Skeptophilia (skep-to-fil-i-a) (n.) - the love of logical thought, skepticism, and thinking critically. Being an exploration of the applications of skeptical thinking to the world at large, with periodic excursions into linguistics, music, politics, cryptozoology, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Keep it on the QT

Dear Woo-Woos of the World,

Ten days?  Ten days is all you could wait?

You just couldn't bear to have a little more time go by before you started blathering on once again about cycles and calendars and End Times?  What, it wasn't enough to have four (count 'em, four -- May 21, October 21, December 12, and December 21) failed predictions of the end of the world in the last eight months, you now have to come up with a new one?

If for some reason, you want to take a closer look at the latest in idiotic prophecies, here's a page from the bizarre site Unexplained Mysteries entitled, "Quetzalcoatl: When Will He Return?"  In case you were optimistic about the webpage's contents, it is far too much to hope for that the entire article consists of one sentence: "HE DOESN'T EXIST, YOU MORON."  No, the writer, one L. M. Leteane, takes Central American Native mythology, and throws it in a blender with Babylonian mythology and Egyptian mythology (because of course, the more ridiculous incorrect beliefs you put together, the more logical things get), and comes up with the following:

The Egyptian god Thoth and the Central American god Quetzalcoatl are actually the same person, because obviously a dude with the head of an ibis and a winged, feathered snake are so similar that they must be one and the same.  QT (as I will hereafter refer to this combined god) has a real fondness for numbers, and his magic number is either 52 or 144,000, the latter being because that's the number of blocks in the Great Pyramid of Giza.  If you take 13 bunches of 144,000 days, you get about 5,125 years; that amount of years, if you start in 3,113 B.C. E. (why start there?  Because the Sumerians, that's why.  Stop asking questions) brings you to the year 2012.  But we just finished 2012, and the world didn't end, amazingly enough.  According to L. M. Leteane, that's because the year 2012 as an end date is "valid but not correct."

And no, I didn't make that quote up.

So, because QT also likes 52, add that number to 2012, and you get 2087.  Add 720 years to that, and you get the year 2807, which contains "13 (almost 14) lots of 52, just as Thoth said!"

No, I didn't make that quote up, either.

Now, add 562 years to that, because of something about Pisces and astrology and who the hell knows, and you get the year 3369, which is when the "comet Marduk" is supposed to return.  Marduk is a Babylonian god.  Apparently, it's also a comet.  Who knew?  Not the astronomers, I'm guessing, because Leteane says it is "not a comet mapped in recent times."

Oh, yeah, and there was something in there about the Great Flood of Noah happening in 10,983 B.C.E. because that was when the Earth's axial tilt was "at its most precarious."  What exactly this means, I'm not sure.  Maybe Leteane thinks that if the Earth tilts too much, it falls over and dumps ocean all over the place.  I dunno.

Anyhow, I'm gonna stop here, because the whole thing is making my head hurt.  If you're curious, you can take a look at the link, or buy Leteane's book, They Came From the Sky.  Me, I'm done with all this.  All I can say is that I'm glad that the predicted End Date is 1,357 years from now, because even in a best-case scenario, I'll be long dead by that time and won't have to worry about nimrods further "analyzing" the situation and trying to decide why, despite all of this faultless logic, the world once again didn't end.

2 comments:

  1. Why does it always have to be the end of the world? It shows a certain lack of imagination. Couldn't Quetzalcoatl return to start a chain of high-end clothing shops? The UFO aliens come to visit all the restaurants in Jane and Michael Stern's Roadfood book? Barney could vanish from the Earth?

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    1. I don't know if Barney's disappearance will be as popular a story as the end of the world, but i like it. Or maybe Snooki and/or some Kardashian could disappear. Although, there is the theory that their existence is a sign of the impending apocalypse. Hmmm.

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