 Ben Radford, such a very handsome man Ben Radford, shiny head and glasses can remind you he's a handsome man Ben Radford, ladies and gentlemen Ben Radford. Remarkably self-serving song, it was wonderful, those are my favorite kind, thank you George. And wow, more people than I expected, awesome. Thank you to everyone showing up who did, again the appearance of not being hungover, that's appreciated. I'm going to be talking, let's see, what am I up to yet? Hugo? Oh it's up here, okay fine, you guys are all over, perfect. So the title is, oh man, am I getting again? Yes, that was better, I thought that up after a beer or two. So for those of you who don't know, I'm Ben Radford, Deputy Editor of Skeptical Inquirer Science Magazine, author of six books, with the seventh one coming out this year, including the Scientific Penal Investigation, a couple of copies of which are available out there. And my most recent one is co-authored with a sociologist, Bob Bartholomew, and it's titled, The Martians Have Landed, A History of Colorful Media Panics and Hoaxes. At least that was the title at one point, they kept changing the title along, so. And speaking of Martians Landing and Hysteria and Doomsday, that's what we're talking about today. So I've only got half an hour and one could talk for hours and hours about Doomsdays and prophecies and things like that. So I'm just going to sort of give a little short overview of some of the more popular Doomsdays, as opposed to the unpopular ones. And of course a bit of the Mayan prophecy, because as we all know, the Mayans were way ahead of their time in some ways, and in other ways, not so much. So let's begin with the Doomsday of April 23rd, 1843. This was a Doomsday that was prophesied by the Millerites. And this was a farmer by the name of William Miller. And he carefully studied his Bible, as many people do, except he decided that God had implanted little clues. He didn't really want us to know when the role was going to end. In fact, in the Bible it says explicitly that no man will know the day. But if you cherry pick, if you just sort of, well, I like this piece but not that piece, and I'm going to believe this piece but not that piece, then of course you can make it say whatever you want. And Mr. Miller, I'm sure he's a fine devout man, had concluded that in fact the world was going to end on April 23rd, 1843. And he had this sect of followers, many of whom were rather pissed off when the day came and went, and they'd given away their plows and their horses, and they're like, dude, we followed you up to here. Oh no, he was wrong. So he kept putting the date back and forth. And actually his group became what's now known as the Seventh Day Adventists. And every now and then you hear a little prediction coming out of them, but they've sort of gotten out of the prediction business wise move. Then we have Doomsday 1910. Any astronomers here know the story behind this one? All right, interesting. Well, this is a comet. This is when an astronomer on the late Great Planet Earth decided that he said, well, hey, we're going to be going near this comet, Halley's Comet, in 1910. And this is not really a problem. In fact, these days we look forward to seeing Halley's Comet. However, astronomers say, there's a gas in the tail of this comet that's related to cyanide. And people are like, cyanide, where have I heard that before? Oh, that kills people. Holy shit! So people are like, oh my god, the whole thing, like, oh, you know, Earth is going to be going through a cloud of cyanide and we're all doomed. And so the astronomers had to sort of say, well, not quite. I mean, it is true that there is some cyanide-related gases. However, our Earth's atmosphere project us from that, so don't worry too much about that. Then, of course, we have the doomsday of March 26, 1997. Planet Earth? Yeah. This was the Heaven's Gate cult. This was leader's co-peep and they're 37 followers, also known as Marshall Applewhite. And this is the UFO Christian cult, called Heaven's Gate, where you listen to the paranormal talk show, Coast to Coast AM, also known as the Art Bell Comedy Hour. And they concluded, based upon something, I think somebody blogged about this, that there was a spacecraft following Hale-Bopp, a comet Hale-Bopp that contained Jesus. That's where he's been all this time. He's been on a spaceship following. So for all the Christians wondering why Jesus hadn't come earlier, he was busy crossing the galaxy behind Hale-Bopp. As we all know, this did not come to a happy ending and these cultists killed themselves in a spectacularly unpleasant way. Then, of course, we have doomsday January 1, 2000. This was the Y2K scenario. And this is when the developed world, especially anybody with a computer, decided that there was a concern that the programmers that had originally done this were going to cause a lot of problems. The computers would think it was 1900s to 2000. There would be all sorts of problems, plane crashes, vast blackouts, failure to open viral YouTube, kitten videos, nuclear holocausts. There was no shortage of possible