Goodbye, Everybody!


Today is, once again, the end of the world.

Coming just days after the world failed to cease as had been suggested on 28 September, Chris McCann of the eBible Fellowship has outlined his predictions in a handy online PDF.

Entitled A Strong Likelihood That October 7, 2015 Will Be The End of The World, it promises a “fiery trial” of faith and quotes Revelation 14:10 in detailing “that awful day” of God’s final judgement of mankind:

It gets better–I thought, back when Harold Camping died, that we’d never see his end-of-the-world prophecies again… but today’s date was explicitly based on Camping’s most recent failed prediction (cos it couldn’t be that he was just wrong). Maybe they remember how lucrative making false predictions was for Camping. Which explained his tenacity. My bold prediction: today’s group will be wrong, again.

There is one neat thing about the HuffPo story, though; at the bottom, they have a listing of various different apocalypse predictions. Most are ridiculous, and one is quite genuine. Which gives me a chance to re-post this one, which I really like.

I was driving along, with the radio tuned
To the lowermost end of the dial;
Through the static, two stations were both coming in
So I listened to both for a while.
First one, then the other, would drift into range
As the road, through the hills, wound around;
And I gradually noticed, the speakers on both
Were discussing the same common ground.
The topic today was the end of the world,
And both stations had stories to tell;
The first speaker told how the sun would expand
But the second was speaking of Hell.
The first station spoke of the Messenger mission
And NASA’s new triumph in space
With instruments measuring surface and core
And cameras detailing its face.
The craters and faults look a lot like our moon
But the temperature there can melt lead!
As the speaker continued, I found myself shocked
By the very next thing that he said:
He noted “of course, in a few billion years,
We know that the sun will expand,
And the Earth will be hotter than Mercury now—
We’ll be long gone by then, understand.”
Now, I know that our species is really quite young
When compared to the age of the Earth
And the odds of survival are frankly quite small,
So today is of infinite worth.
But to hear this astronomer matter-of-factly
Discuss how our planet would die
Was a sobering thing—even more so because
Of the evidence none could deny.
Now, the funny thing is that the alternate station
Was speaking of fire as well
And the punishment meeting each ignorant sinner
Eternally sentenced to Hell.
The end is not coming in billions of years
But when God calls us back to his side.
It could happen tomorrow, so live your life right
With the Bible alone as your guide.
Today’s not important; the whole of your life
Is just prelude to life after death
In Heaven or Hell, so your choice must be made–
It’s too late once you draw your last breath.
He was blatantly trying to frighten his listeners
But strangely, I wasn’t afraid.
A Bronze-age mythology doesn’t stand up
When there’s evidence there to be weighed.

It’s funny—the world-view that talks about Heaven
And promises souls will survive
Has to stoop to extortion and threats, like I heard
As I motored along on my drive.
The so-called “dispassionate world-view of science”
Has beauty, and greater appeal—
What’s more, in a contrast from mythical Hell
What is studied in science is real.
No threats of damnation, just projects like Messenger
Quietly getting it done—
Enjoy your Earth—only a few billion years
Till the whole thing’s engulfed by the Sun.

Comments

  1. says

    A few billion years, for a species evolved
    From microbe to humanoid in mere millions,
    Before long we’ll have it scientifically solved:
    Jump to another star system–there are gazillions.
    We’ll take to the Heavens, but let’s leave behind
    The believers in Hell, cos we won’t need their kind.

  2. Cuttlefish says

    You are far more optimistic than I am, memehunter. Somewhere around here there is a verse in which I predict that we’ll have killed ourselves off long before we have to worry about any cosmic events.

    I also suspect that, while there are gazillions of other systems, space is… big. I think we will never have an appropriate technology to transport any meaningful number of people any meaningful distance. And we presently seem bent on using what technology we do have, to make the world a place unfit for us to live in anyway.

  3. corwyn says

    In order to make help the earth we would need to find a way to launch 1/4 Million people into space EVERY DAY, using significantly less resources than they would consume if they remained here. That is a tall order.

  4. says

    Those problems exist only if you tried to get all 7-plus billions of us off the earth with today’s technology. No need to rush. We have a few billion years to figure it out and get it right, and we don’t need all of us, just a critical mass. Douglas Adams said so. In fact, by your count, we could never catch up since more people are born daily than we could evacuate. But we don’t need them all, just enough specimens to preserve the species. And a few million samples of our earthly companion life-forms in stored DNA.

    Arthur C. Clarke also predicted that we would evolve into energy beings, coded into the fabric of the Universe, beyond meat-and-fur creatures. Give it time. If the entire Internet revolution happened in a few decades, where a huge number of humans are now wired together, how much more can we discover and make possible in the next few decades? The rate of change is asymptotic. Take heart: natural selection will prevail. And we’ll take your poems along.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *