Civil Commotion

The end of the world: May 21, 2011

Enthusiasm for the end of the world has diminished since the economic freefall of late 2008 ended, but there are still characters out there milking the dementia of Revelation. This guy, for instance:

This web site serves as an introduction and portal to four faithful ministries which are teaching that WE CAN KNOW from the Bible alone that the date of the rapture of believers will take place on May 21, 2011 and that God will destroy this world on October 21, 2011.

Look around the Web site, and it gets even better. Here is the introduction to a book entitled Adam When that this guy has written:

Can we know, with complete accuracy, the timetable of the past, all the way back to Adam and the creation of the earth? This book presumes to do so, utilizing the very safe principle that the Bible is infallible in all that it says.

Every seminary-educated preacher on earth knows perfectly well, of course, that his local newspaper is vastly more trustworthy.

End Times alert

Mike Huckabee, presidential wannabe, and Tim LaHaye agree that we are living in the End Times.
 

The cynicism is just … breathtaking.

When pious folk marry

Al Mohler upholds everything I’ve told you about the Christian denigration of marriage.

A believer must not marry an unbeliever, for this violates the very logic of the Gospel and the believer’s union with Christ.

The believer in Christ acknowledges him as Savior and Lord, with an allegiance that exceeds any earthly commitment.

And don’t forget: You must always be ready to betray your family on command, like Abraham.

“Family values” is an empty marketing slogan; what is actually taught is that the mutual loyalty and shared ambitions that go into marriage are a threat to salvation.

• Jesus gets all your loyalty, and …

• He’ll let you know what are your ambitions, or …

• You’ll go straight to hell, like you deserve.

Unfortunately, now that the post-Christian era is here and churches all over the world are closing-up shop for keeps, we should expect the cult-like elements of the familiar teachings to take center-stage and intensify. So far as I’m concerned, though, the person who teaches this kind of thing has no moral right to even conduct a wedding.

Feel-the-love department

Seen at a National Organization for Marriage rally:
 

Thought for the day

Ludwig Wittgenstein, on predestination:

Suppose someone were taught: there is a being who, if you do such and such or live thus and thus, will take you to a place of everlasting torment after you die; most people end up there, a few get to a place of everlasting happiness. This being has selected in advance those who are to go to the good place and, since only those who have lived a certain sort of life go to the place of torment, he has also arranged in advance for the rest to live like that.

What might be the effect of such a doctrine? Well, it does not mention punishment, but rather a sort of natural necessity. And if you were to present things to anyone in this light, he could only react with despair or incredulity to such a doctrine.

Teaching it could not constitute an ethical upbringing. If you wanted to bring someone up ethically while yet teaching him such a doctrine, you would have to teach it to him after having educated him ethically, representing it as a sort of incomprehensible mystery.

I’ve been reading Ray Monk’s biography of Wittgenstein, and it is here that I’ve seen for the first time that third paragraph condemning the teaching of predestination to the young. He is right. But, of course, most clerics insist that indoctrination must begin in infancy, knowing perfectly well that adults will have nothing to do with it.