Allow me to be the first to mention that I failed to work in a mention of the Disney classic All Dogs Go to Heaven, but not for lack of trying.
This is unbelievably fantastic. Can I sign up to be a dog-walker?
I have always argued that traditional Christian doctrine requires one to believe that "pets go to heaven" -- the end goal is the resurrection of the body, and after being resurrected the saved will inhabit a new heaven and new earth. As early as the second century, theologians argued that all this meant that we should expect to see all the various kinds of animals after the last judgment. All this debate about whether animals "have souls" is beside the point -- the culmination of God's plan of salvation is a kind of rebooted physical world. In fact, for this to work I'm not even sure we need to say that human beings "have souls."
Hey, when my good cat, Fred, died we got a sign from someone that he was being taken care of. My father woke up in the middle of the night and found the cat dead in the hall (the cat was really old). Dad wrapped him in a sheet, and grabbed a shopping bag out of the closet in the dark to put the cat in. In the morning, it became apparent that the bag was white with the word "Fred" on it in big gold script, and no one remembered who had brought it home. (Admittedly, it said "Fred the Jeweler", rather than "Fred the good cat", but that's not important.)
A small miracle, but one that we found comforting.
Then we replaced him with the psycho cat from hell.
If pets do go to heaven, do some pets go to hell?
3: so, not worth the money, you're saying?
If pets do go to heaven, do some pets go to hell?
Can you really imagine a Heaven populated by tiny yappy dogs or cats who claw all the furniture to shreds? Wait, that's it, Heaven welcomes good pets and Hell employs them!
Maybe they should trust (observant) Jews to take care of their pets, instead?
Any raptured Christian with a pet miniature pot-bellied pig would be more confident leaving it with an observant Jew than with me, certainly.
I thought this had been discussed here before. Have we already talked about the whole internet?
On NPR this morning there was a piece about an evangelical who wrote a book advocating the radical idea that non-Christians go to heaven. Other evangelicals said he had thrown out the essence of Christianity. He said his ideas were appealing to young people today who were uncomfortable thinking that their nice Hindu college roommate would burn in hell.
Do beautiful Jewesses go to Heaven?
Other evangelicals said he had thrown out the essence of Christianity
Which apparently is glee at knowing people different from you will have to endure limitless torment. No wonder they are such a natural fit with the GOP.
Do beautiful Jewesses go to Heaven?
Not only that, but if you're martyred you get 72 to yourself.
He said his ideas were appealing to young people today
Well, if its appealing to the kids, certainly a basis can be found for working it into the theology. God appreciates the need to target His Message to fit the needs of important demographics. It's called marketing.
4 - hmmm, when our dog died, my dad tried to put him in a bin bag, but it broke and the dog fell out. I'd hate to think that my mother's god wasn't watching over him, but it didn't seem like it then.
I've just suggested this crazy scheme to my dad as a money-making plan for his retirement.
20: Is there anyone in the UK planning on getting raptured?
21: "When I was a child I used to have nightmares about dying. I used to lie awake at night, screaming. All the other children got to go to Heaven or Hell, and I was sent to Southend."
When Rory's rat died, we happened upon a website that explained that pets, when they die, wait at the rainbow bridge (a happy place of play!). Then, when you die, you and your pet cross the bridge to Heaven together. Rory told me I should wait with her rat at the bridge until Rory dies so we can all three make that journey together.
Just me and the rat. Hanging out. At the bridge. Waiting. For years. Got the rat to talk to, so take your time.
I love how atheists are viewed by fundies. Pure Evil! do not leave your dog with that normal-seeming family! They will sodomize it and then eat it!
The whole "I'm more sad that my dog isn't going to heaven than that some atheist isn't going" really gets to me.
What the hell kind of god do these people worship, anyway?
26: Yep. Never mind the glass ceiling for women, we will have arrived -- at something or other -- when an atheist can successfully run for President. It will take, what? A conception of morality as plausibly divorcible from a belief in god. I hypothesize that that's the thus-far insurmountable hurdle for the religious.
Sheep go to heaven. Goats go to hell.
I could have sworn this was posted on this very blog three or four years back, but google searches are turning up dry.
Maybe you're thinking about those rapture-related bumper stickers?
30: The comments have reminded me of your "pets go off to an actual farm" conversation, so it's definitely ground we've covered to some extent.
This guy's project has definitely been a topic of discussion in various corners of the internet for quite a while now, although I'm not sure it's ever come up here specifically.
30, meet 14. Not that I can find it either.
Thanks, Helpy-Chalk, for mentioning that book. I think it will be really helpful for my partner, who's still Baptistesque and doesn't really know how to defend my atheism.
Though the obvious plus side is that with an in-house atheist she doesn't even have to worry about hiring out pet care! And I don't even require $0.94 or whatever a month, though perhaps I should.
And I don't even require $0.94 or whatever a month, though perhaps I should.
A gentler approach would be to shovel some household duties her way. "True, the trash won't take itself out; neither will Fluffy walk herself when the Big Guy comes back."
Or a backstop life insurance policy that will pay out the entire sum of your life insurance policy to your survivors
Wait, I've seen this episode of Leverage, sort of. How about we offer a percentage of total life insurance payout as an up-front lump sum to anyone willing to gamble that the Rapture will happen before they die by reassigning that payout to us?
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Someone with full access to the New Yorker should read this article and tell me (1) if it's worth the read (it's catching much buzz locally) and (2) if I should brave the lines and try to eat there.
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42: Do you want me to just make a PDF of it and email? (I'm too lazy to read it myself right now.)
43: I would be forever in your debt, ().
42: I read that article when the issue came out. It was okay; amusing, but not much more than that. But yes, you should brave the lines.
