Life in the Hamptons

Apostate Ken Pulliam is terribly anxious these days that some of his cohorts have lowered themselves by the company they keep. As he recently put it, “I think somehow we demean ourselves when we respond to such amateurish reviews as those on Tribalogue.”

This inevitably raises the question of what it would take, from naturalistic evolutionary standpointpoint, for an atheist to demean himself. As Richard Dawkins once put it, “For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.”

So Pulliam’s concern resembles the anguished reaction of an ambitious mom whose daughter falls in love with the cowboy. How exactly does a bacterium demean itself? I’m sure you know how that conversation goes:

“Jennifer! How could you! How could you fall for that redneck bacterium? Your father and I didn’t raise you to be po’ white trash. That’s why we moved to the Hampton’s. Where we could work for (or should I say, work inside?) the crème de la phlegm. We have standards, you know. We only infect the haut monde. And we only associate with respectable bacteria–like the Salmonellas and the Gonorrhoeas. That’s why we sent you to Germ Mawr. Why can’t you date a promising law student, like Tony E. Coli?”