Sunday, May 15 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mike Gillis
producer, Ask an Atheist
1019 Pacific Ave #1716, Tacoma WA 90402
(206) 420-0997
ASK AN ATHEIST HOST: “IF I WERE HAROLD CAMPING…I’D PUT A GUN IN MY MOUTH”
TACOMA — While the producers of Tacoma’s “Ask an Atheist” radio show are happy to poke fun at the apocalyptic May 21st prediction of Family Radio’s Harold Camping, we would like to underscore that there are consequences to belief.
“As far as I’m concerned, Harold Camping is a monster,” says Mike Gillis an ‘Ask an Atheist’ producer. “If I ever said or did anything that caused people and their families to be left destitute and penniless, I’d be so ashamed that I’d have to put a gun in my mouth. The rest of this man’s life should be a long, extended apology to all of the people he’s hurt.”
As reported by news outlets like the New York Post and National Public Radio, many of Camping’s supporters have put themselves in financial ruin by quitting their jobs, throwing away their savings and going on the road to preach that biblical end times will begin next Saturday.
One supporter, a 60 year-old Robert Fitzpatrick of Staten Island has spent the entire sum of his retirement savings – $140,000 dollars – on subway ads proclaiming that the world will end on May 21, in accordance with Camping’s prediction. When asked by the New York Post what he would do if Camping was wrong, he said, “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it,”
Adrienne Martinez and her husband Joel, a young couple from New York City, told NPR that they’d left their jobs and have been handing out apocalyptic tracts in Florida. They say that they’d budgeted their remaining savings so that they would have no more money on May 21st. They have a two year-old daughter and a second child due in June.
“While it’s easy to ridicule Camping and Family Radio,” says Gillis, “we shouldn’t forget that he’s preaching a number of families into poverty in a bad economy. These are people who, without help, won’t be able to house, feed or medicate themselves and their children.”
“Ask an Atheist” notes that Family Radio hasn’t funneled its entire budget into their campaign and will still have millions of dollars after Saturday, while many of their followers will have nothing.
“He’s still a millionaire,” says Gillis. “He owes the people he’s scammed a future. He should give them all his money It’s the least he can do…or at least it’s the Christian thing to do.”
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