Page 33 - 20090506 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - May / June 2009

33 Doomsday & Doomsday Cults 33 Doomsday & Doomsday Cults Doomsday & universal deregulation of all industries in an the earth." Ben Israel convinced Cromwell to Doomsday & let the Jews back into England on these attempt to expand world markets indefinitely. Doomsday Cults We could blow up the planet with nuclear grounds. Perhaps he hinted to the Doomsday Cults bombs. The odds of any of these things megalomaniacal Cromwell that he himself was Continued from Page 31 happening are small, but they are not the chosen one. In any case, several people Continued from Page 31 impossible. Whether you should worry about announced they were the messiah, but we'll science and superstition them is up to you. But you might want to think mention just one: Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676?). twice before scaring your children into thinking According to another Jewish mystical Until recently, if we wanted to explain that the end is at hand. One plausible scenario is tradition, the year of doom was predicted to be our origin or our ultimate demise, we were that our sun dies and the planet becomes a 1648, the year Sabbatai announced his restricted to creating myths about the beginning frozen mass some five billion years from now. messianic nature. His power grew as more and and end of our species. For thousands of years, Nobody will be around to observe it, however, more Jews and Christians joined in the chorus we could only guess at where we came from and since all life on Earth will have been singing the praises of the new messiah and the where we were going to end up. "For 160,00 extinguished millions or billions of years glorious end of all things human about to come. years, superstition held Homo sapiens captive," earlier. Their joy turned to sadness, however, when, in as Bob Park puts it.* Science has emerged only (My sage and cheerful editor, John 1666, their hero traveled to Constantinople and in the last few hundred years. Now, thanks to Renish, adds: It is more likely to be the pre- was arrested. His messianic nature was Charles Darwin and others we have a pretty human or pre-biotic world than the Adam & Eve challenged and it wasn't long before he good idea of where we came from. Thanks to world, should some of these things happen.* converted to Islam. As is always the case when many physicists and astronomers, we have a Astronomers generally believe that the Sun will a prophet or messiah is shown to be wrong, the pretty good idea of how it's probably going to expand to a tenuous red giant whose outer faith of some of his followers became even end. Superstitious myths about our origins and atmosphere might well engulf the Earth before stronger. They rationalized that the conversion ultimate demise still abound among the shrinking to a white dwarf. If it expands was part of Sabbatai's messianic plan to bring religious and anti-scientific secularists, but they enough, the Earth will spiral into the Jews to Islam or Islam to Jews or maybe both. do little damage to the progress of science. atmosphere, but in any case will be burnt to a He was eventually banished and died alone in Those doing science either reject the religious cinder. At least we wouldn't have to worry about Montenegro. Even so, there are people alive myths of our ancestral storytellers as products freezing to death. On the other hand, nobody today who await Sabbatai's second coming.*&* of creative minds that tried to understand the who reads your site will ever have to worry In the nineteenth century, the Baptist universe using little more than their about something that happens in 5 billion years. preacher William Miller (1782–1849) said the imaginations and the feedback they got from Most species die out in a few tens of million world would end on 22 October 1844. Miller is equally ignorant folks sitting around a campfire, years at most, so none of your readers or their credited with being the inspiration behind the or they have figured out a way to interpret the descendants will likely see the end, either.) Adventist movement of the 1830s and 1840s in myths to make them seem compatible with Most end-times doomsayers seem to be North America and other movements that modern science. Those who attempt to force unmoved by the enormous amount of scientific emphasized Biblical prophecy. Being wrong is modern science into the mold of their religious data available to anyone truly interested in the rarely considered a fault by the faithful. Miller's myths are not doing science and are little more end of the universe. Instead, when an event followers called the failure of the world to end than a constant nuisance. seems to them like an end-time event—such as as predicted "The Great Disappointment." A (Mythmakers still sit around the the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Millerite named Hiram Edson wrote: "Our campfire telling tales to their ignorant and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, or the fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, audiences. Some of these mythmakers are as recent (October 2008) collapse of world and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I ignorant as their camp followers. Some are banking—they turn to the Bible or someone like never experienced before....We wept, and wept, scientists trying to lure camp followers to Nostradamus for guidance. There have always till the day dawn." Miller thought there might donate money to their implausible or impossible been people who see catastrophic events as be some error in the Biblical chronology, but he projects, like the free energy hucksters. They signs that the end is near, yet an understanding never gave up his belief that the Second call it an investment, but it's a donation. I think of history and science should console us: every Coming was imminent. He wanted to keep that Bob Park said that.) generation has seen catastrophic events, some happy thought alive, as does preacher Ronald Many myths report doomsday events, generated by nature and some generated by our Weinland, who predicts the world will end in but they usually provide no way to test their fellow human beings. There has never been a 2010. If so, that would undoubtedly upset those claims. If they do, the claims don't stand up to time when things weren't uncertain and who think they have until 2012. scientific scrutiny. When scientists claim that dangerous for human groups, from families to there have already been doomsday events on tribes to nations. false prophets of doom Earth, such as being hit with a giant meteoroid some 65 million years ago, they produce saviors The continued popularity of doomsday beliefs evidence and counter-evidence, and argue until is illustrated by the popularity of the Left the claim is either rejected or accepted by the Associated with some doomsday beliefs Behind series of books and films, based on a majority of those in the field. When scientists is the notion that before the end comes some Biblical interpretation that involves something tell us that we could get hit again by another sort of savior will arrive to warn everybody. called the rapture. Millions of copies of the huge object from outer space, we take them These saviors have been many, but the best- novels have been sold. And despite the seriously and do not wonder if their revelation known is Jesus of Nazareth (or Bethlehem) preposterous nature of the belief, millions of came from an all-knowing being from the Great known as the Christ and Savior to a billion or so people apparently expect to have their bodies Beyond. In fact, there have been several mass Christians. Jesus seems clearly to have taught separated from their clothes and jewelry as they extinctions of species (more than 99% of all the that the end of the world and the Second are teleported to some supernatural dimension. species that have ever existed on Earth are Coming was at hand. That was 2,000 years ago. extinct). We could be rendered extinct from Some are still waiting for the messiah. In the Continued on Page 35 solar flares, gamma ray bursts, super novae, or meantime, several messiahs have come and black holes, to name just a few of the ways gone. nature could get rid of us. Our whole galaxy In the seventeenth-century, for example, could be swallowed up by some other galaxy. it was widely believed in England that the end We could be blasted by another huge meteoroid. of the world was at hand. One of the leading We could see our species depleted to the rabbis of the time and a teacher of Spinoza, (metaphorical) Adam and Eve stage from a Menasseh Ben Israel, let it be known that 1666 massive plague caused by the release of some was the year the messiah would come. mighty microbe or by massive poisoning of our According to tradition, before that could happen air, water, and food as globalization leads to the Jews had to be spread to the "four corners of