With less than a week to go, everyone is making jokes about Harold Camping’s Rapture prediction and those who believe it. However, the sad fact remains that these people not only have risked their careers and families, but they will also be emotionally devastated and in a vulnerable position to fall for some other religious charlatan (NOTE: For legal reasons let me be clear that it is my opinion that Harold Camping is a charlatan).
While one would think that being proven wrong about the Rapture would teach these believers some much needed skepticism, experience has shown the opposite to be the case. I recently interviewed a former Harold Camping follower and while he no long believes that Harold Camping can know the date and time of the Rapture, he still is a believer in the Rapture and maintains much of the same fundamentalist religious beliefs despite being proven wrong about the Rapture in 1994.
Those who currently believe that they have less than one week left on this Earth will simply find some other religious leader to follow when May 22nd comes around. This is the time to encourage those who believe in Harold Camping’s May 21st prediction to learn to think critically about what they believe and why.
If you are a May 21st Rapture believer please consider the following:
One of the problems with religion is that there is no real way to know if it is true or not until after you are dead or Raptured. The scientific method on the other hand is based on observation and evidence while alive. It is the best method for analyzing the world around us and determining fact from fantasy.
Don’t fall for the next religious leader’s pitch. The Bible is not a guide to life, it is a mythology written in bronze-age society before we came to embrace science. It is science that has given us the tools to build our modern society not religion. The Bible does not square with our scientific understanding of the world and that is why so many modern Christians view parts of the Bible as metaphorical.
When your son or daughter is sick, do you take your child to church to be prayed for or do you take your child to the doctor to receive all the benefits of modern scientific medicine? On May 22nd you will have to choose between mythology and reality. Choose wisely!
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