It appears that The Rapture leading to the end of the world predicted by a Christian radio broadcaster for this past Saturday, May 21, did not take place. And the failure was covered worldwide. A Google search on Saturday evening yielded over 32,000 articles — in English alone — in the world media.
The secular, especially the anti-religious, Left enjoys these spectacles of religious foolishness. They seem to confirm not only how absurd these end-of-days predictions are, but how absurd religion is in general.
But the Left should not laugh too loudly. The religious world has far fewer doomsday predictions than the Left does. At least every few years, the secular Left frightens itself — and tries to frighten everyone else — about another doomsday scenario.
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The most obvious current example is, of course, global warming. For years now we have been told by the world’s left-wing media that scientists are united in predicting that there will be worldwide catastrophe as a result of global warming caused by manmade carbon-dioxide emissions. Oceans will rise so high that they will drown many of the world’s great coastal cities; entire island-countries will disappear; vast areas of the world will dry up; and countries will fight one another for the little remaining fresh water.
Compared with the global-warming scenario, I’ll face the Rapture — and I’m not even Christian.
Of course, none of these global-warming predictions have materialized. For example, last month Der Spiegel reported: “Six years ago, the United Nations issued a dramatic warning that the world would have to cope with 50 million climate refugees by 2010. But now that those migration flows have failed to materialize, the U.N. has distanced itself from the forecasts. On the contrary, populations are growing in the regions that had been identified as environmental danger zones.”
As a result of so many such false alarms, and because so many places have experienced record cold temperatures, global warming has been renamed “climate change.”
But global warming is only the most recent doomsday scenario offered by the Left. Here is a small sample of some others:
Recall the Time and Newsweek cover stories about how heterosexual AIDS would become a national plague — since “AIDS doesn’t discriminate.” Skeptics who said at the time that heterosexual AIDS in America was largely a scare story were called “anti-science.” But Michael Fumento, the science writer who wrote “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS,” first in Commentary magazine and then as a book, turned out to be right. In America it was a myth.
At the Democratic National Convention in 2000, five children ages about five to eleven were featured; they recited lyrics about the doomsdays they could look forward to as they grew up in America. The first child, for example, said this: “When I grow up . . . Will I be able to see a rainbow in a smog-filled sky? Will there be any trees alive?”
In his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich wrote: “In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
Another doomsday prophecy from the Left: Two prominent feminist writers, Gloria Steinem and Naomi Wolf, wrote in their bestselling books, Revolution from Within and The Beauty Myth — and the news media reported — that 150,000 girls and women a year die of anorexia nervosa. The number is actually fewer than 100.
There is one major difference between leftist and religious doomsday scenarios. The religious readily acknowledge that their doomsday scenario is built entirely on faith. The Left, on the other hand, claims that its doomsday scenarios are entirely built on science.
That there is little truth to the left-wing claim is not as important as the fact that these doomsday scenarios have undermined the status of science. How many scientists have been compromised by their joining the research-money and fame bandwagons of left-wing apocalyptic predictions? And how has this affected the public’s perceptions of science and scientists when it comes to contentious issues?
The Left had its laugh this past weekend, but only because it’s a lot easier to laugh at religious doomsdays than at leftist ones.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. He may be contacted through his website, dennisprager.com.
So if, as the classic joke has it, there is somewhere a dyslexic, agnostic insomniac who "stays up all night worrying about the existence of Dog.".....
....then is this, in fact, Sherlock Holmes' clasic case of the dog that DIDNT'T bark?
Excellent article. I hadn't considered this angle while listening to all the smug sarcasm on this non-event.
At least harmless doomsday predictions like this do not result in new, intrusive laws, expanded government, and billions of dollars of public tax money being thrown down the rabbit hole.
Did the rapture not happen or did we just not "make the cut"? We might be the folks they made a movie about, "Left Behind".
The only way to truly know if the rapture happened is to look for people that are missing! Now, I know that the rapture didn't happen. I am not using faith but solid evidence. My Mom is still here. I might not make the cut but there is no way my Mom didn't!
This is why I'm a creationist who loves God and science, following the great hard SCIENCE of great creationist scientists like Newton & Galileo, Copernicus, Keplar, Pasteur, etc., etc., unlike evolutionists who follow the deranged apostate Anglican clergyman Darwin who was NEVER a scientist, like those who follow him, fellow religious bigots. True modern western science that took us to the moon (NASA's von Braun was a creationist) was built on the Bible and creationism and since they were rejected is quickly sliding into the dump, taking us with it, for the great discoveries of science have all required the REJECTION of the "consensus" touted by today's pitiful, deluded fascist bigots (e.g. Hillary). If these tools had their way, they wouldn't have let Sir Joseph Lister (for whom Listerine was named) disturb the "consensus" of "scientists" of the day who said something that couldn't be seen with the naked eye (micro-organisms) couldn't cause disease, typical for today's deluded "liberal" fascism that's destroying science and the world.
