Don't Strain Your Brain*

Recently, two major news organizations (so called) have covered "End of Days" lunatics in a sympathetic light, and interviewed a fundamentalist nutbag about the deaths of birds and fish in Arkansas. Why the hell are "mainstream" media outlets giving time to these lunatics and their eschatalogical fantasies?

The idea that one is going to be witness to the End of All Things has to be one of the most narcissistic notions that one can entertain. Honestly, people, get over yourselves- you are merely, as Douglas Adams put it, simple, ape-descended life forms inhabiting an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet orbiting at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles a small unregarded yellow sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy. No Rapture, no Ragnarök (though I won't rule out a Gigantomachy). Even if the human species nuked itself into oblivion, life on earth would almost certainly endure. Belief in an imminent end is pernicious because it absolves believers of responsibility for conserving resources or caring for future generations (the "torture porn" aspects of belief in a Rapture, with the majority of humanity suffering lovingly-described tortures, is merely the poisoned cherry on top of the rancid sundae). The only benefit of the Rapture fantasy is that it can provide occasional manifestations of comic brilliance, like this bit from Oregon's big gay emperor, Pupienus Maximus:

I sent the group an email promising a $1000 donation now if they agree that on May 22 the world has not ended they will pay me $100,000.


*Not so veiled Rapture reference