Co-worker & end times.

Ask her when the world is going to end. No specifics are needed. "Within five years" is more than enough. Of course you will have to wait five years, but then you'll feel better.

Like sophia8 says, every year since AD 90 has been found to fit the prophecies of Revelations perfectly. Every year it's been preached that the end will come shortly. Thousands of ministers claim, and still claim, that the end will be "within my lifetime." They all die just a little too early, and then the new crop of ministers forgets about them.
 
Zep said:
Douglas Adams and the B-Ark...??

I like your idea, OC! If I may, can I adapt it to be my standard response to these freaks?

"Sorry, but that happened iin 1996. Guess you weren't one of the lucky ones, and now you're stuck down here with us..."
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Absolutely! :D
 
JP1283 said:
How do you guys shrug off end times fears? .
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I'd go to her and ask for $600. I'd tell her that I will use the money to buy and distribute Bibles after the Rapture. When she'd hem and haw about forking over the cash, then I'd realize that she isn't too serious about it and that I shouldn't be too serious about it either.
 
Ladewig said:
I'd go to her and ask for $600. I'd tell her that I will use the money to buy and distribute Bibles after the Rapture. When she'd hem and haw about forking over the cash, then I'd realize that she isn't too serious about it and that I shouldn't be too serious about it either.
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Of course she'd hem and haw. Six hundred is a weird amount to ask for.

Better make it an even thousand, and get the Bibles with the right God in them. If you get the cheap ones, they're just as likely to promote Thor.
 
Freethinker said:
The weather, hurricanes, earthquakes and wars haven't really increased as you percieve it. What happens is a few bad things happen, then anytime it gets windy out, the news media acts like it is the biggest thing that ever happened. Everything gets blown out of proportion and people start panicking over nothing.
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The Daily Show used to refer to these reports as the "Storm of the Century of the Week".

Imagine what the local news stations would do if Krakatoa happened today. Or the Galveston Hurricane.
 
aargh57 said:
Do what Penn and Teller suggest. Most of these "end times" predictions have 75% (or more) of the population perishing. Play the odds........."
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In classic Penn and Teller form:

Bullspit!

100% of the current populace will die. You will die, I will die, and your dog will die, too.

It's guaranteed. The end of the world comes with the day you die.

Now, do I need to provide "evidence" or "proof"?
 
The rapture is the only way christians can negate the death bed confession. You can live your life however you want as long as you spend the last 4 seconds repenting. They have to give people a reason to convert now. "You might get in a car crash" is not enough to scare the kids.
 
TragicMonkey said:
That seems unfair. Maybe we should make a robot body for the Holy Ghost to inhabit. To give it a bit of a treat.

Then, since its powers are already equal to God and Jesus, it could use its superior robot body to destroy the weak flesh bodies of the other two, and assume supreme control of the universe. Holy Roboghost, huzzah!
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Silly, silly monkey that is impossible!! Nowhere in the bible does it mention ghosts inhabiting robots and if it isn't in the bible, it's impossible (Did Jesus ever defecate?)!!

Plus God and Jesus can drink beer. I hardly find the holy dude equal.
 
I don't get what the big fuss is about with everyone floating off to heaven. Don't they know that bodies decay? does this mean that anyone who died prior to the rapture won't get carried off to heaven? is it only for the living? It just doesn't make sense.
 
If I remember right, I think the souls of everybody that died gets taken up during the rapture in addition to the people that get beamed up.
 
This is running into one of the inherent contradictions in the Bible. Jews do not believe in an immortal soul that continues to live and feel pleasure (in heaven) or pain (in hell) after death. Instead they believe in a resurrection of the worthy dead, who will then live on the new and improved Earth.

The immortal soul comes from the Greek tradition.

John of Patmos apparently believed that Jesus would come back and destroy the Romans, then the Christians would live happily ever after. The whole idea of a "rapture" is not really compatible with the book of Revelations. It comes from a passage in the letters of Paul where Paul is explaining what will happen to the Christians who have already died. They are to be resurrected at the second coming and get to go off with Jesus and the living Christians. John complicates it by escalating the persecutions of his time into an all out war, which the Christians win.
 
