Apology for the Sins of the Religious

The Christians who engaged in infamous persecutions and shameful inquisitions were not evil men but misguided men. The churchmen who felt they had an edict from God to withstand the progress of science, whether in the form of a Copernican revolution or a Darwinian theory of natural selection, were not mischievous men but misinformed men. And so Christ's words from the cross are written in sharp-edged terms across some of the most inexpressible tragedies of history: 'They know not what they do'.

 Farm Animals Give Their Lives That We May Eat

One of the greatest metaphors in Western Civilization is that of Christ who gave his life so that others might live, and I don't want to be sacreligious and I don't want to belittle that myth in any way, but a pig is giving its life so that we might eat, a chickent is giving its life so that we might eat, and I think the least that we can do is to think about that chicken, to think about that calf that we're eating. Not neccessarily to be sad for it, but to celebrate it, to be aware of the be...