Do We See the "Apocalypse" as Renewal?

People’s fascination with “end times” likely is rooted in the emotional and cognitive processes of our brains. Such thinking helps us make sense of the world, according to Michael Shermer, author of The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Conspiracies and Politics.

Writing in New Scientist, he says:

Emotionally, the end of the world is actually a renewal, a transition to a new beginning and a better life to come. In religious narratives, God smites sinners and resurrects the virtuous.

 For secularists, the sins of humanity are atoned through a change in our political, economic or ideological system. Environmental prognostications of calamity are usually followed with reproaches and recommendations for how we can save the planet. 

… Cognitively, there are several processes at work, starting with the fact that our brains are pattern-seeking belief engines.

… Apocalypse thinking is a form of pattern-seeking based on our cognitive percepts of time passing. We connect A to B to C to D causally because they are connected chronologically, and even though occasionally they form false patterns, in the natural world they are connected often enough that in our brains time and causality are inseparable.

Shermer believes apocalyptic visions help people make sense of “an often seemingly senseless world.”

Click here for the complete article.

Drawing: Albrecht Durer's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Diamond Dust Points to Comet Cataclysm

Diamond dust dating to 12,900 years ago exists at six North American sites, pointing to Earth's impact with a rare swarm of carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites, reports a nine-member scientific team.

Nanodiamonds ~ produced under high-temperature, high-pressure conditions created by cosmic impacts and have been found in meteorites ~ are concentrated in similarly aged sediments at sites in Arizona, Oklahoma, Michigan, South Carolina and at two additional sites in Canada.

According to ScienceDaily, last year a team of scientists proposed that a cosmic impact event ~ possibly multiple airbursts of comets ~ set off a 1,300-year-long cold spell known as the Younger Dryas and led to the extinction of a large range of animals, including mammoths, across North America.

Now, reporting in today’s issue of the journal Science, a team led by the University of Oregon's Douglas J. Kennett, a member of the original research team, report finding billions of nanometer-sized diamonds concentrated in sediments ~ weighing from about 10 to 2,700 parts per billion ~ in the six locations during digs funded by the National Science Foundation.

"The nanodiamonds that we found at all six locations exist only in sediments associated with the Younger Dryas Boundary layers, not above it or below it," Kennett, a UO archaeologist, told ScienceDaily. "These discoveries provide strong evidence for a cosmic impact event at approximately 12,900 years ago that would have had enormous environmental consequences for plants, animals and humans across North America."

Click here for the complete ScienceDaily article.

Click here for today's Washington Post article.

This post originally appeared on my Ancient Tides blog.

A Cure for Doomsday Anxieties

Believe me, I’m not obsessed with apocalyptic, end-of-the-world, doomsday, end-time prophecies. But it was just eight years ago next month when a lot of people were trembling with fear as one millennium was about to end and another begin. And even if the world didn’t actually explode or implode as we entered 2000, we were certain to suffer mightily due to the dreaded Y2K.

It’s starting again. Here and there, more and more, we see references to 2012, the year the Mayan calendar ends, coincident with a number of other events that are certain to spell doom. Stay tuned for the Rapture. Just pray you’re not Left Behind.

All of this is why I encourage you to visit this website:

A Brief History of the Apocalypse

“Chicken Littles have been crying doom since ancient times,” writes the site’s author, Chris Nelson, who says he started the site “to debunk end-time prophecy by listing hundreds of failed doomsday predictions, allay the fears spread by end-time preachers, and demonstrate that doomcrying is nothing new.”

It’s a fascinating read ~ beginning with the year 2800 BC and extending to the present ~ with page after page of well-documented prophecies, many of them rather bizarre.

There’s probably no better way to fend off the anxiety that’ll be mounting until December 21, 2012, than to review the hundreds of failed predictions.

You might want to bookmark A Brief History of the Apocalypse for future reference.

Thinking the World's Gonna End

Once again, something in the news has triggered a rash of Doomsday rants. This time it was today’s early morning start-up of the huge Large Hadron Collider with its blasting of atomic particles through a 17-mile underground chamber. The collider's eventual intent is to replicate conditions surrounding the Big Bang, but some critics believe the collider could inadvertently create black holes capable of demolishing the entire Earth.

The BBC looked into the human penchant for apocalyptic fright and today published a fascinating article on why we have these fears.

"It is a very ancient pattern in human thought. It is rooted in ancient, even pre-biblical Middle Eastern myths of ultimate chaos and ultimate struggle between the forces of order and chaos," cultural historian Paul S Boyer, author of When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture, told the BBC. "It is deeply appealing at a psychological level because the idea of meaninglessness is deeply threatening."

Although end-of-the-world thinking crops up in many religions, those in the West are probably most aware of Christian eschatology, noted the BBC article. In the early days of the church it was taken as a given by many believers that the Second Coming and the end of the world were imminent. Mainstream Christianity may have moved away from this type of thought, but large numbers of believers have returned to it at various times.

"It isn't just the lunatic fringe, it's an integral part of all Christianity. But [in mainstream Christianity] it is put into perspective that it may happen 'one day'," Stephen J. Hunt, a sociologist of religion and author of Christian Millenarianism: From the Early Church to Waco, told the BBC. "Certain groups and movements believe it is in their generation. They are saying ‘We’ve got the truth and nobody else has.’"

"It comes down to an issue of power," says Michael Molcher, editor of the magazine The End is Nigh. "What you get during times of particular discontent or war or famine or during general bad times is a rise in apocalyptic preaching and ideas.”

Click here for the complete BBC article.

Illustration from a 1939 Popular Science article, "How Will the World End?"