Blogs May 23, 2011 at 8:19 am

Comments

1
this meme needs to just die right now.
2
The thing that gets me about the rapture is the idea that an all-loving, all-knowing God would be a big enough of a jerk to just pull his favorites and let planes, etc crash. Only a petty, vindictive human who has watched enviously while others lived normal, hedonistic lives would conjer up something like that.
3
In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I gotta tell you the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told.
     Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!
     But He loves you.
     He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!

-George Carlin
4
"Conjer?" No, "conjure." You learned something today.

And yeah, fuck those assholes with a rusty knife.
5
But the raptures did happen and both christians are now in heaven.
6
@1, 2, 3, I agree with y'all and I'm done rapt out.
7
You two too, 4 and 5.
8
I feel bad for them. They kind of have only two choices. Either everything they have believed to be true is suspect, or they are worshipping the cosmic version of a psycho girlfriend who does things like set your car on fire and then stands in the drive way saying "Still love me now? Oh, and your dog was in the car. Still love me now?"
Either way, sucks to be them this fine Monday morning.
9
No sucker as big as a religious sucker. I can't help but laugh at the way they gave their money and possessions to that Camping fraud! Hahahahahahahahah! Suckers!!!
10
This meme is far more insidious than people will admit. The entire Christian religion is an apocalyptic one, meaning that their entire world-view is based on the idea that "some day" Jesus will come back & everything will end. Which is why predictions have been made about that for it's entire lifetime.

The truly horrible aspect is that Christians feel little, if any responsibility towards the planet. It is something to be used up & discarded. Mass extinction, pollution, nuclear waste, these issues have no long-term effects for the Christian mind.

I'm sure they'll be plenty of squawkers out there who will demand that their religion is nothing of the sort. It is a very superficial reaction, based on superficial thinking. Their conscious mind hears only "Christians are bad," and the ego responds. What I'm talking about are the pre-verbal assumptions that live in the subconscious minds of the Christians who have been trained that way since birth. They don't think about the apocalypse on a daily basis, and most likely ridicule these ludicrous predictions of the Rapture. Yet, it is still an a priori assumption that, ultimately, The Lord will take care of any & all planetary problems, so they are never a big concern.

And since the Christian nations control so much of the world's wealth, you get the shit-hole that we are currently living in: depleted water tables, unprecedented mass extinction, rapid global climate change, etc.
11
Oh, thank you 5280 dearest. I actually knew that It's this damn iPad. The keyboard is such a chore, I just throw caution to the wind when it comes to spellcheck.
12
That's why I'll never give up my BlackBerry, Catalina.
13
Sully, huh? You seem to admire him, or at least take him seriously. Must be a cultural thing, as he has yet to craft a compelling argument for policy change, gay rights, or gay (or straight) conservatism. Truly a testament to who you know vs. what you know.
14
But they were so sure that their mythology was the one true religion, and everyone one else was wrong. They had absolute,unwaivering faith in their unfounded beliefs, and knew that everyone who didn't blindly follow were going to Hell. How could they have been wrong?
15
"Bloodlust masquerading as piety" sure sums up American Christianity nicely.
16
only cruel people are capable of cruelly mocking
17
@16 Yeah, I'm cool with that. We all gotta learn somewhere.
18
@10 word. I mean that's exactly it.

Of course the paradox of the rapture is that if it DID happen, then all the atheists would *have* to go, uh wait a minute. So even with all the obnoxious people gone, now suddenly there's proof this stupid sky god with his stupid petty rules is actually out there mucking things up...

(Hey Lucifer! Need any help there??)
19
What bothers me most of all is the show of sudden false piety. So many people made their intention to repent ONLY BECAUSE they believed they were to be judged for it soon. If I may quote a little bit of Judaic tradition: "Rabbi Eliezer would say: Repent one day before your death. Asked his disciples: Does a man know on which day he will die? Said he to them: So being the case, he should repent today, for perhaps tomorrow he will die; hence, all his days are passed in a state of repentance."

@12: Cr-cr-cr-Crackberry!
20
"Cruel people should be cruelly mocked...."

Enlightened.

an eye for an eye just leaves everyone blind, eventually.
21
@8 I'm in love with that analogy, Lissa.

@18 I'd think it was just some VR matrix-style hallucination before I'd ever buy the Xtian version. It's just too silly.

