Thursday, August 18, 2011

What's for dinner?


Atheists aren’t all that bad. I hang out regularly with several. They’re civilly good people. Contrary to some myths, they don’t eat children.


I usually agree with Paul Manata, but in this case I must demur. His view of godless cuisine is far too trusting.

To begin with, while evolutionary ingroup/outgroup dynamics might well mean a hungry atheist would be averse to consuming his children, he might well eat your children–especially in the proverbial lifeboat situation.

As for civil goodness, that’s just the gingerbread house which the witchy infidel uses to lure unsuspecting boys and girls into the kitchen. Once the door shuts behind them, it’s curtains for the poor little tykes.

Paul wouldn’t be in a position to know about godless cuisine since infidels only serve kiddy potpie and whippersnapper ragoût to fellow infidels.

11 comments:

  1. You left out my excellent reason for my claim about Atheist culinary preferences.

    It's more like:

    [1] Atheists only eat nuts, twigs, and tofu. (the meat is murder axiom)
    [2] Children are neither nuts, nor twigs, nor tofu. (biologically known truth, pace Clarkianism)
    [3] Therefore, Atheists don't eat children. (from 1, and 2)

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  2. Okay. Like Jason Bourne, you narrowly escaped capture.

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  3. You could become a Scripturalist and deny [2].

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  4. Whew...I saw that link on the other post and thought Steve had become slightly more sane. I'm glad to know he is still the poster boy of Calvinistic bigotry we all know and shun.

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  5. The irony is that Ben acts like the poster boy of ignorant village atheism we all shun.

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  6. BEN SAID:

    "Whew...I saw that link on the other post and thought Steve had become slightly more sane. I'm glad to know he is still the poster boy of Calvinistic bigotry we all know and shun."

    An informal IQ test is whether a person can recognize satire. Unfortunately for Ben, his score qualifies him to be an elevator operator.

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  7. An "elevator operator?" I'm with Ben now, you aren't sane. Mall cop is more like it.

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  8. Okay, let's split the difference: how 'bout an elevator operator in a multi-story shopping mall?

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  9. "single-story" would have been much more humourous. ;)

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  10. As atheist Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels) has noted of the kind of view and treatment of the youth that culture-destroying atheists like Babinski have in mind:

    The youth of Britain have long placed a de facto curfew on the old, who in most places would no more think of venturing forth after dark than would peasants in Bram Stoker's Transylvania. Indeed, well before the riots last week, respectable persons would not venture into the centers of most British cities or towns on Friday and Saturday nights, for fear—and in the certainty—of encountering drunken and aggressive youngsters.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903918104576504033881168802.html

    How could atheism bring about such a society?

    Again, as the atheist Dalrymple notes,

    "The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core. To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy. And in my own view, the absence of religious faith, provided that such faith is not murderously intolerant, can have a deleterious effect upon human character and personality. If you empty the world of purpose, make it one of brute fact alone, you empty it (for many people, at any rate) of reasons for gratitude, and a sense of gratitude is necessary for both happiness and decency. For what can soon, and all too easily, replace gratitude is a sense of entitlement. Without gratitude, it is hard to appreciate, or be satisfied with, what you have: and life will become an existential shopping spree that no product satisfies.

    http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_oh_to_be.html

    So, in all seriousness, while neither Christian nor atheist will eat their children, it is the latter who, knowingly or not, will and have given us a society where, ironically, our children will eat us.

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  11. EDWARD T. BABINSKI SAID:

    “Theists will eat their OWN children in a ‘lifeboat situation’ (like the siege of Jerusalem), per the Bible.”

    i) To begin with, you and Ben are both too dense to recognize the tongue-in-cheek nature of my post. I did a satirical riff on Manata’s post. The fact that both of your are so defensive about my little spoof reveals something about the insecurity of your position.

    ii) The incident you allude to is condemned in Scripture. That’s contrary to Biblical ethics. It’s cited as an example of extreme depravity.

    You, by contrast, haven’t shown how cannibalism is morally wrong according to atheism.

    iii) Yes, the Bible commends corporal punishment in child-rearing. Do you have an actual argument to oppose that method of discipline?

    iv) Then you raise the stereotypical village atheist objections to OT law, as if I, for one, hadn’t responded to those objections before.

    You keep demonstrating your total inability to think for yourself. You’re too thickheaded to see that your strategy is counterproductive.

    For future reference, don’t little my combox with your cut-n-paste comments unless you’re prepared to actually argue for your objections as well as interacting with my counterarguments.

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