PZ Myers has gone and gotten himself embroiled in another one of those imbroglios. For those of you who don’t trouble to read any other blogs, the story began with the report of a student in Florida who smuggled a Communion wafer — the Body of Christ, to Catholics — out of Mass. This led to something of an overreaction on the part of some local believers, who referred to the stunt as a “hate crime,” and the student even received death threats. (You remember the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says “Blessed are those who exterminate those who insult Me,” right?)
PZ was roused to indignation by the incident, and wrote a provocative post in which he volunteered to do grievous harm to Communion wafers, if he could just get his hands on any.
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.
But the thing that took the whole mess to another level was the intervention of Bill Donohue, whose Catholic League represents the very most lunatic fringe of the Church. Donohue, who specializes in being outraged, contacted the administration at the University of Minnesota, as well as the state legislature. Later deciding that this level of dudgeon wasn’t quite high enough, Donohue soon after upped the ante, prompting a delegate to the Republican National Convention to demand additional security, as the delegates felt physically threatened by PZ and his assembled hordes. (The Republican convention will be held in the Twin Cities, about 150 miles away from PZ’s university in Morris, Minnesota.)
There is a lot of craziness here. People are sending death threats and attacking someone’s employment because of hypothetical (not even actual) violence to a wafer. Even for someone who is a literal believer in transubstantiation, threatening violence against someone who mocks your beliefs doesn’t seem like a very Christian attitude. Donohue and his friends are acting like buffoons, giving free ammunition to people who think that all religious believers are nutjobs. But it gets him on TV, so he’s unlikely to desist.
However.
We should hold our friends to a much higher standards than we hold our adversaries. There is no way in which PZ is comparable to the folks sending him death threats. I completely agree with him on the substantive question — it’s just a cracker. It doesn’t turn into anyone’s body, and there’s nothing different about a “consecrated” wafer than an unconsecrated one — the laws of physics have something to say about that.
But I thought his original post was severely misguided. It’s not a matter of freedom of speech — PZ has every right to post whatever opinions he wants on his blog, and I admire him immensely for his passionate advocacy for the cause of godlessness. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. And there’s a huge difference between arguing passionately that God doesn’t exist, and taking joy in doing things that disturb religious people.
Let me explain this position by way of a parable, which I understand is the preferred device in these situations. Alice and Bob have been friends for a long time. Several years ago, Alice gave birth to a son, who was unfortunately critically ill from the start; after being in intensive care for a few months, he ultimately passed away. Alice’s most prized possession is a tiny baby rattle, which was her son’s only toy for the short time he was alive.
Bob, however, happens to be an expert on rattles. (A childhood hobby — let’s not dig into that.) And he knows for a fact that this rattle can’t be the one that Alice’s son had — this particular model wasn’t even produced until two years after the baby was born. Who knows what mistake happened, but Bob is completely certain that Alice is factually incorrect about the provenance of this rattle.
And Bob, being devoted to the truth above all other things, tries his best to convince Alice that she is mistaken about the rattle. But she won’t be swayed; to her, the rattle is a sentimental token of her attachment to her son, and it means the world to her. Frankly, she is being completely irrational about this.
So, striking a brave blow for truth, Bob steals the rattle when Alice isn’t looking. And then he smashes it into many little pieces, and flushes them all down the toilet.
Surprisingly to Bob, Alice is not impressed with this gesture. Neither, in fact, are many of his friends among the rattle-collecting cognoscenti; rather than appreciating his respect for the truth, they seem to think he was just being “an asshole.”
I think there is some similarity here. It’s an unfortunate feature of a certain strand of contemporary atheism that it doesn’t treat religious believers as fellow humans with whom we disagree, but as tards who function primarily as objects of ridicule. And ridicule has its place. But sometimes it’s gratuitous. Sure, there are stupid/crazy religious people; there are also stupid/crazy atheists, and black people, and white people, and gays, and straights, and Republicans, and Democrats, and Sixers fans, and Celtics fans, and so on. Focusing on stupidest among those with whom you disagree is a sign of weakness, not of strength.
It seems to me that the default stance of a proud secular humanist should be to respect other people as human beings, even if we definitively and unambiguously think they are wrong. There will always be a lunatic fringe (and it may be a big one) that is impervious to reason, and there some good old-fashioned mockery is perfectly called for. But I don’t see the point in going out of one’s way to insult and offend wide swaths of people for no particular purpose, and to do so joyfully and with laughter in your heart. (Apparently the litmus test for integrity vs. hypocrisy on this issue is how you felt about the Mohammed cartoons published in a Danish newspaper a couple of years ago; so you can read my take on that here, and scour the text for inconsistencies.)
Actually, I do see the point in the gratuitous insults, I just don’t like it. Like any other controversial stance, belief in God or not divides people into camps. And once the camps are formed, the temptations of tribalism are difficult to resist. We are smart and courageous and wise; the people who disagree with us are stupid and cowardly and irrational. And it’s easy enough to find plenty of examples of every combination, on any particular side. There is nothing more satisfying than getting together and patting ourselves on the back for how wonderful we are, and snorting with derision at the shambling oafishness of that other tribe over there.
