Things I Didn't Know
"Only one in five Gen Yers are worried that they will personally experience the coming of the Apocalypse," according to Greenberg/Quinlan/Rosner. Only one in five? That sounds like a lot. Belief in the imminence of the Apocalypse is heavily concentrated among Protestants. I have no idea how prevalent it is among other generations, if anyone knows of any polling on that let me know.
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Comments (19)
Is this like a band that is breaking up?
May 12, 2006 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
this (linked thing, not your post) is awfully bizarre. fwiw, I have a very close friend (who I think falls in this demo--I'm never quite sure on this Gen X/Gen Y bit) who doesn't believe in God at all but is entirely convinced we're all about to be vaporized quite soon by a "big white flash"
May 12, 2006 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is off-topic, but just having watched the latest bloggingheads episode with you and Jonah Goldberg, I was disappointed that you fell for the trap of debating how crazy Ahmadinejad is when by all accounts Ahmadinejad isn't really in charge of the country - Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is. Just how much power the president of Iran has at all is pretty debatable; the last president before Ahmadinejad, Mohammed Khatami, was a moderate and a reformer, but never managed to actually do all that much reforming since Khamenei and the Guardian Council kept him in check. Similarly, the question isn't whether Ahmadinejad isn't crazy enough to nuke Israel, but whether or not Khamenei is.
May 12, 2006 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would guess that this figure is no higher for geneartion y than for any other age group. Its easy to forget, but among christians of all kinds, a belief in an apocalypse that will arrive very soon isn't really outside of the mainstream. This is particularly true among pentacostals and some other fundamentalists. These groups see the secular timeline and the sacred timeline as linked and believe that world events can be fitted onto this sacred timeline.
Within this context, it really isn't odd at all to believe that signs point to the imminent approach of the end times. Not beliefs I share, but there you go.
May 12, 2006 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, as someone raised Catholic and having imbibed a lot of what I would call the "pop" side of theology in my studies of art history (i.e., how the theologies were transmitted in art,) here's how I look at it.
That theme in Protestantism is stressed because you are supposed to live your life every day AS IF the end time was coming tomorrow--this is quite in keeping with Jesus's teachings, overall stressing not to be so into earthly things, to keep your perspective in the context of your future with the father. The more hail-and- brimstone preacher or iconographer gets into the scaring the faithful with that theme, getting them to think that it IS coming tomorrow, to get them to think spirtually and to live good lives, the kinder gentler ones will take the tact of understanding why, but both teach that you should live as if the end is coming tomorrow.
Catholics, on the other hand, have this tradition of being able to sin anytime they want and then go to confession and start fresh if you are sorry, over and over and over, and figure that if this is the program, why should the end time be coming anytime soon? That God is letting us perfect ourselves first, and that's going to be a long way off? (Of course in Catholic history, you have your hail and brimstoners at certain points, Savonarola for example.) Also one mustn't forget in this vein that the Reformation started partly because the Catholic hierarchy was seen as being too "into" earthly life and material things.
May 12, 2006 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was under the impression that most people who believed in a coming apocalypse weren't particularly upset at the idea. Those that believe don't expect to be among those Left Behind.
On the other hand, my generation (X?) tended to believe we might experience an apocalypse because we grew up under the threat of nuclear armageddon. It wasn't an irrational thought at the time but a very real possibility.
May 12, 2006 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I sometimes worry that I won't experience the singularity. Does that count?
May 12, 2006 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
No way Khamenei is crazy enough to nuke Israel - assuming he doesn't go completely bonkers from senility as he gets older (and that would be obvious to the other senior clerics - assuming they aren't totally senile - and he'd be eased out...)
No dictatorial leader of a country is going to launch a nuclear first strike at a local enemy when he knows his whole country is going to get smeared by the US arsenal minutes later. Anybody that crazy is usually killed by his associates who aren't that crazy. (Even Hitler had numerous assassination attempts - they just didn't succeed.)
This applies to North Korea and Iran and it applied to Saddam as well. Hell, it applied to the Russians.
It's a total red herring to even consider it seriously.
However, using nuclear bunker busters isn't QUITE the same thing (not least because nobody's going to nuke us in retaliation) - so, yes, Bush will use them.
He's the exception that proves the rule.
There is also one other exception - if you KNOW you're going to be attacked anyway, you have nothing to lose by taking out your local enemy first.
This is WHY Iran wants a nuke - to force Israel and the US to take regime change off the table. Because Israel is too small to absorb a nuclear first strike (even if they do have a second-strike retaliatory capability, Tel Aviv would be gone and so would their whole government.)
And THAT is why the US and Israel HAVE to attack Iran NOW (or sometime before they get a weapon, which could be ten years from now) - because they don't want regime change taken off the table.
All that is left is to determine the timing of the attack and the spurious reasons to be used to justify it.
Based on current RAW Story reports, the attack is on for sometime between next month and the elections, and the excuse, according to Jorge Hirsch, will be a general UN resolution already passed condemning "proliferation as a threat to peace." Aircraft carriers moving to position as I type this.
May 12, 2006 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, actually, the Singularity will BE the "end times" as far as religion goes - and the state, too.
At least if we Transhumans have any influence - and we will, since the Singularity is our baby.
While the morons are praying for the Second Coming and the Rapture, we Transhumans are WORKING for the "Rupture".
Guess who'll get there first.
Whether I personally see it depends on whether I can stop eating a half gallon of ice cream every weekend...doesn't look good.
May 12, 2006 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just be sure your cryonics coverage is paid up. The brain freeze will actually help the process along. ;)
May 12, 2006 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is extremely unlikely that a nuclear armed Iran would openly initiate a nuclear first strike. However, given that using terrorist organizations for deniable attacks against foes you can't afford to openly strike is SOP in the middle east, and that the Iranian government does have a track record of supporting international terrorism, we can't discount the possiblity they might hand a nuke to somebody else to use, with the expectation that we wouldn't be sufficiently confident of their guilt to be able to bring ourselves to strike back at them.
May 12, 2006 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Based on current RAW Story reports, the attack is on for sometime between next month
There will be no attack this year. The Bush administration is all about politics uber alles, and a war on Iran would lead to catastrophic political results at home due to the economic fallout-- veto proof Dem majorities in both houses and probably impeachment (which might even yield a conviction). No way in the world would Bush's gang risk that. They will talk mighty, mighty tough while relying on others (Russia, Germany etc.) to cut a deal for which they will then credit their threats and rhetoric, even if it's nothing more than a fig leaf.
May 12, 2006 6:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
While many people claim to believe in an imminent Apocalypse, very few people act as if they REALLY believe it. They are still saving for retirement or for their children's education, still working for this or that political cause and so forth. Outside of some true crazies, the sort that sell everything and hole up in survivalist camps in the Ozarks, this is usually just the same sort of wishful thinking that also leads people to buy lotto tickets.
May 12, 2006 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sh*t, if the Republicans keep up their current policies, the 20% who believe in imminent Apocalypse might indeed prove prescient. Massive public and personal debt, no savings, a growing divide between rich and poor, war all the time--seems to me like a recipe for some kind of social upheaval on a monumental scale.
May 13, 2006 4:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Do you think that the end of the world, as predicted in the Book of Revelation, will happen in your lifetime or don't you think so?"
Yes, will. All: 17% Fundamentalist: 25% Evangelical: 31%
Don't think so. All: 32% Fundamentalist: 37% Evangelical: 36%
Not sure. All: 10% Fundamentalist:15% Evangelical: 16%
Don't think Book of Revelation predicts end of world. (vol.) All: 41% Fundamentalist: 23% Evangelical: 17%
http://www.pollingreport.com/religion2.htm
May 13, 2006 9:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
For what it's worth, these people believe the same thing that Jesus did. That is, one can make a pretty convincing argument that (assuming he existed) Jesus believed the end of the world would happen in his life time too (see, for example, Bart Ehrman's 1999 book).
Also, some of these (http://www.pollingreport.com/religion2.htm) poll results make me very sad. (60% think the story of Noah is literally true - gah!)
May 13, 2006 10:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
Just so happens Matt......
The damnable heresy popularized in the Left Behind series of books is exposed for the fundamentalist abomination that it is in the History Channel's 2Part Series - The Anti-christ Zero Hour
Authentic faith cannot exist without real doubt and fundamentalists cannot tolerate that. So they retreat into a supernatural fantasy world of intolerance and ultimate unbelief
It is plain for instance that the linchpin of fundamentalist folderol - the Rapture - has no connection to their Apocalyptic "salvation" and everything to do with...well here, they can even comprehend the plain words of St Paul in Thessalonians so they read shit into it that plainly is not there
The fundies, needless to say, do not "encourage one another with these words" but rather use them to justify themselves before God in justification of their hatreds, flight from their fears all in service of an idolatrous perversion of the Christian faith.
Simply put, they cannot bear to look within themselves.
May 14, 2006 8:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Authentic faith?
Inasmuch as "authenticity" is a subjective quality, it seems to me all faiths honestly held are "authentic."
Or to put it differently, attempting to qualify the word "faith" by attaching to it the word "authentic" constitutes, semantically, a nullity.
May 14, 2006 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
Relativism
May 16, 2006 10:36 AM | Reply | Permalink