"Rapture" a Nineteenth-Century Invention

With all the press it gets and popular culture it inspires, it's tempting to think of the modern Christian concept of "the Rapture" as a remnant of some much older religious tradition that retains some fantastic elements. However, that thinking would only be correct if by "much older" you mean "within the last two hundred years." That's right, for the first eighteen hundred years of the Christian tradition nobody believed anything even remotely like it. This article from CNN goes over the real history of the theology, and how it came to be accepted by many fundamentalist Protestants. It doesn't date back to ancient times, but rather to the dispensationalist movement that began in the 1830's.

The rapture notion goes like this: Jesus is coming back, and when he does, he will first return before a time of so-called tribulation begins, calling up into the clouds with him those who are "saved." Horrible suffering will then occur on the miserable Earth for seven years. Then Jesus will come yet again, for a final judging. There are many different versions of this scenario, so it's difficult to summarize. It's fair to say, however, that only fundamentalist Protestant churches bother to think about the rapture at all. (Catholics discount the idea completely.)

The rapture concept is relatively new. It started with an Anglo-Irish theologian, who in the 1830s invented the concept. This may come as a shocker to many, but it's a fact: Before John Nelson Darby imagined this scenario in the clouds, no Christian had ever heard of the rapture. The idea was popularized by Cyrus I. Scofield, an American minister who published a famous reference Bible in 1908, one that developed the idea of an elaborate series of final periods in history known as dispensations. Scofield, like Darby, read the Book of Revelation as a vision of the future, not a fiery dream of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70.

The latter view remains, in fact, the most common interpretation of the Book of Revelation by mainstream theologians and was described recently by Princeton scholar Elaine Pagels in "Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation."

So to the future Harold Campings of the world and their potential followers, keep in mind that the Left Behind series is pure fiction and the idea of the Rapture has little to do with Biblical teachings. Instead, it's part of an imaginative re-interpretation of the Book of Revelation that flies in the face of the professed literalism of the very churches that support it. Not only that, but since the Millerites of the 1840's the history of dispensationalism is made up of one false apocalypse prediction after another. If religion were scientific, the entire Rapture hypothesis would have been discarded long ago.

Yoga Endangers Your Soul?

Not this again. Father Padraig O'Baoill, an Irish Catholic priest, has warned his parishioners that practicing "yoga, tai chi, or reiki" puts their souls in danger. As usual, the idea is that even secular versions of these practices incorporate religious teachings from Eastern spirituality. Now I can't speak for reiki, but I have taken yoga and tai chi classes, and none of them included anything religious. So clearly teaching that way is possible, and my understanding is that outside Asia it's quite common.

He told parishioners in his weekly bulletin: “As followers of Jesus Christ, we shouldn't be taking part in any activities that are in conflict with our faith. Therefore don't take any part in yoga classes, tai chi or reiki. Do not endanger your souls for the sake of such unsavoury activities.”

Fr O'Baoill, who is on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, has refused to comment further. His Bishop Philip Boyce was also “away” and unavailable to comment. However, another priest in the same Diocese of Raphoe insisted: “Eastern pagan worship and practices are contrary to church teachings.”

He added: “Perhaps he shouldn't have made such a fuss about it but most priests, myself included, would agree with him.”

The idea that simply holding postures, stretching, or exercising slowly are somehow "unsavoury" is just plain silly. Obviously devout Christians should avoid classes in which students are expected to pray to Hindu deities or something, but I've never encountered a yoga class like that. Furthermore, it's easy enough to just get up and leave if you happen upon one and are concerned that it conflicts with your faith. This whole "fencing" idea leads a lot of people to distrust organized religion, and not just Christianity.

Forbidding activities on the grounds that they might lead to some sort of sin or violation shows up in many religious traditions and is predicated on the assumption that even serious religious practitioners are too stupid to know when they're actually doing something wrong. So authorities need to create a set of harsher made-up restrictions to keep them in line. Over the years this concept has been applied to all sorts of things not even mentioned in scripture like music, film, and other aspects of popular culture, which just makes religious leaders look out of touch with the modern world.

Vampire Hunter Faces Weapons Charges

I haven't seen much in the news about a plague of vampires descending upon Sweden, but that didn't stop an unnamed Swedish man from arming himself to fight them off. When police arrived at his home, they found a handmade crossbow pointed at the door. The man explained that he built the crossbow to kill vampires. There's no mention in the article of what made him suspect that hordes of bloodsucking fiends were out to get him.

A man in Uddevalla, western Sweden, hated vampires. He hated them so much that he built a crossbow at home and had it aimed at the door.

The man had a history of weapons violations, and police were on their way to pick him up for a trial relating to a breach of knife laws. Upon entering his apartment they discovered that a crossbow, with arrow at the ready, was pointing straight at the door.

