Archive
The ACLU: Banner Banners
by Noah Lugeons
Gotta love the ACLU.
The ACLU announced yesterday that they would be filing a lawsuit to force a Boston area school to remove an explicitly Christian banner from the school’s auditorium. Apparently just pointing out that the law expressly forbids it hanging there wasn’t enough to convince the school, who voted to keep the banner up when the same issue was brought before them last year.
The ability of Christians to play “repressed” never fails to amaze me. In a nation where virtually every position of power in the government is controlled by a Christian, every president through our nation’s history has been Christian (unless you believe Bradlee Dean) and Christianity enjoys a cornucopia of privileges not granted to other faiths, still the holier-than-me of the world will claim oppression whenever they are expected to play by the same rules as everyone else.
Keep in mind that when atheists put a harmless sign on a bus with the pussy-footing message of “There’s probably no God”, the Christians get apoplectic. They sue, they protest, they write angry letters to the editor and eventually vandalize the signs. This is their reaction to a message so watered down it’s drowning. This is their reaction when we simply say “by the way, we also exist”.
And yet, somehow in the miswired mind of the faithful, it’s perfectly okay to indoctrinate the children of atheists (not to mention Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and those of any other faith). So much so that it will require action by the courts just to get them to stop flaunting their majority in a way that is expressly forbidden in the Constitution.
I’m okay with Christians claiming oppression, but shouldn’t we at least get the joy of oppressing them first? If they were complaining because they were being fed to lions, I would completely understand that. I’d also be on You-Tube searching every derivative of the words “Christian”, “Lion” and “Disemboweled”.
I’ll never understand how the Christian brain manages to overcome the inherent paradox of saying that they are being treated unfairly because they are being treated the same way as everyone else.
By the way, I double checked… there are no You-Tube results for Christian, Lion, Disemboweled. All for the best… it might have been a video of CS Lewis’ Jesus allegory getting ripped open.
Man Arrested for Planning to Kill Abortion Provider
by Noah Lugeons
It’s happened again. Much to the surprise of the evangelical pseudo-radicals, their vicious and careless rhetoric about “killing babies” has spurred one of their half-baked followers to seek an “eye for an eye”.
63-year-old Ralph Lang was arrested in Madison, Wisconsin late Wednesday night when he accidentally fired off a round in his motel room. The motel was conveniently located near a planned parenthood center where Lang allegedly intended to take the Lord’s work into his own hands.
This was not the first time Lang ran afoul of the law with regards to his anti-abortion lunacy. He was arrested in 2007 outside another Madison Planned Parenthood facility, where he apparently told the police that everyone in the building should be executed. Because apparently when Jesus said “turn the other cheek” it was so that you wouldn’t get blinded by the muzzle flash.
This type of psychotic, self-righteous rampage is far too easy for the mentally unhinged to justify. When they hear the venomous rhetoric of “baby-killer” from the trusted lips of their clergy and the horrific growl of their favorite talk-radio host, one should not be surprised that they take it seriously. We are mere days from the second anniversary of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller and yet the violent tone of the religious right’s balderdash has, if anything, amplified.
There is no doubt that we will hear from the apologists in the coming days. They will implore us not to paint every Christian or anti-abortion advocate with the same broad brush. They will accuse people like me of anti-religious bigotry (guilty!) for pinning blame on the mouthpieces that direct lunatics like Ralph Lang. They will distance themselves from this self-styled Christian warrior and say that they can’t be blamed for the actions of every lone lunatic out there.
But their arguments seem rather disingenuous. A few states away in nearby South Dakota and Nebraska the state legislatures have proposed laws that would expand the definition of “justifiable homicide” to include the murder of abortion providers. Until I see the churches organizing rallies to fight these proposals and marching on the capitol buildings of both states, I will discard their objections. When you fill people’s heads with the notion that a medical procedure is tantamount to murder you deserve the blame when those people take you seriously.