doomsday scenarios. And then, of course, we have one of the latest doomsday opponents, a man named Harold Camping. That's him there. He's notable not only for leading the most recent doomsday cult, but also for being 240 years old. I believe that's his autographed copy of the Bible he's holding in his hand, if I'm not mistaken. Good old Harold. Anyway, like William Miller in the 1840s, he concluded that he was reading his Bible, as they do, and decided that once again God had sprinkled different ideas about when the world would end and this and that. So he concluded that he did, in fact, know the date, May 21, 2011, last year. That made a bunch of news. It was made national news. I first heard about it on the TV, and they were interviewing his followers who were just as devout as the Millerites were back in the 1840s, and some of them were giving away their possessions, and they're buying this hook, line, and sinker. That day came and went, as you may or may not have noticed. And then he moved the date onto October, saying he'd miscalculated. He didn't carry a two decimal problem. I don't really know. But this was October, and of course, once again, that pale to materialize. So what we find is that... Hi, I'm Ralph. They think I'm text, but I know something they don't know. You're doomed. Exactly. This is the scenario you hear over and over again. You're doomed. You always have people who claim some sort of specialized knowledge, either from God or from biblical texts, and the answer is always, what they're presenting to the unwashed masses, those who are not smart enough to know otherwise, like, by the way, you're doomed. We're all doomed, and I just want to let you know this. Now, in the case of Harold Camping and others, it's always baffled me because what exactly were you supposed to do about this? I mean, really, okay, let's say the world was going to end in December 2011. Okay, thanks, dude. It's not clear what the message is. Go rape and pillage. Don't pay your mortgage. I don't know what they want us to do with this information. It's not particularly useful information. Exactly. So, one question comes up is, where do these Doomsday's ideas come from? Well, there's two basic areas. One of them is, as I mentioned earlier, we have the supernatural or eschatological point of view, and these are where the Doomsday's and Apocalypse Day's are derived from sacred texts. For example, Bible prophecy. In Karen Stolzner's talk yesterday, she talked about the Bible code. Another perfect example, Michael Drozden writing that I think he's gotten out two or three books out in which he claims that if you do various letter pattern searches in the Bible and other sacred texts, you can pull out these messages from God as to when Doomsday is. Again, it's not clear why this would be. I mean, if God wants us to know when Doomsday is, he can make this much more clear than this. I mean, you could just say, you know, page 48, by the way, guys, it's 2012. There's no reason to sprinkle these things all over the place. So, a lot of these are, again, the origins of these are from the supernatural texts where this is where the divine message is coming from. In other cases, it's a natural origin. Or, for example, the ecological origin. So we have freak disasters. We saw this in the concern over Halley's Comet that there's some external force that we can't deal with and usually is unavoidable. And we're all screwed because planets have been aligned or, you know, in one case, there was a guy that wrote a book called Five Five Two Thousand, The Coming Ice Age. And I think his name was Richard Noon, if I'm not mistaken. And the book was about, you know, May 5th, 2000, in which he claimed that the plants were going to align in such a way that it would cause cataclysm in The Coming Ice Age. And I first heard about him in, I think, in 98. And I contacted him. I was like, yeah, I'm interested in your book. Apparently, the world's going to end. How's that going to go? And he said, oh, yeah, this is all, it's all science, all science. Okay, it's all science. So anyway, you can now find his book, Five Five Two Thousand, on Amazon.com for one cent. Get your copies now. They're rare or something. And I actually asked him for an interview on May 6th, 2000, just in case it doesn't all go as he expected. I was wondering, do you mind if I just schedule something then? You may be busy, you may be dead, but, you know, can we work something? He's like, I don't think so. All right, whatever. So we have these sort of freak disasters. And the other one, the other version that we have are the man-made disasters. Anybody here remember the 1982 film, Koyana Skatzi? Yeah. Okay, well, you've got, you know, life out of balance. I think it's a Hopi and Navajo word. And essentially, the idea is that humans are destroying our planet, and we're all doomed and it's coming sooner or later. Now, that's not to say that there's not as green of truth to it. Certainly, we are polluting the planet and there's ecological problems. That's different than saying we're all doomed. And, you know, it certainly is coming soon. So these are some of the different scenarios that you have with the Doomsday books. So that brings us to Mind Prophecy 2012. So the concern began about, let me say, about five or six years ago when books and movies started popping up with tie-ins to the Mind Civilization and End Time Prophecy. I've got a handful of books right here. 101 Things You Should Know About 2012. There's actually not 101 from what I might count. Apocalypse 2012, An Investigation into the Civilization's End. The Hard Scientific Evidence Behind Calamities Portrayed in the Movie 2012. Yes, the Hard Science. And I notice we've got, one of the blurbs is by Tim LaHaye. If I'm not mistaken, isn't Tim LaHaye the left behind guy? Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's not a blurb I would use on my book. And then we have also, and I'll talk about these other options. We've also got 2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl. This is by Daniel Pinchbeck. I'll talk about him later. It's got a fractal thing on there. And I looked up just for fun. I looked up in the Index, Quantum Physics, because he's not a quantum physicist, I should add. And it's great. Shamanic understanding of reality and... Anyway. So basically anybody with an opinion and access to a keyboard, although not necessarily a spell check, is happy to cash in on this. Blogs, books, magazines, you name it. So again, we have sort of different varieties of the New Age folks. Some of them are 2012 New Ages sort of gloom and doom. They say that the world either will end or may end in some unpleasant way. You know, disembowelings, polyshore movies, fire, cataclysm. Whatever horrific death you can imagine is maybe in store for us. And then you have, on the other hand, you have people who are more on the Daniel Pinchbeck side, who are more sort of, hey, it's all right. So it's all good. Everything will work out. This is more of a, you know, instead of disaster, it'll be we just need to love each other, drop some acid, plant a tree. Everything will be fine. And so they don't see 2012 as being the end of civilization, but a new enlightenment. Very much like some of you may remember the harmonic convergence that happened in 87, in which all the countries of the world, people of the world would come together and there would be no more war. Remember that? That happens in 87. In case you forgot. Anyway, it'll be something very, very similar to that. So the question comes up, why the Mayans? Right? I mean, there's dozens of calendar systems. There's Arabic calendar systems. There's Jewish calendar systems. There's Gregorian. You know, it's only 2012 in our particular calendar system. So what is, why is anybody paying attention to the Mayan calendar system specifically? Because it fits in with their sort of condescending noble savage idea of the Mayans. The New Ages had this idea that, well, these ancient people, they built these pyramids and these calendar systems, which is impressive. They actually did have an impressive calendar system. That doesn't mean that they outsmarted the rest of us. It just means they could do a good calendar system. And for these people, the idea that Mayan mystics somehow predicted the end of the world millennia ago, that modern scientists don't know about and are oblivious to, this holds a certain populist appeal to them. They're like, oh, we're sticking it to the man because the Mayans knew this. And this is in some way similar to what you find with the Egyptian stories. The idea that the ancient Egyptians weren't smart enough to have created the pyramids on their own, they must have had guidance from extraterrestrial, the sort of idea that, well, these people had these amazing technology and that, you know, where did this come from? And there's all the differences. So we have the New Ages, and then on the other hand, we also have the scientists and pseudoscientists. So while most of the concern and panic is confined to New Ages, there are a few scientists and pseudoscientists who are somewhat concerned about real changes, actual changes that will go on. One of my mentioned earlier is Lawrence E. Joseph who wrote the rather dramatically titled Apocalypse 2012. And he says, well, he's not saying the world desert can end, what he's saying is that there will, he's pointing to, for example, increased sunspot activity. And it is true. We have had increased sunspot activity this year and we will continue to have some next year. So that much of it is true. He's also talking about some shifts in magnetic fields and other things like that. So basically he's looking to signs in the real world, actual legitimate physical changes and geological changes and saying, yes, and this could happen. This could happen. And of course the answer is, well, could it happen? Sure. Anything could happen. But is sunspot activity actually enough to cause this major cataclysm? The answer seems to be no. So what does all this have to do with the Mayans? Fair question. Well, I'm going to go through this very quickly. I've read up on the Mayan calendar. I do not pretend to be an expert on it because I