The End is Comming

Yet another prediction of the end of the world is due to pass this Saturday. This latest one is brought to us by Harold Camping. A bible thumping nut job from the USA. Camping owns the family radio network. A large non profit(?) that is reportedly worth around $100 million. And Camping has done this before. With at least one previous prediction of the end times failing to come true.    

Should you be afraid? I don't think so. Many, Many people and groups have predicted the end before. The end of what? In the case of the religious types. It usually involves some form of judgement followed by death for the wicked and salvation for the devout. And there are some UFO cults that have similar salvation and/or judgement/death scenarios. There are also plenty of secular apocalyptic type events that have been predicted. Things like the collapse of the world economy due to any number of factors. Or being destroyed by a meteor, or other space related event.

Most such predictions are of course nonsense. We know this because the dates have come and gone and the world is still here. And while a catastrophic event like an impact from a giant space rock is all but inevitable I'm not particularly worried about it. (Interestingly, you are more likely to be killed by an asteroid impact in your life time than win the lottery or die from an act of terrorism). The chance that the world will end in some kind of supernatural rapture is as close to zero as it is possible to get. In fact I think the odds that the entire earth will suddenly stop spinning tomorrow are better.

Camping is basing his prediction on the bible of course. He's done some selective reading an interpretation along with a bit of math (adding two numbers). I won't put forth the details here (as I feel my pages may not be able to fully contain his stupid). I always find this sort of attempt to gain real information from ancient texts to be so laughably ridiculous. It's a wonder that these people expect to be taken seriously. But they are! Camping has thousands sucked into his delusion and there is a long history of such ideas taking hold and spreading.

And what do you suppose will happen when the world keeps on keeping on after Saturday? Well of course the excuses and rationalisations will flow. These will be no admission that they were wrong. Here are three of the often supplied excuses that they may use.
*The date was off. It's actually still coming.
*The prayers of the devoted changed the mind of god and he decided to cancel/postpone the rapture.
*The prophecy was actually fulfilled but not in the way anyone expected.

And so on and so forth.

I'm not really afraid that the world will end. On my scale of things I'm concerned about. I'm actually far more worried that one of my flatmates will illegally import a deadly snake and hide it in my bed as a joke. But then I don't see the snake and it bites me. And despite living just down the road from the Hospital. They won't be able to save me because there are no snakes in NZ so they have no anti venom. And I die a horrible and painful death.
And I'm not really very worried about that at all.