2011 Rapture Redux and skepticism of religion

The now-infamous Harold Camping's latest predicted date for the End of All Things is tomorrow.  I'm personally looking forward to a relaxing weekend.

When the Rapture failed to occur five months ago, Camping backpedaled and said that it was obviously just a "spiritual" Rapture; the real fulfillment of the Book of Revelation wasn't due until October 21st.

It seems like the skeptic community and mainstream media alike made a bigger deal about his May 21st Armageddon prediction - granted, this is because Camping himself made a bigger deal about it.  I haven't seen much advertising from Family Radio regarding tomorrow's apocalypse, but the Freedom From Religion Foundation is wasting no time in capitalizing on it:

 

 (via Friendly Atheist)

The aim of their new billboard campaign is rather straightforward: promote skepticism of religion by drawing attention to the sheer lunacy of doomsday predictions.  Is the truly absurd thing here that Camping picked a specific date?  Or is it that he uses a madman's ramblings as the basis for not only his life, but his eighty million dollar business?

To borrow an analogy from Greta Christina: suppose an old man tells you that his electric hairdryer confided in him that the world is going to end on October 21st.  Which is the more appropriate response?

• That's silly.  Nobody knows when the world is going to end!
• That's silly.  Hairdryers can't talk!

Perhaps as more doomsday prophecies propagate in the public consciousness and are summarily and mercilessly debunked for the world to see, more people will start to question the belief systems that generated these prophecies in the first place.

So begins another week like any other

A few items of interest as we end this non-Rapture weekend:

• Razib "David Hume" Khan has a unique hypothesis about Harold Camping's bible studies.
• Atheist high school student Jessica Ahlquist, who kicked the metaphorical hornets' nest when she asked her school to take down its prayer banner (pictured), has started a blog. She seems to have a lot to say, and has the writing skills with which to say it.
• Another atheist high school student, Damon Fowler, kicked the hornets' nest and got stung.  He challenged the legality of the traditional school-led graduation prayer at his high school, even getting the ACLU involved; he has only harassment from his classmates, scorn from the teachers and administrators, and being thrown out on the street by his parents to show for it.  At least his brother is being supportive.

I would like to think that the Rapture story has been beaten to the point it's no longer recognizable as a dead horse, but it's just a matter of time until the next crazy doomsday prediction.  As for all the high school atheists out there, keep standing up and speaking out!  Public school officials shouldn't be endorsing any religion, period. Hold them accountable to the law, because you can bet that other Christians aren't going to.

Our world will be erased/our kin will be immaculate ejaculate in space

I'm guessing that an absence of reports from the eastern hemisphere of Christians spontaneously ascending into the sky or vanishing outright means that Harold Camping's prediction of the Rapture failed.  It's possible that we just might not have noticed because there are so few True Believers in the world.  We can't truly say they were wrong until the world doesn't end in October.

It's not like this is the first time, after all.

Of course, the mainstream Christians out there are rolling their eyes and quoting Chapter 24, Line 36 of my biblical namesake.  Obviously we'll never know when Christians are going to spontaneously ascend into the sky or vanish outright until the day it happens.  It definitely wasn't supposed to have happened already (hint: don't read the two lines immediately preceding line 36), which means it's going to happen any day now.

If you'll open up the door, we'll all come inside and eat your brains!

It may well be that all this talk of a two millennia old zombie rising again to reap millions of fresh victims today is really the harbinger of the Zombie Apocalypse. Even the CDC has acknowledged that we should be prepared for this eventuality.

Annual Zombie Walks seem to be ever-growing in popularity, a sure sign of how people will behave once the plague of undeath is upon us.  If people will wander the streets en masse in tattered clothes smeared with grime and gore while their brains are still intact, just imagine what they'll do with their executive functions impaired!

