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In Theory: Why do end-times prophecies fascinate?

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“The end of the world is nigh.” That’s the conclusion of a poll that found that 15% of the planet’s population believes the world will end during their lifetime, and 10% believe the “Mayan prophecy” that it will end on Dec. 21.

Armageddon has been making the news recently. California preacher Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on May 21 last year, but was then forced to revise the date to October after the world kept turning. This was Camping’s fourth attempt at divining the end of the world — his others, in 1988 and 1994, also failed.

The December 2012 prediction has grabbed the attention and belief of many. A Google search for “Mayan prophecy” returns around 1.7 million results and a similar search of Amazon.com brings back some 900 hits. YouTube has almost 35,000 videos about it. Many of the books, websites and blogs devoted to the prophecy are out to debunk it. Some can charitably be described as cash-ins, but the majority are written by people who truly believe Dec. 21 is doomsday for the planet.

The Mexican government is even looking to boost tourism in areas once occupied by the Mayan civilization, although the country’s tourism agency has emphasized that it doesn’t have any faith in the prophecy, just the potential visitor numbers.

Q: Why does the end of the world hold such a fascination for so many?

I’m not sure I know. But Hollywood has been making money on the idea of the end of everything for years. A movie I saw as a kid in the 1950s about nuclear annihilation ended with the words, “The Beginning,” because some had survived the nuclear cataclysm of “World War III.”

Maybe there is a certain one-upsmanship about the idea, “I know that the world is coming to an end, but you don’t.” It’s sort of like religious fanatics who assume that they have the truth, but you don’t.

The belief in the end of everything may also be linked to those who believe soothsayers of the past who predicted the end of the world. Personally, I tend not to believe those of the past or present who say that the sky is falling, or soon will fall. And for me, the idea that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012 is preposterous. Maybe other, more pressing concerns took up their attention, and so they needed to attend to what was happening that minute, and not what was going to happen in another thousand or so years.

There are all sorts of reasons why the Mayans could have stopped making their calendar, none of which meant the end of the world. But we’ll keep believing in “The End” because it somehow excites us. There is no such thing as vampires, but we still go to see vampire movies, right? We apparently get some strange pleasure out of scaring ourselves to death. And I think we’ll keep on doing that until the end of the world.

The Rev. Skip Lindeman
La Cañada Congregational Church
La Cañada

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To be a bit tongue-in-cheek, certainly the end of the world would considerably change one’s lifestyle. Still, there’s an element of truth to that statement. It’s a catastrophic, out-of-our-control event that will directly affect each of us. And something about the idea of it rings true to us — because it is true.

God promises, “The present heavens and earth by his word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:7).

There is a common expectation in the human heart that evil must and will be recompensed in a universal way. End-of-the-world theology also addresses the topic of the destination of the human soul after the death of the body, something with which most folks wrestle at some point.

Do I believe the Mayan prediction of Dec. 21 is accurate? Should it concern us? No to both questions. They didn’t understand the correct way to know God, so how could they understand his will for the end times?

We don’t know the day or hour it will happen, but we do know how to be prepared: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved” (Acts 16:31).

Pastor Jon Barta
Valley Baptist Church
Burbank

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I don’t know why people are so fascinated by predictions of the end of the world. But I do know that such predictions have been around for millennia. There are numerous predictions of the apocalypse attributed to Jesus and others, and regularly repeated in all the centuries since. Maybe it is comforting to some people to believe that the end of the world will bring rewards to the righteous and punishment to the wicked, settling for all time the unfairness of the world as it exists now.

One of the amazing things to me is the recent notion that the Mayan calendar can predict the actual date of the end of the world — Dec. 21, 2012. The Mayans were certainly not Christians, so why are Christian ministers among those who are predicting the end of the world on that date? Another confounding thing to me is that people continue to put faith in these predictions after all of them so far have failed to come true.

On a personal note, I received a message on my church answering machine a few years ago saying that we Unitarian Universalists were the ones whom God had warned his followers were the precursors of the end of the world. I could only marvel that we had been so unsuccessful thus far, since our tradition began in the 16th century in Europe. I am also concerned that the bad guys in most of these end-of-the-world predictions are people who follow religious traditions that are different from those of the forecasters.

I am not a believer in apocalyptic predictions, unless they feature humans bringing about their own destruction through environmental degradation, nuclear attacks, human greed and injustice, or some other means. My hope is that we will spend our time working to create freedom, justice and compassion for all, not by succumbing to the fear that we will be destroyed.

As a religious person, I believe we must all take responsibility for the future of our world, rather than blame others for our failures.

The Rev. Dr. Betty Stapleford
Unitarian Universalist Church of the Verdugo Hills
La Crescenta

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The end of the world seems to be a concern only for a small number of people. As the quoted statistic says, only 15% of people believe the world will end during their lifetimes, and an even smaller group believes that it will end this year.

