{"id":77232,"date":"2019-08-20T11:12:54","date_gmt":"2019-08-20T17:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=77232"},"modified":"2019-08-20T11:12:54","modified_gmt":"2019-08-20T17:12:54","slug":"giggling-toward-the-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2019\/08\/giggling-toward-the-apocalypse.html","title":{"rendered":"Giggling toward the apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"Guatemala<\/a>
The volcanos \u201cAgua,\u201d \u201cFuego,\u201d and \u201cAcatenango\u201d loom over modern Guatemala City.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Bill Hamblin and I published the following column in the Deseret News<\/em> on Friday, 16 August 2019:<\/p>\n

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\u201cIs religious faith a disease to be cured?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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***<\/strong><\/p>\n

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This is an interesting, sobering, and provocative article:<\/p>\n

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\u201cHow a Silent Cosmos Led Humans to Fear the Worst\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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And, in a different way, these articles too are sobering:<\/p>\n

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\u201cAt the bottom of a glacier in Greenland, climate scientists find troubling signs\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cJuly 2019 was hottest month on record for the planet: Polar sea ice melted to record lows\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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In its fashion, this is a related article:<\/p>\n

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\u201c\u2018Mystery\u2019 volcano that cooled the ancient world traced to El Salvador\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Wikimedia<\/a>
\u201cAt Yellowstone and some other volcanoes, some scientists theorize that the earth\u2019s crust fractures and cracks in a concentric or ring-fracture pattern. At some point these cracks reach the magma \u201creservoir,\u201d release the pressure, and the volcano explodes. The huge amount of material released causes the volcano to collapse into a huge crater\u2014a caldera.\u201d From nps.gov<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Are you sleeping too well at night? \u00a0Have you developed an unfortunate resistance to horror movies? \u00a0Do they no longer give you that delicious old thrill?<\/p>\n

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If so, consider reading this article<\/a>\u00a0about some of the world\u2019s supervolcanos:<\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/story\/20170724-would-a-supervolcano-eruption-wipe-us-out<\/a><\/p>\n

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Continuing in the same deliciously doom and gloom vein: \u00a0From the time that I was a teenager, I loved a song called \u201cThe Merry Minuet\u201d that I heard on an album (Live at the hungry i<\/em>) by The Kingston Trio. \u00a0The album was recorded in 1958 at the legendary hungry i<\/em> club in San Francisco:<\/p>\n

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They\u2019re rioting in Africa, they\u2019re starving in Spain.<\/span>
\nThere\u2019s hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain.<\/span>
\nThe whole world is festering with unhappy souls.<\/span>
\nThe French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles.<\/span>
\nItalians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch.<\/span>
\nAnd I don\u2019t like anybody very much!<\/span><\/p>\n

But we can be tranquil, and thankful, and proud,<\/span>
\nFor mans\u2019 been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud.<\/span>
\nAnd we know for certain that some lovely day<\/span>
\nSomeone will set the spark off, and we will all be blown away.<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019re rioting in Africa, there\u2019s strife in Iran.<\/span>
\nWhat nature doesn\u2019t do to us, will be done by our fellow man.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s<\/a> a later rendition of it \u2014 I couldn\u2019t find the one that originally heard \u2014 that I don\u2019t like as much:<\/p>\n

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