Thoughts on the May 21st 2011 End Times Bullshit

Shannyn Moore tweeted a few hours ago:

BTW, there are ad truck[s] in Anchorage with Rapture: May 21! Signs all over them.

How can the world end in 2012, if it's already over in 2011? The Mayas will feel so ripped off, after having worked out all those mathematical equations they got from the Olmecs:

According to the Popol Vuh, a compilation of the creation accounts of the K'iche' Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world. The Popol Vuh describes the gods first creating three failed worlds, followed by a successful fourth world in which humanity was placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous world ended after 13 b'ak'tuns, or roughly 5,125 years. The Long Count's "zero date" was set at a point in the past marking the end of the third world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to 11 August 3114 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. This means that the fourth world will also have reached the end of its 13th b'ak'tun, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, on December 21, 2012.

But Harold Camping, the guy behind the May 21st 2011 people claims to have done his math too. Heh..:

• According to Camping, the number five equals "atonement", the number ten equals "completeness", and the number seventeen equals "heaven".

• Christ is said to have hung on the cross on April 1, 33 AD. The time between April 1, 33 AD and April 1, 2011 is 1,978 years.

• If 1,978 is multiplied by 365.2422 days (the number of days in a solar year, not to be confused with the lunar year), the result is 722,449.

• The time between April 1 and May 21 is 51 days.

• 51 added to 722,449 is 722,500.

• (5 x 10 x 17)2 or (atonement x completeness x heaven)2 also equals 722,500.

• Thus, Camping concludes that 5 x 10 x 17 is telling us a "story from the time Christ made payment for our sins until we're completely saved.

Now why didn't I think of that? It is SO obvious. Must be my Norse ancestry.

1,000 years ago, my maternal ancestors, living in primitive wooden homes on the east bank of Oslo Fjord, believed in Ragnarök. My wife's paternal ancestors, living less than 100 miles to the southeast of there, in what is now Sweden, and her maternal ancestors, living in Iceland, believed the same. We'll get back to Ragnarök.

At about the same time, in the south of France, French Christians, living in primitive wooden homes, believed the world was coming to an end soon. In the late 10th Century, the cleric Adso de Mointier-en-Der wrote about the coming of the Anitchrist at the end of the century. He wasn't the only one:

1000-JAN-1: Many Christians in Europe had predicted the end of the world on this date. As the date approached, Christian armies waged war against some of the Pagan countries in Northern Europe. The motivation was to convert them all to Christianity, by force if necessary, before Christ returned in the year 1000. Meanwhile, some Christians had given their possessions to the Church in anticipation of the end. Fortunately, the level of education was so low that many citizens were unaware of the year. They did not know enough to be afraid. Otherwise, the panic might have been far worse than it was. Unfortunately, when Jesus did not appear, the church did not return the gifts. Serious criticism of the Church followed. The Church reacted by exterminating some heretics.

There have been too many end times predictions by too many religious nuts from all around the world to count. There will always be another one, as long as the human race lasts, which - if we don't get our act together - might not be long.

Back to Ragnarök. It is something of a Nordic equivalent to Armageddon. The German composer Richard Wagner used Ragnarök as the basis of the last act of the final opera of his tetrology, Der Ring Des Nibelungen. Here's the basic story:

In Norse mythology, Ragnarök (Old Norse "final destiny of the gods") is a series of future events, including a great battle foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdall, and Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water. Afterward, the world will resurface anew and fertile, the surviving and reborn gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors. Ragnarök is an important event in the Norse canon.

It's about as believable as May 21, 2011 or December 21, 2012, eh?

Frankly, if human civilization is going to survive for another 1,000 years, we need to move as far beyond the fundamentalist sects of Islam, Judaism, Christianity and many others as we have beyond belief in the Norse, Roman, Greek, Canaanite or Egyptian gods and goddesses.

Here's the conclusion of Richard Wagner's version of Ragnarök, Götterdämmerung: