If anyone at all believes in any type of religion, we are not meant to know when our lives should end at all!! It seems to me that the fucked up Mayans or whatever bullshit they were that originally thought this up in the first place; whatever their true meaning of this was…they just wanted some closure on what the meaning of life was and how things might end!!!

Now for all you present day morons….please stop worrying everyone about the ends of all of their lives all at once (would NEVER happen!!!) especially if you are a religious leader of any type… it would be very wise of you if you might want to appear humble in any way to not even speak about this in front of your parishes, etc!!!

Late to this party, but here’s my crazy-assed two cents:

“heaven and earth shall pass away…” Funny how many modern cosmologists concur with that statement. Google big crunch or big bounce. Energy and matter are never destroyed, per Einstein, right? If this universe is indeed destined to become a singularity again via billions and billions of super massive black holes absorbing every particle of matter, energy and light, something tells me that whatever I am at my core (a quark? An energy particle?), I will not be able to escape it. Whatever form of energy/mass that constitutes my conscious existence takes on billions of years from now (a thought in God’s mind, as it was billions of years in the past?), I desperately hope that The Good Shepherd calls it His and plucks me out of that natural cosmological cycle of big bang big crunch ad infinitum. I can’t confidently make a campfire without a Bic lighter, let alone explain where my own (or yours, for that matter) consciousness originates! Since my existence hinges on faith in the Word of God, and Christianity is the only religion wherein human beings don’t earn or behave or learn their way into everlasting life, I must personally hedge my bets with a creator and therefore Jesus Christ. If someone else freely chooses to learn and behave their way into heaven because they think they can be perfect, I say have at it. Those same fanatics must let me have at my “fanatic” need, as an imperfect IMBECILE and sinner, for a Redeemer, and let me “sin” my way through life as a free man so long as my sins aren’t crimes. Assuming there will be a judgement, I don’t want to go through my definition of hell. It amounts to an eternity (for a human being) waiting for God to evolve the conditions necessary for me to become a self-aware creature again. Consciousness/self awareness might have some sort of invisible DNA strands made of Godknowswhatium that PhD’s in quantum physics can only dream about. Consider what’s I’d assume a Big Bang would pretty much rip whatever THAT might be apart. If that crazy theory is true, whatever energy/mass constitutes my individual consciousness could become nothing more than a part of a breath of oxygen for some sentient being billions and billions and billions of years in the future. The record of my “spirit” ever having existed would be pretty much wiped out until/unless God saw fit to rearrange whatever it is that is me and provide a living shell or “soul” for me to habitate. Assuming Einstein is right and matter and energy are never destroyed, I do not want to go through that “hell”.

Read this: http://www.omegaletter.com/articles/articles.asp?ArticleID=5955 if you are interested in past TEOTWAWKI date setting by Christians and why any halfway reliable students of Bible prophecy (Isaac Newton included) humbly accept Matthew 24:36-44 and will NEVER state a specific day. Watching for the season is a different story. December 21, 2012 is certainly NOT the date. No one knows the day or hour. Period. Someone brilliant (like Newton) could possibly discern the generation, though. One of his calculations happens to be “not before 2060”. Is he right? Who knows? But knowing that one of the greatest scientific minds in history says we have some time left should be reassuring to someone who is worried about all of this.

The subject of 2012 is interesting, especially when we consider the coincidence of multiple secular “prophecies” AND religious writings converging in our generation’s season.

This guy’s take on TEOTWAWKI is profound: http://www.hallindsey.com/videos/?vid=76

By the way, my dad’s response when I’d bring up this Mayan shit: “Well, they were a bit off, weren’t they?”

I was raised Catholic, and during mass we used to say:

PROFESSION OF FAITH

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty;
maker ,of heaven and earth,
of all that is seen and unseen.
We believe in one lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
(Bow) by the power of the Holy Spirit
he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered, died, and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in fulfillment of the Scriptures;
he ascended into .heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father. ,
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and t~e Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped arid glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
*We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. *BLECH
*We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
*Blech
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

I am not a Catholic anymore (calling anyone but God our Father was the first big reason, among many others).
I am still fascinated with the topic of prophecy in general. I find that in lieu of a personal Visit and subsequent epiphany, faith in God (see above, ’spake by the prophets’) can be reinforced through verifying ancient prophecies coming to fruition after comparing (as best I can) what was written to what has happened in history. That being said, it seems there is some truth to at least one thing written years ago:

From Luke chapter 21:

25″There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. 26Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. 27At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

If this 2012 / climate change crap isn’t evidence of Luke 21:25-28 coming to fruition, I don’t know what is!

ed davis

The buildup to 2012 echoes excitement and fear expressed on the eve of the new millennium, popularly known as Y2K, though on a smaller scale, says Lynn Garrett, senior religion editor at Publishers Weekly. She says publishers seem to be courting readers who believe humanity is creating its own ecological disasters and desperately needs ancient indigenous wisdom.

“The convergence I see here is the apocalyptic expectations, if you will, along with the fact that the environment is in the front of many people’s minds these days,” Garrett says. “Part of the appeal of these earth religions is that notion that we need to reconnect with the Earth in order to save ourselves.”

But scholars are bristling at attempts to link the ancient Maya with trends in contemporary spirituality. Maya civilization, known for advanced writing, mathematics and astronomy, flourished for centuries in Mesoamerica, especially between A.D. 300 and 900. Its Long Count calendar, which was discontinued under Spanish colonization, tracks more than 5,000 years, then resets at year zero.

“For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle,” says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Fla. To render Dec. 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.”

Part of the 2012 mystique stems from the stars. On the winter solstice in 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years. This means that “whatever energy typically streams to Earth from the center of the Milky Way will indeed be disrupted on 12/21/12 at 11:11 p.m. Universal Time,” Joseph writes.

But scholars doubt the ancient Maya extrapolated great meaning from anticipating the alignment — if they were even aware of what the configuration would be.

Astronomers generally agree that “it would be impossible the Maya themselves would have known that,” says Susan Milbrath, a Maya archaeoastronomer and a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History. What’s more, she says, “we have no record or knowledge that they would think the world would come to an end at that point.”

University of Florida anthropologist Susan Gillespie says the 2012 phenomenon comes “from media and from other people making use of the Maya past to fulfill agendas that are really their own.”

so i it bull shit