My hope is that humanists can not only patiently explain why God and any accompanying metaphysical superstructure is unnecessary and unsupported by the facts, but also provide compelling role models for living a life of reason, which includes the capacity for respectful disagreement.
I say all this with a certain amount of care, as there is nothing more annoying than people who think that professions of atheism or careful arguments against the existence of God are automatically offensive. Respectful dialogue cuts both ways; people should be able to explain why they don’t believe in the supernatural or why they believe. Even if both atheists and believers are susceptible to the temptations of tribalism, that doesn’t make them equivalent; the atheists have the advantage of being right on the substance. Richard Dawkins and his friends have done a great service to our modern discourse, by letting atheism get a foot in the door of respectable stances that one has to admit are held by a nontrivial fraction of people — even if they stepped on a few toes to do it. But stepping on toes should be a means to an end; it shouldn’t be an end in itself.
Well said. Worth the read.
“I’m not for anybody who tells me to turn the other cheek when a cracker is busting up my jaw.”
Malcolm X (1964)
Had to add that!
Good post.
Sean,
An interesting point of view, but your analogy is wholly misleading. The rattle, a unique object to this woman, neither plays the same role nor has the same significance, as a wafer that is mass produced, freely given away, digested and excreted.
Whilst I would not dare speak for PZ, I feel sure that he would never advocate the destruction or defacement of the Shroud of Turin for example.
Secondly, I cannot see how a wafer, even if it is believed to be the body of Christ (making those who consume it some form of cannibal if they are correct), can have the same emotional relevance as a unique object such as a rattle, even if it isn’t the actual one used by the baby. If the wafer were that significant, then Catholics would hoard them, not eat them and excrete them.
A good attempt, but unconvincing.
Adrian
Amen.
Donohue will be safe - there is no way PZ can afford to drive the 150 miles to the twin cities on a faculty salary…
Good post. The problem of the lunatic fringe is that their voice is amplified by overrepresentation on the internet.
I am tempted to just say that people who “specialize in being outraged” like PZ and Bill deserve each other, but unfortunately these people end up representing others who are good at not being outraged.
I’m not sure I agree that good old fashioned mockery and toe-stepping are sometimes in order. You’ve given me something to think about.
I like the rattle story. Adrian doesn’t like it, but I think that if you appreciate the value of symbols — not empty symbols, but symbols carrying the meaning of that which they represent — then this story is a good analogy. My attempt (slightly different angle, and also flawed, but anyway):
For me nationalism is mostly silly, and sometimes even dangerous, leading to things like war. National flags are symbols of nations, and nationalists therefore see them as containing the essence of what they hold precious. I can see why they would get upset if someone burned their flag, or even dropped it on the ground. Because I don’t share their sense of value of the nation, I have nothing much against burning flags per se. In this case I think it’s obvious why I might consider (in some extreme case) to burn the flag of my own country, but also why it’s very unwise to burn the flag of another country — especially if nationalism is considered to be a major virtue over there.
Adrian,
The point (as I’m putting words in Sean’s mouth) of the rattle story is the power of perception. The emotional attachment to the rattle by both the woman and those around her is driven by their perception that it was the boy’s rattle.
Independent of the cracker’s manufacturing process, to those involved with that communion it’s very significant. The emotional attachment they have to that cracker is akin to that of the woman and the rattle, which consequently was also mass produced.
If you happen to be a horse lover, despite the fact there are hundreds of thousands of horses in the world, you would probably be offended if I made a documentary with laughter in my heart of my horse’s trek to the glue factory.
Lucky for the horses of the world I don’t own any.
~RZ
“It’s an unfortunate feature of a certain strand of contemporary atheism that it doesn’t treat religious believers as fellow humans with whom we disagree, but as tards who function primarily as objects of ridicule.”
exactly!
good parable too. but as i’ve argued on my blog and elsewhere, any rational person would know that a consecrated wafer is not just “a cracker” (at least to billions of Catholics around the world). no need for elaborate parables, just consider our treatment of flags as national symbols. threaten to desecrate a flag in public and you’d get similar responses from religious/patriotic/nationalistic nuts, as well as more matured and sane people.
thanks for this excellent post.
~C
I didn’t read all the replies, so I apologize if something similar was already posted but… my thoughts below to which I conveyed to a friend in the discussion of this post…
“interesting post, but i don’t think the analogy fits… the ‘respect’ that that woman deserves in reference to the loss of her son (as the parable suggests) is different than ‘respect’ a religion deserves because of a belief in an imaginary entity… see, her son was REAL… and his DEATH was REAL…”
anyway, love the blog, just my 2 cents
I agree with the thrust of the post, and disagree with Adrian. I came up with a similar parable which I think reinforces your point.
