Bill Donohue says Anthony Bourdain probably would not have committed suicide if he’d been a good Christian man who, presumably, would have understood that he’s no damn good.
If Anthony Bourdain had been a religious man, would he have killed himself? Probably not. The celebrity chef was found dead today in his hotel room in Strasbourg, France.
Bourdain was raised by his Catholic father and Jewish mother, though neither of them saw fit to raise him in any religion. In 2011, he said his views on religion were similar to those expressed by Christopher Hitchens, the British atheist.
Curiously, the Creator of the Whole Big Universe didn’t tell Donohue that only an insensitive cretin would presume to blame Bourdain’s atheism before the body has properly cooled, and without any other knowledge whatsoever about Bourdain’s health or circumstances. And another thing: the NIH data don’t uphold Donohue’s claim; suicide is one of the very few social pathologies that is mixed without any clear bias across the Bible Belt.
Bourdain’s untimely, self-inflicted death doesn’t tell us anything about the value of religion — but Donohue’s behavior certainly does.