yet another from the "crap you can't make up" department...

[acroyear]

Caring for Pets Left Behind by the Rapture - BusinessWeek:

Many people in the U.S.—perhaps 20 million to 40 million—believe there will be a Second Coming in their lifetimes, followed by the Rapture . In this event, they say, the righteous will be spirited away to a better place while the godless remain on Earth. But what will become of all the pets?

Bart Centre, 61, a retired retail executive in New Hampshire, says many people are troubled by this question, and he wants to help. He started a service called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets that promises to rescue and care for animals left behind by the saved.

Promoted on the Web as "the next best thing to pet salvation in a Post Rapture World," the service has attracted more than 100 clients, who pay $110 for a 10-year contract ($15 for each additional pet.) If the Rapture happens in that time, the pets left behind will have homes—with atheists. Centre has set up a national network of godless humans to carry out the mission. "If you love your pets, I can't understand how you could not consider this," he says.

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

trouble is, if you actually follow the mental logic of the AIG (Answers in Genesis, who made the $27 million Creation "Museum" in Kentucky), that's not true: our fall was the animal's fall. When "sin" entered the world through Eve, that was the point when the animals too lost their innocence. Until then, T-Rex's and other mean, nasty meat-eaters were actually all happy little vegetarians. (acknowledging, of course, that T-Rex's and other dinos existed alongside humans, 6000 years ago)

really. they actually think that.

as a result: yes, their carnivorous doggies and kitties are all sinful and doomed.

[uncle-possum.livejournal.com]

OK--but carrying out this logic--since the Nicene Creed includes Roman Catholic doctrine (or, depending on that "homousion vs homoiousion" issue, Orthodox doctrine)--your parrot would not be among the saved. That's given the tendency of many fundamentalist Protestants to argue that Catholics (of all kinds) aren't really "Christians". So the parrot is stuck.

But the point is well taken.

This whole discussion is getting too close to the "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" but that's another issue entirely.

(Reminded of a conversation I overhead once which pretty much ended when one person said "Well, the King James Bible was good enough for St. Paul, and it's good enough for me".

(But, am going to have to reread Mark Twain's "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" again. )

[uncle-possum.livejournal.com]

Ok I quit--I thought we had established that we can only use the literal words of the Bible. I've read several versions and don't recall any statement that pre-Fall animals were vegetarians. (Of course, this discussion would never have started if we had required logic on the part of the insurance customers). Now I'm going to have to visit that musuem.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, now you see the heart of the problem - nothing exists without interpretation, and all literal interpretations of works that were intended to be poetic (that is, metaphorical) in the first place require an interpretation to fill in missing meanings.

it is in this way that the fundies can claim that animals didn't kill each other before sin entered the garden and still claim to be literalist.

a similar stretch of (il)logic allows the Jehovas Witnesses to claim that blood transfusions will keep them from salvation - the passage (Acts: 15:29) is clearly obvious to you and me that it is about blood sacrifice and/or drinking blood (a practice that, like the meat sacrifice, was in Paul's eyes meant to be replaced with the more civilized, symbolic Mass as we know it today - hence his adding of the words "Do this in remembrance of Me" (words which are NOT in the Gospels' version of the last supper).

Paul was being very specific about stopping his followers from "pagan" practices, by replacing literal sacrifices of the living with the symbolic. In no way was he ordering people to refuse medicine in this work - and that is ME being literalist about it.

In short: if someone doesn't like something, chances are they can twist the words of the bible out of historical, poetical, and semantic context in order to justify it and still call themselves "literalists".

As for the museum: save your money, and your mind. there are plenty of reviews (some less "are they really that stupid" than others) online already.