And if it had happen...?

After the Rapture vid.

Truth in media

Pawlenty Presidental Campaign (2011-2011)


Dead on Day 1.

You can't buy publicity like this.

Why would you try?

Further into the sadness of Saturday's rapture cancellation.

In the wake of the aborted takeoff of all the pious, righteous, and true...more of the tragedy that befell some.

This is not about people who blew their cash, or sold homes. That is bad, and lamented. Like the person who dumps their car off somewhere because "they know" they have the lucky numbers that will be winning the lottery that night. But economic boondoggles can be come back from.

No. This is about the near death of children. A women seeing that the rapture and tribulation were nigh, slit her daughters throat, then her own. Then drove to a friend's home to die. Luckily this person had the sense to call for help, which kept them alive.

This is horrible. What this women did was sick and demented. But she was driven and taught to believe that they were both in trouble, and horrors were coming. That is one important trick to many religious groups, promise horror, torture, and unending pain, unless you walk a very narrow line that the group defines. This woman, presumably believed that it was coming. If she did not end her daughter's life, she would have, literally, hell on earth.

And that is messed up. Messed up for her to do. And messed up that in global society we have this tripe sold and coddled by government, media, and the rest of us (to some varying extent). We try to laugh, but it can't be forgotten that things like the Rapture are a cottage industry. They are big bucks because many people take it on faith that events will soon come to pass. Remember how Christianity starts, with the promise of the end of days just around the corner (from 30-something C.E.). People have been drawn into a belief the end is nigh, time and again, before that time and ever since. Sometimes these people are driven or pushed to dark ends.

Now we may learn that she has various psychological issues, medication she needed to be on, etc. But many churches teach that their is a Rapture. That is you are not on their god's right side...you are screwed.

So we need to be aware of this. Joke. Laugh. But keep an eye out in your family, and among your coworkers. Reach out as any compassionate rational person should.

Welcome to my world...world.

Now is when I turn and give some sympathy to those that awaited the rapture yesterday.

Yes. To embrace the idea that some supernatural event was coming is silly. And because a person who spends too much time in their preferred supernatural storybook, and then crafts a mathematical formula around it to countdown to all "good" people being teleported to a magical land...yeah, really?

So everyone had a good laugh. I did.

But what the rest of us? Yes, including myself in this.

There are plenty of joke worthy ideas, causes, beliefs.

• Bible/Torah/Koran codes - Take a given translation trace around words and letters, or just pick them at a chosen interval...and you know the future...No. But it is embraced.
• 2012 - Mayan Comeuppancepaloza. So apparently the Mayans created a super special calendar that charts the major events of the future leading right up to the end of the world. Or not. It points to major events, when you squint at it. Doesn't really point at the end in 2012 even. And the calendar end can also  be, and is by Mayans today, as the end of an era. Not the world. But people are selling it to you. And you may, or someone you know, is lapping it up.
• I-Ching - Works about the same as above...or Nostradamus.
• Anti-vaccination - People are being sold on how vaccination will kill or poison a baby or child. Or how it won't work so they don't pursue shots or updates to protection. And as a result old illnesses are coming back.
• Science denial - In the USA we have to struggle to get comprehensive science to be taught. Evolution is often an anathema. Alien and foreign, barred from conversation. Science is what it is. The results follow where nature leads. But we seem to fear and loathe nature's arrogance with it. We too often see science as a servant to ideology. Evolution is bad, why? GM foods are bad, why? Irradiation is bad, why? A biblical view of history and science is sound, why?

Like I wrote before. Take some time after these ridiculous events like this Saturday. Look at how contorted these people were driven to become. Look at how they believed, and how they have been hurt.

Then look at your own beliefs and ideas, and think thoughtfully.

Been off for a bit.

I haven't been doing much in the way of blogging for awhile. Well as you may have heard the world'd coming to an end, and stuff.

Winds, rains, and storms...and stuff. Plus the nice holy man, and all of his people, his groups, and his billboards say so.

So it's all kinda depressing.

End of the world. And I haven't even finished my laundry, or vacuumed.

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Damn. Apparently the world already ended earlier. Knew I shouldn't have taken that nap. I always miss out on these sorts of things.

Yeah. Not so much for the logic.

End of the world...come on.

But, of course, most nobody was paying serious attention to this. To this one. But not always.

First consider this lot with the billboards. They are not some small unfunded church. This group is all over the country. They have some reasonably deep pockets (they have the money to put up more signs than atheist groups do, and more forbearance from locals than atheists get). So this is more than that Terry Jones lot. Remember that these folks were more . And these folks thought the world was ending. They aren't alone in that.

For example:


Jehovah's Witnesses
1914 - That's the key date when everything changes and Jesus comes into his own. Now a century has passed.


Seventh-Day Adventist
1844 - The day that Jesus returns to Earth (the end). Of course once that didn't happen it became a "spiritual" event. You know, like how God answers prayers in indirect ways, how prayers and saints help medicine after the fact, etc.


General Christians
How did it all begin? With a a promise from Jesus that those he met would see him again in their lifetimes. Meaning, the end was coming damn soon. And...two thousand years later...eh. Of course, we then got the Wondering Jew, an immortal at the crucifixion who walks the Earth as an immortal. So the words of Jesus still stand as he's alive. How freaking weak.


And of course we have had tons of "crazy cults" (cause the main ones are the respectable sort).


Shermer on it.



Brett Erlick on the Rapture



That is the point though people always come up with an end event and obsess. Sometimes a small group buys punch and sneakers and heads off. Sometimes a religious movement embraces it. Or a religious movement is birthed from the dates given.


The thing to remember is whether you ignore this one, or laugh at it, when one comes that you feel like just buying into...Step back. Look around. Think. Research. Don't be Homer Simpson.