Rapture Day at Wichita State University

Will there be a follow-up conference on Oct. 21? 🙂

God gave Noah one week of warning.

Since one day equals 1,000 years for God, that means there was a 7,000-year interval between the flood and rapture.

Even if we ignore the religious insanity here, there’s at least three actual factual errors in that bit:

1. There is nowhere in any scripture anywhere saying how long it took Noah to build the ark. Genesis 6:3 makes it pretty clear that god gave mankind 120 years of time to clean up his act before he sent the flood. At some point in that time, he found Noah and told him to build the ark.

2. Saying that the Rapture comes a week (or 7000 years) after the flood has no basis in scripture whatsoever. It’s just nonsense pulled out of their ass.

3. Where, exactly, did they get 1 god-day = 1000 man-years? I mean, yeah, okay, 2 Peter 3:8, but that’s taken entirely out of context. Peter wasn’t writing about the relative time perception differences between man and god. He was telling the Israelites that a promise is a promise and if god made a promise then it will be kept when god damn well wants to keep it, whether it be in a day or in a thousand years.

This last one showcases a problem with a lot of fundamentalist thinking, they’re not reading the thing as it should be read, as a whole, but instead as bits and pieces out of context. 2 Peter is a *letter*, and should be read as a whole thing, not as a series of disconnected statements.

We were planning a Rehearsal Party for 2012, that day.

Honest predictions vs rapturous lies

• Science makes predictions.

On the Net today appear the precise time, precise duration, exact places on the Earth from which the next 50 years of total solar eclipses will be visible. These formerly terrifying events — a monster eating the sun — were tamed by accurate astronomical theory. Now, total solar eclipses have become a tourist attraction.

Current geology, however, cannot predict precisely when a still terrifying event, a killer quake, will hit LA. It can offer no better than a probable, but meaningful prediction — there is a better than 90% chance that an earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or greater will strike LA within the next 30 years.

Being a meaningful empirical prediction, the statement provides — in advance — its own parameters for failure. It specifies a time limit, it specifies the minimum severity expected, and it provides an estimated probability for the event.

Nevertheless, we know that a killer quake must happen eventually since LA floats atop a boundary between two tectonic plates grinding past one another. (That is — an LA earthquake will happen perforce as a physical consequence according to the well-attested ‘theory’ of plate tectonics.)

• Religion’s baseless prophecies.

Contrast an empty gesture of xian fiction — its most ballyhooed, long anticipated “fulfillment” of scripture. Jesus in his featured role as Christ-Cosmic-Avenger® will return to Earth, raise the dead, judge all humanity past and present, and send each person to her or his ultimate, eternal state of being.

Ask fundies; they’ll tell you that this prophecy is 100% certain. “The Apocalypse” must happen; it is a core dogma of fundie bibliolatry. (Moreover, ancient credal statements still mouthed by xians of all stripes every day, reaffirm the centrality of revenge as xian motivation.) Millions of otherwise outwardly sane people in the US believe this dishonest, harmful nonsense, quite literally.

On what non-scriptural basis can their claim be justified? Not even an alleged “holy” text can justify its own statements.

• Prophesying is lying

Prophecy never predicts anything because prophecies lack falsifying conditions. Under what conditions — specifiable in advance — would a fundie say that a xian prophecy had failed?

“The Apocalypse” just never shows up. Attempts to fix a date for xian/jewish/zoroastrian apocolypses have proved wrong for the last 3,200 years. (See Norman Cohn. Cosmos, chaos, and the world to come. Yale.)

When is enough is enough? Never. The revelation of saint John the divine resonates as one core Big Lie of xian faith-based irrationality.

Just remember, though, that the “End Times” are always upon us because “signs” like earthquakes and total solar eclipses demonstrate the willed and willful “acts of God” in nature.

Is the “Rapture” about to rid Earth of all fundies? Really? As they levitate away, can they take their damned bibles with them?

There are altogether no supernatural phenomena, only supernatural interpretations of phenomena.

the anti_supernaturalist

Stephanie,
Yeah, I read it that way too. Then I was disappointed when I looked more carefully. An edible Bible? Good idea, since these clowns are going to have to eat their words.

Seeing the 2 dates on the billboard (May 21st & October 21st), I’m a little confused into how they got the separation of 5 months. Because, according to their logic, 1 god-day is 1000 years. This means there are 84,000 months in 1 god-week (or 12,000 a day). So using so rudimentary math this leads us to 5 man-months (from rapture to the end of the world) out of the 12,000 months in a god-day, the 5 man-months would equal about .000416 god-months (My math may be off, and I’d welcome corrections). Where is that figure in the bible?

If we go on 5 god-months (at 4 god-weeks per god-month to make it simple) it’s 20,000 years before the end of the world. Suddenly it seems like that wouldn’t serve their purpose to have people thinking they have 20 millennia before they have to worry about the end.

Obviously it’s all nonsense, but I think we’ll see an uptick in this type of stuff with all of the natural disasters that are happening lately.

But about that day or hour no one knows

Of course no one knows, because it’s not going to happen. Dolt.

To bad too, the world would be a much nicer place.

I also thought it said “edible”.

Meanwhile – only two more months, and they’ll all be gone? That’s something worth praying for!

Am I merely cynical for believing that this is all about getting people into church around this date so they can fleece the sheeple of their money? ‘Cos you never know, right?

Growing up religious, I was always under the impression that God transcends time. So how 1 god-day can equal 1000 years makes even less sense.

I’ll be waiting to hear the excuses these fundies make on May 22 for why their rapture predictions were wrong again. Here’s a list of a few previous end of the world predictions that failed:
http://www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm

This is just silly

I too thought it said ediblefellowship. Yummy.

I reckon all Atheists should go dark on May 22nd. Let them think for a moment that it was we who got raptured not them. That should scare them for a little while.

Anyway, I yet again call:
Apocalypse or STFU

When the Rapture doesn’t take place, could these ‘believers’ do us a favor and just go away anyway?

Hover,

Am I merely cynical for believing that this is all about getting people into church around this date so they can fleece the sheeple of their money? ‘Cos you never know, right?

I might agree with you except that Camping’s philosophy is that the “church age is over” (since the 1980’s) and that anyone attending a church now is doomed, etc.

(However I’m sure he wouldn’t turn down donations to his Family Radio broadcast).

Ok, I’ve had just about enough of this End Times fuckery. I was nervously waiting for this to happen – now a mother has tried to kill her 2 kids and herself because she thought the world was coming to an end.
http://doctore0.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/mom-tries-to-kill-kids-self-before-tribulation-comes/

Enough with Glenn Beck and all these stupid pastors!

I see ads all over LA for Christian “family” radio trumping up the Judgment Day coming on May 21.

My real question is whether or not the stations are still selling advertising time for the 22nd and beyond. Because, you know, it should be cheap…

Concerning the date:

Did any of these godsy-people take the whole Julian calendar change-over into account?

If they missed that not-so-little bit of bookkeeping, then they’ve shown that they’re not so rigorous and bright to begin with, hmmm?

ok i am a christian and do believe one day the world will end but i dont know where he got his info.. must be readin a different bible than me…????