The Apocalypse

[GDPR]

I'm sure everyone has heard about the supposed 'apocalypse' that's going to happen a week from today. We have all been hearing about it for years and years.

I don't believe it's going to happen. I don't think 'the end of the world' can be predicted down to a certain date and time. But alot of people do believe it's going to happen. I know people that have been planning for quite awhile and have stocked up on food,water,weapons,etc. I know of churches that have stocked up on caskets(but if the world is going to end, who will bury them?haha). I even know people that believe there's going to be a 'zombie apocalypse' and have been preparing for that.

I do believe something will happen, but most likely it's going to be people doing really stupid things because they will believe they have nothing to lose. I think alot of people will be getting arrested for doing something stupid during an 'end of the world' party(which, by the way, there's alot of those planned, and I have been invited to one).

I'm just curious what others think/believe......

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I thought that was December 12? 12-12-12?

 

[GDPR]

I hadn't heard that one. It's supposed to be Dec. 21st at 11:01 am EST. LOL, not sure why it's 11:01.

 

[rdw]

According to a my Spanish instructor - a Mayan - it is the beginning of a new cycle not the end of the world. He says the end of the world myth is a Hollywood creation.

 

[GDPR]

He says the end of the world myth is a Hollywood creation.

I agree with your Spanish instructor.

 

[SilentNinja]

Nah nothing will happen but that Large Hadron Collider is going to do some damage.. put earth into a black hole.. mess with dark matter and the shadow universe

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Apocalypse

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Re: Apocalypse

 

[GDPR]

Well, today is the day,and so far,we are all still here.

There are a few people that I am really concerned about though, people that have been so excited waiting for 'the end of the world'.I really worry what they may do when it doesn't happen today.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

So the world didn?t end after all? Bummer
by WENCY LEUNG, The Globe and Mail
Friday, Dec. 21 2012

Relax, it?s not the end of the world. Like U.S. Christian broadcaster Harold Camping?s rapture prophesy last year and Y2K before it, the apocalypse ? this time, purportedly forecast for Dec. 21 by the Mayan calendar ? has not happened after all.

But as unlikely as the imminent annihilation of humanity may be, fears of Armageddon still prompt panic among believers around the globe. In China, Russia, France and the U.S., those convinced the world would end Friday reportedly stockpiled supplies in an effort to survive catastrophe, or they made preparations for their last night on Earth.

Professor Lorenzo DiTommaso, chairman of Concordia University?s department of religion, explains why people get swept up in apocalyptic prophecies ? and what happens when they are proven wrong.

Why do people believe these predictions?

Broadly speaking, people believe in apocalyptic doomsday predictions because they perceive a fundamental wrongness with the world and human existence, and can?t see toward a solution in terms of human intellection and imagination. Hence the solution, necessary and imminent as it must be, is ascribed to something or someone else, such as God or the deep forces of the cosmos.

Are certain individuals or personalities more prone than others to believing in them?

Studies don?t tell us much about who might be inclined to believing in doomsday predictions. It?s also difficult to qualify the degree to which people feel dissatisfied with the world and understand it in apocalyptic terms. It?s even difficult to identify the triggers.

That said, certain social settings seem more fertile to the rooting of apocalyptic speculation. Most common is the small religious group or sect, often dominated by a charismatic leader, which feels itself to be under oppression, persecution and perhaps the menace of death, and which looks to an overthrow of the present order as a way of expressing a hope for radical change.

How do believers react and cope when the predictions don?t come true?
One response is for members to leave the group, or otherwise disengage from the theology or philosophy that gave rise to the prophecy in the first place. When in 1844 the world did not end as predicted by U.S. religious leader William Miller and his group, many members left with such a letdown that the event went down in history as the Great Disappointment.

Another response is to move sideways, conceptually speaking. If one prophecy fails, then another might just do the trick. These people might be called ?doomsday seekers.?

A third response is to admit that the calculations were wrong. After all, biblical prophecy is the word of God and as such must be true. So the error, as it were, must have crept into the calculations. This was Harold Camping?s response ? in effect, back to the drawing-board.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

 

[GDPR]

Now people are saying that today is just the 'beginning' of the apocalypse and are changing the date on when the 'end' is actually going to happen.

I know people that have stockpiled food,weapons,etc. and I bet they are wishing they had paid their bills instead now. But, I hope they enjoy their day anyway, even though they don't have water or electricity.Actually, I kind of think it's a little funny.These same people laughed because they weren't taken seriously,they said 'wait and see'. Now the joke's on them.

 

[Mari]

Well, it did snow today but I guess in Canada that is not much of an apocalypse

 

[Banned]

I'm pretty disappointed that I have to go do Christmas shopping now after all. I was holding out just in case I didn't need to bother.

