In his May 23 Wall Street Journal column, James Taranto called Harold Camping -- who predicted the Biblical day of rapture would occur on May 21 -- the “Christian Al Gore.” Taranto further compared global warming activism to a “doomsday cult.”

From Taranto's column:

Something else bothers us about the media mockery of Harold Camping, as justifiable as it may be. Why are only religious doomsday cultists subjected to such ridicule? Reuters notes that “Camping previously made a failed prediction Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994.” Ha ha, you can't believe anything this guy says! But who jeered at the U.N.'s false prediction that there would be 50 million “climate refugees” by 2010? We did, but not Reuters.

Doomsday superstitions seem to fulfill a basic psychological need. On the surface, the thought that God or global warming will destroy the world within our lifetimes is horrifying. But all of us are doomed; within a matter of decades, every person alive will experience the end of his own world. A belief in the hereafter makes the thought of death less terrifying. But so does a disbelief in the here, after. If the world is to end with us--if there is no life for anyone after our death--we are not so insignificant after all.

To reject traditional religion is not, as the American Atheists might have it, to transform oneself into a perfectly rational being. Nonbelievers are no less susceptible to doomsday cults than believers are; Harold Camping is merely the Christian Al Gore. But because secular doomsday cultism has a scientific gloss, journalists like our friends at Reuters treat it as if it were real science. So, too, do some scientists. It may be that the decline of religion made this corruption of science inevitable.

Previously:

Right wing smears scientific consensus on global warming as a “cult”

Limbaugh: “The Global Warming People” Are “Almost Identical” To Rapture Believers

O'Reilly: Maybe Charles Manson Could “Join Up With Al Gore” Over Climate Change

Kilmeade: “Charles Manson Breaks His Silence, And He's Sounding A Bit Like -- Al Gore?”

Right-wing media shamefully try to pin Discovery Channel bomber's actions on Gore