Here is a moral teaser: is Google good or evil? Google and its browser kindred have completely transformed the way we get information. It is the cyberspatial ouija board that few people could do without. I will be using it while writing this post, for example. Yesterday morning I was reading an article posted on the LA Times website about a new study published in Science that argues how “Thinking can undermine religious faith.” In the left margin of the webpage there are two Ads by Google. Both are prime examples of what the article is saying: that a lot of what goes by the name of religion is gut level rather than thought out.

I clicked on “The End-Time is Here” Google ad and discovered a website with a free pdf of 2008 God’s Final Witness by Ronald Weinland, who gives updates on the book in his blog. My first gut level thought was how strange it was that a book about the end of the world with the date 2008 should still be touted on a Google ad. But upon further thinking, by actually reading parts of the book, I discovered that the magic date is in fact May 27, 2008, less than three weeks from today. Here is the blurb that says it all:

The year 2008 marked the last of God’s warnings to mankind and the beginning in a countdown of the final three and one-half years of man’s self-rule that will end by May 27, 2012.

On December 14, 2008, the First Trumpet of the Seventh Seal of the Book of Revelation sounded, which announced the beginning collapse of the economy of the United States and great destruction that will follow. The next three trumpets will result in the total collapse of the United States, and once the Fifth Trumpet sounds the world will be thrust into WW III.

Silly me; the world was not supposed to end in 2008, since that was just the economic meltdown that God chose to let us all know that in a short time he would pull another Flood and this time 6 billion people would die. Bad news for Romney, I suppose, since I doubt any Mormons will be in the 144,000 elect who will then rule the earth (and unless God intervenes there will be a lot of stinking dead bodies to bury). I am not sure what or who they will rule over, since only the really good people are being saved, but then look what a terrible thing Noah’s son Ham did to his drunken, naked father. and given that curse of Ham, is it any wonder that Obama will be denied a second term? I wonder if having a socialist in the Oval Office, not to mention that God must have known that France would also just elect another socialist and the Commie Putin would sweep to victory again, was the final straw for the great God Jehovah.

Regarding this new date, pre-Mayan it would seem, both my gut and thinking part of my brain are skeptical, but it is only fair to reproduce the argument here so you as an educated reader can decide for yourself. So take a look at this:

Mr. Weinland (some of the stuff he writes suggests that he has a little more Wein than his brain or gut can take) raises a rather important question. Gosh, why would the God who created mankind (and then added womankind so there wouldn’t be just one man) allow “enormous death and destruction worldwide”? Mr. Weinland is spot on to note that “The answer cannot be given in a few simple sentences.” So in his book he gives a lot of simple sentences; indeed I would say that all of his sentences are simple to a fault. Of course, how foolish to blame God for this. After all, he just created mankind. As Hobbes told us quite awhile ago, mankind created Leviathan. To blame God would be like blaming democracy or free enterprise or even the Republican Party. How could it be God’s fault if 6 billion people die… so I add another page from Mr. Weinland’s book:

The blame belongs to mankind, not a “very merciful and loving God,” who is only bringing “an end to man’s self-annihilation.” Think of it as a kind of cosmic euthanasia (with all the continents, including Asia now devoid of people) putting mankind out of its sinful misery. Now, as Mr. Weinland wisely notes, “Yes, God could prevent all of it,” since he is all-powerful. No question about that. But, as Mr. Weinland observes, “mankind wouldn’t learn anything!” Why bother to keep people alive if they won’t learn anything anyway. God, as Mr. Santorum (who as a Roman Catholic will be among the tribulation dead) might argue, is a snob, like Obama (but don’t tell this to Weinland) because it seems God really wants people to learn something.

The thinking part of my brain does not believe that the world will end on May 27, 2012 any more than the almost infinite number of earlier dates given over the previous two millennia or so. But my gut tells a different story. In reading Mr. Weinland’s prediction, I find that my gut is turning. Read the Google ads on that last hyperlink and yours may too…

Daniel Martin Varisco