The World Ends… Again? Meh.

You have to hand it to the end-of-the-world doomsayers: they certainly are persistent. After a long and rich history of always getting it wrong, such as with the much-hyped Mayan Prophecy from December 2012, these seers and prophets just keep coming back for more. Case in point: apparently, this past September 23rd, the world was supposed to end… again. But don’t take it from me, take it straight from the prophets themselves:

Beware September 2015! A Great Deception is Brewing! I Know What is Going to Happen and it is Not What You Think!

The Mystery Of September 23: Why Does 9/23 Keep Popping Up All Over the Place?

And the Internet is full of a whole bunch of other “September 23rd” doomsday sites. I swear every year or two these things pop up like roaches; with the true believers, it’s like a game of perpetual whack-a-mole, because no matter how many times these predictions are wrong (which is EVERY TIME), they just keep coming back for more.

Our skeptical friends over at Skeptoid do a nice take down of this latest doomsday prediction:

Skeptoid: The September 23rd Apocalypse

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Let’s start with what’s being predicted for September 23, 2015 – and for September 2015 in general. According to various conspiracy, prophecy, and prepping websites, the following things will happen on the date itself:

• Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

• President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with Pope Francis at the White House. Of note is that Francis is the 266th Pope, September 23 is the 266th day of the year, and the average length of human gestation is 266 days.

• The Autumnal Equinox.

• The First day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, also known as “the Feast of the Sacrifice.”

If you add in days either just before or just after 9/23/15, you also get a number of apocalyptic events:

• A range of dates that Comet 67P is scheduled to make an extremely close passage of Earth, September 15-28.

• The September restart of the CERN Large Hadron Collider will open a portal to another dimension.

• The end of Jade Helm 15 on September 15.

• The September 25th launch of a new UN initiative, Agenda 2030, which signals the end stage of Agenda 21 implementation.

• The date of the last of the “Four Blood Moons” heralding the End Times, on September 28.

• The approximate date of predicted economic collapse.

• The end of a Shemitah year in the Jewish Calendar, the last year of the seven year agricultural cycle, that traditionally brings with it great tribulation.

All of these events have been prophesied to form a combination that will bring on the End Times. What are the sources of these predictions?

• The obvious confluence of the three major world religions on September 23.

• Biblical prophecy, specifically the “Four Blood Moons” prophecy.

• The End Times prophecy of Sir Isaac Newton.

• A dire warning from French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who claimed on May 13, 2014 that we have “500 days to avoid climate chaos.” 500 days after May 13, 2014 is September 24, 2015.

• Prophetic dreams and visions by people attuned to such things.

• Predictive programming in Hollywood entertainment – specifically, many uses of the numbers “9” and “23” in films and TV.

Hmm, that’s quite a lot of scary End Times stuff, isn’t it? Except that the End didn’t come. But that won’t stop the apocalyptic fanatics from continuing to make their doomsday predictions; indeed, a quick Google search for “the coming apocalypse” will yield a mountain of Internet fodder to feed all the Bible-thumping, paranoia-inducing, hide-in-your-basement, conspiracy-mongering that you could ever want regarding future end-of-the-world predictions.

Here’s a prediction that you can take to the bank: the next apocalyptic prediction will pan out like all the previous ones… it will be dead, flat wrong.

So Much for The End of the World, Mayan Style!

Well, it seems that yet another end-of-the-world prophecy has bitten the dust.  Dec. 21st, 2012 – dreaded day of “the end” as supposedly fortold by the Mayan Calendar – has come and gone just like every other doomsday.  Beyond citing the obvious fact that we’re still here, I cannot help but poke fun by passing along this humorous photo of arch-skeptic James Randi while he was in Cozumel, Mexico just last week 🙂

Discovery of Earliest Mayan Calendar Throws 2012 Doomsday Claims into Doubt

No doubt, unless you’ve been living in a hole, you have heard about the supposed end-of-the-world coming this December 21st, 2012 – at least, that’s what some New Age whackadoodles and apocalyptic doomsayers would have you believe.  Why do they believe this?  Because, according to them, the Mayan calendar predicts it.

Unfortunately for the doomsday prophets, the Mayan calendar predicts nothing of the sort.  Take, for example, the fact that recently the discovery of the world’s oldest Mayan calendar seems to have thrown the whole “Mayan 2012” prophecy of armaggedon into serious doubt:

Nevermind the Apocalypse: Earliest Mayan Calendar Found

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The oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the Guatemalan rainforest.

The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 — the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn’t a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said.

“The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future,” said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. “Numbers we can’t even wrap our heads around.” …

Oops.  That’s embarrassing.  So the Mayan calendary doesn’t predict the apocalypse?  Why exactly is that?

… The Maya recorded time in a series of cycles, including 400-year chunks called baktuns. It’s these baktuns that have led to rumors of an end-of-the-world catastrophe on Dec. 21, 2012 — on that date, a cycle of 13 baktuns will be complete. But the idea that this means the end of the worldis a misconception, Stuart said. In fact, Maya experts have known for a long time that the calendar doesn’t end after the 13th baktun. It simply begins a new cycle. And the calendar encompasses much larger units than the baktun.

“There were 24 units of time they actually could have incorporated into their calendar,” Stuart said. “Here, we’re only seeing five units and they’re still really big.”

In one column, the ancient scribe even worked out a cycle of time recording 17 baktuns, the researchers found. In another spot, someone etched a “ring number” into the wall. These notations were used to record time in a previous cycle, thousands of years into the past. The calendar also appears to note the cycles of Mars and Venus, the researchers said. Symbols of gods head the top of each lunar cycle, suggesting that each cycle had its own patron deity.

“There was a lot more to the Maya calendar than just 13 baktuns,” Stuart said. …

Of course, another reason to doubt the claims of the doom-mongers, despite the structure of the Mayan calendar, is the fact that no matter what the source for the supposed end-of-the-world prophecy, every prophecy of this nature in the past has had one thing in common: THEY HAVE ALL FAILED SPECTACULARLY!  This includes at least one high-profile prediction from last year!

It’ll be interesting to see what the doomsaying believers have to say on December 22nd, 2012 when we’re all still here 🙂