Topic: Discussion/Debate End of the World "prophecies"

[Sherona]

Ok first and foremost this is a discussion/debate thread, or at least I would like it to be. There are a few things I would really like to be adhered to. First is, no ridiculing anyone's beliefs. You can disagree, you can give facts or evidence or even opinions of disbelief without calling people idiots or morons *grins* I add this because naturally discussion could/will lead to religious "prophecies". Secondly, really in a debate it is so much nicer if you add reasons and explanations to your beliefs instead of just saying "People who believe in prophecies are sheep".

Now there is one end time prophecy that interests me, not because I believe it will be fulfilled quite the opposite actually, but because of the oddity..the date December 21, 2012. The reason this interests me so much is that not only is the Mayans believed that this day was the day that the end of the current age would occur, while they believed that the world has gone through a few (2 or 3, I am still researching that) they always included the other ages, this date nothing is given afterward. Which I know, nothing can really go on forever created by humans, even Pi has a theoritical end simply because no human can continuously quote the numbers without end for eternity.

Then there is the fact that this day is significant in many end of the world prophecies (again still compiling links for my sources on these) from Nostradomas (unproven, they are still testing the legitamacy of the new books recently uncovered) to ancient Chinese oracles...reportedly the oracle of Delphi even mentioned this cataclysmic day.

This Mayan Calendar gives a rough estimate of what is believed about this date.

*goes to compile more of her own evidence and articles before I post my actual thoughts on this, and why -like the y2k scare- people are buying into it in droves.* This is general discussion, so anything really relating to why the human race has always looked towards Prophets for comfort, guidance etc and what not or about prophecies themselves is not off topic.

[Sherona]

Ok found my favorite Mayan calendar site that I have been scrounging around for. No Doomsday 2012| The universe today

The basic gist of this article is that humans have always been, and perhaps even now well after the scientific age has began, still think in superstitious tones. Anything of major proport (the millenium, y2k?) tends to be viewed as something scary, a time of change and as a race we tend to resist change.

Looking at this rather extraordinairy calendar, that corrrectly predicts lunar phases and planetary alignments, in a time where astronomy was nothing more then looking up at the night sky really.. suddenly, and abruptly comes to a halt. /has/ to mean something correct? Not so much so, as the Mayan long count calendar used a heavy base of the numbers 13 and 20...and as I stated in my original post, nothing manmade is truley ever infinite.

the article explains how mathematically that it was just logistics that ended the Mayan calendar on this date.

The base year for the Mayan Long Count starts at "0.0.0.0.0". Each zero goes from 0-19 and each represent a tally of Mayan days. So, for example, the first day in the Long Count is denoted as 0.0.0.0.1. On the 19th day we'll have 0.0.0.0.19, on the 20th day it goes up one level and we'll have 0.0.0.1.0. This count continues until 0.0.1.0.0 (about one year), 0.1.0.0.0 (about 20 years) and 1.0.0.0.0 (about 400 years). Therefore, if I pick an arbitrary date of 2.10.12.7.1, this represents the Mayan date of approximately 1012 years, 7 months and 1 day.

This is all very interesting, but what has this got to do with the end of the world? The Mayan Prophecy is wholly based on the assumption that something bad is going to happen when the Mayan Long Count calendar runs out. Experts are divided as to when the Long Count ends, but as the Maya used the numbers of 13 and 20 at the root of their numerical systems, the last day could occur on 13.0.0.0.0. When does this happen? Well, 13.0.0.0.0 represents 5126 years and the Long Count started on 0.0.0.0.0, which corresponds to the modern date of August 11th 3114 BC. Have you seen the problem yet? The Mayan Long Count ends 5126 years later on December 21st, 2012.

Though there will be an interesting stellar rare event that does happen to coincide on that date, which just has more people up in wonderment about it.

[Oniya]

The mathematics of it certainly give a 'rational' explanation for why that specific date is given as the end of the world - of course, I'm sure that if there are any Mayans left after that date, the explanation will be "Of course, the real end is coming on 19.19.19.19.19.

As for me, I'm hoping that something incredible happens on Dec 21, 2012.  Hopefully not a 'bad' sort of incredible, but something that does usher in a new age. 

[Sherona]

Mayans actually just believed this date to be a transcending of plans..to a new age if you will. The other ages, marked by the Mayans, ended in something catastrophic but nothing world ending. It is actually the others, interpretations to new pictures thought to be drawn by nostradamus' son in accordance to his prophecies, and other religions picked up the 12/21/2012 as the end of the world because that fit their beliefs.

