The Second Coming

Once again I was reading about the prophetic end of the world as envisioned by some Christians.

It’s the Late, Great Planet Earth all over again. As tensions rise in the middle east, the oft fleeced flock begins to dream of the arrival of the Son of Man to judge the sheep and the goats.

*Yawn.* Excuse me, but don’t these folks ever get it?

This is a form of what I call the “Vindication Fantasy.” A form of fantasy where an authority figure, parent, boss, king, shows up, vindicates your actions or beliefs and raises you up above your rivals.

Let me make it simple. It’s not going to happen. Jesus is not coming back. A mushroom cloud turning Jerusalem into debris is just going to turn Jerusalem into debris and kill a lot of innocent people.

Revelations is a load of gibberish laid down by a delusional Greek on the Island of Patmos. Either he was chewing on some really good stuff or a growing brain tumor was causing increasingly chaotic hallucinations.

None of it is real and none of it is going to happen.

The earth, at least as a rock in space, will most likely survive for about another 5 billion years until the sun exhausts its supply of hydrogen, expands into a red giant and engulfs the inner planets.

But not to worry. It’s highly unlikely anyone will be around to witness the event.

While the life expectancy of the sun and earth may be in the billions of years, the life expectancy of the human species, unless we can figure out a way to travel between the stars, is at best in the thousands of years and quite possible in the hundreds of years.

99.9% of all species that have ever existed are extinct. It’s unlikely we’ll manage to escape that fate. We may achieve the distinction of being the only species that contributed to its own demise, but in the eternal darkness to follow, there won’t be anyone that will care.