Tuesday, June 6, 2006

6/6/06

(Note: I use BCE & CE (Before the Common Era & Common Era) instead of the cult-centric BC & AD)
Well, well... it's June 6th... whoopity doo!
Some fools out there are making a big deal out of it. Why? Because the date has three 6's in it... you know... like the "Mark of the Beast" thing. Of course, these same people who try and play this up seem to conveniently ignore the fact that in even the most simplified form of the date (6/6/06) still has a zero in it.
So, what really are we looking at here? The 6th day, of the 6th month, of the 6th year... of... what? The current semi-arbitrary man-created (and incorrect based on the presumed start point) millennial point on one particular calendar? Dang. That's frightening. Surely some supernatural, cosmic event shall occur on this day because the arabic numbers (man made representations) can be manipulated to kind of resemble an identifier of a purely Christian antagonist. Hell, the number itself is debated (it has also been translated to be "616").
First of all, this date is not a universal date. Granted, most of the planet uses this calendar, at least from a business perspective, but not everybody holds this calendar to be an accurate measurement of years since the birth of Jesus. And about that... chances are, Jesus was more likely born earlier than 1 BCE (or 1 CE). A lot of evidence points to around 7-5 BCE or perhaps even after 1 CE. So, the chances are extremely high that this year is NOT 2006 (by the intended source year). In fact, there is a really good chance that we've already passed "2006".
This is much the same reason I drove people nuts with my "the year 2000 is NOT the new millennium" rant years ago. (Along with the wrong birth year of Jesus, however, 2000 ENDED the millennium and 2001 STARTED the millennium because there was no year zero).
I think if there was going to be a date with 6's in it that was going to have significance, the year 666 would have been it. But nothing happened there. So I think trying to apply wacky Christian numerology to the Gregorian calendar is pretty stupid. If evil has to really reach for the "666" thing to work, then how evil is it really? Every day is 666 days from something (August 4, 2004), every year is 666 years from something (1340 was a pretty boring year).
An what exactly are we afraid of? The actual "anti-christ" that the number supposedly represents has no real foundation in anything other than Revelation. Sure "Satan", "Lucifer", and the "Devil" are all mentioned elsewhere, but there is a debate about what these names actually represent and who they represent. Depending on where the terms are used, they probably don't even refer to the same entity. The "anti-christ" is usually described as an individual or an individual in a group, but there is nothing to attach the number to a timestamp. And it's pretty much described as something that is completely the opposite of or denies Jesus. Well, gee, that narrows it down. Sure there's a bunch of other hotly debated events in Revelation (that probably resemble a Terry Gilliam fever dream), but the point is.... it's all pointless. Nobody can accurately decipher what the f$%@ is actually going on in Revelation, every detail of it is debated, and even the beings that supposedly inspired this vision of an afternoon with Hunter S. Thompson admit that they don't seem to sure when it's gonna happen either.
So. June 6, 2006. Just another fascinating day in the progression of fascinating days. Stupid people will be born and stupid people will die. And the world goes on.
Stop wasting time worrying about the significance of numbers representing human measurement of time.
Today's Julian date is 2453892.
Today's Jewish calendar date is 10 Sivan, 5766.
Today's Islamic calendar date is 9 Jumada I-Ula 1427.
Today's Persian calendar date is 16 Khordad 1835.
For more calendar conversions, go here.

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