22
"Christians feel little, if any responsibility towards the planet. "

That explains why China's so polluted! I hear India is an environmentalist's dream too.
23
The video wasn't cruel enough by half. Dan's point about the viciousness of Rapture-Evangelism ("God doesn't love you! Enjoy watching your kids die!") is spot-on.

It might not be much in the way of revenge, but I'm prepared to be mildly satisfied/amused by some well-deservedly cruel comedy aimed at the May 21 crowd. Anyone have any better links to share?

And, for the record, God loves you. All the rest of that dogma stuff is complete crap.
24
@23: I'm glad you think your imaginary (until proven otherwise) friend loves me. But although it's much nicer, that's still baseless dogma.
25
@22: Yeah, because if Christians are, as a group, environmentally unconscious, that means that all non-Christian areas must be pristine, right?
26
And once again, Kyrie can't resist stepping into a discussion for the sole purpose of being a complete fucking shithead.

Thanks, hon. Now go fuck yourself, OK?
27
@24 Let me rephrase that statement, then. Insofar as any Godlike force of the universe exists, or which/who you should choose to imagine might exist, or which you might wish to exist, which might in any way be responsible for your creation, then that force/God/power/thing loves you, as evidenced by your creation in the first place, and your continuing existence now. And, if it doesn't exist, then it certainly doesn't dislike you.

Better?
28
@26: But 5280! You do that all the time too! But we still love you. :)
29
@5 - has anyone seen Kim in Portland?
30
Here's what I don't get. God takes away all of the good people BEFORE the battle with Satan??? Doesn't he need the good people to fight Satan? Is he relying on all the people who are going to burn in Hell to fight Satan for him (knowing that their reward will be to burn in Hell AFTER they have pissed Satan off)? Wouldn't it make sense, for example, to kill all of the BAD people first and leave the good people to fight Satan?
31
@30: Shh, this is a religion that claims to be monotheistic (like Judaism) and yet worships a Trinity (like certain variants of Hinduism).
32
Camping's PR aide, Tom Evans, told the L.A. Times that the group is "disappointed" that 200 million true believers weren't lifted up to heaven on Saturday while everyone else suffered and eventually died as a series of earthquakes and famine destroyed the Earth.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout…
33
Lissa, if you spend enough time on a site - over the course of five fucking years - and are being honest, you're going to drop a turd or ten. It's a different thing than the obvious trolling Kyrie's been doing lately.
34
@29 - Well the man from Mars ate Ms Kim's guitars so she's chasing stars in old whiskey bars.

35
@10

I genuinely never considered that aspect and result of Christianity. "The more you know..."
36
The nerd in me likes this:

INSTALLING RAPTURE.
███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 44% DONE.
Install delayed....please wait.
Installation failed. Please try again.
404 error: Rapture not found.
EVENT "Rapture" cannot be located. The rapture you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

Posted by commenter Sean Smith on Yahoo News Blog.
37
@26: Sorry, I didn't notice the thread was invitations only. Last time you just insulted me on the basis of grammar (unless saying "all sexist rules should be fought" is trolling), at least this time you're being honest. But according to your own words, you couldn't read me; I can't understand how you now clearly know I am just here for trolling.

@Brooklyn Reader: If I was rude, and retrospectively I see I probably was, my apologies. I was merely pointing out the oddity of separating "dogma" from the statement "god loves you" which implies that there is a omnipotent omniscient creator that has intention towards humanity. I can't disagree with your second statement.
38
"Cruel people should be cruelly mocked."

If it helps ya heal, I guess. But this statement seems to sum up my major point of disagreement with Slog. Cycle of violence, and all that.

39
I have a really hard time feeling bad for the people who lost everything in this debacle. Yeah, you gave away your money and your house and your family think you're insane, but you were proudly proclaiming how special you are while claiming the rest of us will burn.

If there is a god, what the hell makes people think it's even a conscious entity that gives a shit about us? Religion is a tiny bit of comfort for idiots who are afraid of the nothingness that comes with death.
40
@26: Why are you so personally insulted that Kyrie doesn't believe in your god? I find your indignation laughable.
41
No doubt the response to this lack of a Rapture will be amended to an interpretation that May 21 was the beginning of the Tribulation era, and the Rapture will happen later. If this does end up being the case (and it's the only semi-defensible religious response that I can come up with), I'd be more interested to hear what the response would be when someone brings up the obvious point that nothing cataclysmic happened that day.
42
@41: I just hope it doesn't result in a wave of suicide because of the disappointment. In every interview, the people were incapable to even imagine rapture wouldn't happen. That kind of delusion can really break someone.
I still don't know whether or not to feel bad for the "rapturers". It's similar to a sect: they've been brainwashed (and lost a lot of money), which make them the victims, but they also try to brainwash others, which make them at the same time the victimizers.
43
It's a classic Catch-22. If the Rapture actually happened, we'd be forced to admit the jackasses were right. Since it didn't, we're stuck with them. And if you think they'll stop being jackasses after a little setback like this, you haven't been paying attention .
44
They thought they were SOOOOOOO HOT....

