We reported a while back on Eternal Earthbound Pets, a service offered by a group of dogmatic atheists who, in exchange for a one-time payment of $110, will care for the pets of the righteous when the rapture comes. We also learned recently about a Los Angeles church service designed to circumvent the problem of leaving your friendly, unsaved Siberian husky to spend its glory years enduring the plagues of locusts and worldwide earthquakes of the tribulation. With that in mind, we thought this would be a good time to catch up with Eternal Earthbound Pets founder (and author of The Atheist Camel Chronicles) Bart Centre to talk about how business is going, what he thinks of his new church-based competition, and whether he'd take the mark of the beast in order to buy kibble.

While Centre wouldn't give us an exact figure on how many takers he's had so far on his offer to believers, he did indicate that it's "less than a hundred," which is pretty broad. When pushed, he insisted, "It's well into double digits", and given that he doesn't actually have to do any work until all of the saved are lifted away, earthly shell and all, to hang out in heaven for all of eternity, it seems like a decent haul. In fact, it's one that a lot of people want in on.

"I've received over 4,000 emails from atheists looking for jobs so far," he told Asylum, but it's not as easy as just vouching that you've got a bunch of Slayer records in your collection and a poster of Christopher Hitchens on your wall. "In order to confirm that they're all committed atheists, most of them are people we've known for a long time, and whom we trust. And all of them have to commit blasphemy in accordance with Mark 3:29, which is about blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. This is the only unforgivable sin in the Bible." (For a handy guide about what that might entail, the Rev. Ken Collins offers some thoughts on his blog.) That way, even if his corps of atheist pet rescuers find Jesus later in life, they're still not guaranteed an express-boarding ticket to heaven, and will have 7 years of torment and tribulation to make sure ol' Tucker and Roscoe continue to play fetch and go swimming (albeit in a river of blood).

Furthermore, to guarantee that there's no chance of a couple of his colleagues being accidentally raptured away by a Road-To-Damascus like conversion, Eternal Earthbound Pets employs only straight-up atheists: Pagans, Wiccans, Jews, Catholics, and members of other rapture-less religions need not apply. "If you have any belief in the supernatural," Centre said, "It's possible that'll change flavor over time."

As we've noted, though, things on earth are supposed to get pretty hairy once the righteous make their final departure. In addition to the rivers of blood and plagues of locusts, there's also the matter of caring for the animals, which would be made way more difficult thanks to trade barriers imposed by the Antichrist. As Revelation 13:17 states, "No one could buy or sell unless he had the mark of the beast", which means that those who want to purchase dog food, squeaky toys, tennis balls, and heartworm medication will later "drink of the wine of God's fury" for bearing the mark. In the event that he and his fellow pet-adopters are proven wrong about the existence of a man upstairs, would Centre further risk his wrath in order to feed someone else's pets?

"We'll do whatever it takes to care for the animals," he assured us. But if you're a Christian who expects to be raptured away when the time comes, and you're uncomfortable with making even a committed atheist agree to take the mark, there is still that dog church service in L.A. to consider. Though Centre has his doubts about how effective that would really be. "This 'all dogs go to heaven' stuff is non-doctrinal," he argued. "I didn't interpret this as ensuring the animals' salvation, only blessing it to curry favor with God to give it a good, healthy, long life."

And if that good, healthy, long life happens to coincide with the appearance of the four horsemen, church-goers who share Centre's interpretation have an option to ensure their pets' well-being.