the
rapture as a term to signify the Christian escaton that
you know, the end of days, but it's actually just
one event, uh, sort of a moment from this whole
complex system of Christian eschatology. But the idea is that
upon the moment of the earthly return of Christ, dead
Christians will be resurrected and living Christians will be miraculously
(29:22):
sucked up into the sky to meet the Lord, who
is presumably descending from above at the same moment. But
there are some elements of Christian eschatology that match very
much what we were talking about earlier with the idea
of of apocalypses and and utopias. So I mean, because
that sounds like an apocalypse for for pretty much everybody,
(29:43):
Like that's going to end the work day, no matter,
no matter what. Yeah, it's always it's always played for
horror in the Christian apocalypse movies, right, you know, people
people start screaming, they don't know what's happened. It is, uh,
I guess it is assumed to be a very positive
event for the people who have been wrapp p sured,
But for those left on earth it is not a
very positive event. Now this is my own two sense,
(30:05):
but I wonder, I wonder if that the rapture narrative
as it's been popularized, uh in current society, if it
speaks to a desire for a kind of public, passive,
aggressive rectification of faith, you know, in an age of
perceived marginalization of traditional ridgious beliefs. So you get, you
get liberation from a weary world with just a hint
(30:26):
of a middle finger to those that are left behind
it didn't who didn't believe in what you believed and
didn't have the same faith that you had. What you
know is arguably a better moral stance than fantasies of health,
fire and an eternal torment for those who don't agree
with you. But still, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't try
to psycho and I'm sure everybody's got different attitudes toward it,
(30:47):
but I'm sure for some people there is an element
of that that's kind of like I'm out of here,
So yeah, you know, I suck it. And today we're
gonna be focusing on what would be called Christian futurists.
These are people who think biblical prophecies are going to
be fulfilled sometime in the future. There are also other
types of people who interpret the Bible differently, their pretorics,
(31:08):
who believe that these prophecies were fulfilled during the events
described in the New Testament, or in the early years
of the Church or sometime in the past. Uh. They're
also those who believe it's all a bit metaphorical. Really,
but there are very few broad concepts and distinctions in
Christian futurists eschatological thinking that that we can relate to
(31:28):
in this episode. So one is this big, the big event,
the main show, the second coming of Christ. So Christians
believe that that Jesus Christ was martyred, rose from the dead,
ascended to heaven, and at some point after his ascension
as described in the Bible, Christ will return to Earth
or perhaps in some sense has already returned literal or metaphorical,
(31:49):
but in any case, he comes back, and he's not
here just to visit. There's some schatological purpose to his return,
and there are different views on what that is, but
usually it involved some sort of putting the hammer down,
like there is an act of final judgment, Jesus is
back in this time. It's personal. Yeah, But then there's
this concept of the tribulation. So many Christians also believe
(32:11):
that immediately before the second Coming of Christ, there will
be a time of great suffering. You know, it's often
described as war, persecution, hardship, hunger, pain, disease, destruction, and
this very bad period, this road warrior period, as as
you might want to associate it, is known as the tribulation.
(32:32):
This is your apocalyptic aspect. And in the pop culture
since the term it's it's about as close as Christianity
gets to full road warrior. In a way, you can
think of it as kind of like the fattening of
the pig for for for slaughter. Right, If you think
of of hardship and warfare and human suffering is kind
of like the fertile soil from which you know, faith
(32:52):
and especially like strong faith can emerge, then that's uh
that that's kind of how sometimes interpret this vision. And
I think that's actually a concept you see throughout the
theological history of Christianity. There there's very much emphasis on
hardship causing people to strengthen their their faith or their
or their religious character. But so where does this idea
(33:15):
of the tribulation comes from. It comes from the preaching
of Jesus, essentially in the Book of Matthew, for example,
and he's talking about right before the Son of Man returns.
He says, for then shall be great tribulations such as
was not since the beginning of the world to this time,
no nor ever shall be and except those days should
(33:35):
be shortened. There should no flesh be saved, but for
the elect sake, those days shall be shortened. So something's
gonna gonna cut off the tribulation. What's going to happen?
