Betting Against the End of the World

[Ed Hudgins]

Betting Against the End of the World

By Edward Hudgins

May 17, 2011 -- Throughout human history and especially in recent centuries, cults of all kinds have predicted the end of the world. You've probably noticed that they've all been seriously wrong.

The latest such silliness has come from 89-year-old Harold Camping's Family Radio network of 66 stations. Based on his study of the Bible, Camping calculates that doomsday will be on Saturday, May 21, 2011.

Christianity is particularly prone to such nonsense. After all, the Book of Revelation is all about doomsday, though with details from a clearly delusional mind. The "son of man" appears out of the clouds with a two-edged sword coming out of his mouth: that makes it tough to eat and talk! He has seven stars in his hand: a star is a million miles in diameter and a million degrees at its core, making things pretty hot and crowded on the Earth. You get the picture.

American history is full of cults that saw no future for the world. Starting in 1843, William Miller and his followers predicted a dozen doomsdays. One would think that after the first few predictions failed, followers of the cult would disappear. Remarkably, more such cults and followers followed.

The problem is not only found in fringe Christian sects. The landscape of the twentieth century is littered with the failed predictions from a plethora of mystic and New Age groups. The members of the Heaven's Gate flying saucer cult, to get ahead of the game, all committed suicide.

Rich Suckers

What is perhaps most disturbing about the adherents to cults that make such failed predictions or, more generally, are as crazy as March hares, is that they are not just the most poor, ignorant, or downtrodden in society.

The Heaven's Gate members were mostly middle class and made money writing computer software. Scientology charges hundreds of thousands of dollars for their "courses" that in fact brainwash those naive enough to take them. Scientology's victims must be smart enough to make enough money to pay the stiff cost in order to hear L. Ron Hubbard's delusional alien fantasies. These dingbats count Fox talk show host Greta Van Susteren as one of their suckers.

And the Family Radio network has enough cash to plaster the country with the endtime ads. They're apparently effective fundraisers.

Money and Mouth

Here's a deal you might offer all believers in end-of-the-world predictions. Don't worry if you've missed the May 21 doomsday deadline. There will be plenty more opportunities with new predictions in the future.

Seek out those who mouth a belief that the world will end on a certain date. Confirm that they have assets and possessions—a house, car, savings account, and/or 401(k). Then offer to turn over to them assets of your own, valued at half or less of the value of theirs. They can use your assets to pass out copies of the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, The Late, Great Planet Earth, or whatever on street corners. They can buy TV, radio, Internet, or print ads to announce Armageddon. But on the day after they predict the world will end, title to all of their asserts and possessions will transfer to you.

If the world ends, they'll have used your assets to promote their cause and their assets will do you no good as you wallow in fire and brimstone. In the nineteenth century members of some sects did give away all their possessions as they anticipated the end. Today few believers in such things actually put their money where their mouths are. Oh ye of little faith!

Big Blind Brains

Many such believers, especially those who hatch and propagate such nonsense, deserve to be countered with the weapon of ridicule. But such cases reveal a far more serious problem with the culture, one that is a major cause of both individual and societal ills.

Consider the report about Michael Finaldi, the 60-something-year-old head of Tele-Solution, a successful business in New Jersey. One watches with pain as this otherwise solid, responsible, individual talks about how Harold Camping's ravings have convinced him that the world will end on a certain spring weekend. It's like watching a sound human mind descending into mental illness, a sickening tragedy.

We might simply observe that many otherwise sensible individuals have blind spots, and in the case of cult believers, those spots are huge. But in the twenty-first century, with all the marvelous products of the human mind evident, the continued existence and even spread of new cults suggest something deeper. And we see the same mindset on display in politics. How can people in Greece or in California really expect governments to continue to spend massive amounts of money that they do not have and have no way of getting?

Individuals must think for themselves and make up their own minds on every matter that faces them in life. But what does it take for us to activate our analytic abilities? We must have a firm understanding that reality is objective. We must have an unswerving commitment to seeking the truth, whatever it might be. We must not let comforting fictions lull us into mental illusions of our own making. We must not let preconceptions or an ideology blind us to reality. That goes double for those like Objectivists and Ayn Rand fans who explicitly advocate a philosophy of reason but can let this fact make them uncritical of their own beliefs because they assume that they have a monopoly on truth. We should acknowledge that the root of all immorality is the refusal to think, to focus our minds, to honestly seek to know.

To the extent that we can, we should try to shake the unthinking out of their blindness. But in the long run we must understand the importance of fostering a culture that places reason and truth first. It took centuries in the West for that Enlightenment culture to develop—a culture that produced the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and the political revolution that gave rise to the United States. In this way the past should be our path not to the end of the world, but rather to a better tomorrow.

[BaalChatzaf]

May 21 is the day of the Rapture. The real end will occur six months later on Nov 21.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[9thdoctor]

The latest such silliness has come from 89-year-old Harold Camping's Family Radio network of 66 stations. Based on his study of the Bible, Camping calculates that doomsday will be on Saturday, May 21, 2011.

Does he give the time of day, and specify the time zone? If I get this right, what's going to happen is the elect are going to be leaving us, whoosh! Now what if there are very very few elect actually living now? Just a dozen or so, distributed all over the world, no airline pilots (obviously God wouldn't do that!), so it's going to look like they died of natural causes, or just disappeared, and six months later we're all going to be caught unawares when the real doomsday comes!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_end_times_prediction

[Ed Hudgins]

May 21 is the day of the Rapture. The real end will occur six months later on Nov 21.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I'll mark my calender!

