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Dec. 21, 2012, The End of Days
The History Channel did a week's worth of shows a couple of weeks back about Armageddon and the End Times so I DVR'd them in order to watch them back to back which I just finished doing. It's all some pretty incredible, far-out stuff and I wanted to comment on some of the conclusions drawn in the series.
The Mayan Calendar, considered by experts and scholars to be one of the most advanced and complete calendars ever constructed, even more so than our own, ends on Dec. 21, 2012. The calendar is so specific and exact that it predicted solar and lunar eclipses long before they occurred. In addition to this calendar, the I Ching, which has been around for thousands of years and is used primarily as a personal guide, also predicts an end date to the world as we know it, as calculated by modern-day scientists and mathematicians. The end date is exactly the same; December 21, 2012.
Now, predicting the end of the world has been a favorite game for pundits, oracles, theologians and seers since the beginning of time and most of their predictions were very time-specific as well. In fact, their numbers run into the thousands and, so far, they've all been wrong. Followers of Christ, for example, expected and predicted his return during their lifetime and certain religious leaders have been predicting that we are living in the end times ever since, based primarily on the writings of the Apostle John in The Revelations, the final book of the Bible.
The key to good prophesizing of course is to be vague. The more vague one is, the more his followers can claim credit when certain things happen. We see this particularly in the writings of Nostradamus. His prophecies use words and phrases that could mean a lot of different things, as all the other prophets do, and when something happens that appears similar to what was predicted, those people who believe in such things use that as proof of the accuracy of his predictions.
Critics might claim that some predictions, whether biblical or secular, HAVE come true and perhaps they have. But a clock that doesn't run is right twice a day. The law of averages indicate that if enough predictions are made, a few of them will be correct. When they are, that's when we hear about them from that particular oracle's believers and supporters who quietly leave out the fact that a lion's share of the predictions made didn't come to pass at all.
So it's left up to the individual to believe whether these predictions are true prophecies or random noise and this writer has to side with the latter instead of the former. I believe in science, I believe in objective data, and I believe in facts as we know them. I don't believe in ghosts, angels, telepathic communications, or flying saucers. I believe all events have causes and I don't believe in people who claim they can predict the future.
I also don't believe in fortune tellers, mystics, talking with the dead, witches, psychics, or Voodoo priests and priestesses although I must confess I've used some of them myself in hopes of getting what I wanted. When we're desperate, we'll do anything, right? I invested a lot of time and money in pursuing this particular quest of mine and it was all for naught, because people have no more ability to change what people think and do than they do to predict the future.
I expect we'll all be here on December 22, 2012. And, if we're not, you won't be here to tell me I was wrong.