Moment of misCONCEPTION

We laugh at failed apocalyptic predictions, like those made by Harold Camping and "Family Radio" over the weekend. However, many people fail to connect the dots about his other looney beliefs. Why was it called "Family Radio". One reason is because they do not believe in contraception or abortion, even if the latter would save the life of the mother. That is apparently a family value. There was a failed effort in the US by the religious extremist party known as Republicans, to "Defund Planned Parenthood". People like Senator Kyl claimed that "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does" is provide abortions, when the actual figure that every reputable source quoted was 3%. It is this kind of misinformation which fuels these religious extremists and emboldens them to attempt to terrorize the populace with other phony claims, such as the ridiculous notion that the world was going to end on May 21st, 2011. I wonder if John Kyl received any donations from Family Radio or Harold Camping.

These days, only the lunatic fringe believes that contraception is murder, but it didn't used to be that way. This same lunatic fringe now maintains this fiction that there is a "moment of conception", which is scientifically false. To begin with, it is *fertilization*, not conception, and it does not happen in a "moment". It takes place over a considerable period of hours and days. However, these same people with their John Kyl and Harold Camping style misinformation want to insist that a fertilized, single-celled organism, which has no brain or capacity for feeling pain is the equivalent of a fully-born human baby. Here's a 90% figure that is true. 90% percent of abortions happen before the first trimester. Most abortions are more like contraception than the ridiculous fantasies of Kyl and Camping. They stop the development of a pregnancy at such an early stage that nothing significantly human has even developed. The christian doctrine of pre-formism used to maintain that the sperm contained a fully formed, miniature human being, just ready to be planted in a woman's soil, where it could grow into a larger baby. The reality is that nothing like this actually happens. It takes time to build a human, like it takes time to build a house and if you stop building the house after the first few 2x4s have been nailed together, it was never really a house to begin with. It might have been a house if one continued building, but we can't say it was a house already once the first nail touched the first piece of wood, even if the builder had a blueprint for a house in mind when he started hammering.

What is God's Holy Hold up Anyway???

Jebus failed, as he has failed every day, for the last 2000 years, to return "any day now". The recent false prophecy of Harold Camping and his Family Radio group highlights the increasing frustration that believers have with this tardiness. It is high time that the question be seriously put -- what in the world could be God's holy hold up? The bible has been translated into every conceivable language. Missionaries have covered every part of the globe for centuries. Modern communication means that even people in the amazon rainforest are using cellphones and getting internet access. Everyone who wants to hear about Jebus has heard about Jebus. Every day that goes by provides more evidence that Jesus is not coming. It gives us more reason to doubt.

Some insist that he is still waiting to allow more people to be saved, but it is not clear that this is happening. People like Harold Camping are causing more people to doubt than believe. Events in the world are making people more skeptical. Furthermore, population has been growing faster in recent centuries and decades than ever before. This is actually making the job of saving all those people harder than ever. It would have been much easier to have come shortly after the death of Jesus, or at least after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire.

Others just insist that god is really really slow. They say that it takes 1000 years to equal one God day. There are sloths and inch worms that could beat god apparently. Doesn't this make God guilty of the sin of "sloth" for going so slowly about handling things? I must have missed the part in the Bible where it said God's butt was made out of lead. Seriously, he has not shown a good hustle. That is not what we would expect from a perfect being. He needs to get a move on.

Apocalypse Nawwww

Nawww, there was no apocalypse yesterday. Just a lot of hot air from Harold Camping and his followers who reportedly spent $100 million promoting their false claim that the world would end on May 21st, 2011. You know what they say about a fool and his money. Anyway, now he is supposedly in hiding. However, in terms of PR, he will probably cash in. He will charge for interviews, revise his predictions, sell a book, etc. His followers were already selling t-shirts and bumperstickers to cash in on the hype. When will people wake up and realize they are being duped not just by Harold Camping, but by their own Christian preachers. It's a very cushy job and telling fairy stories sure beats having to work for a living. The fact is that many christians believe 99% of the nonsense that Camping spewed, but they just don't have the courage to stand up and admit it because they know they will be laughed at and proven wrong like Camping was.

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.