The calculus of Trump » « I’m sorry, but Pokemon Go is my game

Tim LaHaye: No rapture for you!

One of the loudest purveyors of that absurd (and coincidentally, completely un-biblical) End Times/Rapture bullshit, Tim LaHaye, has ceased to exist. His brain has stopped functioning, his self has dissipated into the cosmos as nothing more than a final sigh of heat, and he is not frolicking about in Heaven or roasting in Hell, because those places don’t exist, and because neither does he, any more. He is not discovering now that he was wrong about everything in life, because he is dead, and it’s only the living who have to deal with the lies he promoted while he was alive.

The only thing I’m sad about right now is that he doesn’t have to suffer the consequences of the misery he dealt to LGBTQ people, to teenagers who were inculcated with an unjustified mortal terror, and to all those people who wasted donation dollars to his fraudulent organization.

The calculus of Trump » « I’m sorry, but Pokemon Go is my game

Comments

  2. Akira MacKenzie says

    A couple of years back, when my department was facing imminent layoffs, one of my very Christian co-workers was uncertain what do afterwards.

    “I was thinking of going back to school,” she said, “but my husband tells me not to bother “because the Rapture is coming soon.” (Emphasis mine.) I was dumbstruck. This person was thinking of hobbling her own and her family’s future over an mythological apocalypse that been “coming soon” for nearly two millennium.

    This bigoted clown helped spread that superstition, that fear. I will shed no tears for La Haye’s passing.

    Don’t let the coffin lid hit your ass on the way out, Tim.

  3. Hairhead, Still Learning at 59 says

    I like to imagine another scenario, taken from a Rowan Atkinson stand-up performance.

    DEVIL: Hello, welcome to Hell. I am the Devil, but you may call me “Toby”.

    DEVIL: Now, Protestants and Catholics, yes, all of you . . . (pauses, leans forward and snickers) The Jews were right!

  4. F.O. says

    I’ve been struggling with death lately.
    The last moments of my life will be irrelevant, none will be there to remember the experience.
    Rationally, I know that death is literally the last (least?) of my problems. Psychologically, I feel overwhelmed.

  5. robertmatthews says

    Fred Clark has as usual an excellent post on the subject, written from the point of view of an evangelical Christian who thinks LaHaye was wrong about literally everything: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2016/07/25/one-will-be-taken-and-one-will-be-left-behind/.

    If you haven’t read Clark’s vicious, thirteen-year-long, ongoing exegesis of the “Left Behind” series, oh, you are in for a treat. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/11/05/left-behind-index-the-whole-thing/

  9. robro says

    …an mythological apocalypse that been “coming soon” for nearly two millennium.

    Actually longer than two millennium, perhaps as much as a couple of thousand years. Ideas of apocalyptic end times certainly pre-date Judaism and Christianity. Their versions were derivative, along with the Messiah myths. The various great flood stories are a form of this, but there were others. People have always loved a good horror story, and what better horror story than the end of the world. Hollywood still makes that movie.

  10. says

    @#3, Hairhead, Still Learning at 59

    I like to imagine another scenario, taken from a Rowan Atkinson stand-up performance.
    DEVIL: Hello, welcome to Hell. I am the Devil, but you may call me “Toby”.
    DEVIL: Now, Protestants and Catholics, yes, all of you . . . (pauses, leans forward and snickers) The Jews were right!

    For those interested in the whole sketch, you can watch it here.

  12. bargearse says

    Robro @ 9

    Actually longer than two millennium, perhaps as much as a couple of thousand years

    Umm, say what now?

  14. Saganite, a haunter of demons says

    @#11 Yeah, I’ve been reading those for a while. It’s become a bit of a slog, though, because there’s so much repitition. That isn’t Fred Clark’s fault, mind, it’s the books that keep rehashing the same crap over and over.

  15. davidnangle says

    I can’t get behind Fred Clark’s religion, but I admire his wisdom and mind at least as much as I do anyone less than Feynman.

  16. Sili says

    All of that said, condolences to his family.

    Iono. The way these things go, they’re probably in the family business and making sure to perpetuate his awfulness and revenue stream.

  18. davidnangle says

    Crip Dyke, assail me not with your instructional Japanese rope bondage for penguins imagery.

    It’s Fred Clark that I admire, dammit!

  19. blf says

    The way these things go, [this scammer’s family are] probably in the family business and making sure to perpetuate his awfulness and revenue stream.

    Yes, from The Encyclopedia of American Loons:

    #225: Tim LaHaye
    […]
    Tim’s wife, Beverly LaHaye, is famous for following up his views on homosexuality. Beverly is the founder of Concerned Women for America, which is devoted to fighting the militant gay agenda and the gays’ attempts to recruit our children. The group has also stated their opposition to publicly funded HIV screening and publicly funded STD treatment (after all, these are effective weapons against homosexuality).

    And:

    #854: Beverly LaHaye

    Beverly LaHaye is the founder of Concerned Women for America, and a rabidly insane author of books […] attacking gay rights and the feminist movement — according to Lahaye [sic] “{f}eminism is more than an illness. It is a philosophy of death.”. She is, for instance, a vocal critic of the Committee for Eliminating Discrimination Against Women, since she believes the committee is heading a super-secred conspiracy to pass the Equal Rights Amendment and give equal rights to gay people, which I am not sure would count as a secret conspiracy even if it were true. LaHaye was as such in the vanguard in the (successful) fight against US ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, making the point that ratifying the convention would mean that a “twisted ideology of extremist feminism rebelling against God and His law” would allow communist China and North Korea to dominate American society and that communists would raise your children.
    […]
    Her organization, Concerned Women for America (CWA), is a wingnut extremist organization opposed to anything that smacks of sympathy with, well, anyone, really. [… S]ince their fight against contraception, say, won’t fly particularly well, they have also taken the fights to third-world countries where success is more likely […]

    The CWA is explicitly opposed to freedom of choice, Muslims, non-Americans and non-Christians, and more or less anything having to do with women’s rights, including equal pay, birth control, abortion, maternity leave (well — real women would of course leave the workforce for good, regardless of pregnancy) and Obamacare with its “super-death-panels” […]

    The CWA has furthermore claimed that publicly funded HIV screening and publicly funded STD treatment are objectionable programs, apparently since such programs may save the life or happiness of people who live in sin and deserve to die. They also describe embryonic stem cell research as “deadly” but display no sign of comprehension of what stem cell research is.

    Another one of their favorite issues is pushing religion and pseudoscience in public schools, including school prayer and Intelligent Design […]

    Michele Bachmann has cited LaHaye as one of her political heroes, and the admiration is apparently mutual. […]

  20. blf says

    instructional Japanese rope bondage for penguins

    The mildly deranged penguin says the sushi is fresher and tastier if you just eat it, rather than first watching a video about the peril presented by free-range peas.