… and some people are as happy as pigs in swill about it:
Is it time to get excited? I can’t help the way I feel. For the first time in my Christian walk, I have no doubts that the day of the Lords appearing is upon us. I have never felt this way before, I have a joy that bubbles up every-time I think of him, for I know this is truly the time I have waited for so long. Am I alone in feeling guilty about the human suffering like my joy at his appearing some how fuels the evil I see everywhere. If it were not for the souls that hang in the balance and the horror that stalks man daily on this earth, my joy would be complete. For those of us who await his arrival know, somehow we just know it won’t be long now, the Bridegroom cometh rather man is ready are not.
The entire thread is just post after post of people being all excited about the fact that Jews and Muslims are blasting the shit out of each other over there because they think it means Jesus is about to show up. Yay for war and death and destruction!
Boy are they ever going to end up disappointed in the end.
Sickening.
Isn’t this just like the occasions when some farmer’s wife has a vision that the virgin Mary is going to appear? About 1000 fools show up to gape at the sky over the cornfield. The appointed time comes. Then passes. One by one they shrug and wander away. What I really enjoy is the last few wide-eyed tremblers who stick it out until weather makes them leave or the farmer get tired of bringing them food. Gimme a fucking break.
I’d rather be Left Behind than be taken up with those callous idiots.
A friend related a story from her old workplace. Back in the 80’s she caught a coworker pouring caustic chemicals down the drain of a sink rather than disposing of them properly.
She started chewing that person out, trying to explain that this chemical is Very Harmful to the ecosystem. The person’s response?
“It doesn’t matter, Jesus is coming soon.”
That was over 25 years ago. Maybe she meant the South Park Jesus character? He finally showed up.
There’s nothing more pathetic than living your life waiting for an apocalypse that never comes, and 100% of these revelation believers fall into that category.
Now is that wonder when Daddy’s little war criminal himself is encouraging it?
ACtually there is: The fact that they use it as pretence for not giving damn about important things and as release pass from thinking.
Les, I was searching for an entry you wrote and came across this.
Yeah, they’re sick, but they have some too-cool-for-school smileys. Can’t we have the raptured fundy smiley here too, Les?
Justice, yes… and?
Zilch, I’ve been meaning to replace the smilies EE uses for awhile now. Just been too lazy to actually do it.
I wish I could post there without signing up. I’d love to post just one “you people are foolish and your attitudes are disgusting” sort of post.
I still can’t get used to people wanting the world to end… no matter how many times I read it.
If I were the God they all supposedly serve, I’d be irritated they are not trying to protect and take in more of something I worked damn (
) hard to create – not rejoycing because they could give a rats ass about the rainbow and only want the gold.
Selfish f*ks…
(Sorry about the language… that forum really irked me…)
It looks like a blogger blog, though the address wasn’t off… I wasn’t sure what it was, and it happened once that a blog called “Baghdad Burning” was copied in its entirety to another blog with a very similiar address, and then the entries were slowly and subtly changed.
Guess its nothing though.
i feel sick. it’s sad that we have to share our world with people like this.
Justice, it’s just SEB using the site default template (I think). Nothing nefarious going on.
That it is.
They sound exactly the same as little kids waiting for Santa.
Hmm, that gives me an idea…
Bleh, news about people getting excited about The end of Times makes me sick.
My Family is Nuts
I find it especially hard when my family or friends get that fevered light in their eyes and start to become giddy about it. Around a month ago I was sitting down at dinner with my parents and siblings when the topic turned to how bad they thought things were getting and how it wouldn’t be long until the second coming of Jesus.
It is hard to describe how weirded out I was. There is something particularly strange about people who are normally very good, but get very excited about other’s suffering. It becomes even odder when they say they are hoping things will get worse.
I decided to inject a bit of reality and spoke up. Note, my parents and siblings know I’m atheist, so it wouldn’t be that big a shock to them that I would disagree. Anyway, I started asking them about various times in history and if they thought we were better off now as opposed to back then. They reluctantly agreed with each of the examples I gave. After a short while conversation turned to less frightening and more mundane things.
Hmph… After dinner, talk turned back to The Sign of the Times. They were much more reserved about it and didn’t seem quite as zealous. I was glad that they weren’t reveling in peoples misfortune. I wasn’t all that thrilled with their talk about how nice they thought their heavenly rewards would be after the second coming, or which prophecies they thought had been fulfilled. I swear, it was like watching little kids get all excited for Christmas. Wistfully wondering what Santa would bring them.
As the only one not enraptured with the conversation, I decided to leave for home much earlier than I would normally. While there have been times like that in the past with my family, for some reason it bothered me more this time. It took several days for the disappointment I felt to fade to the background. I think we should want to make things better for people. I think we should want to help if we can and not hope that people’s lives will be ruined because of a very odd and very perverted, fantasy.
As an FYI, I live in Salt Lake City, Utah. My friends and family are all LDS (Mormon).
My Friends are Nuts Too!
