Many of you already know that Slacktivist has been doing a detailed deconstruction of the first book of the Left Behind series. He has posted a long, painful, entertaining analysis of a few pages in order every Friday for over four years: it’s been like gawking at a major train wreck, since the book is terribly written and an incomprehensible edifice of illogic and anti-realism gussied up with the most appalling lack of imagination.
At long last, he has turned the last few pages of the last chapter. There about 11 more books in the series, I think, and some spin-off books and prequels (I saw one for kids about kids living through the End Times), and I kind of hope for his sanity’s sake that he doesn’t start plowing through them, but on the other hand, it has been an entertaining exercise in the schadenfreude of truly bad literature, and I don’t want it to stop. It seems a little unfair that the one enjoyable part of this series, the demolition of its tawdriness, has to come to an end, while the hacks who created these potboilers and milked millions of undiscriminating, credulous readers continue on, making megabucks on dreck.
I will readily admit that I have no idea what this post is about.
But I saw the mst3k in the title and thought,hey is that the sequel to 2g1c ?
Is there a problem with the link? The page shows for a few seconds, then I get a message that “Page Not Found”.
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/
The Left Behind series succeeds brilliantly is demonstrating the usefulness of the God concept as a plot device for science fiction and fantasy novels. (I really can’t tell which the Left Behind books are because I’ve never managed to stomach more than just a few pages of them while standing in the bookstore.) There is, of course, the usual problem: Reining in the omnipotence so that the plot isn’t just a tedious build-up to a deus ex machina ending. Unfortunately, I hear the authors predictably screw that.
That’s one of the reason why I keep God in a tissue box. He’s actually useful there.
Seems to me if they believed in the hereafter they wouldn’t be working so hard at getting rich here.
Dear old Kirk Cameron has a new movie coming out called “Fireproof: never leave your partner behind”.
I saw a trailer for it while I was in College Station, TX this weekend. It promises to be every bit as bad as the “Left Behind” hogwash. They managed to get a cross with the sun behind it no less than three times in the preview. It is apparently about a fireman who is a local hero to “everyone but [his] wife.” Faced with the ending of his marriage, his father or pastor who whoever gives him a book to follow to help his marriage, and with the power of Jesus Christ and prayer all will be right.
At the end of the trailer the lady next to my friend says “aww, isn’t that sweet.” Meanwhile I’m fighting back the bile and my friend his saying how completely awful it looks.
Granted, the bible thumpers need their crappy movies too, but can’t they stay on public access cable with the other lunatics where they belong?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1129423/
I think that book was a major reason for me to turn apathy towards religion into outright disgust.
I have an uncle with dual degrees in chemical and mechanical engineering. He’s a bright guy. When his marriage fell to bits, he found God. The National Geographic Kids magazine he always got me for Christmas suddenly turned into some weird animated Creation Genesis Highlights style monstrosity. My friends and I laughed at it in disbelief – even middle schoolers could tell it was crap. One year the first book in the left behind series arrived. I did try to read it, but I never finished. I think the last bit I read involved the AntiChrist in a boardroom. I decided I’d wasted more than enough time, and I’ve never had the slightest inclination to pick it back up. I don’t think it made the move with the rest of my books to college, and it sure didn’t make it to my current home. Good riddance.
Left Behind: Brains that will be raptured later to start new religions.
People lauding ill-written garbage like this is the inevitable result of raising a child to think there is only one book in the world worth reading (as if it were 500 b.c.e. or something). Fight against poor style and taste; encourage omnivorous reading!
Why is it I haven’t been aware of this before now? This sounds great!
Off topic.
FSM reveals his noodly self in folding protein.
http://www.venganza.org/2008/09/19/protein-resembles-fsm/
It is truly a thing of beauty. I don’t know what to do on Friday afternoons now, at least not until he starts in on the movie.
The archives put the posts in reverse chronological order, which is a pain, but Right Behind has re-indexed them oldest to newest here.