Ralph Lang actually believes that abortion doctors are out there killing babies day in and day out. If I thought there was someone, or worse, an organized group of people murdering babies, I would take my gun in hand as well. I’d like to think that I’d have the sense not to accidentally discharge it in my motel room the night before, but that happens to every guy as they get older, I suppose. The problem is the rhetoric. The problem is the terminology. When you start by accusing your opponents of being heartless murderers it’s gonna be tough to slip into a level-headed negotiation later.
Fred Phelps to Protest Memorial Service in Joplin, MO
by Noah Lugeons
There is no level of vile, inhumane, despicable, heinous, venomous heartlessness that would be considered unreasonable for the Westboro Baptist Church. There is no limit to their thoughtless bigotry. There is no act so unconscionable that we would put it passed Fred Phelps and his loyal band of homophobes.
No sooner had the dust settled over the devastation in Joplin, Missouri than the WBC was loudly proclaiming it to be the latest act of their spiteful and small-minded deity. Their website proudly proclaims this vast smiting to be yet another example of their fag-hating-god and his insatiable blood lust.
Filled with phrases like “We pray for your destruction…”, “God will not acquit you evil beasts of MO (who have sex with animals among your filthy sins)…” and, perhaps most telling of the dark and tortured part of the psyche their religiosity comes from, “Too many dead bodies to bury! That’s God’s Glory!”, their letter of praise to their vicious and petty lord reads like a love letter to death.
And they make it clear that this occasion requires the use of their most familiar weapon; bigoted picket signs.
It amazes me that our nation’s admirable defense of open-mindedness is such a ready tool for the small-minded. Our principled refusal to shut these people up exonerates our nation from the charges that Phelps levels against it (though I’m not sure it exonerates Obama from the charge of being the Anti-Christ). We, as a nation, are considerate even of the inconsiderate.
That is admirable if problematic. Putting up with the ranting, inbred fucktardery of people like Fred Phelps is a small price to pay for free speech and open dialogue. I just hope that there are plenty of us who are willing to stoop to Phelps level when he dies.
I’ve heard a lot of talk about protesting at Phelps funeral… or at least using it as an excuse to have a party as close to his funeral as legally allowable. I might be in for that, but ultimately it would be pointless. He’ll be dead and decomposing and won’t have the remotest inkling that anything ever happened. If you really wanted to turn the tables on him, it would have to be the funeral of his wife or a beloved son. Only then could he glean the slightest understanding of the suffering he’s caused to so many grieving parents.
But even then, his moral absolutism would shield him. When people speak for god, they are invincible. All who speak of god are in some way responsible for the misanthropy of douche-nozzles like Phelps. By empowering an invisible, fictional character with absolute ethical authority you leave a void where any lunatic who chooses to can stand in and speak for him. After all, it’s not like god can speak for himself. Does it matter if two people who claim to speak for the same imaginary space-daddy say different things? How can one message be more valid than the other?
The Pretty Problem
by Noah Lugeons
The atheist blogosphere is abuzz this week, as it should be, over the charges of sexism within our movement. Greta Christina had a thorough and thoughtful piece on it. PZ Myers threw in as well. I’m not going to rehash the charges, the apologies, the accusations and the resolutions. Suffice to say that it all centers around comments made by a rather attractive atheist vlogger, ZOMGitsCriss who does some pretty good videos while simultaneously being hot.
There hasn’t been criticism against her, of course, but rather against a number of thoughtless comments about how important it is to have more sexy atheists so that people would look at us more. I’m decimating the details here but if you want the skinny, feel free to check the links above. For my purposes, the bare bones sketch I just gave is more than enough.
See, it turns out that the church is having the same problem. They’ve discovered that having sexy vicars can help fill the pews with the added benefits that the molested boys will complain far less often. They don’t see this as a problem, per se, but it has to feel threatening if you’re the Raisenette centurion that she’s opening for.
I dont’ want to talk out of school or anything, but it appears they even have the same problem in broadcast news.
So let me make my point as delicately as possible. Unlike the news media and the Vatican, I think that the atheist community is moving in the right direction on this issue. Sexism is not an atheist problem, it’s a cultural problem that touches everything we touch. It is present in advertising, education, academia, entertainment, employment, religion, government and, of course, atheism.
