atheist_in_foxhole

Jesus will never allow that to happen.

Waning Moon Conrad

Easy.

Psychos are the spawn of Satan. Psychlos have invaded, therefore Satan exists.

Satan exists therefore God exists therefore the Bible is his word therefore believe it or burn.

Arvel Joffi

I worked with a guy in 1999 who was overjoyed that he had lived to see the end times. He couldn't wait to sit in church in solemn prayer while the world was torn apart around him; then he and his family would ascend to heaven.

When the New Year came and went, he just stopped talking about it. I almost felt bad for the guy. It's like he'd waiting 30 years for his trip to Disneyland but the park was closed when he got there.

Those poor Griswolds....

David Bowden

I sometimes wish that somebody would threaten to blow up Jerusalem so people would stop fighting over it. Sort of the way Solomon threatened to cut up the disputed baby in the Bible.

But I don't think catastrophic events in general can be counted on to break a true believer's faith. Their end-times interpretation would be retired, but a new one, dealing with the events as they occured, would take its place. Since there are already many end-times traditions, I think they'd just invent a new one, or adopt or adapt one of the existing ones, rather than reject their faith altogether.

This would involve less effort on the believer's part than scrapping a whole belief system, and trying to replace it with something else, with all the accompanying uncertainties and discomfort. People tend to do what's easier, just to get by. If the event is bad enough, they'll just fall back on simple faith and cope. There's still one's whole venerable tradition to be dealt with, and religions prove to be remarkably flexible as times and circumstances change.

Above all, faith promises a postive outcome if you just hold on long enough. Skepticism doesn't guarantee a happy future after all our weary struggles, so guess which route appeals more to a religious person in times of trouble?

The Holocaust made many atheists out of Jews (and Christians) in Europe, but some concentration camp survivors saw their faith grow stronger, and many now retrospectively put great religious significance on the event.

This seems ridiculous but it's true. Quite often an apparent setback for a religious sect actually becomes a rallying-point for believers.

I recall there being a small cult in the Chicago area years ago where a well-publicized prophecy failed to come true. But while half or more of the members left disappointed, the remaining believers re-rationalized the prophecy, and to this day there are still followers. Also, there's at least one adherent of that UFO suicide cult from a few years back who sincerely believes that his dead friends are communing with aliens on comet Hale-Bopp right now, despite the absurdity of the group's belief system.

I'm sure Jesus' crucifixion, if it actually occured, was just such a setback, transformed by his most devoted followers into a victory for the slain rabbi. The desire to believe and the need to hope that a set of doctrines is true, can apparently outweigh any catastrophe.

This isn't a sign of any religion's truth as much as I think it is a matter of human nature trying to grasp at whatever helps a person cope with negative circumstances. I suppose these people just don't know what else to do, and so they fall back on "hope" in terms they're familiar with.

And perhaps there's a deeply-programmed fear of rejecting their religion in the face of adversity, so maybe they continue to believe not because they understand how to reconcile everything, but because they're afraid to admit that they're weak, because an even worse catastrophe awaits them if they do that.

Tell me about it. Some people stopped putting money away in their retirement investments in the 1990s during the biggest stock market boom in history because they felt they had just enough to live on through the year 2000. Now there's no way for them to recover from that decade-long missed opportunity, they're ten years older, considerably worse off than they could have been, and kicking themselves for missing the whole dot-com thing when it was still good. But popular Christian voices, like financial guru Larry Burkett, taught that the stock market was a poor investment area, and people trusted their spiritual leaders instead of checking out the facts.

A few of my acquaintances have re-rationalized their end-times hopes, though. Y2K wasn't really as important as they thought, but this time they're sure it's...

Well, there's always the 100th anniversary of the re-establisment of the state of Israel, the 50th of the 7-Day War, the 2000th year since Jesus' crucifixion/ascension, the 50th year since Roe v. Wade, the seventh year after Sept 11, 2001 (when "tribulation" supposedly began), the election of Leiberman or another Jew to the US Presidency, the death of John Paul II, 2000 years after the Romans destroyed the Temple, 2000 years after the death of John, the last surviving disciple...

These seem arbitrary but if enough people agree that this or that arbitrary teaching is true, it becomes canonical and traditional. The authority of the book of Revelation itself was disputed for decades until enough church leaders were won over to include it in the canon. And in the future I'm sure there will be more refinements in Christian eschatology based on the latest "current events" in the middle east.

-David