Family Radio finally shuts up but no apology

So far, Harold Camping and his Family Radio have stayed silent about the the FAUXpocalypse they predicted for this past Saturday, May 21st. According to news sources the radio station is just playing lame music and giving out canned platitude advice about life. Camping finally seems to have nothing to say, or perhaps is meeting with focus groups, lawyers, and other like-minded Christian "apologists" to come up with excuses and look for ways to weasel out of his claims. BTW, I have said this many times in other forums, but it bears repeating here, especially among the iPhone generation. As much as I wish it were the case, Christian Apologetics is very definitely not about apologizing for all the things they get wrong on a regular basis. Instead, as one would expect from extremists, it is actually about the exact opposite. It is about making up excuses so that they do not have to apologize. Unfortunately, the English word "apology" means something rather different than the Greek term "apologia", which actually means defense, which anyone studying Plato would surely know from the trial of Socrates, for example. I realize that I am going out on a limb here with my own prophecies, but I predict that there will be little or no actual apology in the English sense of the word and plenty of "apologia" or defensive rhetoric from Camping and his followers, with at most Camping falling on his sword because....duh....he is the primary person to blame here. My own personal definition of "Christian Apologetics", BTW, is "how to lie like a five-year-old and sound less convincing". We will definitely see a lot of that on display in coming days.

Imagine what the money could have been spent on

Family Radio and their gullible adherents wasted an estimated $100 million promoting the ludicrous fanatasy that May 21st, 2011 would be the end of the world. One individual reports spending $140,000 of his own money in order buy posters and advertising to get the word out. Imagine if the $100 million had been spent on targetted charities. It might have helped children, prevented domestic violence, housed homeless people, and even been used in various kinds of medical research. Given that the present use of the money accomplished nothing, any good it did would have been notable. However, the reality is that, not only did this money promote nothing but a falsehood, it also accomplished the opposite of what these people intended. It made religious extremists look foolish anew. It destroyed the "Family Radio" brand, and probably means that it will go out of business or be sued into bankruptcy and those working for it will likely lose their jobs. More importantly, it make people more skeptical. Perhaps that is the only good that it unintentionally did, though true believers wouldn't see skepticism as a good thing.

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.

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.