(CBS/AP)
ALAMEDA, Calif. - The day after his prediction that the world would end on May 21, 2011 failed to materialize, Harold Camping told the San Francisco Chronicle he was "flabbergasted."
The 89-year-old fundamentalist minister and head of the Family Radio media empire, who had led his Christian followers to believe last Saturday marked the Rapture and the countdown to Judgment Day, told the Associated Press that he will make a full statement on his radio broadcast later on Monday.
But when he answered the door at his Alameda home to San Francisco Chronicle reporter Will Kane on Sunday, Camping said he was looking for answers - through frequent prayer and discussions with friends - as to why his prediction of the Rapture and the run-up to the destruction of Earth had not come to pass.
"It has been a really tough weekend," said Camping.
Some of Camping's followers say they are surprised they were not swept up to heaven, after Camping preached for years through his Oakland-based Family Radio International media empire that the Rapture was coming on May 21.
Camping had previously predicted the Rapture would occur back in 1994. When it didn't, he explained that an error in his mathematical computations from clues in the Bible were to blame, and he later revised his forecast.
Harold Camping doomsday prediction record: 0-2
Apocalypse ... uhm, when?
Final Sale? Businesses cash in on End Times
How Harold Camping marketed the Rapture
Along with the disappointment, believers who spent their savings to advertise the world's end are now facing more earthly concerns.
In New York's Times Square, Robert Fitzpatrick, of Staten Island, said he was surprised when the six o'clock hour simply came and went. He had spent his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world.
"I can't tell you what I feel right now," he said, surrounded by tourists. "Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here."
Many followers said the delay was a further test from God to persevere in their faith.
"It's still May 21 and God's going to bring it," said Family Radio's special projects coordinator Michael Garcia, who spent Saturday morning praying and drinking two last cups of coffee with his wife at home in Alameda. "When you say something and it doesn't happen, your pride is what's hurt. But who needs pride? God said he resists the proud and gives grace to the humble."
You feeling humble yet Harold?
__________________
__________________
I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.: LBJ's Ghost
Harold Camping: Judgment Day Did Actually Happen Saturday
Quote:
It was just invisible.
After a few days of silence ? as thousands reveled in the fact that they hadn't been Raptured on Saturday ? Judgment Day-calculator Harold Camping figured out a way to spin his (second!) failed prediction: it actually did happen, you just didn't see it. The 89-year-old Christian radio station owner explained on Monday night, during a Family Radio station broadcast, that rather than a physical Rapture taking place, the judgment was spiritual. But don't worry; the real end of the world is still ahead.
Camping did admit to at least one mistake: that he'd been reading the Bible with a factual mindset, rather than a spiritual one, which is why he'd misinterpreted Saturday's events.
"On May 21, this last weekend, this is where the spiritual aspect of it really comes through," said Camping. "God again brought judgment on the world. We didn't see any difference but God brought Judgment Day to bear upon the whole world. The whole world is under Judgment Day and it will continue right up until Oct. 21, 2011 and by that time the whole world will be destroyed."
So, in other words, even though Harold Camping was wrong, he was actually still right. You just don't know it, because you aren't Harold Camping.
Well, Harold Camping?s prediction for rapture, armageddon, apocawhatever came and went May 21, which clearly meant one thing: The 89-year-old fuddy-duddy was wrong. But in true 89-year-old fuddy-duddy fashion, Camping isn?t letting go of his prediction. He's now come out and said, in no uncertain terms, take it to the bank ... the end is coming October 21.
Yep. Camping is saying he got the math wrong, and October 21 is the new ?save the date.?
It?s like a sequel. ?Rapture 2: The End is Nigh Boogaloo.?
Now don?t get me wrong: I love a good sequel. In fact, sometime Thursday afternoon, I plan on telling my boss I have a family matter to attend to while simultaneously telling my wife I have a pressing matter at work, all in order to sneak off and see ?The Hangover Part II? in peace. So it?s not sequels that make me squeamish.
And it?s not an anti-religious, anti-Christian stance ? as some online commenters have accused me of ? that makes me want to take Camping and tuck him away like winter?s extra blanket. Nope. I?m not anti-sequel, anti-Christian, or anti-religion. All I am is anti-suffering fools gladly.
And to me, there is no greater fool than someone who claims to know when the world is going to end by the hand of God. It?s not even like Camping has a direct line upstairs; he just crunched the numbers he thinks he found in the Bible, and as a result, thousands of people gave up their life savings, stopped being parents and went just a little south of bonkers.
That?s what I dislike. That?s what makes me angry. Believe what you want to you believe. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and everybody else, I?ve got no beef with you. Nor do I have a beef with the guy who thinks the stop sign on Main Street is a heavenly vessel or the shopping cart lady who professes to have found the grace of the beyond in a headless Barbie doll. To each his own. And I mean that.
But people like Camping who get up on their soapbox ? in Camping?s case, a multi-million-dollar radio network ? and tell me this is this, that is that, and we?re all gonna die ... well, for people like that, people who have this absolute certitude they know the unknowable and insist on spreading it like mold, it's these people I hold basic human contempt for.
Really ? and at the risk of overstating the case ? it?s folks like Camping who are doing their fair share to hold us back as a species.
Religion, in its natural, basic form, seems like a pretty good thing. Belief in a higher power, the knowledge that someone, somewhere, is watching over you, the thought that those who sin will get punished, all that stuff: Bravo.
But when religion gets corrupted ? and Camping is corrupting it, that?s for sure ? it gets ugly. Because if Camping is right, then everyone who doesn?t believe is wrong. All religions suffer from megalomaniacs like this. And it?s these megalomaniacs that cause people like me ? in case you forgot, I?m an Agnostic Jewish Buddhist Jedi ? to dismiss the whole religion thing without having to give it too much thought.
