One of the strangest instincts of "rapture" believers

From time to time the same age-old story happens once again: Some preacher or whoever once again predicts that the famous "rapture" will happen in such-and-such date, he gets a varying amount of followers who totally believe him, then the date arrives and nothing happens. No rapture.

The reactions to the inevitable failure vary. In almost every single case, with only very few exceptions, the preacher will then go with the classic excuse of "oops, I actually got the date wrong, in fact it will happen in such-and-such date instead", and only a fraction of his former believers will go with it. The others will be disappointed from the first time and move on.

There is, however, one particular reaction that's common to some of those believers (before the eventual predicted date arrives) which is rather incomprehensible: When they are utterly convinced that the "rapture" is arriving in a few months or weeks, and thus the end of the world, they go ahead and sell their property.

In one recent example some man sold his work truck because he believed in such a rapture prediction, and after the date arrived and went without incident, he reported how he was now out of job because he had sold his truck and lost his job.

What he didn't explain (and what pretty much none of the people doing similar things) is why he sold his property away. What for?

This seems to be a strange instinct among some of these believers: When they think they won't be needing their property anymore, they will sell it. Often not even just give it away, but sell it.

They never seem to stop to think: "Why? What for?"

They seriously believe that they won't have any use for the property because the end of the world is coming (and depending on the branch of Christianity, essentially Hell on Earth for the people left behind). So why would they think that somebody else would have a use for that property either? Why sell it?

Maybe the idea is that they will sell all their property and use the money to go on a lavish vacation before the end? Except that that doesn't sound logical either: These are usually extremely fundamentalist Christians who believe that engaging in such self-indulgence, particularly that soon before the second coming of Christ, is sinful. They strongly believe they should be spending that time praying, studying the Bible and preaching to others, not engaging in self-indulgence and sinful behavior.

Maybe they think that selling off all of their property shows commitment? That it's some kind of act of faith? That it's showing to God how strongly they believe in him and that he is going to rapture them?

If that's so, one could ask: Are you so insecure in your faith that you need to show it off to God, to make sure that he doesn't leave you behind? (Also: If that's so, why sell your property? What exactly do you need the money for? Do you think you are taking the money with you to Heaven?) 

God's (alleged) omnipotency raises a lot of questions

Most Christians really love their "omni" words when describing God: Omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omniwhatever... Yet, at the same time they very rarely if ever stop to think how this clashes with a lot of the Biblical narrative.

In a lot of cases when God acts in a non-omnipotent non-omniscient manner in the biblical stories, the go-to excuse by many Christians is the typical "free will" argument or, sometimes, that God is teaching humanity some kind of lesson. However, in many cases even those excuses don't really hold up to scrutiny.

As an example, why exactly did an omnipotent God, who could have just willed Adam into existence out of absolutely nothing, have to use dust (or mud depending on the translation) to create him? Why did he create him out of dust rather than just willing him into existence? To be poetic about it?

In the story, when Adam was alone in Eden, God noticed that he was feeling lonely, so he brought animals (which he also created from the ground for an even more inexplicable reason, according to the text) to him to keep him company. Yet, Adam was still feeling lonely, so according to the story God took one of his ribs and created a woman as a companion.

If this were interpreted as highly poetic and metaphorical, then fine. And in fact, a few Christian denominations actually do exactly that. However, the vast majority of denominations officially declare the story to be literally true and exactly what happened, to the letter.

So an omniscient God didn't predict from the get-go that his creation would feel lonely and give him a companion from the very start? And the same omniscient God didn't predict that animals wouldn't be enough for this? Only after a bit of trial and error he came up with such a wild idea as creating a second person to keep him company? The omniscient omnipotent creator of the universe who knows everything?

And how did he create this second person? Did he create her out of nothing, as he could have (according to the Christian view that he is absolutely omnipotent and can do whatever he wants)? Did he create her out of the dust of the ground, like he did with Adam and all the animals, according to the story? Nope, for some inexplicable reason he had to take a rib out of Adam and create the other person out of it? Why?

Again, if this were a highly figurative metaphor not to be interpreted literally, then fine, but the majority of Christianity interprets it literally and claims that this is exactly what happened. And no "free will" argument makes sense here.

By far the most common interpretation of the Bible is that only Adam and Eve were created, the entirety of the rest of humanity are their descendants. And the vast majority of Christianity believes this as being literally the case, not just metaphorically. Even putting aside the question of incest, there's the question of genetic degradation, which happens extremely fast if siblings procreate. Thus, Christian apologists have needed to come up with wild (and extremely unscientific) theories about how genetic degradation didn't happen in the beginning somehow.

Why not just as well, since the story remains completely silent about it and doesn't make statements one way or the other, interpret it such that God created an entire population of humans from dirt, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people at once? There's nothing in the narrative that would contradict this (and, in fact, the narrative, even if we took it literally, indirectly supports this, as Cain and Abel were clearly in a world that was already so populated that Cain could go ahead and not only find a wife but moreover found an entire city.)

And, of course, the flood narrative also raises similar questions. If God wanted to destroy humanity and start over (let's just skip discussing about how an omnipotent omniscient God couldn't do it right the first time), why not just wish them out of existence? Why go through the trouble of the physically impossible boat carrying a physically impossible amount of animals, floating on a physically impossible amount of water for a year? Why would an omnipotent God need to go through all this charade?

If we went though the Bible, the list of such incoherent details would be enormous.

And it all stems from that one single claim that God is "omnipotent" and can do anything he wants without any limits whatsoever. 

One of the most braindead arguments (some) apologists present

Tim Allen, the famous actor, once said this in an interview:

"My older daughter is an atheist, and I said, well, philosophically there's an irony there too, because atheists don't believe in God. Well, there has to be a God to not believe in."

Some other Christian apologists sometimes present, in essence, this same argument, although they often don't say it so succinctly and in such a distilled manner, and instead try to dress up and masquerade it in a big amount of fancy words and complex arguments.

The distilled version that Tim Allen spouted immediately reveals the main problem with it: The fact that you could use the same argument to argue for the existence of anything. And that includes other non-Christian gods.

"You don't believe in Shiva? Well, there has to be a Shiva to not believe in."

"You don't believe in Allah? Well, there has to be an Allah to not believe in."

"You don't believe in magic unicorns? Well, there have to be magic unicorns to not believe in."

"You don't believe in bigfoot?" Well, there has to be a bigfoot to not believe in."

The funny thing is that Tim Allen clearly said it as if it was a big "gotcha!" moment for his daughter (and for all the atheists watching) that shut her up so effectively that she had no response.

Yeah, sure, whatever you say, Tim.