As part of our continuing effort to expose the academically deficient work Petrus Romanus, I’ve ordered a couple of earlier books by conspiracy
theorist Thomas Horn to report on. One of these, Apollyon Rising 2012, was
published in 2009, and we may suppose right away that Horn has Camping-like
pressure on him to make sure he was right – save that unlike Camping, Horn
doesn’t seem to have much of a following.
This particular book offers a Chapter (#12) in which Horn
gives reasons why 2012 will be “it” for eschatology – his own 88 Reasons, as it
were. Over several of the next Ticker
entries, we’ll look at the various “2012s” Horn offers.
Regrettably, the first reason is an appeal to the “Mayan
Long Count” calendar many have been using to predict the end of the world on
12/21/2012 – and it doesn’t get much better after that. This Mayan appeal
wasn’t much to start with and was from the very beginning a case of reading too
much into too little. Indeed it seems wackos have been reading things into it
for a while now (see links below). I think an extended quote from the link is
worth posting here:
There is no clear "prophecy" in the records of the ancient
Maya. There is only one known ancient inscription, Monument 6 from the
ruined site of Tortuguero (Chiapas, Mexico), that makes
reference to the date of 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in, but the text is not very
clear because the monument has been damaged. Epigraphers Sven Groenmeyer and Barbara MacLeod think it
refers to a future ceremony in which a specific deity would be honored by
dressing him in special clothes and perhaps carrying him in a procession.
However, this remains a subject of debate. The other Maya
"doomsday" prophecies that do exist in documents such as the 18th
century Books of Chilam Balam, are difficult to interpret and
do not specify 2012. These accounts, as well as the Popol
Vuh ("Council Book"), a traditional Creation story of the Maya
that refers to the destruction of subsequent worlds, were collected after the
Spanish Conquest and may have been influenced by the end-of-the-world beliefs
of Franciscan missionaries to the Maya. That is, the
"2012 doomsday" beliefs attributed to the Maya are actually Western
ideas, not ones that come from ancient Maya beliefs. When the Maya of the
Colonial period were referring to catastrophes and devastation, it seems likely
that they were referring to their own culture's destruction at the hands of
Spanish invaders.
Some people have emphasized the fact that the special date on the Maya
calendar--calculated over 2000 years ago--falls on a winter solstice
(December 21). They think that the skills and precision of the ancient
Maya daykeepers indicate that they had the ability to predict many things about
the future. However, academic scholars disagree on whether the correct
date is December 21, December 23, or something else. Many feel that the
correspondence to a winter solstice is a coincidence. (They also dismiss
notions about a "galactic alignment"-the position of the Sun in a
special place relative to the Milky Way galaxy on that date-as a fantasy based
on inaccurate, non-traditional astrology.)
Promoters of the 2012 mythology tend to ignore current academic scholarship
and the opinions of professional Mayanists (archaeologists, epigraphers, art
historians, linguists, etc.) about what ancient Maya people actually
believed. Their interpretations are based on outdated and antiquated
ideas of the late 19th and early 20th century, ideas that are useful for the
construction of mythology and ideology but do not reflect contemporary academic
knowledge. Mainstream scholars and scientists also view this movement as the
source of a great deal of pseudoscience, ignorance, credulousness, and
incorrect thinking because it privileges subjective over objective knowledge.
This will do for a lot of the nonsense Horn spews in this chapter about the
Long Count. He also appeals to that
fantasy of a galactic alignment, saying this refers to an event that happens
only every 13,000 years. On this, see second link below, and note this quote:
There’s been much hoopla about the winter solstice sun aligning with
galactic plane on December 21, 2012. You, however, now know the reality that,
as seen from Earth, the sun crosses the galactic equator twice a year. And the
galactic equator on our sky’s imaginary astronomical coordinate system more or
less corresponds with the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. So, in this sense, the
sun crosses the plane of the Milky Way twice a year (as seen from Earth).
It’s also simple to debunk the notion of 2012 as an “end” for the Maya, and
Horn’s use of Monument 6 at Tortuguero. On this, here’s a quote from an expert on
the subject of that monument:
Whatever Monument 6 has to tell us pertains to the dedication of the
building associated with the sculpture. It has nothing to do with prophecy or
the supposed, dread events that await us in AD 2012. About that the Maya are
notably silent…or, truth be told, a bit boring.
That should do for Horn’s vacuous appeal to the Mayan calendar – it will
take him at least until 2014 to untangle the rebuttals below, assuming he
notices 2012 is over before then. (Given that his tendency is to use fellow
conspiracy theorists as sources, it ought to all be over his head, too.)
We’ll also note something else in this section of the chapter. He says that
the Hindu calendar “also predicts global earth changes around the year 2012” at
the end of what is called the “Kali Yuga.” Unfortunately, this one appears to
come from Hindu commentators pulling a Harold Camping – making calculations
based on selected data in the past in order to reach a date in the present.
There’s enough back and forth about the exact nature of this Kali Yuga epoch,
and its nature and length (the most common reading is that it is 432,000 years
long, and we are nowhere near the end of it!) that Horn will have to offer more
than a sentence or two as he does here to make a case.
In closing, we’d like to divert a bit to something that seems unconnected
but is not.
Norman Geisler, apparently afflicted with Mike Licona Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder (MLOCD), has just put out yet another item on the usual you know what,
apparently in observance of a scholarly conclave Licona took part in. No, there’s
nothing new to address in it: It’s just the same old “great man speaking”
routine, with the same bad arguments, and the same horrendous mistakes
(including STILL saying Nick Peters “produced” Geisler’s Christmas Carol).
Licona, of course, has been anathematized by one of Geisler’s pet
organizations, the International Society of Christian Apologetics (ISCA). That’s
one reason I no longer associate with that organization any more, but now they have
given me another.
Horn’s co-author of Petrus Romanus, Cris Putnam, was also a speaker at the
last ISCA conference I went to in Raleigh in 2011. At the time, I had no idea
Putnam was involved in such lunacy, and indeed, that is what it is. Sitting on
my table right now is another book by Horn which connects UFOs, prophecy, and
genetic engineering to the idea of the “Watchers” in Genesis 6 – with the
premise apparently being that we can expect the Watchers to make a return somehow
involving all these elements. Just how loony this will get remains to be seen
for when I read the book in whole.
Beyond that, Petrus Romanus and Apollyon Rising 2012 both include lunacy
about Freemason conspiracies, and ideas that America was founded as a sort of
occult Freemason paradise. Yes, you heard me. This is loonier than even Acharya
S could come up with.
In light of all that, Geisler is faced with a conundrum, one I expect he
will ignore.
He, and his pet organization, have publicly condemned Mike Licona for his
adherence to credible scholarly methodology.
Yet his organization has also welcomed, and accepted papers from, someone
who teaches, and cooperates with someone who teaches, UFO/Freemason/conspiracy
theory lunacy.
Isn’t there something wrong here?
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