[The Overlord]

Then there is the fact that this day is significant in many end of the world prophecies (again still compiling links for my sources on these) from Nostradomas (unproven, they are still testing the legitimacy of the new books recently uncovered)

Some years back a guy I worked with made the point that if you notice, every few years they come out with 'previously unknown or un-translated quatrains' by Nostradomas, which tend to predict things after the fact.

So you have this mysterious apothecary and seer from the Middle Ages with a really cool name, it's not surprising that he's the Western poster boy on predicting the future.

Probably the biggest one going around in the last few years-

"In the year of the new century and nine months,
From the sky will come a great King of Terror...
The sky will burn at forty-five degrees.
Fire approaches the great new city..."
"In the city of york there will be a great collapse,
2 twin brothers torn apart by chaos
while the fortress falls the great leader will succumb
third big war will begin when the big city is burning"

This one is allegedly a hoax, pieced together from more separated quatrains and edited for effect.

 "In the year 1999, in the seventh month,
from the sky will come the Great King of Terror,
bringing back to life the great king of the Mongols.
Before and after, Mars to reign by good fortune."

That one is supposedly closer to what he wrote, then I found this.

These quatrains are a hoax, separate lines put together.
"In the year of the new century and nine months, From the sky will come a great King of Terror, The sky will burn at forty-five degrees, Fire approaches the great new city."

"In the city of york, there will be a great collapse. Two twin brothers torn apart by chaos. While the fortress falls, the great leader will succumb. The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.-- Nostradamus 1654."

The first supposed prophecy [the first quatrain] does contain a few elements from various quatrains written by Nostradamus; however, they were not written together as one prophecy. The second "prophecy" [the second quatrain] being sent with lightning speed across the Internet is completely bogus, as far as I can tell. Incidentally, Nostradamus died in the year 1566.


Verses like this were around for years before 9/11 but  pointed out NYC sits at about 41 degrees, not 45, but hey when you're looking centuries into the future, I guess accuracy is tricky. The problem is that so much this guy wrote is hard to verify, only adding to the mystery and the speculation. 

[The Overlord]

Thing is, we call this end day December 21, 2012, but the Mayans were not using a Roman Catholic calendar. What is the true date in their calendar?

[Sherona]

The thing with this bit, is it wasnt quatrains. But a book of artistically rendered drawings of events. The owner attributed the works to Nostradamus' son, a well known artist, putting his fathers words to portraite for some unknown reason. This is according to the History channel.

(Myself, I find that like the Overlord, Nost's predictions are so vague tehy can be attributed to many things.)

[Oniya]

Thing is, we call this end day December 21, 2012, but the Mayans were not using a Roman Catholic calendar. What is the true date in their calendar?

There's also the fact that the Roman calendar has gone through a couple of revisions to make up for the leap year and other inaccuracies.  I know there was at least one time where a jump of 11-20 days was implemented to help it 'catch up'.  (Landlords took full advantage of it, claiming that the rents were due at the end of the shortened calendar month instead of 4 weeks from the last payment.)

[Jeramiahh]

I remember watching a documentary in high school, that pointed out some interesting things; the Sphinx, the Great Pyramids, and a series of temples all across China, all match up precisely with their constellations in the year 10,500 BC. They also made a note that the number 12,512 comes up in the Chinese temples numerous times... the number of years it takes for the stars to make a complete revolution in the sky. 10,500 BC+ 12,512 years... is 2012.

I'll be living in my bomb shelter, thank you.

[ZK]

End of the world? I don't believe so... in honesty, I think it might be a great event or not... if no great event, you can say that you lived in a time when the stars turned again.

[Revolverman]

I've always wondered why people are so damn obsessed with an end to the world? There is no reason for the world to end. a calendar made by people who got killed of isn't that good of evidence.

[Sherona]

I think what makes it so interesting Revolver, is how advanced the Mayan civilization was. I mean, to be able to correctly predict stellar anomalies and lunar phases (things that are not prophetic but actually set in stone, no double talk.)

[Oniya]

I remember watching a documentary in high school, that pointed out some interesting things; the Sphinx, the Great Pyramids, and a series of temples all across China, all match up precisely with their constellations in the year 10,500 BC. They also made a note that the number 12,512 comes up in the Chinese temples numerous times... the number of years it takes for the stars to make a complete revolution in the sky. 10,500 BC+ 12,512 years... is 2012.

