Hang on – World Ending May 21st – so say the Religious

Just a small update today, and in light of our world ending I figure I would say a few things… first a pox on Statistics Canada for sending me a nasty census reminder to participate and secondly, promptly arranging to have the online census form bork out and be unavailable when I finally clear time to actually do the damn thing.

However, if the world is ending on the 21st, then I have it made in the shade!

“According to evangelical Christian leader Harold Camping, the world will come to an end this Saturday.

Camping, the 89-year-old leader of Family Radio Worldwide, predicts that the second coming of Jesus Christ will occur on May 21. Camping claims that those who have accepted Christ as their savior will rise into the air and join him in the sky before proceeding on to heaven, an event known in evangelical circles as “the rapture.”

Once the rapture occurs, those left behind will experience the wrath of God until the world is completely destroyed by fire on Oct. 21, 2011.”

Sounds like a bad deal except for the whole rapture part because then we will have less religious inanity to deal with for awhile.

“What is the inspiration for such unquestioning faith? Camping claims his prediction was derived from a mathematical analysis of the Bible. His doomsday calculus is the square of the product of 5 (which represents “atonement”), 10 (which represents “completeness”) and 17 (which represents “heaven”). That number — 722,500 — is equal to the number of days between Christ’s crucifixion and his return to judge the earth. According to Camping, Jesus is scheduled to arrive on May 21, 2011, 6 p.m. local time.

I guess it should have been obvious.

However, this isn’t the first time Camping has made such a prediction. Two decades ago, his mathematical gymnastics resulted in the prediction that the world would end in September 1994. When the world did not cease to be, Camping blamed it on a miscalculation, but the experience wasn’t a complete failure: the publicity he generated led to increased donations and book sales.”

Damn, he’s only been wrong once, and of course it was a ‘miscalculation’. Some days I think it would nice just to start my own cult and prey on the stupid to make money and live like a sultan for the rest of my days. (Yes I am watching the sock-gnome cult thread developing and taking careful notes, stay tuned). 

source : http://deadwildroses.wordpress.com