"Today I am going to go out and kill vampires," the man had written on his Facebook page. Other social media statuses included "Garlic!" and "What do you do when the blood is all gone?"

The article also doesn't mention the "breach of knife laws" for which the man was facing trial. Was he previously planning on decapitating the undead? According to vampire folklore, cutting off heads is more reliable than staking because a decapitated vampire can't be reanimated. However, a crossbow is safer because it doesn't require you to get as close. And let's face it, according to television and movies vampires are scary fast.

Police did test-fire the crossbow, which worked quite well. It's apparently not clear whether or not it's illegal to own a crossbow in Sweden, and the man has asked for it to be returned. Without it, I suppose he fears he may be powerless against the marauding undead.

BBC Reducing Scientific "False Balance"

Occasionally in political discussions someone will suggest that we should bring back the "fairness doctrine" for American news programs that was eliminated by the FCC in 1987. Usually the idea is that a return to said doctrine would lead to more balanced news coverage, but the problem there is that news programs do it anyway, sometimes with ridiculous results. The problem with trying to present "balance" is that these days it's pretty easy to find somebody who represents "the other side" on just about any issue, whether or not they're even remotely qualified to comment on the subject.

The BBC is now moving to reduce this sort of "false balance" in science coverage, in which unqualified individuals are given airtime to discuss views contrary to established scientific conclusions. While this is a broad brush that will likely reduce the coverage of fringe subjects such as paranormal phenomena, it's also true that said phenomena are paranormal precisely because they haven't been verified by formal science. Also, most of the "experts" who get airtime on those subjects are people like media psychics who don't have much to say about it anyway aside from self-promotion.

The BBC Trust on Thursday published a progress report into the corporation’s science coverage which was criticised in 2012 for giving too much air-time to critics who oppose non-contentious issues. The report found that there was still an ‘over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality’ which sought to give the ‘other side’ of the argument, even if that viewpoint was widely dismissed.

Some 200 staff have already attended seminars and workshops and more will be invited on courses in the coming months to stop them giving ‘undue attention to marginal opinion.’ “The Trust wishes to emphasise the importance of attempting to establish where the weight of scientific agreement may be found and make that clear to audiences,” wrote the report authors.

“Science coverage does not simply lie in reflecting a wide range of views but depends on the varying degree of prominence such views should be given.”

More Bigfoot DNA Sequenced

I covered the Melba Ketchum saga here on Augoeides back when it was taking place, including the founding of her fake academic journal and independent testing of her "bigfoot DNA sample" that revealed it to be possum rather than primate. One point, though, made by her DeNovo Scientific Journal web site is fairly accurate - mainstream science has an uncomfortable relationship with anything considered paranormal, from psychic abilities to unknown species to alternative medicine.

While it's true that most of the time when such things are investigated by scientists they turn out to have normal explanations, that's kind of the point. We are talking about paranormal phenomena, after all, and I'm a big fan of this sort of research whether or not it turns up an unusual or unexpected explanation. That's why I was happy to see the Ouija board study from last week, and also was quite pleased by today's story.

A research team from the University of Oxford led by chairman and professor of human genetics Bryan Sykes put out a call for bigfoot hair samples. They received 57, both from museums and individuals. After determining that 36 of the samples were suitable for testing, they were able to extract recovered DNA from 30 of them. They did not find any anomalous primate DNA, but the results were quite interesting nonetheless.

After weeding out plant matter and glass fibers, they selected 36 for genetic analysis. Over half came from the US; the rest are from Russian and South Asia. The team methodically cleaned 2-4 centimeter shaft samples, and then amplified the ribosomal mitochondrial DNA 12S fragment -- a snippet commonly used for species identification. Some failed to yield DNA sequences, and the team ended up with 30 recovered sequences, which they compared with GenBank data. They got a 100 percent match for each one.

Drugs, Not Demons

Last week I covered the story of three young women who were allegedly "possessed by demons" after playing with a Ouija board. A video widely circulated with the story shows one of the women growling just like Linda Blair in The Exorcist and then cracking up, as if she were trying to emulate a possessed character in a movie but having trouble doing so with a straight face.

The real story turns out to be more sinister than mere play-acting, but it also has nothing to do with possession, demons, or the Ouija board itself. It turns out that the three were given a tea prior to their session with the board made from Brugmansia or "Angel's Trumpet" flowers. Brugmansia is a toxic indigenous plant that contains scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and several other tropane alkaloids, powerful drugs that can induce auditory and visual hallucinations.

