One of the key cases involving church-state separation (discussed in my book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom) was McCollum v. Board of Education (1948) which involved a challenge to the practice of public schools granting “release time” for the teaching of religion in school buildings during the school day to those students and parents who agreed to it. The U.S. Supreme Court by an 8-1 vote ruled the policy unconstitutional. This was the first time that religious instruction in public schools had been explicitly ruled to be unconstitutional under the U.S. constitution.

It turns out that Vashti McCollum, the feisty mother who brought the case objecting to this practice and braved the wrath of the religious people in her small town in Illinois, is still alive died only in 2006 (thanks to reader George for pointing out the error) and some PBS stations will be broadcasting a new award-winning documentary The Lord is Not on Trial Here Today that deals with her case. Here is a preview.

If your local PBS station is not listed on that site, you can call them and ask them to consider showing it.

I have heard reports that a caravan of vehicles with billboards announcing the end of the world on May 21 passed through Cleveland a couple of weeks ago. When May 22 dawns and no Rapture has occurred, there will be a lot of disappointed people. This will not be the first time that such hopes have been dashed. There was a major event actually called The Great Disappointment that occurred on October 22, 1844 [date corrected thanks to commenter Robert] when a widely believed end times prophesy failed to materialize.

While Christianity has always had its end-times fanatics, it was the creation of the state of Israel that spawned a huge amount of end-times theorizing because these people believe that Jesus will only return to Earth after the Jews returned to Israel. This is also why there is such a weird symbiotic relationship between Christian and Jewish extremist groups. The expansionist policies of Israel that have ruined the lives of so many Palestinians is supported by the Christian end-timers because they think it is a sign that Jesus has packed his bags and is about to make the return trip to Earth.

I have been having some fun with the whole Rapture thing, because the idea is so absurd. But there is a dark side to it, in that many of the people who take it seriously are making foolish decisions and could ruin their lives. NPR ran a story on some of the people who are waiting to be raptured. One couple with an infant daughter and another baby due in June have abandoned plans for the mother to go to medical school and are spending all their money down so that they will be left with nothing on May 21, arguing that there is no point since it will all come to an end. In another story, NPR described a person who sold off his house and gave up his job to await the event. A colleague of mine described how her former sister-in-law believed in an earlier rapture prediction of 1994 and ran up huge credit card bills that then took a long time to pay off. These people refuse to consider that they might be wrong because to do so would be a sign of lack of faith and cause god to not select them for heaven.

If no Rapture occurs, the people responsible for the predictions will use the standard excuse that the calculations were faulty and go back to the drawing board. This is what current Rapture predictor Harold Camping said in 1994 when his earlier prediction did not pan out. He said it was because he had not read the book of Jeremiah that contained some important clues. That seems a little irresponsible to me. If you are basing a major prediction such as the end of the world on the Bible, and people are taking you seriously, you should at least have had the decency to do your homework and read the whole thing.

In a comment to a previous post, Scott jokingly suggested that it might be fun on May 21 to leave little piles of clothes around because that would be a sign to the believers that people have been suddenly raptured up to heaven. That would be funny except that we have to remember that we are dealing with seriously deluded people who do not think rationally. If these people think that the Rapture had actually occurred and they were not selected and were headed for hell, there is no saying what they will do and it is quite possible that they will go berserk.

Richard Dawkins was asked by the Washington Post to comment on the latest Rapture frenzy and said: “Why is a serious newspaper like the Washington Post giving space to a raving loon?” He then has a good discussion of how the word ‘tradition’ used as in ‘religious tradition’ tends to bestow respectability on a set of nonsensical myths that have no foundation.

I disagree with Dawkins. We should publicize as widely as possible the crazy and evil things that religions cause people to do. Mainstream religions provide the soil in which the crazies can take root and flourish. We need more and more people to realize that these deluded people are deeply misguided because they are connected organically to mainstream religion, not separate from it. Having a public relations fiasco like the Rapture can only help the cause of skepticism.

Someone has had the fortitude to go through the Bible and tabulate all the people killed by this particular god. The problem is that while sometimes the numbers are given precisely, on other occasions the figures have to be estimated.

The result? 2,476,636 if you count up the actual numbers and, if you include those killings for which no precise numbers are provided, an estimated 25 million.

(via Jerry Coyne.)

Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, was asked at a press conference if he believes in evolution or creationism and he replied with his characteristic rudeness and arrogance “That’s none of your business”.

While I would not have said it the way he did, I do agree with him on the substance. There is no reason why elected officials should have to publicly state what they privately believe on any issue that a reporter might be interested in. We are only entitled to know what they do in their official capacities and the reasons they advance for doing it. Issues should be debated on the merits of the competing proposals and on publicly stated arguments in favor of the options and their underlying beliefs are not a necessary part of the discussion.

Having said all that, I was curious as to the implications Christie’s reluctance to answer the question. If he truly believes it is none of the reporter’s business, I agree with him. But what if he instead felt that giving an honest answer might cause him embarrassment or political difficulties? There are two options here. One is that he believes in evolution but felt that saying so would alienate a major bloc of his supporters. The other option is that he believes in creationism but felt that denying the fact of evolution would make him look like an anachronism in this modern scientific age.

