For some people this rapture thing is terrifying. He should be ashamed.

[Maraya1969]

We laugh about it but for a lot of people is it not funny but scary. When I was younger I had a bad anxiety disorder and the Xtians at my school scared me to death.

One of the things that scared me was this rapture thing because they talked about it so much, (I tried to be a good Christian too but because I was so mentally fried I thought I was going to fail at everything, including being ruptured).

This was many years ago before the internet but I am sure there are people today who are terrified because of all the crap this man has been spewing. And he is making money off of it. I think someone should sue him for the pain and suffering he has caused. I would never teach my children anything like this.

Anxiety disorders and other disorders can manifest where a thought will not leave your head. And these particular religious ones are really terrifying because there are so many people that believe your greatest fear. If the fear is unreasonable it is easier for people to convince you of that.

I wonder how many children this whole bullshit has terrified.

I am so lucky that I do not have the anxiety like I used to but it is not gone completely and I have felt a residual amount these last few days also. So fuck you Mr. whoever you are.

[murielm99]

1. I never thought of that.

I bet there are many terrified children.

I used to be terrified about nuclear war when I was a kid. Maybe I should still be terrified.

[Raine]

9. I was scared of nuclear war too. I was a little girl during the Cuban

Missle Crisis, I had nightmares. I begged my parents to build a bomb shelter and I filled the bathtub with water because I expected a bomb to drop any minute. I wasn't helped by having to do "drop drills" in school where the kids dived under their desks covering their eyes and necks with their hands when the teacher yelled "DROP"! :scared: To this day I can still summon up those nightmares and almost feel the fear I had those many years ago. :-(

[murielm99]

12. I remember checking out the crawlspace under our

house during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I wondered if I would ever get old enough to be allowed to wear lipstick.

We had those duck and cover drills, too. Although I was frightened, I was also terribly embarrassed. We girls all had to wear dresses to school. I was always worried that my underpants were showing. I did not feel covered enough during duck and cover.

[DesertFlower]

15. i was scared too. i was 21 and a mother of

a 17 month old child. my best friend was pregnant with her first. my other friends also had small children. we all went to church and prayed.

[iwillalwayswonderwhy]

26. I was 8 years old and living in Florida

In addition to the duck and cover drills, we had to bring backpacks and while I can't remember everything that was in them, I do remember a few:

2 quarts of water with a 1/2 tsp of bleach mixed in
Canned food and can opener
Hard candy
Sugar cubes

We could barely lift the backpacks. We had drills where we put on our backpacks and walked to the railroad tracks. We were told that in an emergency, a train would come for us and whisk us to safety.

We got in trouble for eating the candy and the sugar cubes.

I always wondered where this so-called train was supposed to come from and had nightmares about never finding my family if I got on the train.

[RebelOne]

50. I lived in South Florida as a child.

I remember the duck and cover drills, but was not required to bring a backpack. I just remember having to take cover under my school desk.

[demodonkey]

18. My aunts took me to a Billy Graham service once when I was little...

He said that if the nukes started flying within 12 hours all life on earth would be gone.

I was terrified and had nightmares for years.

[pipi_k]

33. Yep, I just wrote in another thread...

about how a friend of mine in the US thanked her Aussie Facebook friends for posting that they were OK and nothing bad had happened.

She has four young boys who were absolutely terrorized by all of this.

[xmas74]

38. My ten year old asked me questions about it yesterday.

It doesn't help that the grandparents brought it up. She seemed worried and she didn't sleep at all last night.

I didn't want to put her through this worry. The Rapture is one of the many reasons why I left the Pentecostal church as soon as I was able. Instead, I found a nice mainline church for my child that has lots of children's and teens activities, is more tolerant than many, does lots of charity work/community service, and never mentions the Rapture or even any comments about fire and brimstone.

I swore I'd never mention The Rapture again yet it's shoved in my face time and again.

[RandomThoughts]

2. Next question.

Why is it in the media.


And I agree, the concept of the rapture has the spiting of part of people from other people. The whole concept is sad, if you stay or go, you will lose the opportunity to be around someone in that doctrine. I don't even think about if I were to stay or go, but how either way it would be bad for everyone, since there would always be someone not around, or left behind.

It irritates me also, I try to avoid feeling the anxiety on the topic, but know many feel that anxiety you mention and that part adds strife and is upsetting.

I also agree many of the religious problems come from fear, and that concept does have fear in it.

It is like people talking about peoples deaths. Jokingly or with humor. The loaded macro on that topic has many deep feelings on topics of being around loved ones.

Then again, I am not around very many people at all anyways, so that is odd how it still feels that way.



