20% of US Christians believe: second coming within lifetime

[Tolya]

In my retort to Tolya I was reacting to what I see as a too-common knee jerk response to fundamentalist religious views, which is to say that fundies are just altogether ignorant, even of their own religion. I don't agree. The 20-33% of Christians from those polls are ignorant, deluded, and possibly insane, but to say that they don't know the bible just isn't true. Now, in terms of knowing exactly what the bible says American fundamentalists can give anybody a run for their money, but since they don't recognize biblical criticism and historiography even somebody who's barely read the thing "knows" it better than them... by virtue of knowing that lots of gospels were left on the cutting room floor, that the Pentateuch weren't written by Moses, that Genesis is just a pastiche and distillation of myths common to bronze age fertile crescent cultures, etc. etc. They know the bible very well; it's just that they don't know how to read critically and the ideas in the bible are ignorant, deluded, and possibly insane.

I get the impression that you think that in my case "studying" meant "reading" or "knowing anything about it", which is not the case.

You can't be a practicing catholic and actually NOT KNOW anything about the Bible. Even if you didn't bother to read the whole thing, the priest at the mass reads a fragment of it every sunday. Passages from the Bible are literally everywhere - and I know, I went to a catholic high school.

But to read the Bible and actually draw conclusions from it are two different things. Christians are doctrinated so they subconsciously filter out any "God is a murderer and an asshole" thoughts. Even Dawkins pointed it out in "God Delusion", in the chapter where he brings up a scientific experiment, where two groups of children (can't remember the age) were read the chapter about the destruction of Jericho. One group had the original text, while in the other the entire thing was moved to China AFAIR and the names of the people involved were changed. The group that read the original text unilaterally agreed that it was right for the Joshua's people to conquer the city and slaughter everyone in it. The other group had differing views: most children thought it was plain wrong to do it.

My case in point is that while catholics in some cases actually do read the Bible, almost none really can see it for what it is, which is really the same what you are saying. At this point I could offer a useless personal anecdote saying that I had big problems to change worldview from "God loves all" to "God is an asshole and a murderer". That's religious indoctrination for you and the only person who was religious in my family and actually took to me church was my grandma, and I havent' spent THAT much time with her considering I had caring and loving parents who had all their time for me. And they were/are rather agnostic.

I guess I feel as though imputing theological and/or biblical ignorance to fundies diminishes the bible's responsibility (if a book can have such a thing) for their views. So when I pointed out that they were doublethinking by speculating on biblical prophecy although the bible explicitly says not to do that, and he said, "lol whatever they don't even read the bible", I disagreed.

Mind you I never used the "reading" noun, but rather "studying". Which are rather two different things. Still, the Bible is such a fucked up book that you can derive almost any meaning from it. You want pacifism, you say "turn the other cheek". You want to justify killing, you say "an eye for an eye".

[Tolya]

Ghetto edit:

Mind you I never used the "reading" noun, but rather "studying". Which are rather two different things. Still, the Bible is such a fucked up book that you can derive almost any meaning from it. You want pacifism, you say "turn the other cheek". You want to justify killing, you say "an eye for an eye".

Sorry, should be "verb" instead of "noun"

[Pablo Sanchez]

You can't be a practicing catholic and actually NOT KNOW anything about the Bible. Even if you didn't bother to read the whole thing, the priest at the mass reads a fragment of it every sunday. Passages from the Bible are literally everywhere - and I know, I went to a catholic high school.

Catholics aren't really what we're talking about here, because the beliefs we're looking at specifically--that prophecies about the second coming can be decoded from the bible, and that the second coming might happen tomorrow--are strongly discouraged by the Catholic Church. In fact if that survey was broken down by denomination I'd lay odds that the overwhelming bulk of the 20% and 33% groups believing those things would be evangelical protestants, and only a small percent of Catholics subscribed to them.