The former represents crass political calculation, the latter demonstrates that to deny evolution is no longer something that is intellectually respectable. Both options are signs of science’s progress.

Remember, there are only nine more days until the Rapture! Get your forgiveness from Jesus now and avoid long lines in the last minute rush.

Salon has an article on the latest Rapture prophesy and the 89-year old radio host named Harold Camping who is behind it.

Take a look at this image.

Did you notice that the synagogue has been made out of bullets and guns and other weaponry? It is one example of the work of sculptor Al Farrow, in which he uses the tools of violence to create religious buildings in order to make the point that religion and violence are so closely intertwined.

The link where you can see many other works by Farrow was sent to me by blog reader John. The multiple close up views of a bombed mosque are quite exquisite.

There are only 10 more days until May 21, which is Judgment Day when the Rapture happens! What, you didn’t know this? You don’t even know what the Rapture is? Let me fill you in.

The Rapture is the name given to the occasion when all the true believers in Jesus will be suddenly taken up to heaven, prior to him coming back to Earth in all his glory to smite all the sinners who are left behind and then destroys the world. Or something like that. It is all a bit confusing but the main thing to bear in mind is that it is definitely not a good sign if you are still here on May 22 because that means you are not among the chosen few. You are going to be in for a rough time for the next five months before the world comes to a final end on October 21, 2011, totally messing up the baseball World Series that starts on October 19. If the currently hot Cleveland Indians make it to the World Series and the Earth is destroyed before they win, it will confirm the dark suspicions in the minds of Cleveland sports fans that god hates Cleveland, probably because of their repulsive Chief Wahoo symbol.

How do we know that Judgment Day will fall on May 21? This website tells you how they calculated the date. They say that a close reading of all the clues in the Bible says it will occur exactly 7,000 years after Noah’s flood. Even some Rapturists may be surprised that this implies that the Rapture will occur in 2011 CE since according to Bishop Ussher’s famous calculation, the Earth was supposed to have been created in 4004 BCE and Noah’s flood occurred on 2348 BCE. So, according to Ussher’s chronology, 7,000 years after the flood would mean that the Rapture would occur in the year 4653 CE, which gives us plenty of time to destroy the world in other ways, such as with global warming or nuclear wars, and save Jesus the trouble of coming back to do it himself, since I am sure he has lots of other demands on his time.

There have been other predictions of the end of the world that failed to materialize. But the authors of these new calculations say that, although based on the same Bible as the earlier ones, this time they have got it right. Their new dates are as follows.

• 11,013 BC—Creation. God created the world and man (Adam and Eve).
• 4990 BC—The flood of Noah’s day. All perished in a worldwide flood. Only Noah, his wife, and his 3 sons and their wives survived in the ark (6023 years from creation).
• 7 BC—The year Jesus Christ was born (11,006 years from creation).
• 33 AD—The year Jesus Christ was crucified and the church age began (11,045 years from creation; 5023 calendar years from the flood).
• 1988 AD—This year ended the church age and began the great tribulation period of 23 years (13,000 years from creation).
• 1994 AD—On September 7th, the first 2300-day period of the great tribulation came to an end and the latter rain began, commencing God’s plan to save a great multitude of people outside of the churches (13,006 years from creation).
• 2011 AD—On May 21st, Judgment Day will begin and the rapture (the taking up into heaven of God’s elect people) will occur at the end of the 23-year great tribulation. On October 21st, the world will be destroyed by fire (7000 years from the flood; 13,023 years from creation).

Don’t confuse this end of the world with that predicted by the Mayans. Because their calendar only went up to 2012, some people interpreted it to mean that they somehow knew that the world would end that year. But since the Mayans were heathens who did not know Jesus and their calendar was not based on the Bible, they obviously cannot be trusted.

Notice that we are supposed to have gone through a period of ‘great tribulation’ that began in 1988 but frankly I had not noticed anything particularly different happening that year or since. But in hindsight, the signs were all there. In 1988 Bobby McFerrin’s song Don’t Worry, Be Happy won a Grammy award for best song (as well as awards for best album and best male vocalist) which we should have recognized as the sign of the Apocalypse. The title itself was likely code to reassure anxious true believers that they would be saved. Another missed clue was that at 1:15 in this music video (which includes Christopher Reeve and Robin Williams), McFerrin is suddenly whisked up out of his shoes and socks to heaven. People disappearing suddenly and leaving their clothes behind is a dead giveaway that the Rapture is occurring.

I think the evidence is overwhelming that May 21 is the day, so basically we have just ten days left to shape up and get on god’s good side or have to evade slaughter in the following five months, which would be pointless since we would end up in hell on October 21 anyway.

Where presumably our punishment will be that we will have to listen to Don’t Worry, Be Happy on an endless loop.

The Sunni rulers of Bahrain are destroying Shia mosques and attacking demonstrators in this majority Shia country. There are deadly clashes between Christians and Muslims in Egypt.

Religious apologists are always telling us that their religions are peaceful and that those who perpetrate violence are not being true to it. But it does not seem to strike them as odd that nothing seems to rouse people to a murderous fury more easily than to feel that their god of peace and love has been slighted.