Posted by Hemant Mehta in By now you’ve heard of the PZ Myers‘ take on the news of a stolen communion wafer. And you’ve also heard nutcase Bill Donohue’s response in which he tries to intimidate the president of PZ’s university into fire him.
Back to the issue at hand.
Here’s what PZ said he would do if he were given a communion wafer:
Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage… but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I’ll send you my home address.
Joe Foley is the president-elect of the (brand new) Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics group at Stanford University.
He questions the effectiveness of PZ’s response and whether it’s really worth it:
Should he do it? If someone manages to steal an official, consecrated “Host” from a Catholic service, should Myers really publish photos of it being vandalized?
This would bring a lot of attention to one religion’s rather extreme reverence for a small foodlike object, but only at the direct expense of the adherents’ emotional distress. No one has the right to claim offense just because someone else believes or says something they disagree with; Myers is welcome to say loudly that a cracker is always just a cracker, and he’s welcome to make or buy a similar-looking one for use in graphic art. But to at least one of the parties involved, dishonoring the stolen Eucharist would be more than just an act of free speech: they believe, as they’re free to do, that the cracker is a transubstantiation of their Savior’s actual Body, and Myers would be corporally abusing It/Him. Eating it is one of the most important parts of their religion, perhaps the most important — “excommunication” literally refers to being denied the Holy Communion. Most importantly, the only reason this proposal is interesting is because it would make a lot of people very upset. But it’s beyond just “offense;” the members of the Florida church prayed for their own pardon because they were responsible for losing the anointed wafer. As far as they’re concerned, he’d be causing them tangible spiritual harm, and as far as he’s concerned, that’s precisely why it’s exciting.
What do you think? Should he leave the Body of Christ alone?
I think there’s an overall belief among many atheists that we don’t have to respect religious beliefs, but we should respect religious people.
Desecrating the wafer, as Joe points out, would be causing emotional harm to the people.
Is it worth it?
[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]
Yes. Hemant, this is the sort of thing that needs to be shown to the public. This, my friends, is the PINNACLE of religion’s stupidity.
Not only was PZ’s post just plain hilarious, but it demonstrates perfectly how these “superstitious beliefs” are indeed harmful.
Succumbing to this extreme ridiculousness on any basis, whether it be “emotional trauma” or “not worth the trouble” would defeat the goal altogether. It isn’t about disrespecting “the people”, but rather their BELIEFS. We’re showing intolerance to the beliefs of these people rather than the people themselves.
It is worth it. A million times.
Hemant wrote:
Would wafer descecration cause more emotional distress or less emotional distress than the unauthorized release of Scientology documents on the internet did a few years ago?
And was that emotional harm worth it?
Desecrating a consecrated wafer will not change anyone’s mind and will piss off a whole mess of Catholics. It’s a dumb thing to do. Atheists have a bad reputation just minding our own business; we don’t need this.
The cartoons of Mohammad caused emotional harm to Muslim. South Park’s episode on Scientology caused emotional harm to Scientologists, just as their episode about Mormons did emotional harm to Mormons.
“Emotional harm” is just a fancy way to say “offense”. Nobody has a right not to be offended by private speech. And hurting people’s feelings is not the same as attacking a person.
I don’t think PZ’s campaign to desecrate a stupid holy biscuit on the internet is a good thing. But the reaction of the Catholics, threatening him and attacking him, is pure insanity. This goes back to what I was beating my head up against a wall over in another thread on this site: They’re making symbols more important than people. They equate desecrating a cracker with a “hate crime” against a person. They equate it with an attack on a person. One commenter at PZ’s blog actually claimed that harming a wafer was equivalent to killing a Catholic, and compared it to killing the family members of an atheist. It’s mind-bogglingly psychotic.
PZ’s comments certainly aren’t the best way to go about things (he has a history of going way too far), but they did no real harm to any person. The Catholics’ response, however, has been morally repulsive and simply deranged. Sending him death threats and threatening his job really is doing harm to a person, just as the threats against the student who started this fiasco did harm to a person.
“Is it worth it?” is exactly my opinion.
Why go out of your way to make enemies? What will be gained by this? As Darryl said above, this kind of action isn’t what changes minds.
It’s a fucking CRACKER.
Anyone who gets distressed to the point of illness — or violence — over anything PZ chooses to do to a FUCKING CRACKER is responsible for their own idiocy.
Wes, the whole sacrament thing is bullshit I’ll agree, but don’t misunderstand its significance for Catholics. The Supper is not just a symbol, but a visible sign of invisible grace. They believe in the real presence of Christ in the sacrament–body and blood. That’s what all that transubstantiation hocus pocus is about. If I were a believing Catholic I could think of no worse crime that to mess with the body of Christ. It may be wacky, but there it is.
BTW I just read the linked post “To Bid or Not to Bid.”
