Math makes it insidious
All this business about the rapture has been affecting my life in a ridiculously annoying way for the past three years.
I have never understood the pull of religious devotion. I tried it, and I can say with no uncertainty that it is not for me.
Without getting in to any real religious debate, because I'm not in to trying to push my beliefs on anyone, I need to say a few things about Harold Camping.
I get that you, Harold, have spent nearly half of your life engrossed in your study of that book; nobody could do that for anything without conviction. But this doomsday denial is ridiculous. You spent decades crunching numbers and have come up wrong now twice. Once you blamed the math outright, next you say you took a too strictly literal interpretation. How do you now substantiate your new claims are taking into account the correct critical interpretation?
Furthermore, how can you so coolly dismiss the well-intentioned actions of those who believed you unquestioningly and blew life savings or crippled their retirement funds to spread your now-proven-incorrect information? You are materially comfortable yet remorseless, you owe some responsibility to those you misled.
So, why is the Harold Camping version of how shit is gonna go down so believable to rational people who saved responsibly for retirement then blew it on a failed advertising scheme of biblical proportions? The fact that it's based on mathematical calculations. Math is to the assured-of-their-own-rationality as heels are to strippers. An inseparable constant. When your rational mind tells you to check the math because this sounds unbelievable, Harold has done the math for you. He also wears you down with the repetitive language in his writings and provides so many examples of disembodied scripture (by this I mean that he slaps quotes all over his prose and re-explains them to the point of obscuring the original meaning in the way rhinestones are applied to a beauty pageant dress) that anyone who wants to believe can find something that makes sense to anchor that belief to. I can also make an argument that the cellphone I'm typing this on is magic. As long as I define technology as magical I have dissertation fodder.
Harold says his method is unique because he compares all passages to each other, and he comes to all that reading with the assumptions that the bible is the factual, literal word of god; that the bible contains information about the end of the world;and that if you pray hard enough, god will let you in on the secret. What Harold doesn't know because he was an engineer is that English majors have been interpreting all sorts of books in this same way for much longer than he has been alive to crank out theses. It is not new, unique or guaranteed to give insight and understanding. It is just applying a critical theory to a written work and noting interpretations of that work which support the critical theory.
Basically, Harold, you fucked up and you fucked a lot of people with your unreliable, fear mongering prediction. Rather than own your mistake and apologize like a decent human being, you are stringing it out as long as you can hoping your bullshit pans out. Though you say you are humble (and you probably believe it), you aren't. I know there have been reports of your health deteriorating. I hope not. Until October 22 I will be praying you stick around long enough to explain yourself to the people you've deceived.
I have never understood the pull of religious devotion. I tried it, and I can say with no uncertainty that it is not for me.
Without getting in to any real religious debate, because I'm not in to trying to push my beliefs on anyone, I need to say a few things about Harold Camping.
I get that you, Harold, have spent nearly half of your life engrossed in your study of that book; nobody could do that for anything without conviction. But this doomsday denial is ridiculous. You spent decades crunching numbers and have come up wrong now twice. Once you blamed the math outright, next you say you took a too strictly literal interpretation. How do you now substantiate your new claims are taking into account the correct critical interpretation?
Furthermore, how can you so coolly dismiss the well-intentioned actions of those who believed you unquestioningly and blew life savings or crippled their retirement funds to spread your now-proven-incorrect information? You are materially comfortable yet remorseless, you owe some responsibility to those you misled.
So, why is the Harold Camping version of how shit is gonna go down so believable to rational people who saved responsibly for retirement then blew it on a failed advertising scheme of biblical proportions? The fact that it's based on mathematical calculations. Math is to the assured-of-their-own-rationality as heels are to strippers. An inseparable constant. When your rational mind tells you to check the math because this sounds unbelievable, Harold has done the math for you. He also wears you down with the repetitive language in his writings and provides so many examples of disembodied scripture (by this I mean that he slaps quotes all over his prose and re-explains them to the point of obscuring the original meaning in the way rhinestones are applied to a beauty pageant dress) that anyone who wants to believe can find something that makes sense to anchor that belief to. I can also make an argument that the cellphone I'm typing this on is magic. As long as I define technology as magical I have dissertation fodder.
Harold says his method is unique because he compares all passages to each other, and he comes to all that reading with the assumptions that the bible is the factual, literal word of god; that the bible contains information about the end of the world;and that if you pray hard enough, god will let you in on the secret. What Harold doesn't know because he was an engineer is that English majors have been interpreting all sorts of books in this same way for much longer than he has been alive to crank out theses. It is not new, unique or guaranteed to give insight and understanding. It is just applying a critical theory to a written work and noting interpretations of that work which support the critical theory.
Basically, Harold, you fucked up and you fucked a lot of people with your unreliable, fear mongering prediction. Rather than own your mistake and apologize like a decent human being, you are stringing it out as long as you can hoping your bullshit pans out. Though you say you are humble (and you probably believe it), you aren't. I know there have been reports of your health deteriorating. I hope not. Until October 22 I will be praying you stick around long enough to explain yourself to the people you've deceived.