The Rapture that wasn't

I have mixed feelings about Harold Camping - the man who predicted the May 21st Rapture/Judgement Day. Well, actually, no I don't: he's either a con-man, or he's delusional. It doesn't matter which, since either way he's dangerous to anyone who takes him seriously. Camping, of course, denies responsibility for any actions taken by his followers in response to his warning; this strikes me as the moral equivalent of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater and then protesting that people only got hurt because they panicked and made bad decisions.

Camping is also doubling down on his prediction; he says he was wrong about what exactly was going to happen on May 21, but that the Judgement did come "spiritually" and the world will definitely end on October 21. I'm going to make a prediction: no, it won't. If I'm right, that makes me a better prophet than Harold Camping, despite the fact that I'm functionally an atheist. (If you're keeping score, the current record between us is me-1 him-0.)

No, I don't have mixed feelings about Harold Camping. I do have mixed feelings about his followers. On the one hand, the urge to point and laugh is nearly irresistible. I mean, seriously: crazy old dude announces that he, and he alone, has figured out the Bible-based math that reveals the true date of the end of the world? And people believe him? I've said before that while Camping's predictions have their roots firmly in Christian tradition, they're also directly anti-Biblical (i.e. clearly violating the passage where "no man knows the day or the hour"). Family Radio - or at least some of Camping's followers - had an answer for that... sort of. (Don't read that if you value your sanity.) So, yes, you can make a pretty good argument that someone would have to be a complete idiot to fall for that.

But on the other hand... I've had those moments where I suddenly sort of woke up and realized that something I was doing (or had recently done) was... well... very much not the good idea that it seemed like at the time. Twice, that was accompanied by the realization that what I'd been doing was not only a bad idea, but a potentially life-ruining mistake. And I strongly suspect that a lot of Camping's victim-followers experienced something very similar last Saturday.

Here's the thing: anybody can fall for a scam, if you catch them in just the right way at just the right moment. And these are people who are predisposed to believe in precisely this sort of thing. (It doesn't really matter, for them, whether Camping is a con-man or whether he's completely sincere.) Should they have known better? Yes. Are they victims in this situation? Also yes. So while the urge to point and laugh is strong, I'm also more than a little sympathetic. That's a lousy position to find yourself in.

A Paradox Wrapped in a Tautology

Okay, so apparently the world is set to end on May 21, 2011.

I will tell you right now that I haven't read the whole site. I didn't even make it past the first section. Specifically, this section:

Now, at this time, information is coming forth from the Bible which clearly reveals God’s plan for Judgment Day and the end of the world itself. The Bible has opened up its secrets concerning the timeline of history. This information was never previously known because God had closed up His Word blocking any attempt to gain knowledge of the end of the world.
...
God is now opening up His Word because we have arrived at the time of the end. For this reason, it has become very obvious to the serious student of the Bible that we are now living in the last few days of earth’s history.

Which is just... my brain hurts. Finally, we can know for sure that it's the end of the world! We can know this at last because it's the end of the world! Previously, we didn't know when the end of the world would come... because it hadn't come yet!

I'm sure there's plenty more snark-worthy material on that site, but my brain can only take so much. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done: reading that left me picturing a scene from a particularly surreal time-travel story...

Elderly Professor: "Just remember not to go too far. If you reach the end of the world, you're sure to be destroyed."

Brave Young Adventurer: "How will I know if I've reached the end of the world?"

Elderly Professor: "You can't know that until the world ends."

Brave Young Adventurer: "You're not actually much help, are you?"

Elderly Professor: "Hey! I built this time machine!"

Brave Young Adventurer: "That you're sending me out to explore in..."

Elderly Professor: "I've given you the chance to explore all of History!"

Brave Young Adventurer: "Except I can't go back in time, because you're afraid I'll change something."

Elderly Professor: "You can witness THE FUTURE!"

Brave Young Adventurer: "...Where I'll be destroyed without warning if the world ends sooner than expected."

Elderly Professor: "..."

Elderly Professor: "Oh, just bring back something that will make us rich, will you?"

Brave Young Adventurer: "Now you're talking."