21 May, 2011

Apocalypse later: Surprise! No sign of The Rapture so far | Holy Post | National Post

Apocalypse later: Surprise! No sign of The Rapture so far | Holy Post | National Post
Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous23 May, 2011

    Hi Tim,

    In my opinion, Mr. Camping's cardinal sin is that he made his religious dogma specific and easily falsifiable. Had he left his apocalyptic musings vague and non-specific, his fellow Christians would not be tripping over themselves to point out his misguided “theology”. Remember – the only thing that separates most Christians from Mr. Camping is not his eschatology, but his insistence on pinpointing a specific date on the calendar.

    What Mr. Camping’s musings do is highlight two elephants in the sanctuary of all religious folks:

    • Any religious claim can comfortably exist, and even contradict our share observed reality, as long as it is vague. Take any religious claim – it enjoys longevity precisely because it avoids conflicting with what we can readily observe (e.g. Jesus rose from the dead – no body, no tomb, no contradictory evidence).
    • Even when a religious claim runs smack into the wall of reality, religious thinking can find a way to co-exist with the ensuing cognitive dissonance. For example, take the belief that a soul survives our physical death: the soul is nothing if not the essence of a human being (i.e. personality, perception et al). Nevertheless, our personality and perception can perish once the physical brain is damaged. But this is “no problema” for the religiously inclined – simply ignore the implications and double down your bets and insist that god magically smooths over the observed biological interdependence between mind and body.

    Even though Camping has failed spectacularly in his prophecy, I predict that he and his hardcore believers will emerge even STRONGER in their faith. Just like any other religious adherent who encounters a rude punch in the face from reality, he will pick himself up and see success in his failure.

    You guys share more in common with Mr. Camping than you care to admit.

    Cheers…Martin

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

About Fr. Tim

My Photo
A Roman Catholic Evangelical Priest of the Diocese of Pembroke, Canada. Shown in my profile photo with my canine companion, Mateo.

Followers of this blog:

Visitors to this page

Locations of visitors to this page

Blog Archive

Google Analytics