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http://blogs.discovery.com/inscider...ve-in-doomsday-predictions.html#mkcpgn=fbsci1
Why Do We Want to Believe in Doomsday Predictions?
By: Patrick Kiger
Biopsychologists tell us that humans, like other species, have a compelling interest in our own survival, so that we can fulfill our evolutionary imperative to pass on our genes and sustain the forward march of our species. In light of that, it's a bit puzzling to observe our contradictory fascination with--and for some, fervent belief in--predictions of our impending extinction.
Case in point: The currently trending meme that the world will end on December 21, 2012, which coincides with the end of the 13th Baktun, or 144,000 day cycle, in the Mayan Long Count calendar. Oddly, the future-obsessed Mayans themselves didn't have any prophecies depicting the Earth's destruction, and as this New York Times article points out, the Mayan calendar doesn't actually end in 2012, but instead simply slip into the 14th Baktun, in the fashion of an aging car's odometer that reaches 120,000 miles and just keeps ticking toward 130,000.
But the absence of an actual Mayan Doomsday prediction simply has caused apocalyptic fanboys to fill in the blanks themselves. One popular option for those eager to foretell their own demise is the belief in Nibiru, which is not a dragon conjured up by Dan of the Bakagan battle brawlers, but rather a rogue planet that supposedly was discovered by the ancient Sumerians and is now hurtling on a collision course toward Earth. As this NASA 2012 debunking FAQ notes:
Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist.
If you're wondering where such ideas came from, Space.com offers this fascinating take on the origins of the Nibiru myth. Earthlings first learned of the mysterious unseen planet in the 1970s from the late Zecharia Sitchin, a Russian-born author who, based on his interpretation of ancient Sumerian pre-cuniform script, believed that Niburu roamed the cosmos on an enormous orbit that brings it near Earth every 3,600 years or so. Sitchin also claimed that humans were genetically engineered in ancient Mesopotamia by nine-foot-tall extraterrestrials, who were in need of laborers to mine gold on Nibiru. To quote a 2010 New York Times profile:
"This is in the texts; I’m not making it up,” Mr. Sitchin said, finishing his coffee. “They wanted to create primitive workers from the homo erectus and give him the genes to allow him to think and use tools.”
The idea of Nibiru, or Planet X as some called it, percolated though the UFO fabulist subculture on the Internet, and somehow morphed into a Doomsday prophecy that the rogue planet would collide with Earth--a premise vaguely similar to the 1951 sci-fi movie When Worlds Collide. Originally, the collision was to occur in May 2003, but when, for whatever reasons, that didn't happen, 2012 apparently emerged as a makeup date. (You may scoff, but revising Doomsday dates is an accepted practice in the apocalyptic subculture; here's a 2011 USA Today profile of radio evangelist Harold Camping, who predicted that the world would end on May 21 of that year...or else Oct. 21.)
It's easy enough for a skeptic to poke holes in Nibiru--or in the catastrophic pole shift theory, or any number of other apocalyptic scenarios. But the more interesting question is why so many people fervently embrace these predictions. A May 2012 Reuters poll found that 22 percent of Americans believe that the world will end in their lifetimes--a level of end-of-the-world prognostication matched only by Turkey, and way above Great Britain (eight percent) and France (6 percent). Another 2010 Pew Research Center poll found that 41 percent of Americans believe that Jesus will return by 2050, even though the New Testament itself says that event is impossible to predict.
Why is it that better than so many of us are convinced that the end is near? Why is it that the idea of an impending apocalypse is so appealing? I haven't been able to find much scientific literature on the subject. In this 2011 New Scientist article, Concordia University religious scholar Lorenzo DiTommaso hypothesizes that this may reflect an innate human aversion to future uncertainty, and desire to know the unknown. He
Within its limitations, apocalypticism is very rational. It's a world view that explains time, space, and human existence. It's not science - it's not universal or repeatable - but it does explain things.
And apocalyptic thinking isn't necessarily a sign of unscientific irrationality, DiTommaso maintains. He points out that Isaac Newton, the great 17th-early 18th century theoretical physicist, was an end-of-the-world enthusiast who spent much of his life trying to decipher prophecies in the Biblical books of Daniel and Revelation.