Where were the drooling mobs when that little deal went down?
no. i think he has every right to do what he wants with the cracker.
letting these people say that this cracker is the body of christ and to respect that is a little ridiculous.
i support respecting individuals, but respecting ridiculous religious ideas is not our obligation.
this is an imaginary offense!
they do not have the right not to be offended.
they have the freedom to believe what they want to, and they have the freedom to practice their religion in so far as it does not infringe on other peoples’ freedoms.
but we have the freedom to mock and ridicule those beliefs if we decide to.
i agree that this “stunt” seems to be aimed at hurting feelings.
while i agree that it may be going too far, i also think that it wouldn’t hurt at all to open up the issue for discussion: how much respect is a religious belief really due?
i think we already give religions far too much respect and not enough criticism. and what PZ is doing really illustrates how silly their demands of respect are.
i don’t think we are obligated to respect a mass delusion of this sort, just as we aren’t obligated to respect every delusion people have.
Most Catholics are so ignorant of their faith and doctrine, they won’t see what the big deal is. It’s because I know about BS like transubstantiation that I’m an atheist while my Catholic family (even the Catholic school teachers) don’t really know much about the faith except in very superficial terms. Back in my Grade 11 religion class, a classmate couldn’t accept transubstantiation even when the teacher told him bluntly. He felt it was just a remembrance of the Last Supper–he couldn’t accept that we were supposed to believe it actually turns into the flesh of Christ. Because his own common sense dictated otherwise.
Yeah, Bill Donahue and his ilk will make a big stink, but they blow up about everything. They don’t represent the views of the majority or even a significant minority of Catholics. Donahue’s a Republican shill who only gets worked up about Catholic doctrine that overlaps with the rest of the Christian right: abortion, birth control, public criticisms of the faith. He has no problems with the death penalty, the War in Iraq, or the destructive elements of globalization, issues the Papacy has spoken directly against.
I will say I found PZ’s comments to be…disappointing. He sounded more like a rebellious teenager than an erudite academic in his 50s (”Duuuude! Let’s totally crap on a communion wafer! It’ll like TOtally piss ‘em off!”). I don’t think the Beavis and Butthead stance makes anyone look good when they adopt it. PZ’s in better form when he’s more Voltaire-like: hilarious, but witty at the same time.
There is a huge difference between the Scientology documents and this.
The Church of Scientology will not tell you what they believe until you join and fork over a few hundred thousand of your hard-earned, and even then, you don’t learn everything. Leaking the documents shows potential church members just what they’d be signing up for and, crucially, exposed some public lies about what it is they believe.
Nobody is accusing the Catholic Church of doing anything wrong over this issue, although the death threats from the lunatic fringe are certainly disturbing. The only thing that the Catholic Church is being accused of is believing something that others find stupid. It’s not like they even deny believing it.
Yes, it’s just a cracker, but people think symbolically. By desecrating the symbol, you symbolically desecrate the religion. If you don’t have a good reason for doing it, you just come across as an arsehole.
The fuck? Who gives a shit? Like PZ posted — It’s a goddamned cracker! Let it go already!
Beat me to it. This is the crux of the issue. “Emotional harm” is just a euphemism for “we want to control your actions and you won’t let us.”
By being upset over it, the religion is already desecrating itself far more seriously than anything PZ could do. Besides, while we’re talking symbolically: PZ hasn’t actually done this (at the current time), so his statement is (currently) just a symbolic expression too, is it not?
And some of communion’s history with pork demonstrates that it isn’t so innocent itself.
But that just makes it worse. They’re making the symbolic into the actual.
Catholics think there’s a soul in a microscopic 50-cell blastocyst sitting in a petri dish. No evidence exists to support this claim. They value this “soul” more than the real, concrete medical research that might be done with the stem cells in the inner cell mass of the blastocyst. They think doing research on the blastocyst “kills” a “soul”, and want to impose restrictions on this research based on these beliefs. I would call this making empty symbols and abstractions more important than real life.
I know they really believe it. But that’s part of the problem. Why should their beliefs, unsupported by any evidence and based on symbolic hermeneutics, be made more important than actual, concrete life?
One of the problems the more moderate religions face when they stave off atheists by claiming their beliefs are all metaphor and symbol and abstractions is that it’s extremely difficult to justify harming a concrete human life for the sake of an abstract symbol. If they want me to believe these things are all symbols and metaphors, then they need to stop treating them like they’re more important than real life. If they want me to believe these things are genuinely real and very important to the Ruler of the Universe, then they need to produce some evidence.
This is all about pushing the frame. The more extreme PZ is, the more normal atheists who don’t engage in publicized desecration will seem.
llewelly’s theory is the most plausible I’ve seen so far. PZ is just taking one for the team.
<parody>So where are all of these so-called “moderate” atheists speaking out against this horrible extremism?</parody>
I’m a little disturbed by how people seem to be ignoring the context of PZ’s post. He didn’t just wake up one morning and think to himself, “I think I’ll mess with the Catholics today.”
I think the Catholics lost the high ground here because of their ridiculous overreaction to this whole “holding hostage” nonsense. I’d say that intentional offense is a much more reasonable response than threatening death which was how they responded to the original unintentional offense. Granted PZ’s comments aren’t winning any friends, but do we really want people who react like that as friends?
