2012: They Don't Want You to Know (video)

(HowStuffWorks) Thousands of people across the globe believe the world will end in 2012 -- but why? The beliefs of 2012 fans, from interpretations of the ancient Mayan calendar to concerns over irregular sunspot cycles and solar storms, spell new hope for humanity or doom of biblical proportions.

Why we fear "doom"

Wisdom Quarterly

Doom is the end of the world. Doom is death and destruction. Doom, we can't get enough of it. Why are we obsessed? It may be fear of death the forces us to pay attention. It may be relief -- we need another "failed" prediction to bolster our sense that no one will ever predict anything. No one has seen anything. No one knows anything. We're safe.

We are safe. But as we sleep in safety, are we ignoring the doom all around us? The Buddha's final words as he exited this samsara (the round of death followed incessantly by rebirth) were:

All conditioned phenomena are hurtling toward destruction;
work out your liberation with diligence.

Translators may tweak the tone or sentiment of these words. Yet the message is incontrovertible. Things fall apart. They are always falling apart. That is the nature of "things" (all that arises supported by causes and conditions, which is everything with the sole exception of nirvana). Release from this, freedom from this, liberation from this is knowing and seeing nirvana.

Mahayana Buddhism popularizes a confusing notion, "samsara is nirvana," a dangerous witticism on par with "If you meet a buddha on the road, kill him." These are odd ways to say simple things. This is not nirvana. It can be. Nirvana is not elsewhere. But we have not realized that liberation. The belief that we have does not bring us closer to it.

And if a paradoxical Zen instruction says reject authority because we have that in us, great. But to "kill" (utterly disregard, denounce, silence) a guide who points out the way? That is like rejecting a prison door labelled EXIT and deciding, "I'll just keep looking for myself."

Buddhas point the way.

There is precious little time for us on this plane, so fortunate to hear the path to freedom from all suffering. We go from here onto other states, only very rarely coming back. It is not likely that we will hear this message again for a long time. We ourselves are conditioned phenomena, and everything (material form, sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness) in us that we regard as us is hurtling toward destruction.

The Buddha (teacher) is a guide. The Dharma (teaching) is a guide. The Sangha (those who have successfully followed the path) collectively is a guide. The path does not simply lead to nirvana, final emancipation. It leads to all good states along the way. If one should wish to be reborn in one of the many heavens (states superior to the human in terms of longevity, beauty, pleasure, radiance, etc.) that is available by the path of serenity and insight, concentration and mindfulness, stilling and seeing.

Why the World Will End (Again) Tomorrow

Stephanie Pappas (LiveScience.com)

(Fox) The world is about to end. Again. Oct. 21 is the next in a long line of apocalypses stretching back thousands of years.

This time, the prophet of doom is Harold Camping, a radio preacher who received international media attention in May when he predicted that Judgment Day would fall on May 21, followed by months of torment on Earth and an end to everything in autumn.

Judgment Day didn't bring the promised earthquakes and Rapture, but Camping now says May 21 marked a spiritual Judgment Day and that the world will still end "quietly" on Friday. It may seem odd that Camping's faith remains strong, but apocalypse experts say that doomsday prophets have often built their entire lives around their end-of-the-world views, and that worldview is hard to shake. For an elderly preacher like Camping, who suffered a stroke in June, apocalypse beliefs may also reflect his struggle with his own mortality....

• Deferred Doomsday Due Friday - Or Not
• Debris of Comet Elenin to Pass Near Earth
  
• Mysterious Planet Nibiru, Comet Elenin
• Camping says end of world is on May 21st
  

The Appeal of the End
Doomsday predictions, whether secular or religious, often attract those who feel the world is unsalvageable. Sometimes the world-ending catastrophe is nuclear winter; sometimes it’s the Mayan apocalypse. But religious doomsday groups often draw on mainstream faith, said Stephen Kent, a sociologist at the University of Alberta. "Almost all apocalyptic beliefs show Christian influence," Kent told LiveScience. More

But the Rapture DID Happen (video)

Wisdom Quarterly

Camping speaks to media after failed prediction. Insists the Rapture did happen. Doomsday still on schedule for October (IBNTimes).

News outlets are misquoting and mischaracterizing failed Christian prophet Harold Camping. He said "Judgment Day" would be May 21, 2011. And it was, Camping insists. It's just that it was "spiritual" rather than physical. If people are committing suicide, that's their business.

