Based on an article by Adella M. Banks, of the Religious News Service, published in The Washington Post, I wrote a piece for today on Bart Centre and his Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, “a business that promises to care for the pets of Christians who are swept up in the Rapture.”
It struck me as just the right amount of quirky to be a scheme hatched by an Apocalypse entrepreneur. However, the article prompted the New Hampshire Insurance Department to subpoena Bart since he appeared to be operating an “unauthorized business in insurance.”
OOPS! Time for ol’ Bart to come clean.
"Eternal Earth-Bound Pets employs no paid rescuers," Bart wrote in a blog. "It has no clients. It has never issued a service certificate. It has accepted no service contract applications nor received any payments — not a single dollar — in the almost three years of its existence."
Bart claimed that the whole thing was a “social experiment.”
The original idea he presented was pretty simple. Rapture-ready Christians go to Bart to make arrangements for Spot and Tabby in anticipation of the coming glory.
He said that Harold Camping’s prediction of the end of the world last year resulted in an uptick in business and a subsequent uptick in the rates at Eternal Earth-Bound Pets. A 10-year coverage plan supposedly ran $135 per pet.
It was all stuff and nonsense.
Bart also claimed that he and his partner share the income with 48 other animal “rescuers,” which he describes as “atheists who are happy to give people peace of mind.”
The social experiment was to find out "how much do believers really buy into this? How committed are they to their pets? How much do they trust atheists?"
And what he learned was that state regulators care little about such “social experiments” and the Rapture and care more about fraud and deceit.
Fortunately, I learned of the deceit before I published it on my blog. Wouldn’t I be red-faced? Naw.
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