Rapture

Ooh, look, another guy screaming “the end of the world is nigh!” and gaining worldwide media attention. Well, as I write this it is currently half-ten in the pm in the UK. So that means Australia and Japan are already well into May 22nd and guess what? No Rapture.

I personally think the concept of The Rapture is entirely disgusting and in fact unchristian. How can floating into the sky and watching everyone who doesn’t follow the same religion burn fit with love thy neighbour? It demonstrates how some are compelled to think terrible things about others; just because of what they believe in.

This end of the world stunt will be laughed off in the media for the next few days. It’s already started:

Doomsday-declarers will simply move on to the next prophesised judgement day, and never speak of this again. But if we look beyond the surface of this stunt, it gets truly depressing. Like always, these come with a human cost.

I don’t blame people for believing this stuff. That’s what faith is about, isn’t it? Why not be on winning side of Pascal’s Wager, just in case? It doesn’t make any sense, but we have stupid monkey brains whose prime instinct is for survival. People who believe this aren’t dumb – they’re misled.

Religion means something very personal to people, for whatever reason that may be. This belief is used and abused by people around the world to push their own self-interests into the public eye. The true meaning of what a religion stands for is distorted beyond belief, even so that it is contradictory to the fundamental pillars of that religion. But at what cost? There’s always a human cost. People go broke, people get ill, family connections are shattered beyond repair. People die. We’ll do good to remember that.