haven't spent 15 years researching, but in essence, the Mayan calendar, also called the Long Count, is divided into different units, including the Keen, one day, Uinal, 20 days, Toon, 360 days, the Cattoon, 7,200 days, the Bok Toon, which is 14,400 days, and 13 Bok Toons, which is 1,872,000 days. Adding notation from another Mayan calendar system because that wasn't complex enough, and you blend that with another calendar system called the 260-day Tolskine cycle with another calendar system called the 365-day Hobb cycle. What you find is that the first day of their current calendar system, which was 0,0,0,0,4,0,8,0,0, and the final day is written as 13,0,0,0,0,0,4, 4 Ahu, 3 Kanken, and therefore the calendar began on August 11th, 3114 B.C. with 0,0,0, and it will end on December 21st, 2012, which would be 13 Bok Toons within the 13th Long Count. You got that? Okay. I just wanted to make sure that everyone's on the same page here because there'll be a test later. So it is true that the 13th Bok Toon in the Mayan calendar ends this December. Absolutely true. It's also true that the end of the Gregorian calendar on my wall ends on December 31st. Make of that what you will. There is precisely one Mayan inscription among all the thousands that exist that mentions the date 2012. It's not something that the Mayans were pretty concerned about. There weren't red flags everywhere and people getting terrified over it. It's on a rock called Stella 6, which was found in Tortuguero, the ruins in the state of Mexico, Tabasco, actually where they make Tabasco sauce, or it was origin, and it describes the descent of the Mayan Mayan god named Bolo Ngocu, and it says it will happen when, quote, the 13th Bok Toon which, again, is soon. I had a couple of handouts. There's like 20, 30 of them flying around. I wasn't sure how big a crowd to expect, so 20, 30 was obviously badly misjudged. Anyway, there's a couple of flyers that actually have an inscription on there, so if you're lucky enough to have one, you can sell it on eBay later on. And this is it. This is Stella 6. This is what the concern is about. And if you look in the bottom left-hand side there, there's three different little glyphs there, and these are the ones that are depicting the rise of this god Bolo Ngocu. Now again, to the Mayans, this was not anything necessarily unusual. They had lots and lots of gods, and this was only one of many gods, and this just happened to be the end of his particular cycle. The Mayan calendar is heavy on renewal and new calendars. So let's look at the ancient Mayan ideas of what was going on here. The ancient Mayans viewed this as an end of the cycle. Despite the claims of the contrary in dozens and dozens and hundreds of books such as these, the Mayan didn't actually hold that much significance for 2012, and they certainly did think the world was going to end. We know this because in addition to the date of 2012 when God Bolo Ngocu would ascend, they mentioned a bunch of other dates that happened after 2012. So clearly, if they didn't think anything was going to happen after 2012, they wouldn't have mentioned, oh, and look forward to this date in 2015, and you know, 3018, things like that. So this is something you have to keep in mind here. So in some cases, centuries and millennia later on. So this was not something that people were thinking was going to be the end of all things. So this is what the ancient Mayans think. So what do the modern Mayans think? Basically, their position is who gives a shit. The Mayans who live in Yucatan, and I've actually been there, I've been to Yucatan and some of the ruins in Tikal in Mexico and Belize, they're more baffled and annoyed than anything about this old 2012 thing. They're like, I'm sorry, what? In fact, I was reading an article and there was an anthropologist by the name of Joe Awe, and he asked some of the Mayans who still live there. He said, what's your take on all this? And their answer was, what does this have to do with the price of milk? I got kids to feed. I have cattle dying. I've got someone raiding my lawn. I can't download kitten videos. I'm upset here. So basically, their point is, in many ways, this is very much a manufactured story by new-agers and others who are just trying to make something fun out of it. So let me go and I'm going to show a little video clip and if there's time, I'll do a little Q&A. I went to the premiere of 2012. I was invited to Yellowstone for the... Anybody see the movie 2012 with John Cusack? Okay, a handful. You didn't miss much if you missed it. So I went up there and interviewed John Cusack. He was kind of a dick. He was a nice guy. Anyway, I'll tell you later. So while I was there, I got a chance to interview three so-called 2012 experts. One of them is Daniel Pinchbeck, as I mentioned earlier, who's the author of 2012 Quetzalcoatl. Another one is John Major Jenkins, who actually is a Mayan scholar. He's the first person in this clip. He's got a beard and he wrote a really pretty good book on the history of the Mayan. And the third one is this other author here, Lawrence Joseph, who