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'Soylent' Dawkins? Atheist Mulls 'Taboo Against Cannibalism' Ending as Lab-Grown Meat Improves

posted by martyb on Saturday March 10 2018, @03:04AM   
from the Newest-Entrée-at-Milliways?-Long-Pig-Bacon? dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

'Soylent' Dawkins? Atheist mulls 'taboo against cannibalism' ending as lab-grown meat improves

What if human meat is grown? Could we overcome our taboo against cannibalism?"
- @RichardDawkins - 6:15 AM - 3 Mar 2018

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/969939225180364805
https://archive.fo/kSmgi

"Lab-grown 'clean' meat could be on sale by end of 2018, says producer"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/clean-meat-lab-grown-available-restaurants-2018-global-warming-greenhouse-emissions-a8236676.html

"'Soylent' Dawkins? Atheist mulls 'taboo against cannibalism' ending as lab-grown meat improves"
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/6/richard-dawkins-mulls-taboo-against-cannibalism-en/

and:

https://www.nationalreview.com/blog/corner/richard-dawkins-eating-human-meat-cannibalism-taboo/

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Original Submission

• Re:Betteridge applies here (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @11:13AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @11:13AM (#651291)

  The key word here is "because". When you make a random choice without knowing if it will produce a favorable outcome in the future (e.g. keep you alive longer) you don't make it because of the outcome, but the outcome justifies the choice in retrospective. That's how evolution works. It is not that we condemn people for cannibalism because it is bad for people's health, but to the contrary people's health is a tad bit better because we chose to condemn cannibalism. Why exactly our ancestors chose that, we don't know, but it probably was some religious belief, perhaps belief in an carnal afterlife.

  Parent