Filed under: Media | Tags: doomsday, fraud, Harold camping, media, reaction, the end of the world, the rapture
My profuse apologies to all who’ve been checking here to read what I’ve been writing – a blend of relative financial destitution, as well as being busy with other writings (the biggest change being my job writing for ShortFormBlog) has to this point absorbed much of the energy I could’ve been spending here. Moving into the summer, however, I intend to be producing much more than usual. For those noble amongst you who’ve been waiting three months for part two of my post about Uganda’s anti-homosexuality legislation, you will get it, though not on this particular occasion.
What I’ll consider instead is some reflection on what’s recently transpired in the world of religious zealotry, and in the exploitation of a dismal number of grossly trusting people. As you had likely heard, yesterday was the day proclaimed by a longtime Christian talk radio host named Harold Camping that the world would be plunged into “the rapture,” a Christian endgame in which the blessed would ascend into heaven, leaving behind the non-believers to face their judgements from on high. Needless to say, this did not happen. This no doubt must have been a severe shock to Camping and his followers, especially since many of them specifically burnt through all their savings leading up to the average, lazy Saturday, either in service of spreading the word or simply to not leave any money unspent. While many might have limited sympathy for somebody so recklessly credulous (I don’t think I can bring myself not to feel sympathetic for somebody taken in by such a fraud, especially because of the hell threat Christianity wields), I think everybody could agree the children in these families, now without a penny or a plan, have been failed in a spectacular and terrible way.
I’ll admit up front that my position on organized religion is pretty hostile. Not the religious themselves, mind you – faith has never caused discord in my personal relationships. My opinions on the topic are probably closer to those of Christopher Hitchens than any of the other modern atheist intellectuals, which is to say I could be called an anti-theist – both almost absolutely certain there’s no god, as well as philosophically opposed to what a god universe would mean by any standard of human morality. It would be disingenuous to say this doesn’t inform my perspective on stories like this. I have never made arguments about faith, however, that I don’t believe stand on pretty strong foundations, and I welcome any good or bad natured challenges anybody would like to put to me on the matter.
I bring this up because what bothers me most about the Rapture That Wasn’t has squarely to do with the outsized respect and deference religious claims are given by our society. That the world was not going to end yesterday, at least unless by an explicable event quite unlike what Harold Camping had in mind, is essentially a matter of scientific fact. It is as certifiably false to make that prediction as any fantastical claim that most modern Christians might dismiss with a scoff – a galactic space emperor named Xenu, for example. A news outlet covering the Harold Camping story would be entirely factually correct to make the following statement at the conclusion of their coverage: “Harold Camping’s claims of a coming Doomsday are based on his own interpretation of Christian theology, and have no scientific credibility. As such, people who spend their life savings in advance of the day will find themselves and their families destitute.”
There’s nothing in that comment that anybody could call inaccurate by any standard of journalism, and it isn’t prescriptive. It’s a simple explanation of the scam we all watched unfold in painfully slow motion. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear even something that mildly candid? But such candor will likely continue to be in short supply, unless people who make their living on fantastic faith claims begin
being held subject to the kind of hard, skeptical examination that the implausibility warrants.
In the case of Harold Camping, maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. If you’re willing to throw away a life that’s taken decades to build on the say so of an 89-year-old doomsayer who incorrectly predicted the same thing back in 1994, you may be well below the base level of skepticism at which Brian Williams reminding you it’s nonsense has any bearing. Notwithstanding, I have trouble envisioning a better way to make things like this happen less often than to be that blunt about it over an extended period of time. Whether such reporting could take place (again, despite being unimpeachably credible) in the ever faithful U.S. Is quite another story.
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