The Elephant, the Baby, and the Atheist

You are on a deserted beach with a rifle, an elephant and a baby. This is the last elephant on earth and it is charging the baby. Do you shoot the elephant, knowing the species would become extinct?

This was a question posed by renowned atheist Richard Dawkins to the writer Cristina Odone at a recent dinner party. Odone said, of course, save the baby and wrote about it in the Observer.

Dawkins expressed an outrage only atheists seem able to muster, although oddly enough he said in a recent interview that he believed in the possibility of a transcendent “gigantic intelligence” existing beyond the range of human experience but he refused to call it God.

Congrats to Odone. I would only add that the baby would be sleeping in a crib made of tusks that night and I would be eating like a king for weeks.