Saving the cat

Reminds me of another cat conundrum. . .the cat in the box with a vial of cyanide beneath a hammer attached to an atomic switch.

Only this time the question isn’t “is the cat dead or alive,” it’s “has the evangelical raptured yet?”

And the answer is a fool and his money are soon parted. Don’t they know the hammer falls during the rapture, and all good kitties go to kitty heaven?

On the subject of bumperstickers, my favorite is “Honk if you ARE Jesus.”

By the way, a shorter link to the actual video, bypassing the kidnapped blonde girl news items, is http://media.theage.com.au/national/breaking-news/atheists-armageddon-pet-rescue-702350.html?.

Such disdain for animal rights. Why can’t the pets be rapt up to St. Peter, too? Are they that unworthy of salvation? tsk tsk

There are a lot of practical problems, such as who’s going to press for the enforcement of the contracts following the (hypothetical) raputre.

Organized religion has the same enforcement problems, but it doesn’t seem to hurt their business model…

This phony gotcha question seems to be in bad faith. Obviously, those who think their doggies have souls believe they’ll go to heaven during the rapture, those who don’t, don’t care if they’re non-soul having doggies die.

You clearly don’t get the concept, here: the rapture’s _all about_ the attitude of “Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home!” The point is to leave your troubles behind. That’s the cynical side: our cats and abandoned houses are now _your_ problem, sinners.

The less cynical side, which you’re also overlooking: the point of most religions is to establish some sort of set of values that demarcate priorities and thus organize human life. Most include the broad category of spirit > matter. So, it’s the height of irreligiosity to ask: when I enter the sphere of true existence to escape from a world of illusion and lies about to be destroyed, who will take care of my stuff?

There’s a great parody of Bergman’s Seventh Sign (Seal?) in Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life. A bourgeois dinner party dies en masse from bad salmon mousse. When death comes to escort them away, they ask if they can take their cars.

Back when I was in the evangelical world – this was 25-30 years ago – there was actually a mild but active debate about animal souls, as part of the larger debate about the issues that can be summed up as “stewardship”. That is, what do people in general and Christian in particular owe to the world at large and to all its non-human parts? As I recall, nobody involved wanted to claim outright that animals had full-fledged souls of their own on a morally and spiritually equal footing to human souls. The spread of possibilities given interested discussion ranged at least from “none at all, the world is ours to use as we see fit” to something like C.S. Lewis’ speculation that whatever we love picks up some ensoulment by virtue of our love and may endure too, and others I’m not thinking of at the moment.

In practical terms, I’m guessing it all got settled long ago with the ascent of movement conservatism as a power within the evangelical world. But I wonder what’s being written now by the philosophical and ecological counterparts of genuinely honest scholars like Mark Noll and George Marsden.

In other news

A US judge has thrown out a case against God, ruling that because the defendant has no address, legal papers cannot be served.

The suit was launched by Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers, who said he might appeal against the ruling.

He sought a permanent injunction to prevent the “death, destruction and terrorisation” caused by God. …

I don’t believe my cat has a soul, and I care a great deal about what would happen to my cat should I suddenly vanish.

But aren’t most cats usually quite self-sufficient? I imagine there will be much less traffic and other man-made hazards in the areas previously populated by evangelicals, so, one could argue that the cats and dogs left behind will find themselves in their own little paradise. The goldfish will perish, though.

A similar site is here. This one lets you record various messages for friends, family, pet-caregivers, etc. If the proprietors fail to log in for six days — which given their probity, can only mean they’ve been raptured — the messages will be sent automatically…

Nobody ever went broke selling indulgences to the believers either, even if that practice ended up breaking the Church.

Look, if you insist on taking literally something obviously meant to be poetry, the question of what happens to your cat after the Rapture is the least of the totally manufactured dilemmas you’re going to find yourself in.

