Dear Mr. Camping.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Atheist-Lite]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Faithfree]

Let's ask Camping for his response:

[Atheist-Lite]

[Durro]

I wonder if these poor deluded people who following Camping have a recourse for getting their donated money back...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I wonder if these poor deluded people who following Camping have a recourse for getting their donated money back...

There will be lawsuits, no doubt. Maddoff II, some folks are saying.

[Bella Fortuna]

I wonder if these poor deluded people who following Camping have a recourse for getting their donated money back...

Doubtful. If there was recourse someone would have discovered it by now - goodness knows this isn't the first time some religious huckster has persuaded people to part with their greenbacks.

[klr]

Dear Mr. Camping

Cheer up, it's not the end of the world ...

[laklak]

Very, very doubtful, I was talking about this with my sister today. There's no contract, and no consideration that could be construed as a de facto contract. He promised nothing for the money they sent him, other than it would be used to "spread the joyous news" or some such smarmy xtian rhetoric. He did that, and has apparently never personally profited from his "ministry". You can't sue because you're stupid.

I am enjoying this hugely. Schadenfreude doesn't come close to describing how much personal pleasure I'm taking in reading the stories of these stupid morons. The guy that quit his job, ran out his credit cards and let his mortgage lapse - HA HA HA HA HA. You dumb fuck. The one that spent his entire life savings buying bus adverts in New York City and is now "devastated". HA HA HA HA HA HA you dumb fuck. The family that dragged their kids around and forced them to hold stupid signs on public streets and spent all their college money - bet those kids are REALLY gonna love you now, aren't they? HA HA HA HA HA You dumb fucks. Welcome to the hard, cold light of the fucking morning after, numbnuts., here's your "I'm Really Fucking Stupid" T-shirt. Wear it proudly. Stand on a city street with a big sign "I'm a Fucking Moron" like you did with your stupid "End of the World!" signs. You dumb fucks.

I honestly hope they start offing themselves. I'll find that even more amusing then simply watching them spiral into despair and bankruptcy. I want pictures of churchloads upon churchloads of KoolAid fundys clutching their Holey Babbles in rigor mortis. I know that's terrible, to wish that on them, but I cannot pretend I wouldn't laugh my ass off. I do hope the kids get away, but then again a few dead kids would do more to discredit their asinine religion than anything else I can think of.

[.Morticia.]

I wonder if these poor deluded people who following Camping have a recourse for getting their donated money back...

It's nearly impossible to get donations to charities back.

[Feck]

Very, very doubtful, I was talking about this with my sister today. There's no contract, and no consideration that could be construed as a de facto contract. He promised nothing for the money they sent him, other than it would be used to "spread the joyous news" or some such smarmy xtian rhetoric. He did that, and has apparently never personally profited from his "ministry". You can't sue because you're stupid.

I am enjoying this hugely. Schadenfreude doesn't come close to describing how much personal pleasure I'm taking in reading the stories of these stupid morons. The guy that quit his job, ran out his credit cards and let his mortgage lapse - HA HA HA HA HA. You dumb fuck. The one that spent his entire life savings buying bus adverts in New York City and is now "devastated". HA HA HA HA HA HA you dumb fuck. The family that dragged their kids around and forced them to hold stupid signs on public streets and spent all their college money - bet those kids are REALLY gonna love you now, aren't they? HA HA HA HA HA You dumb fucks. Welcome to the hard, cold light of the fucking morning after, numbnuts., here's your "I'm Really Fucking Stupid" T-shirt. Wear it proudly. Stand on a city street with a big sign "I'm a Fucking Moron" like you did with your stupid "End of the World!" signs. You dumb fucks.

I honestly hope they start offing themselves. I'll find that even more amusing then simply watching them spiral into despair and bankruptcy. I want pictures of churchloads upon churchloads of KoolAid fundys clutching their Holey Babbles in rigor mortis. I know that's terrible, to wish that on them, but I cannot pretend I wouldn't laugh my ass off. I do hope the kids get away, but then again a few dead kids would do more to discredit their asinine religion than anything else I can think of.

