Waiting for the world to end.

Like so many other people, I am looking forward to tomorrow. Most people do so because it is Saturday, and thus a day off from work. For some religious people however tomorrow is a very special Saturday. One may even go so far as to call it the most special Saturday of all time. Why so? According to Harold Camping, an American self-taught biblical scholar, May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day. That’s right, the end of the world is very, very nigh. Apparently he reached this conclusion after calculating that tomorrow marks the 7000 year anniversary of Noah’s flood. At first he calculated the rapture to take place in 1994 but, as we all know, he was wrong. So why am I looking forward to tomorrow? As it turns out I will spend my Saturday at work, but as I am slaving away in front of my computer I will be warmed by the knowledge that I will soon get to feast upon the fantastic fiction that is doomsday backpedaling. I love doomsday prophesies for just that very reason: Religion takes a bold step and makes overt predictions about the real world. The end of the world isn’t some kind of unknowable, immeasurable magic thing that requires blind faith. Nope! We’re talking real life “2012” Hollywood mayhem for six months before the total destruction of the world, Ragnarok, Armageddon, the freakin’ end of times. Moreover, we will be able to instantly witness the faithful being sucked up into heaven! It will be a sight to remember.

Of course, that will leave the rest of us here on earth realizing all too late that we have been wrong all along. We’ll be stuck with the biggest “I told you so!” of all times, and boy will we be sorry!

Only, that’s not going to happen.

As you may realize upon reading this, no prediction about the end of the world has been right yet, and they haven’t been lacking in number. Here is one wonderful example of previous rapture predictions:

It is easy to dismiss this phenomenon as just another crackpot Christian making a fool of himself, and to some degree it is just that. There are groups on Facebook organizing pre-Armageddon parties and post-Rapture looting, and a number of Youtube clips poking fun at what you should think about before you are sucked into the sky. I even read about some atheists in the U.S. that are taking this opportunity to offer to take care of people’s pets after the rapture, and who are actually succeeding in getting people to pay them for this. While this feels like an asinine thing to do, you can’t help it but to laugh a bit on the inside at the stupidity of the whole thing. However, there is something serious to be drawn from this too. Firstly it proves yet again how whenever religion tries to make real claims about the physical world, claims that we can observe and disprove, it ends up making an ass of itself. Secondly, it exposes one of the main problems of blind faith (and to some degree, religious faith in general): the gullibility of its followers. The people who believe that the world is ending tomorrow are doing nothing logically wrong by doing so, because their framework used to interpret the world is not one built up around critical thinking and scientific reasoning. If something can be believed in the face of contradicting evidence then there is no reason to reject any idea as false – especially if this idea comes from a spiritual authority that you trust. Blind faith gives you a set of broken tools with which to make sense of the world and opens you to draw stupendously naïve conclusions based on nothing but empty words.

One way in which we can be sure that the world is not ending tomorrow is for example to look at the evidence for there even being a Noah’s flood in the first place. Since the story of a giant flood appears in many myths predating the bible it makes sense to draw the conclusion that there may at some point have been a huge flood in that region. There is however not a shred of evidence to suggest that the world was drowned 7000 years ago. To believe that the world is ending tomorrow requires you to be so ignorant of facts and logical reasoning that this idea deserves to be met with ridicule. I myself am looking forward to hearing the explanations that people will have for the world not ending. Don’t get me wrong; I do not relish in people’s suffering, and I do not doubt that some people are heading for a rude awakening. What I look forward to seeing is how, amazingly, though the prediction will turn out to be completely wrong, the people who believe it will come up with reasons why that won’t matter.

To make my point clear: anyone can make a prediction and be wrong. Scientists do it all the time. The difference is that people don’t quit their jobs and sell their houses over these predictions. Instead they say: prove it. Once proven, then you sell your house. If the Christian god popped down today and said “Hey, guess what? The world is ending tomorrow!” that would be all the evidence I need. In fact, if the whole world would be hit by a worldwide earthquake tomorrow and there were videos on every news outlet of people floating off the ground – guess what? My atheism is gone. Granted it wouldn’t be conclusive to say god did it but I would feel comfortable to call it a qualified guess.

Here is my prediction for tomorrow: It will be a Saturday like any other, only a lot of people will come up with illogical reasons why the world didn’t end and why this miscalculation shouldn’t affect their beliefs or their critical thinking.

Oh, and don’t sell your house just yet.