To all those followers of Mr. Camping who sold all their worldly possessions, cashed in their retirement accounts to rent billboard space, and devoted the last few months to traveling around the United States to warn of the imminent second coming of Christ -only to realize last Saturday that their dear Mr. Camping was, uh, mistaken... to you poor misguided fools I give my sincerest best wishes for the future. You're obviously gonna need plenty of well wishes and luck to make up for the stunning deficiency of common sense with which you've been afflicted.
From a purely Biblical standpoint, Matthew 24:36 clearly states (depending on your version of the Bible) "But of that day and hour knoweth no [man], no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only."
Yeah, you can't get much clearer than that. To in any way buy into the notion that some loony 89 year old self-professed Holy man with a civil engineering degree has the inside scoop on the second coming of Christ is pretty ridiculous. Even more so when you take into consideration that ol' Harold's been wrong TWICE before!
And herein lies my biggest problem with any form of organized religion. I don't care if we're talking about the Roman Catholic Church or the Westboro Baptist Church, these 'organizations' tend to rally around one central figure and take all their cues from that one person. For the Catholics it's the Pope, for the Westboro idiots, it's some guy named Fred Phelps, and for all the rapture retards, its Mr. Harold Camping. Somehow, magically, when you organize a couple people into a 'religious group' they're suddenly better and holier than everyone else and they gain all sorts of special powers, abilities, and insight into what God is thinking. In the process of such enlightenment, those fools relinquish of any and all common sense in exchange for a firm belief and adherence to anything their dear leader tells them. It's sad and it's pitiful that there are so many people in this world that are unable to think and do for themselves and fall to religion as a crutch and compass.
I take no issue with believing in God or a higher power. Please, by all means, believe what you believe! But, please, make sure your beliefs are YOUR OWN and not those of someone else who claims to be closer to God or that higher power than you are. Don't let anyone with a title or a large congregation or following try to tell you what to do. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the difference between wrong and right; good and evil. I have a hard time believing there are any hard and fast rules that you must follow in order to get to heaven or the next happy level of the afterlife. I think it can be whittled down to simply doing all you can to help your fellow man and try your best to leave this world in a better condition than when you entered it. Approach all things with love and understanding and there's not much chance of you doing the wrong thing. And whether it's God or Allah or Thor you believe in, you gotta expect that this deity is giving us all a little room for error and expecting us to screw up sometimes. It's in our nature. But I believe when you die, you'll stand before God or whatever higher power you believe in and be judged on your own merits. In other words what you did with the life you were given. If you spent it stealing, lying, cheating, and killing you can't logically expect much of a break in the afterlife. But if you led a good life, tried to be truthful and honest and helped make the world a better place I really don't think you have anything to worry about. Maybe I'm wrong, but it makes a whole lot more sense to me than the majority of the nonsensical rules and regulations put forth by the majority of the organized religions out there.
Quite frankly, I don't want a heads up when the world is about to end. But if it happens in my lifetime, I'm not going to lose any sleep worrying about. I'm confident that whatever the afterlife holds, I've scored enough atta-boys to enjoy it.
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