After you’re done with Fred’s fisking of Left Behind, try Right Behind for all your fanfic needs. :)
What’s additionally creepy is how many people treat the Left Behind series as though they are themselves gospel truth rather than fiction adopted from the bible. PZ, you could probably get as many folks up in arms desecrating one of them.
Those people can kiss my Left Behind.
See, this is what I don’t undersantd about Bible-thumpers.
We (or they) have this set of premises:
a) The Rapture will somehow coincide with the start of the reign of the Antichrist.
b) The Antichrist will be librul.
c) They want the Rapture to happen soon.
So, why in Hades aren’t they voting liberal to bring the Antichrist to power and hasten their celestial abduction?
And the idea of the Rapture (where the big Daddy in the sky will whisk them away from all of us heathens) is an idea they HATE to have challenged. I ask them why big daddy is going to lift them out of any suffering when the prophets and Jebus all thru their magical book had to suffer? They hate it when I ask that question. They dont want to suffer because they are LAZY people with LAZY thinking. THEY HATE IT WHEN YOU MAKE THEM THINK. Which can be a challenge when the brain has been unused for so long.
Why wait for him to show up himself? Blake Stacey has a post about the publisher’s latest:
http://scienceblogs.com/sunclipse/2008/09/from_the_publishers_of_left_be.php
I just read an article by a neurologist about the psychology of incompetence. The researchers administered a test of cognitive thinking to undergraduates, asked them how they thought they and others would do beforehand, then correlated the data to the actual test results. The conclusion: the more intellectually incompetent the individual the more s/he overestimated his/her ability.
Explains a lot, doesn’t it? The full article here
The real thing that pisses me off about these end of dayers is that they are all so desperate to see Christ return (fast-food mentality wedded to religion) and when he doesn’t they rationalise it as the prophecies of Revelation have not come to pass. So they are doing their hardest to make them happen thereby “forcing” Christ to appear. (Now if it were me I would’nt come back for these SOBs to really test their faith). The trouble now is the rest of us have to live through all their crap before they realise it’s not going to happen. Not now, not ever.
There’s not only the books, there’s also a game called ‘Left Behind:Eternal Forces’, and an expansion to it called ‘Tribulation Forces’. It’s pretty damn abysmal, and got a complete panning in reviews, and, predictably, this got certain fundy loons screaming ‘religious discrimination’, even though the reviews, by and large, agreed the premise of the game was actually pretty good – it was things like bad graphics and bad gameplay that got it marked down.
Truly, one of the most depressing things about American “culture” is that this book series has sold gajillions of copies and made its authors very rich. Everywhere in the country symphonies are going broke, music and arts programs in public schools are being cut, terrific novelists and visual artists barely eke out a living or do something altogether unrelated to pay the bills (and fuggidabout being a composer or poet)… But people pony up to give their hard-earned dollars to these huckster/hacks. This makes me despair for the future of the nation as much as anything else, even the presence of GWB in the White House.
Is there any kind of index to earlier episodes? I could only find the last and second-to-last ones, and it seems like the kind of thing that would be best to start from the beginning…
…and then, like an idiot, he sees the LB Archives button off to the side…
Tim @4:
“Seems to me if they believed in the hereafter they wouldn’t be working so hard at getting rich here.”
Those Christians who are most eager to see the End of the World tend to also subscribe to the peculiar idea that all the passages in the New Testament condemning greed and wealth somehow don’t apply to them. Hand in hand with a refusal to read the Sermon on the Mount as meaning what it says, they also think that God rewards the godly in this world with material wealth — so if they are raking in the dough, that means they’re living right by God.
Andres @13:
“So, why in Hades aren’t they voting liberal to bring the Antichrist to power and hasten their celestial abduction?”
Because if you do that, you’re supporting the Antichrist and his goals, which would be evil.
druidbros
There should be a logical fallacy called the “I stopped them dead in their tracks with my insightful question, really–I promise I did, no kidding. Man it was so cool you should have been there; Geez I am so smart” fallacy. Any argument that includes variations of “they don’t know how to answer me when I ask that” or “they look like a deer in the headlights when faced with the onslaught of my intellect” is deserving of the label. Because what it really means is this: when I imagine asking this question, then in my mind I really stump ’em.”
