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But there are differences between the two situations.

I agree. Camping was more right than the Mayans; there WILL be a culmination of the Age with Christ reconciling the world and destroying the wicked, only the timing was wrong as was the knowing. On this, the Mayans were dead wrong.

And there’s also much ridicule surrounding the supposed Mayan prophecy (even coming from people who might be termed pagans).

Sorry, there is nowhere near the ridicule of the Mayan belief about this apocalypse date as there was of Camping's. The point of the article is that numerous people are calling in to inquired of this Age's high priests, scientists, for answers.

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Thanks for the response. You undercut your own original argument, though. Whatever people think about one particular "end is nigh" preacher, there's a lot more interest on the part of the general public in Biblical prophesies and the Apocalypse than in this Mayan calendar thing.

That's especially true if it can be given a new packaging: the Bible code, the da Vinci code, etc. You might think of all that as heretical, but still, they attracted more people than the Mayan thing.

If you're saying that the media and urban sophisticates believe in or respect the Mayan thing more, I'm not sure. They don't really believe in it. They're just looking for something new to talk about, something that will sell magazines or kill time, but the Mayan end of the world has always been kind of a joke.

Of course, they don't think much of Bible prophecy either. That's also something used to boost circulation. If you're looking for something people really worried about, the Y2K thing fits better. It seems hilarious now, but there was a lot of real anxiety about whether our technology would collapse when the year 2000 came around.