I am very unsympathetic to the Catholics at this point, because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have cared back when I was Catholic. So Webster Cook attempted to take the eucharist out of the service. It’s not even like he had any bad intentions. From what I heard, he meant to show it to a friend in order to explain Catholicism. And for this mistake, his educational standing is brought into question, and people are making death threats? Call me a softy, but I don’t care about the offended masses, I care about this one victim.
But I’ll try not to let my anger ahead of me. Just because I’m on the victim’s side doesn’t mean that PZ’s tactics are effective. I think the idea behind it is that by offending people in a certain way, they become desensitized. I don’t really see that happening here, not the way PZ is going.
Of course, we all know PZ too well to think that we have any power to stop him. That in mind, I wonder what he’ll do with the wafer. I hope he goes for humor. If I had to do it, I’d blend it in with a delicious smoothie and drink it.
A banana smoothie. And then I’d later reveal that I had used an unconsecrated wafer, just to screw with people’s minds.
Hemant wrote:
I think this is precisely the problem. Nobody is actually being harmed; it’s only their ideas (that a wafer is somehow magic and made of Jesus skin) that is being criticised. The fact that they may choose to find this offensive makes no odds as to whether this is actually harmful or not.
They find it offensive when we criticise their beliefs despite evidence, their dogma, their traditions. Why is criticising this particular belief any different from criticising a particular interpretation of Genesis or any of their other beliefs about their myths or traditions?
I can’t see how this would be helpful in the slightest.
It’s this kind of disrespect for people and their beliefs that give atheists a bad name. Well, that and Christians’ general paranoia of all they don’t understand which is still probably 99% of our “bad name.” But still, these kinds of stunts don’t help.
“Can someone score me some of PZ Myers’ $100 bills? I wouldn’t hold it hostage, I’d use it on something vile and disgusting. I’d take pictures and laugh. And if he complains, what can he do? IT’S A PIECE OF PAPER!!!”
What other kinds of childish stunts are our supposed opinion leaders going to come up with next?
Obviously. The question is “should he?”
I think this is just another case of we-know-best wrapped up in the guise “of emotional harm”.
If I went up to a church and told them their incredibly loud church bells caused me ‘emotional harm’ every Sunday, by waking me up like an alarm, I would probably have to settle the issue by…moving, or just living with it. I would probably be given the shifty eye for not rejoicing at the bells.
I would say that all claimants of the severe emotional anguish supposedly suffered by catholics, I don’t doubt it, but I seriously doubt they themselves would give the same consideration to EVERY wild-eyed claim that would cause the ones who believe it ‘emotional pain’.
This may be the thing to keep from all this.
I agree that ‘emotional pain’ is the latest buzzword for offence.
to make it all more ridiculous pz should buy some bread and wine for himself and find a lapsed priest willing to make the magic trick on them. because of other absurd dogmas, catholics will then claim property of his bread and wine, demonstrating the incompatibility of catholicism with the american constitution. who will be UNamerican then?
So, pastafarians should tear out their hair and wear sackcloth and throw themselves on the ground in front of Italian restaurants?
Look, the fact that these idiots think a silly fucking cracker is their silly fucking water-walking magical skydaddy’s golden boy is precisely WHY he should make fun of it.
Spork wrote:
Spot on.
Are there any atheist symbols that would cause atheists to get mad to the point of death threats if some Catholic “held it hostage”? That might be a good contest.
I agree, it’s just a little starch wafer. And PZ has every right to do with it what he wants. But it would have been a sophomoric stunt for attention purposes, like flag-burning, or as one commenter on his site said, like a teenager with a bible and a hammer. His gift for sharply-worded criticism would have served him and his purpose well enough and he would have made his point.
How about holding reason and critical thinking hostage?
I sure hope to see this in the next season of South Park
Absolutely it is worth it! It is a cracker and nothing more. If people want to fantasize about its spiritual significance, let them. But there is no reason why we have to play along. I’m down for respecting people - religious or otherwise, but I’m not going to respect magic crackers.
That such an act could possibly cause emotional harm helps to make the case that these people need mental health treatment. Pretending to respect their delusion is the last thing we should do.
Once the wafer leaves the church, does it stop being sacred?
I don’t know. It just seems to me that if I were setting up a ritual like this, it would only count under certain circumstances.
Nance
Maybe PZ should just eat it! After all that shows that Catholics believe in the abomination that is ritual canabalism.
Tipping cows over causes emotional distress to hindus. Carving them into burgers even more so.
I hope the UN sets the reparation fees we owe them at an acceptable level.
Is anybody going to steal a cracker for PZ? Is PZ even going to do anything with it?
On the one hand, I think we all know very well the difference between a zealot on a mission and a reasonable person that is annoyed: the former might do anything at the request of his spiritual master (hence my concern about death threats), whereas the latter will think it’d be funny, but not worth the bother.
