Unsurprisingly, the fact that the Rapture palpably did not occur when he was 100% certain it would has not shaken Harold Camping’s blind faith in his worldview.
He still claims that his interpretation of the Bible is as reliable a guide as ever, and October 21st will definitely see the end of the universe.
Now there’s a guy who doesn’t get Bayesian probability.
The way he’s explaining things away is by declaring that Judgment Day did happen – it’s just that it was a “spiritual aspect” of the end of the world. Which, conveniently, is indistinguishable from absolutely nothing happening. Spiritual stuff’s good like that. It can happen any time you like, and look like whatever you want it to.
And I think you’ll find I totally called it. (Kinda. I suppose it was sadly inevitable. I mean, what else is he going to do, change his mind about his own personal interpretation of his particular holy book on the basis of evidence? Please.)
I hope a good few of his followers have given up on him now, and I hope the ones who threw their life savings away based on this nutcase’s prediction have some luck putting their lives back together. As for those who are sticking by him, and who are going to be disappointed and start rationalising yet again come October… Well, I’m inclined to think reality doesn’t owe them anything if they’re going to ignore it like that.
Oh, and if what strikes you as crazy about all this is simply the fact that he claims to know when God’s going to call a halt to his creation, because it says in the Bible that nobody knows when the end of the world will be… then, well, what PZ said.
By the way, I promise I did think of the title to this post before reading The Freethinker‘s article. It’s just too fitting not to use.
