I was paying some admittedly shadenfreudal attention to the non-events of the last weekend. On Saturday, when Jesus was supposed to be coming back to judge the world in order to prepare us for the end of it all, I was enjoying a nice day with my beautiful girlfriend and enjoying a beer.
When nothing happened, as we expected, I was willing to just let it go. I knew most Christians did not take it seriously, and those that did were feeling bad enough, most-likely.
But then today I wake up to this from Harold Camping:
“On May 21 this last weekend…God again brought Judgment on the world…We didn’t feel any difference,” he says, “but we know that God brought Judgment” on the world. “The whole world is under Judgment.”
and then, minutes later:
“May 21 Was A Spiritual Coming, Where We Had Thought It Was a Spiritual Coming.”
…
“It won’t be a five-month terrible difficulty…that we have learned,” said Camping. Instead, he says, the world will end quickly on Oct. 21 without any build up.
The Media is summing this up in this way: The real end will be October 21st (like he’s been saying all along), but Saturday was a “spiritual judgment.” He said the same thing last night about 1994, in fact, which should tell you something in itself. The bottom line is that we have been judged, but we feel no different. It’s sort of like how having no soul feels like having a spiritual soul.
Spiritual and Nonexistent
A couple of years ago, on one of may favorite atheist productions out there, Tracie Harris made a comparison between 3 jars.
In the first, there were dice. She talks about how we can demonstrate that they exist by seeing them, hearing hem, etc. In the other two jars, no contents were visible, audible, or otherwise detectable. A second one was referred to as filled with transcendent, supernatural dice, and ththird one as filled with nonexistent dice. The point being that since there is no detectable difference between supernatural things and nonexistent things, there is no actual difference.
Harold Camping’s “spiritual” judgment is just like these transcendent and supernatural dice; we can’t tell the difference, and so it is the same as if it had not happened. Camping has to demonstrate 1) That here is some being or force that could judge us and 2) that there is any way to determine that this has occurred. So far, all I have seen are baseless assertions.
I think the time is well passed that we ignore Harold Camping. Perhaps we should have done so before, but it is clear that he is either dishonest and therefore repugnant, or he is delusional and incapable of discerning truth from fiction. In either case, this reinterpretation of October 21st as the real end is just becoming embarrassing, and any one who believes it really needs to reconsider their theological and epistemological bases for thinking so. Anyone who still believes Harold Camping is long out of excuses
Please, can’t we just abandon this rapture concept, specifically dated or not, already? Can’t we just realize that this project of Christianity has given up the ghost, and Christians are just necrophiliacs for the corpse of a doctrine that was, at best, a Frankenstein-esque monstrosity of a religion?
I hope so.
Skepticism, Properly Applied 