September 2011
34 posts
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There's more than one apocalypse possible
Here’s a reminder for fundagelical watchers like myself that not all Armageddons involve religious predictions and mythologies. Here’s a very real apocalyptic possibilty: the sociopolitical meltdown predicted to come with declining availability of cheap, readily available oil.
Apparently, our obsession with apocalypse means we’re really not rational about preparing for...
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The New York Times explains the antichrist &...
Of course, it says something really awful about America that the editors of the New York Times found it necessary to do so. Nonetheless, in light of the recent “heckler” (I’m sure he thinks he’s a prophet), it was sure nice of the Times to provide us with this information:
While Depression-era fundamentalists represented only a small voice among the anti-Roosevelt forces...
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Bringing the apocalypse ... with a bomb hoax
From the Washington Post:
An explosives-trained Army veteran who wore a fake bomb during a standoff that followed a phone call to a mosque in which he threatened to “start an apocalypse” was sentenced Friday to five years in prison by a federal judge who called the matter an escalation of the man’s aggression.
Roman Conaway, a former Wal-Mart employee, had gone on a rampage that led to an...
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The difference a future makes...
I’m reading The Myth of the Great Ending by Joseph M. Felser, a philosophy professor who is looking at why we look for an end, even when we’re at the beginning.
This passage got me thinking about what an expectation of an apocalypse does to our very human lives. Felser is asked by a student what he thinks of this “End of the World stuff.” He tells her no, but in the...
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Foreign policy signs & technology portents
As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “It’s always something.” That’s especially true if you happen to be an End Times-believing fundagelical Christian and you’re getting tired of waiting.
That’s how we get items this week in blogs on the Christian Post site that pick politics (the Palestinian Authority’s move to get the U.N. to grant them statehood)...
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Rev. 19:11, nuclear war, and the U.S. Air Force
One of these things is not like the others, if you’ll recall your Sesame Street song.
That is, yes, the US Air Force is responsible for conducting nuclear war (dawg forbid we should ever need to do such a thing), but what’s Revelation 19:11 got to do with it?
That’s the one that reads:
11 Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called...
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The facts about the Mayan calendar and 2012
Here’s a review (via National Geographic) of a new book—from an expert on Mayan writings—about what the “long count” calendar really means.
The book is called The Order of Days: The Maya World and the Truth About 2012. Of course, I expect to read it soon, but here’s a bit of what Jason Golomb says about it on the National Geographic blog:
Did the Maya...
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Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of Millennial...
That’s the name of the new book by Richard Landes, and Religion Dispatches has a piece up about it—a review by Gordon Haber.
We like to downplay our fascination with the apocalypse. When it shows up in pop culture, we treat it as metaphor: an alien invasion represents our fear of immigrants, zombies our fear of pandemics, and so on. Or else we’re dismissive: when Harold Camping...
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Ponzi schemes and apocalypse
Sarah Posner over at Religion Dispatches ties Texas Gov. Rick “Goodhair” Perry’s claim that “Social Security is a Ponzi scheme” to the apocalypse.
That’s right; one of Perry’s fellow fundagelical Armageddonists, the Left Behind man Tim LaHaye, described our national elderly poverty prevention program as a “Ponzi scheme” in his 2005 book, The...
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“Much of what we portray as baffling in John of Patmos’ psychedelic visions would...”
– Fred Clark at Slacktivist, in “Refusing to bow before the Beast,” an excellent post on reading Revelation without fundagelical goggles—but with Christian faith.
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Don't worry, you'll still be able to get fresh...
This just in, via LAist and LA Weekly Blog: Pink Visual, a Los Angeles porn production company, is so concerned about a 2012 apocalypse—and the resulting shortage of new porn—that they’re building an underground bunker to shelter the company, family members and stars.
That way, we won’t have to rely on outdated pornography in our post-apocalyptic world.
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WatchBecause once all the Christians have disappeared (or at least the Real True Christians)—plus all the children, if Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series is to be believed—the first thing we’ll do is go find a DVD player in order to get some answers.
christiannightmares:
Pastor Vernon Billings pre-records an important and potentially soul-saving message for those Left Behind by...
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“It is the apocalyptic frame of reference of fundamentalists, their belief in an...”
– Mike Lofgren, “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult”
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SF, get ready. The United States of Armageddon...
…makes a road trip this Saturday:
Kel Munger Speaks on the Apocalypse at AASF
This month Atheist Advocates of SF features a talk by writer Kel Munger on America’s fascination with the apocalypse.
While the idea of apocalypse dates to before the Christian era, Americans have refined it to a gory, glorious epic-and then exported it to the rest of the world, with implications for the...
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“Great numbers visited the spot, and examined these wondrous eggs, convinced that...”
– From a Christian Science article detailing five failed End Times prophecies. This one describes the Prophet Hen of Leeds, England. That’s right, a chicken. In 1806.
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Prosecution for one of Harold Camping's followers
In Malawi, an African nation that’s been a single-party dictatorship for decades, they’re pretty tough on false prophets. One of his followers was arrested in Malawi for circulating leaflets with Camping’s May 21 Rapture prediction.
Saduki Mwambene, a 39-year-old bicycle repairman, was arrested on April 21 for circulating leaflets published by American televangelist Harold...
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Moving closer to where the end will start
Here’s a piece from the Economic Times that details how a group of Italians who believe that the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar will bring about the end of the world—-and so they’ve moved to the Yucatan Penninsula to wait for it.
Scholars agree, though, that the Maya believed nothing of the sort. The date is the final one in their so-called Long Count calendar, the end of...
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“Apocalypse thinking is a form of pattern-seeking based on our cognitive percepts...”
– Great piece from Barry Ritholz at The Big Picture about the neurological underpinnings of apocalyptic belief and is roots in our being wired to look for patterns.
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