Laughing off the 'Rapture' when we should be laughing off religion

[Bozita]

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/05/religious_zealot_gets_it_wrong.html

The atheist perspective: Laughing off the 'Rapture' when we should be laughing off religion
Published: Monday, May 23, 2011, 11:37 AM Updated: Monday, May 23, 2011, 11:52 AM
By Darrell Dawsey


Becky Friedman stands outside a rapture party on Saturday, May 21, 2011 at Dorky's Arcade in Tacoma, Wash. Groups of local atheists gathered at the arcade in Tacoma on the day that radio minister Harold Camping predicted would be the beginning of rapture. AP Photo



So no Rapture this weekend, eh? No end of the world. No return of Christ. No vanishing of Christians in the "twinkling of an eye." LOL.

Sure, most people, even among the avowedly religious, weren't expecting much more than another spring weekend. But that didn't stop many in Metro Detroit and the rest of the country from counting down as the clock and calendar moved toward 6 p.m. May 21, the day some religious kook named Harold Camping slated for the "end of the world."

Predictably, preachers all over were quick to dismiss Camping, but I suspect this was largely because he had the audacity to actually stamp a date on his craziness and put it on billboards all over Metro Detroit (well, that and the fact that this marked his second failed prediction of "end times").

-snip-

So why is it only the people like Camping, who somehow get segregated from the rest of so-called Christianity, are treated as if they are only one small and irrational strain of the belief? Why do we get to laugh at Camping, but somehow allow the larger idea behind him—the idea that some divine, supreme intelligence is dictating our lives and has his grubby little hands in everything from earthquakes in Haiti to the outcome of pro football games—to escape mass scrutiny?

No, there was certainly no real evidence that should've led Camping to believe that the world would end this weekend. But really, where is the verifiable, independently testable proof for any of this craziness that we embrace and accept as incontrovertible truth?

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