"So what would you think if two billion people vanished?"

[farla]

It seems "Rapture! OHSHIT!" really is the most common response to people vanishing. I was hoping other belief systems had some sort of fallback explanation. Also, for a spirited defense of the Alien option. I may need to repost the question to the religious forum. They might be a better source for x religion's thoughts on mass vanishings.

Off to answer emails and suchlike now.

Comments

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

"Well fuck. We finally made contact and not only did we not even know it, not only are the extra-terrestrials malicious, but among their first impressions of humanity was an intercepted broadcast of the LB movie. How embarrassing."

[farla.livejournal.com]

Exactly, just because the event seems guided by an intelligence, there's no need to assume that narrows it down to just God.

[psiumbreon.livejournal.com]

If the Rapture happened, all the fundies would be gone. One would hope so, anyway. Which means we could like... actually get some stuff done.

[farla.livejournal.com]

No, only a couple of them were taken, and now they're recruiting like mad.

FEAR.

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

What is the prerequisite for paradise on Earth? All the religious people vanishing.

I don't know of any other religions having people vanishing stories. Just common culture gives me "Rapture" or "Aliens." Messianic ages, sure. Bodily resurrections, sure. I can't think of any equivalent Jewish/Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist stories, if nothing else because billions of people spontaneously disappearing is a really weird think to think about and if John of Patmos was the only one, I wouldn't be surprised. No one spend much time thinking about the people of the world turning into orange Jello; the only explanation I would have would be sufficiently advanced aliens or Evangelion's Instrumentality.

[farla.livejournal.com]

What is the prerequisite for paradise on Earth? All the religious people vanishing.

But all members of religious groups other than rapture-believing Christians are still here and panicking, and most of the rapture-believing Christians are still here and panicking worse, and also people are converting left and right.

No happy humanist paradise for you!

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

billions of people spontaneously disappearing is a really weird think to think about and if John of Patmos was the only one, I wouldn't be surprised

Even he didn't think of it. The idea of the Rapture comes from someone in the past couple centuries deciding it would be a good idea to splice a verse saying something like "We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed" together with a completely unrelated passage in a different chapter (and even a different book, I think, though I could be wrong about that) saying something like, "Two women will be working at the mill; one will be taken and one will remain. Two men will be sleeping in a bed; one will be taken, one will remain." And "taken" in this latter passage could just as easily mean dying suddenly but otherwise normally as it could mean being bodily transported into Heaven — probably more easily, since the context makes it sound like being "taken" is a bad thing.

It takes a special kind of crazy to claim that a book as obviously full of crack as the Bible is the inerrant word of God. Claiming that, then turning around and giving said book the full-on Beautiful Mind treatment, then turning around again and insisting that said treatment constitutes a "literal reading" renders words like "special" and "crazy" completely inadequate. This is pathological insanity we are talking about here.

[farla.livejournal.com]

But not so literal that both the men in bed are actually men, mind you!

(OMG OMG, remember Conservapedia's fixing all gender-neutral parts of the bible back to the masculine. What happens when they hit that part? What sort of convoluted reasoning will it take to argue that the use of men is in fact a feminine gendering by the feminazis done to elliminate men from the bible?)