Then, on the other hand, PZ post was quite obviously sarcastic, it seems to me. Maybe, if he had been given a catholic cracker right after writing it, he would have gone ahead, but after some time has passed and he has calmed down, does anybody really think he’ll actually bother to go through with it?
I think that merely talking about how PZ Myers got death threats for merely writing AN ARTICLE which denounced the overreaction to the initial wafer threat would be good enough.
Think about it: last year, neo-nazis targeted me for writing an article that denounced their going after columnist Leonard Pitts.
The neo nazis have turned out to be LESS of a threat to me than the friggin lunatic Catholics are to Myers!
For any rational, intelligent person to contemplate desecrating a piece of toast is absurd. It’s a pointless stunt. In itself it suggest that one actually can desecrate toast. Myers should have stuck to the facts and just condemned the zealots who went apeshit over that kid taking the toast in the first place and not made any further inflammatory threats.
Even when I was a Catholic (as a boy; after about the age of 16, I was a skeptic) the idea that taking communion as a form of ritualized cannibalism was not lost on me. It weirded me out bigtime. Catholics will say I was never really a Catholic and to that I say, you’re probably right.
Now as it’s really just a cracker (and not a very good one, it’s got a copyright on “bland”) PZ, if he ever gets ahold of one, should treat it no differently than any other cracker. Eat it. Wash it down with a cold one. But anything more than that plays into the hands of Catholic nutters who insist that it is somehow more than an edible poker chip. I have no idea what he had planned to do with it, but would he do the same to a Cheeze Nippy or a Wheat Whippy or a Corn Curly? It’s no different, so it should get no special “desecration” performed on it.
If only Catholics believed in a all powerful supernatural force that could stop this . . . Instead their god is trapped in a craker.
[...] also: Friendly Atheist and Richard [...]
I think there’s a line that’s crossed here, although i’m struggling to define exactly what it is. I mean, PZ or one of his followers really is going out of his way to desecrate a ceremony - it’s not the same as drawing a cartoon of Muhammed. And as far as Scientology goes, fuck those guys - anyone who is seriously comparing Scientology to Christianity needs to look around because there are quite a few practical differences to their methods and message.
I have friends who are Catholic who are also sane, rational, awesome people - if I were to do that i’m sure i’d lose their friendship. I would have gone so far out of their way to basically just call them stupid. It’s not arguing a point with logic or reason or any of the other things Atheists are supposed to stand for - it’s just going out of our way to insult a group of people.
Real problem - lack of seperation between church and state - the huge outcry it caused as well as the university’s reaction.
When they give you the cracker, do they make you sign a contract stating that you must eat the cracker on the church premises? If I’m at a dinner party, and the host passes out hor’dourves, I think I have every right to wrap one up in a napkin and take it home.
It’s not about it being just a “fucking cracker.” It’s about treating your fellow human beings with respect. Granted, the Catholics didn’t do that to the UCF student, but going out of your way to offend Catholics (no matter how insane you feel their beliefs are) just casts a bad light on atheists.
Desecrating the cracker would be incredibly rude and counterproductive. I’m all for art that offends, but this doesn’t rise to the level of art. It’s just a sophomoric prank.
Looking at the facts, mashing up a cracker on its own is harmless. However, there are two words which are important, meaning, and intent. A group of people apply meaning to the Eucharist. Now, for Protestants, some people may be upset by the treatment of the Eucharist, maybe not to the level as some Catholics, but without meaning applied to the cracker, what would be the point of doing it? We are just a combination of individual cells, but as social people, we assign meaning to different combination of cells around us. Now, it is a far stretch to associate your brother or sister, father or mother, to a really special cracker out of the box, but it may give an understanding as to why people may feel so upset. If your mother dies, does that not hurt you more then if someone you don’t know dies? A painting is just canvas and oil, a building is just steel and glass, but people assign irrational meaning to things. Don’t tell me you go through life without doing the same. However, you’re not sending death threats to some weirdo biology professor in some small town for spouting off what was on his mind.
The intention of the act is to incite anger, to point out how silly it is to have such reverence for a cracker, and to make those who believe such things seem foolish. However, what will happen, in addition to that, is that atheists will continue to have the stigma of being anti-religion. We should focus instead on things which are effective in making the world a better place. PZ may think that he’s accomplishing this in his own way, but I think he’s just acting silly in public, and soaking up all of the attention he can get.
Let’s not forget why Myers said he’d beat and torture the cracker. It’s not to piss of Catholics, but because several Catholics said that taking the cracker was a hate crime.
Let’s remember that a hate crime is when people are physically hurt or threatened because of their religion or sexual orientation. These idiots are trying to say that abusing this cracker is comparable to hospitalizing a teenager because he was gay. Actually Donahue said that abusing a cracker was worse.
If a couple thousand years hasn’t given them any perspective, then it’s time perspective was thrust upon them.
And frankly, we’ve seen that these religious idiots are willing to say that they are being hurt and offended whenever any trivial aspect of their wacky beliefs are exposed. We can’t let them use this as a club to beat people into silence.
