According to many religions no one knows or can predict the end of the world (although science can estimate a date for the end of the sun.) Even though no one knows when, there is a cottage industry of people offering clues as to how close we are. Just about every television evangalist is offering evidence that we are amidst the endgame.
(Why would something unknowable be so hinted about?)
But I think I’ve discovered a better method than interperting English translated from Greek remembered from Aramaic.
Poll all psychics with questions about the future. The point at which they can’t predict is the end of the world.
Or is the “religious fact” that no one knows the Date of Judgment proof that there is no such thing as a psychic?
Yes, let’s see here… according to my 1977 edition of The People’s Almanac, the Earth has already been destroyed by a reverse-gravity spiritual phenomena called a black rainbow, or something.
Heh. Sorry, I should have put in a smiley. It’s kind of a joke. Several years ago, y’see, we were channelsurfing and came upon a tele-evangelist announcing weightily, “The Second Coming is closer now than it ever has been before in the history of the world!” Naturally, we fell about laughing. After all, any expected event that hasn’t yet happened is closer now than it ever has been. My daughter’s 10th birthday, Fidel Castro’s death, the sun’s transformation into a red giant, whatever.
Now of course if you don’t happen to believe that the Second Coming will happen, it doesn’t apply–but the statement is funny within its own context, because it’s so self-evidently dumb. You don’t need to have an opinion on Judgement Day’s date to see that.
I don’t believe there will ever be a judgement day. Religions need a fear factor to gain converts. We should concentrate on living in the present and not worry about the future.
The triangulating with psychics thing is an interesting idea, but there’s never been a documented psychic with a success rate higher than flipping a coin.
Coincidentally, flipping a coin and having it always come up heads was used in Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead as a sign that they were doomed / unreal / already dead.
(Do the Left Behind novels provide a date, or do they leave if vague? When I studied with a Jehovah’s Witness in the eighties, she said that the world would end in 2014, a hundred years after WWI. Have they started to equivocate on the date yet?)
Surely you must be kidding, lekatt. After all, you’ve already stated that there will be a judgment, and since you are not guessing, but know, that cannot be incorrect. After all, if that is incorrect, then everything you’ve ever claimed about the afterlife and spirituality could also be incorrect, since it has the same basis, ie the infallible knowledge you get from a near death experience. And we all know that cannot be the case. Right?