Baby grazes in backyard. Image courtesy of Andrew Blight under Creative Commons License

One of the common jokes among atheists is that we eat babies. The joke is meant to expose the stereotypes many give atheists — in countries where religion is dominant (no need to rub it in Scandinavia), a stereotype of atheists is that we worship the devil (that we don’t believe in the devil doesn’t matter) and that we are morally bankrupt. To us atheists, this is ridiculous, obviously, and we make fun of the stereotype by joking about the worst think we can think of — eating babies.

I mean, seriously. What could be worse than eating a baby? (Possibly eating a baby without hot sauce and cooked anything less than medium rare (any more and it’s not as tender), but that’s beside the point. It’s beside the point. Moving on…)

I mean, this is a joke to say that yeah, you might think we atheists are morally repugnant, but we OBVIOUSLY don’t go around eating babies (except on Sundays during brunch as we conduct our Satanic rites). It’s a way to make fun of the atheist stereotype with something so horrible and ridiculous that people would turn red in the face and have to admit that they atheists obviously aren’t the devil incarnate.

What kind of sick, twisted fuck would actually take baby eating nonbelievers seriously?

There’s actually an answer to that question, believe it or not.

The answer is, um, God — according, traditionally within Christendom, to Moses. He (Moses…er, I mean God) was allegedly obsessed with the concept, which is a bit disturbing. Especially when it concerned people who didn’t get along with his commands, like stoning people same sex, sex. As Leviticus 26: 27-29 reads:

If … you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.

Wow. So it turns out non-believers eating babies was God’s idea, according to Moses, according, likely, to whoever made Moses up. That’s a bit sick and twisted, if ya ask me.

But wait, there’s more! Check out these juicy details of the punishments God (in the words of Moses, in the words of the bloke who made Moses up) promises to dole out to people who don’t follow all the commands (like chopping of the hand of a woman who attacks the genitalia of a man who is engaged in a fight with her husband) that God gives them. According to Deuteronomy 28:53-57:

Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.

So…yeah. Serves you right nonbelievers. You don’t follow the God of Moses of the guy who made up Moses, and you’ll dine on babies. So follow God, goddammit. Don’t you love your children? You don’t want to eat them, do you?

And there’s an encore: In Jeremiah 19:9, God, according to Jeremiah, will punish those who don’t follow him in the following way:

I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them.

Ha! The sick, twisted fuck is going to “make them” eat their sons and daughters as punishment for not following him…

So, it turns out, nonbelievers might eat babies…but God seems to get off — due to all the juicy details — on making them do it.

And then in Ezekiel 5:10, Ezekiel says that God says to the non-Judeo Jerusalem that, because the don’t follow Him, the following will happen:

Therefore in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents. I will inflict punishment on you and will scatter all your survivors to the winds.

Now, I know what you atheists are thinking. Does the Bible have any good baby-eating recipes? I’m glad you asked. There’s cooking, which you might have to schedule — same-day boiling keeps the meat fresh, so you may not want to kill both children in the same day (although you want to make sure there’s some kind of safeguard to make sure no one backs out. As 2 Kings 6:28-29a says, when relaying a conversation between two women being punished by God via a siege for Israel’s sin:

Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”

As for where you get the dead children — well, the Bible says you can’t murder, but there’s perfectly good meat to be had in rebellious teenagers you’ve stoned to death. And it’s encouraged right there in the Bible, in Deuteronomy 21:18-21:

If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

But maybe you’re not ready to branch out to stoned teenagers yet. Well, God encourages the deaths of plenty of young, plump infants. It would be a shame to leave the meat just sitting there. Take 1 Samuel 15:3, for example where God allegedly, according to Samuel, allegedly, says this:

“Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children andinfants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

Nor is this necessarily a sad thing to do. One method of killing those dangerous enemy infants is throwing them up against rocks — it is a method that comes strongly recommended in Psalm 137:9:

“Happy is the one who seizes yourinfants and dashes them against the rocks.”

God (or the people who made Him up), is kinda into this, as He brings it up again in Isaiah 13:15-18 when talking about what He’s going to do to those Babylonian pagan infants:

Whoever is captured will be thrust through;

all who are caught will fall by the sword.

Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes;

their houses will be looted and their wives violated. See, I will stir up against them the Medes,

who do not care for silver

and have no delight in gold.

Their bows will strike down the young men;

they will have no mercy on infants,

nor will they look with compassion on children.