Why, TNR? I'm back from a fantastic buzzy day of getting my Masters degree and laughing my ass off at rapture jokes, and you gotta go put a heartbreaking human face on the evangelical crazies. People who not only stopped saving but who spent all their savings -- and their kids' -- in anticipation of being raptured. Suckerpunch.
This sort of thing is, obviously, terrible. And maybe there is something kind of sick, or at least smug, at the root of our obsession with it. But I don't think that's ALL there is. With that, I give you five reasons why it's still OK to laugh at the rapture:
1) This is simply the stuff that memes are made of. In an Internet culture already giddy over the zombie apocalypse, we love end-times narratives that are as wacky as they are implausible. And this shit's bananas. So much that it's taken on a life of its own, in mythic rather than human proportions.
2) As people who value rational inquiry, we may look down upon those who don't -- but more importantly we find them fascinating, and terrifying. They fascinate us because we genuinely don't understand how someone can be that irrational. And they scare us because we worry about how irrationality currently rules our public discourse -- climate deniers, debt ceiling deniers, vicious homophobes. Rigid idealogues of all sorts. So when we see card-carrying members of the Cult of Irrationality throw down the gauntlet by presenting a falsifiable fact to public scrutiny -- by SETTING A DATE and putting it on BILLBOARDS fer cryin' out loud -- it's hard to resist a bit of satisfaction that THIS time -- at least -- at last -- facts might enjoy a moment of unqualified triumph.
3) And it's more than just satisfaction for skeptics. It could, dare we hope, mean real change for one or two believers. Someone who has built their life on falsehood, when confronted with undeniable evidence of its falseness, might realize that fact and do something to turn things around. Or they might not. But they might!
4) Even if believers decide not to change their ways, we might see a generation of evangelicals turning away from small-government conservatism. If they were among those who blew their life savings in anticipation of the rapture, now they get to experience firsthand what it's like to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps"!
5) End of the World parties are a heap of fun, and should really become an annual tradition.
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