On Harold Camping and the Great Rapture Rodeo

In the interest of staying out of the pigeon-hole, I do believe in a God. No, it’s not YOUR idea of God. No, it’s not Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Satan, Cernunnos, Cthulhu, or the Great Spaghetti monster and that’s all you need to fucking know. I’m a faithful practitioner of George Carlin’s first commandment: Thou Shalt Keep Thy Religion To Thy Self. Call me an agnostic if you will but the one thing you should NOT do is lump me in with any group for no other reason than you’ve found it an easy shortcut to thinking.

When it comes to debate, I side with the atheists. From a logical standpoint, you HAVE to be an atheist. It’s not just because no one can prove that God exists, it’s because they really do have to be admired. It takes a lot of gumption to stand against the tide, specifically when you are outnumbered 300 to 1 (.4% of US population).

Now, your typical atheist could take the easy route. He could just sit back and say, "that’s just silly," when faced with religious dogma. It’s a great argument and would win in most circumstances. Instead, they have the tenacity to argue intelligently. The only trump card for a believer is his faith, which is kinda like a catch-22. "You have to have faith to believe and anything that challenges your faith is simply test of your faith." How convenient. Anything that might make you believe otherwise is a great way to drive your resolve even deeper. That’s pure genius. Most of the time arguing either way is time spent away from better pursuits like toenail grooming or catching up on missed Family Guys episodes.

Speaking of keeping religion to oneself: Harold Camping. Perhaps that’s all I need to say. His name makes a great punchline. "Why did Chicken Little think the sky was falling? Harold Camping." In case you live under a rock or have the enviable fortitude to ignore all media, Mr. Camping is the man behind the multi-million dollar website Family Radio. Camping recently put out that judgement day was decending upon us on May 21st 2011.

Allow me to share how he arrived at that date.
From the time of the crucifixion on April 11, 33 AD (shouldn’t that be Easter?) to May 21, 2011 is a total of 722,500 days. The number 722,500 is made up of two sets of an identical series of numbers: 5x10x17 x 5x10x17 = 722,500. Now, since the number 5 stands for atonement (stay with me) and 10 stands for perfection (just hang loose) and 17 stands for Heaven (it smells like ass, keep reading), this formula means, "Atonement has been completed for Heaven," and it is repeated twice for emphasis. Because, you know, God always says shit twice and loves math.

Harold, let me introduce you to the word Arbitrary. Definitions: 1) Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system 2) according to Camping and NOBODY ELSE.

When I heard about this, all I wanted was to knock on his door the day after "Judgement", stick a microphone in his face and say, "Explain yourself." Well, he’s explaining himself, now, and he says, get this, "I don’t know what could have gone wrong?"

Well, I have a few ideas.
The first and most logical is that some people are born without the "doubt gene." Doubt is what keeps most Christians, and even some Pastors, floating right in the middle between committing suicide to get to heaven faster and throwing the bible away in a fit of indifference. Have you ever noticed that? You can go to church every Sunday, listen to what someone else thinks God is and what he wants and offer up prayers that don’t come true because it’s God’s will (or maybe they do which suddenly becomes proof that he exists). But, as soon as someone says they’ve seen Jesus, heard God’s voice, seen a light, or noticed the Virgin Mary in their breakfast cereal they are branded as a lunatic. Oh, we’re real supportive when someone tells us of these revelations as we nonchalantly attempt to edge out of the room. We pretend to listen as we tap our watches and suddenly remember we have non-screwball people to go see. Strange, isn’t it? Try as you might to be a true-believer, the doubt just keeps creeping in when it comes to miracles. So, when Camping says the End is Nigh, we roll our eyes and say "Cukoo."

Of course, doubt carries a long feather has a way of hanging out in the back or our minds and indiscriminately tickling anything we think is true. So, on May 21st, even the most jaded of us spent a moment looking up at the sky. It’s that "What if" that caused Camping’s followers to travel around the country in an RV and spread this viral outbreak of proposed apocalypse. Is it possible that these people were born without the ability to doubt? Basing any theory about the end of the world on religious doctrine, hidden numbers, or even outright prophesy is the work of a flaky mind. But people BELIEVED.

Camping and crew are an easy target. But, you seriously can’t attack them without attacking all religion at some level. Once we say, "that’s silly" where do we stop? So, let’s take the opposite viewpoint. Let’s take into consideration the impossible concept that Camping is Dead-On. God put those numbers in his head, gave ol’ Harold the inspiration to find ‘em, and this past Saturday truly was the day of Rapture. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that God Himself has Made It So. Well, how do we account for the whole lack-of-Armageddon?

There’s only one answer: The rapture DID happen and none of us know anyone who took the Soul Train. It’s not coincidence that everyone who pre-boarded for their trip on Revelation Rail thought they had a reserved first-class seat. What’s the opposite of being humble? Proud? Conceited? Pretentious? Arrogant? Would they have looked forward to the day of departure if they knew they would be left standing on the prognostication platform? Did it EVER occur to Camping that he just wasn’t on the passenger list?

So, who made it aboard? There are thousands of disappearances every day, would we really miss the homeless guy who took a silent vow of poverty and chose to live in filth in return for a place in the sky? Would we miss a group of fanatical zealots who live in a compound in Alaska? Or, here’s a treat, maybe somewhere in the middle of the desert we’ll find a pile of bones indicating human sacrifice surrounded by a laundromat’s worth of empty clothing. Either way, those who were sucked up into the sky were the few who could, conceivably, come back down and do the Nyah-Nyah dance at the rest of us. They were the ones who were "right" while the rest of us were irrevocably destined to surf on a lake of fire.

I guess what I’m trying to say, here, is: "Who’s to say?" Of all the religions in the world, all of the denominations of Christianity, all of the off-shoots, the individual churches that want to do their own thing, and the fact that the religion means something different to each and every individual, we are now talking about literally billions of possible definitions of the word "good." Add in all of the rituals that may or may not be correct or followed correctly, the poor translations, misconceptions, outdated doctrine (like selling your children, etc), it’s like playing the telephone game over a thousand years (You know, the one you played in grade school where "Amanda has nice eyes" becomes "mint goat coffee fucker"). By that token, the very idea that it’s exclusively Christians that would be raptured makes as much sense as having a section in the library that only includes books with blue covers. So, what went wrong, Mr. Camping? Well, EVERYTHING.

So, off we go into our world of mediocre beliefs where no one is really sure what’s going on or how it will all turn out. It would be nice to have some firm ground to stand on, but we don’t. We never will. Only people like Camping who have selectively clamped their hands over their ears have any security at all. Always letting in what jives with their perceptions and ruling out what doesn’t. Always doing enough to stay on the good side of their religion but rationalizing bad behavior with "we just don’t know for sure." Let those without doubt cast the first stone.

For a while, I did entertain the idea that I may be one of the chosen few. Then, I wondered what I might have done in the past that would get me left behind. Cheating on taxes? Premarital sex? Eating animals? Could it be such misdemeanors like using the F-word or laughing at retards? What’s my definition of "good?" But then I thought, "that’s just silly."

For a moment, though, one man made me think about it. One man and his crazy numbers caused me to ponder the afterlife or lack thereof and to strengthen my position on religion.

And Harold be thy name.