We are therefore currently living through the tribulation. Doomsday will occur in October. The world was never going to end in May; it was always predicted by Camping to end in October. So...no refunds! Take your complaints to God. Donations will not be returned, period:

Camping, the president of FamilyRadio.com, said he will not return any money for those who have invested in the Doomsday campaign, despite the fact that his prediction has [apparently] failed. Family Radio has raised over $80 million of donations over the past five years. God is good that way. More

Hitchens: Religion degrades humanity.

Doomsday dud! So now what? (Commentary)

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)


Filmmaker Zeke Piestrup has been documenting Harold Camping; see below (SFGate.com).

Doomsday was a dud. It's no surprise. But we have to admit we're a little disappointed. We came in on the weekend, hugged Christian pets, went to a party, learned the Dougie -- and all for what?! When does the Bible show begin already?

• How Harold Camping marketed the Rapture
• Like End Times: Terrifying video from US tornado

Kate Upton teaches a weary world the Dougie

Armageddon is the name of a Jewish war. And apparently it can not begin until a few other things line up. Imagine a religion, fundamentalist Christianity, put in a position to long for war, to be wary of anybody labelled "the peacemaker" (usually American presidents who try to resolve Middle East tensions), and who sees End Time signs in every social eventuality:

Kindness? So what. Compassion? Who cares. Environmental stewardship? Never heard of it. But homosexuality? Aha! Crime? Yes! Earthquakes? Praise the lord! Everything bad is good if it signals the end of the world (and the beginning of assumption into heaven).

CBS News Video as posted on SF Gate's May 21, 2011: rapture or party time?

Camping to Answer on Film Today

Wisdom Quarterly
Fortunately, Zeke Piestrup has been following doomsayer Harold Camping for weeks, running tape for as much as 19 hours a day in the run up to The End. But Camping went into black out mode on the 21st. He will emerge on tape to explain why his prediction failed.

And Camping will have an explanation today because he holds the world's record on answering Bible questions (50 years) on an unscripted open forum radio show. He is unflappable, charismatic, and absolutely certain of his interpretations. He has survived at least one failed prediction (but that one left him the out that May 21 was the only other option). More than surviving, he comes out stronger, in accordance with psychologist Festinger's 1950's findings on doomsday cults.

Former KROQ DJ Piestrup was on KROQ radio in Los Angeles Monday morning (May 23) discussing his documentary film on Harold Camping and the Family Radio ministry.

Camping "flabbergasted" Judgment Day did not come

SFGate.com
The man who said the world was going to end appeared at his front door in Alameda (Northern California) a day later, very much alive but not so well.

"It has been a really tough weekend," said Harold Camping, the 89-year-old fundamentalist radio preacher [and twice failed prophet] who convinced hundreds of his followers that the rapture would occur on Saturday at 6:00 pm.

Massive earthquakes would strike, he said. Believers would ascend to heaven and the rest would be left to wander a godforsaken planet until Oct. 21, when Camping promised a fiery end to the world. More

• Will Graham [Televangelist Billy Graham's son] preaches on end times after camping's wrong prediction [because there's a lot of money to be made from doomsaying]
  
• Harold Camping Should Publicly Apologize for Wrong Doomsday Prediction, Says Christian
• Critical Facts About Harold Camping
• Harold Camping's Rapture prediction doing anything good?
• Harold Camping, We're Still Here After 6:01 P.M., What Now?
• Harold Camping doomsday prediction record: 0-2
• Jane Seymour: Schwarzenegger has more out-of-wedlock kids
  

Doomsday dud explained!

LiveScience.com

Harold Camping has some serious explaining to do. Or does he? He may be an embarrassment to Christians, laughing stock to atheists, and a "nut" to everyone else, but what motivated his charismatic confidence? (Image: Karl Tate, TechMediaNetwork)

If readers are reading this, Harold Camping and FamilyRadio.com's predictions that the end of the world would start Saturday (May 21, 6:00 pm) failed to pan out.

That's good news for most of us. But Camping and his Christian followers were looking forward to the end. After all, they believed that they were likely to be among the 200 million souls sent to live in [space] paradise forever.

[That is the total number to get to heaven, past and present, because the worldwide earthquake was going to toss up the dead, according to Camping.]

Piestrup documenting Camping in the run up to the end (Michael Macor/The Chronicle).

• Harold Camping "flabbergasted"; Rapture a no-show

So how do believers cope when their doomsday predictions fail? It depends, said Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal who studies the history of doomsday predictions.

Doomsdays without Doom

The classic study of "doomsdays gone bad" took place in 1954. A Chicago woman named Dorothy Martin predicted a cataclysmic flood from which a few true believers would be saved by aliens. Martin and her cult, The Seekers, gathered the night before the expected flood to await the flying saucer.

