Fr Dwight Longenecker

Dear Fr Dwight Longenecker

Mrs Root adored your blog post yesterday likening atheists to spiritual zombies and reckoning them to be a sort of sub-species of humanity.  I quite agree: we get them all the time round our neck of the woods.  I'd go even further and say that atheists probably aren't human at all.

At our wet fish counter we get all manner of rubberneckers trying to sell us fish that aren't really fish at all.  Mrs Root usually gives them 'what for' round the face with a mouldy kipper!  They've tried it on with JellyFish, CuttleFish, StarFish, CrayFish, Mexican Walking Fish and even Phish - which is a band for goodness sakes!

No, Fr Longneck, plodding along, eating, sleeping, shopping, working and breeding - that won't do at all....sure signs of spiritual zombiness and of sub-humanity. Leave that sort of thing to Radio 4 listeners and other godless n'er do wells.

Oh....now you've upset Mrs Root by deleting the post and all the comments!  That's not how we do things at all Father Littleneck: we stick to our guns, we don't run away trembling at the first sight of a spiritual zombie with a pertinent question to ask. No we don't!  Let them have it point blank with both barrels! Man Up, like Mrs Root does from time to time. Grow a backbone Fr Longnecking, hold fast to what you believe.

Let's find a building full of spiritual zombies and fly a plane into it! Let's at least set up The Society For The Extermination of Spiritual Zombies and apply for a Vatican grant.

I enclose a pound to get it up and running.

yours sincerely

Henry Root
(suppliers of wet fish to fully certified human beings)

NB: “Fish” includes three classes of vertebrates: the Osteoichthyes, or bony fish; the Chondrichthyes, or cartilaginous fish (sharks and rays, as well as some odder groups such as chimeras), and the Agnatha, or jawless fish (lampreys, hagfish, plus many early fossil forms).

"Homo Sapiens" includes all humans who believe in God - doesn't matter which one.

"Homo Zombiens" refers to everyone else.

PS - Here's the blog post you deleted quoted in full....we'd hate for the world to be deprived of such valuable insights.

"Is there really such a thing as an utterly authentic atheist? I think so. I have a dreadful feeling that there exists a sort of human sub-species who have lost their spiritual capacity completely. These authentic atheists do not profess belief in God, nor even disbelief. Instead they seem entirely deaf to such ideas. They do not hate the Church or say the Bible is a fairy tale. They do not spit out bigoted remarks that blame the Pope for the holocaust or missionaries for murder. They do not attack the arguments for the existence of God, say the universe is random, or call Rick Warren a simpleton. They do not rage against God, any more than someone born blind has dreams in color. These are the authentic atheists. They plod through life eating, working, shopping, breeding and sleeping, and God never seems to flit across their consciousness. Members of this sub-species may be sparkling sophisticates or ill-bred boors. They may be the decent and moral folks next door, or they could be despicable murderers. In a frightful way, it doesn’t matter. If they exist, perhaps they have bred and spread like the alien bodysnatchers, and exist in our midst like spiritual zombies—indistinguishable in the teeming mass of humanity except to those few who see them and tremble."     (Fr Dwight Longenecker)