We should be talking about these issues and we are, but it’s not fair to characterize that as the “first step”. It’s more like a first rocking forward in anticipation of lifting the foot. Talking is not stepping.
And this is not a new issue either. A number of small things have touched off this debate in the past and PZ Myers has been sounding the general alarm on this issue for some time. He’s strongly urged the inclusion of more women and minorities at atheist conventions and panels. This would represent an actual step and there is some evidence that it’s happening.
But a real step is in finding the common ground between atheism and feminism. I think it’s clear to everyone that the biggest common field in the Venn diagram of social issues here is abortion. Abortion is a right that is under constant attack from religious fundamentalism and far too often the atheists stand back in order to avoid the label of being politically biased.
There are a few secular arguments against the right to have an abortion. I don’t find any of them remotely convincing, but it is fair to acknowledge that the “Pro-Life” movement is not comprised entirely of rabid, inbred young-earthers. There are deeper questions of social and ethical concerns surrounding abortion than “Jesus wouldn’t want it!”, but those arguments are not heard in the echo chamber of fundies. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, all reasonable people recognize that a delicate moral line has to be drawn around the issue. But it’s impossible to have a reasonable argument with an unreasonable opponent, and good luck finding a reasonable religious extremist.
I don’t need to tell the liberals or the feminists why they should rabidly oppose the detestable wave of anti-abortion legislative trickery that is sweeping through America and, as Rebecca Watson points out, nobody should have to tell the atheists either. Regardless of your feelings or relative passions regarding this issue, the fact remains that religious fundamentalists stand on the verge of overtaking a right consistently upheld by the Supreme Court just because their god says no.
This fight need not only be about the right of a woman to exercise dominion over her own body. It need not only be about reproductive rights and equal respect for both halves of humanity, though that should be plenty enough to get everyone fired up. It is also about the ability of the religious right to trample upon the full freedom of American citizens and that is something that should have every atheist getting out their torches and pitchforks*.
*actual torches and pitchforks not recommended.
Harold Camping: 3rd Time’s the Charm!
by Noah Lugeons
This is why I’ll never understand the faithful. Harold Camping predicted the rapture would happen on September 7th of 1994. When that didn’t happen, he predicted it again in 2011.
So let’s try to get beyond that first. You fail in predicting something as grandiose as the fucking rapture, you shouldn’t be qualified to guess weight at a carnival from that point forward. If a scientist predicted the end of the world and then it failed to pass, nobody on this planet would listen to anything that scientist said again but to mock it.
But religion doesn’t work that way. Harold Camping got a mulligan.
And it wasn’t even like his followers were slightly less credulous the second time around. It would be easy to say that after being burned once you’d at least accept the possibility that he was going to come up short again this time. But if you look at the results from this latest failure it seems that if anything, their faith in their leader increased. At the very least their financial support grew if the national advertising blitzkrieg is anything to judge by.
From my rational, atheistic point of view it seems like the idea of going out to witness the end of mankind again would be a red flag in itself. But not for these unquestioning Camp-ites. They are doubly sure this time because they were wrong the time before.
Different year, same result. No rapture. And Camping gets a mulligan.
That’s right. Camping has spoken. Turns out that the rapture did occur on Saturday. I figured as much… as though he might suggest that us linen-wearing, indiscriminate meat-eaters weren’t good enough to be spared, but he chose the more “loving Jesus” approach to the whole thing.
Camping’s explanation for why the rapture failed to happen is simple. Jesus reappeared and took a look at humanity and his big-old Jesusy heart just couldn’t bear to put us through all that torment. But have no fears, Camping isn’t backing off from his original October deadline for the actual end of the world. He’s just saying that Christ didn’t have the heart to rapture his loyal followers up to sky-candy land. Seems that this pang of conscience didn’t extend to not actually killing everyone and sending the vast majority to an eternity of suffering in Hell.