Temporal Renegade said:
I'm still trying to figure out just why you'd need your body up in Heaven in the first place. If Heaven's a spiritual plane, could it contain a physical object?
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As a believer in the rapture, let me answer.
Your body, as it is right now, is flawed. It will be lifted up and changed to an immortal, perfect one.
And I am glad even unbelievers seem to think there are signs of the end times, because there are, and more frequent.
 
psy kick said:
And I am glad even unbelievers seem to think there are signs of the end times, because there are, and more frequent.
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Well, of course we think there are signs of the end times! We have always thought so, because there have always been signs of the end times. They started happening just before the first war and with the first storm. The difference between us is that we have evidence for what we think they mean, and you don't have evidence for what you think they mean.
 
The first reliable recording seismic sensors were set up in Scotland in the mid 1840s, at Comrie, which sits on the Highland Boundary Fault and is subject to frequent small tremors.

Prior to this , earthquake records were patchy, kept by a few scattered people around the world.

Accordingly, the number of recorded earthquakes has increased dramatically since then, simply because we are now keeping systematic records.

As for the politics of the middle east, what would you have said during the Roman occupation of the 1st - 3rd centuries? Or the period of Ottoman rule? Or the situation in the 1920s or 1050s? There is always trouble in this area.

Iran was a largely British post-Ottoman creation circa 1922. It has little to do with the Persia of Xerxes and more to do with Anglo-Iranian Oil. (Or BP as they call themselves now).
Climate change? Ask the Anasazi or the Maya. Or the folk who lived in the Sahara three thousand years ago, or the dustbowl farmers of the 1920s. Climate change is nothing new.

Hurricanes? Yep, we get those. Does it actually mention hurricanes in the Bible? Where, precisely?

Wars? Yep. We have those. Remember the thirty years' war? The hundred years' war? The (fill in any of several thousand Eurasian wars of the last 2000 years) war?

The end times is (are) a crock of kapoomba. I worry about reality. Like taxes n' stuff.
 
JP1283 said:
I have a co-worker who loves to talk about the end times a lot. For one thing, she doesn't believe she's going to die; she believes that the Rapture is going to come and "she will be flying." And she says this with a straight face.
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then she is certifiable.

Anyway, it got me to thinking. I used to have a fear of the end times that sort of died down, but lately I've been getting worried again. It seems that the signs are all around us...wild weather (hurricanes), climate change, earthquakes. But what has really got my attention now is everything that has been going on with Israel, starting with the Jews being forced back into it, and now all this stuff with Iran and how it looks like we're going to be going to war with them as well.
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well first of all why on earth would you consider some weather to be something to be scared of? IN the 19th Century the island of Krakatoa exploded and the fall out from that eruption basically erased a summer from the globe - now THAT was weather.

As for your comments about 'everything that has been going on with Israel' why do you find that more 'important' than, for example, Sri Lanka? Or Chechnya? Or the Congo? Just because some book put together by goatherds says that this is significant? Come on, you cannot be serious?

How do you guys shrug off end times fears? This all ties into my religious fears I've had and I'm paranoid that all these fundamentalist Christians (who I couldn't imagine spending eternity with, but that's beside the point) are right.
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holy owned and operated batchild, you need to get down and sceptical.

Why on earth would you believe any of the drivel from religion? C'mon.

The next thing you know you'll be telling that Jerusalem is an important city just because some fanatical nitwits think it is.

If you want to worry about things worry about Putin becoming a born again Russian Despot who controls European energy supplies, worry about Whhabbi sectarian teachers spreading Islamic radicalism worry about the way Peterborough United are playing.

If you are going to worry about Fairy Stories then maybe you could panic about Harry Potter - at least that stuff gets made into movies with good FX.
 
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its getting to the point where wild claims of end times and man's impact on the environment is getting so ridiculous and tired that people are starting to shut out legitimate concerns about the environemnt. even i get to the point where i want to say "screw the environment, it isnt that bad." but anyway, IMO, you are just getting swept up into the frenzy. as much as the media hates people saying this, the media plays into this because it is a good story. they do the same thing with the economy- sometimes my wife gets so stressed and desperate because there will be 5 stories about how abysmal the economic indicators are...if i had listened to them 5 years ago, i wouldve never bought my house and had 5 years of equity in it...you just have to step back and use your head.
 
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