Then again, there have been bees flying in my window last couple days(literally), Been watching them fly around for a day or two, one of them was on the window glass on his way back out, and it was like feeling the panic of him seeing the light, but not being able to reach it through the glass, and not knowing the opening was a little higher. Figure it was the feeling from a metaphor, but still a feeling, true story. So maybe I think a bit to much on things. He made it out a few seconds later.

[Rhiannon12866]

16. +100. Excellent point...

My feeling is that they figure that sensationalism sells. :(

And I'm not religious, but I agree that the anxiety is contageous... :(


I also believe that animals can be sensitive to subtle changes that we can't sense. We once had a small earthquake here and my dog knew about it before I did, was afraid and came to me before I sensed a thing. Thank you for telling us about fate of the bee... I would have wondered. :hi:

[Arkansas Granny]

67. It's in the media because they know it will attract viewers.

The more viewers you have, the more you can charge for advertising. It all comes down to money.

[xmas74]

3. It really frightened me as a child.

That's one of the main reasons why I chose to raise my daughter in a mainline church instead of in the church of my youth.

[steve2470]

4. I agree.

One article I read, some guy close to him claimed Mr. Camping spent around $100 million advertising this. Camping claims that one passage in the Bible is wrong and other passages are right. Idiot and/or world champion grifter.

eta: Tuter thinks $100 million is a conservative figure for the money Camping has spent publicizing May 21. On Friday, employees at Family Radio headquarters in Oakland were given a paid day off, though some of them chuckled at the irony that the money would not appear in the paychecks until June.

http://www.latimes.com/la-me-rapture-20110521,0,1687317.story

[MH1]

37. imagine if they spent that kind of money feeding or sheltering the homeless

or teaching non-violent conflict resolution to children
or...

about a million other things they could have spent it on, that would have been more 'Christian'.

[kentauros]

5. My only 'fear' about all of this,

is if he's somehow managed to brainwash his followers so much that they pull a Heaven's Gate event on themselves, and us.

[ohheckyeah]

6. I've seen more about the rapture here

at DU than I've seen on the news. It seems to be an obsession.

[strawberryfield]

8. The DU seems to be big on obsessions

From what I can tell, the DU loves to fixate on a particular story for a few days, but as if it had ADD, suddenly the issue gets dropped and the next hot subject suddenly appears.

[ohheckyeah]

11. Since I have ADD

I guess it works for me most of the time. :-)

[NYC Liberal]

13. DU has many recurring obsessions that flare up every so often.

Any mildly provocative post involving:

-Pitbulls
-Smoking
-Circumcision
-Breastfeeding
-Code Pink
-Hugo Chavez
-SUVs
-Porn
-Overpopulation
-PETA
-North vs. South
-Vaccines
-Cornflake chicken ;)

is guaranteed to start a flame war.

[mentalsolstice]

20. You left out the eating @ Olive Garden in NYC. nt

[xmas74]

39. Are they still flaming over cornflake chicken?

I believe I was in that war many years ago as an innocent bystander. That or I passed out popcorn.

[murielm99]

53. I thought Skinner put a stop to the cornflake chicken

threads. He said, "No more!"

I never opened any of them. They were too long and repetitive.

[xmas74]

54. I thought there was a stop to them

around the same time as there was a stop on the Laura Branigan threads.

[NYC Liberal]

62. That he did:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=3499154

Please, no more threads about chicken.

I am trying to keep a sense of humor about this, so please bear with me.

I have instructed the moderators to lock new threads about chicken.

:rofl:

And the original thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=961628

[murielm99]

63. Damn, that was funny.

I just went back and opened the original thread. Some of those people have been tombstoned since then, so I will get off this topic.

[Odin2005]

47. LOL, I remember the cornflake chicken flame-war!

EPIC!!! :rofl:

[treestar]

30. Yep.

There will then be threads talking about why DU is obsessed or begging others to stop posting about it.

It's fascinating how certain subjects are so interesting to people.

[LadyHawkAZ]

7. I went to a Presbyterian school

they pushed this stuff constantly. I remember them holding a special assembly to show the movie "A Thief in the Night" when I was about nine.

I was terrified. I had nightmares for years. If I had to put my finger on the point where I began to part ways with religion, that assembly was probably it. I would happily see this sort of terrorizing prosecuted as child abuse: it really is that horrible to live with.

[sakabatou]

10. I grew up Jewish, so I can't share the same fear as you did

[DesertFlower]

14. i went to catholic school and i was

terrified of burning in hell. now i'm a happy atheist.

[bluedave]

21. I did too

but agnostic makes a lot more sense than athesism--ya just never know.

[Zhade]

57. They are compatible views. I am an agnostic atheist.

In essence, I have no belief in any gods (atheism) because I have never received any verifiable evidence (agnosticism, lack of knowledge) to support such a belief (in truth, it has never been shown that anyone, anywhere, at any time, has received such knowledge -- thus, believers are really agnostic theists).

