Bible guarantees! Wow, it must be true then.

Unclear on whether that’s Greenwich mean time or whether it’ll be a rolling event as the day tracks around the globe. So as an Australian I won’t get a chance to repent but those in later time zones will presumably get a bit of lead time, perhaps to arrange for their pets to be looked after by some left behind atheists.

So let’s look on the bright side of the rapture
Let’s assume that all the religious believers are taken up for processing with just the dirty non-believers left behind. Unlike each of those religions, I’ll assume they’re all going to be treated the same: you believe in god/gods then hey – you won the irrational thinking bonus of a lifetime.

Chaplains out of schools
It will get NSCP Chaplains out of our supposed-to-be secular public education system in Australia (so we’d save $222m from the budget recently announced) and stop me from having to complain about the dodgy NSCP mobs (e.g. Scripture Union, Access Ministries) that run this tax funded religious racket.

School time would be more ethical and less bronze age
The only option in SRE time in NSW would be the Primary Ethics course or “non scripture” (I dubbed the trial The first useful scripture lesson in NSW history). So ethics teachers still need to turn up to teach the kiddies next week as they’d be left behind having shunned the nuns. It’s possible other ethics teachers would need to be covered by the Atheists as it is a secular course after all and makes no religious claims.

Public education would no longer be playing second fiddle to private religious schools and would have billions of dollars to spend on much needed facilities, materials, staff and land acquisitions in cramped schools.

Special treatment at all levels. (Image from SMH)

The calls for creationism to be taught in science class would stop.

No more door to door
There’ll be no one knocking on doors in cheap white short sleeve shirts and black ties while you’re trying to get a sleep in. The plus side is that there’ll be little piles of exactly that sort of clothing left around the streets in the post rapture world. Might want to discard their magic Mormon underwear.

Style repellent too.

Peace and quiet
No church bells on Sunday.
No more ridiculously early morning call to prayer in Muslim countries.
No more wailing at the wailing wall.
No more batshitcrazy types picketing funerals.
No more rioting mobs any time a holy book is destroyed.

London's finest out in force.

Discrimination laws will have less exemptions
No religious run businesses/schools left with ridiculous exemptions from the discrimination laws (e.g. allowing the expelling gays or single mothers from schools).

Less nonsense in healthcare
All hospitals left running would offer IVF, abortion services, post rape medical treatment, contraception advice etc. Chemists/pharmacists would all give out medication based on medical need and wouldn’t veto for their own personal reasons.

No nut-cases like this lady picketing female health clinics.

Crazy old bat that pickets a clinic in Surry Hills

No people thinking that scraps of Mary Mackillop miracle placebo items are miraculous. HIV/AIDS treatment and vaccinations could move forward instead of having ridiculous religious leaders impeding the flow of medical aid and advice.

Business and property
The tax system would have a massive amount of money to spend on things as it would stop handouts to the tune of billions to religious organisations.

Sanitarium would have to start paying taxes on its weetbix profits, meaning the tax free status it uses to compete with other cereal companies would evaporate. A slew of other for profit religious owned businesses would no longer be rorting an unfair tax advantage to put normal businesses out of the market.

There’d be lots of prime real estate that could be turned into useful spaces rather than just sitting empty except for an hour a week when a few people get up on a Sunday to do work. The new users of those buildings would pay council rates like everyone else.

Politics and equality would improve a bit
We’d have no more Fred Nile in parliament so someone else would get a chance at the dumbest minister award (plenty of candidates, but Abbott will be gone so the position is open).

Top priorities for Fred.

Gays could get married and have equal rights… you know, like they should have always had.

Child safety
The world’s largest paedophile cover-up group would cease to exist meaning thousands of children would not be exposed to predatory Catholic priests and crimes not covered up then simply shuffled on to new areas. Previous victims could be given free right to loot some of the gold that the Catholic church loves to hoard.

Women’s rights
We’d no longer have clerichead bearded Islamic morons telling us how to beat wives or rape them in a Sharia compliant way and brave Muslim women having to stand up and tell them they’re dickheads.

There's nothing real funny about this, but it makes a point.

Environment and Science
A whole bunch of trees cut down to produce uninspiring religious texts would be saved or used to make more interesting or enlightened books. There’d be slightly more storage room in bedside tables in hotels without the Gideon minions doing their work.

We’d (sadly) lose the learned Cardinal Pell and his climate science denial ways (because as a person who reads the bible he knows better than scientists).

Atheists/Agnostics and secularists can get back to adult matters
And finally Atheists, although they’d have been wrong if the rapture happens would finally get that evidence after thousands of years of waiting.
Secularists will get their separation of church and state they’ve been asking for..

Any others?

Check out this disturbing post at a site called “rapture ready”.

I’ll quote..

..actually, you know what, I’m looking for something to quote that doesn’t make me feel like taking an ice pick to my head when I read of these nitwits who want to act like spoilt children in the hope that their sun god father will wipe out the world. I suppose it’s a natural progression given that prayer achieves absolutely nothing, their religions are fast losing followers and having an all powerful god who appears completely non-existant must sting a bit. I can only hope they work on keeping their virginity forever and thus take themselves out of the gene pool.

Ok, here’s one:

I don’t want the Rapture to happen now. I want it to have happened YESTERDAY!!! I wanna go home daddddddyyyyyyyy!

and another from “WaitingForJesus”:

I very badly want to go home, too. I feel alienated from this world with its ungodly ways. I know it’s selfish of me (because I guess we SHOULD want to stay a bit longer so we can evangelize some more…), but I wanna go RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!

and still more:

The rapture is the blessed hope which is a desire that the Lord puts in our hearts. I suppose its a lot like looking forward to Christmas as a child, the more you look forward to it and anticipate it, the more you enjoy it when it finally comes.

There’s at least hope for one on the forum:

I always thought that the cough syrup in California was a lot more potent than here in Iowa…you have confirmed my thoughts

I mean it’s a pretty sick kind of mindset I think that goes to bed each night and wakes up each morning hoping that the wrath of god will descend upon anyone who hasn’t accepted a bunch of unfounded stories about some guy called Jesus (that just happen to mirror a bunch of astrology based stories the Egyptian religions had long before). If this was anything other than religion these people would be on suicide watch.

To give you further examples of the insanity of this notion that the world will end thanks to rapture: there are a bunch of twits who think that Obama is the anti-christ.

I mean is it any wonder we had 8 years of George W Bush?

They really should put a child proof lid on the ballot box to stop these dickheads getting to vote.