Religion is a fraud

The Millennial Hysteria and Chiliastic Brouhaha

January 5, 2000

The world has spent over $300 billion ($250 billion in United States exclusively) for the last two years in order to escape from the Y2K disruption, one of the secular versions of Apocalypse.

A computer maven, who has been warning the world that the technical glitch from the obsolete program would disrupt the entire financial system globally, sheepishly repeated his caveat and cautioned that the disruption would occur in near future again. However, he immediately put his Website that he has promoted his warning on the market garnering $10 million bid on the auction bloc.

A bozo in Wisconsin, who got the jitters through the mass media and his own dementia, had squirreled away the 400 boxes of Hamburger Helper, 175 pounds of pasta, 50 bars of soap, nine tubes of toothpaste and supplies like drinking water, medical supplies and a generator that has cost him over $20,000.

He is not a nincompoop whose intellectual level is below normal, but a typical family man who has got a wife, two kids with professional occupation, a gung-ho, law-abiding and church-going citizen.
After nothing happened, he still said: This is hardly over. Thank god, we got through to night. I don’t think we are out of woods yet until May or June.”

In Canada, many residents in Ontario were awoken from their bed experiencing short but powerful shakes early in the first morning of the millenium and some god-fearing folks knelt down saying this is it, this is the moment and prayed for their souls.

In Jerusalem, a congregation of the fundamental Christians has cooped up in the cave near Negev desert, waiting to be saved through “Rapture” or some other means and believed that a series of events will then eventually follow: the great tribulation, the second coming, the battle of Armageddon….

First of all, year 2000 does not mean anything if you figure out how capriciously the calendar was set in the sixth century by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus and a lot of people seem to think this has any relevance to a historical Jesus. Another factor for the fallacy is that since this calendar began with Year One the new millenium actually starts on January 1 next year and why the world has to jump the gun on the celebration.

Secondly, it would be spurious to argue that it was well spent than sorry to see the disruption, because many countries around the world got around well without wasting too much like in the United States.
It was overkill that the U.S.commercial interest bombarded a stray dog with cannon balls.

There would be no such things like perfect or virus-free mechanical system in modern technological world, as there is no bunker you can be safe from the nuclear attack.
The only reason why you do not hear the alternative voice is that the powerful mass media has never offered any niche to the opposite parties against the establishment like government, churches, stock market, and corporation.

Still, it is amazing, in the era of enlightenment, that the society could be besieged by nebulous fear of secular and religious apocalyptic belief, in which the Chiliastic mode has been crucial to much of western history.
I think it would not be difficult to find why people fall for this hype, when you look at our belief system, especially mainstream religious one, Christianity.

Christianity thrives on the notion of Apocalypse! It goes something like this…there will be wars, famines and disease endemics and heavenly signs that will alert the world some sort of crisis. There will be an Antichrist and a false prophet, and they dominate the whole world. There will be the war of Armageddon, and finally Jesus Christ returns as a warrior on a white horse and sets up the Kingdom of God.
When you tallies up the death count and projected it on a modern day such as ours in the Book of Revelation, you come up with about three-quarters of 5 billion dying of famine, war, earthquake, and plagues.

The Book of the Apocalypse has been in contradiction with other books of Bible after it was entered in the Bible…such as John’s antagonism against Rome Empire and apostle Paul’s advocated obedience to Rome, in which you have no option to drop the Apocalyptic view but to reinterpret it.

Historically, Christians have interpreted the Apocalypse in various modes from the first century to now…Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, Puritans, William Miller, Mormons and other fundamental groups, and Year 2000 is not the first Apocalyptic manifestation the Christians had predicted and it has had 100 percent failure record.

For example, William Miller, the Seventh Day Adventist, calculated 1843 as the thousands year, the millennium will commence and the second coming of Jesus Christ, and he revised it for 1844 when Jesus did not appear in his backyard in New York.

Now, people have learned from Mr. Miller that it is dangerous to set the date and come about with the signs of the times: we know the end is near, because all the signs are coming together, such as earthquake, El nino effect, environmental destruction, HIV, drought, etc, but we don’t know exact date, we must be ready at any moment for the end to come.

This creates powerful psychological dynamic of expectation that you are not being left behind alone while others will be taken from the earth through ‘Rapture’, and you have to be in a constant state of readiness that cannot be falsified because it involves events that lie in the future.

Jesus Christ, if he ever exists, were eschatological in his discourse with his disciples saying Kingdom is at hand and emphasized that his disciples would not die until they see the kingdom…that is, very soon, just around the corner.

This apocalyptic Christianity has attracted a great deal of people’s attention, when Martin Luther had translated the Bible and placed it into the hand of ordinary people and other preachers utilized mass journalism in getting their message out through new printing mechanism.

And people are fed constantly through daily encounters with many phenomena the notion of prophecy that “End is near and Judgment is imminent”, and moreover they are not some of isolated cranks living on the fringe of the culture but average Joe-six-packs who elect school trustees, bureaucrats and other politicians.

Apart from these religious apocalyptic views, there is an idea that history is moving towards an end…environmental danger, population explosion and nuclear war.
We have a tendency to believe that when history has begun, it requires an end that is cast in apocalyptic mold.
Y2K fear was egged on the bloated notion of the secular doomsday scenario that was easily fed into the brains of the people who are already saturated with religious millenarianism, and many Joe Blows have swallowed it lock, stock and barrel with handful of supplies in the basement.