So Camping could have ? could have! ? redeemed himself in the last few days. He could?ve come out and said, ?Golly. I was wrong. Sincerest apologies. For my most ardent followers, here?s a check to cover some of your personal losses. Barbecue at my place next weekend. Party on.? Instead, he told his flock, ?Wait a few more months and you?ll see! I?ll be proven right!?
Something tells me the media ? myself included ? won?t be so quick to jump on the bandwagon. Something tells the reported $100 million Camping and his followers spent to hype May 21 as the end of the world will be whittled down to a few email blasts. Something tells me Camping missed his true calling as an public relations executive. And something tells me come October 21, the biggest worry on my mind will be my Fantasy Football team, assuming there?s an NFL season. Now that?s a topic I wish someone would profess knowledge from the heavens on. I?m getting nervous over here.
__________________
I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.: LBJ's Ghost
What happens to a doomsday cult when the world doesn't end?
HTML Code:
http://www.slate.com/id/2295099/
Quote:
Preacher and evangelical broadcaster Harold Camping has announced that Jesus Christ will return to Earth this Saturday, May 21, and many of his followers are traveling the country in preparation for the weekend Rapture. They're undeterred, it seems, by Mr. Camping's dodgy track record with end-of-the-world predictions. (Years ago, he argued at length that the reckoning would come in 1994.) We've yet to learn what motivates people like him to predict (and predict again) the end of the world, but there's a long and unexpected psychological literature on how the faithful make sense of missed appointments with the apocalypse.
The most famous study into doomsday mix-ups was published in a 1956 book by renowned psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleagues called When Prophecy Fails. A fringe religious group called the Seekers had made the papers by predicting that a flood was coming to destroy the West Coast. The group was led by an eccentric but earnest lady called Dorothy Martin, given the pseudonym Marian Keech in the book, who believed that superior beings from the planet Clarion were communicating to her through automatic writing. They told her they had been monitoring Earth and would arrive to rescue the Seekers in a flying saucer before the cataclysm struck.
Festinger was fascinated by how we deal with information that fails to match up to our beliefs, and suspected that we are strongly motivated to resolve the conflict?a state of mind he called "cognitive dissonance." He wanted a clear-cut case with which to test his fledgling ideas, so decided to follow Martin's group as the much vaunted date came and went. Would they give up their closely held beliefs, or would they work to justify them even in the face of the most brutal contradiction?
The Seekers abandoned their jobs, possessions, and spouses to wait for the flying saucer, but neither the aliens nor the apocalypse arrived. After several uncomfortable hours on the appointed day, Martin received a "message" saying that the group "had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction." The group responded by proselytizing with a renewed vigour. According to Festinger, they resolved the intense conflict between reality and prophecy by seeking safety in numbers. "If more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly, it must, after all, be correct."
When Prophecy Fails has become a landmark in the history of psychology, but few realize that many other studies have looked at the same question: What happens to a small but dedicated group of people who wait in vain for the end of the world? Ironically, Festinger's own prediction?that a failed apocalypse leads to a redoubling of recruitment efforts?turned out to be false: Not one of these follow-ups found evidence to support his claim. The real story turns out to be far more complex.
What Festinger failed to understand is that prophecies, per se, almost never fail. They are instead component parts of a complex and interwoven belief system which tends to be very resilient to challenge from outsiders. While the rest of us might focus on the accuracy of an isolated claim as a test of a group's legitimacy, those who are part of that group?and already accept its whole theology?may not be troubled by what seems to them like a minor mismatch. A few people might abandon the group, typically the newest or least-committed adherents, but the vast majority experience little cognitive dissonance and so make only minor adjustments to their beliefs. They carry on, often feeling more spiritually enriched as a result.
For those who draw their inspiration from the Bible, there is some small print in Deuteronomy 18:21-22 which wonderfully illustrates why a failed prophecy may not shake the foundations of a believer's faith, or cause him any uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.
__________________
I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.: LBJ's Ghost
Even though his prediction wasn't fulfilled, it would be interesting to imagine the impact of 200 million people disappearing from the earth all at once.
200 million is almost 4 times the number of people who die every year. It's also bigger than the largest number of people killed in a single event in human history (the earthquake in Shaanxi in 1556, which killed 830,000 people).
However, Paul Ehrlich, a professor at Stanford University's Center for Conservation Biology, said "with a population of about 7 billion and aiming now to go somewhere in the vicinity of 9 billion, 200 million is not very big," according to LiveScience
He said if the 200 million raptured people were evenly distributed across the world, the ecological impact wouldn't be that great. However, if 200 million people all disappeared from United States, the impact would be much bigger.
America is the country that uses the most of resources in the world; it was responsible for a quarter of the global petroleum consumption in 2009.
Taggert J. Brooks, an economist at the University of Wisconsin, said "the knowledge that we have in our heads can be thought of as a type of machinery for how to combine things, how to produce things or provide services," so if "200 million people get snatched up, you lose their human capital."
As time passed by, the economy would adjust to a world without those 200 million people, but the transition from pre- to post-rapture would be not easy at all, Brooks said.
However, he said the psychological impact will be the biggest challenge to cope with. There aren't any models that can account for the disappearance of so many friends and family members, said Brooks.
"It doesn't count things like, 'What if your brother or sibling is one of the 200 million?'" he said.
But all these worries and theories don't seem to matter at this point because Camping's prediction didn't happen. Moreover, if Camping was proven right, the world will simply end in October 21, 2011, so it's irrelevant to talk about long-term impacts.
__________________
I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.: LBJ's Ghost
Linear Mode
