Just a question Lexy. You're a very logical person, how come you don't believe any of that stuff, whereas the likes of myself lose bowel control and suddenly its brown trousers time?
(Not literally, it's just a metaphor)
I am pretty logical, yea. I don't believe these things because nobody's come up with a proper believable reason why everything would suddenly come to an end on a particular date in a dramatic way. There have been predictions about the world ending before and they've all been wrong, so I'm not going to believe any one of them without some decent evidence.
But I guess it depends on the definition of 'end of the world'. I do believe the world WILL end some day, as in the Earth will be swallowed by our sun when it burns up so much of its existing fuel that its gravity can't stop it from expanding... and that will be the end of our world as we know it unless we manage to escape this planet and found colonies somewhere else (if that is even possible). Astronomers can see stars exploding in distant galaxies and know that stars explode. They have so much evidence of that from all the billions of visible stars out there we can see with the telescopes that are all in different stages of what looks like an identical life-cycle, so they're all pretty much the same - they're born and eventually they die and collapse through different phases, so it's logical our sun will do that as well, and it'll take half the solar system when it does. So I believe that, but it's so far ahead into the future it's not even worth thinking about as a problem.
I guess old religions and cultures appreciated that everything has a beginning and an end, so logically they too assumed the world would end some day. They didn't know about the physical workings of the sun so they never attributed the end of the world to that, but to other things that humans understand. Some are religious ideas, and since I'm agnostic but don't really buy into the idea of fire and brimstone and judgement day wars, I just think these are stories made up that are always meant to be 'in the future' or an impending threat. I honestly think people love to believe that they live in the worst of times, no matter what time period they live in and are always afraid they're going to see the end of the world. But I doubt it! Look at this quote attributed to Peter the Hermit, written in 1100 AD:
"...The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."
People are still thinking that nowadays, thinking things were obviously so much better in the past and these days everything is falling apart! It's just people's naturally fatalistic attitude and instinctive fears. I'm pretty sure things are much better now that they have ever been for the human race, with our technology and comforts and medical advances, but we're unable to see it easily. We always look for doom and gloom and we're always being told by someone that our world is doomed... terrorists, nuclear war, global warming, swine flu, pollution... you name it, and we do know how silly people can be about the things they believe in. None of those things will be the absolute end of our world, I'm absolutely certain. We humans may have our flaws but we will find ways to survive these things, or to master them. We're not always the wisest species but I do think if something truly threatened our existence we would work together to fix it. After all, you can see it inherent in people during natural disasters and other kinds of disaster - their will to survive comes through in times of danger, and also the will to help others, even complete strangers to survive as well. I think when we have no danger people tend to fall back into doom mode, but when things are threatening us all we have hope and courage.
(Make a joke out of it... that's how i cope)
