Ask an Atheist with Sam Mulvey

PRESS RELEASE: Ask an Atheist Host: "If I were Harold Camping… I'd put a gun in my mouth‏"

 

Sunday, May 15 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Mike Gillis

producer, Ask an Atheist

1019 Pacific Ave #1716, Tacoma WA 90402

(206) 420-0997

mike@askanatheist.tv

www.askanatheist.tv

www.wecantknow.com

 

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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About the Author: Mike Gillis

Mike Gillis is co-creator, and co-host of Ask an Atheist. He hosts the Radio vs. the Martians! and Mike and Pól Save the Universe! podcasts. He also enjoys comic books, the Planet of the Apes, and the band Queen.

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fenchurch

Game, set, and SCORCH!
Problem is, whenever *do* Christians do the “Christian Thing”? ‘sides, some of their “things” I, as a morally superior atheist, would never do myself: like promulgate an unfounded yet sincerely-held belief to deceive other people in order that my unverifiable soul can relax.

B1-66ER

WELL SAID SIR! I personally don’t see how someone can con another person like this and sleep at night… This whole business, like all “end of the world” money making schemes make me sick…

No Gods, No Masters
Cameron

Darren

Camping is just a con man. There’s a sucker born every minute and Camping seems fully aware of it. As for doing the Christian Thing…. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Ike

Someone should launch a class-action suit against Camping for fraud. If nothing else comes of it, perhaps people will think twice in the future before yelling “FIRE” in this crowded house we all share.
There’s another way to look at this of course. There are people who will always be frightened and gullible and ripe for the con. Camping may just be a wolf who is thinning the herd in his own way.

[…] of the concerns which has continually been raised in connection with Harold Camping’s rapture prediction was the fear that it might influence people to harm themselves or others. It worries me that so […]

eduardo

Now that the end of the world ended for now, atheist should concentrate in those christians that want to use Camping to strengthen the respectable, mainstream christianianity church by falsely and hypocritically differentiate themselves from the false prophets as if they were the true ones. Camping, certainly is a monster due to the consquences of his extremism, but the slow damages cause by the official christianity is in the long run even worse. And, as we are citing Camping as one more example of the need to see reality as it is, so the official (and powerful) christianity has been… Read more »

[…] and kick the ball down the field. He did. We called him out on the lives that he was destroying, convincing people to spend their life savings in the cause of his Iron Age fairy tales. We also pointed out how the only real difference between Camping’s credulous mob and the […]

John Cook, Ph.D.

being an atheist has taught me that hurtful lies are no to be used. While it is socially acceptable, even demanded to lie, lies that harm others or intend to remove a persons responsibility are to be avoided. I can truthfully say I have never (since atheism) used a hurtful lie, however I see them used commonly by Christians. This makes me wonder what “the Christian thing” truly is? I have to see it as often harmful deceit. As example, a truck ran into my new Ford truck denting and scratching it. I watched it happen. Before asking the driver… Read more »

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