Unbeknown to them, however, their group had been infiltrated by psychologist Leon Festinger, who hoped to find out what happens when the rug of people's beliefs is pulled out from under them. Festinger's study, which became the basis of the book When Prophecy Fails (Harper-Torchbooks 1956), revealed... More

• When Doomsday isn't, believers struggle to cope
• What do believers do when the world fails to end?
• Pondering death can alter behavior [Maranussati]
  
• The Dish: Helper brain cells grown in lab
• No Rapture, No Judgment, NO DUH

Countdown to extinction: the last seven days with 89 year old Christian prophet Harold Camping. "It's the gays and drug addicts!"

• Will Graham preaches on end times after camping's wrong prediction
  
• LAPD hold suspect in Dodger Stadium assault on SF Giants' fan
• AP Exclusive: Former Palin aide pens tell-all

Doomsday Parties, Saints, Song (video)

(Hugh Kramer, examiner.com) While Christian media tycoon Harold Camping is prophesying worldwide devastation and the bodily lifting into heaven of true believers for May 21, the group "American Atheists" is prophesying something quite different: a good time.

Here's the blurb from the biggest party AA is sponsoring; the two day (May 21-22) West Coast Rapture Ram in Oakland, CA:

We'll be there organized and ready to pick up theclutter left behind when the Christian Rapture begins that Saturday, as promised by "God" Himself at wecanknow.com. Since God has chosen to reveal this vital fact to his prophet in Oakland, we thought Oakland would provide the best venue fo an intimate view of the event. More

Eels "Lucky Day in H*ll"

According to FamilyRadio.com, only 3 percent of the world's population will be "raptured" on Saturday, about 6:00 pm. Although (.03 x 6.5B = not good odds), it may be our lucky day in h*ll.

How to get the title "Saint"

(Patt Morrison) Not God, but recognizably holy, oftentimes a martyr, and always a miracle worker, how does one become a saint? The earliest form of the canonization process was more or less a popularity contest. But over the centuries, it became more stringent.

[Then it became much less stringent with the closing of the Vatican's Office of the Devil's Advocate," which used to vet claims of sanctity and miracles.]

Sometime after the year 400, bishops decided who would be declared a saint. This went on until around the year 1100, when a priest got into a bar fight in Scandinavia and was killed. When his bishop friends began to revere him as a saint, the pope reserved the saint-making process for himself. It’s been in the hands of Rome ever since.

Today, the process is a complex affair involving formal [but no so stringent] investigations and witness testimonies, of sometimes up to 1,000 pages. In addition to the Virgin Mary and St. Patrick, there are as many as 40,000 Catholic saints [which to many simply means one got into heaven[. Now some southlanders are petitioning to canonize a local Basque Claretian Missionary priest buried at the San Gabriel Mission [in Los Angeles' east valley].

Patt Morrison gets the latest on the story of Father Aloysius Ellacuria and a brief history of sainthood.

Atheists "to save pets after world ends"

During Rapture an Episcopalian priest, Fran, Roger the Alien, Stan the CIA Agent, and the slow janitor look on as naked people are lifted up ("Rapture's Delight," American Dad).

(Web.orange.co.uk) Enterprising atheist animal lovers are cashing in on religious pet owners who believe the world is about to end [on Saturday, May, 21, 2011].

Some US Christian fundamentalists [familyradio.com] believe Judgment Day will begin with a massive earthquake on Saturday.

They say believers will immediately go to heaven while the rest of us have another five months to suffer until the world ends in October.

The problem is that many fundamentalists are reportedly worried about what happens to their pets when they go to heaven.

Whereas in Buddhism animals are living beings subject to rebirth the same as humans, gods, hellions, and other entities, pets are not allowed in Christian heaven. Atheists will care for them on Earth.

A new company -- Eternal Earth-Bound Pets -- is offering to step up to "take that burden off your mind."

"You've committed your life to Jesus. You know you're saved," the company says on its website.

"But when the Rapture comes, what's to become of your loving pets who are left behind?"

The post-Doomsday pet rescue service says it already already has 259 clients, who have paid $135 for the first pet and $20 for each additional pet.

All the rescuers are sworn atheists, which means they will be left behind on Earth, ready to rescue pets after their Christian owners have gone to the other side.

Eternal Earth-Bound Pets co-founder Bart Centre said: "This will happen only if and when the Rapture happens. So we do not expect to have to do anything on Saturday."