Hey Fundies, The World Is Not Undergoing Rapture May 21

Update: Gays brought this on.

Pam Spaulding has been having some fun with the end-of-the-world-is-coming [Saturday] crowd.

Here's an update from Pam; though left unmentioned is whether that weird storm extending West from the Atlantic Ocean is the beginning of that horror-of-horrors process.

Note the Rapture Index is at near-record high of 182, indicating imminent End Times. But like many religious people, these guys who do the Rapture Index possess what Bertrand Russell used to term their "corners of madness" of significant girth.

So, let us join Pam, Lauri Lebo and many others in saying: Dear Lord, we mock thee.

From Lauri Lebo at Religion Dispatches:

I've been fielding a lot of questions from friends about the upcoming Rapture, which Christian doomsday prognosticator Harold Camping and his sad motley group of followers say will take place May 21. This is the day that true believers will be taken up to heaven, while everybody else -- Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics and anyone who supports gay marriage or accepts evolution -- will be stuck here on Earth for another six months while war and pestilence rains down on us. Then, on Oct. 21, the world will end.

... Well, because God created time zones -- just as he apparently created US international borders -- the Rapture will begin at 6 p.m. in each time zone. Also, you'll know when the Rapture will begin because it will be preceded by an earthquake.

... ‘starting in the Pacific Rim at around the 6 p.m. local time hour, in each time zone, there will be a great earthquake, such as has never been in the history of the Earth,’ he says. The true Christian believers -- he hopes he's one of them -- will be ‘raptured’: They'll fly upward to heaven. And for the rest?

‘It's just the horror of horror stories,’ he says, ‘and on top of all that, there's no more salvation at that point. And then the Bible says it will be 153 days later that the entire universe and planet Earth will be destroyed forever.’

Defenders of Christ and War

It's takes a sense of entitlement to kill someone, more so to self-consciously prepare to kill someone. Some serving in the U.S. military seeing themselves on a holy mission from a Christian God are up to the task, a little too enthusiastically for Americans who want their country officially secular and substantively humanistic.

Concerns about a growing dominionist Christian movement seeking to control the U.S. military academies and foreign policy persist as America continues its two or three wars in what many fundamentalist American Christians consider a holy battle against Islam.

I'm hoping one episode from last year pertaining to military-dominionist Christians gets cleared up.

Last year, I wrote a piece, The Crusades, Still Killing for Christ, about the the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and its founder and president, Mikey Weinstein working for a military free of religious coercion. The piece attracted the attention and comments of one gentleman named "Donnie" who proceeded to badmouth the MRFF and Weinstein.

The funny thing is, this anonymous Donnie bears a striking resemblance in tone and language to one Col Donald P. Higgins, "the key, on-scene, Inspector General investigator for the Department of Defense/United States Air Force in the 2005 investigation" of Weinstein's charges of religions coercion and proselytizing at the United States Air Force Academy.

Higgins appears a nut who, after investigating anti-Semitism and proselytizing at the United States Air Force Academy actually sent e-mails to Weinstein last year composed of fabricated news articles mocking Weinstein, prompting a Sept. 2, 2009 response letter by Weinstein to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. [See Fake, Col Higgins-authored Washington Times Article, and Fake, Col Higgins-authored New York Times Article.]

Same guy making comments to the The Crusades, Still Killing for Christ piece?

I did on a trace on the Internet Provider (IP) address and this Donnie was commenting from an IP address at the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton, 1.7 miles from Col Donald Higgins’ home in rural Arkansas near Pine Bluff.

I asked Weinstein about the comments and said, "“If this is [Col.] Higgins, he is one crazy case. I can’t believe the IG’s office would assign Higgins as an investigator looking into proselytizing and religious coercion. Is this the same guy?”

Weinstein didn't know for sure and Higgins refused to return phone calls.

Donnie responded to a query asking if his name is Higgins with this comment (reading in part):

That is certainly not my name, Leon. Are you a lawyer? Are you going to sue me to shut me up? That seems to be the favored MRFF tactic whenever someone uses facts to disagree with Weinstein or his mouthpieces like you--at least that's the way I read his vicious propaganda.

Thinking this matter might get cleared up some time this year.

- via mal contends

Holocaust Survivor Faces Mortality, Warns of Fundamentalist Control of U.S. Armed Forces

Update: See The Crusade for a Christian Military (Harper's, May 2009).

Most of us when we reach our 80s will relax, reflect and live out our retirements in peace.

Walter Plywaski of Boulder, Colorado, a survivor of the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz and Dachau won't hear of it.

Mr. Plywaski is using his time to warn of a growing trend in the American military: A stealthy and creeping fundamentalist Christian takeover of our armed forces.

This won't come as a surprise to readers of Jeff Sharlet's The Family, or readers of the work of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (MAAF).