Your point about selective comprehension of information in the bible is understood, but the case of doublethink I initially cited isn't really similar; I was talking about Matthew 24. That chapter basically comes in two parts: first Jesus says some stuff about what his return will look like, then in the second half he says explicitly that nobody but God Himself knows when that day will come. The thing about Matthew 24 is that it is probably the section of the Bible apart from Revelations that is most often dissected by people who believe in bible codes and prophecies, because of the first half where Jesus talks pretty extensively about all the stuff that will happen before his return. But then the second half of the chapter is all about how you can't predict it. Studying the first part intensely while ignoring the second is just some mental gymnastics that I found curious. It seems that we're more or less agreeing with one another, though, because it's clearly a case of selective comprehension. Somebody like LaHaye can cite the "nobody shall know the hour or the day" for whatever purpose he needs it one moment, then conveniently forget it when he wants to write a book about the coming rapture.

[Surlethe]

It's not that all of them entirely ignore the second half of Matthew 24, it's that they play lawyer with it. IIRC, my wife once told me that she heard someone say, "We may not know the hour or the day, but that doesn't mean we can't predict the year."

[Tolya]

It's not that all of them entirely ignore the second half of Matthew 24, it's that they play lawyer with it. IIRC, my wife once told me that she heard someone say, "We may not know the hour or the day, but that doesn't mean we can't predict the year."

I would just LOVE to ask such a person about the input data used to make a "year" prediction. Or has anyone actually tried that/know what their reasoning is?

And yeah, when you read Matthew 24, Jesus explains what will happen before his second coming... only that he lists things that were happening since the beginning of human civilization. "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." and the like (that's 24:7 for you).

[Tolya]

Somebody like LaHaye can cite the "nobody shall know the hour or the day" for whatever purpose he needs it one moment, then conveniently forget it when he wants to write a book about the coming rapture.

Religious doublethink is a very common thing in the Catholic church. Take jews for example: Pope John Paul II tried to make amends with judaism (even apologized for all the wrongdoings that CC inflicted upon Jews throughout the history), but when you look at the Bible, which clearly says that Jews are "tainted" because they killed Jesus, it's just hypocrisy.

Oh, and as for denominations, if you go to pewforum.org and look at the full text of the survey (the link to the PDF file is just below the chart) you'll find the data you are interested in.

As is the case with overall belief in the second coming, white evangelicals and black Protestants, as well as those who say that the Bible is the literal word of God, are much more likely than other Christians to say that the specific time of Christ’s return to earth is revealed in biblical prophecies, and that Christ will return in their lifetime. Even among these groups, however, those who see Christ’s return as imminent are greatly outnumbered by those who say Christ will not return in their lifetimes or that it is impossible to know when Jesus will return.

So yeah, you got it right about evangelical protestants. The survey gives a table with exact percentage for each denomination.

[Surlethe]

One-liners are unwelcome. Split to Testing.

[Darth Yoshi]

It's not that all of them entirely ignore the second half of Matthew 24, it's that they play lawyer with it. IIRC, my wife once told me that she heard someone say, "We may not know the hour or the day, but that doesn't mean we can't predict the year."

I would just LOVE to ask such a person about the input data used to make a "year" prediction. Or has anyone actually tried that/know what their reasoning is?

And yeah, when you read Matthew 24, Jesus explains what will happen before his second coming... only that he lists things that were happening since the beginning of human civilization. "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." and the like (that's 24:7 for you).

Never mind Matthew 24:34 - "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." The world was supposed to end within a generation; we're still here. There isn't anything to lawyer, unless there's a 2000 yr old man walking the earth and waiting to die.

[Samuel]

It's not that all of them entirely ignore the second half of Matthew 24, it's that they play lawyer with it. IIRC, my wife once told me that she heard someone say, "We may not know the hour or the day, but that doesn't mean we can't predict the year."

I would just LOVE to ask such a person about the input data used to make a "year" prediction. Or has anyone actually tried that/know what their reasoning is?

And yeah, when you read Matthew 24, Jesus explains what will happen before his second coming... only that he lists things that were happening since the beginning of human civilization. "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." and the like (that's 24:7 for you).

Never mind Matthew 24:34 - "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." The world was supposed to end within a generation; we're still here. There isn't anything to lawyer, unless there's a 2000 yr old man walking the earth and waiting to die.

The Wandering Jew story was created to fit that niche.