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Kingdom Come

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The Four Horsemen

Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a woodcut. Germany, AD 1498.


Vaughan Bell has an interesting piece at Slate about research into how followers of apocalyptic cults cope when their end-of-the-world predictions don’t pan out. The answer is that they don’t. That is, they don’t ever really face up to it, because to them, the great clash of theory and fact never happens. That’s because they’ve rigged their theories so that contrary facts may not disturb the integrity of the theory. Bell concludes:

For those not waiting for the world to end in a storm of fire and light it is easy to write off the believers as deluded, but Festinger was not so wide of the mark when he suggested that we adapt to even the most unlikely of contradictions using nothing more than our methods of everyday rationalization. The faithful could just as easily be those who stubbornly stand by disgraced politicians, failed ideologies, dishonest friends, or cheating spouses, even when reality highlights the clearest of inconsistencies. Armageddon is unlikely to arrive this weekend, but most of us have lived through it many times before.

Via Mind Hacks. Also interesting to see, via Kevin Drum, that the crackpot behind this particular rapture theory spent upwards of $100 million publicizing it, with the result that we’ve all had a good time making fun of it.

That said, in time the sun and stars will all burn out, and human life will be extinguished forever.


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