So it's quite clear that, if it were true that God exists, God thoroughly rejected the hubristic claims of a smug segment of sinners, and subjected them to the schadenfreude smirks of the whole world.

Therefore, Dan, the mockery is not cruel, but (virtually) divinely-inspired.
45
@43 Nope. Even if the Rapture appeared to have happened, if Revelations was being acted out before my eyes, I'd still highly doubt it was actually the Christian god pulling all the strings. The possibility that some advanced form of life had developed fantastically realistic VR or hallucination inducing technologies and felt like seeing what happens to us when they make one of our myths come to life, that’s still infinitely more likely than the Christian God hypothesis. We know alien life is theoretical possible, we know these reality-tricking technologies already exist and can likely be improved upon quite a lot, and there’s no good evidence that gods exist. In this case Occam would gladly help me from needing to admit jack shit to Christians.
46
Love these pictures:
http://www.regretsy.com/
47
@38 @16 I don't know if mocking these people is cruel. It seems more cruel to me to be polite and respectful in this case. These people's lives have been ruined. Many quit their jobs, or spent their retirement.

Most will never have the courage to reassess their beliefs. Being the chosen people of the creator of the universe is a huge ego trip that would be near impossible to give up. So mocking the converted doesn't really effect them, and they'll feel persecuted whether they are mocked or not.

When delusions like the rapture are publicly confronted and ridiculed, it makes it more difficult for con artists to run this kind of scam in the future. That's a win for everyone even if some people's feelings get hurt.
48
IT is sad to read all the above comments and have to see how terribly ignorant you are in th understanding of the error of the biblical principal of the Rapture. It will happen whether you believe in it or not- the thing is the bible says "no man knows the hour or the day, not even Jesus, but only the Father.

1. So no one who has even a very basic knowledge of the Word, need have gone bananas, given their money to anyone, etc.

the apostle Paul,referring to Christians ( blood washed and beliving followers of Christ) need not have given CAmpings's ramblings, a second thought.He is a false deceiving prophet.

2 The teaching on the Rapture states that (we who are alive, shall be caught up in the air....that is where the word rapture comes into play.

3.Basic Christian teaching states that because mankind is born into a fallen world, and has a carnal, sinful nature. but God because He so loved the world, sent His son Jesus, not to condemn it, but to rescue man from the condemnation that is coming,If you believe on, and trust J esus, and what He has done and accomplished for you, you will be "saved"d from that judgement. not because you are good, or bad, but because by accepting what He has done for you, an exchange took place: His perfect eternal life for forgiveness for all your sins, past present and future,

4.God gave you a choice- to trust in Him for that forgiveness, or go on your " merry way".Because we are prone o all manner of selfishness and pride, sooner or later we find our lives full of the antecedents, and consequences of those 2 qualities.(do any of you out there reading me doubt the way I am describing mankind?) After all, who has to teach a 5 month old child to display willfulness as he continues to throw to the flow, whatever object he has , over and over again?hmmm....)
5.So as you are born again, and allow God to renew your mind, and write His principles for living on your heart, you will not want to covet, steal, murder, etc. "repentance" means "changing your mind". Emotion or not may follow. The whole process, which continues until one IRS and no longer are to be used on this earth, is called "sanctification".
6.it is to those people the apostle Paul was speaking, and to whom the term rapture, applies. To those who are believers in, have put their faith in, the person of Jesus.
7. The rest of mankind will inherit the destruction to which their natural birth, and subsequent
development has led them. An angry and avenging conqueror is to return, this 2nd time!
the blood washed, and conforming Christian has nothing to fear regarding the Rapture.

8 All the above suggests why Christians care very deeply what their children believe and rely on; why they are wired as well as instructed biblically to share the gospel, and of the Savior's love for them. Of His compassion, for all of us- to reconcile us to the Father, and model for us, by His own life, how to relate to Him.
9.So you see, people wii suffer what the Bible calls the " Tribulation". At the end of that period, much of the world has been ravaged. many have died with much tribulation. is all this hard to imagine?