Imagine Alice goes to the cemetary and sees men digging up graves to look for valuables. The bodies they’re disturbing are dead, and so the corpses don’t care. There’s millions of graves around the world, so the robbers aren’t destroying anything of rarity or intrinsic value. The robbers don’t want to be detected so they replace everything as it was found, minus the valuables. And finally, if Alice doesn’t tell anyone then the families of the dead will never miss whatever was taken.
Is Alice justified in being offended nonetheless? I think so. For PZ to do something like insult Alice and say “Hey, send more bodies to me and I’ll dress them up in party hats” is not very nice.
It does remind me a bit of junior high when some of the bullies used to bait the tards riding the bus on the way to school. I suspect there is more than a bit of cruelty motivating them in this instance: Watch the tards get all worked up when we steal their crackers!
(A different Adrian
)
I too find the analogy very misleading.
Cook originally took a wafer which was special only by virtue of having a magical incantation. There are millions of other crackers identical to it, and he only took what was given to him. The rattle is unique, it wasn’t given away and it was smashed not returned (as the cracker was).
Further, PZ only steps in after the big emotional upset. If we take your analogy and instead of thinking Bob was being an “asshole”, Alice and her friends issued death threats, said his act was worse than a hate crime, compared him to a kidnapper and then launched a campaign to harass him at school. Thinking Bob was an asshole would be minor, the incident would be forgotten, everything would be fine. PZ only enters the picture after the armed guards had to get involved. His crime is to say “you think rattles are nice, if someone can score me a rattle, I’d smash it on television!”
Yeah, it’s nice to get an analogy that tries to share the emotional depth the Catholics may feel, but it’s so far off as to be deceitful, in my humble opinion. The fact that we can’t think of any analogy which would have both the sheer triviality of the offence yet provoke the insane response reinforces the need to expose this sort of lunacy.
OMG! What’s wrong with CV and it’s readers today? Most of you seem to be agreeing with the post??? Whats wrong with you all?
Correct me if I am wrong, but by extension of this post, the cartoonists who drew comics of the Prophet Mohammad were wrong. The Prophet is the Muslim rattle after all. Creationism is the Christian rattle after all. In fact if I apply the humanist principle outlined here in it’s ridiculous extreme, then belief in God is the real baby rattle of the majority of the religious folks. So, are we now suddenly not supposed to not question religion now?
Come on, Sean! Pardon me, but I have been around here for quite some time and I find this rather shallow and unexpected coming from you. Creating emotionally charged Bob and Alice analogies doesn’t change the fact that the core issue here is whether we should or should not challenge stuff that is considered sacred. Is this really your position on that issue?
It seems to me that the default stance of a proud secular humanist should be to respect other people as human beings, even if we definitively and unambiguously think they are wrong.
I disagree.
First and foremost, I don’t think anyone deserves intellectual respect as a human being. Belonging to the same biological species I belong to, automagically does not demand intellectual respect.
Intellectual respect is something that you actually have to deserve. And religious people actively pursuit beliefs that make impossible for me to intellectually respect them.
It’s not they are wrong in the conclusions, the problem. The problem is that they are blatantly, utterly wrong in the methods (or lack thereof) they arrive to the conclusion. They simply stop thinking and give up to faith. That’s something I simply cannot even begin to think to respect.
And there is no thing like a “religious nut”, because all religious people are basically nuts in the same sense: they found their metaphyisical conceptions and daily life on completely unproven (or even positively disproven) supernatural claims. The “nuts” just display more integrity to their beliefs, at least.
Sean,
I think your parable misses the mark somewhat. It seems less like the poor woman is attached to her single rattle which someone desecrates, than that she’s insisting in very heated and aggressive terms that everyone treat every rattle of this same mass-produced and widely-available brand with the same reverence she shows her own.
Matt,
I don’t think Alice in your example would be justified in taking offense. The ghouls would just be recycling a valuable resource. Why should we treat dead bodies with reverence? Tradition, because for religious and historical reasons it’s the norm in our society? That’s not a good reason at all.
Sean, the original story is often extremely distorted. The student did not “smuggle” a communion wafer out of mass. He’s a Catholic. He received communion in the hand and took it back to his seat to show a non-Catholic friend who was curious about it. The student claims he was then going to consume it. However, some of his fellow Catholics saw that he still had the wafer and physically attacked him. The student didn’t so much smuggle the wafer out as he ran with it, one step ahead of the people who were pummeling him. It all went severely downhill from there.
As for PZ’s over-the-top satire: He is, unfortunately, no Jonathan Swift. A more carefully written diatribe (although one seldom thinks of “diatribes” as carefully written) might have been more obvious to those who thought PZ was actually planning a three-ring communion wafer desecrationthon. Both the student in the original incident and PZ have now received multiple death threats from ostensible Christians. Some people take their religion too seriously — except for its tenets of peace and forgiveness.
[Link]
I think the rattle analogy doesn’t quite apply here. In that example, you are talking about stealing and destroying a one-of-a-kind object that cannot be replaced.
The crackers are not behind glass. No one is going to steal anything, they are given freely by the priests. Granted, the priest expects you to eat the cracker, but I don’t think that not doing so amounts to thievery.
