Benny's original blog post can be found here:
http://whatispopculture.blogspot.com/2011/04/which-apocalypse-would-you-prefer.html
I think that the easier apocalypse would be the first. If my fate were in the hands of a higher being, then I would not have to really do much. I won’t say I’m righteous, but whether I am or not is the only thing that appears to be important. In the moment of the rapture, I would not suddenly be able to change myself into being a righteous person. The chance that I am not going to be taken is almost equal to the chance that I will be affected by a looming crisis and will not survive in the second option. (This I deduce by probabilistic inductive logic). Therefore the chance that I am going to be stuck in a battle and suffer hardships is pretty much the same.
I would like to point out that both options include the probability of a savior who will come to save this world, whether they are already in it or not. Now the first points to Jesus Christ, and the second points to an unknown savior. Another reason I think I’d prefer the first evangelical apocalypse is because of the known saviour. History has indeed shown us a man named Jesus Christ did indeed exist, and it has been proclaimed that he has done many great things. However, the second option could be anyone, or even no one. I’d much rather take my chance with the reality of a saviour than an apocalypse where the end is much more unclear.
Crises facing humanity are not always easily resolved, nor do they always end well. And I definitely agree with what your problem with Oswalt’s reading for the week. You also used a great example of the zombies to prove your point.
All Apocalyptic Thinking: The Present Time is The Worst Time
Growing up, I constantly heard people say the generation I was in was the worst, that things couldn’t get worse. But often they did. This idea that we are currently living in the final stage of life, where the world will eventually end, did not really make sense to me. I don’t think I was ever convinced that an apocalypse would really occur. I believed that an idea of an apocalypse served many purposes: to help those who were in distress by giving them hope, encourage those who are religious to remain steadfast and be in constant repentance, gives the religious a promise of vindication and redemption, and overall helps authorise a message.
The paradox of the apocalypse is that all attempts and beliefs of the apocalypse all try to predict the time of the end of the world. We saw examples of this, not only in our real life current day, but also in the Simpsons episode watched in class. Again and again, end of world predictions have failed to actually take place. What shocks me is the amount of people who truly believe that a particular time or day will fulfil an end time prophecy.
Looking back in history, we have been able to see how there have been prophesies that are fulfilled. So I won’t say the end of the world will never happen. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Considering so many people are expecting it to happen, makes me more likely to validify the apocalypse. However, that being said, I do not believe we can ever truly know in advance when the world will end. Nor can we say the present time is the worst time. It can probably get worse, and who knows, it might even get better.
Top 10 Failed Apocalyptic Predictions:
More Failed End of the World Predictions:
Some of the failed predictions of the end of the world during 2006:
Response to Benny's blog post “The irony of the pro-life debate”
Original Blog can be found here: http://whatispopculture.blogspot.com/2011/04/irony-of-pro-life-debate.html
I completely agree that abortion is quite a controversial issue. Unlike yourself, I am however on the pro life side. By being pro life, I believe abortions are wrong and to me an abortion is the murder of a child. With this in mind, understand that my justification against abortion is because of the life of the child, when the safety of the mother is not at risk. Despite of the idea that there are only two common views on abortion (pro choice and pro life), I’d argue that there are many different ways individuals portray and express these opinions.
You wrote about the irony of pro life views, and one of the examples you used were of particular Christian pro life campaigns that use violence. I agree that this does show irony with their beliefs, but I don’t think that you can correlate all pro life beliefs to the violence that some Christian campaigns portray. Many others, myself included, would be against personal violent actions or attacks towards abortion clinics. That being said, I think I would have the freedom to belief the abortion is wrong, reasons which I haven’t gotten into here.
The last thing I would like to question is about what you considered the most ironic about pro life Christian movement. You mentioned that Christians are big on protecting family values, however I do not really see how you concluded this, and would just question what would make you say that Christians withhold family values and if so how they do this. That being said, your example plays an effective role in exemplifying what you said.
Abortions: The Last Television Taboo
Brought up in class was the topic of abortions, and I was not that surprised to note that abortions are a topic quite under represented on television. This is quite a contrast to media representation on television, one shown to have much of an over representation seen in the earlier discussion on Media and Violence. In class, the statistic given was that there were 9 abortions in 40 years on television, whereas abortions are generally a phenomenon that occurs at least once a day.
I actually went and looked up stats for age groups of abortions, because I have generally believed that abortions were mostly done by teenagers who were unable to support and raise a child. I suppose my reasons for believing this come from only seeing representations of abortions with teenagers in media, and from the fact that the only people I personally know who have had abortions were teenagers. I was actually quite surprised to realize that the numbers of abortions done by older women are greater than the amount of abortions by teenagers. [I know statistics are not completely accurate, but it gives us an estimate idea of the amounts of abortions per age group.]
During class, abortions were shown to reinforce many racial and sexual stereotypes. During the Friday Nights Live episode, one can see how being white in a particular social class will play a huge role in the determination of having an abortion. The reading from Press and Cole also suggest that although additional factors, such as emotions and circumstances, play a huge role in the struggle women who are considering abortion take, one of the greatest factors will include the social class of the women. The reading showed that women of higher social class generally were less likely to consider the option of having an abortion, compared to the women of lower social class. This is similarly portrayed in the episode of Friday Nights Live, where we can see Becky’s social status and her decision to abort her child compared to Tami’s birth of her child and Tami’s higher social status.
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