Armageddon, doomsday, apocalypse and the rapture are ideas mentioned in many world religions, but no one agrees with any single date for these potential events. Many belief systems hold eschatological views about the end of the world, but many of those teachings are philosophical and not related to a set date.

In the United States there have been millenarian predictions several times, and sometimes with a great number of believers involved. The ideas sometimes involve a golden age before a judgment time.

These beliefs can come about because of hopes for a better time, or fear of the present or future. Usually these beliefs do not affect other people who do not share the particular end-time belief.

However, there have been several groups that have wanted to hasten their idea of end-time by causing destruction or self-destruction. Groups including Aum Shinrikyo, Heaven’s Gate and the Peoples Temple have been a danger to themselves and others because they believed in an end-time and in using violence. Fortunately, for most people, a fascination with the end of the world is a harmless pastime and diversion.

Steven Gibson
South Pasadena Atheist Meetup
Altadena

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Most of the people on the planet have a sense that this world is not all there is; that a place where war, famine, crime and heartache persist must have a terminus. There must be something better after this.

And given that Christianity is the primary religion on the planet, the biblical expectation of an end to the current state of affairs with the inauguration of a “new earth” (II Peter 3:13) has filtered into the psyche of most of the planet’s inhabitants, along with their own religious prospections. Add to this the modern ability to blow ourselves to smithereens ands it seems all the more plausible that this generation could witness the end of days.

But is there any credible reason to think it will happen this December? No. How about on some other date a thousand years from now? No. We have no idea at all when God will decide, by the wisdom of his own mind, to command the finale.

If I were going to foolishly posit a guess, I’d base it on the Bible, like the false prophet Harold Camping, but I certainly wouldn’t give credence to some pagan Mesoamerican calendar that doesn’t claim to make this prediction anyway. Its authors murdered human beings in bloody, polytheistic sacrifices, so that gives me even less confidence in them, for why should we expect the devil to know before God when the fat lady sings?

No, nobody knows.

If I weren’t a saved Christian, I’d worry about the coming apocalypse. I’d fret about the Mayan baloney, and I would be afraid for my existence beyond this one, since I would have no confidence that one was even forthcoming, let alone that it might be hellishly worse. The Bible only tells us that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (I Thessalonians 5:2 NIV).

If you believed a night prowler was coming, wouldn’t you prepare? What would you do, get a dog? I got a God; the one who knows the exact time.

“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31 NIV).

The Rev. Bryan Griem
Montrose Community Church
Montrose

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To quote that depressingly perceptive commentator on modern life, Homer Simpson, on the subject of the Internet, “I’m sure some idiot somewhere agrees with me.” The sheer volume of hits on Google or on YouTube do not significance make.

It is my feeling that while Rome is burning this time around, the same 10 to 15% of Earthlings who believe that the Mayan prophecy will come true, or that the world will end in their lifetime for another loony reason, also are the ones fiddling around, Nero-like, with Howard Stern, the Kardashians and on-line poker.

I think most people who are fascinated by the end of the world know, deep down, that it is not happening any time soon. Thrilling, like a scary movie, but enjoyable because it isn’t real. Similarly puzzling is that people lose themselves in far-fetched conspiracy theories when ample real evidence of harmful wrongdoing abounds.

For edifying entertainment as you while away your time until Armageddon, try J.M. Coetzee’s book, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” which I recently stumbled upon. Or is this newspaper covertly guiding my reading to coincide with “In Theory” topics?

Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose

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There always were, and always will be, people who are gullible, uninformed or downright kooky. It’s a condition of the human race. What scares me is the significant percentage of the world’s population who actually believe in this Mayan doomsday hogwash. But then again, how many people — especially those living in Muslim countries saturated by anti-Jewish propaganda — still give credence to the ancient slander that Jews sacrifice Christian children for Passover? I would posit that more people believe in that age-old anti-Semitic nonsense than embrace these End of the World predictions. Sometimes I need to pinch myself and ask, “Is this for real?”

Unfortunately, all of this Armageddon talk is a distraction from the undeniably real threats facing humanity. For instance, Iran may not be planning for the end of the world, but Tehran definitely seems to be on track to attain nuclear weapons with which they threaten to annihilate countries such as Israel and the United States. How absurd is it that people are more frightened by a cryptic (and disputed) theory from 3,000 years ago than by the obvious dangers emanating from rogue regimes today?

But again, belief in far-fetched theories and speculations is part of the human condition and we need to live with it. No matter how bizarre an idea may be, there will always be someone out there who will buy into the notion hook, line and sinker. Some people will believe anything and everything, regardless of whether it makes sense. And once these odd theories take hold and gain a following, they can have remarkable staying power, despite overwhelming evidence demonstrating their foolishness.

To those who are planning for the end of the world on Dec. 21, I would humbly suggest you donate all your worldly possessions to a worthy charity. That way, you won’t feel too bad when you wake up on the morning of Dec. 22 and discover that life is going on as usual.

Rabbi Simcha Backman
Chabad Jewish Center
Glendale

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