Ancient Science

Today was the day people have been joking about.  At some point, it was decided that the Mayans had predicted today was the end of the world.  The fact that they did no such thing was completely irrelevant to the joke.  In having our fun with the joke, the Mayan's actual prediction appears to have gone unnoticed by most.

The Mayans were very interested in astronomy, and they were quite good at it for people who didn't even have telescopes.  They also made complicated calendars.  As everyone is aware, today was a big day on that calendar.  Today is 13.0.0.0.0, the first day of a new piktun (the Mayan Long Count or 20 b'ak'tuns), and it fell right on the Solstice.

Instead of freaking out about fabricated claims about an apocalypse that they didn't even predict, we could  have been focusing on appreciating that an ancient civilization created a calendar period more than 5,000 years long that landed directly on both the Winter Solstice and a day when "the sun will align with the center of the Milky Way galaxy".

Some folks certainly had some fun today at Stonehenge, another example of the amazing things ancient cultures could predict using the stars.

I wonder if those civilizations had people denying astronomy the way Creationists today deny Evolution.

Credit:  @HuffPostRelig

The Twelve Apostates

Christians have the Twelve Days of Christmas and their Jesus has the Twelve Apostles. I, obviously, do not buy into the Twelve Apostles myth. And, while Secular Christmas is celebrated by many atheists, I do not (except for the obligations I've held onto that come from having family who does celebrate).

I was recently planning for a list of the atheists I respect and sometimes get inspiration from. While thinking of who to include, and what size to make the list, I thought of the Twelve Days of Christmas and the Twelve Apostles.  So I decided to call my list "The Twelve Apostates" and publish it as a series with a new one each day leading up to Christmas Day.  I have just enough to say for most of them, that making it all one post would make it much too long for a single post.

Some will be specific people, while others will be groups of people.  It more appropriately be called "Twelve  Days of Apostates", but I like "Twelve Apostates" better.  Yes, I'm neurotic enough that I put that much thought into it.  Some will be from my childhood, while others will be much more recent.  They will be in no particular order, with one exception on the first.

You may not agree with any or all of them, but it's not meant to be a universal list. It's meant to be personal to me.  I would love to see your lists as well.  I hope to use those as part of another list, that will be meant to be more universal.  A friend already beat me to it, quite a while ago.

The title of this post and the date it was published is a coincidence.