X-Message-Number: 19334
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: Americans "Left Behind" intellectually
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 12:56:35 -0700

Time magazine has an article (probably the July 1 cover story) about the 
growing popular interest in biblical "prophecy," especially as portrayed in 
Tim LaHaye and Larry Jenkins's crappy Left Behind series of novels, which 
rival Harry Potter novels in sales.

From:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,265345,00.html

A TIME/CNN poll finds that more than one-third of Americans say they are 
paying more attention now to how the news might relate to the end of the 
world, and have talked about what the Bible has to say on the subject. Fully 
59% say they believe the events in Revelation are going to come true, and 
nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the Sept. 11 attack.

---------------------------------------

Now, I've read Revelation. It describes a world where people are ruled by 
kings, practice slavery, keep records on scrolls, ride horses into battle, 
fight with swords, suffer from supernatural curses and get attacked by 
mythological creatures.

In other words, Revelation sounds more like the world of Xena the Warrior 
Princess than the kind of world we live in and can look forward to in coming 
decades.  That is, unless we're going to get assimilated into a "True Names" 
sort of virtuality presently, or else civilization collapses back to a 
preindustrial, demon-haunted level.

If this sort of myth-information is contaminating the American people's view 
of the future, it's probably contributing to the general lack of interest in 
conquering aging and death.  It's still WAY too early to refer to something 
like an "evolutionary stampede" towards Transhumanism.  Transhumanism's 
natural generational constituency may not even be born until after the Teens 
or Twenties in this century.

Mark Plus





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