God Can't Beat This Meat

Christians scare me. Their rigidity scares me. What this holds for my country and the world really scares me.

Case in point. Scientists are getting very close to being able to reliably generate meat (read steak, hamburger...bliss) from animal stem cells. Soon we'll be able to cook up a T-bone that didn't require a cow to carry it for months and then die for its harvest. PETA rejoice! And lab grown meat wouldn't require nearly the resources; water and grain, that raising a cow does. We would be able to enjoy a burger without depriving others of food, and further taxing a dwindling global freshwater supply. World, rejoice!

And me rejoice! As much as I'm philosophically drawn to vegetarianism, I don't think I could ever give up meat. Selfishly, I can't wait for cultured meat patties. And my excitement for said patties caused me to bring up lab-grown meat at a breakfast I attended with my family recently. Probably not the most savory subject to bring up as we crammed sausage links and bacon strips down our throats, but far more palatable than the response I got from my stepmother.

She's wonderful woman on all counts but one...she's a Christian. I'm sure some of you can guess her response. "Well I don't know about that...that seems pretty unnatural." Okay, not so bad yet. I responded with, "Okay, but consider how we get our meat currently. Fro animals in pens with no room to move, dosed with growth hormones and antibiotics (and sometimes each other), killed en masse by disease-spreading machines. That doesn't seem terribly natural either. Or healthy." And she says...

Wait for it...

Oh crap, here it comes...

"If god wanted us to grow meat in labs, he wouldn't have given us animals."

Eecch! C'mon. That's akin to saying, "If god wanted us to live in houses he wouldn't have given us caves." Houses are just an upgrade on caves. In fact, houses wouldn't be possible without the raw materials (stone, dirt, etc.) found in caves. And cultured meat wouldn't be possible without the stem cells and genetic material found in animals. I say, "if god didn't want us to do all the things our technology currently allows us to do, he wouldn't have made us so damned intelligent!"

According to your teachings, Christian nay sayers, god gave man free will. Clearly he also gave us the intelligence to do interesting things with that will. What was the point if all he really wants us to do with our intellects is sit in supplication to him and ponder a book that was started almost 3,500 years ago, when iron was considered "high tech." Why would he gift man with such a staggering ability to create and manipulate and then condemn his creations?

Why not look at our ability to craft technologies from scientific insights as a gift...from god if you must, or just as a gift that our evolutionary heritage has bequeathed to us. Regardless, the technological advancements of the last 100 years have created solutions for many of the hardships our ancestors faced...disease, heavy labor, waste management, constant hunger. But in the process we've created all new issues, some much larger than previously faced. Global warming, fresh water shortages, population booms (which leads to constant hunger in some areas), pollution, major species extinctions, etc. Now more than ever we need to bring our technological minds to task. We've passed beyond the event horizon of technological damage. We can now create technologies, unimaginable technologies, which greatly swing the order of the natural world and finally bring a balance where one hasn't existed in quite some time.

Technologies like cultured meat. Meat grown in a lab can reduce deforestation, since less land is required for grazing. It can reduce water waste associated with raising large quantities of food-animals, as well as free the grains previously used for animal feed to be used in the fight against world hunger. Fewer food-animals means less methane released into the atmosphere. That, paired with slower deforestation creates a net gain in the fight against global warming.

And this is why Christian's scare me. Well, it's not the only reason, but it's the reason I'm including in this post. There are enough close-minded Christians, like my stepmother, to keep these sorts of technologies from reaching the mainstream. We've seen fundamentalist attacks on stem cell research. But Christians, voting with their wallets, can be just as damaging. If the majority of people (read Americans) choose not to buy cultured meat, the technology will wither and die. In a market-driven economy, the majority speaks. And the last thing I want to do is trust the well being of our planet to a bunch of people who believe Jesus is coming soon to rapture all the true believers and then clean up our mess. But that's a topic for another entry...

Right on, Mr. Sagan!

I found this quote in an interoffice memo. I'm sure some of you have seen it, but it's new to me.

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
- Carl Sagan

This is a powerful position statement for atheists in general, I think. The truth is that we reside in a mind-bogglingly big universe that doesn't know we exist and wouldn't care a whit for us if it did. It's more violent than any of us have experienced or could imagine, violence made worse by its random and emotionless nature. We could be vaporized in an instant by some unseen cosmic cataclysm, and the big U would keep on truckin' without a notice for our absence. This can be troubling sometimes, even for the stoutest minds among us. It can be tempting to infuse the chaos with a little human compassion. Throw a little meaning and control into the mix.

But it's not necessary or desirable. Any meaning or character we impose on nature is a lie, a personification of our own desires and fears. When Christians call on god to help them, they aren't accomplishing anything. But they've experienced compassion from other people, and imagine that the universe functions according to the same principles. It doesn't, and assuming that it does can stop them from taking action on their own that might ultimately alleviate their situation.

And the interesting thing is that we atheists, by nature of being human, can be just as guilty of manipulating existence to fit our "story." The description of the universe I painted two paragraphs ago is just as much a lie as anything the religious might conjecture. The universe isn't mind-boggling, or big, or violent, or any other adjective we might use to describe it. The universe just is. Before we came on the scene and tried to describe it the universe just was.

There is no need to anthropomorphize the universe in positive or negative terms. This frees us from fear and allows us to seek existence on it's own terms. To hypothesize, theorize, test and reject if necessary. It is best to seek the world as it is, free of delusion and self-deception. Doing that is the tricky part. Stay tuned for part two...why Christians are dangerous because they believe they are doing everything I just detailed above.