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[ by Charles Cameron — Apocalypse redux [h/t Jean-Francois Mayer ]

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I know, you’ve had quite enough end times to last you for a while…

What can I say? It’s an idea that keeps recurring …

[ By Charles Cameron — apocalyptic movements, best readings, budget shortfalls, lack of support for scholarship in crucial natsec areas — and with a h/t to Dan from Madison at ChicagoBoyz for the video that triggered this post ]
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What with rapture parties breaking out all over, billboards in Dubai proclaiming The End and thousands of Hmong tribespeople in Vietnam among the believers, this whole sorry business of Harold Camping‘s latest end times prediction is catching plenty of attention. I thought it might be helpful to recommend some of the more interesting and knowledgeable commentary on Camping’s failed prophecy.

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First, three friends and colleagues of mine from the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, about which I will have a further paragraph later:

Richard Landes of BU has a text interview here, and a TV interview here. His forthcoming book, Heaven on Earth, is a monumental [554 pp.] treatment of millenarian movements ranging “from ancient Egypt to modern-day UFO cults and global Jihad” with a focus on “ten widely different case studies, none of which come from Judaism or Christianity” — and “shows that many events typically regarded as secular–including the French Revolution, Marxism, Bolshevism, Nazism-not only contain key millennialist elements, but follow the apocalyptic curve of enthusiastic launch, disappointment and (often catastrophic) re-entry into ‘normal time'”.

Stephen O’Leary of USC wrote up the Harold Camping prediction a couple of days ago on the WSJ “Speakeasy” blog. He’s the rhetorician and communications scholar who co-wrote the first article on religion on the internet, and his specialty as it applies to apocalyptic thinking is doubly relevant: the timing of the end — and the timing of the announcement of the end. His book, Arguing the Apocalypse, is the classic treatment.

Damian Thompson of the Daily Telegraph is a wicked and witty blogger on all things Catholic and much else beside — the normally staid Church Times (UK) once called him a “blood-crazed ferret” and he wears the quote with pride on his blog, where you can also find his comments on Camping. Damian’s book, Waiting for Antichrist, is a masterful treatment of one “expecting” church in London, and has a lot to tell us about the distance between the orthodoxies of its clergy and the various levels of enthusiasm and eclectic beliefs of their congregants.

Three experts, three highly recommended books.

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Two quick notes for those whose motto is “follow the money” (I prefer “cherchez la femme” myself, but chacun a son gout):

The LA Times has a piece that examines the “worldwide $100-million campaign of caravans and billboards, financed by the sale and swap of TV and radio stations” behind Camping’s more recent prediction (the 1994 version was less widely known).

Well worth reading.

And for those who suspect the man of living “high on the hog” — this quote from the same piece might cause you to rethink the possibility that the man’s sincere (one can be misguided with one’s integrity intact, I’d suggest):

Though his organization has large financial holdings, he drives a 1993 Camry and lives in a modest house.

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Now back to the Center for Millennial Studies.

While it existed, it was quite simply the world center of apocalyptic, messianic and millenarian studies. CMS conferences brought together a wide range of scholars of different eras and areas, who could together begin to fathom the commonalities and differences — anthropological, theological, psychological, political, local, global, historical, and contemporary — of movements such as the Essenes, the Falun Gong, the Quakers, Nazism, the Muenster Anabaptists, al-Qaida, the Taiping Rebellion, Branch Davidians, the Y2K scare, classic Marxism, Aum Shinrikyo and Heaven’s Gate.

And then the year 2000 came and went, and those who hadn’t followed the work of the CMS and its associates thought it’s all over, no more millennial expectation, we’ve entered the new millennium with barely a hiccup.

Well, guess what. It was at the CMS that David Cook presented early insights from his definitive work on contemporary millennial movements in Islam — and now we have millennial stirrings both on the Shia side (President Ahmadinejad et al) and among the Sunni (AQ theorist Abu Mus’ab Al-Suri devotes the last hundred pages of his treatise on jihad to “signs of the end times”)…

Apocalyptic expectation continues. But Richard Landes’ and Stephen O’Leary’s fine project, the CMS, is no longer with us to bring scholars together to discuss what remains one of the key topics of our times. When Richard’s book comes out, buy it and read it — and see if you don’t see what I mean.