Is it “friendly”? Maybe not. I watched your YouTube presentation of different “friendly” approaches and how they worked and found them very cherry picked and self-serving. I think there is a real place for friendly approaches but I think the only reason that friendly atheism works is because theists have been softened up by these much less friendly demonstrations. Note that I think Myers will be intelligent (not like that idiot Mills and his dog crap “Blasphemy Challenge” video) but he certainly won’t place any undue reverence towards a cracker.
Obviously the death threats are wrong and PZ in no way deserves them, but on the question of what PZ should have done in the first place, I think he is obviously wrong. This isn’t even a question of “effectiveness” or atheist strategy, it’s a question of how you treat fellow human beings. And, as far as I can tell, all he’s doing here is trying to upset a bunch of Catholics. He didn’t even give any reasons for wanting to desecrate the crackers in his original post. He seems to be doing it just for his own joy in pissing off Catholics. And that is wrong.
No, you contemptible moron, they’re not. Do you have any reading comprehension whatsoever? They’re not breaking down the doors of the cathedral, pissing on the altar, and setting the building on fire while nailing the pedo-priest upside down on the crucifix.
They’re just going to have a cracker handed to them, and then leave with it.
I really can’t believe you’re so dim-witted you can’t figure this one out. For me, the biggest thing of this is the death threats by Catholics. I mean, come on. This is the real issue; Catholics starting witch-hunts over a kid who wanted to teach a friend about Catholicism. Well, he got a more honest view of the church because of it, at any rate.
As for PZ, he’s already said he won’t eat it - imagine eating something a stranger sent to you over the internet! There have been suggestions of sculpting a Bread-Golem Jesus from the eucharist, though. Personally, I hope they spackle the Jesus Crumbs over an animatronic framework so we can have ourselves a walking, talking JesusBot.
I say go for it. I’m of the opinion that we ought to be respectful of people’s beliefs, but under no circumstances does that me we ought to pretend they’re real, rational or useful in any sense–an certainly not equal to beliefs and ideas which are. It’s not a fine line, guys.
However, when something so petty elicits such a violent response, respect should stop immediately. At that point, a line has been crossed on the part of the irrational and the absurdity of their beliefs ought to be exposed to the rest of the world, period.
I’m seriously beginning to think that PZ has some sort of emotional problem(s), or had some sort of emotional trauma as a kid. Why is so he so literally obsessed with being a jackass? And he’s REALLY giving atheists a bad name. I hate guys like that.
I wonder if PZ realizes that this will have the opposite effect that he wants. No one’s going to say, “Hmm…atheism seems pretty rational. I should check it out.”
DUMBASS. Go out and do something productive for the world. For *ONCE*.
I now understand how wars get started. PZ doing that would just keep things on a downward spiral. For PZ to do that someone would need to go into a Catholic church and totally disrespect the rules set up for their church.
It’s like me inviting in a guest and them spitting in my face. It’s wrong. It’s stupid. I don’t know which would be more stupid, the Catholic reaction to “wafergate” or PZ pulling that stunt.
I think religion is stupid. However as a brilliant philosopher once said, “stupid is as stupid does.”
I, for one, enjoy science posts on PZ’s blog, because it is on scienceblogs.com. Even if the content were 50/50, that would be an improvement to me. Try to do an analysis of a month of posts and see how many are about science versus rants.
You know, PZ is frequently silly. A lot of his writing isn’t just witty or sarcastic, but silly. (See the recent octopus with rubics cube post.) And this “frackin’ cracker” thing is both silly and angry. I wonder if some of that anger came from the fact that the catholic league (makes them sound like some demented Marvel comic) was originally targeting a student and his chance for an education. In any event, I admit that this “descration” thing did bother me, not least of all because the idea of “desecration” implies sacredness. However, he does seem to have drawn fire, and he is in a more unassailable position than that poor kid.
Ok I can buy wafer’s from any number of catholic church supply stores. They are really pretty cheap. They have the cross stamp or lamb stamp on them. You can buy 100 for less than $6. They are the same ones that are used on catholic churches all over. If I send a couple to PZ and does unspeakable things with them so what? I know they are not “consecrated” but no else would or could know. I think PZ went a bit over the top but BFD.
I think a better thing would to do a blind taste test. Challenge a bishop or any catholic to tell the difference between a common wafer and a consecrated one. I bet they would do no better than chance. in fact I would be willing to wager $10,000 that the pope himself could not tell the difference. And yes I have $10k.
I don’t think you understand the situation.
No one was hurt, no one was slapped, no one was punched or kicked, and no one was even spit on. Got it? It isn’t like inviting a guest in and having them spit in your face. Not at all.
Second, the catholic reaction wasn’t just a little over the top, it was issuing death threats, it was alleging kidnapping, it was saying that this ‘crime’ was worse than physical beatings, holocaust denial or Neo-nazi speeches (yes, they said it was worse than any hate speech).
Now that you understand the facts, perhaps you can build a better analogy because yours stinks and it looks like you don’t understand the basic facts in the case.
This is assuming that PZ is serious and not just tweaking the noses of Donahue and other windbags. But let’s say he really did it. How would this be a downward spiral? It would get considerable media exposure and give many opportunities for Catholics to make asses of themselves. Surely it wouldn’t be worse than some art exhibits we’ve seen like religious icons made out of dung. They didn’t create downward spirals or anything, so why the hyperbole about this?
I think the threat to commit cracker abuse is more than sufficient. Seeing as simply threatening to do it has brought PZ death threats and raised a serious (if improbable) threat to his job, he’s more than accomplished his purpose without actually doing something bad to the innocent wafer.
It’s annoying indeed to see American Catholics — normally a fairly moderate bunch — behave like the Taliban. But flushing out that kind of behavior is what the threat was all about. Actually going through with the act is irrelevant at this point.
So, the people who claim to be thesource of all that is moral and threaten somebody with death over a bloody cracker and people think that what PZ proposed to do is bad? Are you people insane?
Sure it would ruffle some feathers and piss a lot of people off, but do they understand anything less?
I read that the guy actually gave the cracker back. That is a bummer. He should have said that he ate it and gave them a ziplock full of poo. Let them find Jesus in that.
Notice that PZ has not done anything to a chunk of HolyMatzah, not that we know of. He merely wrote that he’d like to.
The kid in the original story didn’t do anything horrendous to the HolyMatzah either, he just left the building with it.
Now the kid is under threat of expulsion, has been accused of hate crimes, and PZ’s livelihood is being attacked.
Just WHAT the FUCK is respectable about any of that?
For that matter, where was Bill Donahue when Cardinal Law was being lateraled out of the jurisdiction of proper authorities so that he would not have to answer for his role in the conspiracy to obstruct justice on grown men who raped ten-year-old boys. Because, after all, when you have HolyFuckingMatzah to defend you don’t have time for such trivialities.
As Thomas Jefferson said, ‘Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions’. I don’t give a shit how sacred the friggin cracker is to Catholics, this NEEDS to be done to show the whole world how stupid and ridiculous they are being. What do they REALLY think is going to happen should PZ do this? Jesus is somehow going to be ‘hurt’ by it? If that’s the case, he’s not so all-powerful now, is he?
Maybe atheists should steal enough crackers to make a life-size Jesus and we hang him back up on a cross. That should really tick em off.
Adrian is an atheist piece of shit.
See, now that wasn’t very nice. I don’t even mean it and am using it as a rhetorical device.
The point is that ritual abuse of a communion wafer, while moderately funny, it like hurling an insult that doesn’t need to be hurled.
Got it, Adrian?
Ron,
It doesn’t need to be hurled? Because this insult was hurled, we see that Catholics who are seen as among the most liberal and secular of the religious groups in the US will nevertheless issue death threats to protect some bizarre superstitions. We see that they consider human health is less important than a magical cracker. We see that their much vaunted claims of caring, respect and love get dropped in a heartbeat once their magic is questioned.
It has also helped expose the rank hypocrisy in their sect. We’ve seen them go ballistic over a cracker yet ignore genuine human harm, we’ve seen them automatically excommunicate individuals that condone gay marriage or women priests while embracing child abusers.
I’d say the insult was a very mild one that paid out some big dividends.
Got it, Ron?
I find the idea of cannibalism extraordinarily distasteful. What about the psychological harm done to me, knowing this group of people is willing to ritualistically eat human flesh. Yuck.
I’ve been torn on this since I read PZ’s initial post.
From a purely scientific point of view, I’m fascinated by the reactions it’s garnered among atheists, including my own psychological machinations on the matter. That it will offend kooks like Bill Donohue is a given and doesn’t really concern me. Some people are just professional “offendees”, if that’s a word.
But I’m actually curious to see how my moderately Catholic family and friends will react. I’m curious if they’ll even hear about it, and if so, how the news reaches them. I’m wondering if it will make them think, get angry, change their minds, etc.
It’s very provocative. And from that standpoint, while I would not desecrate the crackers (cracksecrate?), I fully support PZ’s right to do so under the right of free expression.
And as an aside, who cares how this “makes atheists look”? If people choose to stereotype me based on their failed understanding of one atheist’s actions, that’s their problem, not mine.
Adrian
Perhaps you’re right I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why absurdity should be repaid with absurdity. Don’t you honestly think that any non-Catholic would view death threats over a cracker as hypocrisy? I’d venture to guess that a bunch of practicing Catholics would probably see it as absurd.
I’m all for pointing out absurdity and hypocrisy. However intentionally disabusing someone or their beliefs just doesn’t need to be done. It was enough for PZ just to point it out the death threats against the UCF student.
I believe in treating people with dignity. Even if I find them stupid, dumb or criminal. I guess I’m just simple and follow the old maxim that two wrongs don’t make a right.
So maybe you’re right, I don’t get it.
Yeah, go be a science teacher or something…..
Oh wait.
Youtubers take:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gL8h4fhGj78
Just so people understand - PZ is not advocating going down to the local Christian superstore and buying communion wafers to make his statement. He is talking about someone going into a Catholic church (i.e. their property) falsely going up for communion (the only way to get your hands on a consecrated wafer) and taking their wafer. (Granted not exactly grand theft, but still a taking of their property under false pretenses.)
Sorry folks. I’m calling BS on this one. It’s wrong, it’s stupid. It’s abusive.
Ron,
Ah well, there you have me. I personally wouldn’t do this, I agree in principle that people should be treated with dignity, and I support the work of the “friendly” atheists who probably oppose this sort of stunt. But I think it’s vital to the strength of the atheist movement that there are people like PZ as they expose the ridiculous and, oddly enough, they make ordinary run-of-the-mill atheists seem mild and meek in comparison. (In a twist of irony, PZ is meek and mild in person.) Sort of the Rush Limbaugh effect, except by all accounts Limbaugh really is a jerk and has never heard of a principled stand.
The other factor which I find very dangerous is the implicit threat that whenever anyone exposes a religion to the mildest of criticism then theists fly off the handle and scream bloody murder. It’s an overt attempt to silence any form of criticism and to stifle free dialogue. If we hold ourselves hostage to the hysterical complaints by these Catholic leaders, we have no hope of talking in an open fashion. I fully support respectful dialogue, but when one side adamantly refuses as the Catholics are doing here, then we have two choices: give in to their pressure or show we won’t be intimidated. Maybe it’s stubbornness or bloodymindedness, but when they go so far over the top, I think that’s exactly the time to keep up the pressure.
If, instead, they said “we think it’s childish and disrespectful for you to take interfere with our ceremonies and we would like you to return the wafer,” I would wholeheartedly support them. Since they said “what you did is a hate crime” and was followed by death threats forcing an armed guard, they’ve crossed the line from being an injured party to a bully.
bjorn wrote:
Actually someone did that. Turns out PZ out sciences everyone else. Can anyone find me that article?
It turned out that PZ wrote more science articles a week than anyone else on ScienceBlogs, IIRC.
Is it worth it…?
When they cause emotional harm to a student for “kidnapping” a damn cracker, we have to take a stand against the religious stupidity one way or another. Desecrating crackers are just one way - maybe not necessarily the best way - of taking a stand.
I agree with Adrian. Proportionality and perspective are totally missing here in the case of this kid. PZ, being PZ, he wants to stick up for this kid by calling attention to how ridiculous it is.
Let’s note that as of this moment, PZ Myers has not desecrated wafer-one.
I actually think he SHOULDN’T do it, at this point.
Because right now, PZ is getting death threats and an organized campaign to have him fired, led by The Catholic League… merely for WRITING A BLOG POST disrespecting the Eucharist.
Let that puppy sink in, and we can talk about proportionality and free exchange of ideas in a society of supposed equals. It’s not about “respect”, it’s about quashing dissent. Offensive dissent, yes.
I was in a discussion where a very nice theology student told me that a billion Catholics would be offended if PZ did this. I wish I would have said “Yeah, and a billion Hindus and other people who find animal life sacred are offended when you eat a hamburger. “
Well, well, well. It’s good to see that, after fighting racial opression and slavery in the form of some guy saying “negro”, now there are so many people up in arms to protect the freedom, integrity and happiness rights of a bunch of kooks who revere a piece of bread. America trully is a great country!
As several posts have pointed out before me, “what is the point?” Does PZ really need to show the Catholic church that he disagrees with their beliefs by abusing a cracker. If I had a nickel for every time PZ denigrated one religion or another, I would be a rich man. We get it PZ, you don’t care for religion. Good for you. I fail to see the usefulness in intentionally showing disrespect for anybody, religious or not, because you disagree with his/her beliefs. I get the definite impression that some people believe that PZ Myers speaks for all atheists. PZ Myers does not speak for me.
Ron, Adrian is not an atheist piece of shit, but he can act like a shit, can’t he?
I see from the comments that there are a lot of militant atheists out there. Why is it difficult for some of you to dismiss silly beliefs without making metaphysical assertions about what Catholic communion is or is not? You may think it’s a “fucking cracker,” but that’s no reason to be a dick about it.
Perhaps some of you ought to imagine yourselves as diplomats, working for the State Dept., and your mission is to Ireland, or to Saudi Arabia, or to India. How would you behave? Would you look for ways to be obnoxious and offensive? Do you think that’s going to help our situation, by insulting people?
[...] Atheist has a post on Wafergate (is it really necessary to name all “scandals” with the -gate term?) asking whether [...]
Cracker Please!
It MUST be done. We’re talking about death threats and a campaign to have the man fired. For suggesting it might be funny to do silly things to a Cracker of Holiness on his blog.
Someone might actually find him and put a real bullet in his head.
I’m astonished that anyone could take a “middle ground” here. We should flood the diocese with desecrated crackers of all shapes and sizes. To them it would be the CrackPocalypse. I kill myself sometimes!
