Food

Satan thinks religious diets are jail food

Posted on by A lesser demon

The Devil prefers to think that He fails to understand why humans fuss about dietary habits, but He does have some hypotheses.

Some foods are risky. Pigs often carry diseases and require stricter cooking techniques than, e.g., poultry. Ancient Man knew nothing of microbes but must have been mindful of the potentially lethal consequences of eating under-cooked or raw meat from certain animals. So, when mankind invented their gods, perhaps they threw in a divine ban on pork as a reminder to avoid it. Satan finds this explanation insufficient, however. It makes sense for swine (my Horned Master unfortunately did not clarify whether he meant the animal or the religious people) but is hardly true for many other dietary restrictions imposed by the various gods around the globe, and the Devil is inclined to dismiss this hypothesis except for a limited number of particular foods in specific historical areas.

Satan suspects more sinister reasons. He believes the gods never intended to serve Man (again, Satan sounded ominously ambiguous saying this) by offering sound advice but instead attempted to feather their own nests. My Master understands that gods use every trick in the book to retain their followers, and intricate rituals with complicated table manners and recipes requiring special attention to ingredients require both host and patron to concentrate on their faith. The more complicated the more the followers are forced to think about their divine lords.

The trick of eating different foods also provides the ability to distinguish oneself from other groups. For example, to stand out from the shellfish-eating, primitive pagans of the other tribe, is is easier to remove oyster from the menu than to stop being an equally primitive screwhead.

Lastly, leading its followers to believe that certain foods are yucky, or “unclean,” surely won the inventor a cosmic patent for its effectiveness as an unclimbable fence around the followers. Human taste develops during their lifetimes, but usually keep within the limits of learned acceptable categories of food. Humans that were raised to feel aversion to, say, fish, will usually stay off seafood. The divine subterfuge is to select food that is consumed in nearby religions, because this will keep one’s own followers from leaking into neighboring groups, who eat disgusting things.

The human adaptability to strange situations teaches followers to consider unreasonable and nonsensical rules to be normal, and they will argue their necessity and pass them on to their offspring, never realizing that they are held hostage. Satan thinks religion is best defined as an institutionalized Stockholm syndrome.

Satan thinks vegans have a point

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan agrees with vegans and vegetarians on one of their chief arguments: it is less expensive—both financially and ecologically—to live on plant matter than on meat, even if accounting for the required haulage of seasonal products that were generally unavailable a century ago in order to satisfy the nutritional needs of a human being. The Devil does not wish to discuss obviously untenable or plainly stupid arguments; for example, there is no reason to debate that Man is biologically an omnivore not a herbivore.

Yet agreement is one thing, caring is another. The latter turns the ecological fact into a moral question, and the Devil asks His followers a few rhetorical questions: are humans unconcerned about the future for vast population groups including their own? Are humans willing to live on a polluted planet, and can they look themselves in the eyes knowing they leave an exhausted Earth to their offspring? Do humans believe that a reduced production of meat should be permitted? The vegan answer is no, and disagreement with them is impossible without either being ignorant or feeling guilty. (The latter option being reserved for humans, of course, as Satan has no idea what it means.)

But, acknowledging the validity of one moral argument is a slippery slope, and allows the vegans to present another moral argument, which is perhaps their primary argument: how can humans, living and feeling beings, justify killing and devouring other living and feeling beings? Why do humans find it dandy to eat cows but not each other?

Meat eaters sometimes argue that other carnivores and omnivores usually have preferences, too, and usually do not eat their own species; however, this does not necessarily apply to humans, who might be one of several exceptions. Humans have eaten only certain species for as long as we can remember but that is a naturalistic argument, and vegans are correct when they state that humans have the capacity to make a choice, as humans have done in other areas of their biological history; for example, when they take medicine.

Humans who eat the flesh of other beings genuinely have some explaining to do: they do not have to kill animals for food. They choose to do it, and it changes nothing trying to justify the killings by peeping that the animals maybe individually and most likely as a species would meet their destiny more brutally in the fierce struggle for survival in Nature. At best, humans can patch their guilty conscience by killing their prey “humanely” (which Satan thinks sounds a little disturbing, because it reveals human standards for killing each other in cold blood), and thus flaunt your hypocrisy by wanting the dead animals on the one hand but feeling uncomfortable killing them on the other. Vegans see through this hypocrisy and stress that humans do not escape their choice by pretending to be friendly executioners.

Killing animals for food is perfectly legal, and like the ecological view it is a moral choice. It is unnecessary; it is impossible to pretend otherwise. Satan thinks it would behoove His meat-eating followers to admit that they kill intentionally and harm the planet merely to satisfy their own culinary pleasure. Satan does not personally care what humans eat, however. He is the Devourer of Souls and would never lower Himself to consuming the improper foods of humans.