But it’s still going to happen.

Yes— The all-merciful Christian God will be destroying the planet, as scheduled, on October 21st, 2011— according to colossal ass clown, Harold Camping:

“This is absolute proof that I am correct,” said Camping. “The rapture definitely took place, but there just wasn’t a soul worth saving [apparently including his own] so it went unnoticed. The world will still end in October, as planned.”

When asked why he, as a good Christian, hadn’t yet ascended at 6 PM California time, Mr. Camping offered little explanation, simply saying, “Why I am still here is irrelevant;  all I can do now is take the 80 million dollar surplus my organization has collected from religious donors to the Cayman Islands where I intend to work tirelessly spreading the word of God before the End of Days in October.”

Yes— the Cayman Islands.  You heard him— the Cayman Islands.  Because . . . um, because there are just oodles and oodles of lost souls there to be saved?  Right?

Well, NO.  As it turns out, The Caymans are already almost exclusively Christian.  Not exactly a place where “the fields are white for the harvest.”  And the Cayman Islands actually have more registered businesses than they have people; who number around only 52,000 on all three islands combined.  That’s about the size of, say, Port Orange, Florida.  But then, Port Orange isn’t the fifth largest financial center in the world, either— like the Cayman Islands are.

There are around 279 banks in the Caymans, with 260 of them operating on an “international basis”— with very limited domestic activity. But the financial services generated by these banks account for 55% of the total economy, and 36% of all employment.  So apparently, it’s a good, safe place to “tirelessly spread the word of God” before the End of Days this October.  And deposit eighty million dollars.

Or not. Thanks to the tempestuous location of the islands, more hurricane/tropical systems have been visited upon the Christians of the Caymans and their heathen banker neighbors than any other region in the Atlantic basin.  On average, they get bruised up or directly smitten every 2.23 years.  In 2004, category 5 Hurricane Ivan damaged or destroyed 85-95% of all the structures on Grand Cayman, which is barely above sea level to begin with.  But within two years, its infrastructure was nearly returned to pre-hurricane levels.  Thank you, God;  the tax shelters banks are all open again.

But I have digressed.  Now to be sure, the Grand Moff can just be dismissed as another filching loony from a galaxy far, far away.  And if the soft-headed, both in the press and the general population would have ignored him, we could be talking about more important things, like the alarming mean diameter of Newton Leroy Gingrich‘s ego, or the looming demise of the Republican Tea Party.  But it’s instructive to understand why the Moff is deranged, and why anyone capable of dressing themselves unaided would actually make life decisions based upon various assertions flowing from his lunacy.

“Concerning the accumulated fetish writings which various religionists hold as sacred books, it is not only believed that what is in the book is true, but also that every truth is contained in the book. If one of these sacred books happens to speak of the earth as being flat, then, for long generations, otherwise sane men and women will refuse to accept positive evidence that the planet is round.”
—The Urantia Book

Bible fetishists are, of course, not new, and predictions about the end of the world have at least been with us since the times of Christ, when men began confusing certain things they thought he said concerning the end of an age, his second coming, and the resurrection of sleeping souls.

Individuals like Harold Egbert use this confusing mix of partial truth and error, human dogma and superstition to concoct various rapture scenarios and the End of Days, basically pulling assorted nonsense out of their nether orifices until the somnambulant press gets a hold of it and helps turn it into a retirement fund rapture kitty for the 89 year old evangelist, who can now afford to drink muchos mimosas on the beach . . . until, of course, the chickens come home to roost on October 21st.

Evolutionary religion, the kind Harold and other fear-addled children prefer, makes no provision for change or revision. Unlike science, it doesn’t provide for its own progressive correction. Yet evolved religion still commands respect, because its followers believe it is The Truth; “the faith once delivered to the saints” must, in theory, be both final and infallible.  So when even a small-time evangelist like Camping blows the trumpet of doom, so to speak, the righteous just can’t imagine he could be wrong, and promptly send in their doomsday dues.

As human science and divine revelation continue to destroy the remaining childish doctrines and illusions of primitive religious beliefs, it becomes increasingly important to focus on the actual truths associated with the errors of religious thinking, and thereby correct our evolving philosophy and ethics to reflect true spiritual values; which is not nearly as emotionally exciting as doomsday scenarios where the wicked get what’s coming to’em.

Who can really say if Harold is just a garden variety swindler of the old school fundamentalism, or is genuinely duped by his own biblical machinations?  Well. God can, and he will.  But it will be business as usual on October 22nd.

Yes indeed, eventually God ends the mortal life of every last one of us.  Whether we sell the farm to line to pockets of some lying evangelist or some lying politician, we’ll all get a chance to meet our maker, and ask him point blank if we want to, “Was that guy full of shit, or what?!?

But those who somehow manage to wade through the contemporaneous social and cultural morass of so-called Christianity and other religions and come to know God and accept his exceedingly fine promise of eternal life— they are the truly lucky ones.  They’ll show up on the next world and feel right at home.
It’s the rest of mankind— including those who were bilked out of their savings by loonies like Harold— who will eventually awaken to find themselves enrolled in the kindergarten— literally, the children’s garden— of the next world;  what Urantians call “Mansonia One.”  And it is only then and there that they will truly begin to understand what all this crazy was really about.