I’m sure Camping lost some of his flock, but if even one person is still clinging to the ramblings of this deranged old kook it is one too many. Come to think of it, I feel the same way about Jesus.
A Letter to the Pope: Saint Starbucks
by Noah Lugeons
Yet again, the papacy has spent a week highlighting its own ineptitude. The reign of Pope Benedict XVI continues to be marked by a long and embarrassing series of revelations as to the depth of the sex abuse scandal, broken only by misguided and increasingly asinine attempts to recover their public image.
This week began with the pope issuing yet another new guideline for dealing with accusations of clerical abuse. Yet again the report failed to recognize the institutional role in the scandal and again put the power over these matters in the hands of the local bishops who have the greatest incentive to cover things up. This latest revision reduces the focus on outside groups unaffiliated with the church. What’s worse is that they continue to act as though the correct response to this abomination is to handle it within the church rather than allow the courts to deal with it in the way that secular societies demand.
But this was only the first fuck-up this week and Pope Benny is nothing if not an overachiever. To further embarrass the pontiff, a new report was released a few days later detailing a long study of the root causes of the unchecked pedophilia. The study, funded entirely by the church and collected from data provided entirely by the church, took four years and cost upwards of $2 million.
The John Jay College of Criminal Justice published the findings of the report a few days ago and strangely enough, very little of the blame was placed on the institution itself and its policy of 3-pedophile-Monte. Instead, they chose to blame those damn kids with their long hair and their rock music.
Through it all, Pope Benny hangs his head in shame and wishes old Harold Camping had been right about the rapture. He’s tried his damnedest to produce a newsworthy story about Catholics that doesn’t include the words “child” and “molestation” in conjunction. They’ve put John Paul in the beatification express line and waived all the normal waiting periods and traditional taboos in hopes of cashing in on the popularity of the pope who actually presided over the pedophilia scandal. But it’s not enough.
Well, ever since he pulled me free from that alligator infested phone booth (remind me to tell you the story sometime), I feel like I owe Pope Benny and in his hour of need I want to be there for him. So I’ve come up with an idea that might help take the focus of their literal translation of the whole “coming unto the children” bit: E-Bay Canonizations.
Think of the potential here. The Vatican could engage a younger, more internet savvy audience, they could raise some money to make up for the billions they’ve paid out in hush money to rape victims, they would get new pagan idols to pray to and, best of all, the outrage would take some of the focus off the sex abuse scandal and the Catholic Church’s appalling stance on contraception.
I can see the papacy resisting this idea, of course. If you just offer sainthood to the highest bidder than you couldn’t end up venerating PZ Myers or Steven Colbert so I also come bearing a plan B. You could just establish a market rate for sainthood and attach a rider that allows you to boot us heretical non believers. I would imagine any company that does heavy business in South America would be happy to pay a premium for an officially recognized canonization.
If that’s too much, you could even give existing saints sponsors. I could see a defense attorney shelling out big bucks to sponsor Saint Jude. Blue Cross/Blue Shield could start a bidding war with Humana over Saint Luke. For a smaller fee, a local doctor could sponsor Saint Werenfridus, the patron saint of stiff joints.
I know this idea might sound extreme, but it will cost a hell of a lot less than your bullshit study and it couldn’t possibly make you look stupider than you look endorsing a study that blames your institutional indiscretion on the Love Generation.
Crucifying Straw Men
by Noah Lugeons
The collective voice of the non believers cried out in a chorus of criticism this week as a small contingent of Christian kooks camped out to await the rapture. Twitter was alive with jokes like “No rapture? Don’t sweat it. It’s not the end of the world”, “If the rapture doesn’t happen Saturday Christianity’s cancelled right?” and “So can I have the Vatican when you’re gone?” We laughed at their gullibility. We laughed at their mindless adherence to a numerological interpretation of a poorly written compendium of ancient mythology. But between the jokes and insults, we also roundly criticized them for perpetuating such a moronic belief.
