Mayan Cosmo-what?

Oh yeah, it's 2012, isn't it?  And it's almost over, too.
Which means the date for which all the religious zealots have been waiting is upon us.

RUN FOR THE HILLS!

Ah, the end of the world nuts. What a great picture of humanity. When they're alive, we laugh.  When they've been dead for thousands of years, we take them seriously. Nostradamus, John the Revelator, Jeremiah, Isaiah... all of them taken seriously because something happened to coincide with one of the lines of text. Random Coincidence? Most likely - in fact, I'd be willing wager that, if a study was taken of people who believed in end of the world theories in general, we'd find that 75% or more of our country doesn't buy into it, 15% or less might believe that something like that could be possible, and 10% or less believe wholeheartedly that it's going to happen, and soon.

Honestly, and after much thought about it, coming from a background of belief where Revelations is not literally translated, I say it's a bunch of crap. Revelations as fact was not something that came about in our western culture until around the Protestant Reformation (the first millennium CE at earliest), when educated people began reading the sections of the Bible the priests had left out of the sermons/homilies.  Before this period of time, the Church had maintained a solid 1000 year grip on Western Europe. The Catholics had managed to convince everyone that their religious text was fact (so as to keep control of the people and maintain an order to a chaotic land), and that everything in the text had ACTUALLY happened (and that Jesus and God were both white skinned).  So, when people began to read for themselves this factual text, they began to apply their own theories to their social organism.  These people begat more, and those begat more, who eventually landed on our continent and developed into our nation.  Now, we have people believing religious text as fact, even when science directly contradicts half of the book's credibility (none of the gospels included in the Bible were actual texts from Jesus' time, circa 40-80 CE, 11 years after his death, and most even considered were Greek translations.) - I think I've argued this point before, but onto the end of the worlders.

While they represent a very small sector of our population, they are there, and they are insistent.  But this Mayan Cosmogenesis is something else.  For the first time, religious zealots from completely different regions and belief structures, are arguing for a date made on a calendar by some other religious leaders, who used their insightful astronomical predictions for Creation Myths and seemingly unreachable End Times when their gods will return and destroy the world.  The most amazing part about it is, not knowing the true nature of the date, some of our religions have placed their own belief on that same date.  Jesus will return; The dead will be resurrected for the final judgement; the Messiah will take his people home.  It's the Grand-Daddy of all "End-of-the-World" days.

Having faced 1999, Y2K, 1991 (and the supposed anti-christ then - Saddam Hussein) and several solar eclipses, I have no fear of this Galactic Alignment (when our sun crosses the galactic equator)... but for all that, is it any wonder that I am still a bit curious? What if one of those crazy guys wearing his End-is-Near sign, clutching his bible in hand and shouting to the apathetic masses that they must repent is right?  Wouldn't that just be the biggest joke of them all!

Got my popcorn. Less than two months away - if it happens, it'll literally be the Fight of All Time! God vs. God, God vs. Devil, Devil vs. Dead, Dead vs. Us!  I wouldn't miss it - in fact, I don't think I could miss it if it actually happened.