This is no scoffing matter. The accelerating proliferation of advanced nuclear weapons is bringing \u2018end times\u2019 closer by the day<\/p>\n
Humankind has fearfully and sometimes joyfully anticipated the end of the world ever since it began. The Bible\u2019s Book of Revelation speaks of \u201cend times\u201d, a period of tribulation, war, famine, plague, floods and environmental catastrophe that may seem a less absurd prospect today than perhaps it once did. Islam, too, posits a fateful day of judgment or day of reckoning. Christian evangelicals believe that, in the final rapture, a chosen few \u2013 the righteous or the \u201celect\u201d \u2013 will be saved while sinners burn. It\u2019s a minority view. Matthew\u2019s gospel predicts most people will defy, ignore or ridicule warnings of imminent Armageddon. Peter, another of Jesus\u2019s disciples, agreed: \u201cIn the last days, scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.\u201d Yet such worldly scepticism does not mean a universal cataclysm is less likely. It may make it more probable.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump\u2019s blanket denials<\/a> of the dangers ostensibly posed by artificial intelligence, whose uncontrolled development is seen by some as the latest harbinger of apocalypse<\/a>, could be interpreted as fulfilling Peter\u2019s prophecy. This US president, the nearest thing the world has to a one-man doomsday machine, is a great one for scoffing and evil desires. In Robert Harris\u2019s 2019 novel, The Second Sleep, a worried scientist lists half a dozen ways the world might end. They include devastating climate change, pandemic disease, a giant asteroid collision with Earth, or some other overwhelming calamity. Few heed the fictional scientist\u2019s fears. In the event, what destroys him and almost everybody else is a disturbingly plausible cyber crash \u2013 a global digital and internet meltdown.<\/p>\n Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is no scoffing matter. The accelerating proliferation of advanced nuclear weapons is bringing \u2018end times\u2019 closer by the day Humankind has fearfully and sometimes joyfully anticipated the end of the world ever since it began. The Bible\u2019s Book of Revelation speaks of \u201cend times\u201d, a period of tribulation, war, famine, plague, floods and environmental … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}