So, it's just past 10 am, 21 October 2011 in Toronto.
Harold Camping's third (or fourth, depending on how you count his attempts) prediction of the end of the world called for an apocalyptic wave travelling time zone by time zone around the Earth.
Well, it's already 22 October in parts of Australia, Russia, etc. They're still there. All of 'em. Everything is just fine.
Maybe Camping's god got stuck in traffic or something.
This apocalypse stuff is, quite frankly, getting stupid. How much money was wasted on Camping's stupid, childish bullshit? Not to mention the poor schmucks who blew their life savings supporting Camping's crap, like this guy?
I'm convinced that Harold Camping is a criminal. Specifically, I think he's guilty of fraud, which can be defined as "an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual." It's ridiculous to think that someone can calculate, based on an obviously inaccurate set of documents (the bible or whatever the fuck Camping used). It's certainly obvious now, after the fact, that he was wrong. It's ridiculous to think that his intent was pure and not deceitful, because if his intent was pure, then he's nuts and should be locked away. If he's not locked up (and he isn't), then he's not nuts, and therefore must be deceitful.
Given the huge amount of money spent promoting Camping's insane prediction ($100 million by some estimates), this is not just some petty fraud. This is massive. Indeed, even a christian has enumerated some of the things that could have been done with that much money.
Undergraduate students at my University pay something on the order of $7,000 a year in tuition. $100 million dollars would provide completely free education for over 3,500 students. I find that the education of 3,500 young people is superseded by the brain fart of some pathetic, ignorant shit-disturber like Harold Camping borders on a crime against humanity.
Here's a project for the atheist community world-wide: let's start pressuring governments to make failed predictions of the apocalypse criminal offences. Let's make sure that anyone stupid enough to try it gets to pay, in kind, for their abhorrent fear-mongering.
And let's all take a moment to tell Harold Camping to fuck off.
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