The Amazing Atheist and the extinction of piggies

I've decided to start focusing on the brighter sides of life, so let's get this out of the way; there's something I've wanted to comment on for a while:

I was a pretty radical antitheist when I was about 14 or 15. One of the reasons why I distanced myself from the movement were the jerks that come with it.

'The Amazing Atheist' is a good example of this. A very loud (often the loudest) minority of Internet atheists are the people who simply have a lot of spontaneous opinions and "Religion sucks!" just happens to be one of them. These guys are highly unpleasant, attention-seeking turds of insults, rape jokes and loud voices. Their opinions are not based on facts or ethics, but on emotional ideas of which group of people is 'annoying' and which is not.

This is tiring, because it gives the impression that committed atheists in general are disrespectful simpletons. This is not the case.

If you are rational in terms of some things and come up with irrational crap, excuses and myths in terms of other things, you are not rational. You are religious, in the worst sense of the word.

Vegetarianism is one thing that divides the atheist movement (and yes, there is a movement). I've noticed that the more educated, more intellectual group (as far as I know, this seems to be the majority) sees animal rights as something pretty obvious. Being against the modern meat industry or at least acknowledging its problems goes well along with secular, ethically conscious worldview.

It's something that many of the leading figures agree on: for example, Richard Dawkins believes that in the future, vegetarianism will be the norm; Sam Harris seems to believe in the same thing, but seems to see lab-grown meat as the more realistic option. Both naturally condemn factory farming.

Ok. Then the video I linked above. The Amazing Atheist believes that if we start boycotting factory farms and the meat industry disappears, the factory farmed animals will go extinct, boohoo.

There are several problems with his argument:

1) He clearly doesn't understand how evolution works. Animals don't care about their species. They care about themselves (and their relatives). 'Extinction' only means something to humans. It is naive to think that animals tortured on factory farms spend their shitty days thinking, "Phew! At least there are 60 billion of us! We are not extinct!" The only thing the animals are aware of is the reality around them, and the reality on factory farms is virtually hell.

2) Factory farmed animals are not part of any natural system that should be protected. They are modified freaks; practically inviable. If we didn't pump them full of antibiotics, most of them would die before reaching puberty.

These species didn't exist before we created them. Oh no: how will the eco systems cope without the animals that were never a part of them?

The only purpose of these species is to suffer. They should go extinct. That would be wonderful for the planet; the fact that we're producing factory-farmed cows and chickens means that we're driving thousands and thousands of natural species to extinction.

3) When the meat industry disappears (probably due to the production of lab-grown animal products) it is unlikely as fuck that there'd be zero pigs left on the planet. Many people keep them as pets, for example. So, on a rainy, nostalgia-filled day The Amazing Atheist would certainly be able to go somewhere and find a pig to pat.

You can always come up with excuses, but everybody with a moral backbone should boycott the modern meat industry, or at least have the honesty to admit their lack of backbone. It's pretty easy, after all.

.......................................

So, now that the facts are out there, I can euphorically forget the existence of The Amazing Atheist for good and concentrate on the more interesting sides of the world.

Like YouTube comments making sense:

Cheers! I guess the future of Internet atheism is pretty bright, after all.