I've heard that only about 100,000 people believe in Harold Camping's May 21st prediction.

[LoZoccolo]

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. That's 100,000 too many.

[LoZoccolo]

2. I don't see why there needs to be thread after thread about it in any case.

[originalpckelly]

3. That's a lot of people who might do something drastic.

:-(

[LoZoccolo]

5. I spent some time listening to Family Radio a few days ago and they seem pretty reserved.

[originalpckelly]

10. Have you run into any of them?

:shrug:

I have.

Motherfucker rolling a giant ass cross down the 16th Street Mall here in Denver.

They have invested so much in this.

So many have quit their jobs to spread the word. (This would be his closest followers, not the 100,000.)

It's just not a good situation.

[LoZoccolo]

16. No, but that sort-of helps my argument.

I live in a really big city (Chicago) and the only thing I've seen is one of the advertisements on the side of a bus. If they were stockpiling weapons and hiding out in some barricaded compound I might be worried, but this radio network had a longstanding reputation for not even getting involved in electoral politics (Wikipedia says that they stopped airing Focus on the Family because they thought it was too political), so I don't have any reason to believe that they'll be involved in violence. There have been predictions like this before, and not much of anything has happened.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. Well, you just started another one.

:D

[LoZoccolo]

6. This thread is now "meta".

[Liberal_in_LA]

14. hee!

[Boojatta]

7. Amazing!

144,000 people will be raptured, but only 100,000 of them believe in the rapture.

[Speck Tater]

8. Now that we have established the lower bounds for the possible number of morons in the country...

I wonder what the upper bounds is.

[Fumesucker]

11. 27% at a minimum..

It's really creepy how that 27% keeps popping up in poll after poll to support the most deranged things..

[LetTimmySmoke]

9. He doesn't care how many people actually believe the prediction.

It's all about generating publicity for his radio station and website so he can make more $$$$$.

This whole thing is one giant advertising campaign.

[regnaD kciN]

12. True...

Rapture-believers (in general) only make up a fraction of U.S. fundamentalists/evangelicals...who themselves only make up about 20% of American Christians. Belief in a Rapture has no place in the mainstream Protestant, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox denominations that make up the rest. And, when I mean "no place," it isn't that they have an official position; they just regard the whole idea (which is taken from a bizarre interpretation of a passage in 1 Thessalonians that speaks of something quite different) as so absurd that it doesn't even merit consideration.

And that's talking about those who believe in an eventual Rapture someday, as opposed to one that can be predicted; most of that ilk would also quote the Gospels where Jesus says that no one but God the Father knows when the end will come.

And, needless to say, Rev. Camping doesn't exactly have the greatest track-record, as he has predicted the rapture at other times, then discovered he'd "miscalculated" when it didn't happen. No doubt we'll see the same again from him.

Seriously, I'd say that at least 95% of those currently talking about May 21st are those making fun of it, whether mainstream Christians ridiculing their more-fundy counterparts, or non-religious types seizing on this to "disprove" Christianity as a whole. For most Christians I know, Camping's prediction is regarded as being on the same level of general amusement as Bishop Usher's long-ago calculation that the beginning of Creation ("Let there be light") took place in 4004 B.C., on October 28th, at around 8 A.M. (for some reason, they never give a time zone for that). ;-)

[kimi]

15. Yep, I agree with this

I'm one of those Christians who is ridiculing. Well, I have a dim view of fundies anyway, but this is just so much fun for me. Camping may be getting publicity, but an awful lot of it is negative publicity, IMO.

[elocs]

13. Out of 2 billion Christians worldwide, that is probably about right.

The majority of Christians in the world do not believe in a rapture of any kind. They do believe in the second coming of Christ, but that is not the same thing as the false doctrine of the rapture.

The problem here at DU, where so many are at best nonreligious and quite often mockingly anti-religious is that so many are out of their depth when it comes to understanding traditional Christian religious doctrine and so they are clueless when it comes to understanding who believes what or even "what" may be. I would be very surprised if there were many here who actually know anything about the rapture more than they have read in an article.

[regnaD kciN]

18. It's not just DU that is ignorant of religious doctrine...

The general media, for years, have avoided writing substantively about religious issues, on the grounds that, whatever they might print, it will be sure to offend somebody. Moving from print media to the somewhat-more-sensationalistic electronic form, the ignorance remains but, since they realize that they have to cover religious controversies in some way, their first step is to look at those who are in the same "game" (i.e. electronic media) as they are -- in other words, the televangelists and those with "electronic churches" on cable channels. Thus we get mainstream news programs touting a Jerry Falwell or a Pat Robertson as "the voice of American Christians," even while most American Christians are wishing such "voices" would just shut up.

[elocs]

19. No, certainly not just DU, but Christians themselves who swallow things like the rapture

hook, line, and sinker without ever studying it for themselves. Kind of like Republicans who simply parrot what they have been told by someone else.

[Bonhomme Richard]

17. What pisses me off is that their vote counts the same as mine. n/t