Flight 102 is Now Boarding

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However it happens, it will happen!

There we go, folks.

So..your point is that "to avoid looking stupid you should..avoid looking stupid... by concealing your stupidity!"
What an insight! No one in the human race has ever thought of THAT before!



This meteor thing you mentioned atleast had some logic and evidence based in science even if it was wrong.

Harold camping not only violated all external logic by predicting the end of the world for a date unsupported by any scientific evidence, but he also violated the internal logic of the Bible itsself in many well know theological ways causing the secular to laugh and the religous to foam at the mouth in anger.

It was already laughable ahead of time.
He had already predicted the world would end in 1994.


Niether of your two remedies for avoiding being a laughing stock wouldve worked: keeping it secret nor hedging his bet with a range of dates.

Hes an evangalist. Hes all about spreading the word. So he cant keep his discovery a secret!

Even if he had given doomsday the wide berth of a range of dates all that would have done would mean that all of his followers would have gathered for the rapture at the last moment of that range in time. The New England millinialist of the nineteenth centurey named Miller did exactly what camping did almost two centuries earlier, but he was aiming (just as you suggested) for a wider target-namely the whole year of 1844 instead of just for a specific hour on one specific day. The result was exactly the same. Dec 31 1844 came and went and nothing happened- so miller and his 'millerites" decided that the bible formulas refered to the HEBREW year which ends a few months later.- rather than to the Gregorian year.

So they all kept the faith (and continued to spread the faith) and three months later all of New England was gathered in each village common to wait for the rapture at the stroke of midnight at the end of the last day of the Hebrew year on a spring night in 1845.

And all of New England became a laughing stock the next day.
So a wider target didnt change the laughableness of it because of this stroke-midnight-on-the-last-day effect.

A hedged prediction is a bogus prediction.

A real prediction involves sticking one's metaphorical neck out.

ruveyn

Camping's claims were BS not because nothing happened last Saturday but because doom cult beliefs like the rapture have no base at all and are only harmful to mankind. (But clearly very profitable to fraudsters like Camping).

Camping did not include any estimation of errors. He said very precisely that at 6:00 PM in each timezone an earthquake will happen.

I think that it is forgivable if you are 'cautious' to wait until the 21st at 6:00PM before mocking. But waiting any more time than that to begin bashing would just be irrational. These people have made a lot of winnings out of people that were tricked into believing their doom cult, I don't think they deserve for us to wait until the 27-th before laughing on them. If something happens the 27-th it will most likely be a coincidence. Heck, even if something happened the 21st it would as well be.

Camping didn't give a range of error, there's no reason we should give him such thing for free.

No.

That would be a dumb pseudo-intellectual irrational person. There is no reason at all to take numerology-based doomsdays predictions with a "grain of salt" no matter the source. Taking them any more seriously than just calling them BS requires an IQ of 45. There is no point at all to give them any respect. Assuming that they were right, so what? The world ended, nothing for you to do. Spending time judging them would be stupid. What are you going to do? Verify that the math adds up? Numerology is utter bull, the numerology method camping used was completely made up but I bet you he added the numbers well.

No doubt a failing of mine - I just do not see how an end times prediction relates to evangelism.

I also fail to see, even if I have access to the details of Doomsday, how announcing it to everybody will change anything.

Not sure here, but I think the point being made is that the doomsday profiteers use poor methods for doing poor jobs of trying to sell poor things to the allegedly-intellectually-poor masses.

Kind of like basement fallout shelters? We had an old fruit cupboard my mama stocked with caned goods and some other supplies?

Lets make this simple.

Consider this statement.

"It is unfair for us to laugh at the followers of Harold Camping for thinking the world was going to come to an end a few days ago."

Philogos
Is that your point?
Yes, or no?

If yes then why do you think that?
IF no then what IS your point?

In adding that to the immediately-above (from naturalplastic), I see essentially-desperate people both leading and following ...

... and I would agree as to the inappropriateness of ever laughing at either ...

... and I would suggest people would/could/should have learned that from people who laughed at Noah ...

No, that is not at all my point. I have been trying to make it simple, but this happens - someoboty thinks at just enoughh of an angle to my thought patterns that one of us totally misses. I am just starting to get a key to where some com glitches with AG come from.

Harold Camping and anybody else who puts out a major prediction with a precise time associated with no allowance for at least up to 10% error is - in my opinion - a fool. This is in part my psychology - ask me when I will do something I cannot / will not give a definite figure.

Camping and anybody else who tries to calculate a timed major prediction on the basis of an ancient text, Torah, Popol Vuh, Book of Odes, Rigveda, Laxdaela Saga, Gallic Wars, even the Merchant of Venice is - in my opinion - a fool. When in addition the text repeatedly says that the data on which such a prediction could be based have been omitted, I change the rating to obtuse fool.

Somebody who buys into such a prediction, whether convinced by the science or by the charisma [if any, I do not know the guy], who fails to reason in accordance with the last two paragraphs, is a gullible fool.

I personally am more inclined to roll my eyes and moan than to laugh, but if anyone chooses to laugh at them for these calculations and this behavior, be my guest.

BUT - I do not recommend laughing on the basis of "yah the prediction failed". Laugh at their poor powers of understanding, if that is your bag. BUT - the broken clock line goes here - you and I [though we can and I will say it was stupid and baseless prediction - cannot call it a failed prediction till we have allowed a reasonable margin for error.

I have missed a lot of busses that way - Oh, 2:00, it ought to be here, guess it is not coming, I will start walking - then at 2:03 [was it my watch was wrong? it comes.

I used to have an arrangement to pick up a co-worker in the morning. Knowing him as I did, I intentionally arrived nearly fifteen minutes early and still always discovered he had already taken off walking even though everything had worked perfectly on the very first day of that arrangement.

Ah. Wasn't me, but he's one of us. Eventually I leaened to curb the impulse.