Thursday, March 24, 2011

Beware: The Elevens


Seen on Facebook:
Sept 11( NY) Jan 11( Haiti) march 11(Japan).. Luke21:10-11, Then Jesus said to his disiples; Nations will rise against nation & Kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes,famines & pestilinces in various places and great signs from Beacon.'Jesus says behold I come quikly'.(So ask yourself are you ready for his return)? So sad to many wont post!!!

I didn't post a reply.  There's just no room on FB to post all the reasons why this is wrong, conceited, self-centered, hard-hearted, stupid, a-historical and inapppropriate.

Not enough room here, either.  And anyway, I found a picture that says it all.

Okay, let's try anyway.

First, in order to find this "pattern" you have to ignore all sorts of horrible events that didn't happen on the 11th of their respective months.  The Indonesian tsunami happened on December 26.  Christchurch, NZ suffered a terrible earthquake on February 22.  Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana on August 29.  And of course God attempted to destroy the city of Nashville with a horrendous flood beginning May 1, 2010.  Apparently The Grand Ole Opry offended God.

If you put all those events into a list you see no pattern at all.

Second, if God was sending a message by making earthquakes, how does 9/11 figure into this?  It wasn't an earthquake, famine, or pestilence.  The terrorists weren't a nation or even citizens of the country they were living in, so you can't count that as "nation against nation," either. 

Third, all these things have been happening for all of history.  If you want to be a shyster prognosticator, it's a safe bet that there will be wars, earthquakes, famine and pestilence somewhere in the world most of the time.  It's like dousers finding aquifers (which are under virtually all land).

Fourth, as if we need more reasons to argue against this tripe, why would all this horrible stuff presage Jesus' return?  What kind of god does that?  Wouldn't a loving god say "In order to give you a last chance to repent, I'll give you a two-minute warning (remember, God isn't very good with time, so that would be like 20 years).  I'll send rainbows and cure everyone from their cancers and stop all the locusts from destroying any crops."

Fifth *sigh*  The "endtimes" have come and gone many many many times, most recently in 2007.

I don't de-friend people who post this stuff.  They're nice people and I see them as victims rather than morons.   Still...  I wish they would think a little harder and develop some critical skills.  It's rude of me to argue in a FB thread, and it has to be massively offensive for me to break the unwritten FB etiquette rules.  This one didn't rise to that level but it merited a post and a facepalm.

5 comments:

krissthesexyatheist said...

The second photo made me spit coffee all over my keyboard, thanks. A couple of thingies 1) we are mere humans (w/that awesome evolved human brain) so, err, but we cannot know the mind/intention of Gawd (even tho his peeps keep telling us what he wants, 2). Isn't the formation of Israel part of the fakey fake prophecy , w/ natural disasters, that states dude will come back and take a small portion of his peeps to the cloudy penthouse-then his dad kills everyone else-and 3) UR awesome. I guess that's three thingies.

Kriss

LadyAtheist said...

Aw shucks.

Diet ginger ale taught me that I should always keep a piece of saran wrap on my keyboard. Yes, you can type that way!

Skepticat said...

I feel like I'm contributing to the problem when I don't call out this stupid stuff on FB. As long it as it goes on unchallenged, it just continues to spread.

On the other hand, I rarely ever say anything about it because I always end up looking like the bad person. That makes me feel like a coward. I keep hoping one day I'll find my courage.

LadyAtheist said...

I feel pretty much the same way. If I don't say something I'm condoning it but if I do say something I'm violating the spirit of FB. And to be fair, none of them offers to pray for me when I post about something atheist.

B.R. said...

I don't. When idiots use this moronic argument, I crush it. I don't have a FB, but when memes like this start to spread, skeptics are obligated to stop them with our arsenal of logic.