Speaking of friends, there have been a few times when they too have started talking about The Sign of the Times. It is pretty much the same stuff. They get excited about how bad they think things are getting, how much better they thought things must have been in the past, how nice heaven must be, etc…
With my friends it can get even weirder. They start talking about the LDS prophet and the Quorum of the Seventy (high level church officials) almost as if they were superheroes. They talk about how these old, decrepit men will do incredible things against evil in the end of days. I usually just sit there, wondering how my friends can be so batshit crazy sometimes and so sane other times. If these men are superheroes, why aren’t they doing things right now? Argh! Sadly, using logic or examples works much less with my friends than it does with my family. Who knows, it could be my family is just as unreasonable, just more polite and try to at least pretend they are less extreme.
Religious LARP’ing
It is so weird hearing grown adults get so excited about religious LARP’ing (Live Action Role Playing). You know, that is what they remind me of. People that have taken a make-believe system way too far. Taken it to the point where it compromises their compassion and judgment.
On a humorous side note, I sometimes find myself wondering if I should pull out my D20 dice (used in AD&D and roleplaying) and wondering if they would mind if I played a high powered mage. “Lightningbolt!” “Lightningbolt!” Video on Google
Wow, Todd. Your comments especially reminded me of my previous life as a fundie.
That was way back in the old days when we worried about all the nukes the Soviet Union had, things were heating up in Vietnam, and then there was the Six-day War.
I was just a young pup then, but I clearly remember how excited everyone was—they were all in a witnessing frenzy: It would not be long before Jesus came back and they wanted to save as many as possible.
All the talk everywhere was about what the rapture was going to be like—and how it would occur. Would planes drop out of the sky as Christian pilots disappeared? It was going to be soooo wonderful.
People made a special effort to be nice to me since my parents were Catholic and wouldn’t be making the trip.
Okay, sing with me all together now, “I wish we’d all been ready . . .”
Is it?
By the way, wasn’t it Shelley who had a relative in need of deprogramming?
That thread got merged with others – it’s now called “Events Speeding Up (Large Merge)”
And yes, it’s still disgusting. I’m actually hoping the Rapture happens so we’ll be rid of all the sanctimonious weirdos. Then the rest of us can get on with working FOR peace instead of against it.
I think it is curable, but like any mental illness, the sufferer has to want help.
BTW, PZ has found the merged thread. His take on it is, as usual, quite entertaining.
Surprise, surprise, the Rapture-Ready thread has also turned into a Coulter-love fest.
You know, I’m a long way from agreeing with Nunya that all religious believers are mentally ill, but the more I learn about fundamentalists, the more inclined I am to view them as suffering from one or more mental disorders.
Documentaries like Dawkin’s The Root of All Evil and Flemming’s The God Who Wasn’t There do not improve my mood, either.
Look on the bright side. We are going to be stuck outside hell, ‘cos it’s going to be too full of full of fundies
(‘Hey Jesus you puke, when you said love thy neighbour, you didn’t say you really menat it’)
So, who wants to tell the Rapture-Ready people that the book of Revelations (where they get their beliefs from) is just a political paper? I saw it on the History channel somewhere, I think..
According to wiki it’s a rather recent invention and neither the word nor concept appears in Scripture.
Pharyngula points to some entertaining threads here, here and here.
Me too (guess that dates me). Funny how these things stick.
Oh yes. The kid is still a serious fundie (flat-earth type—converted by Kent Hovind). He has given up annoying the living hell out of me with emails in which he calls me an “evil scientist” (I especially love that one).
Actually, he consulted a friend of mine from my religious days who warned him off trying to convert me—both because I know the bible better than he does AND because (get this):
“Since Shelley was saved before, she’s going to heaven even though her beliefs have changed. Jesus has his hand on her.”
So, I’m good to go! All bases covered! You’ve got to love that.
One more thing—Kent Hovind’s tax evasion stuff? According to my relative, it is all a trumped up charge—a conspiracy.
Gotcha
Luckyjohn19—Thanks for that reference to the wiki site—I did a wander through notations on Darby and dispensationalism and so on. I’d forgotten a lot of this stuff about the “coming tribulation” and so on.
I am laughing so hard I don’t even know how to answer that one.
LOL…
http://prickwear.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=618
So, when do we start saving up for that little island that we can buy and start our own country upon?
I know. Not really viable solution. Just being sarcastic.
I think people who are fervent about the end coming are focusing on the “savior of the chosen” (of which they believe themselves to be apart of…). Not to mention the belief that the delivered chosen are destine to get whisked away to Utopia (uh Heaven) while the rest of us rot.
Or something like that…
Freeeeeking lunatics
As long as it’s not Jesus “Groping” Christ.
ET, it took me a moment to see the X on the trash.
It’s hard to pick a favourite.
How about: “Guns Don’t Kill People, Just Ask Dick Cheney – T Shirt”
Some aspiring new Sci-Fi writer needs to start another “Left Behind” Series. This one needs to tell the story of how wonderful life becomes for the rest of when all the christers are raptured away. Oh, wait, it probably wouldn’t be nearly violent and bloody enough……