Since you are so fond of thinking then I suppose you know there are two other major schools of Christian eschatology that are not “Left Behind”–three if you count historic (as opposed to dispensational) premillennialism. You see, the Left Behinders are used to having their view challenged–by other Christians. And I’m very certain we can ask them tougher questions than you can.
You just made this godless MiSTie extremely happy.
@19 by MTS
Don’t make me cry. I was speaking to a creative writing professor and when I mentioned I was a poet she said she was sorry.
I’ve been working at a new job for about 10 months and recently found out that I work in the former Best Brains headquarters where MST3K was filmed. So cool…
Since you are so fond of thinking then I suppose you know there are two other major schools of Christian eschatology that are not “Left Behind”–three if you count historic (as opposed to dispensational) premillennialism. – heddle
Why would anyone interested in thinking – apart from certain kinds of specialist historian or a psychopathologist – be interested in the different varieties of Christo-crap?
Nick Gotts,
Well, I understand you wouldn’t care. But someone who wanted to post a cogent comment on the Left Behind juggernaut might care. Someone who didn’t want to look as if they didn’t know what they were writing about might care. Someone who considered the history of a subject in order to avoid writing something god-awful might care.
But I agree you wouldn’t care.
I haven’t seen this sentiment evidenced in the discussions I read.
They certainly have fleeced the flock but then again that happens every Sunday nationwide and isn’t much of an accomplishment.
heddle@28,
I don’t see anyone else thanking you for the information. You don’t need to be an expert on varieties of garbage to know that it stinks. You weren’t at the incident described by druidbros, so you don’t know what happened – you just saw an opportunity to sneer; the kind of people who would read Left Behind are generally so stupid that they are could be out-argued by a turnip, so I find his/her account quite plausible.
I recently started reading these books. I have no idea why, but I was at the library, and decided to pick up the first one. (I actually started with the prequels. More on that in a minute) At the moment, I’m on the 5th one, and I find that they, as books, don’t completely suck. Now, before you start going crazy, this is me ignoring that the authors think this is real and that I’m the type of person they will gleefully go to hell. Each time I remember THAT, well, the books drop dramatically.
However, back to my standpoint from ignorance. The most annoying aspects of the books are the preaching and the Michael Bay action scenes. The characters are constantly separated from each other and have to somehow get back together. All the time. You know, like that thing that Terry Goodkind does and calls it writing. Anyway, so, once they’re separated, they start either whining that they want to be back together or they start preaching the gospel. There’s enough interesting parts, to me, to feel that if the authors weren’t whack-a-loons on a mission, these guys might have done something. However, it too often preaches to the choir and anyone who’s not in the choir gets quickly turned off.
The first major instance of me wanting to find the authors and strangle them was when, in the prequels, we find out the heritage of the Anti-Christ. His father(s) were two gay guys. They took their sperm and “isolated” all the good genes. You know, like in “Twins” only they threw away the stuff that was going to become Danny Devito. Then, they get the girl from the Planters commercial pregnant. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nez0rWG–5c )
The second time was, in Heaven, when Billy Graham gets a standing ovation and major accolades from teh Jesus. Oh, and this is during the time when all the good Christians are all winning at Pretty Pretty Princess and getting Crowns of Laughter, Butterflies and Ninjas for being really good Christians. The really stupid thing is that, of course, all the biblical scholarship in this series is horribly messed up. Case in point, the crowns. They reference Paul saying stuff like congregations being crowned with laughter or joy and take that to mean they’re going to get jewelry (Jew-lry?) in Heaven.
Finally, I keep telling people that beyond the horrendous preaching, there’s some interesting stuff in here, and that the writing is often no worse then some others I’ve read (I’m looking at you Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson). Now, of course, Brian Herbert merely wants to basterdize his father’s name and ride on his father’s well established success to get nerds to love him. I’m guessing he’s achieved that, although I think someone should beat him with his sequels and prequels until he apologizes. He doesn’t, however, hope that Jesus will crown him with kittehs while I burn in hell for not accepting Jesus into my . . heart. (I did give my love to Jesus one time. He never called me back, the jerk.) And that has made all the difference. or something.
Questioning the theological coherence and Scriptural fidelity of the premillenial dispensation adherents may be well and good for moderate Christians, but it neatly sidesteps the question of the validity of any school Christian eschatology.
The truth is that there are no gods, Jesus is not coming back, and Christianity, along with every other religion invented, is based on magical thinking and superstition.
Rational people who understand that the universe runs on mechanical principles, and not by magic, realize that all religion is superannuated rubbish. It would be much better for the welfare of our species if we gave up belief in gods and established our belief systems on empahty and shared values instead of catering to the arbitrary whims of priests speaking in the name of a fictional deity.
The earth will be roasted to a cinder in about a billion years by the increased energy output of our aging sun, and Jesus will not have returned because the Christian eschaton is a myth.
I find it interesting that there is something about kids living after “Teh Rapture” – if I remember what the books say, kids disappeared. All kids. I guess that doesn’t mean more won’t be born, or something, but Slacktivist kept bringing up where all the kids are gone. Now, I’m not versed enough in that bizarre theology (well, more bizarre) to say where they get that from, I’ve looked at the writing of revelation from a historical/evidentiary view, but it seems that they are going more and more to a strictly marketing-based structure than any kind of consistency. I could be wrong, of course.
Badger3k,
The left behind: kids stuff is about teenagers. so, it’s kinda internally consistant.
They reference Paul saying stuff like congregations being crowned with laughter or joy and take that to mean they’re going to get jewelry (Jew-lry?) in Heaven.
Heh — I’ve seen posters on Rapture Ready convinced that they will be living in “jewel-studded mansions”.
I used to read the Left Behind kids one.
It has a scene where a kid drinks water poisoned by the wormwood meteorite and has to have her throat cut open and a pen stuck in there. She still dies, but it’s ok because she didn’t repent and was thus, on Satan’s side.
There’s also a kid whose parents die right as the rapture happens, but he gets over the fact that his parents are currently roasting in horrible agony and will continue to do so for eternity.
He doesn’t hold this against Jesus and turns to the lord just in time to be skewered by a piece of wood during an earthquake.
As you read the posts on that site, you can see that the majority of the people there are older, less educated, and impoverished. Most of their prayer requests have to do with financial problems, employment, and health concerns, and it’s obvious that a lot of these people work at minimum wage factory and retail positions without decent health care or retirement benefits.
I’m not at all surprised that their after-life fantasies concern garish descriptions of material reward. These are people living close to the poverty line, so I can see why their idea of heaven would be living in a golden, jewel-studded mansion.
Re #36: The cheery acceptance by many Christians of the fact that, if their beliefs are true, many people they know and claim to love are going to spend all eternity in unimaginable torment for the crime of not choosing the right religion, has always puzzled me. My favorite example is when Mel Gibson strongly implied that his own wife will go to Hell, despite being a “saint” who “loves Jesus,” because she’s not a member of the more-Catholic-than-the-Pope cult he belongs to. He acknowledged that this wasn’t really fair, but didn’t seem terribly broken up about it. I found lots of references to this: here is one in an article by Austin Cline: http://atheism.about.com/b/2004/02/13/mel-gibson-my-wife-is-going-to-hell.htm
Some Christians do seem bothered by this, and a not-uncommon belief is that when they die, saved Christians will have their memory magically wiped of the knowledge that so many of their friends and family members are being tortured forever.
Others will admit that they are troubled by this issue, but say that it must be OK for their loved ones to be tortured because it’s what God has decided. This always reminds me of the scene in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in which the slave Pseudolus tells his mistress that he doesn’t feel pain; she jabs him with something and when he reacts says “I thought you said you were impervious to pain.” He mumbles something like “Not my own.” I suspect they would feel differently about what is and is not just if they were the ones going to Hell.
Being a rather silly music geek, different statements can get various songs playing in my head. And if you are unlucky enough, I will start singing these songs. So when Left Behind gets mentioned, I flash back to a song titled Left Behind by a band called The Happy Flowers.