49
If anyone is so prideful and thought they were pure or holy enough to get raptured, thay are certainly damned.
I declined my chance to be raptured as I have too much work to do on earth.
And anyway, besides the few saints like me the only folks that have any chance are Unitarians and LGBT married couples.
50
@45: I never really got why we have a sinful nature (or a fallen world for that matter) in the first place, since we were created by god and "in [his] image, in [his] likeness". And I don't see either how Jesus sufferings can fix mankind. Many people suffer as much and way longer than he did. It still amaze me that for 15 years of spiritual instruction I learned and repeated this kind of thing, and it took me to become an atheist to notice the incoherences of what I used to believe.
Christians, and particularly the "born again" crowd, got their fair share of pride and selfishness.
51
Harold Camping is on now, totally backtracking, and revising the history of what he has been saying. Even though absolutely nothing happened on May 21, he says that the Lord has come, the world is under judgement, but now he claims that the rapture and earthquake will happen on Oct. 21, because God is a merciful God, and doesn't want to make the wicked suffer for 5 months. Only, after Oct. 21, God'll destroy the world, and send you to Hell to suffer for all eternity. Um, anyone see a problem with this reasoning? So, now the church is done advertising the Apocalypse, and won't speak of the end of the world anymore. How many of his followers will fall for this again?
52
@48: See, that's the biggest problem that I, as a Jew, have with Christian doctrine. Salvation, in a just world, would rely for the greater part on one's deeds. It is written many times over, in the holy books of the Abrahamic faiths and those of others, that a righteous non-believer will be viewed more favorably than a wicked member of the faithful.
53
I try to imagine under what circumstances I could bring myself to actually want the world to end. What does it take for a person to be excited for the death over every living thing on Earth, and the eternal torture of millions? The hatred inherent in wanting The Rapture is unimaginable to me. Maybe they don't examine their beliefs. How anyone could worship a god that could commit The Rapture as Evangelicals describe it is sickening.
54
@47: I don't know if mocking these people is cruel.

I was just quoting Dan's wording. And what stood out to me was how much his sentiment "Cruel people should be cruelly mocked" encapsulates my differences not just on this issue, but with the general tenor of much of what appears on this site. I just don't much agree with that sentiment at all.

If you wonder how people get to the point where they pray for millions to suffer and mere thousands (including themselves) to be saved, I think it starts with a seed like "Cruel people should be cruelly mocked" and years of crushing reality that most people can be cruel, most people care more about themselves than about you, most folks got something condemnable about them if you look hard enough, and it's easy enough to imagine the worst about people. That's where the wrathful judge of the apocalypse seems to be coming from, and when we mock, deride and chastise people for their failings, we help make that cruel god a little bit more incarnate.

What most keenly separates my understanding of Christ from the judgmental god of the rapture is that my God sees our petty egos and selfishness and ignorance and loves us anyway. In a world where most people are some inextricable mix of cruel and compassionate, I try to forgive the cruelty so that I can embrace what's worth saving. And, much as it is rare to find a person without some condemnable qualities, it's also rare to find a person who lacks some inner goodness worth saving. It's just a question of what we go looking for in people.

I don't think Slog is entirely off the deep end--I forgive it for its faults and read it for its inner goodness (up to and including hot pictures of navy seals.) But there was an extra layer of irony for me in Dan's post this time, because his desire to mock people points more towards that angry god of the rapture than towards the God I know and love and worship. So I toss in my 2c, point towards a more forgiving God and hope some folks heed me. But if you don't, hey, I ain't gonna mock you for it.
55
@54: Well isn’t it big of you JackDitch, to find it in your heart to forgive us our sins here on the Slog! And who knew that all that homophobia, and misogyny, and “teaching the controversy” in schools instead of science, was all because Christians, as the dominant cultural paradigm in this country, feel picked on! Oh if only we Sloggers weren’t so meeeeeaaaaan we wouldn’t have to worry about our reproductive and basic human rights being legislated out from under us by a bunch of jackasses who build “museums” which include dioramas of Adam and Eve frolicking with dinosaurs, and spend their time calculating exactly how much blood it would take to fill up the Valley of Jehoshaphat.
Please.
Go take care of that (pretty breathtakingly smug) beam in your own eye, and then get back to me.
Or better yet, go read everything that Kim in Portland and Brooklyn Reader have written here, and then get back to me.