It is a mystery to me that the people who are attacking PZ cannot see that he is simply responding to far more ludicrous statements by the Catholic League and its friends. We have people, who apparently expect to be taken completely seriously, talking about “kidnapping”, “worse than hate speech”, “it’s hard to think of anything more vile”, etc. Why should not they be called to account? Should reasonable people really have to take such nonsense and even bullying lying down?
If someone was advocating disrupting church services I would be against it. In this case I thought PZ was making a rhetorical statement, but even if he wasn’t I’d support him on this. Why? Because such a stunt would be a finely targeted. No person is being abused - only a bit of carbohydrate. Reasonable Catholics will shrug it off. Deluded fanatics will be enraged. Hopefully this would wake up some of the more reasonable Catholics to the fact that the deluded fanatics are indeed just that.
Let’s say a woman’s husband dies. Let’s also say that a day before her husband died, he bought a cheap fake rose when they were in the dollar store and gave it to her. Let’s also say that because of his death, the cheap fake rose (being the last thing he gave to her) has a very special meaning to her now. Let’s also suppose that she has an asshole of a neighbor (who knows how much that cheap fake rose means to her) threatens to steal it and step on it, pull it apart, etc. in front of her. Let’s also say that this neighbor defends this threat by saying “It’s just a cheap fake rose, it’s not like we’re dealing with actual people here.”
I hope you would all agree that the neighbor shouldn’t receive death threats from this and also shouldn’t be fired from his job over this. But I also hope you would all agree that the neighbor is one huge asshole, whose moral compass is pointing in the wrong direction.
It is a mystery to me that the people who are attacking PZ cannot see that he is simply responding to far more ludicrous statements by the Catholic League and its friends. We have people, who apparently expect to be taken completely seriously, talking about “kidnapping”, “worse than hate speech”, “it’s hard to think of anything more vile”, etc. People who want to end a student’s career for a minor prank. People who want to end a professor’s career for criticising them. Why should not they be called to account? Should reasonable people really have to take such nonsense and even bullying lying down?
If someone was advocating disrupting church services I would be against it. In this case I thought PZ was making a rhetorical statement, but even if he wasn’t I’d support him on this. Why? Because such a stunt would be finely targeted. No person is being abused - only a bit of carbohydrate. Reasonable Catholics will shrug it off. Deluded fanatics will be enraged. Hopefully this would wake up some of the more reasonable Catholics to the fact that the deluded fanatics are indeed just that.
Brad: let’s say you come up with an analogy that actually bears some relationship to the case under discussion. Or is that too far-fetched to expect? Can you really not see the difference?
Let me spell it out: in one case a valued object is destroyed. In the other case, objects are given out by the millions for the purposes of destruction, and one such object is not destroyed. Your analogy is about 179 degrees off-target.
Stephen
Brad’s analogy really isn’t a bad one. From an atheist perspective it’s all about silly, stupid belief about a cracker. However for the Catholic faithful, it is like Brad describes. I’d say if anything his analogy is possibly not strong enough.
Joe Foley… cut a bit.
Hemant… highlighted in bold.
IT’S A CRACKER! As a wise many once said, “we don’t have to respect religious beliefs”. If that is what Foley is advocating, that we respect religious people not beliefs, how come a large proportion of his words are about what Catholics believe? We don’t have to give any time to their beliefs. It’s just a cracker.
Hemant…
It’s a dangerous game, they don’t collectively have emotional distress, it’s a personal subjective experience. Religion already plays that card to the extreme, and this stunt seems to be in response to the religious overplaying it. A freaking hate crime, to a cracker?
Political activism involves breaking rules on purpose because they are wrong, not because of need or desire, but because they’re wrong. It’s a reponse to the Catholic reaction that PZ read about, it’s not like PZ woke up and thought “I know how to piss off some Catholics”. People don’t seem to get this is a response to something, not an unprovoked childish stunt designed to hurt people. It’s free expression of PZ’s disgust at the Catholic response.
We may not want to do what PZ suggests, we may not even understand it either, but if we are to respect people, then we should respect PZ, respect his right to express himself. The people who are coming down on him hard miss the dogmatism and authoritarianism of religion too much. Look at their hypocrisy, they come down hard on atheists about respecting other people’s beliefs, but they don’t expect the religious to respect anything, and they certainly don’t respect what other atheists value.
Eating meat causes great emotional distress to some vegetarians, but we don’t give a thought to that, nor should we. This is just another case of atheists special pleading for religion, when they already do enough of that for themselves.
“Destruction” has little, if anything, to do with the analogy. The analogy is about respecting people that put meaning in otherwise meaningless things. The point is, no matter how much we might not understand the meaning behind it, there is meaning there for them. PZ is wrong… it is NOT just a cracker to them. The fact that otherwise rational people can’t see this baffles me to no end.
PZ responids:
Myers, in an interview today, explained that the blog entry is more “satire and protest” than an actual threat to defile the Eucharist.