Moreover, the cracker itself means nothing - they’re mass produced in factories. It’s not comparable to a sacred icon (like the rattle). It’s the desecration of the ritual, not the object, that is the cause of outrage.
You can still argue that it’s unnecessarily cruel for PZ to advocate taking crackers, but it’s not at all the same as covertly stealing and destroying a valuable object.
This was really well written, and you made excellent points. I’ve been thinking about posting on this issue, but I’m sure I have anything to add.
I really PZ. I read his weblog before he became an atheist superstar. We’re fellow cephalopod lovers. He doesn’t death threats, or that idiot Donahue. Neither does the student who wanted to smuggle out the cracker, though I think the old saw on sides to a story applies here: there’s the student’s side, there’s the church’s side, and there’s the truth.
Returning to PZ, sometimes he reminds me of the extremists in the religions, including the Catholic league. As you wrote, every “category” of person has extremist representatives, and unfortunately, PZ is an extremist among the atheists. He’d probably agree with me for saying this.
What’s sad to me, though, is he doesn’t seem to respect when a fellow atheist disagrees with him on these issues.
Excuse me, “I really _like_ PZ” and “He doesn’t deserve death”
Sorry
PZ is the Howard Stern of science, although I don’t see all that much science in most of what he does - it’s all about religion. He has done, and will continue to do, outrageous things to get more attention and further his career and influence (which seems to be what many science bloggers actually are after - if you don’t write papers, write blog posts). You’re helping him by paying attention. The question though, is whether or not all this noise helps to fight religious extremism, and more importantly, advance science in the public eye.
Well said, Sean. (As always.)
Well, I’ll agree that Donahue is a tool, and that people are making a big deal out of it. But I feel that P.Z. Meyers is in the wrong for an entirely different reason than discussed here. Whether we agree or disagree with the rationale behind ritual, it is still an important aspect of community whether it be as informal as drinking beer and watching the game, or as formal as legal due process. Soliciting people to disrupt a Catholic communion doesn’t strike me as that much different from soliciting people to disrupt a same-sex marriage or the funeral of a gay man.
Aloysius: The value of ritual and symbols have very little to do with the underlying value of the physical things used by them, and a lot to do with the values of share community that create those symbols.
Sean,
I find myself in general agreement with you.
However, I will say that the woman in your parable is a thoroughly sympathetic victim. There is no equivalent in the reality that is the cracker story. Not Donahue and not the crazed Jesus-freaks who threatened (and apparently beat!) the young man and are now after PZ’s blood. Nobody.
The problem is, what it has to be fought is not religious extremism.
It is religion itself.
If you believe that the Bible (or Quran, or whatever) is the Word of God, the only logical consequence of that -given the kind of god therein described- is to follow that book literally and ruthlessly. Religious extremists are actually the most logical and self-coherent religion followers.
Until religion won’t be eradicated, religious extremists will unavoidably sprout.
And even if you don’t buy that view, even religious moderates can be harmful. Here in Italy, our legislation on civil issues like same-sex convivence, euthanasia and stem cell research is pushed blatantly back by the influence of secular (non-ordained) politicians that nonetheless follow the Church teachings on the subjects. This happens in both the mainstream right-wing and left-wing coalitions. These are not extremists -there are peaceful, polite people that would never threat anyone and sometimes are not even strictly religious. Nonetheless, they actually keep dying, conscient people agonize in their beds because they refuse to make euthanasia legal due to a Christian view of “life rights”, for example.
I agree that post #13 is a much closer analogy to the events as they happened.
I disagree entirely Sean’s construal of this. There is indeed no redeeming value to the paragraph of text quoted from Myers’ blog post. If that paragraph existed in a vacuum it would truly be an ugly, juvenile display of contempt for ones fellows.
Context matters though. Here that context is calls from the Catholic League for the expulsion of a student for not eating his wafer, and mad claims that the student committed a hate crime and that his actions amount to kidnapping. The boy’s even received death threats.
There is indeed a need to be sensitive and courteous. There is also a time to stand up in solidarity: I don’t share Myers’ apparent revulsion / hatred for religious symbols, but this isn’t the time for THAT debate. This is the time to say ‘I refuse to discuss religious tolerance with a thug and a bully like Donahue.’
*I* am irritated enough by the behavior of Donahue’s thugs that I’m half tempted to buy a wafer on ebay, masticate it thoroughly then mail the results to Mr Donahue. He has no bloody business demanding a student’s expulsion for trivialities like these.
Once moderate Catholics have taken up the cry to marginalize the Catholic League on this matter I’ll gladly join them in criticizing PZ Myers for his occasional boorishness on matters religious.
What makes this whole episode farcical, BTW, is that there is no substantive evidence from Cook that he ever received death threats in the first place. Despite the hype of the headlines PZ linked to, and the Fox anchorwoman leading with Cook ‘fearing’ for his life, we don’t have any evidence he was threatened with death. We have one student who threatened to break into his apartment and steal the wafer back.