56
@ Just about everyone. When ya'll are bagging on the harmful effects of religion, it kind of drags down perfectly reasonable faiths [eg mainstream Buddhism] when what you are really talking about is the exclusionist, dogmatic and confused Abrahamic religions. There is a difference.

Venomlash @52, thank you for your non-exclusionist, non-dogmatic and clear-headed interpretation of an[the] Abrahamic faith. This conversation needs more folks like you and KiP who know their faith and use their powers for good. Would you happen to have the chapter:verse of that good good inclusion stuff handy?

@10 It is too true. When one confuses mythos for logos, believes that the poetic is historic, it leads to big problems. Unlike Hindus, Taoists, &c. for whom creation IS the Divine, Xtianists principally believe that creation is seperate from God, fundamentally degenerate, and only heading toward a final end. Scary shit yo.
57
People need to live in reality, not made up myths. If someone started a movement that promoted the belief that fairies, and leprechauns are real, there would be people who would join in unquestioningly. I have no more reason to believe in any gods or supernatural beings than I do in unicorns, and fire breathing dragons. It's harmful for people to believe in the stuff that other people just imagined, because it sets the bar very low. People can make up some fucked up crap, and there will be others willing to die, and even kill to defend it.
58
@56: I personally have no beef whatsoever with people believing whatever helps them shape the universe into something manageable for them. I think the impulse to connect to the unknowable is within us all, and that out of that impulse we can find ways to connect with each other. I think every spiritual movement on the planet has a seed of this at its core.

What I do have a beef with is people deciding that their particular spiritual recipe is the one and only way to go and that all the other cookies at the Cosmic Bake Sale are poison! Poison I tell you! And if you put raisins in your snicker doodles you are going to HELL111!!!!1

That, in my opinion, is a load of crap, and I will bag on that attitude wherever, and whenever I see it, regardless of its bakery of origin.
59
31
in order to be 'monotheistic' don't you have to actually have a -you know- "god"?
how long has it been since you girls heard from the Big Guy?...
60
@59: I haven't talked to my dad for about a month, being rather busy with things. I still have a father.
Did you know that normally, children of only a few months of age can conceptualize the continued existence of things that have left their fields of vision and hearing? You must suffer from a severe developmental disability, poor dear.
(And for the record, I'd rather have one true prophet than a thousand false prophets. Quality over quantity, bitch.)
61
60

that long, eh?........
62
@61: Yeah. I mean, it's only about a 20 mile commute, but he works a lot of hours, and I've had school and Scav and everything to deal with. Don't you worry about me, though; I keep in touch with my dad.
63
I feel saddness for those who put their hope in May 21st. Maybe, their lives are such that they find no beauty that transcends their struggles. Are they living, like some that I know, waiting for life and waiting for an ideal of perfection in order to be happy? Is their grief over the passing over a loved one so great, that they wish to bypass tomorrow's joys? I don't know.

I hope they find those moments of joy. For me they come when I'm so caught up that I loose all self-awareness. Self-awareness often seems to be my greatest stumbling block, it my exodus.
64
@55: Well, no, it's not that tough to forgive the mockery I find here. In the long list of things that I strive to forgive in this world, blog mockery is training wheels. There are much more difficult things to forgive.

But did I maybe need to mention that I'm gay? I don't have it as bad as many gay guys out there, but I'm still in the sights of all those cruel people you seem to think should best be mocked. To have you turn around and mock me for finding such mockery distasteful and counterproductive just kind of drives home why I find it so distasteful and counterproductive.

"Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." --MLK Jr

I'll keep living by those words and encouraging others here to do so, because yeah, I think my own civil rights and the functioning of our society depend on it.
65
@ JackDitch, I hope that the bittersweetness of Slog is more sweet than bitter to your heart. It does require a tough skin at times, but the community is real.

@ Orphian, Micah 6:8 comes to mind: He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

That verse seems to work for those who subscribe to theosupernaturalism, as well as those who subscribe to theonaturalism and theopanthesim. Of course, individuals and communities may interpret that verse and they will form the predicate. As construers of reality, we frame reality by our own interpretation this seems most obvious within religious circles, in my opinion, as they often seem to have the greatest emotional attachment to their beliefs. Perhaps, venomlash has something more specific in mind.

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.