Of course, Saturday came and went with the same number of raptures as the Saturday before that and now as Harold Camping’s disillusioned followers slowly start to reassemble their lives. Largely we’ve stopped picking on them and moved back to picking on Christians and faithful folks in a more general sense.
But there’s also been a backlash against our criticism. Many within the religious community are now faulting the atheists for “attacking the extremes”. This is a pretty common critique; that non believers find the most outlandish and ridiculous examples of Christianity and then hold them up as examples as though they represented the average Christian. When Bill Maher’s film Religulous debuted, the majority of critics accused him of only showing the lunatic fringe of faith without mentioning that it was not an accurate representation of Christians in general.
But is that a fair criticism? Do we really only attack straw men? And if we do, is that really a bad thing?
This weekend provides the perfect example. Sure, an overwhelming majority of Christians were not expecting the rapture to occur yesterday. They correctly predicted that Harold Camping and his ministry were full of shit. So is it fair to paint all Christians with the same brush strokes you use to cover these religiou-tards?
Well, I would argue that it is. The rational people rejected Harold Camping because he was an idiot numerologist that thinks the bible is the word of god. The religious people rejected Harold Camping because they thought he had the math wrong.
Christians expend a lot of effort trying to distance themselves from the more extreme end of their spectrum. When Fred Phelps protests at military funerals, the Jesus-ites are quick to remind us that he is doesn’t speak for them. He is a small and insignificant extremist with a warped view of Christianity and they cannot be judged by his nonsense any more than atheists can be judged by the random mental ejaculations of Joe Rogan.
On its surface, that seems like a fair argument. After all, you can’t say Catholics are murderers just because Hitler was a Catholic. You can’t say that scientists are all full of shit just because Andrew Wakefield was a scientist. If you don’t bother to examine it very deeply, the charge that we attack straw men seems fair.
But it isn’t. Fred Phelps didn’t decide that God Hated Fags. It’s written right there in the Christian instruction book. Harold Camping didn’t decide that the world was going to end like the intro to a Michael Bay movie, it’s a major tenet of their faith. These people are simply taking the accepted beliefs of the larger group and carrying them to their logical conclusion.
When Christians faulted Camping by quoting Matthew 24:36 they acted as though this was somehow less stupid than Camping’s original claims. But polls show that the majority of Christians do believe in the same fanciful crap that he was selling. How can you fault one man for assigning it a date without also faulting the moronic set of beliefs that got him there?
Socially conscious Christians do their best to sweep the fundamentalists under the rug. They like to pretend that these are just the insane ramblings of someone who “doesn’t get” Christianity. But all the fundamentalists do is take the crap that mainstream preachers pretend to believe seriously. Some pastors and parishioners might tell these stories with a nod and a wink, but how can they fault someone for taking them seriously when they say that to do otherwise is a ticket to eternal damnation?
Fundamentalism is a predictable and even necessary offshoot of religion. Anyone who endorses the bible as the “word of god” is guilty of fostering them. Anyone who has ever given a dime to a church is guilty of harboring them. Anyone who ever told their children that there was a lake of fire where the bad people spend eternity is responsible for creating them.
Christianity cannot divorce itself from the extremists until they admit publicly that the bible is just a collection of prehistoric essays. Until they admit that Jesus has no more substance than Santa Claus, they are just as guilty as the people holding the protest signs or giving away their worldly belongings in time to get raptured.
You can’t blame an idiot for being an idiot. The only recourse is to stop feeding the stupid.
Camping Out
by Noah Lugeons
I watched it all. I had the good fortune of being in the streets of Manhattan at precisely 6 pm, just when the rapture was not happening.
The group has been there all week. They’ve been everywhere, actually, plaguing the city like a dumber version of New York’s sewer rats. They’ve been handing out pamphlets, preaching to innocent people waiting on the walk light, waving end-of-the-world signs around and reminding New Yorkers that there are worse infestations to have than bed bugs.
I’m talking, of course, about the missionaries sent out into the world by one Harold Camping. His “precise” “calculations” were enough smoke and mirror to inspire plenty of mathematically challenged dim wits to follow him into the wild broke yonder. But it wasn’t enough for them to sell their property, pull their children out of school and quit their jobs. They wanted you to come too.