Or read Jean-Pierre Filiu‘s Apocalypse in Islam.  Please. Or Tim Furnish‘s recent paper.

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And while it may not see Judgment Day or the beginning of the end of the world as predicted, what this week has seen is the end of funding of Fulbright scholarships for doctoral dissertation research abroad.  But then as Abu Muqawama points out:

hey, it’s probably safe to cut funding for these languages. It’s hard to see Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere in the Arabic-speaking world causing issues in terms of U.S. national security interests anytime soon.

Right?

So the CMS isn’t the only significant scholarly venue we’ve lost to terminal lack of vision.

[ by Charles Cameron — May 21st, Y2K, USS Topeka, Harold Camping ]
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I’ve been listening to Harold Camping lately, he’s been on my car radio quite a bit and I like the way he handles callers – he’s a courteous old gentleman, firm when he has to be, and very, very certain that the Bible supports his date-setting for Judgment Day just four days from now on May 21st at 6pm in whichever time-zone you happen to be in – foolish the man who straddles two time-zones on that day!

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Digression: I say that last bit, remembering that as December 31st 1999 slipped into January 1st 2000, the USS Topeka straddled the dateline, equator, hemispheres, seasons and millennia:

Its bow in one year, its stern in another, the USS Topeka marked the new millennium 400 feet beneath the International Date;line in the Pacific ocean. The Pearl Harbor-based navy submarine straddled the line, meaning that at midnight, one end was in 2000 while the other was still in 1999… The 360-foot-long sub, which was 2,100 miles from Honolulu, Hawaii, straddled the Equator at the same time, meaning it was in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Some of the 130 crewmembers were in Winter in the North, while others were in Summer in the South…

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In any case: this evening Camping mentioned that his representatives had managed to get permission to post some of his end-times billboards in Dubai of all places – see illustration above — and apparently they’d contacted an Emirate bureaucrat while his boss was away from the office, and received official permission. And although the permission was quickly rescinded, that fact in turn led to Arab news-media carrying the message into half a dozen other countries which might not otherwise have been informed. All this, Camping, age 89, assured his listeners, was the work of God, the CEO — and he spelled out just what those letters stand for: Chief Executive Officer.

What a story — this I had to verify! – and it’s true, Gulf News for April 13th carries a story titled ‘End of days’ billboards in Dubai to be removed, says official.

Dubai: A billboard advertisement claiming that May 21, 2011 will be the “judgment day” according to the Bible, and which shocked many and dismayed others, will be removed, a senior official said on Sunday.
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The large billboards put up on various busy roads of Dubai such as Al Garhoud and Al Jaffiliya, carries the sentence “the great and terrible day, who shall be able to stand”.
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Marie Sheahan, Media Representative of Family Radio, who is campaigning to put up this advertisement about judgment day, told Gulf News that she and her husband are in town from the United States to advertise and “warn people about it, regardless of nationality, religion or anything else because this will affect everybody”.

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So… I was listening to Camping on the radio this evening, fascinated as always by the interplay between Camping himself, the true believers and the doubters, when an awful racket assailed my ears – and Camping’s warning that the entire world was about to end was rudely interrupted by a more local and immediate warning that a tornado watch would be in effect just down the road in half an hour…

Oh, the irony!

Which brings up the question of when is an emergency so urgent that it can interrupt another emergency? I mean, should a tornado watch warning interrupt a warning of the end of the world? Does an ambulance have the right of way over a firetruck if they meet at an intersection?

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Camping’s book 1994? had a similar theme, but lacked mathematical rigor alas.

This time, he’s double-checked.

[ by Charles Cameron — creativity, Taliban, Leonardo, pareidolia, Virgin Mary, Kwan-yin ]
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Sharing, as I do with Zen, a keen interest in the creative process, I am used to the idea that an idea that seems trivial at first, the very expression of which risks making oneself a laughing-stock, may well carry the seed of success.

