Saturday, May 21, 2011

The Rapture 2011 (Religion)

Dramatization...or is it?

So the rapture began May 21, 2011, and it turned out to be a big disappointment for all devout fundamentalist Christians out there.  It did not happen.  I waited outside my house all day with my hands raised for Jesus to take me to better places and wouldn't you know it, nothing happened.  Perhaps I missed it all during my frequent bathroom breaks, I'm sure Jesus would not want me entering heaven with my pants down.  Maybe me cursing his name for not rapturing me soon enough deterred him, who knows?

If at first you don't succeed, keep randomly
guessing.
How did this happen (or rather, not happen)? Who can I point my finger at? According to the major news outlets that have nothing better to do than report nonsense (FOX, CNN, MSNBC, they all reported on it), we could find that the man responsible for this prediction is none other than resident old fart, Harold Camping.

Harold Camping is a civil engineer turned radio show host, who is mostly known for his first prediction of the world's end in his book, 1994?.  Obviously, his book predicted it in 1994; however, he has stated in the book that he was almost (it only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades) positive.  This time, its the real deal.  Why so sure, you ask?  Simple, like most engineers, he turns to math, and like some fundamentalist Christian engineers, he adds a twist of the Bible in there as well.  This is what he came up with:  first, Christ died 4/1/33.  Second, the time between that day and 4/1/11 is 1,978 years.  Third, that multiplied by the number of days in a year 365.2422 is 722,449.  Fourth, the time between 4/1/11 and 5/21/11 is 51, add that to our last value and we get 722,500.  Lastly, apparently "Heaven," "atonement," and "completeness" have the numeric complements of 17, 5, and 10 respectively.  Now multiply those three numbers and then square the result (randomly, because it makes sense) and you get 722,500, the same result as before!!!  In your face, Pythagoras.
He'll come back when he's ready, and
rapture the living shit out of everyone.

So, what happened?  He used MATH (for Christ's sake) and it was obviously infallible.  Perhaps he should have accounted for the extra days in leap years.  Maybe he forgot that the time in each year changes slightly from year to year, currently about 365.2424.  Unfortunately, only Jesus really knows when the world is going to end so we'll just have to keep guessing until 3% of the world's population randomly disappear one day and the rest of us get to see a great fireworks show...o wait, the Bible says Jesus does not know either.  I'm sure Camping was so busy finding random numbers and performing seemingly random operations on them that he missed Mathew 24:36 where, apparently, Jesus says, "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only."  Seriously though, who reads the Bible now-a-days (especially if its your life's work), it's like a million pages.