Some Decaying Old Man Claims That the World Will End on May 21st. He Should Know--Just Look at Him!

For about 2 months now, a certain percentage of the population of the United States has been following a shambling corpse of a televangelist who claims that the world will end next Saturday, May 21st, 2011. It is worth noting that this particular decaying corpse has previously claimed that the world would end in 1994, but has admitted he was wrong simply because he "hadn't read Jeremiah."

Basically, the premise is that next Saturday is the 7,000th anniversary of the Flood in Genesis (not the one from Halo, but that would be much more awesome/terrifying, as it involves mutated space zombies instead of just a ton of water).

There are five basic theological problems with the idea of the world ending on Saturday: 1) God never indicated that he eventually wanted to annihilate us all a second time (in fact, he tells Noah that he won't ever do that again), and, by extension, God learns from his mistakes; 2) We really don't know how many generations have passed in the Biblical timeline even if some of us believe it to be literally true, and this is important because the Old Testament measures time by generations, not years; 3) The number 7 has significance for Numerologists, but few others; 4) (also the most important) The Biblical Old Testament is completely rearranged, it differs significantly from the order of the Jewish Tanakh, therefore, such predictions are impossible; and 5) Jesus' apostles believed that he would return within their lifetimes but he never showed up.

The rationalist arguments as to why Harold Camping should be placed in an insulated nursing facility are that 1) He was wrong in 1994, 2) He frequently says bizarre and irresponsible things (by my standard, anyway), and 3) people have been predicting the end of the world since it began, and all of them have been flatly wrong.

The only argument one could make in favor of Harold Camping's prediction is because of his physical disposition: He appears emaciated and more or less dead already, so his proximity to his death may give him privileged information. But old and sickly people are often delusional, and he may be clasping to what little he has left of his mind, and he has no proof that what he believes is actually correct beyond his own bizarre interpretation of the Bible.

This leads to an interesting point: Just why are people so eager to see their world end? This is the only home we have, why would we want Jesus to burn it? Jack Miles writes on page 268 of God: A Biography,

"An Apocalypse is a cryptic revelation of imminent destruction to be followed by a definitive divine intervention at the end of time. Historically, apocalypticism is a kind of weed sprung up in Judea from the charred earth of failed prophecy. Its predictions are coded and otherwise elaborately mysterious in part to mislead the Judeans' and later the Jews' foreign oppressors, in part to renew the nation's own belief in God's power and its national uniqueness when all evidence seems to point the other way"1.

So why now? Over the past decade we have seen a nearly unceasing series of destruction, from 9/11, the tsunami in Indonesia. the Haiti earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, the earthquake off the coast of Japan and the imminent collapse of the Fukushima reactors, and I am sure that there are more than a few other events that I have omitted here. Also, do not forget that the May 21st prediction is not the only apocalyptic conspiracy theory in circulation: December 21st, 2012 is also apparently a date for annihilation.

It has always been fun to speculate that civilization as we know it would collapse. I know that I enjoy zombie movies, dystopian novels, and exploring an annihilated United States in the Fallout series of computer games. But it is an entirely different matter when people begin to believe that these ideas are factually true.

Why should we have to suffer through the Christian fundamentalist nonsense again? In response to the dumbassery of the Bush administration, Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District, assault on women's rights, Terri Schaivo, and the enormous campaign in favor of gay rights, because the liberals began fighting back, because they dialed it up to 7, the Christians have to dial themselves up to 12, when they started at 9. When Americans start supporting gay rights and fighting back against Creationism in public schools, they want to feel vindicated in their own way: "How could we lose America? Surely God will annihilate it now that they're all hedonists!" Even though most of the country is still religious. As Michael Shermer wrote in The Science of Good & Evil in 2004, "If America is going to Hell in an immoral handbasket, it is happening at a time when church membership is at an all-time high and a greater percentage of people than ever before proclaim belief in God"2

The irony is that it is these people who took us in the wrong direction in the first place, and continue to try to steer us further to the right, and only seem to get angrier when the voices of reason fight back.

This entire escapade is motivated by bitter and resentment over staggering political losses, evident of a slash and burn attitude toward America: It isn't going their way anymore, so they want to see it destroyed. So what looks to us as some fun little game--riding Winnebagoes across the country telling people the Rapture is going to be a lot of fun is really a subtle code for "We're losing elections and if you keep supporting gays, we'll tell God on you!" But God hasn't been seen for more than 2000 years.

1) Miles, Jack. God: A Biography Vintage Press. (C) 1995. NY, NY

2) Shermer, Michael. The Science of Good & Evil. Henry Holt. (C) 2004. NY, NY