chris77 wrote:
Graham Hancock wrote a great book called Fingerprints of the Gods. Without being condescending towards any group, he draws a lot of parables between ancient cultures and religions and asks a few interesting questions. Defenitely worth the read if this kind of thing tickles your fancy. He mentions the Mayan calendar in it as well, and tries to place it in context a bit.
(I am currently reading Supernatural by the same author. A bit more leftfield (lsd, fairies, aliens, rockpantings etc ??? ), but still interesting. )
Hancock couldn't find his 4rse with both hands. He's a fraud who's done rather well out of life. Try put his inane suggestions in front of historians, archeologists and astronomers, and the slap from the collective face-palm will make your ears ring.
He also likes to ask questions based on BS assumptions - continuing on in that way until you're standing on top of a tower of hot air.
There's no implication that because the cyclical Mayan calendar ends in 2012 that any Mayans predicted the end of the world for then. And even if they had (which they didn't), what the hell did they know? They didn't know what germs were. They couldn't predict the collapse of their own civilisation - otherwise they would have taken measures against it. They failed to predict the cataclysm that western invasion of their continent would bring - killing three quarters of the population in 50 years through diseases to which they had no immunity, and war.
I suppose this is all rather harmless, but these continual fears of apocalypse - as old as civilisation - convince some people to sell their houses and commit suicide and all kinds of things.
After 2012, believers will tell us that us skeptics that we "could have been wrong," ignoring the fact that there's (a) not a shred of evidence for the 2012 apocalypse and (b) that these claims of impending doom pop up every few years (also without any evidence to support them whatsoever besides baseless assertions based on interpreting vague, unfalsifiable prophesies).
People should worry about the actual threats to our future which have real evidence supporting them: global warming, nuclear weapons, the annihilation of biodiversity, the aggressive resurgence of fundamentalism, the threat to our democracy through suppression of freedom of speech, etc.