I have gleaned from some other Catholic blogs that Cook is well known on campus for opposing the support of the Campus Ministries on the university grounds, so I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest this whole thing was a stunt from the get-go to make his point. If he ever really wanted to simply show a host to a non-Catholic, one wonders why, for example, it didn’t occur to him to…you know, just take his pal up to the priest after Mass and say ‘hey, padre, do you mind showing one of the wafers to my friend.’
Meanwhile, PZ decides to post two of the death threats he got from a couple of nitwits, was dumb enough to provide their internet addresses–and was soon horrified to find that his fans were happy to take matters into their own hands, with the result that he had to post twice begging them to stop.
Good grief.
I neglected to mention that Bill Donohue is a boob who was all to ready to bellow his way into this mess.
There’s a great comedy script here.
What I find farcical is death threats from people who believe they are protecting the actual body (in the form of a wafer) of some Bronze age mythical character, and which they intend to eat!
I didn’t realize the first century C.E. was part of the bronze age….
Kirk,
PZ Myers wasn’t soliciting anyone to disrupt a Communion, though. Never once did he advocate gatecrashing a service or in any way interfering with any Catholic’s right to worship in any way they see fit. If someone sent him a host, though, he might treat it disrespectfully and webcast it from the comfort of his own home or lab or dungeon or whatever. That does not in any way, shape, or form affect the practice of Catholicism for any Catholic. I really don’t see how they have any reasonable grounds to take offense in a liberal, pluralistic society. No actual harm is being done, except perhaps to the feelings of extremists who insist that our whole society must show deference to their particular religious rituals. That is not a reasonable request and not one in my mind that we are obliged to honour, any more than I am obliged to agree that everyone’s wife is beautiful or that everyone’s child is an angel. As a matter of common courtesy I’m happy not to enumerate the faults with wives and children unprompted, but when the husband or father in question makes it a public issue and insists that his wife’s or child’s virtues be a matter of public consensus I draw the line.
There has been a large volume of virtual ink expended on arguing where Webster Cook’s or PZ’s actions lie on a continuum of [blame | praise]worthiness spanning:
1) the illegal,
2) the strictly immoral or unethical,
3) the sleazy, lame, assholeish or generally poor form,
4) the unstrategic (as likely to lose more hearts and minds than it wins),
5) the morally neutral but defensible on grounds of individual rights,
6) the rather clever thing I wish I had said or done, and
7) the necessary and heroic act taken at great personal risk.
Most of PZ’s fans put him at a 6 or 7, and most of his detractors (on sites similar to this one, at least) make him no worse than a 3 or 4.
It’s an essentially subjective call, and we will never have a single authoritative answer.
What does admit of an objective assessment is the observed reaction of the population.
Will there be a rash of wafer thefts? Unlikely; the stunt is too public, and easy to thwart.
Will PZ get fewer death threats? At a minimum, I bet the emailers will be more careful with their addresses.
From Salman Rushdie to the Danish cartoonists to the wafer caper, the pattern we see seems to be provocation, followed by overreaction and overreaction-reaction, followed by both sides colling their respective jets while they jaw endlessly over which internal faction is right about strategy.
It’s great theater, if nothing else.
As to the validity of Sean’s parable, I thought it was crystal-clear that his criticism of Bob stemmed from his willingness to cause Alice emotional distress, independent of whether that distress was rationally justifiable.
Yet, several commenters seem to be looking for some rational distinction between Alice’s reaction (the rattle was unique and irreplaceable) and the reaction of Catholics to the threatened wafer-defilement (jeez Louise, it’s just one cracker among zillions!).
A better example of two parties talking past one another could hardly be found.
First of all, I want to thank Sean for his reasonable post on this issue. I agree with what he wrote in this post, except for his atheism, but I of course also respect his right to believe as he does. The posts on this blog about religion are almost always good and avoid the mockery that so many others slip into when discussing this sort of thing.
I am Catholic (and a physics grad student — the two are not mutually exclusive!) so I thought I’d offer my perspective.
After looking into the original story more, I can say that, for me, Cook’s actions are easily forgivable. He did not act out of malice or a desire to mock a sacred Catholic tradition. He simply didn’t fully understand all the rules of the ritual, and ended up somewhat unwittingly doing something that is offensive to many Catholics. I am embarrassed by the actions of those who confronted him and of course those who have sent him threats. I am not very sympathetic about his response in which he is claiming that the Catholic student group’s celebration of the Eucharist was a form of hazing and underage consumption of alcohol.
PZ’s actions, on the other hand are very offensive, and it embarrasses me that he represents a branch of my University and scientists in general in this way. His actions are different because his intention is to mock, insult, and offend Catholics in a way that he apparently knows is very hurtful to us.
Like Sean’s analogy points out, if you know something is very important to someone, then that should be enough for you to choose not to mess with it. Even if you don’t understand why it’s important, or disagree about its importance, damaging that precious thing, whatever it is, serves no purpose other than to be hurtful to a fellow human being.
