This past week, it was announced that humans as a species is 30 seconds closer to annihilation. Now two minutes to midnight, we are the closest to midnight we have been since the Cold War of the 1950's. Concerns of climate change along with increased tensions with countries that have access to nuclear weapons have led to this announcement. If you want to learn more about the Doomsday Clock including when it started, how it came to be, and what it actually measures, you can go here:
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Years ago I got hooked into dystopian fiction when I read a book called A Time of Darkness. It was fascinating and it told of one possibility of a result of nuclear war. This soon led to other equally grim novels: On the Beach, The Giver, After the Bomb, Fail Safe, Hiroshima, and more that I can no longer recall the titles to. It became a bit of an obsession for me at one time, something I learned about and read about. Music I listened to like Peter Schilling added to the mood.
Ironically, we were living in a time that was relatively peaceful. These were the days the Doomsday Clock was the farthest it had ever been since its creation. From 1991 to 1995, it was at 17 minutes and from 1995 to 1998 it was at 14 minutes. Nuclear war wasn't something we were really concerned about but all those old novels certainly triggered my imagination.
Now, we're living in a time where our kids DO have to worry. It may have been an error but people in Hawaii recently received alerts that a missile was heading for them. No one knew what to do. We are closer now to the threat of nuclear war than we have been in over 50 years. The clock is ticking down. And we have world leaders who are antagonizing each other on Twitter about the size of their nuclear buttons. I mean, REALLY?!
There's nowhere else to go. This is the one and only planet we have and if we screw it up, that's it; we're dead, all of us. I wish world leaders would keep that in mind as they make some of the decisions they make. In some scenarios, there are no second chances. Other scenarios, like climate change, there are but only if we act SOON.
This is one area where religion can be dangerous. Not all religions believe this but there are those who are hoping for this very thing. They hope for this because they believe that they will be saved before total annihilation and when they are, only those who are worthy will remain. This thinking is dangerous for pretty obvious reasons. If you believe that you will be saved by a supreme being and the earth will be restored no matter what is done to it, what motivation is there to keep it going as it is now, especially when by this supreme being restoring it, that supreme being also fixes the problem of all those pesky people who don't believe the same thing.
My husband's church believes in something called the millennium. The millennium is this 1000 year period of peace that will follow the tribulations where those who made it through the tribulations (by being in a place of safety if I remember right) and those brought back to life during the first resurrection (known as the first fruits). Because of this promise, first of all, they constantly believe they are in the end times, OBSESSED with the idea of living in the end times in some cases, looking for all the clues and all the signs that maybe, JUST MAYBE this is IT and Jesus will come back and save them all. And then for 1000 years all will be perfect and then there will be this final battle and after that, earth will basically be heaven, all those non-believers will be thrown into the Lake of Fire and that's it, the end, happily ever after.
They meet once a year at something called the Feast of Tabernacles to give people an idea of how this time could be with the last day of this 8 day festival known as the Last Great Day which is all about the final judgement of man, the second and third resurrections. FYI: The Branch Davidians also believed in the millennium.
So you have people like that, and people of other religions who are hoping and sadly, even praying for the end of our world, the end of life as we know it, the end of humankind even because why not, as far as they are concerned, they have nothing to worry about, their god will save them and the rest will go to hell.
It boggles my mind and it scares the crap out of me. It should scare the crap out you too because these are not people who are going to help us get farther from that midnight deadline. If they had their way, they would drive us all the way past it. It's up to the rest of us to somehow fight this so that we ALL have a chance of living, not just those under the severe delusion of their religion.
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