[NNN0LHI]

17. The part in the bible where Abraham thinks he hears gods voice telling him to slice his sons throat

But god stopped him at the last minute and gave him a goat to slice his throat instead. Learned that in Catechism when I was just a little shit. I got worried my father might start hearing voices telling him to cut my throat. And then at the last minute when god was supposed to stop him he got busy doing something else and forgot about stopping him.

That was good enough for me. I didn't even need to get to the rapture bull shit to know this stuff wasn't for me. I was probably about 7 at the time.

Don

[Mariana]

23. God didn't stop Jephthah from cutting his daughter's throat.

I always wondered why God saved Isaac but not Jephthah's daughter. Maybe God was distracted that day, in exactly the way you worried about. Anyway, I think your fear was very reasonable. Even the kids in the Bible stories only had a 50% chance of being rescued, once their dads decided to cut their throats for God.

[sarge43]

27. A daughter, not as important as a son. OED n/t

[Ilsa]

19. I'm worried about we'll see reports of murder-suicides

when families realize they are "still here" and if they believe they were left behind.

[salin]

28. Just read an interesting article in Slate - per what the likely response will be

http://www.slate.com/id/2295099/

Testament to the power of human rationalization to solve cognitive dissonance. Based on past groups' behaviors - I hope that your worries are less likely founded and the writer's implied prediction is more likely.

[Ilsa]

29. I've heard that there will be an abundance of professional counselors

in the area of Camping's church to assist with depression, etc.

[sarge43]

22. "Fear is the mind killer."

When most people are threaten (the more powerful and vague, the better), they flee, freeze or fight. What they don't do, unless they're trained to deal with the threat, is think. They don't question or analyze; they aren't skeptical. They're ripe for manipulation.

Essentially, this scam is no different than the post-911 Bush et al worked on us or racial/ethnic etc bigotry (The Other is coming to get ya).

I agree that the effect on children is terrible. However, I fault their parents more than the manipulators. If Mommy and Daddy go batshit over every faux bogeyman, their kids probably will, too. I'm 68; the Cold War was a significant part of my childhood - the duck and covers, News of the Day shorts of the bomb tests, the giant mutant creature flicks. I don't recall being particularly frighten and I thank Mom and Dad. They may have been, but they never showed it. I took my cue from them.

[Motown_Johnny]

24. Herbert (n/t)

[Odin2005]

49. Ah, the Litany of Fear, from "Dune".

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

[sarge43]

52. As litanies go, not a bad one.

"All we have to fear is fear itself."

[EstimatedProphet]

25. Believe me, I'm there with you

Being the son of a preacher in a small town is very anxiety-inducing. I remember when I was 6-7 or so going to sleep every night terrified of Satan coming to get me.

[xmas74]

40. Granddaughter of a Pentecostal preacher.

Lots of bogeymen in my closet and under my bed as a child. Of course, many of them were Satan wearing a Santa mask but that's besides the point.

[pipi_k]

31. OMG I can so identify with what you wrote...

I've had anxiety disorders ever since I can remember. I'm 58 now...had panic attacks starting at the age of 10.

I recall one time after I had learned to read where I saw an article in the newspaper where someone had predicted the end of the world. It was a very small article, stuck in the middle of the newspaper, which, today would tip me off that it was a load of shit.

But a kid doesn't know those things.

I was absolutely terrified. And sick.

Then there was that whole "The Soviets are going to KILL us!!" thing going on. Duck and cover drills. The air raid siren tests on Friday afternoons.

By the time I was 20 I had agoraphobia to the point where I couldn't leave my own home, and I couldn't even go from one room to another without crawling on my hands and knees because I was so dizzy from fear.

So after all these years I am somewhat functional, although I have a limited range of travel. And, coincidentally, I had a dream last night where I was in a car with someone else who was driving and we were going someplace and I was afraid and I found myself starting to have a panic attack in my dream.

People can't see this stuff, so they don't know how debilitating it is, and how it can literally be complete Hell.

anyway, yeah. I want to say a big FUCK YOU to Harold Camping for scaring the bejeezus out of a whole lot of little kids who don't have anyone sane in their lives to tell them the guy is a nutcase and the world is not going to end.

[treestar]

32. My first day at college - far away from home

I was a shy kid who was anxious about it - I had just dealt with buying all my books when some fundie kid came up to me and asked me if I died tonight, would I have eternal life?

It was the last thing I needed at that moment! I walked away but never forgot that obnoxious twit.

[Odin2005]

51. I once had a nut try to witness to me on campus

I was 18 and very angsty at the time and she pulled the same line, I was so pissed I tried to smack her with my Cell Biology textbook.

