Saturday 21 May 2011

Apocalypse not now.

You still there? Didn't get taken away in the Rapture? Neither did I, but then I don't ever expect to be.

So the time passed and millions of people spectacularly stayed exactly where they were. There will no doubt be compensation claims flooding in from the idiots who gave up their jobs and spent all their money, also from all those squatters who thought they'd have a load of empty mansions to choose from. As if anyone in those mansions was really likely to be included!

It's a good thing it didn't work as expected. A rolling Armageddon, following 6 pm as it passes around the globe, was a terrible idea. I mean, we're at the end of Europe here. By the time we reached Heaven, the Poles would have finished the vodka, the Italians would have drunk all the wine and there'd be a German towel on every sun-lounger. All the Brits would turn up complaining that the timing clashed with teatime.

I wonder if smoking is banned in Heaven? I suspect not, since it's unlikely to harm the already dead and also because those who make a living by tormenting their fellow man aren't likely to get tickets. Sorry, Dreadful Arnott, it's eternity in the hot smoky place for you. Now that's what I call irony.

It's okay to laugh at doom-mongers. That's what they're for. it becomes even more amusing when doom-mongers laugh at other doom-mongers and then set about planning what they'll do after those troublesome Christians are taken off the planet.

There was a display of Olympic standard point-missing from Stephen Fry on Twitter.

Marvellous news! #rapture doesn't mean end of world. Apparently all the plantet's [sic] imbeciles disappear in one go. #dreamcometrue

No, you imbecile, the imbeciles stay. We wouldn't lose a single politician, human rights lawyer or council official who thinks he's Genghis Khan. We wouldn't lose the Westboro Baptist Church or any of those TV evangelists. If there is a God, and if the Rapture ever really happens, all the best people will go. The good ones, the noble ones, the selfless ones. Not the superinjuncted celebrities and not the chat show hosts. It'll be people nobody has even noticed.

Then there are the Green God's followers working out how they could selectively send American consumers to Heaven and how much better the world would be if they left. Sigh. You no more get to choose who goes than my tomato plants get to choose which ones go in grow-bags and which go in the compost. And when the good ones have been selected out, compost is all the rest can look forward to. They don't get to plan a new tomato paradigm after the good plants have been Raptured into a bag of soil. If a lot of people vanish, those who are still here had best get very, very drunk and stay that way because there would be nothing else left to do.

I'm not religious, but I'm not antireligious either. I don't follow a God but I recognise that I can't prove there isn't one so I go through life not worrying about it. Maybe there is, maybe there's not. I am an apathist.

If the Rapture really happens and God's chosen get swept up to Heaven, and the rest of us have to deal with the winding-down operation before God finally presses 'delete', well, too bad. I'm old, I've had a mostly good time and I wasn't expecting to go anywhere afterwards anyway. So, no loss.

Besides, eternity with me? Even God couldn't stand that.

I'm not even sure I could.

11 comments:

sixtypoundsaweekcleaner said...

Poor Harold Camping, he can't have read his Bible.

Leg-iron said...

Apparently he spends a lot more time reading his bank statements.

timbone said...

haha I am an atheist even though I was once a born again pentecostal evangelist. This however, is still a beautiful song, whether you agree with the sentiment or not. Yes, it is about the very thing that never happens, and the singer and writer, whom I have met professionaly (and died an early death) was as lovely as his song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FcTKNXlO0

Leg-iron said...

Timbone - a cleverly worded song and well sung. I don't have to agree with it to like the music.

smokervoter said...

Quit smoking - add 20 years to your life
Eat Right - add 20 years to your life
Quit drinking Scotch - add 20 years to your life
Avoid salt - add 20 years to your life
Quit fizzy pops - add 20 years to your life

At this rate who needs to go up there or down there afterwards. There'll be no afterwards.

Earthbound Eternity awaits all those who follow the Ministry of Longevity's instructions to the letter.

Leg-iron said...

There's only one reason they want us to live so long.

Dead men don't pay tax.

Anonymous said...

There was an unexpected attempt at humour at the end of last night's C4 news when Krishnan G was 'beamed up' leaving only his empty suit.

Rapture might have been the invention, in the 19th century, of a leading light of the Plymouth Brethern, a strict fundamentalist sect. Members of my family belong to the Brethern (or rather to its even more extreme offshoot, the Closed Brethern (which considers the PB to be louche...) and, astonishingly, they do truly believe in it, literally.

There was a laugh out loud moment on a TV doc a couple of years ago about American Endtimers when some Midwest shopkeepers earnestly showed off their Armageddon Survival Kits (I think Swiss army knives were involved).

Anonymous said...

Dead men don't pay tax.

Men who die with less than £325000 don't pay tax. Soon to drop to 1p when Labour wins GE2015.

Anonymous said...

My understanding is that it isn’t “the good” who are supposed to get swept to Heaven in the Rapture, but “the believers.” Apparently professing to “believe” is your get-in-free ticket to Heaven, no matter how wicked you might have been in your Earthly life. So in theory, Myra Hindley would already have been waved through the Pearly Gates by St Peter with no questions asked. And Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would both have been on the Rapture Train, too, had it arrived yesterday.

All of which begs the question: of all the True Christians that you know, how many of them would you want to spend all of eternity with? And if the answer is “none,” then doesn’t that cast an ever-so-slightly Hellish light on the whole concept of Heaven ……?

Chief_Sceptic said...

Personally, I think we need the "Golgafrincham B Ark" here - and dispatch the 'B' before the 'A' ...

The 'B' of course contains all the dog beauticians and god-botherers and administrators ! ...

(Apologies to Douglas Adams) ...

Macheath said...

Chief Sceptic, we already had a 'B Ark' - at least as long as Big Brother was running.

The problem was that they let them out again.

I always felt that BB's tagline should have been "You're a load of useless bloody loonies!"

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