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End times?

but you gonna love this reason for why the world is ending 101.
Men would mock the warning signs of the end of the age saying, These signs have always been around (2 Peter 3:3-4). The Bible even reveals their motivation, they love lust
isnt this one supposed to be a logical fallacy....
 
Well, considering that Christianity did start as a doomsday cult, yeah, it's not entirely surprisingly that they knew what people would answer to doomsday cultists. After all, they were hearing those answers first hand :p
 
That said, as far as I can tell, it boils down to this:

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
-- Mel Brooks.​

There was no shortage of people in history willing to believe that whatever problems or concerns they have at the moment are the worst that humanity has ever seen, and indeed so bad that surely the gods themselves will step in to stop the world. Why, not even the most heinous god would leave a world going where it's so bad that Jack Whiner has cut himself while making a salad. Meanwhile, the fact that in the same spot, 500 years ago anywhere between a third and two thirds of the male population would die violent and painful deaths... meh, that doesn't count. Unless it was some slapstick death, in which case it's funny.

But really, that's the history of human failure of empathy.

- that my flight was delayed because of some storm or volcano, why, that's a tragedy and a sign of the end times
- that 3600 years ago an eruption plunged Europe into famine, caused a major disruption of trade, and caused whole populations and countries to be exterminated or enslaved in the ensuing migrations... meh, that doesn't count. THAT is not bad enough to be a sign of the apocalypse :p

- that nowadays I have a moody boss and get some requests for overtime, oh God, it's such a cosmic injustice, that surely God himself will step in to stop the world already
- that not even so long ago the vast majority of the workforce wasn't free, and in some places serfs could be marched in chains to build a new city for the Tsar, meh, that's not so bad ;)

- that noawadays it upsets me to read about a couple more guys killed in Iraq recently, oh God, it must be the end of the world
- that all through the middle ages (and a good chunk of renaissance), it was considered the properly Christian thing to do to hang the whole garrison of a city and sometimes massacre some of the population too, if they didn't take the offer to surrender and made you storm the city, or for that matter that it was just normal to hang the thousands of non-noble prisoners after the battle in any case, meh, how bad can that be? Surely God wouldn't start the Armageddon over THAT, right? ;)
- or that it's barely a couple of centuries ago that the thirty years war caused over half of the population of Germany to die, well, that's not so bad either ;)

And so on, and so forth. That was sarcasm, btw, if someone can't tell.
 
AdMan said:
Just don't worry about it--there are always going to be gullible people who will buy into the craziest ideas. That does not mean there is any merit to them.

There are still people who think the world is flat, and websites pushing that idea. But it is very stupid to spend any time worrying about idiotic stuff like that. Same thing with many of the websites you start threads about.

Just relax. Avoid the crazy.
Click to expand...

Well, hmm. I would love to agree with this sentiment, but I don't think I can.

First, just dismissing these folks as 'gullible' doesn't seek to understand why end-times ideas are so durable, and always have been. I mean, yes, these folks are gullible, no doubt...but there's more to it than that.

These ideas are different from other nonsense, like flat earth or electric universe ideas, because they appeal to some of the most basic human emotions. I think one of the reasons that end-times ideas are always so popular is that they're a psychological defense against the idea that nothing we do really matters. If the world merrily goes on for another five thousand years, then everything we do right now--all our triumphs, all our failures, all our political ideas, all our experiences--are going to be as irrelevant as the lives of, say, common citizens in ancient Greece are to us. For many folks, that is an emotionally distressing thought. We really like to believe that we matter; we're important, what we do now makes a difference.

If this is the end of it all, then that is true.

I also think it's a bad idea to ignore these notions. Here in the US, we have politicians in high state and Federal offices who say things like "The world will end within the next 50 years." Their beliefs are, presumably, highly relevant to their policies. I personally don't want politicians who think the Rapture is about to happen making decisions that affect me, you know?
 
Good Lt said:
What is there to debunk?

The Bible says vague things. Also, bad things happen and have always happened in history. The rest is meaning grafted onto unrelated events by people who see what they want to see and ignore everything else.

Result? ENDTIMES!

Bulletproof, right?
Click to expand...

Hey, it worked the last seven or eight times........:D
 
wakawakawaka said:
yes but what about the so called proofs they now give like this http://rr-bb.com/showthread.php?27867-101-Reasons-we-are-in-the-End-Times! does rational wiki have a rebuttal to this list
Click to expand...

From your link:
10.
Damascus would be destroyed (Isaiah 17:1, 14; Jeremiah 49:23-27; Amos 1:3-5; Zechariah 9:1-8). Damascus, Syria is increasingly in the news and is extremely anti-Semitic. Many terrorist organizations have their bases in Damascus. God declares that they will become a ruinous heap because they have violently taken what was not theirs.

See:
-The Land of Israel: To whom does it belong?
-Olmert Warns Of Looming War With Syria
-Let’s get serious about Syria
-As Syria prepares for war (jewish world review)
-Olmert: Prepare for war with Syria (the jerusalem post)
Click to expand...

Using those diatribes against Damascus as evidence of the End times is popular over the web:
http://www.eternal-productions.org/101prophecy.html
http://www.conservapedia.com/Oracle_of_Damascus
https://ieonline.microsoft.com/#ieslice
http://jesus-1000.bigforumpro.com/t...ng-now-oracle-on-syria-elam-southwestern-iran


Anyway, if you want to know more about these prophecies, you might consider reading:
http://www.homerheater.com/files/OTProphets.pdf
http://www.arlev.co.uk/zech14.htm

Some think the Zecharaiah prophecy refered to Alexander the Great:
http://www.bunyanministries.org/expositions/zechariah 9,9.pdf

And on and on.
In any case this sort of rabid escapism just gets tired after a while because after all:

 
Growing up I've always heard when there are a lot of skyscrapers and gays running around that's when the world will end. Is that written in any holy text word for word? :D
 
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