As for Catholics, the foundation of our religion is a belief that Jesus, God Incarnate, gave himself to us in a very real way, both at the Last Supper and through his death. We believe that this action of Jesus giving himself to us is repeated in a miraculous and very real way through the Eucharist. So a consecrated host is not just a cracker to us, and that’s why it’s so important.
Again, I’m not defending any hateful speech or actions on part of my fellow Catholics, but I just thought that knowing would help people understand how this could be so upsetting to someone.
if you know something is very important to someone, then that should be enough for you to choose not to mess with it.
Why?
So a consecrated host is not just a cracker to us, and that’s why it’s so important.
It is a cracker.
Every experimental technique will tell you it is a cracker, and just a cracker.
It’s you having the burden of proof of telling me it’s more than a cracker. It’s you having to bring substantial evidence telling me you’re not a fool deluding yourself thinking it is not just a cracker.
I am deeply offended by people who suggest desecrating communion wafers is in any way bad.
I assume this means no one will do that anymore since “if you know something is very important to someone, then that should be enough for you to choose not to mess with it. “
devicerandom: That’s the point of Sean Carroll’s analogy. It’s not Alice’s son’s rattle. Every experimental technique proves that. She really is being kind of obtuse and silly in insisting otherwise. She is clearly not dedicated to the search for truth above all. Nevertheless, it’s extremely rude and really sort of juvenile to insist on smashing it in front of her.
Your implication that other people are not worth of respect if they aren’t as smart as you is also really creepy. (And yes, you said “intellectual respect,” but if that’s all you really mean, then your point is just irrelevant. Sean didn’t say that religious believers are worthy of intellectual respect on the subject of religion; he said they’re worthy of respect as other people, whom we ought not take pleasure in cruelly provoking just because they don’t know as much about the world, or about how to learn about the world, as we do.
Here’s a question…
I’m a gay man. The Catholic Church teaches that, while I as an individual deserve respect, my lifestyle is wrong and should not be accepted by our society, and that if I actually express love for another man rather than suppressing my natural impulses this is a sin in the eyes of God that could doom me to Hell. Certainly not all Catholics feel this way, but this is the official position of the Church itself. It is also the rankest bigotry. Many other faiths take positions on homosexuality that are even more reprehensible.
Am I obliged to show respect for the feelings of some Catholics and other religious believers by staying in the closet, abandoning efforts to win social acceptance for non-heterosexuals, and not calling various churches out for their bigotry?
It’s a rhetorical question. Of course I’m not obliged to do any such thing, even if being out and proud offends some people, goes against their sincerely-held beliefs, and hurts their feelings because they don’t consider themselves bigots. The Catholic Church wants to marginalise and condemn me and millions of other otherwise-inoffensive people, and this can’t be whitewashed away. It’s wrong and needs to be confronted as such.
The point of this is that it shows we are not obliged as a matter of principle not to hurt people’s feelings by vocally disagreeing with their sincerely-held religious beliefs, even in very strident and (in their eyes) disrespectful ways.
The real question is, where do we draw the line? Sometimes beliefs ought to be treated civilly, and sometimes, as above, they definitely ought not. Even if people will be hurt and offended.
I’m not saying you have to believe it’s anything more than a wafer of unleavened bread. You’re free to believe whatever you want. The burden of proof is not on me because I’m not trying to prove it to you. If you want to believe I’m deluding myself, then that’s fine.
And I sort of assumed a basic respect for other human beings when I said that you shouldn’t try to hurt the things they care about. And let me be clear, I’m not trying to impose my religious beliefs on you. I’m not asking you to do something that should interfere with your life or things you want to do, I’m asking you to not come and mess with something important to me, something that you would have to go out of your way to do. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, unless your actions are hurting me.
I hope that I made that clear.
As others have pointed out the parable is a little bit off, mainly that the wafer was freely given out. PZ’s actions still were a bit childish, and I would not have done it, but I don’t see it as being particularly assholeish. Now I do see a problem in that that the issue has become about PZ, not about the kid who originally got in trouble (and is being abandoned by his university). This may be a good thing, in that it draws attention away from the kid (and the death threats move to PZ), but it could also lead to greater attacks against the kid.
On a side note: I agree that atheists/humanists/miscellaneous nonbelievers should give respect out as a default, but people can lose respectability, and one way of doing that is mailing in death threats or trying to get someone fired for (even hypothetical) actions to a cracker.
Also, it’s important to emphasize that what Myers did is not akin to some kind of clever satirical cartoon. A certain mocking of religion is an important tool in the struggle to free the world from needless superstition. There’s a huge difference between that kind of thing, and intentionally provoking religious believers just for the thrill of watching them writhe in anger and knowing how much smarter you are than all that. Does anyone think that Myers’ stunt is going to further the cause of rationalism in any real way?
Finally, while this seems too obvious to need saying, it apparently isn’t: the fact that some Catholics launched death threats or whatever against Myers really doesn’t make it okay to spit in the face of every Catholic in the world.
After I made my last post, Aloysius brought up a point that might help me illustrate what I mean better.
For example, I don’t think that my personal beliefs about what is a sin should affect your life as a homosexual man. Nor do I think that the Church’s teachings make you less of a human or more of a sinner than I am or anyone else is.
I agree that you are not obliged as a matter of principle not to disagree with my firmly held beliefs, and you are perfectly welcome to do so out loud and in a public way. I’m just saying that such things should be done civilly. I do think that malicious mockery is something that we should avoid on principle just out of respect for other people.
Just wanted to point out that PZ insulted the crackers only after the Catholics had already “over-reacted,” which seems not too be quite as “misplaced” as just waking up one morning and deciding to offend a whole bunch of “tards.”
Other Sean, how exactly can I disagree with the Church’s teachings on homosexuality in a civil way? They’re vile, evil, despicable, reprehensible, completely beyond the pale. They’re no different from racism or misogyny. Anyone who publicly supports these teachings deserves to be mocked and shunned and treated with a certain amount of outright contempt. These views are simply incompatible with the whole framework of a pluralistic civil society, and treating the people who voice them with respect only serves to degrade the value of civility for everyone.
Sean, you can’t hear Him, but I know God agrees with your position on respecting and valuing each other. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders.
… and every year Alice tried to force Bob and all of Bob’s friends to buy identical rattles to hers, and when Bob and his friends refused Alice attempted to get politicians to force everyone to have a rattle, and erase any book that taught that people didn’t really need rattles. Wars were started with those who preferred pacifiers, and many objectors were burned at the stake…
Just to add another voice to the dissent, your ‘parable’ is not correct–the analogous situation would be if Alice has millions of these rattles, hundreds of millions, actually, with the possibility of creating many, many more whenever she wants. She gives these rattles away to her friends weekly, expecting them to do a certain thing with them. If she gives Bob a rattle, and instead of doing this certain thing, Bob gives it to someone else…well, you might have a different stance on “re-gifting” than I do, but if Alice is going to be extremely upset by this, she probably shouldn’t have given the rattle-facsimile to Bob in the first place. Once she gives it to Bob, it’s his. If he wants to send it on to his friend PZ, he certainly can.
It is true that PZ was reacting to an overreaction that had already occurred; that’s a good point, and sadly no analogy is perfect. (Most of the other belabored attempts to point out failures in the analogy are sadly missing the point.)
Which is: why should anyone take joy in doing things that disturb other people, even if the other people are being irrational? Explain to them why they are wrong, yes; oppose them (with mockery if necessary) when their irrational beliefs start to affect the lives of others, of course; but to piss people off solely in celebration of your own superiority seems unnecessary to me, and not much fun. If I’m going to piss people off, it will be for a good reason.
So are PZ and Donuhue like Tweedledee and Tweedledum?
It’s starting to look that way.
I think that Sean’s parable about the rattle is bordering on “emotional exploitation” (did he really need to resort to dead babies?). A better comparison might be to a baseball (=cracker) that was given to Alice by her favorite player (=priest). I think everyone would agree that Bob is an asshole if he threw Alice’s ball into a river, even though “the laws of physics” would say that Alice’s ball is no different from another ball.
However, there is still the fact that Catholics have a history of doing some pretty bad thins in the name of their crackers (and they still do to this day), so I have to say that PZ isn’t quite as much an asshole as Bob.
If you try to say I can’t marry who I’d like because your cracker said so, I’m not an asshole to say I’ll flush your cracker down the toilet.
Point taken, Sean. I agree with your sentiment (I won’t be flushing any crackers) but I think PZ’s actions don’t quite fit into the category of “piss[ing] people off solely in celebration of your own superiority” since the Catholics who overreacted first were sort of asking for it.
I think Sean (and Other Sean, who I must thank for his interesting perspective) are on the ball with this one.
I am an atheist. My mom is of the “Catholic on holidays” variety of religious, and one of the biggest double-takes of my life was realizing people really believe a wafer can be anything other than a wafer and not just a slight symbolic gesture or something like that. It’s silly, if you ask me.
But at the same time, being an atheist does not mean I do not feel compassion for my fellow human beings. They think it’s more than a cracker, but so what? It’s not like I’m ever going to go up to my very Catholic grandmother and say “you’re silly for receiving Communion” because while I might be right she’d just get upset and I don’t like to upset those I love.
And while there will always be idiots out there who think a death threat is appropriate in this circumstance (and I’m sure everyone reading this agrees that it isn’t), we all know most Catholics are not that imbecile. It’s not like anyone in that mentality is going to come around and say “by golly, you were right and I was wrong!” anytime soon anyway, especially upon seeing you destroy a wafer.
I think the analogy is misleading for a different reason. The trauma of losing a child is different from the trauma of — well, living as a Catholic. Bob is an asshole for destroying Alice’s rattle because her sentimental attachment to that rattle stems from the psychological torment of losing a child, and because his actions are likely to make that torment worse. I don’t see why Catholics would be so emotionally fragile. P.Z. Myers blog post might not have been especially sensitive, but he’s certainly not an asshole for having written it.