42: Yes, and apparently yes. I can't email it to you at the moment, so I'd recommend taking up () on her offer.
I really love reading Calvin Trillin's writing about food, and grew up wanting to eat all of the things he wrote about, because he made them sound so fucking delicious. As an adult, I've realized that Calvin Trillin may occasionally find basically unexceptional things to be fucking delicious.
As an adult, I've realized that Calvin Trillin may occasionally find basically unexceptional things to be fucking delicious.
OTOH, he was totally, utterly right about Snow's BBQ.
42: I used to eat at China Star somewhat often, years back, and I now see from that article that some of those visits must have been during Chef Chang's tenure there. Definitely worthwhile.
which would ensure that your possibly not-saved family members won't lose their home when you're taken up.
First of all, don't be insulting. What unsaved family members? Second, why would I want to give my home to those reprobates?
by turning the novels into feature films
Really astonishingly terrible feature films.
53, 54: This suggests an even more lucrative scheme by which lawyers can help the enraptured assert their property rights from the beyond. No, you godless scum, you can't have my car.
57: Alternatively, find someone like me, currently atheist but guaranteed to convert the moment a bunch of rapture-rightists swoop up into the air in accordance with the script. That way you get your pet looked after by a real Christian. You'd better believe I'd be the real deal if my fundy relatives suddenly got raptured. I know the script, I know the magic spell, and I know what to expect after the rivers turn to blood and all that. Also I'd have a lot of money and plenty of space for the pets to run around in, as my Real Christian(tm) relatives are rolling in dough (the fakey-ass Christians who went off to help poor people in Africa, not so much). My compassion for the less fortunate should be no obstacle to conversion, as it's straight out the window the moment it runs up against the possibility of eternal conscious torment while Calvin oggles my junk from his cloud.
by turning the novels into feature films
Don't forget the real-time strategy computer game. By all accounts it's a pretty good RTS but (a) I'm terrible at real-time (turn-based all the way!) and (b) I decline to play until it's confirmed that I can play as the forces of Hell.
Wouldn't it be worth a few grand to have the peace of mind that comes from being backed by "Rap-Sure", the discreet service that will stage your disappearance from home and hearth
We would of course have to remove them completely and they would be able to take nothing, but neither would they pay for the so-called privilege of living in discrete poverty. I suggest we identify one of these self-contained retirement communities the size of a small town - surely one has gone belly-up in the real estate boondoggle or will as soon as the believers have run out on the tab en masse - and whisk them away to it with nothing but the pajamas on their back. The abandoned property of Raptured former residents would presumably be completely stocked with plenty of material goods useful to the client in consoling himself or herself over spiritual failure and our contractually obligated, tremendously showy clean-up of the "abandoned" home the client leaves behind would provide plenty of stock to supply a secondary market interested in the legal purchase of gently used junk. I think we have to be open to the idea that the real money in a post-Rapture economy is going to be in what are essentially dolled-up yard sales.
For that matter, we have fourth and fifth options for pet* salvation: one, for a slightly higher fee we rescue the pet and sell it as part of an explicitly evangelical mission with the hook being that even if we don't believe in the Word we might be able to convince someone else and what better bait than a lonely puppy; two, for platinum customers we verify and document the pedigrees of their pets and relocate them to only the most exclusive homes where even if they're in the care of the damned at least they're being treated in the manner to which they're accustomed.
* Originally mistyped as "poet salvation" which is of course a lost cause.
56 is somewhat similar to what I'd been thinking--does the average evangelical will have proper rapture contingency provisions? You want to make sure your will is actually drafted to be effective upon rapture, not just your death, and you also may need a complex mechanism for allocating assets among potential beneficiaries, since the set of people you'd like to benefit may vary significantly depending on whether the "saved" beneficiaries are still around. And of course it's especially complex since there's no way for the testator to know for sure which of the beneficiaries are in fact "saved", since of course only the Lord Jesus Christ knows whose names are recorded in the Book of Life.
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Hey KR, negative bag check fees -- any thoughts?
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The platinum package would also include VIP services such as discreet deletion of the porn file from your hard drive.
Brilliant, but I think we'd better go ahead and opt for full disk destruction.
62: But I'd love it. Onboord big bag carriers are THE DEVIL.
63: "You won't burn -- but your secrets will!"
64: he also seems rather handwavey about the fuel cost/plane loading time tradeoff. Presumably it's not as cut and dried as all that, or else every single-plane-model discount carrier would do it.
Does a Republican Health Care Bill have Rapture Panels?
Don't be so sure, airline executive lurkers might be supporting me in e-mail.
72: so what you're saying is that airlines should goose the moving walkways up to 20mph or so and eliminate in-terminal bathrooms?
73: No, no. He's saying the planes should take off downhill and land uphill.
If I told you you had a congested hub, would you hold it against me?
26 makes me sad that I can't find Ogged's oh-so-reasonable estimate of the proportion of girl-on-family-dog events.
Do beautiful Jewesses go to Heaven?
no, they are heaven.
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Reading that Taste of China article () sent me, it occurs to me that both the restaurant and that GOP office whose windows got smashed are in the same random, rink-dink stripmall. WEIRD!
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OT Bleg: Do any Boston/Brookline area unfoggeders know of a grocery store where I can buy Passover Coca Cola, the stuff made with real sugar?
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84: I'm pretty sure that the Star Market out by Washington Square in Brookline would have it (that's where I plan to get my Pesach stuff).
It's weird that you can go your whole life hearing what appear to be urban myths, and discount them the whole while (in school, youth groups, bands, whatever), but then some arbitrary imaginary person on the internet, an implausible "Knecht Ruprecht" says his made up partner "Fleur" saw something happen, and you believe it.
87: Capitulation to what? To whom?
