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 _________________________________________________________________ Join the world s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19334