[Love Bug]

34. I'm an ex-fundamentalist and trust me, there are none more anxious than fundies

It's not easy being part of a religion that teaches that your 'unsaved' friends and relatives are going to suffer the torments of hell. It's a horrible way to live and it doesn't help when groups like this remind xtian fundies that they had better get busy and work harder on their proselytizing. It's abuse, frankly, and terrible for those stuck in that culture of fear.

A lot of DUers who haven't been there don't understand how difficult it can be to get away from that group-mind -- think Stockholm Syndrome. I'm not excusing any fundys behavior, but trying to explain what drives them.

It's a fear-based religion and that is why they are so drawn to republicans, who practice fear-based politics. It all feels 'comfortable' to them.

[lunatica]

35. I believe religion is child abuse

Period.

[Zhade]

59. Same here. I was very upset when my son uttered the phrase "the one true god".

He doesn't live with me. He's in Virginia, where I lived when I was married to his mother. You can imagine the xian influence there. Now double it.

My son knows I respect his right to his beliefs, something most adults don't really consider. But he also knows I do not share in or particularly like those beliefs. It's been interesting. I certainly hope he grows out of it. I don't love him any less, but I would be so proud of him for figuring it all out as I did. We're talking about a kid who took calculus at 10 -- the last thing he needs is the irrational thinking other adults inculcated within his mind blocking what that mind can achieve.

[Mr. Jefferson]

36. Ashamed...?

To be ashamed, one must acknowledge that there is, in fact, wrong and right (black and white).

We live in a world where most everything is painted "gray."

[Occulus]

42. That's because the world is, morally and ethically, very gray.

The idea that the world is divided into Biblical "good" and "evil" camps (since that's what you were really referring to and we both know it) is false.

[Mr. Jefferson]

66. You should demand a refund from whoever sold you that book on how to read minds.

In any case, your response verifies my claim.

[Tuvok Obama]

41. I agree with what you said about children, but I think this has been good for the adults

I love the fact that this money-grubbing weasel has given so many grown adults a lesson in how to GROW UP and stop believing these con artists.

"THE BIBLE GUARANTEES IT!" reads the endorsement on his home page. Yes, it's still there, even some 12 hours after the global, rolling earthquakes have failed to begin.

It's awful, what the children of these fools have been put through. But as for the adults, I see this (the failure of the prediction to materialize) as comparable to someone who has vodka and cigarettes for breakfast, bacon milkshakes for lunch, and deep-fried pizza-burgers for dinner, having a minor heart attack. Just a little warning to adjust their lifestyle, and spare them an even greater loss in the future.

[Arugula Latte]

43. My mom had a rapture nut aunt who scared her silly in the 40s

She took my mom aside when she was a kid and said: "Don't say anything to your parents, but the world is going to end soon." It was very traumatic for my mom.

On the positive side, it helped her open her eyes to the idiocy of religion. She was confirmed as a Catholic but rejected it all after adolescence.

[Cattledog]

44. Who cares what idiots fall for?

[Codeine]

56. Exactly.

Stupidity should be painful.

[lapislzi]

45. I am sorry to laugh, but your typo was very funny

I know anxiety is no laughing matter, having dealt with both sides. But your fear of being "ruptured" caused me to chuckle.

[Odin2005]

46. I have OCD, so I feel for all the folks with OCD that have been suckered by this bastard.

[Skidmore]

48. He's collected a cool $80 million off of this since the last

prediction of the end of the world in 1994. SHould be tried as a con man, but he won't because it is his "belief."

[Codeine]

55. If some one is stupid enough to be frightened of the Rapture

then they deserve all the discomfort coming their way.

[Avant Guardian]

58. Back in the 90s my aunt and uncle sold their house and went to Texas

They stood out in the desert there for two weeks waiting to be raptured. Eventually they gave up and drove back to Wa. state. These people are morons.

[spin]

60. I remember a co-worker who told the boss she would not be at work on the day of Camping's last ...

prediction in September 1994. She was a very religious person and she fully expected to be "Raptured". The boss told her that if she wanted to get paid, she would have to use a vacation day. She was upset and the boss just laughed and told her that if she was really going to be snatched up to heaven, why was she worried about her pay?

I wonder what impact the failed prophesy had on her outlook on life. A few years later she left her husband and children to go live with a younger man half her age and get high on illegal drugs and sex.

[murielm99]

61. I think you can see what impact it had on her life

if she went to live with a younger man and get high on drugs.

I was not aware that this Camping had made predictions in the past. Why don't people learn?

[donheld]

64. I know very well what this does to a kid

from the time I was 5 days old it was hammered in my head the rapture was going to happen soon, very very soon.
This happened at least 3 times a week at church and constantly at home.

[freshwest]

65. Thanks for expressing what has affected so many of us.