To be honest, it would be complete chaos. The financial markets would collapse, there would be no more reserve currency, the US military (especially the Navy) would be out of commission meaning that the international situation has become much more random and chaotic. We would see Taiwan and Tibet become Chinese within a year, S. Korea would probably go to war with N. Korea, and God only knows what Israel will do without the West’s (especially the US’s) support.
I don’t think South Korea would have enough of a population left to go to war with Monaco, let alone North Korea. The interesting part is there is a possibility that China will overexpand, becoming far too large to govern from afar.
Well, S Korea won’t initiate the war, that’s for sure. Didn’t mean to imply that, but it looks like I did.
I think Israel would want to do something but lets not forget they still would have massive military superiority in their region. Just to be safe they might launch massive strikes against any neighbor they thought was close to being nuclear weapon ready. Also, a lot of Arab nations would suddenly lose massive portions of their oil sales without Christians to sell to in the US and Europe. Not to mention the effect on their foreign worker forces that have a lot to do with maintaining oil production.
If the Middle East starts to gang-up on Israel in a post-Christian world, Israel might just decide to go pre-emptive and let the missles fly. Bye-bye Damascus, Cairo, Tehran, Riyadh…
Looking back I can say that I missed the non-believers, according to recent surveys in the USA their numbers are on the rise and currently more than 15% of Americans declare to have no religion.
Adding also people like the followers of Hinduism and Buddhism, (many of them living in Southern California) And it is not only New york that will make it but also Los Angeles although in a reduced scale (I do think a quick infusion will come made of the people remaining around going to the remaining big population centers -lots of nice rentals available now- and to allow for them to keep going).
What’s the deal with the Czech Republic? A high percentage of atheists?
I just had a thought-why not have the Jews take on the former U.S. of A. as a new homeland? Y’all crossed a desert for that purpose, so why not cross an ocean for the same purpose? I don’t think the Canaducks are going to be too much of a problem, there’s going to be some prime real estate available, and we’ve already got a bunch of military bases set up for use.
As an interesting side-issue, lets assume the United States survives as an entity despite the loss of around three quarters of our population.
Who would make up the provisional emergency government? While a substantial number of Americans profess no religion, there’s only been one open atheist ever elected to Congress: Pete Stark, who left office in 2013. There are two Muslims in the House of Representatives: Andre Carson and Keith Ellison. Senator Mazie Hirono is a Buddhist and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is a Hindu. There are also ten Jewish Senators and twenty-two Jewish Representatives.
In the official order of succession, you’d have Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew (who would become President) and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, who are both Jewish.
Ruling on the constitutionality of all of this would be the three surviving Supreme Court Justices: Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan.
One interesting demographic is that if you remove all of the American Christians from the picture, you’re left with a United States that is approximately three quarters non-religious and one quarter believers in non-Christian religions. But as you can see, the non-believer majority would be unrepresented in the surviving government.
There’s just no way to say - the simulated universe scenario is highly speculative; any guesses we made at the architecture of the speculative simulation would be worthless, so it would be a completely unfalsifiable hypothesis.
I agree - it’s all smoke and mirrors, however, the people trying to assert the rapture explanation would have one thing on their side - that the observed phenomenon did resemble something that people had been predicting.
Correlation does not necessarily indicate causation, however, verified predictions are supposed to add a little weight to the hypothesis. Small weight, in this stated example, I would concede.
I don’t know that people will necessarily arrive at this conclusion. In the minds of Americans who have heard of the Rapture, which is by no means the majority, it has pretty specific visual associated with it of people being carried up in the air, number one, and number two, outside of the US, the number of people who have even heard of the concept is vanishingly small.
People simply vanishing in front of our eyes, clothing to boot, would certainly freak everyone out, but I don’t think concluding there is a god or, more specifically, that the god of Christianity is real, would necessarily be a byproduct. I don’t know what I would think, but I will tell you that “god did it” wouldn’t wouldn’t be a consideration for me at all. I’d be more apt to think it was a weapon of some sort.
Doesn’t matter if “the Rapture” is unknown (the concept will be discovered again, so that’s really irrelevant), but the simple fact that all disappeared professed a single religion, and that was the only thing that tied them together, would put the idea that “the Christian God did it” into a lot of heads (Others, of course, will think “My God did this!”)
Regardless, the fact that it was Christians and only Christians who disappeared would loom large in any post-disappearance theories… to dismiss that data point would be foolish and unscientific, right?
Really? In my experience, the visual that people commonly associate with it is actually people abruptly vanishing and leaving their clothes empty in place. For example. (Also, the Left Behind series, which depicts an instantaneous disappearance). This is what I believe the popular culture understands by the concept of the Rapture.
Are you sure?
I live in the UK. I’ve heard of it (from an Evangelical church background). All of my atheist friends and colleagues are familiar with the concept, because it has been widely ridiculed on the internet.
Actually, the Rapture concept was invented in the British Isles- John Nelson Darby, Anglican then Plymouth Brethren; Edward Irving, Presbyterian then “Catholic Apostolic” (proto-Pentecostal); and Scottish charismatic Margaret MacDonald all hit upon the concept in the 1830s.
I’m no longer a Rapturist but I’ve thought of a similar scenario to Czarcasm’s in which the Rapture takes all Christians, sincere or nominal, doctrinally correct or not, virtuous or sinful, but those in the wrong go into Divine Judgement (either purgation or damnation or oblivion). That would allow the non-believers greater deniability as “No Divine Rapture would have taken those pretenders/cultists/sinners”.
For most of the people that I work with, I wouldn’t know their religion one way or another.
I’d also think that for a lot of people, (at least around here) those that do know their religion will also be gone (i.e fellow christians) and there would be enough wrong assumptions and “I don’t think he’s christian” to confuse the issue. At least for a while.
Let’s say that China did decide they wanted to expand to the US, and on the assumption that there wasn’t enough military to want / try to stop them - how many people would / could / should they send there, and how long would it take? What sort of logistics would it involve?
One would think that there’s suddenly going to be a whole bunch of container ships laying idle, not to mention cruise ships - how quickly and easily could they be used for a massive population move?
Is there any evidence that China would even want to take over the world?
Well…going by what they are fighting Japan over, the policy on Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan, it seems a safe bet that expansion is on their agenda. Not to mention - they have an over abundance of people.
Also, going by recent reports on their arable land, they may want to be looking for more farmland in the nearish future.
Not to mention economically. Doesn’t matter if you think America is the Great Satan, or the shining city on the hill - you’re looking at the devastation of the second-largest economy in the world. With the Europeans thrown in, that’s two of the world’s economic powerhouses gone. That sort of economic chaos often breeds militarism.
nitpick - Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) is a Buddhist.
Yes, but after the Great Disappearing Act, there will be plenty of land available closer to home, and their own population will be reduced by 67,070,000.