A Christian Group Says the World Ends Today. Here's How It'll Probably Go Down

Four years ago, the barely extant, fringe religious organization eBible Fellowship predicted the end of the world. When all existence did not conclude on May 21, 2011, the web bible people shuffled their decrepit scriptures, reinterpreting Christ's foretelling of the ultimate burn. The organization's leader is the HTML proficient end-times zealot Chris McCann, and he says there's a "strong likelihood" all will come to an untimely, fiery end sometime later today, actually. As in, Wednesday, October 7, 2015.

To better explain the situation, eBible broke down their supernatural calculations in this unreadable PDF, or if you're willing to sacrifice ten minutes from the remainder of your fastly diminishing existence, you can watch this video they made. Press play as an apocalyptic radio tunes in to judgement, its high-pitched warping blips signaling sin-brought damnation.

Director of communications for the American Astronomical Society Dr. Richard Tresch Fienberg makes a more realistic prediction for the end of the world. "The only sure bet, scientifically, is that in a few billion years the sun, as part of its normal evolution, will swell into a red giant that will engulf the planets Mercury and Venus and perhaps Earth," he says. Fienberg explains that scientists aren't 100% certain how big the sun will become, but that it will grow approximately one hundred times larger in diameter—and a million times bigger in volume. "Even if Earth isn't actually swallowed up by the sun, it'll be scorched to a cinder—the atmosphere will blow away, and the oceans will boil away, and it'll become a dead world." Surprisingly, Fienberg and his colleagues' best estimates place this eventuality some five billion years in the future—not suppertime tonight.

But isn't it possible that some anomaly could occur to destroy existence today? Perhaps there is some secret astrological code in biblical text that correlates to the path of a stray asteroid, hurtling toward our planet, undetected?

"No," Fienberg blasphemes. "House-size asteroids like the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, two years ago are so small and faint that they're easy to miss and can come out of nowhere, but city-size asteroids big enough to cause global destruction have nowhere to hide."

"Astronomers are regularly scanning the sky searching for potentially hazardous asteroids," he continues. "We know with great certainty that there are no threatening objects in our vicinity today. If there's something really far out in the solar system that's heading our way, we'll find it years before it gets close enough to cause concern."

According to Dr. Fienberg, the potential threat of a massive, world-crushing asteroid has numerous groups of scientists searching for ways to prevent such a calamity. "We don't have [the technology to divert an asteroid's path] yet, but we're working on it, and since there's no immediate threat, we have plenty of time to study the problem," he says. It's possible, Dr. Fienberg says, that a nearby star could explode as a supernova. "That could potentially harm us—not destroy the planet, necessarily, but perhaps deliver a high dose of radiation that would be harmful to humans and other living things. But we know how stars evolve, and we know that there are no imminent supernovas anywhere near enough to be worrisome."

It isn't as if religion has no place in the modern world, but extremist Christian ideology has long been used to oppress people and thoughts that differ from baseless, archaic, alarmist beliefs. "Scientists are the ultimate skeptics," Dr.Fienberg says. "We'll change dearly held opinions if the facts argue otherwise. Scientists study the natural world and attempt to understand it in terms of natural laws—every effect must have an observable (at least in principle) cause. It is certainly possible for astronomers and other scientists to be religious and to believe in God—many are and do—but it is quite rare to find a scientist who is 'supernaturally superstitious.'"

As to why Chris McCann and his eBible Fellowship may be espousing their apocalyptic claims, Dr. Fienberg says that these predictions are very common, "and they all end the same way: with the person making the prediction getting lots of attention, being proven wrong, and coming up with an excuse as to why he or she was wrong this time but will be right next time. It's a publicity stunt—a way of getting attention and attracting more people to the church or organization, and making more money for the leader."

In any given year it seems only a few months can sneak by before some camera-ham fearmonger takes the stage to make a fuss about the end of days. A quick peek at this list chronicling apocalypse claimants shows hundreds of names spread across the last two thousand years. If we want it to end, Dr. Fienberg suggests trashing this story. "The media should ignore such blatantly nonscientific predictions. If nobody pays attention, perhaps this nonsense will stop."