New details on the story reveal that Alexandra Huerta, the girl in the video, is 16 years old, not 22 as first reported. What’s worse, the drug was knowingly referred to her, her brother and their cousin by Maria Camaño, the girl’s legal guardian, who admits she was “helping” the orphaned girl and boy contact their dead parents. They boiled the flowers in a tea that they drank an hour before the session and its subsequent problems. Mrs. Camaño is the same woman who went to a priest first to perform an exorcism rather than getting medical help for the hallucinating teens.

Brugsmansia, also called Angel’s Trumpet for its poisonous flowers, has long been used in South American cultures as a topical remedy for pain relief, arthritis, infections and as an anti-inflammatory. All parts of the plant are poisonous and can cause death when ingested in large quantities, but it has also been used internally for spasms, pain and asthma. It is known to cause visual and auditory hallucinations and was traditionally given to misbehaving children who were told the visions they had were dead ancestors coming to scold them.

So rather than simply acting out, Huerta was actually under the influence of drugs, and for some reason her guardian decided that what she needed was an exorcism rather than medical attention - even though she knew about the Brugmansia and in fact supplied it. Why she expected an exorcism to resolve the situation is something of a mystery, though perhaps the real reason the priest refused to perform one was that he figured out something was up.

So no, Ouija boards aren't dangerous, some hallucinogenic drugs are - but we knew that already. Huerta and her relatives did recover once the drugs were out of their systems, but as the substances also induce amnesia she has no recollection of what she experienced under their influence or whether any of her behavior at the time was stereotypical acting-out.

Recrucifying Christ?

Crucifixion was employed by the Romans as a means of execution for the Empire's worst criminals because it meant a long, drawn-out, and torturous death. Political prisoners who threatened the Roman hegemony were generally elevated to this "worst" classification, and according to the Biblical narrative it was for this reason that Jesus was crucified. Even though this supposedly took place nearly two thousand years ago, some modern Christians have decided that there are activities so utterly and irredeemably evil that they rise to the same level as the crucifixion itself.

What could be so utterly awful that it rises to the level of torturing an innocent human being to death? According to Pastor John Piper, it's not theft, rape, murder, or anything that obvious. In fact, it's apparently so unbelievably terrible that Jesus himself was unwilling to speak of it, preferring instead to teach on more pedestrian wrongdoing like exploitation or demonization of the poor - which, by the way, some modern Christians have no problem doing. No, this unspeakable evil is the sin of watching nudity on television.

A listener named Adam emailed Piper, asking, "Pastor John, what would you say to a Christian who watches the cable TV show Game of Thrones?"

What proceeded were a dozen heartfelt, challenging questions Christians should ask themselves before considering watching shows like Game of Thrones, noted for their graphic sexual content.

"Christ died to purify his people. It is an absolute travesty of the cross to treat it as though Jesus died only to forgive us for the sin of watching nudity, and not to purify us for the power not to watch it," Piper explained.

"If we choose to endorse or embrace or enjoy or pursue impurity, we take a spear and ram it into Jesus' side every time we do. He suffered to set us free from impurity," Piper concluded.

Mystical Snakes and Bees Stalk Boko Haram

How do you terrorize a terrorist? If this story from Nigeria is to be believed, all you need to do is conjure up some "mystical" snakes and bees to hunt them down. Captured members of the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram reported to authorities that they were under attack by the ghosts of those they had killed, who took the form of the deadly creatures in order to take revenge upon them.

According to Nigerian newspaper Vanguard, the captured insurgents claimed the creatures -- possessed by ghosts -- had killed many Boko Haram members.

"We were told that the aggrieved people who had suffered from our deadly mission -- including the ghosts of some of those we killed -- are the ones turning into the snakes and bees," one militant told Vanguard. "Our leaders fled, too."

Boko Haram made headlines worldwide for the kidnappings of 220 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, last April. The girls are being allegedly smuggled to Cameroon and Chad and sold as brides to militants for 2,000 naira (£7). Others are being forced to marry their abductors.

Some Boko Haram members believe the insects and reptiles are hunting the insurgents to punish them for the mass abduction. "We decided to flee when almost all our comrades are leaving the Sambisa [Forest] because of constant attacks by snakes and bees, which we were told was as a result of Chibok abducted schoolgirls," one insurgent said.

It would perhaps be overly skeptical of me to point out that encountering snakes and bees is a likely consequence of having to hide out in more remote parts of the African jungle, as Boko Haram members have been forced to do since they attracted international attention by abducting the schoolgirls. Many poisonous snakes can be found in such areas, and African bees are far deadlier than the more docile European honeybee. Not only do they swarm aggressively if disturbed, they also can sting many times without injuring themselves.

But who knows? Whether the attacks are the actions of vengeful ghosts or a natural consequence of going deeper into hiding, it's fair to say that they are a consequence of the abductions either way. Clearly the whole operation was a bad idea from the start.