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Why the end may well be nigh

Now as regular readers know, I'm an atheist -- but today I'm going to play devil's advocate and see if I can't perhaps identify some contemporary signs that "the end is nigh".

In Matthew 24:7, Jesus (son of God for those who never paid attention to such details) said "There shall be famines, and pestilences [strange diseases], and earthquakes in diverse places"

Famines? Yep, we've had those recently. Pestilences? Yep -- plenty of those. Earthquakes? Well just ask the folks in Christchurch, Indonesia and quite a few other places around the globe and they'll say "yes".

In Matthew 24:6-7 the SOG goes on to predict "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars ... For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom".

Hmmm... The USA versus Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria and a whole heap of others. Israel versus Iran and most other Arab nations, China versus Taiwan. N.Korea versus S.Korea, Japan and most of the Western World. yep, looks as if there are wars and rumours of wars for sure!

But Matthew wasn't the only guy giving some clues as to what signs we ought to expect when the end was nigh -- Timothy was in on the act as well and in 3:1-5 of his contribution to "the good book" you'll find this little bit "But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God".

OMG! Surely the end really is nigh!

It's not just the God-fearers who believe this -- just this week the hands of the Doomsday Clock were moved a minute closer to midnight, after quite a period of inactivity after they actually moved backwards for a while.

Clearly, even the world's best minds believe that we're on the brink of disaster -- be it inflicted by a divine entity or simply a result of our own ignorance, arrogance and stupidity.

But all this prophecy aside, there are now signs that we really may be teetering on the edge of significant death across the face of the planet.

I'm not talking about famine, nuclear war, climate change or anything so exotic -- I'm talking about TB -- that age-old killer of men against which we've been waging a war for decades.

Unfortunately, if the latest reports are to believed, TB has just beaten us and there is now a totally drug-resistant strain on the loose in India against which not even our "last resort" antibiotics are effective.

How do you eradicate -- or even stop the spread of a disease against which we have no effective treatment?

While the world has been fearing a global pandemic of something like a mutant H5N1 virus, perhaps the really dangerous pathogen has been quietly adapting to the point that it is now impervious to every defense we have, except the body's own immune system.

Unfortunately for those with even slightly compromised or inadequate immune systems, catching this latest strain of TB could be a death sentence and, perhaps even worse, force those infected to spend the remainder of their shortened lives in quarantine.

Which leads me to my second column of the day...

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