 

[Katieann]

I would tend to think that people have their own personal apocalypses...in astrology it would be signified by the planet Pluto forming up a critical aspect and traveling through a particular part of the person's birth chart... but since everything in Nature is cyclical - in the end that process serves to destroy the old and clear out debris... making way for the new....but it can involve groups of people... clans... villages... larger collective units....not always pretty, but necessary for the long term good...

Even if it's just you checking out - that is your whole world, isn't it?

As far as I can see - I'm the centre of my Cosmos.... :grouphug3:

 

[Timber]

Broadly speaking, people believe in apocalyptic doomsday predictions because they perceive a fundamental wrongness with the world and human existence, and can’t see toward a solution in terms of human intellection and imagination. Hence the solution, necessary and imminent as it must be, is ascribed to something or someone else, such as God or the deep forces of the cosmos.

I am a fan of Carl Sagan. I thought about the answer to the same question before while reading Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. I would love to hear Professor Lorenzo DiTommaso and Carl Sagan discuss this! In his book, Sagan was discussing what he refers to as the "tabloid universe" and religion. Sagan (p. 58) says, "Such reports persist and proliferate because they sell. And they sell, I think, because there are so many of us who want so badly to be jolted out of our humdrum lives, to rekindle that sense of wonder we remember from childhood, and also, for a few of the stories, to be able, really and truly, to believe--in Someone older, smarter, and wiser who is looking out for us. Faith is clearly not enough for many people. They crave hard evidence, scientific proof. They long for the scientific seal of approval, but are unwilling to put up with the rigorous standards of evidence that impart credibility to that seal. What a relief it would be: doubt reliably abolished! Then, the irksome burden of looking after ourselves would be lifted. We're worried - and for good reason - about what it means for the human future if we have only ourselves to rely upon."

This thought implies that there are those that fear the future because they have only themselves to rely upon. I don't think that is unnatural. Life is so much easier and secure when a support system is in place. I think that ignorance of the facts is why science is important to consider. The dooms day people didn't realize that December 21 2012 is more like a Mayan New Year. We base our calendar on twelve months. They based their's on 26,000 years - which coincides with the Galactic Alignment (when the earth, sun, and equatorial center of the galaxy line up) and the winter solstice. Those who have no, or believe they have no support system in place will be more fearful of possible events, especially if they do not know the scientific mitigating factors.

 

[H011yHawkJ311yBean]

OK, folks, I've been telling people that the reason the Mayan Calendar only went up to Dec 21st, 2012 was because whichever sap got suckered into hammering out all those darn stone calendars got wicked carpal tunnel syndrome...

By the way, is anyone keeping track? It's now 0001/01/02 AMA (After Mayan Apocalypse)... Who is in charge of making THAT calendar? The Aztecs? Because their calendar resembles an Oreo Cookie...

 

[David Baxter PhD]

The 2012 Apocalypse, or Why the World Won?t End This Week | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network

According to Maya myth, the world was created on 11 August 3114 BC in the Gregorian Calendar; or 13.0.0.0.0 by the Maya count. This creation was the fourth incarnation of the world, the previous age having ended after the thirteenth b?ak?tun (a c.400-year cycle). On 21^st December, it will once again be 13.0.0.0.0 and the ?Great Cycle? will be completed, bringing the thirteenth b?ak?tun of the current age to an end. Some translations of the glyphs from a partially illegible Maya stela suggest that the end of the present b?ak?tun will see the ?descent? of the god Bolon Yookte? K?Uh (sometimes translated as the ?Nine-Footed God?). This convergence of dates and prophecies has been seen as marking the transition to the next world, and hence the end of this one.

or many years, a scarcity of Maya calendrical references to dates post-2012 was also seen as a possible indication of a cataclysmic end to the world this December. But, quite apart from the question of practicalities (I mean, how many of you have a calendar on your desk which reaches to 2406 ? a b?ak?tun from now?) even this tenuous evidence has recently been refuted by the discovery of an early Maya mural in Xult?n which includes calendrical and cosmological calculations stretching some 7,000 years into the future. Certainly, the Precolumbian Maya might have considered 21^st December 2012 a symbolic date, a moment of potential transformation. But does that mean they thought the world would end?

...

According to the Maya legends eloquently recorded in the sixteenth-century Popol Vuh, humans were created in this, the fourth world, when the gods moulded our ancestors from maize dough (after unsuccessful attempts at fashioning men from monkeys, wood and clay). I doubt that many of the so-called ?preppers? who are ?preparing? themselves for the end of the world or an ascent into the stars with their alien overlords believe in the Precolumbian myths of creation, so (even if we had conclusive evidence of a Maya belief in a 2012 apocalypse) why would they believe in the myths of destruction? And if you don?t believe me, why not listen to the Maya themselves. Modern-day Maya see the ?apocalypse? as a European invention. For them, the end of the b?ak?tun is a time of renewal and celebration, a new beginning, not an end.

 

[H011yHawkJ311yBean]

Hm, so people were made out of Oreos, is what your sayin'... Corn-flavoured cookies.

 

[David Baxter PhD]