Intrepid wrote:You seem to think that the number of lives lost, in some way, equates with the end days. It is about a lot more than the number of volcano eruptions over a given period. This is a very poor attempt at trying to discredit what someone has said.
To take a page from your playbook--yes, your attempt to discredit what i've written is very poor. The amount of ejecta from a volcano, the loss of life from the eruption and the resultant tsunami are measures of the magnitude of the event. MOAN's contention is that there are more natural disasters now than there previously were and that they are of a greater severity, and this equates with the "end of days." Therefore, that is relevant because of a point
she tried to make, not me.
Quote:It is interesting that you came back to edit and add all the other stuff. You were much better off when you only had the first line.... "This is nonsense--you have no basis upon which to make comparisons"
Indeed, i did give consideration to what i'd written, and the fact that as it stood, it was simply a bald assertion, without other reference. In the interest of providing more for those who read here, i added a good deal more. People have a right to know what motivates someone's assertion, and i provided a very good example of just exactly what i meant--something MOAN always fails to do with her feeble "well, that's just what i believe" comments. Apart from that, my objection to millinarian nonsense is not based soley upon the lack of referrants, but also upon the fallacy of a contention that there are more and more severe natural disasters occuring. I offered examples of the basis of my contention that MOAN deals in self-serving fallacy out of respect for the intelligence of others who read here--and certainly not because i have any expectation that minds as closed as yours and hers will be changed.
To expand on this topic, whether or not you like to see it, millenarians were a major part of the religious landscape in England in the mid-seventeenth century, a period of upheaval from which Congregationalists and Presbyterians emerged as doctrinal evolutions of the Calvinism of the Scots Kirk and the English Puritans. In particular, this took the form of the "fifth monarchy" millenarians.
Wikipedia wrote:Millenarianism (sometimes spelled millenarism or millennarism) is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society after which all things will be changed in a positive (or sometimes negative or ambiguous) direction. Millennialism Millennialism (or chiliasm), from millennium, which literally means "thousand years", is primarily a belief expressed in some Christian denominations, and literature, that there will be a Golden Age or Paradise on Earth where "Christ will reign" prior to the final judgment and future eternal state, primarily derived from the book of Revelation 20:1-6. Millennialism as such is a specific form of Millenarianism.
Millenarian groups typically claim that the current society and its rulers are corrupt or unjust and will be destroyed soon by a powerful force. The evil nature of the status quo is always considered intractable without the anticipated dramatic change. In Medieval millenarianism the world was seen as controlled by demons In folklore, mythology, and religion, a demon or demoness is a supernatural being that has generally been described as a malevolent spirit but outside Christian circles was viewed as a sort of elemental spirit: compare Daemon and djinn. A demon is frequently depicted as a force that may be conjured and insecurely controlled. The "good" demon in recent use is largely a literary device (eg: Maxwell's demon). In common language, "demonizing" one's oponent is to define him or her as an evil person.
In the modern world economic rules or vast conspiracies are seen as generating oppression. Only dramatic change will change the world and change will be brought about, or survived, by a group of the devout and dedicated. In most millenarian scenarios, the disaster or battle to come will be followed by a new, purified world in which the true believers will be rewarded.
Wikipedia wrote:The Fifth Monarchists or Fifth Monarcy Men were active from 1649 to 1661 during the Interregnum, following the English Civil Wars of the 1600s. They took their name from a belief in a world ruling kingdom to be established by the returning Jesus in which the year 1666 and its numerical relationship to a passage in the Biblical Book of Revelations indicating the end of earthly rule by carnal human beings. (I am not responsible for the linguistic ineptitude of the person or persons at Wikipedia who wrote this paragraph.)
The Fifth Monarchy Men were suppressed by the Parliament after 1660 when Charles Stuart returned from exile on the continent and the monarchy was restored with him mounting the throne as Charles II. The year 1666 inspired them to even more wild-eyed fanaticism because of the plague of 1665, and the great fire in London in 1666. However, as the years wore on, and the plague did not return, and the city was rebuilt, and with no returning Savior in sight--the Fifth Monarchists faded away.
In the mildest form, millenarianism contends that a new era of peace and prosperity will soon dawn on the planet. In its most extreme and virulent form, cults such as the Branch Davidian "heretics" who followed David Koresh will be willing to immolate themselves to help the process along (the Branch Davidians rejected Koresh and his followers even before the seige at Waco). These extreme acts of group suicide have been seen in other places and at other times, as well. In the reign of the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovitch, the second Romanov Tsar, the Patriarch, Nikon, reformed the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox chruch. One significant reform was to prohibit the priests from keeping mistresses and to prohibit the marriage of priests, and to turn women out of the monasteries; what seemed a small matter at the time was to insist that people use two fingers when crossing themselves rather than three. The results were far-reaching--there was a rebellion against church authority at the lowest levels. Only one Bishop opposed Nikon, but many priests and monks, losing their mistresses and their comfortable lifestyles, rebelled against the reform, and convinced their superstitious peasant followers that they were going straight to Hell if they crossed themselves without using the appropriate number of fingers. Once again, a small matter, but the effect was profound. Literally tens of thousands of "Old Believers" ran away--some to hide in the northern woods, others to seek refuge in the Ukraine, where the Russian peasant had always fled to seek freedom and sanctuary among the Cossacks.
In the northern woods, the more extreme of the priests and the monks set up communities such as Koresh established at Waco. Just like Koresh's cult, they barricaded their compounds when the Tsar's troops approached (they didn't pay taxes and they didn't send young men for the military levies, and so were seen as being in open rebellion). When it became apparent that they would be overrun by the Tsar's troops, they frequently packed into the church, barred the door, and burned the church to the ground, killing themselves in the process. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.
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The Old Believers gradually gave up their extremism, and as their priests died off, and fewer priests from the "New Believers" came to them, they were obliged to give up their notion of the approach of "the millenium," and to establish a regular theology and episcopacy in order to survive as a church. The Fifth Monarchists in England in the late 17th century faded away as the wait for the arrival of the Savior grew longer and longer, and the plague and the London fire proved to be signs of nothing more than poor medical services and a lack of effective civic methods of fire prevention--rather than the wages of sin at the end of days.
The year 2000 stirred up a recent rage for the end of days scenario. When that year came and went with no apocalypse. the most extreme of millenarian groups broke up and the members scattered. The less extreme millenarians who had confidently predicted the end of days can now be found asserting that 2000 was not the end, but rather, the beginning of the end. I rather suspect that by the end of this century, they will be looking for a new date for the second coming, and new signs that the end of days is nigh.
Ignorance is a wonderful comfort to those who wish to believe silly things.
We are strange here in the desert.
