You may have heard, Judgment Day is coming. No terminators, apparently, but your Christian friends will be flying up into the air at 6:00 pm on May 21. Which time zone, you ask? All of them, apparently.

On May 21, “starting in the Pacific Rim at around the 6 p.m. local time hour, in each time zone, there will be a great earthquake, such as has never been in the history of the Earth,” he says. The true Christian believers–he hopes he’s one of them–will be “raptured”: They’ll fly upward to heaven.

Apparently, God will respect local authorities in their designation of time zones, even the ones set hours before and after others in the same longitude.

One has to wonder if the people publicly predicting this truly believe the rapture is coming or not. Some people are just that nutty. But it is easy to suspect people like this of manipulation; they may correctly believe that predicting the rapture, despite being eventually proved wrong, will draw adherents to their cause. The media loves goofy stories like these, so it’s great publicity for the people making the predictions.

Now, you might think that once May 21 passes and there’s no rapture, these people will get a huge black eye. However, you would be wrong. You might be thinking of scientists, who lose credibility when they predict something and it doesn’t happen. In the world of faith, things work differently. Remember, religious zealots disrespect scientists exactly because they change their beliefs depending upon prevailing facts. To the faithful, a wrong prediction is easily–in fact, automatically explained off as a “test” or in some other way. The yahoos predicting the end of the world–who have done this many, many times before–risk nothing in being wrong. They only have to worry about how much they gain.

Atheists are having fun with this, of course. Many post-Rapture parties are being planned for the hour after the predicted end of days. One enterprising atheist even started a business where, for a fee, he promised to take care of people’s pets after they ascend–presumably without their furry friends–to heaven. He’s dealt with this intelligently, in that he will not take the pets before the Rapture, but has promised that he or his agents across the U.S. will drive to the homes of those raptured within 24 hours after the event to collect the pets. He claims to already have 250 takers, which, frankly, is sad.

As tempting as it is to laugh at these people, there will be damage. Followers, made to believe that any doubt may win them an express ticket to hell, have interrupted life plans. One woman dropped out of medical school. A couple who apparently are not working as a result of this and are running out of money have no backup plan. It has caused rifts between families and friends. Doubtlessly many more people are going to be hurt by this in some way or another. But the people causing all of this will not pay the price–and the people hurt will probably find a way to keep believing in and respecting the ones who caused them harm.