1
The end of the world, a little earlier than expected...
13 May 2011
Apparently the world will end on October 21, 2011. That's exactly five months after the "rapture", which takes place this month on May 21, when, the site says, Jesus will arrive for his third official visit to this planet.* Judgment Day, apparently, is only a week away. I thought I had at least until December, 2012 to get the basement cleaned up...
The "rapture" is a moment when some (but clearly not all) Christians will levitate and meet Jesus in the clouds. I recommend rain coats and wellies: clouds are notoriously wet. And watch out for jets... they're hard to see among the clouds.
Rapture, tribulation, Armageddon - they're all part of Christian eschatology, or apocalypticism. Properly it's the study of the end of things. Several other religions have eschatological beliefs, and even science has them - the end of the sun, the heat death of the universe, and so on. Only a small group of fundamentalist-literalist Christians tag October 21 as the end of the world, however. But the prediction has gone worldwide, thanks to the Internet. There are even blogs about it.
The date is reported on wecanknow.com. It's based on the calculations of one Harold Camping, age 88, president of the fundamentalist Bible Radio network. You can read his dubious calculations here. In plain terms, the dates are based on assumptions (based in turn on his own interpretations), not facts. And not even good math (4990 BCE plus 7,000 adds up to 2010 CE, not 2011...).
Camping predicted the rapture previously, for September 6, 1994, but apparently either he was wrong, or no one noticed.** Chalk it up to an error in my calculations, he later said. He has also dated the creation of the world as happening in the year 11,013 BCE, only about four-and-a-half billion years short, but older by a millennium than some of his peers, so he's a tiny fraction of one per cent closer to the truth.
Perfect timing for me. I just finished reading A History of the End of the World, by Jonathan Kirsch. It's an overview of the book of Revelation and Christian apocalypticism. Now, primed for the event, I get to watch it happen. Or not. So far, predictions about the end of the world have been notoriously unreliable. But then so have predictions about the return of Jesus, which are right up there with predicting the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup again, as far as hitting the mark goes.***
A few of the many other failed (or about-to-fail) predictions for a world-ending event this decade are listed here, along with ends-of-the-world predictions that go past 2012. Two thousand twelve is, of course, the popular measuring stick for world-ending events because some sadly deluded people (apparently including George Lucas, I'm sorry to say) believe the Mayans predicted the world would end on 21 December that year, and so, for them, it will.****
Bad luck for most of us, if Camping is right. Camping's followers claim around 200 million people (approximately 3% of the total population) will be raptured.The rest of us? Annihilation: "those who are not saved will simply cease to be conscious rather than spend eternity in Hell." So 97% of the world's population will die on May 21, 2011 (so you might want to delay paying that VISA bill until May 22, just in case...). I suspect that includes all of the attendees at the Regional American Atheist Meeting in Oakland, scheduled for May 21 and 22, 2011. And, of course, me. Not only am I a skeptic, cynic, an iconoclast and an unbeliever, but my clothing tends towards basic biker black as opposed to the de rigeur white clothes of the rapturettes.*****
According to some polls, an estimated 50 million Americans believe Armageddon will happen during their lifetime. Sad, but true, and a statement about the laxity of American education more than anything else. This end-of-the-world battle between the forces of good and evil (or more correctly between Christ and the Anti-Christ), is actually taken from the name of an iron-age fortress in Israel, Har Megiddo (now Tel Megiddo), a strategically located hill overlooking the major trade routes of its day, and where many decisive battles took place in ancient times. Been there, walked its top, bought the post card. But in Christian eschatology, Armageddon has taken a rather more symbolic role as the end-of-days battle, for most believers losing its reference to the actual place that bears its name.
Camping isn't the only fringe fundamentalist-literalist to predict the end of the world, not even the only one to predict it for 2011. Witnesswatch predicts it will begin in spring 2011, but it's iffy on the actual end (Dec. 25, 2012?). Apocalypse2011.com follows Camping's dates. Jonathan Selby earmarked May 14, 2011 for the return of Jesus (at 9:23 a.m., EST). He previously tagged June 21, 2009 as the date, but seems to have re-calculated since. Download the star chart for the apocalypse here. There are more - just start Googling (or Binging if that's your choice).