[sjw]

On the other hand, there's plenty of scientific argument for end of the world scenarios:

http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything-Illustrated/dp/0307885151/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305774243&sr=8-1

We can start worrying about the Armageddon scenarios and actually do something to prepare for them, or we can sit back and fight each other until Mother Nature gets into one of her awful mood swings and just wipes the slate clean.

Shayne

[syrakusos]

Over on RoR, in response to this essay from Ed Hudgins, I wrote, in part:

I highly recommend The Future and Its Enemies by Virginia Postrel. An editor at Reason, Postel compares (and contrasts) the Green anti-technology people with the right wing millennarians, including Objectivists, who predict with great enthusiasm the end of civilization. The Greens are somewhat more successful in bringing it about in that they advocate for legislations which governments are only too happy to enact.

On my blog, Necessary Facts, I have an essay, Cities, that pays tribute to Jane Jacobs. It started as a reply in February to a retreatist post on the "Whiskey and Gunpowder" blog.

Civilization is not going away - nor should we want it to.

[sjw]

"Atheists offer to rescue Christians’ pets after judgment day"

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/18/atheists-offer-to-rescue-christians-pets-after-judgment-day

[Rich Engle]

I guess I don't have to worry about practicing all those songs for Sunday.

rde

[Ed Hudgins]

6:06 pm. So where's the damned end of the world?

[Selene]

6:06 pm. So where's the damned end of the world?

In the Oval Office of course!

[sjw]

6:06 pm. So where's the damned end of the world?

In the Oval Office of course!

Well it's not all peaches and cream everywhere else either. I'd argue that what we are living through now is Armageddon compared to how it could and should be.

Shayne

[9thdoctor]

There was a live report from Times Square around 6 PM, I think it was on ABC. There was a guy who spent all his life savings to put up billboards in the NY subways announcing the expected event. They said he was currently in Times Square, reading his Bible, and being jeered. I’m actually feeling sorry for him right now.

A funny thing happened last year, there was an event called “Boobquake”, where some college students tested the idea that immodest dress causes earthquakes. The idea was funny enough on it’s own merits, but there actually was an earthquake near Taiwan within 24 hours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boobquake

Back to today’s farce, there was one of these doomsdayers years ago who, when confronted with the biblical statement that no one knows “the hour or the day”, replied that indeed, he also didn’t know that, but that he did know the week (or maybe it was the month)!

[sjw]

There was a live report from Times Square around 6 PM, I think it was on ABC. There was a guy who spent all his life savings to put up billboards in the NY subways announcing the expected event. They said he was currently in Times Square, reading his Bible, and being jeered. I’m actually feeling sorry for him right now.

The most ironic part about this is that most people mocking him are themselves deserving of being mocked, for believing in all manner of cultish ideas themselves.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

Is the end of the world supposed to happen time zone by time zone? If so, Europe is gone. Israel too.

--Brant

mocker and scoffer

[BaalChatzaf]

Is the end of the world supposed to happen time zone by time zone? If so, Europe is gone. Israel too.

--Brant

mocker and scoffer

There are only 23 people in Israel capable of being raptured.

Certainly non of the Jews, Muslims or Druse are going into the sky to meet the Lord.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

There was a live report from Times Square around 6 PM, I think it was on ABC. There was a guy who spent all his life savings to put up billboards in the NY subways announcing the expected event. They said he was currently in Times Square, reading his Bible, and being jeered. I’m actually feeling sorry for him right now.

The most ironic part about this is that most people mocking him are themselves deserving of being mocked, for believing in all manner of cultish ideas themselves.

Shayne

Two years later, and here on OL we have the same discussions about the end of the world. Climate change? Bilderbergers? President Obama and the Weather Underground? Runaway inflation... total economic collapse...

[KacyRay]

Two years later, and here on OL we have the same discussions about the end of the world. Climate change? Bilderbergers? President Obama and the Weather Underground? Runaway inflation... total economic collapse...

And in another 5 years, we'll be having the same conversation. And again 10 years after that.

That is, all of us except Dennis May. He's going to be part of the 10% who are killed within the next couple years when Obama finally unleashes his socialist takeover.

[syrakusos]

It does not take much history to see how things are going. The right wing crazies could marshal better arguments than "Rome ... Rome ... Rome ... " Just for instance, the religious wars of the 16 and 17th centuries provide ample support for the "Coming Obama Bloodbath and Party Purge." Read about the Huguenauts. England escaped the worst of it, but still had its burnings-at-the-stake over religion. I once saw Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" in modern dress. Act IV Scene 1, Antony and Octavius are in camos and berets, deciding which of their friends they will sacrifice to balance the power between them. Ah, but there we are, back Rome again.

I just do not see America as Dennis fears it. When you look at the actual oppression such as the case of Joe Hill, the assassinations of Fred Hampton in Chicago, the attack on MOVE by the Philadelphia police, they are isolated events. Moreover, the actual recent history is that the government is tolerant of right wing crazies. The claim that they are endangered is just self-aggrandizing paranoia. If you look at the actual crimes and the actual sentences, you will see that violent Greens are more harshly punished thant violent Patriots.

That being true, nonetheless, compared to the Moscow Purges the Red Scares here were hardly worth mentioning. (Read about how Stalin killed off the Leningrad leaders after World War II.) But that is the point: our society, the cumulative history of America, just points away from purges of 10% to 15% of the population over mere ideas. Maybe if the War in the Pacific had gone as bad for the USA as the war in Europe went for Hitler, the people in our concentration camps would have met the same fate as the Jews. We will never know. However, as I pointed out elsewhere, the killings at Jackson State were more violent than those at Kent State. If you want to fear that, start by being Black.