Who were The Happy Flowers you must be asking. Twenty years ago, Mr Anus and Mr Horribly Charred Infant came from Virginia with detuned guitars and sangs songs from the point of view of demented seven year old boys. Left behind was about being LEFT BEHIND!
If you are so inclined, you can follow this hyperlink where you can find the MP3. Sounds as noisy now as it did twenty years ago. Also, it is a hell of a lot more enjoyable then the silly series of books.
Now be careful and do not feed acid to the cat.
Heh — I’ve seen posters on Rapture Ready convinced that they will be living in “jewel-studded mansions”.
In heaven, everybody has bling and grillz. Even all those embryo-babies that never had a life past the blastula stage. Cuz that’s what God believes humans think is important. You may not be able to serve God and Mammom, but apparently if you do serve God, then your reward in heavenly Mammom. Which is worthless since everybody else has loads of it too. MIght as well be given sand as a reward.
These are people living close to the poverty line, so I can see why their idea of heaven would be living in a golden, jewel-studded mansion.
Of course poverty is a relative thing throughout human history. Anyone for time travel to the good ol’ days of the 1st century?
I think that “the event” that the stories is based on namely the “second coming of the Christ” has already occurred and no one missed the only 5 true saved Christians that were taken into heaven long ago and we are living in he “aftertimes”
Snicker. Thanks, oncle grenouille. #41
Care to give us your best guess when this happened?
The Petey #25
Obviously she’d read your work ?
a book where the protagonists names are:
Rayford, Chloe, Buck, and Bruce?
I rather think the author read too many dime store detective novels as a kid.
Actually, I would mark that as a success in my book.
Oh, wait, you mean the authors WEREN’T trying to spoof xianity?
my bad.
Anyone for time travel to the good ol’ days of the 1st century?
can i bring my bling?
your guess is as good as mine but I would say that it was long before the “discovery” of the western hemisphere long before Columbus, long before “the Inquisition” closer to the birth of the God man himself
Heedless:
when I imagine asking this question, then in my mind I really stump ’em.”
followed by:
And I’m very certain we can ask them tougher questions than you can.
are you certain, or are you just imagining how you would really stump ’em, stumpy?
like all xians, Heedless really does love playing the projection game.
Re: time travel to 33 ADcan i bring my bling?
Yeah, but I’d recommend armaments and vaccinations ; )
Re; Jensen and LaHaye. It’s interesting how they make sure they get their money up front, prior to their “rapture.” Now Jesus may have said to lay up treasure in heaven, not on earth (sounds like one of them liberals), but they are definitely hedging their bets down here. And I bet God did not even get a percentage of their gross.
My personal envisioning of the end times:
2008: Repubs steal election for McCain
2009: McCain’s melanoma metastasizes to the brain
2010: Palin sworn in, gets access to big red button
2011: Kablooey.
200,000,000 (or so): some big brain cephalopod descendents crawl out of the sea and rediscover biology. They dig up the fossils of Neil Shubin and Tiktaalik, with the fish intertwined in the human’s hands. (Shubin was giving a lecture with the fossil at the moment of the big kaboom) With no other surviving fossils from our time period, they are forced to conclude that the concurrence of ancestral and descendent forms in the same strata falsifies evolution.
The resultant cognitive dissonance destroys the universe.
The fundigelicals who eat up this Left Behind shitpile really, truly don’t know ANYTHING about theology and the Christian tradition except the stuff they hear in church from their only marginally better-educated clergy.
And because they read the Bible — which they don’t, much, because their critical thinking skills are nil and they’re not all that fond of reading — LITRULLY, it’s easy for them to believe that the Revelation of John is some kind of history-to-be travelogue.
Even the top quartile of fundigelicals, the ones who have business degrees from places like Texas A&M, don’t know doodly-squat about theology. They don’t know their theological tradition is a novelty introduced by a 19th-century nutcase named Darby. They don’t know they’re premillenial dispensationalists. Hell, they can’t even PRONOUNCE “premillenial dispensationalist”. Their ignorance is damn near total, and it makes them sitting ducks for any unscrupulous manipulation (yes, Rethugs, I’m talking about you).
