Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Broken News: Richard Dawkins wins ‘fishes and loaves’ eating contest

dawkins dogs
Dawkins, moments before destroying the competition at the 125th annual West Essex Craft Fair and Eating Contest

TUSCALOOSA, AL--The annual St. Fritz the Pious "Fish Fry, Bake Sale, and Fun Fest" has traditionally been one of Tuscaloosa County's banner events. This year, St. Fritz hoped to expand both attendance and its reach in the community by tapping into the national popularity of competitive eating with a bible-themed "Fishes and Loaves" eating contest. These plans quickly fell apart when accomplished scientist and passionate atheist, Richard Dawkins, dominated the eating contest. In the wake of Dawkins surprisingly lopsided victory, area clergy and parishioners are struggling to defend against a sudden atheistic groundswell taking hold within the community.

The day began just as it has in previous years, as parishioners set up the tents and rides, Father Joseph prepped the fish fry, and animals were loosed into the petting zoo. As one strolled along the fairway between PTA bake sale tables and donated clothing racks, there would have been no reason to suspect the events would play out any differently. Soon thereafter, as though from a black-tipped cloud of despair and evil, a lone, wild-haired Englishmen strode from the parking lot and onto the scene.

“It began with a sort of murmuring and necks craning over to see,” remembered Father Joseph, parish head and contest emcee. “You could hear the whispers of ‘Is it really him?’ and ‘What’s he doing here?’ I turned around and saw Richard Dawkins strolling through the front gates, a smug look across his heathen face, and I knew we were in for a long day.” Indeed, it would not be long before the congregation's protein and carbohydrate-based hopes were dashed against the rocks of reason.

"I knew exactly what I was doing,” said a bloated Dawkins the following day between generous heaves into his toilet. “Books, scholarly articles, presentations, and speaking tours are just preaching to the converted, if you’ll excuse my pun. This is America. People might not read anymore, but they’ll line up a hundred rows deep to see someone eat his own weight in fried food. Especially if it gives them a chance to appear on a late-night ESPN2 segment. That’s when I pounce. Their God, with all his might and power, can’t will any of their men or women to out-eat me.”

Dawkins, a professor of ethnology and evolutionary bilology who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, is the 2007 Major League Eating Rookie-of-the-Year, and professional God-sneerer. Upon reaching the contest registration booth, Dawkins signed his name so large John Hancock would have blushed, underlined it twice, then gazed at a crucifix before laughing to himself, shaking his head, and walking over to the petting zoo.

Initially Dawkins seemed content to wander the grounds for a time, hands clasped behind his back, jaw jutted, and nose pointed squarely up. But it was not long before the figurehead of the new atheism launched his first salvo at the bake sale. The victim: Mary-Louise Mesick and her prized lemon squares.

“He made me question everything I thought I knew about baked goods and God,” said a still clearly emotional Ms. Mesick. “He stopped right in front of me, peered down over those wire-rim glasses of his, and paid one dollar for one square. He carefully ate it, and after considering it for a moment told me, ‘Lemon squares are the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate flavor.’ My knees buckled and I had to be carried to the first aid tent. He was just so clinical, scholarly, and dismissive. His eyes were so cold. So very, very cold.”

Others were less lucky. Evangeline Garcia was put under 72-hours of psychiatric observation after Dawkins mused that he was against her crème filled donuts because they “…teach us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.” For her part, Sally Danforth had to be physically restrained after Dawkins referred to her fudge nut brownies as possessing “…precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”

In the wake of these verbal assaults, many parishioners wanted Dawkins removed from the premises. Other, more calculating attendees felt that such a measure would give Dawkins the very victory he sought. A hastily called conference of organizers decided that to do so would cast them as unthinking rubes who persecuted a man just for asking questions about God. As parishioner Jeanine Mealey explained, "The only way forward was to defeat and humiliate him in the ‘fishes and loaves’ contest."

“We knew why he was here,” remarked Ed Hoyle, parishioner and collection plate man at the Sunday noon service. “I read on Beliefnet that he was traveling around to local community fairs and religious gatherings trying to prove the non-existence of God through competitive eating. We just never thought he’d have the guts to show up to St. Fritz’s. Me and the other local men knew we had to represent for God in the eating contest or we were in some serious danger of not getting that addition built on to the church by next fall. Who would donate to the church Dawkins humiliated?”

Twelve men rose to challenge Dawkins, but in the end none could even come close to defeating him. After the five minute time limit, Dawkins had eaten 64 fishes and 58 loaves, a world record. The next closest competitor, James "Jimbo" Fickleninny, had barely reached a dozen of each item. As the perplexed crowd pondered the defeat of faith by atheism in a religious eating contest, Dawkins wrestled the mic from Father Joseph, proclaiming “Where is your God now? You pray to him and worship him and yet he doesn’t appear to help you in your time of need. The best of you have consumed barely one-fifth of what I am capable of ingesting. I’ve been interviewed by Charlie Rose five times! Doesn’t this show you the foolishness of your beliefs? You’re holding yourselves back with this childish insistence in a higher power! Jog on!”

While the mic was quickly cut off and Dawkins expelled by volunteer firemen, the damage had already been done. “You could see people questioning everything they thought they ever knew. He just ate so much!” an exasperated Father Joseph observed. Church insiders say the real damage was seen the next day at a traditionally popular service rendered half-full. Worse yet, the collection for the local soup kitchen netted only $40.

As of now the church leadership is grasping for ideas. Some have suggested stoning Dawkins to death. A more widely supported plan has them joining together with a local synagogue to train eaters for a hastily planned second festival with an eating contest theme of unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They hope to defeat Dawkins at his own game and win the battle of ideas against the world’s foremost atheist eating machine.

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