next »

[gsawpenny]

So, May 21 is the end of the world. Whatever you have planned for Sunday is toast.
The good thing is that after Saturday, I won't have to hear about this whole thing anymore.

So you mean I won't have to grade those papers after all?
That's the best news I've had all day.

Oh, good.  I was scheduled to mow the lawn.

[engineer_adrift]

Doonesbury is covering this Rapture story pretty well this week.  http://www.doonesbury.com/strip

I hear Arnold is counting on it.

Best
EA

[systeme_d_]

I'm looking forward to May 23, since that's the first Monday following the 21st.

On that day, I'll use the opportunity to generate discussion in my summer class about what happened to the Millerites after October 22, 1844.

Other than that, this whole thread is a Great Disappointment.

[tee_bee]

Well, when he gets to meet his maker he can argue with him about creation, etc.  I feel sorrta sad for the guy, seeing as he thinks he's the brightest bulb in the universe and will soon enough, at least in relative time, realize he is wrong.

Oooh, boy.

[eumaios]

Yes, but what about the rapture, scheduled for Saturday.We will find out all the answers then. Supposedly, the world is ending on Saturday. I am hearing it on the radio, seeing it on billboards, and a guy handed me a brochure about it in the Barnes and Noble. Then two tables of people sitting next to me started discussing it. If you haven't been informed yet, the world is ending on Saturday. The people calling the radio show were interested to know about pesky things like time zones for judgement day.  So, May 21 is the end of the world. Whatever you have planned for Sunday is toast.
The good thing is that after Saturday, I won't have to hear about this whole thing anymore.

But Harold Camping's calculations are all wrong. A friend and I have been e-mailing about the rapture scheduled for this weekend. Here's what I figured out and told my friend:

With only a few days left before the rapture predicted by Harold Camping, I figured I'd better say hi, just in cast the Internet doesn't work after Saturday night. Holy Writ is unclear on what happens to computer networks when the Rapture begins.

But then I ran across this item at LiveScience, in an article titled "End Times Math: The Equation That Predicts May 21 Judgment Day":

Here's the gist of Camping's calculation: He believes Christ was crucified on April 1, 33 A.D., exactly 722,500 days before May 21, 2011. That number, 722,500, is the square of 5 x 10 x 17. In Camping's numerological system, 5 represents atonement, 10 means completeness, and seventeen means heaven. "Five times 10 times 17 is telling you a story," Camping said on his Oakland-based talk show, Family Radio, last year. "It's the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you're completely saved."
(end quote)

Clearly, Mr. Camping is a blundering amateur with no skill in numerology. The numbers 5, 10, and 17 make no sense. Five and 17 are prime numbers, but 10 is not. We have 5 digits on each hand or foot, and 10 fingers and 10 toes, but the number 17 does not relate to anything in the natural world. You can't play with 5 and 10 to get 17, or do anything with 10 and 17 to get 5, or multiply 5 and 17 to get a product evenly divisible by 10.

Camping pulled his numbers out of his butt. Nostradamus could have done a better job, and he was a Frenchman.

So I did my own calculations based on my own mystical insights into the significance of magic numbers--insights that are every bit as valid as those of Mr. Camping and other prophets--and came up with a very different result. And my numbers make sense.

God is a Trinity, right? Three in one. So, somewhere in the equation, we have to cube something.

Christ was 33 years old when he died. And he is part of the Trinity. Therefore, the number we should cube is 33. The cube of 33 is 35,937.

Christ had 12 disciples, but only 11 after Judas hanged himself. And Christ was crucified between 2 criminals. So we add 11 and 2, get 13, and multiply 13 times the cube of 33 to get 467,181.

That's the number of days between Christ's death and his return. A year has 365.25 days. Divide 467,181 by 365.25 and you get 1,279.07.

We don't know when Christ was born. Estimates range from 6 b.c.e. to 6 c.e. So he died anywhere from the year 27 to the year 39.

So Christ's return occurred sometime between early 1306 c.e. and early 1318 c.e.

In other words, the world already ended about 800 years ago.

I feel much better now. I was going to change the oil in the riding mower this weekend, but why bother? Neither the mower nor I--nor my lawn--exists, since the math proves that Christ returned and the world ended in the late Middle Ages.

