Richard Dawkins: "Can We Overcome Cannibalism Taboo?"

                Richard Dawkins, British scientist and all-around hail-fellow-well-met (sarcasm alert), posted an article on Twitter about synthetic meat created from stem cells, something he said he has been “looking forward to” for a long time.

                According to the Daily Mail, the well-known atheist wrote: “Tissue culture ‘clean meat’ already in 2018? I’ve long been looking forward to this,” before sharing a link to the article. Researchers have been working on creating lab-grown meat for years. The first test tube beef hamburger was created by Dutch scientists in 2013. Poultry flesh and meatballs have also been grown from stem cells. The process involves harvesting stem cells from a living being, “culturing” the cells in sugars and minerals, and then growing the cells into skeletal muscle in bioreactor tanks. Sounds delicious! Romantic, too!

                Incredibly, Dawkins went on to write: “What if human meat is grown? Could we overcome our taboo against cannibalism? An interesting test case for consequentialist morality versus ‘yuck reaction’ absolutism.”

                That old-fashioned yuck reaction absolutism! That silly cannibalism taboo! I say ban guns, but legalize eating each other! That seems reasonable. Fortunately, we’ve been overcoming our long-held taboos with great rapidity lately. Abortion, homosexual sex, gay marriage, gender fluidity, open bathrooms, transgenderism, sex-bots, you name it. Yay us! Yay tolerance! Imagine if we could grow enough human meat in labs to feed the hungry all over the world? Maybe a Santa Clarita Diet would benefit us all?! What could be the harm?

                And we would still have our pick of white meat or dark meat. “Hey, Dan tastes just like chicken!”

                Think of the possibilities for restaurant menus alone!

                “I’ll have a leg of Bob, and, let’s see, a thigh and a breast of Nancy, thank you. Do you recommend Pete’s giblets?”

                “How is your Caucasian soufflé?”

Of course, this heinous conjecture could only come from someone who doesn’t believe in God, or the concepts of Natural Law and Natural Rights. But, perhaps we can rewrite the Ten Commandments. I mean, surely it is a “living document” like the Constitution, right? If we can toss out a couple of the Ten Amendments, we can certainly modify a couple of the Ten Commandments.

#6) “Thou shalt not kill”-- could be tweaked to “Thou shalt not kill…unless you eat them, too.”

#10) “Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife”—could be modernized to read “Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife…unless you’re really famished and she looks delish.”

                The right to life? What would it say about someone if they didn’t even believe we have the inalienable right not to be eaten by our neighbors?

                Progressivism should not be confused with progress.