It seems as if there are any number of groups predicting the end of the world come January. Back in the 50’s or 60’s there was a book written by a social psychologist (Leon Festinger?) who studied what happened to a group who had predicted something like this (either the end of the world or an alien invasion or both) when their predicted date came and went. Basically they all acted sort of confused for a while, until the leader came up with the brilliant theory that they themselves had saved the world through their unshakeable faith.
So, my question is–what do you think will happen when the world DOESN’T end come New Year’s Day?
Well I, for one, am hoping for a big surge in the stock market.
But I think all the millennialists are going to say, “Oh, wait a second… What were we thinking? The millennium doesn’t end until January 1st, 2001! Not January 1, 2000! We’re a year too early! No wonder…”
“For what a man had rather were true, he more readily believes” - Francis Bacon
I think Mark has it right. By New Years, 2001 the hype will probably have settled down to the point that most of us won’t notice that the world didn’t end as they predicted, or which particular idiot had predicted what.
The truly devout might insist that the end will occur 2000 years from Christ’s death, which would be 2033, or 2029 if you think he was born in 4 BC (as some scholars do).
What amazes me is the amount of significance these nuts put on the number 2000. Yes it’s a nice round number if:
You consider the Gregorian calendar to have some cosmic significance,
There is a very funny series of Dilbert strips where Dogbert poses as Nostradogmus, predicting that the world will end in 2000, his rationale being that 2000 is “a big, round number”. (Dilbert freaks when Dogbert stands behind him chanting "It’s biggggg and rooouuund…)
Little did I know that line of reasoning would indeed scare so many people…
I personally am of the opinion that, because it is stated several places in the Bible that we know neither the day, nor the hour that Christ will return, he is more likely to return at some seemingly arbitrary point, rather than a set number of centuries, millenia, years, or days from his birth, death, baptism or any other occasion that we can name.
Note that only complete idiots and loonies believe that Jesus was born in 1 BC or 1 AD. He was born in 4 BC at the latest. The guy who originally did the math 1500 years ago just got it wrong (not hard to do; the Christian calendar was the first well-accepted western calendar to give simple serial numbers to years, so trying to do calculations with historic records was a nightmare up till then) and that’s been well understood for centuries.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
My guess is that they will just say, “Well, I guess when they said the ‘millennium’, they didn’t mean the second one…get ready for an apocalypse when Y3K rolls around!”
gaberino, welcome to the Straight Dope. We prefer that old threads only be revived to provide new information. Since this thread is so old the usernames are gone, it’s best to close it.