End Times and Such

Over at the Pharyngula blog PZ posts a picture of a church van.

And that got me thinking of the various times in my life that I’ve heard “it’s the end of the world, repent!”. Heck down in North Florida there were several creepy billboards about repenting, Jesus coming. They were creepy since they were black billboards with a simple (sans serif) font. REAL BIG. I remember being in middle school and 1984 was thought to be the end, then there was 1996 and 1999 and Y2K. People wrapping their houses in plastic, buying all sorts of emergency items, bunkers all sorts of things. In doing some brief research for these dates that have come and gone I came across March 10, 1982, which is my birthday, wasn’t necessarily supposed to be the end of the world but on that day there was an alignment of the planets and the subsequent “Jupiter Effect”. That never materialized.

Here we are nearing 2012 when the Mayan’s calendar says that December 21, 2012 is the end of a cycle. Of course that means the end of the world for many people. Now this church is saying it’s May 21, 2011 – they did some weird bible math to figure that out.

I’m not a true atheist since I do believe in spirituality and the connection that binds us all together. I have always thought that I would see world changes and happenings that in the 70s or 80s would blow people’s minds. Cell phones are one of those things and also Hurricane Katrina, Asian Tsunami of 2005, World Trade Center disaster 2001, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Pakistan flood 2010, just to name a few. The frequency of these events, the break down of society’s ethics and common courtesies, the dumbing down of America is disturbing to me. All I can really do is sit back and watch and also try to stay out of the line of fire.

So to clarify, I do believe something’s gonna happen and it’s going to be bigger than anything we’ve ever seen. We’ve built up a society/economics destined to fail – all it takes is a few good punches from Mother Nature and WHAM, we’re back in the dark ages. When that happens, humans will turn into animals.