I wonder how many of the people who’ve been laughing at Campings prediction take the 2012 nonsense seriously.

Yeah, but … isn’t the 2012 prediction why most people didn’t believe Camping?

Hidden behind the rapture date-setting fizzle of May 21, 2011 is one of the greatest untold religion stories of all time!
Of course “rapture” to 50 million American evangelicals is the “pretribulation rapture view” – a secret return of Christ said to occur several years before the final Second Coming to earth – but most are unaware that it was never a part of any Christian theology before 1830. And their leaders fight hard to cover up recently uncovered facts about its shady 181-year-old history – facts about its rampant plagiarism, devious revisionism of early “rapture” documents, and other dishonesty that journalist/historian Dave MacPherson (known as the “Rush Limbaugh of the Rapture”) has been uncovering since 1968.
The mainstream media have somehow overlooked his highly endorsed research even though No. 1 religion expert Dr. Martin Marty featured it in 1980 in Christian Century and said that Time or Newsweek should air it. And even though rapture promoters like Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye have published their muddied-up versions of it. And even though Bill Moyers touched on it in 2005 in the Minneapolis paper in his article “There is No Tomorrow” which mentioned the “fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers” who have “captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.”
If this fringe-British-invented “pretrib rapture” escapism had never existed, American fundies could never have had fun (or built fortunes) with their mega-selling books and date-setting games. MacPherson’s bestselling nonfiction book “The Rapture Plot” is in libraries and bookstores, and his many articles on Yahoo, MSN etc. include “Pretrib Rapture Politics” (showing how anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, and anti-Muslim the rapture is!) and also “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty.”

G: Hey Jesus, convince them the world is gonna end in the yr 1400.
J: Got it.
G: They bought it!
G&J: Ha! Burn.
J: What next?
G: Ummmm how about 1612?
J: Priceless.

And so on.

Sounds like something best described using Venn diagrams.

I live in San Jose, CA, and just on my 5 mile commute to work, there are five of Camping’s billboards (one for each mile, I guess). So he’s definitely making it difficult for the media to ignore. I’m certain a lot of people saw the billboards and called the news stations to find out what it is.

In any event, I support the media covering these types of things. I don’t think looneyism should be ignored in principle. In practice, sure, there are so many loonies out there that there just isn’t enough time to give them all coverage so inevitably the media have to ignore some of them, but a choice select few one or two loonies given coverage about their spectacularly bad prophecies might do a little good for skepticism and critical thinking.

Robert Says:
May 24th, 2011 at 2:03 pm

The crazies are very good at getting their message out. The mainstream churches, which do not promote belief in the ratpure – the rapture interpretation only dates back to the 1800′s – don’t spend a lot of time or energy keeping people informed about their view. As a result, a lot of people are sitting in the pews at mainstream churches, but their views are informed more by what they heard on the crazies’ TV and radio stations. The mainstream churches theology is based on many centuries of philosophy, on people actually THINKING about things. The fundies base things much more on “visions” and the personal authority of the preacher. Perhaps the mainstream churches are wrong too, but they have a more solid footing than the fundies do.

Nonsense. They have exactly the same footing as the fundies – zero. Age does not make a soft footing stronger.

Mainstream church theology may be based on centuries of philosophy, but that’s not what they preach from the pulpit, which is part of the reason their parishioners get their theology from the sources you mentioned.

What happened to climate science after many predictions of water levels and population trends made in the 1970s failed to materialize? They said they miscalculated and kept on.

Check out this :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3S0fnOr0M&list=PL029130BFDC78FA33

when it comes to what they were or weren’t saying inthe 1970′s climate ~wise.

See also this :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9SGw75pVas&list=PL029130BFDC78FA33

for what we do know about climate change and how and why we know it.

Plus this one :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0HGFSUx2a8&feature=related

which covers more predictable predictions.

Oh and this one :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGVgrRAyQmw

gives you more y’know actual scientific evidence too. Want to compare predictions? Check that out. Hope this helps, really – please do watch and consider these, okay.

PS. I was a climate contrarian myself once. I was wrong then.

That’s the kind of reasoning you go through when you’re both religious and have an education to top it off. Unfortunatly, this guy gets way less publicity than those Sectarian Leaders. (Not sure I can call him anything close to a Pastor. A millionaire that understand fiscality better than Donald Trump? Maybe.)

http://imgur.com/zf7B9

But my fave has to be this explanation :

http://www.satirewire.com/content1/?p=3062

From Mr Apocalpyse himself!

(In case folks missed it on the last thread here on this topic. Apologies if that breeches netiquette but I think it bears repeating or rather relinking.)

Via PZ Myers Pharyngula blog :

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/doh_we_should_have_known.php

which also reports in the thread immediately before that linked one some of the tragedies caused by those poor fools who took Camping’s rot seriously and were apparently genuinely terrified the world was ending. Silly them – but their poor kids.

PS. As for shooting a fish in a barrel that depends upon a lot of factors – notably how big is the barrel, how big is the fish, is it more than one fish, do we count them being killed by the shockwave, is there water in the barrel too, etc ..

”as saying the sun will rise tomorrow.””
Is this another prediction of that Camping?

Actually, I think Camping predicted that our Sun wouldn’t rise tomorrow! (Or yesterday or the day before or the day before that ..)

Not that this is any big surprise; as I said in my first post, rationalizations were just as inevitable as the Rapture wasn’t.

Yup. Very predictable indeed.

No apocalpyse , lots of excuses. same thing every durn time – and there’s been so many of them!

“To any of my friends who believe the Rapture is taking place this Saturday- I am 100% sure I will be staying behind, so if you have any money or material possessions you’d like to give to me. Just let me know and I’ll swing by and pick them up. Thanks, and have fun in heaven!”

“I’m still here, as expected. My money grab was a fail, also as expected. Taking pre-placements for 2012.”

I have to admit I was thinking the same thing, but didn’t want to say anything. My friend’s 14 year old daughter last week said, “What excuse will they make when the Rapture does not happen?”

With regards to shooting fish in a barrel, doesn’t that entirely depend on what you are shooting them with?

Dynamite.

There is freedom of religion in the USA, after all. People have a constitutional right to be stupid. I believe strongly in that, and if that makes me soft on religion too, then so be it.

Madam, thou needest get thyself to a monastery. At some point in time, all of the jibes and jokes spouted at the Cubs will come back to haunt you American Leagues types. Just because Chicago has often been Completely Useless By September, that is no reason to taint their bad luck streak with prattle about World Series wins! (Just be glad that Camping didn’t predict the Red Sox to win the WS this year.).

(Sorry to Cubs fans, I couldn’t resist. I’m a Red Sox fan so I know all about suffering.)

Some of the verses were an attempt to show prophecy, some were propaganda, some were intended to explain away uncomfortable facts–such as the fact that a lot of Judeans were taken away to slavery, and the fact that more Judeans killed each other than were killed by the Romans (the Romans were more restoring order in “their” province than putting down a rebellion). Christians made the most of that by writing it into their “scriptures” their way.