Did you hear? The world came to an end!

The past few weeks in the grander smorgasbord of news we had some pretty interesting things happen.  Yet, in the background of the news at the beginning of the month, a man named Harold Camping claimed that Judgment Day would be May 21st.  There were billboards, websites, radio broadcasts, and signs on buses proclaiming that we better prepare or be doomed for eternity.

Reaction to this from most rational people was that of laughing, just plain ignoring the guy, or taking a minute to say how crazy the guy is.  Yet, in the back of my mind, I knew that someone, somewhere a follower of Camping would take his message to heart and do something horrible.  This is one of the horrible things that was done:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110524/sc_livescienc/faileddoomsdayhasrealdeadlyconsequences

While I am not going to say all of Harold Camping's followers are mentally ill, all it takes is one person with enough money and influence to force someone in distress to think that forcing their teenage kid and their pre-teen kid to slice their throats with box-cutters will save them from the torture of "judgment day".

Now, throughout this run up to "judgment day" and the fallout after, mainstream Christians have been distancing themselves from Harold Camping's predictions.  Most do this by citing a bible verse (Mark 13:32-33) that says no one can accurately predict "judgment day".  Problem solved, right?  So, really what mainstream Christians are saying is that the end times are still coming but the date can't be known?  So, that brings up a couple of questions:

1.  Since Harold Camping's rantings are not true, how does still saying the end times are coming by mainstream Christians make the situation any better?

2.  Second, if mainstream Christians are using the bible to cite where they think Harold Camping was wrong, then why is it when a non-believer cites the bible to show where God either kills people directly or sets them up to be killed (http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-does-god-kill-people-let-me-count.html) or when it is stated in the New Testament that slaves need to stay with their masters even if the master is evil (1 Peter 2:18)?

It's moving the goalposts (a basic logical fallacy) when Christians cite the bible to prove their point in one case and then in another say that "Skeptics misinterpret the bible all the time" or "the Old Testament doesn't count".

Many people these past few days have learned their lesson the hard way by believing a man who made a prediction about the end of the world.  Interestingly enough, he has already shifted his goalpost and now predicts that the real "judgment day" to be October 21st.  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110524/ap_on_re_us/us_apocalypse_saturday
I assume that most people will not be fooled this time.

Finally, how many more people losing their lives and possessions will it take to show that making a doomsday prediction (whether predicted to be an actual date or an unknowable date) really does actual harm?

Post your responses in the comments if you like.