Caring for Pets Left Behind by the Rapture | Hacker News Reader

Caring for Pets Left Behind by the Rapture

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50 pointsJoakal24 comments

You don't have to be an atheist to not buy the Rapture. You could be agnostic, Jewish, Hindu or indeed (like me) Christian. Please remember that Camping and his like are a tiny crazy fringe on the edge of a tiny crazy fringe.

Are atheists going to stay on earth, or just go to hell? If it's the former, an earth with no fundamentalists sounds like my idea of heaven...

From my understanding of "good," a lot of atheists will be taken and a lot of fundamentalists are going to get left behind.

That would be a heck of a surprise for a "good" atheist to wake up to.

What would he say? "HA! Fooled You!"

We'll still have all the non-Christian fundamentalists, of course. They might be a bit toned down after having discovered that they worshiped the wrong god, though :)

In their belief system, maybe that population was subject to the wrath of [insert divinity here]

Forget the "rapture" - instead I would just love a respected service that guaranteed to look after my pets if I got hit by a bus, etc.

So maybe a spoof business like this could be turned into a really good thing?

It would be especially interesting if this was in the form of an auction. Based on the eventual price we could gauge belief in the rapture.

Extra points for figuring out how to extend this to other aspects of religion since (I think) the rapture is somewhat fringe. The challenge is coming up with something where both parties actually have the ability to collect upon showing their belief is the correct one.

Every time I see this, I can't decide whether to cackle in sadistic delight, or grimace in empathetic disgust. It's quite a workout for my face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdEOB8Uv3UY&NR=1

Perhaps some enterprising fundamentalist Christian will start offering a similar service for the pets of nerds after the Singularity? (Uploading cats might be a bit risky).

Although this trips a few ethical flags for me (should we be taking advantage of the deluded?) I kind of love it. It makes me wonder if there are other services atheists are particularly suited to offering to fundamentalists.

It's only an service for a tiny subset of fundamentalists. While all dispensational premillenialists and members of the small Millerite sect are fundamentalists, not all fundamentalists are advocates of Millerism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millerism

If you want to link it probably would have been better to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture

Miller was a date setter, but not an advocate of the traditional fundamentalist 'rapture'. He was waiting for the second coming which would have been very public and would have taken the righteous up to heaven before Armageddon/judgement.

I'd grant that to the extent that the modern followers of Harold Camping, et. al. are not Millerites, but Camping and his contemporary date-setters are definitely influenced by Miller.

And all are deeply influenced by The Crazy.

Well... technically, they are being up front about the fact that they don't believe in the rapture. They're saying they don't think it's going to happen, but if it does happen, they will be legally obligated to keep care of the pets.

In many ways, this is not much different than insurance.

This puts "make something people want" on a whole new level.

Isn't "Make something people believe they need, even if you don't believe they need it" as old as the road to Rome?

This could be extended... not everyone who believes in the Rapture will be taken (due to the many potential disqualifying clauses)... what about that adulterous, shrimp-eating brother-in-law... surely your mother-in-law would want him cared for in a land of unbelievers, non?

A supermajority of the population cares more about the suffering of cute animals than the suffering of adult humans.

If an intellectual/conceptual framework has bad income demographics, it's time to question the wisdom of adhering to it. (Which is also not to say that a high average income is any kind of validation. It's not!)

However, if an heretofore obscure genre of music has bad income demographics, it might be a good choice to go long on it. (Blues, Country, various roots musics, etc... Also, if the genre has already achieved mainstream sales, go short!)

This is essentially a variation on the "post-rapture post office service", like this one, also run by a non-believer:

http://www.postrapturepost.com/about.html

There are several others.

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