Welcome to the Post-Apocalyptic World!

Ok, this post might be a little high-brow, but I'll keep it short and try to throw in a dirty joke somewhere.  

So, the rapture happened.  Or some would say that it didn't.  Actually, everyone says that it didn't and the one who predicted it said he made a mistake...again.  It's now going to happen on Oct 21st.  Mark your calendars for more disappointment!

Well, I would like to make a couple arguments about why it did happen. 

1.  On May 21st at 6pm local time, everyone in this world had to deal with the consequences of the lives they had lived up until that point.  Boom!  Welcome to the post-apocalyptic world biatch!  Depending on your life choices, you are now living in a heaven, hell or purgatory of sorts.  It wasn't what you expected, right?  Well, who said it was going to be anything different?  This leads me to the second argument...

2.  The apocalypse happened on May 21st, but it also happened a bunch of times before and will happen again.  According to ancient Indian and Egyptian philosophy, the universe is unlimited on time, but limited in material (stuff that's in it).  Therefore eternal recurrence.  Simply put, the universe repeats itself and we live the same life over and over again because there isn't enough stuff to make it different (at least in any significant way).  So, out of the infinite number of times we've lived a life similar to this, a world may have ended on May 21st, just not this current iteration.

3.  According to God, the apocalypse happened.  It just hasn't happened to us yet.  God is the beginning and the end, His understanding of time and space is much more superior than to ours.  Our conception of linear time is an oversimplification to cope with our dilemmas in causality and morality.  May 21st may have been the end of the world, we just don't have access to God's calendar or the capacity to understand when that is according to our calendar.  

I realize these arguments are weak and essentially argues for a this-world based outlook.  What if we are already living in a type of heave/hell/purgatory?  What if moments of high-anxiety or stress is a moment in hell?  It is temporary, but not necessarily non-eternal, because we will face stress or anxiety again. Same with those happy moments. 

Anyway, this Harold Camping guy has a fixation on needing to know when the end will happen (I'd be interested in a Freudian or Lacanian psychoanalysis of this guy).  As a believer, is he feeling impotent about making the world better and only looks forward to knowing when he'll leave it?  Why does he need this release so bad?  This may be borderline heretical, but I promised a sex joke so I'm going to use a sex analogy.  Camping sees life on earth as a one night stand with an ugly person.  He has little to no intention of staying any longer than he has to.  He plots and analyzes to figure out when his exit is.  He thinks he's gonna bone a supermodel for the rest of his life if he can just get out of this fugly's apartment.  The better outlook is probably to just enjoy the time you have with a special person, it's a gift after all*. 

I believe that faith, no matter what it is in, is something that supports (the self, the community, environment, society, the world) and fills the faith-holder with hope and happiness, not this dread-spreading disdain for the rest of humanity and the world.  Friedrich Nietzsche used the idea of eternal recurrence to argue for a life and world loving outlook.  It's kinda like the movie Groundhog Day.  Bill Murray's character thought he was in hell until he learned to embrace it and found himself in a kind of heaven.  I think any "good" deity would want it that way.   

*I am not implying that sex is a commodity that can or should be gifted.