What will it be shortened by? Well, perhaps it is
the millennium. This is another concept from Christians chatology, and
it's a period of utopian rule on earth where Christ
(33:56):
himself or Christian goodness generally will rule for the earth
for one thousand years. So sometimes this is interpreted as
a long period of time represented metaphorically by the idea
of a thousand years. Sometimes it's literally a thousand years.
But this comes primarily from the Book of Revelation, chapter twenty,
in which it said that those who have been martyred
(34:16):
for not having taken the mark of the beast on
their hands or their foreheads will be resurrected and rule
with Christ for a thousand years now. There are tons
of different ways that you can put all these concepts together.
They're there are different ideas about in what order they come.
Their pre millennialists who think that Christ's second coming will
happen right before the millennium begins. There are post millennialists
(34:40):
who think that Christ's second coming and final judgment will
happen at the end of the millennium. And they're also
among the pre millennialists. Some who think the rapture is
going to happen before the tribulation, in the middle of
the tribulation, or that the rapture won't literally happen at all.
So so there's a great diversity of opinion. I don't
want to represent them as all thinking the same thing.
(35:01):
And of course I should also stress that there are
plenty of Christians who don't really buy into any of
this end times framework. You know, they're a millennialists that
they're not they're not looking forward to any kind of
apocalypse or utopia on Earth in any sense. Yeah, I mean,
you know, obviously it's going to vary from from sec
to sect, from individual to individual. But it's I think
(35:22):
it's definitely hard to argue that at the at the
end of the date, is anything that occurs in like
a book of revelation. Is anything concerning the end times
really affect your day to date a much? You know? Yeah, um, well,
I know it might. It might. And I want to
make a case actually why some people would say that
belief in the end time, whether religious or secular, does
(35:46):
actually affect the way we live our lives. Well, I
guess it depends on when you were you're throwing out
that end time, when you're throwing out that cataclysmic event,
when you're throwing out that utopia, if you think it's
gonna occur near enough in the future that you can
actively structure your life in accordance to it, I mean
that's one thing. Well that that is a point that
will be echoed by somebody I want to quote in
(36:08):
a bit. Okay, okay, So, Robert, we we've talked about utopias, apocalypse,
is the the end times? The schatological views of of
what's coming down the road, how soon it's coming, and
is it gonna be good or is it going to
be bad? But these ideas are not, of course limited
to religious believers, right right, Yeah, We've had plenty of
(36:29):
concepts that have been thrown out there in terms in
terms of uh, you know, secular utopia, even a scientific utopia.
I mean you can, if you you can trace fictionalized
versions of this journey all the way back to the
epic of Gilgamesh, humanity's earliest surviving piece of literature, dating
back to the second millennium BC, in which are our
hero wants the secret of immortality and failing that, realizes
(36:52):
that the greatest naim is to just build a city,
just building an awesome city instead, and then that's even
you know that that's also really hard work. Well there
that project of civilization, right yeah, But but even in
just the e a good Google mess, we see that
quest for more life and a better system for living
as a people. Now, um, I was reading a wonderful
(37:12):
two thousand twelve article from James J. Hughes titled the
Politics of trans human Humanism and the Techno Millennial Imagination
sixty six through uh, and he traces trans humanism and
trans humanist thought back to into the European Enlightenment in
the seventeen hundreds. Now sorry to interrupt, but you and
(37:33):
Christian did an episode about trans humanism recently, right, Yeah,
we we may have done a couple of them now
that I think about it. Um, well, it's kind of
been a summer of trans humanism, if you will. So
we you know, talked that we did an episode that
was devoted to just the general idea of trans humanism
and some of the different sects of trans humanism that
are present in the world. But can you give us
(37:53):
a one sentence digest basically that through science and technology
we can create a better expression of the human form
and or human society, so we can we can live longer,
we can live happier, we can And this is where
that the definition varies because you have you have some
people whose idea of trans humanism is far more individual based.