[Coito ergo sum]

When Doomsday Isn't, Believers Struggle to Cope




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Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer,
LiveScience.com – Sat May 21, 10:31 pm ET
If you're reading this, Harold Camping's predictions that the end of the world would start Saturday (May 21) failed to pan out.
That's good news for most of us, but Camping and his followers were looking forward to the end. After all, they believed that they were likely to be among the 200 million souls sent to live in paradise forever. So how do believers cope when their doomsday predictions fail?
It depends, said Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal who studies the history of doomsday predictions.
"If you have a strong leader, the group survives," DiTommaso told LiveScience. "Sometimes the group falls apart. Most often, the answer given by the group is that the prophecy is true, but the interpretation was wrong." [Read: Why People Look Forward to the End]
In 1994, Camping predicted a September doomsday, but hedged his bets with a question mark. On his website (familyradio.com), Camping wrote that he had misunderstood a key biblical passage, but since that time, biblical evidence for a 2011 end had "greatly solidified."
Doomsdays without doom
The classic study of "doomsdays gone bad" took place in 1954. A Chicago woman named Dorothy Martin predicted a cataclysmic flood from which a few true believers would be saved by aliens. Martin and her cult, The Seekers, gathered the night before the expected flood to await the flying saucer. Unbeknown to them, however, their group had been infiltrated by psychologist Leon Festinger, who hoped to find out what happens when the rug of people's beliefs is pulled out from under them.
Festinger's study, which became the basis of the book "When Prophecy Fails" (Harper-Torchbooks 1956), revealed that as the appointed time passed with no alien visitors, the group sat stunned. But a few hours before dawn, Martin suddenly received a new prophecy, stating that The Seekers had been so devout that God had called off the apocalypse. At that, the group rejoiced — and started calling newspapers to boast of what they'd done. Eventually, the group fell apart. Martin later changed her name to "Sister Thedra" and continued her prophecies.
Other failed doomsday prophets have struggled to keep their followers in line. One self-proclaimed prophet, Mariana Andrada (later known as Mariana La Loca), preached to a gang of followers in the 1880s in the San Joaquin Valley of California, predicting doomsday by 1886. But Andrada was not consistent with her predictions, and believers began to defect. Trying to keep one family from leaving, Andrada told them one of them would die on the journey. Sure enough, the family's young son soon fell violently ill and passed away. The family accused Andrada of poisoning him. She was arrested and found not guilty, but never returned to preach to her followers.
Searching for explanations
How Camping's followers will cope with a failed doomsday prediction depends on the structure of the group, said Steve Hassan, a counseling psychologist and cult expert who runs the online Freedom of Mind Resource Center. [After Doomsday: How Humans Get Off Earth]
"The more people have connections outside of the group, the more likely it is that they're going to stop looking to [Camping] as the mouth of God on Earth," Hassan told LiveScience. "Information control is one of the most important features of mind control."
In his experience, Hassan said, about a third of believers become disillusioned after a failed prediction, while another third find reason to believe more strongly. The remaining group members fall somewhere in between, he said.
Doomsday groups in history have run a gamut of responses after failed predictions, said Stephen Kent, a sociologist at the University of Alberta who studies new and alternative religions. On occasion, a leader will admit he or she was wrong; other groups will come up with a face-saving explanation. Some groups may blame themselves, rationalizing that their lack of faith caused the failure, Kent told LiveScience. Other groups blame outside forces and redouble their efforts.
"One of the options is for the group to say, 'Society wasn't ready, Jesus felt there weren't enough people worthy of rapturing. Hence, we've got to go out and convert more people,'" Kent said.
After the apocalypse
Often, a failed prediction leads to splinter groups and re-entrenchment. After Baptist preacher William Miller predicted the end of the world on Oct. 22, 1844 — a date thereafter known as "The Great Disappointment" when nothing happened — his followers struggled to explain their mistake. One subset decided that on that date, Jesus had shifted his location in heaven in preparation to return to Earth. This group later became the Seventh-Day Adventist church. [Infographic: Doomsdays Past and Present]
Sociologists and doomsday experts agree that Camping is likely convinced of doomsday rather than perpetuating a hoax or running a scam. A con artist, Hassan said, would never set himself up for failure by giving a firm date.
A belief in doomsday gives followers a clear sense of the world and their place in it, Kent said. Those comforting beliefs are difficult to maintain after the world fails to end.
"This could be a fairly sad day for these people," Kent said. "There will be some greatly disheartened people who may be terribly confused about what didn't happen."
You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/201 ... ggletocope

[Coito ergo sum]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zm9saD1 ... ture=feedu[/youtube]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Some of them are already saying "God is still on schedule, the end of the world is October 21."

Good, another party then, shall we?