I’ve passed them almost everyday over the last couple of weeks. I’ve choked down clever insults throughout. As I watch them in their devoted fervency I don’t know whether to feel sorry for them or mock them. So I mock them. They cringed when I said “see you tomorrow” yesterday.
But today I could not bring myself to say a word. I got off of work early enough to be on the subway by 5:30, but I made excuses to stick around. They were still there in the streets and I couldn’t leave until I saw their reaction.
I wish that this was the part of the blog where I embedded a time-lapse You-Tube video of their growing disappointment. I was unprepared for my reconnaissance mission today so instead I’ll simply leave you to imagine the slow and dramatic shift in facial expressions that I witnessed between 5:58 and 6:02.
For many of them you saw the whole spectrum of facial nuance. Fear, acceptance, joy, impatience, confusion, disbelief, sadness and anger passed by in quick succession as the minutes ticked away and they all started to wonder if the good lord knew about day light saving time. Much of the crowd looked heavenward, shielding their eyes from the setting sun and waiting in palpable anticipation for the clouds to part and Ted Nugent to appear behind them.
That much I expected. Hell, that was the show I’d been waiting around for. That part didn’t surprise me.
What surprised me is that you really had to look for it. You see, the faces in the crowd that were filled with emotion were in the minority and the ones filled with genuine emotion were rarer still. Perhaps many of them were too stoic to bear their inner feelings. Perhaps they’d already heard that the rapture had failed to occur in every time zone between the International Date Line and Labrador. But I find another explanation far more likely.
Perhaps they knew they were full of shit.
I don’t doubt that many of them were completely snowed by Camping’s fraudulent hysteria. I would say that at one time even the majority of them were blinded by their desire to live in the end times. But I suspect that as the day drew nearer the conviction began to fade. I suspect that by 6:00 pm, not a damn one of them actually thought that the rapture was on its way.
I visited with a friend downtown before heading home. On the way, I swung by the spot on 6th Avenue where I’d seen them and to my surprise most of them were still there, still wearing the same dejected expressions they’d worn when I happened by them before. I was left wondering if any of them had a place to stay that night. It would have been pretty disingenuous, after all, to pay for an extra night at the hotel. It might well be that the stragglers I saw tonight were broke, homeless and estranged from their family because of the lunatic they chose to follow.
I think of the 7th Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and I feel that I understand them so much more. These people will have no choice now but band together in their destitute humiliation. What other church would have them after this fiasco? Rather than admit to their own gullibility, they will continue to elevate the con-artists that brought them here and they will continue to praise the con-artist prop that lives in the clouds.
Think of the parents of these drifting, wayward automatons. The majority likely tried to talk their offspring out of such a bastardization of the scripture. Many of them likely tried desperately to reason with them while they were selling their homes and cashing in their retirement. Many of them failed and then sat miserably at home wondering what went wrong.
Teaching your children that magic exists and that anybody who invokes the name Jesus can wield it has consequences. When you raise them on lies you make them easy prey for liars. How can you reason a person out of one ridiculous belief if you’re trying to move them to another, equally ridiculous belief? The mainstream churches have been quick to disavow Camping and his followers, but they won’t go as far as to disavow the product that he is selling. The rallying cry of “don’t believe bullshit unless it’s our bullshit” doesn’t inspire the customer as much as you’d think.
So I implore the Christians of New York City to go out and clean up the mess they made. Open your home to one of these idiots while they get on their feet again. Wander around the city with a tent. Bring a chicken dinner to Chicken Little. You’re the one’s who sold these vulnerable minds the foundation of nonsense that Camping exploited. It’s the least you could do.
Apoca-lip-service
by Noah Lugeons
What? No apocalypse? No rapture? No dead rising from the grave? No Christians being carried to heaven on a sunbeam? Who would have guessed it?
