Elenin and Brimstone

 

SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

- Robert Frost
December 1920


Insanity: doing the same thing 

over and over again 

and expecting different results.
- Albert Einstein

Rev. Camping personifies for me the religious leader who embraces superstition that borders on mental illness, rather than spirituality.  But then, so do a number of religious figures among the conservative 'Religious Right'.

I don't doubt his sincerity, but his sanity and religious beliefs do appear more wobbly than pious.  While I must admit a certain humor at the gentleman's expense, I do feel badly for him that he appears so ridiculous, and further that he appears deficient in that important gift of learning from our mistakes.

From MSNBC.com:

Preacher still says Oct. 21 for end of world

Harold Camping not backing down from prediction of doom

Reuters TV  /  Reuters file

The Rev. Harold Camping, who suffered a stroke in June and is now at home recuperating, said in a recent audio message on his site that the end on Oct. 21 will come quietly.

By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

updated 10/14/2011 6:19:29 PM ET

The radio preacher who predicted Judgment Day on May 21 has not backed down from his claims that the end of the world is near, despite the lack of a Rapture or world-devastating earthquakes leading up to the doomsday.

In an announcement on his Family Radio Network website, Harold Camping stands by his earlier predictions that the world will end on Friday, Oct. 21. Originally, Camping had predicted hourly earthquakes and God's judgment on May 21, to be followed by months of torment on Earth for those individuals left behind. Using numerical codes extracted from the Bible, Camping set the date for the end of everything for Oct. 21.
When May 21 came and went without fanfare, Camping revised his story. The "earthquakes" he had predicted did occur, he writes on his website in a post titled "What Happened on May 21?" — only instead of shaking the Earth, God shook mankind "with fear." Likewise, although no one was raptured, God is no longer saving souls, Camping writes.
"What really happened this past May 21st?" Camping wrote. "What really happened is that God accomplished exactly what He wanted to happen."
Camping, who suffered a stroke in June and is now at home recuperating, also said in an audio message on his site that the end on Oct. 21 will come quietly.
It's not unusual for failed doomsday predictors to claim that their prophecies were true, just slightly misunderstood. [Read: 10 Failed Doomsday Predictions ]
"Most often, the answer given by the group is that the prophecy is true, but the interpretation was wrong," Concordia University professor of religion Lorenzo DiTommaso told LiveScience during Camping's rush of publicity in May.
The modern Seventh-Day Adventist church, for example, got its start as a splinter group of Baptist preacher William Miller, who predicted the end of the world on Oct. 22, 1844. In the post-doomsday letdown, Miller's followers struggled to explain what went wrong. The group that would become the Seventh-Day Adventists concluded that on that day, Jesus had shifted his location in heaven in preparation to return to Earth.
Other groups have also survived failed predictions of Armageddon. The Jehovah's Witnesses made specific predictions about the apocalypse until the early 1990s, when they switched to more vague prophecies. A 1950s doomsday cult known as The Seekers actually bragged to the media after their end-of-the-world prediction failed, saying that their devotion had saved humanity.
Believing in the end of the world even without evidence may seem strange, but sociologists say that a belief in doomsday gives followers a clear sense of the world and their place in it. Others have suggested that apocalyptic worldviews stem from the overwhelming feeling that one's problems are too big, and, as such, the only possible solution is a clean slate. Over the past 40 to 50 years these doomsday beliefs have increased, according to DiTommaso, though not all "believers" are as extreme as Camping.
Camping's doomsday prediction isn't the only looming end-of-the-world forecast this month. Apocalyptic rumors circulating online have held that the comet Elenin is set to collide with Earth or to cause some sort of celestial domino effect that would result in the end of the world. Debris from Elenin — which started breaking up after a solar storm in August — will pass within 22 million miles of Earth on Sunday, and astronomers say that the comet is not remotely dangerous to Earthlings.

The Comet Elenin  (Fire, or Ice?)