What does the God of the Crap Christians have against poor defenseless little animals?

If Fido, Rex, and Rover accept Macho Jesus as their personal

two-fisted savior, can they avoid being Left Behind?

"Pets don't have souls, so they'll remain on Earth. I don't see how they can be taken with you. A lot of persons are concerned about their pets, but I don't know if they should necessarily trust atheists to take care of them."

-- raptureready.com wackjob Todd Strandberg

by Ken

We already knew that the God of the Crap Christians has divinely kinky tastes, like the way he likes his hunky Christian boys to be all nice and buff so their bodies will look supercool all bloodied and broken when they get the stuffing kicked out of them. (Crap Christianity appears to have a significant degree of S/M cult built in.) But really now, what could the Big Dominator in the Sky have against poor innocent animals?

I have to admit that I never thought about this problem until this piece was forwarded to me, and maybe it's just me insensitivity to the well-being of animals always seems to me one of the surest and most repellent signs of inherent inhumanity, which is why it's the Nazi anti-pets ordinance that horrified me most of all the ghastly details we learned with the ultimate publication of the wartime diaries of Victor Klemperer (a first cousin of the great conductor Otto Klemperer, or "the musician Otto Klemperer" as Victor usually referred to him when his name came up in the diaries. Victor Klemperer, you may recall, was a romance languages professor who managed, just barely, to live through the Nazi regime in Dresden thanks to having a non-Jewish wife. As in a cheesy Hollywood melodrama, Victor and Eva were scheduled finally to be deported, presumably to a death camp, the morning after the fire-bombing of Dresden. In the chaos, they escaped the burning and melting city.

The diaries are filled with shocking documentation of the day-to-day horror of life in the Third Reich, as growing deprivations and indignities were heaped on Jews. and while lots of them, like the increasing restrictions on what Jews could own and what they could buy, growing in time into a near-total ban on Jews buying anything at any time. But none stick in my imagination as vividly as the ban that came down on Jews owning pets. Importantly, the ban wasn't limited to Jewish ownership of the little cutie pies. It was also illegal to give them away to non-Jewish owners. For animals like the Klemperers' beloved little cat, it was a death sentence. There's a special kind of sickness at work here.

So tell me, did you ever wonder about what happens to the pets of right-thinking Christians come the Rapture? The inescapable conclusion is that they're to be Left Behind with all us Jews and other heathens. Apparently the heaven of the Crap Christians is pet-free. What kind of mastering of the universe is that?

Well now, as I learned in this fascinating report that Noah passed on to me, a "Small Business feature from Business Week, an enterprising 61-year-old Christian entrepreneur in New Hampshire named Bart Centre has found a solution. It's the very solution that wasn't available to save the Klemperers' poor pussycat or any other Jewish-owned pets in Nazi Germany: placing the critters with Left Behind families.

For a fee, of course. If there's anything the God of the Crap Christians believes in, it's making a buck any way you can. Crap Christians understand that what the Macho Jesus-haters don't understand that so-called human "misery," which we always talk about as if it's a bad thing, is really an opportunity for some smart cookie to pocket some dough.

Caring for Pets Left Behind by the Rapture

For a fee, this service will place your dog or cat in the home of a caring atheist on Judgment Day

By Mike Di Paola

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 atheiists. 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.

Centre came up with the idea while working on his book, The Atheist Camel Chronicles, written under the pseudonym Dromedary Hump. In it, he says many unkind things about the devout and confesses that "I'm trying to figure out how to cash in on this hysteria to supplement my income."

Whatever motivates Centre, he has tapped into a source of genuine unease. Todd Strandberg, who founded a biblical prophecy Web site called raptureready.com that draws 250,000 unique visitors a month, agrees that Fido and Mittens are doomed. "Pets don't have souls, so they'll remain on Earth. I don't see how they can be taken with you," he says. "A lot of persons are concerned about their pets, but I don't know if they should necessarily trust atheists to take care of them."

This paradox poses a challenge for Centre. He must reassure the Rapture crowd that his pet rescuers are wicked enough to be left behind but good enough to take proper care of the abandoned pets. Rescuers must sign an affidavit to affirm their disbelief in God -- and they must also clear a criminal background check. "We want people who have pets and are animal lovers," Centre says. They also must have the means to rescue and transport the animals in their charge. His network consists of 26 rescuers covering 22 states. "They take this very seriously," Centre says.

One of Centre's atheist recruits is Laura, a woman in her 30s who lives near the buckle of the Bible Belt in Oklahoma, and who prefers not to give her last name. She has two dogs of her own and has made a commitment to rescue four dogs and two cats when—if—the time comes. "If it it happens, my first thought will be, 'I've got work to do,'" Laura says. "The first thing I'll do is find out where I need to go exactly."

The rescuers won't know the precise location of the animals until the Rapture arrives, at which time they will contact Centre for instructions. "I've got to get to [the pets] within a maximum of 18 to 24 hours. We really don't want them to wait more than a day." A day she believes will never come.

Centre doesn't think he will ever have to follow through on the service he offers. But he believes in virtuous acts. His Web site directs about $200 a month in proceeds from Google ads to food banks in Minnesota and New Hampshire. And to pet owners, he has already delivered something of great value: peace of mind, for just 92 cents a month. "If we thought the Rapture was really going to happen," Centre says, "obviously our rate structure would be much higher."

Somebody here is nuts, and I mean just plain crackers. I think you can guess who my candidates are.

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