A lot of them are dear, good people, but they’re incapable of evaluating this dreck on any level — literary, theological, or moral. It really, really angers me that tools like LaHaye, who do know better, milk this crap to make money from the flock.
Leigh Willians #51: Indeed so. But what else does one do with a “flock”?
You either milk them, sheer them naked, or slaughter the lot of them for the meat. That’s why its called a “flock”.
McCain’s melanoma metastasizes to the brain
too late.
In heaven, everybody has bling and grillz. Even all those embryo-babies that never had a life past the blastula stage. Cuz that’s what God believes humans think is important. You may not be able to serve God and Mammom, but apparently if you do serve God, then your reward in heavenly Mammom
And for the good little Muslim martyrs, heaven is the Playboy Mansion and they’re all “Hef”.
FWIW, we’re all living in the Time of Tribulation, courtesy of good old “Conservative” values.
I loved those books.
Hold on now, people, before you begin to flay me! I took them for what they’re worth: fantasy potboilers. I just happened to find them trashy fun (like some people love trashy romances). My wife and I had a grand time reading them then ripping them to shreds.
I just happened to find them trashy fun.
The horrible, wretched, stillborn prose, though. No thanks, life is too short.
I was lucky enough to catch Slacktivist’s LB series not long after it began. I’ve timed my Sunday morning cup of tea around it for years. The fact that he reviewed the book from his own admitted evangelical beliefs made it even more interesting.
I’m in agreement with P.Zed–I hope he continues it for my sake, but lays off it for his own!
CJO,
That was my sentiment regarding Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman’s Union. Great prose; boring as hell. Sometimes trash is worth it. Sometimes lit ain’t.
I must admit, the Antichrist’s name, Nicolae Carpathia is pretty damned cool.
So cool, in fact, I think I’ll use it from now on.
Amphiox #52: “But what else does one do with a “flock”?”
Amazingly enough, some of the sincere pastors act as shepherds and do their best to protect, comfort, and lead the folks in their congregations. I know some of these good people and value them highly. You can usually recognize them because they don’t have any money or free time. They also don’t write trashy books, I guess because they’re not hateful people . . . and also because they don’t have any free time, what with the marrying, burying, visiting of the sick, and refereeing of the deacons’ meetings.
My personal theory is that Tim LaHaye is the Antichrist. After all, what better way could be devised to raise the funds needed for a bid for supreme power, gather a loyal following, draw Christians into heresy, and deflect suspicion?
I accidentally checked out one of those books at the library in audiobook form for a road trip. I was in a hurry and thought it was a sci-fi book (well, I guess it sci-fi/fantasy, but it was not what I thought).
Whoo boy, what a mistake. My husband and I made it through about 10 minutes of it and just couldn’t take anymore. We turned it off and listened to staticky country music instead. It was a vast improvement.
I can’t write worth crap yet my crap can write better than that. This has inspired me. I will write a silly “Christian” pop novel such as this drivel and once it’s popular reveal it was all a joke. That’ll crush those doofuses!
There are actually TWENTY-ONE volumes of Left Behind, not counting the Left Behind: The Kids spinoff (which is up around 40), the comic books, the movies, or the first-person-shooter game.
Twelve Volumes in the main series.
One Sequel (set AFTER the literal End of the World — nice trick).
A Prequel Trilogy (AKA “The Antichrist’s Baby Pictures”).
Two official shared-universe Trilogies by different authors.
Total: 22 Volumes of Pre-Trib Porn for Born-Again Bored Housewives.
(No joke — that’s the actual target demographic:)
“Delta Dawn?
What’s that flower you got on?
Could it be a faded rose
From days gone byyyyyyyyy?
And did I hear you say
He was meeting you here today
To take you to His mansion in the skyyyyyyyyyy?”
Slacktivist has started up his “MST3K for Funagelifiction” again — he’s MST3King the first Left Behind movie right now.