The End Is Near: Is 2012 Truly the Day When the World Will End?

Suzanne · Tue Jan 05, 2010 8:33 pm


	Trish wrote: Other than that, I'd put my money on climate change.

I'm going for climate change myself. I live in NJ, and when I was little a played a game with my mother; who could spot the first robin in the spring. I cannot play this game with my own children because the robins never leave. We had a huge snow storm a few weeks ago, and it broke my heart to see a robin in a snow covered tree. This must be an effect of global warming, or, an example of evolution in robins. The temperature lately has not risen over 20 in the last several days. I often wonder how these robins stand the cold.


	Trish wrote: How about death by a large asteroid? They don't emit any light of their own, so they aren't the easiest things to find in space. Scientists have only begun to discuss possibly averting that disaster, but they also have no funding for an emergency asteroid deflection project. The Earth being over 3/4th water would make it likely we'd go out in one hell of a tsunami.

Advanced global warming would produce the same result.

ChrisRippel · Thu Feb 04, 2010 3:49 am


	tbarron wrote: I think it would be interesting to compile a list of all the predictions of the end of the world just to see how wrong we humans can get things.

Get a jumpstart on your list by Google searching "failed prophecy."

Even more interesting is the research about believer's reaction to failed prophecies.

In 1956 Leon Fastinger published a book called "When Prophecy Fails." Under five conditions, prophecy failures actually strengthen belief in the prophecy. This reaction supports Fastinger's theory of "cognitive dissonance." There is a Wikipedia article of the same name as the book.

A more recent book called "Expecting Armageddon: Essential Readings in Failed Prophecy" is an anthology refining the theory based on additional cases of failed prophecies. Pretty amazing stuff.

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