Fringies like Camping are not - by far - the only people predicting catastrophe and even apocalypse this year. Many predictions are appropriately vague and confusing (not to mention poorly written), such as, "Many foreign Governments will "merge", as to battle Mother Earth depleting health..." from a self-proclaimed "astro-psychologist." There is a growing online population of 11-11-11 loonies predicting much the same sort of celestial-being-apocalypse claptrap that was predicted for 01-01-2000 (sign up for the regular, uplifting emails from celestial guardians waiting to give you the benefit of their angelic advice...). And of course who doesn't expect the four horsemen of the apocalypse to ride through in 2011... Still, a great deal of this folderol is fueled by literalist biblical interpretation (and usually not even the actual Bible but rather a translation into English, which cubes the nonsense...), usually mashed in with a cornucopia of pseudoscience, astrology, superstition and sheer stupidity.
I really don't know how many people actually believe this nonsense or are just on the bandwagon for the ride. I suspect many get caught up in it the way people get caught up in eBay auctions and end up winning a set of antique tea cozies they really didn't want. Others (like this guy) clearly do (man, will he feel bad on May 22 when he realizes...). But thanks to the Internet, this sort of thing gets spread around a lot more easily today than in the past, and there seems an inexhaustible well of gullible folks to believe in it.
For traditional media, no day is ever slow-news-day as long as there's some oddball online making predictions or apocalyptic statements. At least it gives some of us some amusing topics to write about. But for the record: the world won't end in 2011. Or 2012. Or any time soon... so in the meantime, why not read Carl Sagan's book, The Demon Haunted World, a refreshing polemic about science as a candle in the dark.
~~~~~
* Rather oddly called the Second Coming, not the Third. But a lot of this group marked 2000 as the start of a new millennium, not the arithmetically correct 2001, so math is obviously not their strong suit.
** On that date, Michael Jackson was a winner (along with Aerosmith and Lisa Marie) at the 11th MTV Awards. Maybe everyone stayed home to watch TV and capture the moment instead of heading skyward? What's a rapture when you can see the King of Pop?
*** Which, unlike the predictions of charlatans like Edgar Cayce and Jean Dixon, might come true. After all, the Leafs are a real team, whereas Cayce's Atlantis remains a myth, stubbornly refusing to rise (which he predicted for 1968 or 69).
**** They didn't. Actually all they predicted was that their complex calendrical system would start a new cycle for its long calendar calculations. It's not an end for the Mayan scheme, but a restart. But simple facts have never deterred the lunatic fringe from creating their own interpretive scenarios about doomsday events.
***** According to this site, a "lack of white clothing" means you're not about to levitate. Bad news for Goths... should I cash in my RRSP and buy that solid-koa ukulele this week so I at least get a few days playing a fine instrument before being consigned to which circle of Hell... First? Second? Fifth? And who will feed the cats when I'm gone?
The "rapture" is a moment when some (but clearly not all) Christians will levitate and meet Jesus in the clouds. I recommend rain coats and wellies: clouds are notoriously wet. And watch out for jets... they're hard to see among the clouds.
Rapture, tribulation, Armageddon - they're all part of Christian eschatology, or apocalypticism. Properly it's the study of the end of things. Several other religions have eschatological beliefs, and even science has them - the end of the sun, the heat death of the universe, and so on. Only a small group of fundamentalist-literalist Christians tag October 21 as the end of the world, however. But the prediction has gone worldwide, thanks to the Internet. There are even blogs about it.
The date is reported on wecanknow.com. It's based on the calculations of one Harold Camping, age 88, president of the fundamentalist Bible Radio network. You can read his dubious calculations here. In plain terms, the dates are based on assumptions (based in turn on his own interpretations), not facts. And not even good math (4990 BCE plus 7,000 adds up to 2010 CE, not 2011...).
Camping predicted the rapture previously, for September 6, 1994, but apparently either he was wrong, or no one noticed.** Chalk it up to an error in my calculations, he later said. He has also dated the creation of the world as happening in the year 11,013 BCE, only about four-and-a-half billion years short, but older by a millennium than some of his peers, so he's a tiny fraction of one per cent closer to the truth.
Perfect timing for me. I just finished reading A History of the End of the World, by Jonathan Kirsch. It's an overview of the book of Revelation and Christian apocalypticism. Now, primed for the event, I get to watch it happen. Or not. So far, predictions about the end of the world have been notoriously unreliable. But then so have predictions about the return of Jesus, which are right up there with predicting the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup again, as far as hitting the mark goes.***
A few of the many other failed (or about-to-fail) predictions for a world-ending event this decade are listed here, along with ends-of-the-world predictions that go past 2012. Two thousand twelve is, of course, the popular measuring stick for world-ending events because some sadly deluded people (apparently including George Lucas, I'm sorry to say) believe the Mayans predicted the world would end on 21 December that year, and so, for them, it will.****
Bad luck for most of us, if Camping is right. Camping's followers claim around 200 million people (approximately 3% of the total population) will be raptured.The rest of us? Annihilation: "those who are not saved will simply cease to be conscious rather than spend eternity in Hell." So 97% of the world's population will die on May 21, 2011 (so you might want to delay paying that VISA bill until May 22, just in case...). I suspect that includes all of the attendees at the Regional American Atheist Meeting in Oakland, scheduled for May 21 and 22, 2011. And, of course, me. Not only am I a skeptic, cynic, an iconoclast and an unbeliever, but my clothing tends towards basic biker black as opposed to the de rigeur white clothes of the rapturettes.*****
According to some polls, an estimated 50 million Americans believe Armageddon will happen during their lifetime. Sad, but true, and a statement about the laxity of American education more than anything else. This end-of-the-world battle between the forces of good and evil (or more correctly between Christ and the Anti-Christ), is actually taken from the name of an iron-age fortress in Israel, Har Megiddo (now Tel Megiddo), a strategically located hill overlooking the major trade routes of its day, and where many decisive battles took place in ancient times. Been there, walked its top, bought the post card. But in Christian eschatology, Armageddon has taken a rather more symbolic role as the end-of-days battle, for most believers losing its reference to the actual place that bears its name.
Camping isn't the only fringe fundamentalist-literalist to predict the end of the world, not even the only one to predict it for 2011. Witnesswatch predicts it will begin in spring 2011, but it's iffy on the actual end (Dec. 25, 2012?). Apocalypse2011.com follows Camping's dates. Jonathan Selby earmarked May 14, 2011 for the return of Jesus (at 9:23 a.m., EST). He previously tagged June 21, 2009 as the date, but seems to have re-calculated since. Download the star chart for the apocalypse here. There are more - just start Googling (or Binging if that's your choice).
Fringies like Camping are not - by far - the only people predicting catastrophe and even apocalypse this year. Many predictions are appropriately vague and confusing (not to mention poorly written), such as, "Many foreign Governments will "merge", as to battle Mother Earth depleting health..." from a self-proclaimed "astro-psychologist." There is a growing online population of 11-11-11 loonies predicting much the same sort of celestial-being-apocalypse claptrap that was predicted for 01-01-2000 (sign up for the regular, uplifting emails from celestial guardians waiting to give you the benefit of their angelic advice...). And of course who doesn't expect the four horsemen of the apocalypse to ride through in 2011... Still, a great deal of this folderol is fueled by literalist biblical interpretation (and usually not even the actual Bible but rather a translation into English, which cubes the nonsense...), usually mashed in with a cornucopia of pseudoscience, astrology, superstition and sheer stupidity.
I really don't know how many people actually believe this nonsense or are just on the bandwagon for the ride. I suspect many get caught up in it the way people get caught up in eBay auctions and end up winning a set of antique tea cozies they really didn't want. Others (like this guy) clearly do (man, will he feel bad on May 22 when he realizes...). But thanks to the Internet, this sort of thing gets spread around a lot more easily today than in the past, and there seems an inexhaustible well of gullible folks to believe in it.
For traditional media, no day is ever slow-news-day as long as there's some oddball online making predictions or apocalyptic statements. At least it gives some of us some amusing topics to write about. But for the record: the world won't end in 2011. Or 2012. Or any time soon... so in the meantime, why not read Carl Sagan's book, The Demon Haunted World, a refreshing polemic about science as a candle in the dark.
~~~~~
* Rather oddly called the Second Coming, not the Third. But a lot of this group marked 2000 as the start of a new millennium, not the arithmetically correct 2001, so math is obviously not their strong suit.
** On that date, Michael Jackson was a winner (along with Aerosmith and Lisa Marie) at the 11th MTV Awards. Maybe everyone stayed home to watch TV and capture the moment instead of heading skyward? What's a rapture when you can see the King of Pop?
*** Which, unlike the predictions of charlatans like Edgar Cayce and Jean Dixon, might come true. After all, the Leafs are a real team, whereas Cayce's Atlantis remains a myth, stubbornly refusing to rise (which he predicted for 1968 or 69).
**** They didn't. Actually all they predicted was that their complex calendrical system would start a new cycle for its long calendar calculations. It's not an end for the Mayan scheme, but a restart. But simple facts have never deterred the lunatic fringe from creating their own interpretive scenarios about doomsday events.
***** According to this site, a "lack of white clothing" means you're not about to levitate. Bad news for Goths... should I cash in my RRSP and buy that solid-koa ukulele this week so I at least get a few days playing a fine instrument before being consigned to which circle of Hell... First? Second? Fifth? And who will feed the cats when I'm gone?
