The World is Ending! Update!

It's been the 21st of May for 58 minutes. So far the end of the world is sort of a let down.



Incase G-d is just running a little late, I'd like to take a moment to thank him for creating the plague, AIDS, baby moths that eats their way out from the inside of a live caterpillar, the particular kind of leech that likes to live inside eye sockets and of course, homosexuality.



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-preacher-warns-end-of-the-world-is-nigh-21-may-around-6pm-to-be-precise-2254139.html


I'd also like to reassure him/her/it/ze/they that I don't hold any grudges against ze for hiding yourself so thoroughly, for making all your devoted followers nutbags and idiots, and for generally not being a good explanation for any of life's mysteries.

In order to deflect your possible wrath, I'd like you to consider that while I have been referred to as 'millitant' atheist before, I have never used the wit and style of this man. Dawkins.

some of my favourite quotes:

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."
— Richard Dawkins (Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder) 

"The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale. "
— Richard Dawkins

The World is Ending!

Stop the presses, we're all going to die.

I know, for too long we've all thought the world was ending on the 21st of December, 2012. Those Mayans promised us. But since they're all dead now, the world really ended a long time ago for them.


Now, a new date has been proposed.

The 21st May, 2011. That's right people, only 27 more days to rap up all your unfinished business.

This is the genius idea of (who else) a rightwing American nutjob with too much money and too little sense. Family Radio network founder Harold Camping. He also prosephied that the world would end in 1994, but later admitted to doing his adding wrong or forgetting to carry the 1. He's sure his Maths is right this time though. Ruly-truly.

If you feel the need, search for his page, it's full of bizarre claims basically taking random numbers from random Bible excerpts and then using those numbers to make a date for the End Days.


Allow me to use my prophetic powers in order to determine the true date the world will end.
I am the Ungodly Prophet, and I see.....


My favourite number is 17. I am currently 22. I feel like the oldest I will ever be is 37.

(1+7) x (2+2) =  32
=
3/2/37

The world will end on the third of February 2037.
(Guess I will live past 37)

(Or, if God really is American, than maybe it'll be the 2nd of March 2037.)

If you do feel the need to prepare for the rapture, apparently there are actually books designed to prepare you for this.

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times

The End of the World: Stories of the Apocalypse

End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life


I can't tell you anything about them because I don't think the world is going to end, except that they're cheap, (which definitely says nothing about their quality. O_O ) so might be good for a laugh.


So, what do y'all think? Is the world really ending? Anyone packing up a swiss army knife and a supply of canned food and heading for the hills?

A book

Now I'm not in the habit of doing this, it's kind of tacky, but I want you to read this book. If you can't find it in you local library, or secondhand somewhere, then you should buy it.

The God Delusion

It is made of win. Dawkins, who appears in so many YouTube clips as a witty man with a slight tendency to stutter, reveals himself as a really amusing writer. It's clever, it will help you win arguments with deists...and hey, if you are a deist, you know, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc, maybe you'll have your own little period of Enlightenment. :D

Easter

Happy Eostre y'all.

Have lots of chocolate on my behalf. (I forgot to buy any and the shops are all closed.)


The modern English term Easter developed from the Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre (IPA: [ˈæːɑstre, ˈeːostre]), which itself developed prior to 899. The name refers to Eostur-monath (Old English "Ēostre month"), a month of the Germanic calendar attested by Bede, who writes that the month is named after the goddess Ēostre of Anglo-Saxon paganism.^[4] Bede notes that Ēostur-monath was the equivalent to the month of April, yet that feasts held in her honor during Ēostur-monath had gone out of use by the time of his writing and had been replaced with the Christian custom of "Paschal season
(stolen from Wikipedia)


Pretty, right? The Pagan gods are so much more creative than the Abrahamic God. Personally, I like the commercial god we've created, the Easter Bunny.

2 seconds on YouTube though and I've found proof that our new God can be pretty malevolent too! Just to even out the score, and because it makes more sense if the bunny is female (the whole fertility motif), we're going to decide that in the clip you are about to see, we're looking at a Goddess.

It is Easter Saturday. One of the days Jesus supposedly spent dead in a tomb, 2000 years ago. In honor of this sacrifice, thousands of customers who eat at Mcdonald's over the Easter weeked will order fillet-o-fish burgers.

(I work at the dread store, as a casual while I finish uni. The acrid reek of deep fried fish is never so pungent as on Good Friday.)

I know, the Jesus story is nice, and some people find truth and beauty in it. For me, there's too much darkness hidden in the Bible for me to ever see it as the Holy Book.

I find truth and beauty and meaning in science, in my year 9 biology textbook, in the maths books I was never dedicated enough to decipher, in chemistry and physics.

Some people might think you can't find the meaning of life in a world without God, and to those people, I offer these two clips. One is an excerpt from a speech by Richard Dawkins that I got off YouTube, and the other is Carl Sagan's 'Pale Blue Dot'.

They are worth the 2 and 4mins it will take to watch them.

Sexist, racist- pretty music though.

So, I just watched a movie. Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third Narnia movie.

I really like the music for the Narnia movies. I’m not going to go into a synopsis of the movies, if you want one then I suggest you dogpile.com it. (I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Google is Master)

The movies themselves are okay for kid’s movies, and Skander Keynes, who plays Edmund, the skeptic child, would get my heart fluttering if I were just a little younger.

The books themselves are full of the dwarves, fauns, centaurs and small children becoming heros that dominate kids fiction. They aren't terrible books, but they would be better if they weren't thinly disguised Christian allegories. More than that though, they require an ability to figuratively block your ears and hum loudly every time you come across some of Lewis’s patented racism, sexism and islamophobia.

To be honest, however, I think the most offensive and laughable thing written in the books is in the fourth book, the Voyage of The Dawn Treader. After all, racism, sexism and islamophobia are still alive and well in modern society, whereas I think we've all moved past an aversion to people who live a healthy lifestyle.

Lewis sneeringly describes odious Eustace Scrubb, with his vegetarian, non smoker, teetotaler parents, with more than a hint of disdain. I also have to wonder if ‘they wore a special kind of underclothes’ is a reference to Mormonism, it being the only philosophy I’ve ever heard of that actually sets out what kind of jocks their adherents should be wearing. Thankfully, by the end of the book, Eustace is firmly converted to the joys of Anglicanism, sorry, Aslanism, though no doubt his parents are still muddling along, not getting lung cancer or liver failure. Maybe they need another book or two to reach that point.

I’ve gone wildly off point. Sorry, it's just something I do.

The movies are mediocre, the books are derivative and shockingly bigoted, but still entertaining in their own way, but the music…I have a soft spot for the music. ‘This is Home’ by Switchfoot, and ‘The call’ by Imogen Heap are both songs that simultaneously cheer me up and depress me, making me long for a magical fantasy world to call my own. I expect in this fantasy world I’ll be obliged to get a sex change in order to make sure I don’t spend the majority of my time sewing and pumping out noble children.