Sloganeering vs. Thinking

 

            Recently, while traveling to a nearby town in order to make a pastoral visit, I noticed some bumper stickers on a car in front of me.  They read:  “Eating Meat is Murder”; “Every Religion is Just Another Cult with More Members”; and “Reproductive Rights are an American Value.”  Also, I observed, there was a university sticker on the back window, and sure enough, as I passed the car, the driver looked like a young college man.  I enter into an imaginary conversation with him…

            “I couldn’t help but notice your bumper stickers…”

            “Well, I put them there to be noticed.”

            “Obviously…but I am not sure that the assertions they make are so very obviously true.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I’m glad you ask.  For example, how can eating meat be murder, since the cow – that is to say, the rib-eye – is already dead?”

            “Well, it had to be killed so it could be eaten.  That’s pretty obvious.”

            “Yes, ‘that’s pretty obvious,’ but the ‘murder’ part isn’t.  Murder is in the act of killing, not eating… unless, of course, one kills by eating, which is not done to my knowledge.”

            “I guess I expect people to make a few mental connections; besides, to write it out as you would insist would make the message…”

            “Less pithy, catchy, witty?”

            “Yeah.” 

            “I see.”

            “What?”

            “You’re more interested in a slogan than a proposition of truth.”

            “Wait a minute…”

            “You just admitted it.  But let’s move on… if you’ve the time?”

            “Oh yes, this is gonna be interesting.”

            “Okay.  You say that it is wrong to kill an animal for the sake of food.  Is it murder for a lion to kill a zebra for food?”

            “I’m not sure what you’re getting at…”

            “Oh, I think you are pretty sure; that’s why you hesitate.”

            “Well, it’s natural for a lion to kill and eat.”

            “But not for a human being?”

            “No, not for a human being…”

            “You seem to be making a very strong distinction between man and animals.  That is, we have an idea of what murder is, but animals don’t.”

            “Yes, that’s so.”

            “You seem to be saying then that the human being, since we have knowledge the animals don’t, are in some sense higher creatures, and therefore more responsible?”

            “You’d never know it by the way most people behave toward the animals, toward the earth…”

            “Toward each other?”

            “Yeah.”

            “So we’ve discovered another big difference between the animal and the human:  that we humans can do what the “cult” I belong to calls evil.  We know good and evil.” 

            “What cult do you belong to?”
            “The Roman Catholic one.”

            “Ah, the biggest one of all.”

            “Yes, ‘fraid so.  But you and I at least agree here on the fact of the essential difference in nature between man and animal.  Let’s see if we can expand our area of agreement.  And perhaps we can, for the sake of us carnivores, come to a compromise.”

            “Okay, we can try.  What’s the compromise?”

            “Veal.”

            “I don’t get it.”

            “Well, veal, you know, the meat of a milk-fed calf.  I just love veal chops cooked with a spicy dry rub.”

            “You mean limit killing of cows to calves?  But that would still be murder by my definition.” 

            “No, no, no.  Hear me out.  The calf would be killed while still in the womb; or, even better, after it’s partially delivered.  Then we call in the butcher to handle it from there.”

            “This is sick.”

            “But humans do it all the time ‘toward each other.’  We call it abortion.”

            “But a woman has a right to an abortion.”

            “A woman, a member of the human species with a knowledge of right and wrong, who can discern what animals cannot – that is, what murder is – has a right to do to her own kind  what you consider murderous when done to a cow?”

            “I never said that.”

            “No, you never ‘said’ that, but your logic leads inexorably to it.”

            “But, but… abortions aren’t done for the sake of food!”

            “True enough.  But you’ve already agreed that the act of murder is in the act of killing itself…”

            “I may have to reconsider that.”

            “Then tell me what murder really is.  And please don’t repeat your bumper sticker slogan that ‘eating meat is murder’.  It might be wise to begin, not with a slogan stuck on the bumper of a car, but rather with the classic, time-tried definition of murder, and then go from there:  murder is the intentional killing of an innocent human being.  Think about it, and we’ll talk again sometime.”