(38:16):
So it's like, hey, some people are gonna live forever
and have spaceships and that's great. Other people are gonna say, well,
we're not really transhumanist unless everybody can live forever and
everybody has access to spaceships, and you've solved some of
these other problems. So it gets, it gets, it turns
into a mire rather quickly, right, But it's the idea
(38:37):
of transcending the human animal and well, so do you
want to transcend into the species level or just modify
your own body to transcend your birth nature. Yeah, it's
kind of the same idea that you see with your
topian models in general, where people will say, hey, this
is where we are now, this is where we would
like to be, and then in addition to squabbles about
(38:59):
where you want to go, there's the inevitable problem of
how you get there. Okay, But back to James Hughes,
what's his argument? Okay, So he says that a lot
of transumutism dates back to the European Enlightenment of the
seventeen hundreds, which allowed the same millennialist dreams we've discussed
in religious terms. Uh, these aspirations to grow, to grow
(39:21):
who we are, but instead of doing it on you know,
based on faith, based on the divine intervention or some
other model. It's it all has to do with reason
and science and technology. So machines will free us from
our labor, medicine will rid us of disease, and peace
will wash across the land. It's a basic enlightenment tenants
there um and of course some help also acknowledge that
(39:43):
we might have some of the Enlightenment thinkers said, okay,
we might have to also fight a whole bunch of
awful wars. Really there, Yeah, so we might have to
go through a tribulation. Yeah, exactly to the millennium. And
in generally the details of the ascension, the science of
the rapture, if you will, is ever varied, argued, and
and sometimes glossed over all altogether. Um. But Hughes says, quote,
(40:05):
it was in this stew of often contradictory ideas about
the nature of progress that modern techno millennialism was forged.
And you have a number of individuals, early individuals who
are getting involved in these ideas m Benjamin Franklin, William Godwin,
or just two that argue that humans would eventually conquer oppression, inequality, disease,
(40:26):
and death. Um. What about did Tero ditto is interesting?
Um seventeen sixty nine. Uh. In his work, UH, the
alan Bert's Dream proposed that human brains might be taken
apart and then put back together, that intelligent animals and
animal human hybrids might be possible. And this one's the
(40:46):
big kicker. Sophisticated machines might have mine. Oh I'm gonna
talk about that in a minute, because there is plenty
of artificial intelligence eschatology now, the post enlightenment quest for
better life, for utopia even um, obviously we could spend
(41:06):
multiple podcasts if we wanted to just talking about that,
all the the individual expressions of this, uh of this,
this this grasping. But in short, you see a number
of different social movements, right, you see you see everything
from anarchism and liberalism, social democracy, Marxist lenin Leninism, fat fascism, etcetera. Right,
(41:28):
all these different models of this is what we need
to do. This is how we need to reorganize ourselves.
Cast out the old, embrace the new, and we're gonna
be better for it. And of course none of them
really worked out quite as intended, even the ones that
arguably worked, Right, Well, what's your beef with social democracy? No?
(41:49):
I love social democracy, but uh, let's just say that
we're done always we're still working out the kinks. Yeah,
I can see that. And of course we would be
remiss if we didn't mention eugenics, right, I mean, that's
a utopian vision that's now widely regarded as a as
an utterly bankrupt and evil idea. Yeah, it's and it's
(42:12):
fascinating because in a post it's like a postar in
a post oar winning world eugenics. If you strip away
all the horrible things that came out of it, if
you just like, basically, if you stripped the meat off
of the carcass of eugenics and you just look at
the bones, you can say, well, that seems to make
a certain amount of sense, right treat you know, basically,
(42:34):
selectively breed humanity to improve the expression of the human species.