has a slightly more scientific perspective on this. My favorite part... Look for the captions. Look how they're introduced. Anyway, just a little short clip I'll show you. It's the apocalypse. The end of dates. The judgment day. The end of the world, my friend. Christians called it the rapture. But the Mayans knew about it. The Hopes, the Aicheng, the Bible, kind of. As you know, the Mayans and the Mayan calendar is only one of many different civilizations and one of many different calendars. Why do you see anything particularly significant or valid in that calendar system? Well, for me, it's very clear that 2012 is anchored to this empirical cosmological alignment. That's why the Maya chose December 21st of 2012 to end this vast cycle of time. So unlike other vague prophecies or prognostications, this cosmology is very sophisticated and involves astronomical science. Yeah, I mean, I guess I would say that, you know, I'm very interested in shamanism and shamanic practices. Consciousness Explorer has allowed us to consider and the Maya civilization was the most kind of advanced and sophisticated form that shamanic culture has taken on the planet. And as part of that knowledge they pulled together was this understanding of time cycles that I think is just, you know, whether it's better or not, it's certainly fascinating that they went so deep into it and really created a kind of fractal and harmonic psychical model of time that is, that is different than our linear calendar Newtonian time that we're still kind of living in and seems to be almost closer to kind of a quantum physics perspective. Quantum physics, there you go. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. This is pure genius. It came as close to determining eclipses and movements around the heavens as very close to what we now know today with our satellites and computers and telescopes. Ancient genius that's been overlooked until now largely simply deserves our attention, our respect, and our further research. Well, given that history is littered with failed prophecies, failed promises of new age, enlightenment, whatever else, is there any reason to assume that 2012 will be any different? Well, for me, I'm not that concerned with whether the Maya prophecy, whatever that is, fails or succeeds. What I've been concerned with is reconstructing this lost ancient paradigm that is very profound and it's a scale and scope. It integrates not only the astronomy of this rare alignment, but also the ancient Maya's spiritual beliefs about cycle endings. And so there's this sort of grand holistic vision that the Maya had and that we can now put that on the table and talk about it, I think is something very important to do right now because it elevates our estimation of the ancient Maya genius. I think that stepping aside from what the Maya might have known prophetically or through their visionary work, this is critically a crux, a critical crux of a transition. Every time I watch this, I'm just saying nothing. Massive species extinction, accelerating climate change, resources disappearing. We're probably not going to be able to continue on this planet very comfortably unless we kind of come to our senses and realize that this kind of the inertia of these industrial systems that we've created are actually on the point of destroying us. He's literally not making sense, seriously. I've listened to this, he's literally not making sense. By the end of the century there's going to be 150 million people left on the earth if we continue with what we're doing. So we clearly have to look outside the box for solutions. I think there are many solutions, but there hasn't been the social and political will to kind of deploy them systemically. I think recognizing the situation we're in, we then have to find that will and make that happen. It's like you're streaming together these buzzwords that just quantum cycles. But it is the coincidence between that ancient prophecy and the solar climax of 2012 that makes me insist that we look closer. And even if it doesn't turn out to be 2012, there are things happening with the sun in relationship to the earth that we have to know now, we have to learn more about and act. So there you go. I met Pinchback, he's a nice guy. The man has dropped a lot of drugs. And again his solution is just to drop a bunch of drugs and everything will be fine. If you read his book it's just this hodgepodge of new age stuff and cycles and crop circles and the kitchen sink is in there at some point. So here's my prediction for 2012. I believe, and I say this with all sincerity, I predict there will likely be widespread stress and panic across North America, here in North America and elsewhere. Other Christian nations, Christian nations, on the days of the 13th Bakhtun ends. After all it is 40 before Christmas. Make of that what you will. Anyway, I think we have like, I don't know, a minute or 40 seconds or something. I'll take a quick question or should I wrap it up? We're good. Thank you all for listening to my background. Ben Raffer, folks. Ben Raffer. Giving that early morning cheer.