If any of these people ever bothers you with this literalist nonsense, you should, assuming you want to risk entering in any way into their delusional system, just ask them what they make of Rev 17: 9-11. We are told there point-blank exactly what the literal reference is for the key figures in the Apocalypse narrative, that they are the first eight Roman emperors. The eighth is the Anti-Christ. There is absolutely no way around the fact that that narrative is presented as happening two millenia ago. It was in no way a “prophecy” in the sense of foretelling the future. There had already been at least nine emperors by the time the book appeared. The Rapture, whatever is meant to be conveyed by that story, has already happened. It’s gone. Go home. Your cat is safe from the threat of bereavement, at least by the Rapture.
Now, there is the escape clause, if you are bound and determined to rip Revelations out of context and imagine it as fortune-telling a la Nostradamus, of the recurrence theme. The Beast, after being defeated in the first Battle at the End of History, the one that most of the narrative recounts, and which includes the Rapture episode, is actually just thrown into the Abyss for a thousand years, after which he escapes, only to be again defeated in a Really Final Battle at the End of Time. You could interpolate, so to speak, that perhaps many of the episodes that preceded the first Final Battle, would also recur just before the Really Final Battle, even if the Revelations narrative doesn’t mention them happening again the second time. This is the theory that the original Millenarians ginned themselves up with as 1000 AD neared, then 1033 AD, then whatever date they could project as being a thousand years after the defeat of the eighth emperor. But these people were just ignorant medieval fanatics, so they still had some intellectual fastidiousness in their delusional constructions. Not so our latter-day Holy Rollers.

I have a concern about what sort of health (and I guess healthcare to make it USA topical) one can assume in heaven.
Does one ascend to heaven with the current body and aches and pains and disease?

Does any disease or defect become cured in ascension? Does one revert to a previous healthy age, say 22 or 23, but with older wiser brains?

If one reverts to an earlier age – are accumulated skills lost? ( so one could be physically attractive and fit but stupid about money and relationships, and maybe even still think Bachman Turner Overdrive is a great band)

Would hair and toenails continue to grow and need cutting?

Is there any need for clothes in heaven?

I think the rapture already happened, during the 1st Century. This would accord best with certain New Testament passages, and it would explain why bad things keep happening, like the Black Death, the Inquisition, the death of over 50 million New World Indians, the H-bomb, Naziism, the Soviet Union, and Dick Cheney.

@lemuel pitkin: This has already been covered in an episode of Law & Order!

As a Muslim, I’m cheated of the rapture, but totally down with the idea of Rapture Insurance. I’ll insure the upbringing of your demon spawn and take care of your worldly goods. For a price.

Wow, I never thought of this. You could make alot of money off this. Think of it – to deny buying ‘rapture insurance’ is to doubt or deny it will happen, then what kind of believer are you?

Holden,

I Corinthians 15 answers most of your questions, I think.

We are told there point-blank exactly what the literal reference is for the key figures in the Apocalypse narrative, that they are the first eight Roman emperors. The eighth is the Anti-Christ.

Vitellius (emperor April 17, 69 AD – December 20, 69 AD) was the antichrist? If so, he was something of a flop . . .

As a footnote to 29: This Chambers may not actually be certifiable, but just one of those people who enjoy hearing their names spoken on TV so much they don’t care why. All the more reason for giving him short shrift when he messes with people who have work to do.

(Incidentally, no. 19 by Glen Tomkins is of course utterly correct, but the short title for the last book of the New Testament is “Revelation”; “Revelations” though common is a Vulgar Error.)

Peter in # 9:

“What if the cats arise to Heaven when the Rapture comes, and all humans burn in Hell?”

Remember the kdaptist heresy among Larry Niven’s kzin which held that “Man was made in the image of God”. Man, not kzin (because men kept winning the wars). One of the nice features about the Plotinist “great chain of being” was that it put humans in a merely privileged, not exclusive, place in the creation. There were amoebae and turtles below and angels above, indeed several grades of angels. For a serious discussion of dinosaur pain in theodicy, see John Hicks, Evil and the God of Love.