Millenyptica

I don't understand the attraction of apocalyptic religion. I honestly don't. But what I really don't understand is the glee with which some people practice or preach apocalyptic religion. Go to the bookstore and flip through a book on the Mayan calendar prophesy, and you can't help but get the feeling that the author is strongly in favor of such a cataclysm. Those who believe in the Rapture are even more eager - they're positively champing at the bit to see the world end.

It's silly, all of it. If you asked the Mayan astronomer-priests of old what happens when the Long Count runs out, they'd probably shrug and say "Hell, we don't know, it probably just starts over again..." If you asked John of Patmos what he meant with all that beast-with-seven-horns business, he'd stare at you for a moment and say "Um, Emperor Nero and the Roman Empire, of course. What the heck are you smoking?"

Why are people in such a hurry to see the end of time? And why are unrelated events always thought to be part of the prophecy? What prompted this whole post was a comment attached to a news story about a passenger ferry in the Philippines that apparently foundered in a typhoon, with large loss of human life. The comment claimed that this was just another in a chain of natural disasters leading up to the End of Times, the final start of the Christian eschatology-slash-orgasm. Was it really? Or was it someone making a serious mistake and sailing a passenger ferry into a typhoon? What does one see here, the hand of God who had to sink ships and flood cities to start the End Times, or the hand of a select handful of human beings who made a serious mistake??

No wonder I grow skeptical with age.