Why were we wrong then and why are we wrong now?

How refreshing to hear working scientists freely admit that practices based on poor understanding can result in being wrong when the evidence from reality shows us this to be the case! (If only theists were as honest about the practices undertaken on behalf of their faith!)

Why isn’t MSNBC heaping scorn on those who ‘predict’ the date of the Rapture?

I usually just ignore these end-of-the-world so-called ‘predictions’ that have a long and solid history of being absolutely wrong. Even a semi-reasonable person should take such predictions as laughable jokes, yet when it comes to the rapture, far too many people seem more than willing to lend it an ear of respectability as if this time it may be true… just in case… and it is to those folk that I think we should hold in high contempt for their willingness to be so gullible.

MSNBC has within its editorial ranks just such people, who tell by the publication of this non-contemptuous article that there is

a movement of Christians loosely organized by radio broadcasts and websites, independent of churches and convinced by their reading of the Bible that the end of the world will begin on May 21, 2011.

Treating this religious inspired lunacy without scorn lends to it an air of legitimacy to the possibility that the  basis of the ‘prediction’ – in this case a calculation based on a scriptural interpretation  – may have some merit when there isn’t even the slightest shred of evidence to justify any such distinction. This faith-based gullibility – especially for those rational enough among us who actually know better but wish to pretend that their agnosticism is a more reasonable and tolerant position than a firm stance of ridicule for this absurd ‘prediction’ in the absence of any meaningful evidence – does a disservice to respecting a legitimate prediction based on what’s probably true, probably accurate, and probably correct.

It’s important to understand why and how these legitimate probabilities inform legitimate predictions rather than cast all predictions into the same pot from which we can draw whatever made-up crap we want and pretend that all are more or less the same quality… as long as we call them predictions rather differentiate made-up crap from evidence-based probabilities. The  May 21 rapture is no ‘prediction’: it is a guess about when the end of the world will occur with an extraordinarily high probability of turning out exactly like every other religiously inspired faith-based guess: absolutely wrong.

So here is my informed prediction: the world will still be up and running on the 22nd of May, 2011. You are a moron to believe otherwise.