This past Tuesday, I attended a Columbus Science Pub meetup for a very informative and entertaining talk about the neurobiology of slow-moving zombies by Dr. Steven C. Schlozman, author of The Zombie Autopsies.  I now have a better understanding of the level of brain damage it would take to turn a human being into a rabid, flesh-eating monster.  Perhaps it was fate that this event was scheduled just days prior to the Rapture?

The signs are clear: we are mere hours away from being overwhelmed by hordes of voracious, pitiless, mindless zombies who will bring an end to civilization as we know it.  And if it doesn't happen today, be prepared for it to happen any day now.

This should be an interesting week...

It's been an eventful Monday.

• Trump dropped out of the 2012 Presidential running, ending a joke that stopped being funny a while ago;
  
• Facebook has been peppered with reports that scientists have "cured" cancer, which would be awesome except that they didn't;
  
• Pakistan is no doubt preparing to block major social networking sites in anticipation of "Everyone Draw Muhammad Day" (post about that subject coming later this week);

• Stephen Hawking dismissed the afterlife like a boss;
• Harold Camping and his acolytes are counting down the hours until Jesus comes back nothing happens on Saturday;
  
• apparently a cult of Russian women believe that Vladimir Putin is a reincarnated apostle.

That's all for now.

Rain, rain, go away...

Central Ohio has been experiencing copious rainfall during the past few weeks.  I've been blogging with increased frequency and increased snark during the past few weeks.  Coincidence, or evidence of a death threat from divine providence for my brazen incredulity?  Today's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic makes me think that the beautiful double rainbow my wife and I saw the other day may have been more than just sunlight refracted by raindrops...

We are, after all, a mere two weeks away from Judgment Day according to some.  Heavy rainfall at this latitude during April and early May couldn't have any logical explanation, right?

Rapture party, heyyyooo

I told myself I'd stay away from the "Let's snicker at religious people for believing something silly" sort of posts that spice up many an atheist blog. I find myself recanting that vow now, at least for one particular issue.

Photo credit: not me.

Last week I witnessed the caravan of "Judgment Day - May 21, 2011" mobile billboard trucks rolling about Columbus. I passed them stopped in traffic on I-270 on my way home from work. I wish I'd taken a picture, but I didn't really want to take the risks associated with fumbling with a camera phone while driving.  Of course, with these things cruising all over the country, someone was bound to photograph one and post it on the internet.






I'm a bit perturbed by the amount of time and resources that Family Radio is spending promoting this campaign. They haven't stopped with advertising in the continental US - they've got paid advertising for their doomsday prediction as far away as Thailand.  These people are devoting everything they have to warning the world about an apocalypse they're certain is going to come this year.


I've considered three possible outcomes of their efforts, in increasing order of gravity (though decreasing order of likelihood):

1. They all wait around to be raptured on May 21st and nothing happens.  Some of them, disillusioned, abandon the cult and try to put their lives back together.  Others go on to form their own cults, as happened after the Great Disappointment of October 22, 1844.  The rest of the world laughs it off.
2. They turn out to be a suicide cult like Jim Jones' "People's Temple" and all end up dead on May 21st, spending their last moments believing they're being raptured and not giving much thought to the odd aftertaste the Kool-Aid seems to have.
3. They turn out to be a terroristic cult like Aum Shinrikyo and carry out some sort of horrifying WMD attack loosely based on some verses from the Book of Revelation.

 Oh, and mustn't forget:  4.  They were right all along; Jesus comes back, whisks the True Believers up to Heaven, and then our unconditionally loving God proceeds to torture the rest of us for five months before finally throwing us into a lake of fire to forget about us for the rest of eternity.  See a dramatization of the events to unfold in this video (not produced by Family Radio, mind you, but a truly epic film indeed).

If you can make it through the whole thing, then you are truly dedicated to fully investigating the claims of the religious wasting 44 minutes of your time.

And now I see that the who's-who of today's atheists are throwing a Rapture Party!  If it weren't in California, I'd at least consider going, but I'm going to just stay here in Ohio.  Anyone want to join me for a beer on May 21st?