At Mr. Plywaski's request, posted below is his letter that he wishes receives the widest distribution:
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At the age of 80 and a Holocaust survivor, my time is limited and thus I must share my thoughts and feelings about the frightening trends in today’s U.S. Military. The stealthy fundamentalist Christian takeover of our armed forces is a strategy all too reminiscent of what brought about the end of all, but two, of my entire family in German-occupied Poland during World War II.

America’s magnificent and unique Constitution prohibits any sort of religious test for all Federal offices and that most certainly includes our military! America’s founders understood the need for a robust separation between Church and State, since they knew of the terrible events in the new American colonies and Europe caused by the invidious unions of church and government.

James Madison wrote that it is precisely the separation of Church and State which strengthens our citizens' most fundamental religious rights. In the America to which I gratefully immigrated, all religions were allowed to flourish and NONE were permitted to be specifically, or even indirectly, favored or recommended by the state. Personally, through sheer luck and the aid of the US Army, I survived the flames that consumed my family and countless millions; an Inferno that sprang up in Germany, a country which rejected such separation.

There is an ongoing and concerted drive to infiltrate our military by Christian fundamentalists who believe in the superiority of their very dangerous brand of faith. This evangelization telegraphs a Crusader agenda abroad while coercing our military's rank and file to adhere literally to a fundamentalist reading of their Bible. This movement has insidiously spread throughout the military, with organizations such as the Campus Crusade for Christ having unfettered access to proselytize new recruits at our nation’s military training installations.

These extremist organizations also have a strong presence at the Air Force Academy and other service academies, and their reach extends to the highest levels of the Pentagon itself with numerous Flag Officers having been implicated in using their rank and position to spread this extreme brand of religious ideology. These organizations have the stated goal to “win” the military for Christ and utilize individual service members stationed across the world as paid emissaries for him. Therefore we must, as a country, stand firmly behind the Constitution to defeat those who wish to destroy the wall of separation between Church and State within our armed forces and the general society.

My life's experience tells me we must try to defeat the onslaught of fundamentalist Christian theocratization of the Armed Forces of the United States. If things continue to proceed as now, our military could all too easily begin its descent into the American equivalent of the brown-shirted Nazis. History has shown all too consistently the extreme danger that religious militarism imposes upon secular democratic societies when these cede their exclusive right to bear arms and enforce the law without racial or religious prejudices. This time, please, let's not wait until it's too late.

If my words convinced you to take note, then please use your influence to halt the takeover of our precious military institutions. Additionally, please consult with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and Mr. Mikey Weinstein, its brave and tenacious founder, (militaryreligiousfreedom.org) and the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (MAAF). These organizations are fighting to save our country from the creeping cancer of super-Christianity invading our military!

I saw the takeover of a continent and saw humans go mad with hatred and bloodlust. Now I can only hope that Americans will awaken to this danger and put an end to the usurpation of power in our military by today’s Christian fundamentalist fanatics, people who want to turn it into a Crusader Army and therefore their own tool.

It doesn't matter if those who would take over our military call themselves Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Devil worshipers; what does matter is that a democratic society cannot possibly hold onto its freedoms under the guns of a militarized theocracy.

Most sincerely yours

Walter Plywaski

The Rapture Index

On the lower-left corner of this page, readers can find a link to the Rapture Index.

The Rapture Index proclaims to arrive at a predictive measure of the imminence of rapture—the instant when true Christians will be taken up by Jesus Christ into heaven and assorted non-believers like Catholics, secular humanists, Jews, Muslims, agnostics and so forth will be left behind to face the tribulations.

Or, even more precisely, a measure of prophetic activity that occasions the Rapture.

As the Rapture Index site states:

You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we're moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.

What’s pathetic about all of this is that the millions of fundamentalist Christian millenialists who believe this nonsense comprise a central constituency of the Republican Party under Bush/Rove/Cheney.

But they are the perfect Republican constituency—unthinking, irrational, hostile-to-evidence-and-argument, bigoted, and utterly incapable of altering their dogma through reason.

Current Rapture Index – 159

Rapture Index of 100 and Below: Slow prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 100 to 130: Moderate prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 130 to 160: Heavy prophetic activity
Rapture Index above 160: Fasten your seat belts

Right now, we are at 159, we're right there before Rapture occurs, again.

But as the Rapture fails to occur again and again, as it surly will, we can be sure that the whackos will not change their worldview, and that they will remain Rapture-ready, looking to their Holy Man, George W. Bush, a nut in his own right, but one who occupies the White House as he delivers his own brand of tribulations to the world.

So, what do right-wing pundits think about this nonsense coming from today's Republican coalition? One can't even get most of these guys to acclaim evolution (that most evil of scientific facts) and to denounce the vacuity of "intelligent design," so we should we not expect them to acknowledge the whackos who give them votes.
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