From: john grigg (starman125@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Mar 07 2000 - 15:55:42 MST
Zero wrote:
Better to leave the theists to their own devices until their mouths begin to
water watching us live in health and wealth for hundreds of years with no
sign from God that he's pissed off about it.-
(end)
They will quickly adopt advanced technologies LONG before that! lol! They
will also live in health and wealth but fuse their doctrines and beliefs to
it. If a cheap treatment is developed to grant near immortality, believe
me, the vast majority of every religious and nonreligious group will rush to
take it!
Millennialist beliefs will still continue, as they have for centuries. I
myself believe that Christ was/is divine and is coming back. If he does not
by 2100 I would start to severely doubt based on my own study and thinking.
I could see myself having an argument with a young believer from the 22nd
century regarding the matter, should I make it there! He or she/IT(an
evangelical Christian or Mormon A.I., uplifted animal or upload, ever
thought of that, folks?) would tell me that I did not have all the evidence
back then but they do now.
I wonder how public morals will be a half or full century from now? Imagine
when birth control is totally safe and failproof, when pharmaceutical
options to enhance desire and performance are vastly better then even now,
zero gee love motels are inexpensive, when sexually transmitted diseases are
just a memory and when people age at a much, much slower rate which
preserves youthfulness.
I would suspect at first a sexual revolution making the sixties and
seventies look tame by comparison! And of course, you would have young
people or those getting out of monogomous relationships, sowing their wild
oats. But, I think most people would in time settle down for a committed,
monogamous and loving relationship for not only having their needs met but
to rear a family. There will be other forms of family but I don't see the
nuclear family going the way of the dinasaur.
I can see fundamentalists being outraged by such a sexual revolution. But
yet, the irony would be that the temptation for them as individual members
and especially the young people growing up in it, would be such that great
care would have to be taken that there is not wholesale defection to the
ways of the world.
Saying you might get pregnant or get an std would no longer work. They
would have to focus on doctrine and even more so on an appeal to moral
virtues and loyalty to God and one's present or future lifemate. And I
thought the poor Hebrews had problems living next door to those
pleasure-loving Canaanites!
Due to the superiority of schooling for children and adults due to A.I.,
neurohacking and just better training and funding of public education, I see
a Christianity which will have the intellectual means among the general
membership to view fundamental matters such as historical truth, the nature
and existance of God, evolution, ethics and other subjects in a way no
previous generation has had.
I do not see Christianity fading away. But the schisms within it will
increase even more so and on a grand scale. Acceptance or rejection of key
ideas and technologies will fuel this. I hope not but we may see wars of
words and even physical violence unleashed on us over these ideological
differences. Will we see conflict that will echo of the reformation or
enlightenment?
Even a race of near-immortals with nanotech-empowered godlike powers will
still, at least among a sizeable portion of the population, desire to
develop their spirituality in ways reminiscent of the past. They will see
Jesus Christ as a great exemplar whether or not they accept his divinity.
And at least some will wonder, in their age of splendor, if Christ was
divine and will return to chastise their world for it's pride and sin,
though it may not be fashionable in such a place to speak that.
sincerely,
John Grigg
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