Rapture, Westboro, and such

This man did his Bible math wrong, is all.

One quick thought: when everyone joins together in mocking a particular religious belief, at first I enjoy it because I'm like, "Yes! We all recognize how crazy this nonsense is!" but then I remember that, statistically speaking, most of these people must think that this nonsense is crazy only because it isn't their nonsense. (PET PEEVE: People who are like, "Oh, man, these Jesus freaks with all their 'Praise Jesus' craziness—what a bunch of wackos! Anyway, as I was saying... I was having a hard time figuring out what to do with my career until God spoke to me and showed me that what He really wants me to do is...")

As I've asked here before (about those Westboro Baptist cretins*), is the belief that the world is going to end on a particular day actually substantively more ridiculous than any other religious belief? If God exists and has a consciousness and a will and does things—does whatever He wants—is it really so absurd and unthinkable that He might hate gay people or choose to destroy the Universe on a particular day? Seriously. Why is that so laughable? Once we accept that God is real, are we really so certain that our preachers and our interpretation of an ancient text are necessarily righter than anyone else's?†

The reason why Harold Camping's May 21 prediction was so ludicrous is not that he was reading the Bible wrong; it's that predicting anything based on reading the Bible is NUTS.

The general response to the Rapture thing was like a bunch of people watching a screaming homeless person on the street and then shaking their heads like, "Radio signals beamed from the C.I.A. into your brain? God, I'm glad I have it together enough to know that the U.N. is beaming signals into my fillings. Poor crazy bastard."

The mentally ill are allowed to raise families.

* BONUS NOTE: Did you know that, etymologically, cretin comes from Christian? True story!

† Or, for that matter, than an all-powerful being with a history of wiping people out might not decide, "To hell with the preachers and the ancient text," and just do whatever He fucking pleases, even if we are reading the Bible right? We're talking about an all-powerful superbeing. Presumably all-powerful superbeings can change and/or break rules if they feel like it.