Liberalism truly is a religion. For all the talk that liberals comprise of the educated and intellectuals of society, they merely live a faith based life; unfortunately it’s not a faith based on moral principals but a faith that they alone have been ordained with true knowledge.
Of course they are neither intellectual nor knowledgeable. They may be educated in the select rote facts spoon fed in academia but they do not seek knowledge as the attempt to understand basic truths nor are they willing to modify their view in face of new evidence.
Liberals are merely egoists who assume an innate ability to discern truth. Their arrogance is not tempered by learning other perspectives but fed by seeking words that confirm their intrinsic beliefs. This is folly, not intellectualism.
It’s funny, the intellectual (whom I admit a fondness for) Carl Sagan wrote a book decrying pseudoscience (Candle in the Wind). As I now recollect, the book gently chided the religious as susceptible to pseudoscience vs. those wise but few who truly understood real science. Somehow I think if he had lived today he would have fallen victim to the pseudoscience hoax of global warming.
Lastly in so far as evangelical doomsayers go, they are not necessarily harmed by their failed prophesies. One only has to go back to Hal Lindsey and his wildly successful The Late Great Planet Earth. When proven wrong he just went out and wrote more immensely popular books.
As you mentioned Paul Ehrlich...if this man was ever given power he’d be as monstrous as Stalin, Mao or Hitler for he advocated the deaths of millions in order to ‘save’ the planet. He thought Rachel Carson’s now discredited Silent Spring was an excellent tool. For it lead to the end of DDT (a very safe and effective pesticide) use allowing many to die of malaria, thus helping alleviate the ‘overpopulation’ problem.
There’s some nice intellectual liberalism for you...
The "rapture" or doomsday is specifically spelled out in the Christian religion. It was front and center when I was going to church. I don't know how many times I'd heard that "the world was ending" or "these ARE the END TIMES"...or that I better "erase or suppress all doubts" or I'd end up in hell. When 9/11 happened my mother thought for sure that was the beginning of the rapture. Many people in here church did.
So I think it's not realistic to think that "doomsday/rapture" stuff is just a minor thing in a few whacky churches. Going to hell/doomsday/rapture is the chief part of my religion growing up and these were mainstream Baptist churches. That's WHY you go to church to avoid going to hell.
I think the bigger picture is that mankind whether through formal religion (like I had) or through left wing groups that view themselves as irreligious have a doomsday streak in them. It's just the nature of man to think that "these are the end times!".
Leave it to a conservative to lump together (i) doomsday prophesies based on the Bible and (ii) doomsday prophesies based on gravity, thermodynamics, Maxwell's equations, etc.
Doomsday predictions are doomsday predictions, Mikey. In the 1990's we were told all hell was going to break loose because of the computer glitch with two-digit dates. Sure, a lot of Y2K stuff was done, but a lot was NOT. And I recall how NOTHING MYSTERIOUSLY HAPPENED.... Hmmmm... And it was terribly reminiscent based on what people wrote about the turn of the LAST millennium. Yes, all hell was supposed to break loose in 1000. And... NOTHING HAPPENED!
Most of these dire predictions are based on the FAITH of the person making the predictions in the material from which they derive their information, and on that material being CORRECT and COMPLETE, and on THEIR INTERPRETATION of it being correct.
And so, doomsday prophesies based on the Bible are not much different from a doomsday prophesy based on gravity, thermodynamics, Maxwell's equations, etc. (BTW, the left's doomsday prophecies to which Dennis Prager refers, why not a single one of them was based on gravity, thermodynamics, Maxwell's equations, etc.)
MikeB, I assume the "global cooling" doomsday predictions of the 1970s were based on some sort of science, right?
Along with various predictions of famine and overpopulation and AIDS crossing over into heterosexuals that were supposed to have taken place by now?
One of Mohammad's wives supposedly once dryly commented to him that it was amazing how quickly Allah's decrees conviently coincided with whatever Mohammad happened to want at the time.
I find that socialis/progressivism has the same cozy arraingement with science all too often.
Before the current popular "secret rapture"/dispensational/premillenial interpretation of Bible prophecy, postmillenialism was the dominant view for most of history of the Christian church. The bulk of the book of Revelation is about the BEGINNING of Christianity, not it's END! A return to the solid, simple, non-sesationalistic interpretation of prophecy would prevent Christians from looking so foolish.
You are so right. Whenever I hear anyone say that scientists say "such and such". I respond with "They get paid to say that whether it's true or not". People fail to understand that most science fails but that failure adds to the understanding of what's not right. Ask Thomas Edison. nThe left doesn't want to admit to "what's not right".
I have one more sad comment. I read through the comments and find that some responders like to argue and insult each other rather than to limit themselves to commenting on your article.
