Creative Reasons that the Rapture Ruptured on May 21, 2011

After all the media hoopla about Family Radio and this Harold Camping dude who spent $100 million promoting the idea that the world was going to end on May 21st, 2011, I think it would be entertaining to come up with reasons that the world didn't end. Just saying "Because Camping has a funny name," or "He's a senile old coot!" would be examples of reasons that are not particularly creative.

OTOH, here is an example that I have been promoting, already in this blog, but I would like to see some from others.

1. God's Cosmic Vacuum Cleaner broke down: The Christian Rapture can be thought of as God turning on the Great Cosmic Vacuum Cleaner in the sky. When he does housekeeping, ever couple thousand years, it will suck all the Christian suckers right out of their clothes and straight up into the dust bag which Christians call Heaven (unless god has a bagless model). However, apparently something happened. My personal theory is that Jerry Falwell, who was quite "larger than life", got stuck in the tube. Even with all God's immense sucking power, he couldn't dislodge Falwell. So he had to throw the vacuum into reverse and try again in a few thousand years again, when Mr. Satan, the local vacuum salesman, pays another visit.

Make your suggestions as simple or complicated as you want, as long as they are creative.

Let the Bible Backstroke Begin

Now that Harold Campings false prophecies about the world ending on May 21st, 2011 have been proven false, one can expect the Bible Backstroke to begin. In this Olympic sport, the objective is swim around words and verses so quickly that believers can deny that anyone ever made a mistake. As I've pointed out already, fundamentalist christians believe 99% of what Camping does. They simply are too cowardly to step out from behind vague language and put their money where their mouthes are like Camping did. Sure Camping was a nut for thinking that he could do it, but a lot of you people think the same nutty things and just don't have the courage of your convictions. Remember that as you are having a nice hearty laugh with your minister as he feeds you another load of nonsense this sunday.

Harold Camping's Load of cRapture

Well the so-called "christian rapture" (or crapture for short ;-) ) epically failed to materialize today on May 21st, and it's already May 22 in some parts of the world. Therefore the prophecy of Harold Camping is proven false. We didn't see hundreds of millions of holier than though christians flying upward into the air to be with Jebus and play harps on clouds. This may leave some very arrogantly over-confident christers scratching their little noggins and scrambling like mad to find any excuse for why their god has failed to return for thousands of years. After all, Harold Camping and his (manson) Family Radio network claimed that the Bible "guarantees" that the world would end today. If so then many of us didn't notice. Of course, I am sure he will come up with a load of excuses, or should I say a load of cRapture reasons that he got the time wrong. They are, after all, alway discovering new, lost scriptures which never made it into the Bible. I suppose that I shouldn't come up with too many alibis for Harold, because I wouldn't be surprised if he uses excuses like this. This might permit him to take one more swing at pretending that he knows when the world is going to end. But, as it stands, all he has produced is a load of cRapture predictions which have proven to be full of cRapture errors.

Theory about why rapture was an epic fail today

For fundamentalist christians (fundies), the rapture is like a super sucker vacuum that sucks those suckers right out of their clothes, and deposits them naked in heaven, where they have a big orgy in the clouds. Well, that last part isn't exactly true, though the word "rapture" sounds like it might involve sex. However, rest assured that fundies hate sex. They just have lots of theological terms that sound like what they're not, such as being "born again", which sounds like it might involve being painfully shoved back inside your mother.

Nevertheless, the part about God turning on his cosmic vacuum is how they seem to envision being taken up to heaven. My theory then, as to why the rapture didn't happen is that some very fat Christians got caught in the tube. Recall that there are people like Jerry Falwell, which even God's own vacuum cleaner would have trouble sucking through a tube. If he got caught up there then God probably had to throw the vacuum into reverse and drop everyone back down to Earth to try again in a few thousand years, when he develops a more powerful vacuum.

Are failed doomsday predictions making more atheists?

One often wonders about the motives of failed doomsday prophets. Were they really just "trolling" us in internet parlance. That is, are they really just trying to get a rise out of us or enjoying trying to scare us? Do they think that we might temporarily turn more religious, at least for a day, in the hope of pulling off what the eminent theologian Bart Simpson called a "presto, chango, death-bed conversion"? Is God that easily fooled that he would accept as sincere a day of good behavior based upon fear, in exchange for a previous lifetime of doing as one pleased?

I submit that, especially with the enhanced communication abilities in the modern world, the repeated failure of these doomsday prophets will result in less religiosity and more atheism. Therefore, rather than seeing these "scary" predictions as noble lies to help win souls for christ, the reality is that these people are likely causing more people to laugh at and turn away from religion.

These individuals making or following various cultish predictions concerning doomsday appear sincerely to believe their claims, but they demonstrate that they have little regard for moral responsibility. That is, they have not thought about the consequences of their actions and how their overtly displayed, and embarrassing false certainty will lead others to become less religious. If "soul-winning" is a noble thing, according to their their faith tradition, then losing souls must not be looked upon too favorably from on high. While I know this won't deter people the very next day from making new false predictions, they should at least consider the moral irresponsibility of their actions.

For atheists, these false predictions should be an god-send. Unfortunately, many atheists don't seem to know how to capitalize on such things. Believers will just shrug this off and go on to believing the next dubious prediction tomorrow, not even remembering the trail of false hopes an vain claims their their religion has lead them into. Perhaps atheists need to make a bigger deal out of such things. Perhaps they should have a special word for when doomsday predictions fizzle and gloom and doom go kaboom. I have proposed some candidate terms like "dumbsday", or "dudsday", or "dundersday". Instead of a prediction, one might have a "predorktion" to describe the phenomenon when the prophets boff-it. At the very least I think that a secular group like American Atheists should hand out an award called the "NostraDumbAss Award", to failed prophets, and people like Harold Camping should be this years nominee.

Perhaps it would fun to make a t-shirt with a list of failed doomsday prophecies, each one being exed out, and a few that are yet to come, such as 2012, and a few blank spaces that say .

Calling BS on May 21st Rapture

According to a media campaign with far more money than sense, Harold Camping and his "Family Radio" insist that the "rapture" will occur tomorrow. As popularized by the Tim LaHaye _Left Behind_ series of books, the "rapture" involves god turning on his huge Cosmic Vacuum Cleaner (tm) and sucking the bodies of devout Christians right out of their clothes and up into the dust bag known as heaven. According to bizarre, illogical, and impossible to follow numerological arguments and word games by Camping, he has determined that this event, predicted "any time now" for the last 2000 years, will happen tomorrow. As I have pointed out to many people, there is hardly a year that goes by that someone doesn't think the "End of the World" will happen. Camping himself claimed this would happen in 1994. However, he says that he made a math error on that one. However, he now thinks the bible "guarantees" that it will happen tomorrow.

As fun as it is to prove these people wrong again and again, it might be cool to fake them out too. People have done this before too, leaving sets of empty clothes around the office, sitting on the chairs to make a christian co-worker think that people had been "raptured" out of the office and that he or she had been left behind. It might be fun to wander around with halloween makeup in zombie hordes, or to dress up in devil costumes, and pretend to writhe in agony in front of churches. The zombie hordes would be a reference to the fact that even the long dead are supposed to be resurrected. The devil stuff would be just for fun.

It's conceivable that a person could use a powerful LCD projector and project an imagine that looks like Jesus onto a cloud, perhaps from a high building. I wonder how many people would be taken in by that kind of thing. At least it would be based upon some kind of evidence, unlike the stuff from Camping, et al.