The 2nd Great Disappointment
H.P. LaLancette
April 24th, 2007

One of the main errors Transhumanists make with their religion is that they are way
too specific with the date when the Messiah (a.k.a. the Strong A.I.) will come to initiate
the Rapture (a.k.a. brain uploading). For instance, Kurzweil believes the Messiah will
arrive in 2029. FM-2030 thought it would arrive in, yep, 2030. In being so specific with
the date of the Rapture, they are assuring that their religion will fail when the date
passes and nothing happens.

Of course, the main reason the date of ~2030 is chosen is because many
Transhumanists are baby boomers who are desperately afraid of dying. So they
conveniently make up a date that coincides with when the average boomer will reach
the average human life span of ~85 years.

Successful religions are suitably vague with their prognostications. It is enough to say
that believers will be saved at some future date but leave the when and where up to
their imaginations.

As it so happens, this pattern of religious prediction followed by disappointment
happened at least one other time in American history when the Millerite
Dispensationalist movement in upstate New York failed to predict the coming of the
Messiah on October 22nd, 1844. Interestingly, this Great Disappointment did not lead to
the end of the Millerite movement but rather transformed the movement into the
Seventh-day Adventists who are still around today. The Adventists merely
reinterpreted the prediction as being when the process of Investigative Judgment
began in heaven. This is still part of the theology of Seventh-day Adventists today.

So, maybe I spoke too soon about the end of the Religion of Transhumanism in ~2030.
Following the 2nd Great Disappointment, I suspect that Transhumanists will still believe
in the inevitability of the techno-Messiah, just that the date was off a bit for a variety
of reasons. Expect cryonics to see a huge boom around 2030 as thousands of
Transhumanists freeze themselves. There will likely be many offshoots of the Religion of
Transhumanism at this time, each one just as bizarre as the original.