This prophetic numerology business is pretty easy, especially with a calculator.

If anyone has any other eschatological questions, just PM me.

[plunkett]

I love Stephen Hawking. He's charming and brilliant, and a wonderfully idiosyncratic icon of our times.
Now, about the rapture:
Have you seen this bumper-sticker? 

"When the rapture comes, this car will have no driver."

[systeme_d_]

Everyone who has ever lived in the south or midwest has seen that bumper sticker.
Now on to something more interesting.

[the number 17 does not relate to anything in the natural world.

Eumaios, you are going about this all wrong by looking to the natural world.  Have you never heard of Heaven 17?  And the Jargon File tells us that 17 is the least random number.

Click for more about 17 !

[busyslinky]

Yes, but what about the rapture, scheduled for Saturday.We will find out all the answers then. Supposedly, the world is ending on Saturday. I am hearing it on the radio, seeing it on billboards, and a guy handed me a brochure about it in the Barnes and Noble. Then two tables of people sitting next to me started discussing it. If you haven't been informed yet, the world is ending on Saturday. The people calling the radio show were interested to know about pesky things like time zones for judgement day.  So, May 21 is the end of the world. Whatever you have planned for Sunday is toast.
The good thing is that after Saturday, I won't have to hear about this whole thing anymore.

Andre Gregory couldn't have put it better.
But Harold Camping's calculations are all wrong. A friend and I have been e-mailing about the rapture scheduled for this weekend. Here's what I figured out and told my friend:

With only a few days left before the rapture predicted by Harold Camping, I figured I'd better say hi, just in cast the Internet doesn't work after Saturday night. Holy Writ is unclear on what happens to computer networks when the Rapture begins.

But then I ran across this item at LiveScience, in an article titled "End Times Math: The Equation That Predicts May 21 Judgment Day":

Here's the gist of Camping's calculation: He believes Christ was crucified on April 1, 33 A.D., exactly 722,500 days before May 21, 2011. That number, 722,500, is the square of 5 x 10 x 17. In Camping's numerological system, 5 represents atonement, 10 means completeness, and seventeen means heaven. "Five times 10 times 17 is telling you a story," Camping said on his Oakland-based talk show, Family Radio, last year. "It's the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you're completely saved."
(end quote)

Clearly, Mr. Camping is a blundering amateur with no skill in numerology. The numbers 5, 10, and 17 make no sense. Five and 17 are prime numbers, but 10 is not. We have 5 digits on each hand or foot, and 10 fingers and 10 toes, but the number 17 does not relate to anything in the natural world. You can't play with 5 and 10 to get 17, or do anything with 10 and 17 to get 5, or multiply 5 and 17 to get a product evenly divisible by 10.

Camping pulled his numbers out of his butt. Nostradamus could have done a better job, and he was a Frenchman.

So I did my own calculations based on my own mystical insights into the significance of magic numbers--insights that are every bit as valid as those of Mr. Camping and other prophets--and came up with a very different result. And my numbers make sense.

God is a Trinity, right? Three in one. So, somewhere in the equation, we have to cube something.

Christ was 33 years old when he died. And he is part of the Trinity. Therefore, the number we should cube is 33. The cube of 33 is 35,937.

Christ had 12 disciples, but only 11 after Judas hanged himself. And Christ was crucified between 2 criminals. So we add 11 and 2, get 13, and multiply 13 times the cube of 33 to get 467,181.

That's the number of days between Christ's death and his return. A year has 365.25 days. Divide 467,181 by 365.25 and you get 1,279.07.

We don't know when Christ was born. Estimates range from 6 b.c.e. to 6 c.e. So he died anywhere from the year 27 to the year 39.

So Christ's return occurred sometime between early 1306 c.e. and early 1318 c.e.

In other words, the world already ended about 800 years ago.

I feel much better now. I was going to change the oil in the riding mower this weekend, but why bother? Neither the mower nor I--nor my lawn--exists, since the math proves that Christ returned and the world ended in the late Middle Ages.

This prophetic numerology business is pretty easy, especially with a calculator.

If anyone has any other eschatological questions, just PM me.