It's something that that sounds fine until you think about process, right,
you know, so what is the process of doing that? Well,
that requires either killing people who you think harbor less
desirable genes or not allowing them to breed, or not
(42:57):
allowing them to breed at the same rate as people
who you think possessed desirable genes. Also in the process
is the idea of selection. Who gets to pick which
genes are desirable. Some people might think, well, it's not
just genes that prevent certain diseases and make people live
longer and stuff like that. Some people might think that
certain uh, you know, continental origins are more preferable than others,
(43:20):
and so you get into really nasty territory. But I
think what's interesting here is that eugenics is really not
that different from the idea of the Christian rapture, right,
because then in eugenics, it's basically this idea that selected
races and gene lineages are going to be lifted up
and essentially the rest are doomed. So it's an it's
(43:42):
an an elevation. It's an ascension of certain models of
humanity in the same way that a Christian rapture means
the elevation and survival of certain very particular modes of
human thought, faith, and reason. Well, yeah, this does sort
of highlight that they're they're very different ways of thinking
about out the idea of of utopia and apocalypse at
(44:03):
the end of times? Is it egalitarian in nature? Like?
Does does the destruction that's coming or the great blessing
that's coming apply to everyone or does it only apply
to some One person's utopia is another person's apocalypse? Right?
It could be very much and often within the same system.
Is now fast forward a bit, skip over a lot
(44:23):
of stuff, and you kind of get to our what
can we condemn eugenics? And move on. Yeah. Yeah, having
condemned eugenics and moving moving on, we get into another
area here, uh, certainly into more of our current transhumanist
ideas and a lot of the fascinating material that we've
even discussed on the show about genetic engineering, genetic manipulation
UM that are in many ways not that different from
(44:46):
some some some of the goals and aspirations of eugenics,
but achieved or potentially achieved through you know, far less
morally reprehensible. Means, the idea of simply selecting how genes
are expressed in our children, creating genetically modified UM expressions
(45:09):
that are more ideal without actively harming anybody. Okay, so yeah,
it's essentially taking the core nut of eugenics but applying
it in an individual consent level and saying we're not
killing anybody or telling anybody they can't breed. Yeah. And
on top of this, we have you know, various other
(45:29):
models of transhumanist um ascension, right, technological augmentation, cyborgs, virtual worlds,
space exploration, colonization, because let's remember you on a lot
of the ideas of exploration and particularly colonization of other worlds,
it's about the long term survival of human race, right.
And in fact, there's a there's a two twelve book
(45:50):
that came out from Corey dr Ow and Charles Stross
titled The Rapture of the Nerds, which which I have
not read some interesting things about it, but it's it
is in effect that that term is referring to a
trans humanist elevation of at least certain individuals and some
of the problems that occur there. Yeah, well, I mean,
(46:11):
I certainly I don't know to what extent this makes
the idea of trans humanism religious in nature. And that's
something we can talk about, is you know, to what
extent does a similarity to a religious idea make an
idea of religious I don't know if I would say
trans humanism is a religion or not. You might be
able to make that argument, But in any case, I
(46:31):
I do see parallels to, for example, the idea in
Christianity of resurrection bodies, you know, the idea that those
who are dead in Christ upon Christ's return will be
resurrected in in bodies made of like a like a
better spiritual material. It sounds a lot like trans human
body modification to me, Like you have your body remade
(46:52):
in a way that will never age, will never die,
will somehow still be you, but won't be that crappy
body you had before. Yeah, don't think it's so much
that the trans humanism is religious in nature. But some
of these religious models we've been discussing, they share the
same energy as as trans humanism, Like they're similar fears,
similar aspirations about who we are and where we're going.
(47:16):
All right, everybody, We actually have much more on this topic,
but we went so long we're splitting it into two episodes,
So come back next time and we will continue this
discussion of of rapture, trans humanism, utopianism, and then of
course how we as humans deal with these these prophecies,
both secular and spiritual, when they do not come to pass.
(47:40):
In the meantime, reach out to us on all the
normal platforms. You'll find us a Stuff to Bow your
Mind dot com. You'll find us on Facebook and Twitter
as well as Tumbler and Instagram, and if you want
to email us you can do so. As always that
blow the mind at how stup works dot com for
(48:04):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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