I'll be living in my bomb shelter, thank you.

Actually, the constellations wouldn't line up for 25,765 years - give or take a few.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession_(astronomy)#Effects

Of course, that is a little more than twice your given 12,512 (actual calculation = 12882.5 - what's 370 years in the grand scheme of things?) which would possibly correspond to some 'polar opposite', when the stars are their most 'unaligned'?

[ZK]

They're led by aliens. Indiana Jones can verify. *giggles*

*rolls around*

But on such, I don't know. We'll see in four years.

[Inkidu]

I remember watching this on the History Channel. I'm with the skeptics. The Mayans admittedly had great knowledge of the calenders and such, but that date would have to do with Mayan belief and religion more than actual predictability. I mean they didn't even know about any planet beyond Saturn. (Of course for all we know they did, but there isn't evidence to support this as far as I'm aware.)

I also don't believe in the prophecies of Nostradamus. I've read a few and they seem awfully broad. Too easily applied to any situation depending on what the reader wants to see.

The Bible code is also another one of those things. I believe its just a completely random sequence of letters. People just looking at coincidentally placed letters. I'm sure you can do something similar with Beowulf, Shakespeare's Sonnets, or the works of Confucius. Just completely random letters.
I'm not a person who believes in predestination, that's also a large part of my belief. 

[Sherona]

The Bible code is also another one of those things. I believe its just a completely random sequence of letters. People just looking at coincidentally placed letters. I'm sure you can do something similar with Beowulf, Shakespeare's Sonnets, or the works of Confucius. Just completely random letters.

Many skeptics say this (I am a skeptic as well) but none, to my knowledge, has put this to the test. I wonder if its just because teh bible code only works with hebrew letters (as in the software) or what not..

[Oniya]

Slightly off the End of the World topic, but people have tried to find secret messages in Shakespeare's works.  There was a conspiracy theory going around that many of The Bard's plays were actually written by Sir Francis Bacon.  To 'prove' this, there was a cipher produced that supposedly could be used to encrypt messages in seemingly normal text by way of different typefaces.

[Revolverman]

that was a plot point in a Sherlock Holmes radio play

[Sherona]

*smiles* No off topic here actually. I rather enjoy when discussions go to different topics, its how true discussions go..evolving and turning.

I had heard that as well. But the bible code uses a specific mathmatical equation, and I would love to see it applied to other lenghty texts. *goes to find the equation*

[Oniya]

I remember going through my math book in junior high, and copying the first and last letters on each page to a grid to see if there was a hidden message.

There wasn't.




I was a strange kid. 

[Sherona]

sound slike something I would do. I still have a few of my high school chem books (yes ...a few...) laying around might be interestng experiment

[Oniya]

It would be much easier with even as little as Notepad and monotype font as opposed to a pencil and a sheet of quad-ruled graph paper.

Anyways, that's what the 'bible code' always struck me as, at least when I saw the documentaries on it.  The letters were arranged in some sort of grid, and words were found in it like a word-search or crossword puzzle.  It's easy enough to reduce that to a couple of formulas, since letters above one another will have positions differing by the width of the grid, and letters diagonal to each other will have positions differing by one more or one less than the width of the grid.

[Inkidu]

Many skeptics say this (I am a skeptic as well) but none, to my knowledge, has put this to the test. I wonder if its just because teh bible code only works with hebrew letters (as in the software) or what not..

Well Beowulf, is in Old English. That would have different places in Old English than in the modern translation. I think people are just seeing what they want to see.

[Sherona]

Well Beowulf, is in Old English. That would have different places in Old English than in the modern translation. I think people are just seeing what they want to see.

The original King James Version, translated by the order of King James of England was written in Old ENglish, and i have seen them do the Bible code on specials about it using King James.

I am not arguing that the Bible code is valid, as I clearly stated I am skeptical..ok I am a firm DISbeliever in it, but it would still intensely interest me for some of those who say that the same thing could occur using shakespear, or even The Odyssey could in effect create the same "anomalies". Usually people use reason and logic, and proof to back up their claims, and the fact that none have used proof, only just skepticism to back this claim up makes me wonder why. :) I am still searching.

[Inkidu]

The King James Version Bible was written in Middle English. Shakespearean, Chaucer, that stuff. Old English is more German sounding than anything. I know you weren't arguing I was just saying in different translations words are placed differently or are interpreted differently by different people that's all.