[southerntransplant]

I once derived an equation for some engineering phenomenon but used a probability distribution in order to make it more like "real life," with all its randomness. The denominator of the exponent in the resulting equation was 17.

<goes to Barnes and Noble to buy "Starting a Cult for Dummies.">

[notaprof]

<goes to Barnes and Noble to buy "Starting a Cult for Dummies.">

Could you please clarify whether you are researching how to start a cult that has only dummies as members or is this a book of self-help for clueless cult starters?

[merit_decrease]

<goes to Barnes and Noble to buy "Starting a Cult for Dummies.">

Could you please clarify whether you are researching how to start a cult that has only dummies as members or is this a book of self-help for clueless cult starters?

I think it's against cult rules to ask the Great Leader to clarify.

He will probably forgive you... once.

[shamu]

Have you seen this bumper-sticker? 

"When the rapture comes, this car will have no driver."

A little side note on that: throughout my travels, I observed a high correlation between the frequency of those kind of bumper stickers and adult stores. I take it those adult stores sell materials for the spiritually very mature.

[mystictechgal]

A little check on reality, please? For me, at least, the idea of heaven and hell are constructs that allow human beings to get through their daily tribulations. Ask me what I really believe, and I'm not sure what I would tell you. What I would like to believe, and what I really believe, are very different things, and I hold them, variously, without shame, at very different times. When I put Tessa down last week, did I believe that she would go to a place called Rainbow Bridge to await me? Yes, because it made me feel better to believe it. I've sent my pets to stay with my mom since well before Rainbow Bridge was constructed. When mom died, when I was barely 14, I was an avowed agnostic, bordering on atheist, yet I sent my pets to be with her until I came along. I'm still of two minds, one completely rational, and one willing to suspend rationality to some extent. It is, I think, part of the "magical thinking" that we discuss, elsewhere. I now, for the first time in my life, regularly attend church services. I started because I was paid to sing in the choir, but I do so now because this church is the first I've encountered that actually seems to believe, and live by, teachings that I think are valuable from a social standpoint, whether or not I really believe heaven exists. When I pray, I am really praying. Ask me outside if I really believe heaven exists, and you are engaging a very different part of my intellect.  

I'm not so dogmatic as to think that there has to be one answer. There isn't one answer for me. I'll be darned if I require that everyone else have one single answer for them. It's their business to work out. I have no need to explain myself, or my beliefs, to anyone. I'm rather sorry that Hawking thinks he should, or needs to, publicly lay his beliefs out. Intellect, or not, I think he's been through enough in his life to be able to choose for himself what he believes without others challenging him on it.

All I know is that I rather hope there is a place, or a moment, where I can "see" those that have been in my past and reach reconciliation with them for whatever wrongs I think I may have done them. I hope there is a place whereby I can see my pets happy and content, and, perhaps, choose to have them with me. If I/we/they go into oblivion after that, fine. If there is an option, as in some belief systems, to continue, I hope that there is also an opt-out option, and that whatever I choose, I choose wisely. Death is a continuation of life--my energy will go somewhere. I go into it open-mindedly.

My own beliefs are convoluted enough. I have no need to critique the beliefs of someone else. Hawking is just as entitled as any of the rest of us to his beliefs, and they don't verge anywhere near the bizarre. I'm not about to critique him. I'll reserve that for the truly bizarre, and potentially dangerous, who, among other things, set dates for things to happen. That's cultish, and can cause real harm to both adherents, and non-adherents when they decide to "make it so", and for adherents who stake their lives here on it being so, and do real economic &/or physical harm to themselves and/or their families.

Hawking is an individual who has decided to come out with his beliefs. Not sure why he decided that was necessary, but I will not critique him for it. Where they don't potentially hurt others, we are all entitled to our own beliefs.

[wet_blanket]

I agree with the sentiment, MTG, but I don't think this thread was started to ridcule Hawking.  It was started to give the OP an excuse to ridicule others (Christians) for their beliefs.

[canuckois]

I agree with the sentiment, MTG, but I don't think this thread was started to ridcule Hawking.  It was started to give the OP an excuse to ridicule others (Christians) for their beliefs.

....which is odd, since Plunkett is a self-proclaimed Quaker.

More than anything, though, he's a sh!t-stirrer.