{"id":1882,"date":"2010-11-05T09:45:56","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T14:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=1882"},"modified":"2010-11-05T09:45:56","modified_gmt":"2010-11-05T14:45:56","slug":"what-if-every-christian-disappears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=1882","title":{"rendered":"What If Every Christian Disappears?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, I got an e-mail from a Christian asking me if I would believe in fundamentalist Christianity if every Christian on Earth suddenly disappeared. The reasoning being that they were \u201cobviously\u201d all raptured up to Heaven, so that must be evidence that it is all true, right?<\/p>\n<p>I responded with a one word answer of, \u201cNo.\u201d First, even if the obviously ridiculous \u201crapture\u201d story popularized by the Left Behind series were true, not every Christian would be raptured away. Only those \u201cTrue Christians\u201d who take the Bible as fundamentally true and as literally as the law would allow would be magically whisked away to Heaven bodily.<\/p>\n<p>But I digress, if these fundamentalists suddenly disappeared, my first thought would not be, \u201coh, I guess they were all right and I missed the trip to magic happy-land.\u201d It would probably be closer to, \u201cI knew fundamentalist Christianity was a suicide cult.\u201d I would look for the most naturalistic explanation that would fit with the observations and facts. In this case, mass suicide would make much more sense than magic happy-land.<\/p>\n<p>But let\u2019s say that after analyzing the data, it was clear that it was not suicide and was in fact some unexplained mystery. I would still consider alien abduction before raptured to Heaven. But let\u2019s rule that one out and say that it all the evidence some how indicated the raptured to Heaven conclusion (how I don\u2019t know). Would I believe?<\/p>\n<p>I guess I would believe, but I still wouldn\u2019t follow. The God in which these fundamentalist Christians worship is immoral and no magic sign would convince me to worship such a being. If such a deity wants me to worship him, he has already proven that he is not worthy. The desire for worship is vain and unbecoming a just deity.<br \/>\n<!-- AddThis Button BEGIN --><br \/>\n<a onclick=\"return addthis_sendto()\" onmouseover=\"return addthis_open(this, '', '[URL]', '[TITLE]')\" onmouseout=\"addthis_close()\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addthis.com\/bookmark.php?v=250&amp;pub=dangeroustalk\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0;\" src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/static\/btn\/lg-share-en.gif\" alt=\"Bookmark and Share\" width=\"125\" height=\"16\" \/><\/a><script src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/250\/addthis_widget.js?pub=dangeroustalk\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><br \/>\n <!-- AddThis Button END --><\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\" style=\"font-size: 1em;\">Related articles<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/living\/article\/862663--christians-may-be-fine-with-the-rapture-but-what-about-their-pets\">Christians may be fine with the Rapture, but what about their pets?<\/a> (thestar.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.brighthub.com\/society\/religion-spirituality\/articles\/94237.aspx\">Understanding The Basic Beliefs of Christianity<\/a> (brighthub.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/dispatches\/2010\/11\/christian_nation_the_other_fun_3.php\">Christian Nation: The Other Fundamentalist Perspective, Part 4 [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]<\/a> (scienceblogs.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/new.exchristian.net\/2010\/10\/heaven-selfish-gift.html\">Heaven: a selfish gift<\/a> (new.exchristian.net)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/new.exchristian.net\/2010\/10\/dangerous-world-of-biblical-counseling.html\">The Dangerous World of Biblical Counseling: Part 1<\/a> (new.exchristian.net)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: medium none; float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=340fb1a6-5478-45ce-bc6e-c6c8a9d69c31\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><span class=\"zem-script more-related pretty-attribution\"><script src=\"http:\/\/static.zemanta.com\/readside\/loader.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=1882\"><\/div><script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, I got an e-mail from a Christian asking me if I would believe in fundamentalist Christianity if every Christian on Earth suddenly disappeared. The reasoning being that they were \u201cobviously\u201d all raptured up to Heaven, so that must be evidence that it is all true, right? I responded with a one word [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n<script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1039,545,1448],"tags":[43,280,37,11,1343,2216,2217,1449,378,1264],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1882"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1883,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1882\/revisions\/1883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}