Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Natalie A Sera on April 16, 2011 at 2:01pm

Fortunate I am, not to have any freaked-out friends, although I do have some genuinely religious ones. A naive and credulous soul needs to have some explanation, and how they cling, regardless of how many times they've been disappointed in the past?

Permalink Reply by Rudy V Kiist on April 16, 2011 at 4:49pm

Not that complicated. The perception of more earthquakes is easily explained...

#1; We hear about more earthquakes due to technology and the "information highway". 

 

And 2; We have a much higher population density than ever before, therefor the human devastation is potentially much greater.

 

I suppose a 3rd could also be added...we humans seem to have a short memory...

 

 

Permalink Reply by Alice on April 19, 2011 at 12:05am

Oh you heard about the lizard people too! Now that one was far out… LMHO… I knew a bunch of hippies in the hills who just fell in love with that one! Trying to give me tapes with proof and everything. Something about George Bush being one of their descendants or some madness - LOL

Permalink Reply by Natalie A Sera on April 19, 2011 at 12:11am

Now, George W. Bush being descended from a lizard is something I would believe!!! :-P

Permalink Reply by Micah Johnson on May 8, 2011 at 6:26pm

The thing I never understood about arguments like these, that the biggest earthquake/tsunami/hurricane/etc. since 1900 or something... how is that a sign of the end times if they've happened before? It may have been a long time since the last one, but events on that scale are certainly not unprecedented, just rare. Was it a sign of the end times back then as well?

 

They might have more of a point if there are statistically higher frequencies of disasters with magnitudes never seen before - still not the best argument, since they could have happened in the past before measurements were taken, but it would be a better argument. They just hear about more disasters and think that they're more frequent, without looking into the actual numbers.

Permalink Reply by Scott Bidstrup on May 8, 2011 at 7:56pm

As the article notes, there is some evidence that the frequency with which very large earthquakes occur can change over time, but it doesn't happen to be changing at the moment.  But yes, large earthquakes are always taken by the gullible as evidence for the end times.  Tribulation, rapture, the approach of Nibiru, whatever. It goes way, way back.

That's all part of human pattern seeking, and is nothing that is surprising to psychologists.  That it gets framed as religious evidence shouldn't surprise anyone.  That's part of pattern seeking too, and so it shouldn't be a surprise when patterns get glued together in the seeker's mind.