I am hereby obliged to officially announce that on May 21st, 2011 the world as we know it has came to an end. Or has it?
According to Harold Camping, a preacher from Oakland, California the world was going to end on the before mentioned date. However, to everyone's surprise absolutely nothing has happened. That of course is not entirely true; apart from events that most casually took part in our everyday lives, preacher's prediction of the apocalypse has triggered a worldwide discussion. There were those who supported and followed Camping's theory, and of course there were those who contradicted or even mocked the idea of 'Judgment Day'. While there is still an open debate going on in the media I have decided to give my two cents on the story and how I perceive it.
I consider myself being a person of science and therefore I was taught to use facts and empirical data to support my hypotheses. In other words, I am an observer that likes to analyse things that happens around me, and try to explain it in the best way available to me. Herewith, Harold Camping's prediction has caught my attention, and I have spent the last few days actively following the media and brain-picking the theory that seemed to have shaken up the world. The first step was to analyse the evidence for Camping's prediction. As Harold Camping himself has explained, he discovered the day of world's end by using mathematical system. After 70 years of studying the Bible he claimed to have used mathematics to interpret the prophesies that were hidden in it. Herewith he stated that by multiplying the three holy numbers: 5, 10 and 17 one gets a sum of 722,500 which is the number of days, from the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (1st of April, AD 33) until the end of the world. With that being said I could not help but notice the lack of thoroughness in the mathematical equation that Camping used to determine the final day. The holy numbers that were used are not the only numbers that are considered by the Christian community as being holy. What about number 3; a number of Trinity: Father, Son and a Holy Ghost? What about number 6 that represents the day that man was created? What about all the other numbers? Such observation allowed me to conclude that Camping's mathematical equation had little or no grounds, and was based merely on elusive reasoning.
The next step in the analysis of the Harold Camping's prediction was to think outside the box. Considering Camping's education (a former civil engineer) and status a world-know preacher person that owns 66 radio stations in the US only, one can only begin to appreciate mans potential as a strategic thinker and his intelligence in general. With such assumption, the previously made statement about the lack of thoroughness in Camping's calculations all of a sudden does not add up. How can a man of such experience be so sloppy in such a comparably heavy prediction? Moreover, one could assume that Camping surely had considered the outcomes should his prediction be proven to be wrong the next day. Herewith, discussing whether Harold Camping genuinely believed in his theory would be the right question to ask. At the same time, let it be known that by asking such a question I am by no means trying to accuse the man of knowingly and intentionally trying to cause a world-wide panic while having selfish intents for profits or fame. On a quite contrary, I suggest that Harold Camping is a man with a dream to abolish all that he believes to be evil; 'all the stealing, and the lying, and the wickedness and the sexual perversion that is going on in society', and so he uses every tool in his possession to try and make that dream come true. Therefore, I believe that Harold Camping used the prophesy of the Judgment Day not to warn people of the inevitable end, but merely to evoke people's hearts and minds with a hope that his call will be answered.
