- The battle for common sense got serious
this month with this year's countdown to the millennium.
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- Never mind numerically the "millennium"
doesn't occur until Jan. 1, 2001, realism is beyond those who believe in
magic and who ascribe mythical properties to numbers.
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- So the orderly turning over of digits
from 1999 to 2000 isn't simply the progression of the year, but must signify
some apocalyptic event. Cue the wackos.
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- There were riots in the streets in 999
in anticipation of The End, but nearly 1,000 years later one would presume
a more scientific outlook. Yet doomsday cults, such as the one unearthed
last weekend in Jerusalem -- a small collection of nutbars known as Concerned
Christians -- show just how gullible humans continue to be, even in the
face of science and knowledge and simple common sense.
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- This latest group apparently wants to
manifest its form of Christianity in suicide and violence on the streets
of Jerusalem, the better to hurry the Second Coming.
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- This is no more bizarre than David Koresh
of the Branch Davidians believing himself actually to be Jesus, although
his "resurrection" has been on hold since April 1994 when Koresh
and his followers were immolated in an armed standoff in Waco, Texas.
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- Such cults have existed through the centuries,
springing up with renewed vigour every time an appropriate date for death
arises, either through what messianic leaders see as divine revelation
or just a pleasing concatenation of numerals.
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- Having an innate sense of order, we humans
think in terms of round numbers. If the world is to end with a bang, not
a whimper, it will go in some "special" year, like 2000. The
Japanese Aum Shinri Kyo cult, which gassed thousands in a Tokyo subway,
holds to that belief.
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- The followers of the Solar Temple in
Quebec and Switzerland saw salvation in mass suicides four years ago. So,
too, with followers of Heaven's Gate, the computer-weenie cult who believed
salvation was a suicide ride on the tail of comet Hale-Bopp.
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- With the exception of the truly bizarre
suicide cults most of this stuff is harmless. Some is even beneficial.
A greater number of people looking toward religion for comfort or seeking
to follow some spiritual path of enlightenment pose no threat to their
neighbours. Indeed, one would think a commitment to spirituality would
improve the surroundings for all concerned.
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- But crystals and pyramids; New Age prophecies
and goddesses; a renewed belief in angels and spirits are no more logical
or believable than little green men and invasions from Mars.
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- The ultimate weapon of millennium cults
is fear of the unknown. There's no way to prove the Second Coming of Jesus
will not occur in the year 2000. There's no scientific method to disprove
we are living in the End Times of Revelations.
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- The easily gulled and the just-plain
ignorant take such an inability as a replacement of proof. It is the hallmark
of all pseudo-science. The belief that something could exist because there
is no proof it doesn't exist is the basis for such nonsense as astrology,
numerology, extra-terrestrial beings, alien invasions and extra-sensory
perception.
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- As John Allen Paulos writes in Innumeracy:
Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences: "Disproving a claim
that something exists is often quite difficult, and this difficulty is
often mistaken for evidence that the claim is true. Pat Robertson, the
former television evangelist and presidential candidate, maintained . .
. he couldn't prove that there weren't Soviet missile sites in Cuba and
therefore, there might be. He's right, of course, but neither can I prove
that Big Foot doesn't own a small plot of land outside Havana.
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- "New Agers makes all sorts of existence
assertions: that ESP exists, that there have been instances of spoon bending,
that spirits abound; that there are aliens among us. Presented as I periodically
am with these and other fantastical claims, I sometimes feel a little like
a formally dressed teetotaller at a drunken orgy for reiterating that not
being able to conclusively refute the claims does not constitute evidence
for them."
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- What gets in the way of the cold truth
of numbers and logic is faith. The sort of faith that moves mountains;
the faith that believes in one God or many; the faith that propels men
and women to devote their lives to serving others.
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- But it is also misplaced and misguided
faith that believes violence can achieve peace.
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- The need to believe doesn't replace the
rules of logic or common sense.
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- As Minnesota minister Clark Morphew wrote:
"There are all kinds of people out there who want to fiddle with your
soul. Guard it with your life."
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