Whitehead is quoted as saying, “Every really new idea looks crazy at first.” Einstein, “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” Nils Bohr, “Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.” The idea is not even confined to physicists and mathematicians. Mark Twain observed, “The man with a new idea is a crank – until the idea succeeds.” And Winston Churchill, “No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time steady eye.”

I was therefore intrigued to read this account of the origins of the Taliban’s recent Kandahar prison break:

One of the surprising mujahideen squad in the city of Kandahar, who by his connections gained full knowledge of the inside and outside of the prison, pondered one day whether it could be possible to dig a tunnel from the inside of a house on the other side of the street to the prison as a means to releasing the prisoners. This fantasy and imagination seemed laughable at first even to its owner; he dared not share his opinion with others. But, after more time and continued thinking, he reached a conclusion. On one of these days, while he was riding a motorcycle with two of his comrades, he shared that view with them. They thought it impossible initially and deemed it a fruitless, dangerous attempt. Finally, they placed their trust on God and shared their opinion with the mujahideen high command in Kandahar. With guidelines from the command, the aforementioned four revealed [to] their trusted comrades their decision to implement this plan regardless of its risks and even if it looked impossible.

The sentence that really got my attention was this one:

This fantasy and imagination seemed laughable at first even to its owner; he dared not share his opinion with others.

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Leonardo da Vinci once wrote of having “a new and speculative idea, which although it may seem trivial and almost laughable, is none the less of great value in quickening the spirit of the invention.”

His “trivial and almost laughable” idea?

It is this: that you should look at certain walls stained with damp or at stones of uneven colour. If you have to invent some setting you will be able to see in these the likeness of divine landscapes, adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, woods, great plains, hills and valleys in great variety; and then again you will see there battles and strange figures in violent action, expressions of faces and clothes and an infinity of things which you will be able to reduce to their complete and proper forms. In such walls the same thing happens as in the sound of bells, in whose strokes you may find every word which you can imagine.

Essentially, Leonardo is suggesting that we use what’s effectively the Rorschach technique to induce pareidolia (I think that’s the state) and elicit mental contents – images triggered by the mind’s eagerness to sense meaning – thus imitating the universe itself in bringing something out of nothing, out of the potent void.

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This is, however, the same psychological mechanism that brought us the sale of a grilled cheese sandwich for $28,000 on eBay – because it “looked like” the Virgin Mary…

That’s not a note I’d like to end on, however — so I’ll just remind myself that we don’t “know” what the Virgin Mary looks like, and pass on to the rather charming story of a similar pareidolic image, this one possessing the almost miraculous property of looking simultaneously like the Blessed Virgin and the bodhisattva of compassion, Kuan-Yin:

Situated in the East Bay area, near the lovely city of San Francisco, the Purple Lotus School is witnessing yet another miracle. … In April 1996, when the great “Merit Wall” on campus had just been constructed, a mysterious face appeared on the wall immediately after the cement dried. … Buddhists who have witnessed this phenomenon believe this to be the face of the compassionate Bodhisattva Kuan-Yin. … Others have believed this image to be that of the Virgin Mary. Magia and Junia Chou, the daughters of the Purple Lotus Society’s Master Samantha Chou, attend a Catholic elementary school. Upon seeing the image, both called out earnestly and delightedly, “Look! It’s the Virgin Mary!” … With the essence of Enlightenment and universal wisdom in mind, perhaps one can argue that a distinction between the two is not important after all.

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It’s laughable, I know — but I must confess I like the “meaning” I can draw from that…

[ by Charles Cameron — religion, Taliban, suicide bombers, child soldiers ]

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It’s already a problem that the sacred texts of the world’s religions so frequently include passages that can be used to confer divine sanction on acts of needless, appalling violence – but apparently there’s no depth to which the interpretations offered by religious authorities cannot descend…

Does anyone truly think “all the people around us would die, but we would stay alive” is what God intended to whisper in that nine-year-old child’s ear?

Luke 11.11: If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone?