Types of Rapture

[joshcryer]

In my experience every type of fanatic or radical believer in a given idea also has their own varient on the Rapture.

For instance, the most commonly understood Rapture (at least in the USA) is the Original Rapture. That of Jesus coming down from heaven to take up all those who believe, leaving behind the sinners to dwell in a world where the anti-Christ reigns with fire and brimstone falling from the sky on a regular occurance. Plagues, and whatnot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture

But there are others, and while I am somewhat generalizing here (about the types of people who believe certain things), this is what I believe people expect from the Rapture, or from The Apocalypse.

First, is Nerd Rapture. The Rapture of the Nerds is, The Singularity, as envisioned by Verner Vinge, and Preached About by Ray Kurzweil. Basically the belief is that at some point in the near future, the world will change as Machines Achieve Strong Artificial Intelligence, and are able to Exponentially Advance themselves, allowing everyone to become immortal, live in their own virtual universes, do whatever they want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

Second is my most favorite, the Primitive Rapture. This Rapture is seen by many Spritualists or some Pagans as The Global Collapse. That is, Peak Oil occurs, The End Times Near, Nature Strikes Back, and so on. Many "Primitivists" believe that this is the Final Judgement of Nature, and that Human Civilization, the Evil that has Scourged The Earth will finally be met with a force it cannot reconcile itself with. And Everyone Will Live in a Primitive Utopia Away From The Evils of Work and Drudgury of Conumer Society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_Way_to_Go:_Life_at_the_End_of_Empire

One Key Tenent of these Beliefs is that, essentially, only the Good Survive. Even the Nerd Rapture presumes that Good will Conquer Evil, and that Benelovent Artificial Intelligence will Win The Day (despite that evolution has shown that more powerful species always conquer the weak). The Primitive and Christian Raptures believe that if you are "Good Enough" you'll be OK at the End Times. The former you Learn to be a Survivalist, and the latter you Get Swooped Up Into Heaven.

Now try as I might I can't think of other types of "Rapture." Can anyone tell me about other Religious Raptures and perhaps expound on any errors I have made here?

I think Rapture is interesting, and I'll be honest, if any of them are reasonable I wouldn't mind the Nerd one. I'd love to live until Epoch 3 of the Universe (Where the Local Group forms into a Super Galaxy a trillion years from now). But that's just dreaming. :)

(Note that I'm not a "believer" in the Nerd Rapture in that I think Kurzweil is wrong about the exponential curve. It's just a cute thought.)

[Beregond2]

1. You do realizethat there is nothing in traditional Christianity about

a "rapture," right? It's some loony thing dreamed-up by fundamentalists in recent years.

[joshcryer]

2. It goes back a very long way and is integral in many Christian teachings.

Newton even predicted when he thought it would occur.

Not all nerds believe in the Technological Singularity, and not all Pagans or Spritualists believe in Global Collapse. It's a generalization about what people believe that can be called a "Rapture."

That is the end of All Things and the Beginning of the New.

I just thought of another one, the 2012 people, but they're a small number so it didn't really click at the time. Some people believe that 2012 will usher in a New Age of Enlightenment and Heaven on Earth. I can find a link for that one if you want.

[Beregond2]

9. Wikipedia on the "Rapture."

"The Catholic and Orthodox churches as well as the Reformed denominations have no tradition of such a teaching and reject the doctrine, in part because they cannot find any reference to it among any of the early Church fathers and find its biblical foundation as not solid.<1>. Some also reject it because they interpret prophetic scriptures in either an amillennial or postmillennial fashion, as being more spiritual than physical."


Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed. In other words, every branch of Christianity except the evangelical/fundamentalist nutjobs.

[joshcryer]

11. Fair enough. What do those demoinations believe about The Apocalypse?

Do they consider Revelation a metaphor or an actual event that is to Occur? (Wikipedia isn't answering my question on a quick glance.)

[Beregond2]

15. The traditional belief

is that Christ will return "in power," and bring about "the new Jerusalem," the City of God. The dead will be clothed in new "spiritual bodies" and live eternally in bliss. Not in heaven as disembodied souls, but on a new Earth. Heaven and Earth will have become one.

As for all the death and destruction described in Revelation, that has always been very controversial, because it hardly jibes with the Christian doctrine of Jesus as the Prince of Peace and a God of Mercy. It was very nearly not included in the Bible at all for that reason. The main justification for including it was all the imagery of the Queen of Heaven, which had become incorporated into the cult of Mary; the very part that the fundamentalists now deny of course.

All the specific images of the Beast, 666, the Antichrist, the Whore of Babylon, and so forth, have been explained as references to figures and powers that were current at the time it was written: Rome, Nero, etc. They had to be referred to symbollically to avoid charges of treason. Therefore the mainstream churches regard all that as historically interesting, but no longer relevant. Revelation is a shapshot of what one Christian was hoping for at one moment in history. As a statement of belief in the doctrine of Christ's return in glory, it has value, but as historical prophecy it was clearly wrong.

[RebelOne]

20. It all has to do with the Mayan calendar.

www.survive2012.com/

[undergroundpanther]

3. All forms of rapture

are ultimately all about the believer's narcissism. Rapture is about getting REWARDED. Being a king and priest and never ever feeling bad or being deprived of what you want ever again, it is about getting crowns and revenge.It is about being better than the unchosen ones.

It is a form of narcissism..

[moggie]

7. Which is why the rapture is always expected in the believer's lifetime

I don't think the technological singularity really fits this picture, though. There appear to be two routes to singularity: intelligence augmentation, and artificial intelligence:

In the intelligence augmentation scenario, we develop technology which enables us to boost the effectiveness of human thought, such as a direct neural interface to computers and the net, or genetic enhancement of the brain itself. It's easy to see how this scenario appeals to your narcissist, though I'm not convinced it would lead to singularity: there's only so far we could overcome our meat limitations this way. The winners might be smarter than Stephen Hawking, but they probably wouldn't be as gods.

In the artificial intelligence scenario, greater-than-human AI bootstraps itself to levels far beyond our understanding. I'm not sure there's any reason to believe any humans would necessarily be winners in this scenario. The machines would be to us as we are to insects: they might decide that we were in the way, and eliminate us, or they might find us irrelevant to their concerns, and simply ignore us. Their goals might be radically at odds with our needs: for example, if they decided to dismantle the solar system to build a Matrioshka brain, there goes the neighbourhood.

[joshcryer]

13. As you point out there are generally two ways to Nerd Rapture, but...

...when you look at the arguments, for either Strong AI or Agumented Intelligence, both sides claim that the Benelovent and Good will Win The Day. The Singularity Institute has Embarked on a Mission to Create "Friendly AI" (though their attempts as yet are lackluster at best, imo). Kurzweil Argues that Benelovent and Good will Reign Over Evil, etc.

Scenarios like the Matrioshka brain Consuming All Of The Galaxy, Leaving Human-Sentience To Utilize But One Exa Peta Trillionth Precentage Of All Computing Power, Thus Making The Simulation Of One Human Day Last A Hundred Million Real Years are completely unreasonable!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Strange things are happening... leading where I'm not sure but

hopefully to better times.


SUN: The Sun’s magnetic field is over 230 percent stronger now than it was at the beginning of the 1900s, and its overall energetic activity has sizably increased, creating a frenzy of activity that continues to embarrass NASA’s official predictions.

VENUS: Venus is now glowing in the dark, as is Jupiter’s moon Io.

EARTH: In the last 30 years, Earth’s icecaps have thinned out by as much as 40 percent. Quite inexplicably, just since 1997 the structure of the Earth has shifted from being slightly more egg-shaped, or elongated at the poles, to more pumpkin-shaped, or flattened at the poles. No one at NASA has even bothered to try to explain this yet. Link to full article at NASA.

MARS: The icecaps of Mars noticeably melted just within one year, causing 50-percent changes in surface features. Atmospheric density had risen by 200 percent above previous observations as of 1997.

JUPITER: Jupiter has become so highly energized that it is now surrounded by a visibly glowing donut tube of energy in the path of the moon Io. The size of Jupiter’s magnetic field has more than doubled since 1992.

SATURN: Saturn’s polar regions have been noticeably brightening, and its magnetic field strength increasing.

URANUS: According to NASA’s Voyager II space probe, Uranus and Neptune both appear to have had recent magnetic pole shifts – 60 degrees for Uranus and 50 for Neptune.

NEPTUNE: Neptune has become 40 percent brighter in infrared since 1996, and is fully 100-percent brighter in certain areas. Also, Neptune’s moon Triton has had a “very large percentage increase” in atmospheric pressure and temperature, comparable to a 22-degree Fahrenheit increase on Earth.

PLUTO: As of September 2002, Pluto has experienced a 300-percent increase in its atmospheric pressure in the last 14 years, while also becoming noticeably darker in color.

[joshcryer]

5. Oh wow, this is awesome. Ascension and stuff.

Found the source for your copy-paste, appears to be a website called Devine Cosmos, a 2012 Ascension website. Thanks for sourcing me on post #2. :hi:

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. Post #2?? OK now I'm lost. Glad you can receive this sort of

information though.... without feeling that your belief system has been run into the ground so to speak.

[joshcryer]

10. Oh, it's not! I enjoyed researching Chapter 8 of The Book and felt my own beliefs validated.

I just don't have a need or desire to admonish others for their beliefs, despite the wording of my Rapture post.

PS in post #2 in this thread I mentioned 2012 "Rapture" believers, which I'd heard about before but I believe they are much smaller in number.

[TZ]

8. ah yes

the lefts version of biblical mythology..astrological bullshit!

If you think the universe is static you know NOTHING about science/astronomy (which is a valid theory given some of your other posts)

[HysteryDiagnosis]

12. Some of my other posts are better than others... and btw 80 to

90 percent of the universe is made of stuff we haven't got a frigging clue about, so don't go on touting how much ANYONE knows about the universe much less its dimensional properties. Spare me the science lesson.

[joshcryer]

14. I don't want this to become an Atheist oriented post, but please read the footnotes.

You'd be really surprised by what you find in Chapter 8, my friend. Oh shit McCain says that. Bleh.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

16. You talkin' to me? nt

[joshcryer]

17. For instance, the part about Venus "now glowing."

The cited reference notes a glow of Venus that was discovered, not that it "wasn't glowing before." The more accurate cite would be "Venus has been discovered to glow." A significant distinction.

[Odin2005]

18. "Nerd Rapture?" You are comparing us Transhumanists with the Fundies?

:wtf:

[arKansasJHawk]

19. Not to be nitpicky ...

But I'd suggest that "rapture" is too loaded a term for use as a generalization. I much prefer the term "eschatology." For one, I personally think "eschatology" just sounds cool.

To be technical, "the rapture" is a form of Christian eschatology. The singularity is a scientific eschatology. The Y2K scare was mass eschatology at its finest, in that it combined what might be called "nerd" and "primitive" raptures into one package.

Granted, your definition is narrowed to include only eschatology that seems to impose some sort of judgment about good and evil. You could shoehorn Y2K in there, if you were of a belief (and some people definitely were) that computers were evil and those that survived would be the "good" people who knew how to live off the land and stockpile massive amounts of weapons.

Then there's Islamic eschatology, which mirrors, in many ways, the Christian "rapture." From what I've read (and my reading hasn't been really extensive), Islam basically teaches that there will be signs of a "Last Hour," and that an angel will blow a horn of truth. There will be resurrection (notably of Muhammed) and judgement of every soul.

The most extreme versions of the climate change argument could fall under the "primitive rapture" umbrella. Out of all of them, this is the one I find most likely to occur. Whatever role humans play in climate change, it's undeniable that the climate on earth can go through massive changes, and there's no reason whatsoever to think that there WON'T be another ice age, no matter what we humans do. Of course, that ice age may be 10,000 years away.

There are a few non-judgmental scenarios, of course. Meteors and asteroid smashing into the earth, massive earthquakes that swallow up whole cities, a new global pandemic of a heretofore unknown superbug, etc.

In short, humans spend a lot of time thinking about the end of the world, I guess.

[joshcryer]

21. While I won't dispute the scientific basis for some transhumanist ideologies:

I believe that a great number of them are not based in any scientific realm. Nano-technology, for instance, is impossible out of fluids, in a biological sense. Smalley was right, Drexler is absolutely wrong. Arguments for self-replicating nanotechnology are physically impossible as *science* understands the physics. Of course that is not to preclude it from some hypothetical future, merely that our current understanding denies it.

So if you're hypothizing outside of a realm of observable reality I wouldn't call it "science" so much "science fiction."

No doubt that some future AI will have an interesting role to play, I'm not denying that.

But let's be honest, only a few transhumanists are realistic about the future (you might consider me a conservative or realist transhumanist on that basis). Most are rather caught up in "technologies" that are non-existant nor are able to exist in any realistic, scientific nature.