I knew with absolutely 100% certainty that the world would not end at 6 PM last night. I did not have even the tiniest superstitious nagging doubt of some, as revealed in the jokes permeating the blogosphere. To me a lot of these were the equivalent of throwing salt over your shoulder after upending the saltshaker. The reason that I was so cocksure, however, is that in the history of the universe, as far back as we can see (which is pretty far), there has been absolutely no evidence of supernatural intervention. The idea that after billions of years that there suddenly would be such a spectacular occurrence in our tiny corner of it is pretty farfetched. We can know that such a "rapture" will and could not happen to a very high (sigh, yes, not "absolute") certainty.
However, of course there are bands of people whose arcane studies could produce a revelation of when the world will end, and if they do so, it would be good to pay close attention.
I'm sure you've guessed where I am heading, but bear with me. As we well know, astronomers, and this includes amateur ones, could discover a large asteroid or comet on a collision course with the earth, and their calculations could reveal with certainty, ultimately up to the minute, when the world would end for humanity. We could possibly know years in advance when it will come to pass. And this disaster would uncannily resemble Biblical predictions, with people incinerated in a wave of unimaginable heat, traveling not from time zone to time zone, but expanding in ever greater radius from the point of impact. Any who survived would endure a short miserable life ending in starvation.
We know that although the probability of this type of catastrophe happening in any one generation is very low, that it has happened before, and will happen again, perhaps in a few years, or maybe not for millions.
In addition, there could be, and very well appears to be, a slower moving catastrophe underway with a much larger chance of producing the deaths of millions in the near term. I am of course referring to anthropogenic climate change.
There are other, unlike The Rapture, actually possible, demises for the human race that you can find explained in detail some night on the History, Science, or Discovery channel. They all vary as far as the degree of predictability goes. But if and when they are predicted, based on scientific observations, you need to pay a lot more attention than you likely did to the fantastical, deluded pronouncements of Harold Camping.
There is also another difference between these catastrophic visions, and those of Camping. The latter are supposedly foretold in Scripture, and completely inevitable, with, very conveniently, a chosen few being exempted. Some of the former however could be avoided, and the whole human race could be saved, not just a chosen few. This can only happen though if we shed the dark superstitions, stop fighting each other, and start working together for the good of all.
We may someday get to the point that we become capable of deflecting a world ending asteroid, using the one advantage of ours that the dinosaurs never had. We may be able to defeat the next plague through discoveries made in genetic science. We certainly can and must greatly reduce the chances of nuclear or environmental disasters occurring through our own actions or lack of such.
This gets to the heart of my political preferences. There is one party that puts an emphasis on unfounded beliefs across the spectrum, from science to economics to extreme religion. They rely on all sorts of superstitious mumbo-jumbo (e.g., voodoo economics), and it is completely predictable as a result that their policies will lead to disaster, as has been amply predicted and come to pass time and again. These days they emphasize the individual to a fault, ignoring all of the things that we can only achieve working together as a group, with the possible exception of military action. They attempt to undermine evidence-based analysis on every front, and cut education funding to students, who while they may be poor, may include the brilliant mind that discovers a technique to avoid one of the very catastrophes that I have discussed. The other party, while having a multiple of faults, still bases its policies on the best available data. They realize that investment in education is invaluable, and that science is also critical. They know that private firms will not undertake much of the necessary research needed to prevent an actual Armageddon. They know that while criticizing science-based proclamations is certainly fair game (and in fact is fundamental to scientific progress), that politically based, unfounded attacks can damage institutions that have provided great dividends to society. And I certainly don't need to tell you here just who is who. I believe wholeheartedly that the nation benefits from the interplay of ideas found in a robust two-party system. That other party needs to rescue itself from the dark abyss of ignorance it is plunging headfirst into.