Like me, I’m sure that you’re sick of hearing about the sputtering doomsday prediction. Even well before the anticlimactic hour arrived just west of the International Date Line, I was already bored with the jokes and the inane ALL CAPS Facebook posts warning us of our impending death-by-brimstone. We marvelled at how easily people could be drawn in by the spectacle of a person who was predicting the world’s end for the 2nd time. We listened as dumb people argued with dumber people about whether or not anyone would know the date of the rapture.
I’ve planned for several weeks to debut this blog on the day of the crapture but as it drew nearer I started to wonder if there was too much saturation. I started to wonder if the internet had room for yet another person poking fun of the nimrods that sold everything they owned on the word of a guy who claims to be a biblical scholar despite having no qualification beyond an engineering degree. I feared that there were no jokes left unuttered, no insults left unhurled.
But as I scrolled through the unforgiving depths of cyberspace, I started to notice one point that was not being made. It was so glaringly obvious to me that I expected to refer to it with a quick quote and a hyperlink and yet I couldn’t find anyone who was saying it. I’m sure I’m not the first to posit the question, though I’m surprised that such an important inquiry would manage to get buried under so many less important criticisms.
Why the fuck isn’t Harold Camping sitting in a jail cell right now?
Okay, sure. He has the right to believe whatever bullshit he wants. He even has the right to say whatever bullshit he wants. But he doesn’t have the right to sell it. What’s more is that even a cursory glance at his business practice demonstrates with all but certitude that he didn’t believe a damn word he was saying.
Family Radio (Camping’s “non-profit”) still had their employees scheduled to work this week. That, of course, proves nothing. Camping never said that the world was going to end today, but rather that the rapture would occur. For all their upper management knew there were some closeted heretics in their ranks and it would be damned presumptuous for them to assume that all their employees were going heavenward on the conga-line of immortality. Surely one or two of them would have unforgiven sins or last second impure thoughts that would hold them at the station. The schedule was just there for the ones that got left behind.
Many also faulted them when the station presented a 5 day forecast the other day with no mention of brimstone or frog-rain. But, of course, other than the earthquake and the rising dead Camping’s theological diarrhea wouldn’t have effected meteorology. Even after the rapture us unlucky heathens would still need to know whether or not to bring an umbrella so that makes sense as well.
But CNN reports that the hypocrisy goes much deeper. The organization has filed for tax deferments on payments that wouldn’t be due until after the October 11th “whole-world-destroyed” date. They still had a holiday schedule printed that included things like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even the upper echelons of the business didn’t bother cashing in their 401k in time for the rapture. Sure, they encouraged their followers to give up on all their worldly possessions, but they weren’t convinced enough to do the same.
At a certain point this goes from tongue-in-cheek to knife-in-back. As easy as it is for me to sit back with my fully functioning cranial facilities and laugh at all the dumb-assses that bought into Chicken Little’s latest prediction, we’re also talking about gullible people getting bilked, lied to and left penniless as the rapture fails to materialize. As of 2009, Camping’s ministry had fucked its loyal adherents out of about $80 million. Up to about $73.08, that was funny. After that it is simply criminal.
Camping should be arrested for fraud. Sure, all preachers are committing fraud and I’m of the mind that the vast majority of them know good and well that the word their selling is nonsense. If a preacher actually believed there was an all-powerful, all-knowing, magical, omnipresent, jealous, vengeful deity watching over them, I think they’d be a little slower to speak for him. But in this unique case we can prove the deceit beyond any reasonable doubt.
The leaders of the Christian church (or any religion for that matter) are detestable scum that live well off charity they’ve guilted from those who cannot afford it. They prey on the poor and the ignorant, they don’t hesitate to use brutal psychological tricks against defenseless children and they do it all while somehow maintaining an aura of moral superiority.
In the end, I feel like I owe Harold Camping and Family Radio a thank you. If nothing else, they’ve helped to demonstrate that there is no amount of fraud one can commit in the name of religion that will be punished. No amount of deceit will be prosecuted. There is no limit to the amount of extortion one can get away with as long as they remember to say Jesus often enough.
The Scathing Atheist 