Mixing Myths

I just watched a History Channel special on the Mayan civilisation.  It’s almost impossible to find a documentary on the Mayans that does not succumb to woo-woo fantasies.  This one was no exception.

Example:

“The ancient Mayans were experts in mathematics, architecture and astrology.”

Wait… what?  Experts in astrology?  You say that as if it’s something to be admired!

What hurts me most about these documentaries is the theory that the Earth will be destroyed on 21 December 2012 because that’s when the Mayan calendar “runs out.”

The History Channel documentary spent over 5 minutes of my valuable time explaining how and why modern Christians adopted the 2012 bullshit into their own end times theology.

When I was in middle school and I got my first Palm Pilot, the calendar software wouldn’t go farther than December 2035.  It makes sense:  A piece of software coded for a device made in the late nineties will probably not be used in 2035, so why code it further?

Why on earth would the Maya create a calendar that goes on for more than a thousand years after they created it‽

The Maya calendar in question is the Maya Long Count Calendar.  It is a non-repeating calendar that counts off 14 arbitrarily set eras called Baktuns from 3114 BCE until 2012 CE.  From what I have read on the subject, the calendar does not actually end on 21 Dec. 2012, but that is the date of the beginning of the 14th and last-listed Baktun.  But why would the last-listed Baktun be last era on Earth?  Does it not make sense that the Mayans had better things to do than count off years for their great-great-great-grandchildren’s great-great-great-grandchildren’s great-great-great-grandchildren?  They “mysteriously” (which does not mean mystically or supernaturally) vanished 1000 years ago in the 10th Baktun, so they couldn’t have possibly updated their calendar after then.  Maybe they fully intended to add more Baktuns as the Baktun they were in came to a close.  It’s a difficult algorithm to place the date of the next Baktun, so why would they waste their time on it when they clearly had more than enough time marked off on their calendar already?  Their calendar is still active a millennia after they all died, so it’s clear they weren’t in any urgent state to add more to it when they were still around.

But even if they did mean to leave the calendar off at 2012 because they thought the world would end then, why does that hold sway over anyone?  Much less, why does it hold sway over Christians who believe that the Maya were pagans who had no say in Christian theology?  Just because an opinion is old is not reason for the opinion to be more valid than any other, especially when said opinion is only known through shoddy interpretations of rock carvings.

There is no rational reason, even if the myths of Revelation were true (which they aren’t), for anyone to believe that these two myths coincide with each other. How can they?  The two stories were created in different times on different sides of the planet.  Neither author knew of the other.

Believing in the end times because of the Maya calendar is dumb.  Believing in the end times because of the Bible is dumb.  Believing both myths and saying they coincide with each other is dumber than any dumb I know of.  It’s dumber than ID, UFOlogy and Time Cube–yes, Time Cube–combined.

Every generation of religious fruitcakes believes that the rapture will happen in their lifetime.  They have all been wrong.  Even when they’re wrong, they come up with some irrational rationalisation about how they were really right… but only in a non-literal or metaphysical sense.