Your Rapture Dollars At Work

A reader considers important theological questions:

OK, they've programmed the rapture website to send out the emails six days after the rapture.

How does the computer know it's the rapture?  The people running the site are good Christians, and so they won't be there to tell it.

But you could get around that -- you could have a system that would assume it's the rapture unless someone tells it that it's not.  So every day a good Christian would have to click on the button that says, "we're still here!". 

If the machine doesn't hear from a good christian in six days, it will know that it's time to send out the emails.

But from a security standpoint, the system is really weak.  I mean, all of the good people will be gone.  And the antichrist will be in the world.  And do you think the antichrist is going to want those emails to go out?  Does he want anyone to be saved?

How hard would it be for him to just pull the plug on that server?Disconnect it from the internet?  Or whatever?

Honestly, I just don't see how this is likely to work.

Another reader adds:

I have a lot of credibility as an apostate, having written the "Why Diss Baptists" letter you published several months ago. This "Left Behind" website illustrates a clear misunderstanding fundamentalists have about nonbelievers: when I disregard a commandment in the Bible I'm not flouting God's will, I'm denying his authorship. If my pious friends and neighbors were magicked into heaven, you'd find me in a church pew right next to Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, because the Rapture would be something science really couldn't explain. Compare to evolution, which is something science can't explain to willfully irrational people.

The real problem fundamentalists have with the theory of evolution is that it wasn't written on a sheepskin in the Bronze Age.

Yet another:

Thanks for the heads up on ""You've Been Left Behind" - Bruce Schneier (a security expert) points out on his blog the implications of trusting your belongings with the makers of this site, and how easy it would be for them to rip you off.

However, the prize for post-rapture sites must go to this site. Run by atheists, and therefore guaranteed to deliver your mail post-rapture. Check out their FAQ (titled, obviously, "God Hates FAQs"). Example Q&A:

Aren't You Afraid of God's Wrath?

We don't believe in God, remember? In the event that the Rapture actually occurs, we will go to Plan B: "Lifetime of Sin Followed by Deathbed Repentance."