The general point about respectfulness and our tendency toward tribalism is well taken.
Completely disagree, and here’s why - PZ’s not mocking the believers here, but the belief regarding the wafers.
He’s not even focusing on the believers at all.
If it weren’t for the parable nitpickery, this thread would be very interesting. That part’s quite comical.
I certainly agree with Aloysius that we (the humanist cadre) have absolutely no reason to be polite about our disagreement with the Catholic Church, or any other fundamentalist sect that tries, as an organization, to impose its will on non-member individuals and/or society at large. The views and internal policies of the Catholic Church would be none of my business, and safe from ridicule and abuse, if the Catholic Church and its radical members would *completely stop* attempting to impose their worldviews on the rest of us through legislation and, occasionally, intimidation. Until that time, they are, quite frankly, my mortal enemies - speaking in an absolutely nonviolent but nonetheless completely serious way. I hold them in absolute contempt and will make no secret of this.
I know a fair number of people that I really like (generally members of my extended family) who are very religious. My ability to communicate peacefully with them on matters of religion is related to the level of social activism associated with their church. So I basically have no problem with (for example) Methodists and am quite friendly towards Buddhism and Unitarianism; none of these groups have ever tried to restrict my rights or those of my fellow citizens, or not to my knowledge. For this reason I accord these faiths a basic degree of respect and acceptance, since they have had the courtesy to do the same for me.
Interestingly, this places the Scientologists in a grey zone. For the most part, I have no problem with this group because of the above logic. To me their doctrine seems no more or less bizarre than the Catholic one - and no, Other Sean, that is not hyperbole, I honestly think they are about equivalent. But my main point is that my thoughts about their doctrine are irrelevant - they haven’t picked a fight with me, so I have no problem with them…except for the fact that they have been exercising their worldly power in the form of censorship, squashing critics online and in real life. That’s very problematic behavior and I hope it stops. That’s the grey zone I mentioned. But other than that, I consider Scientology a *much* less harmful religion than Catholicism or fundamentalist protestantism, since it infringes less on the liberties of nonmembers.
The Catholic Church, and the Southern Baptists, and other fundamentalist churches of their ilk, have picked a fight and kept up the attack day in and day out. If this were not the case, it would be quite rude to insult their beliefs, and I wouldn’t do it, at least in public. However, they keep trying to impose their beliefs on the rest of us, and I’m not having it. Their own actions place their beliefs in the public sphere, and then they have the temerity to be insulted when we mock those beliefs for the crude, primitive, delusional nonsense they so patently are?
Other Sean, if you want us to stop attacking your beliefs, stop your damned church from intruding on the lives of nonmembers. Until then, you have nothing to complain about. We’re rude? Tough. Your church is a barbaric band of bullies and you are guilty by association.
PZ may be a jackass, but he’s our jackass.
The power of an idea and the power reserved for some object of veneration by tribalist or cultists is theirs to administer as they see fit. Just as there is unspoken relativism in otherwise doctrinaire and absolutist notions of religiosity, it is the responsibility of those not so afflicted to do no harm.
Other Sean:
“His actions are different because his intention is to mock, insult, and offend Catholics in a way that he apparently knows is very hurtful to us.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong - almost as wrong as your comment that you support Sean’s right to “believe” as he does (he doesn’t believe in atheism; atheism is the LACK of belief, period).
PZ is mocking the BELIEF, not the believers. World of difference.
In a world running out of cheap energy and clean water and farmable land and harvestable oceans, the stakes are too high to accord any respect to intellectual and moral laziness in any realm of knowledge.
Sure, we all believe in a wafer of some kind to make sense and meaning of the world, and I’m incredibly fortunate that my bulwark against the darkness is science.
I thank you for writing this post, because it’s impossible not to be part of this conversation (although many mistakenly imagine they are “above” it), as it is the invisible undercurrent of every conversation and touches every public and private decision.
This is the principle conflict of our time, and we better figure out that this is the real enemy (not teenage terrorists in pajamas in a desert 12,000 miles away) before the lights start going out.
The recent New Yorker cartoon lampooning the right-wing’s portrayal of the Obama’s as secret revolutionaries and closet Muslims — should be shocking in its accurate portrayal of the right-wing as utterly un-American in its values, let alone un-human. But this isn’t what the current conversation on the cartoon is remotely about.
Even in its simple-minded mythology of broad-brush homilies, America was built by revolutionaries seeking religious freedom who had no respect for nationalist impulses, standing armies, aristocratic exceptionalism, corporatist thugs, or a specific flavor of god. For a while we were those ingenious Yanks.
I’m beyond tired of the inroads made by right-wing and religious fanatics who can’t perform basic human functions, like write a song, solve a quadratic equation, tend a garden, love a partner, steward even their own small portion of the world without utterly savaging it, and raise children to do the same.
I have revolution in my blood and I think you should, too. I’m not going to give the world to thugs in uniforms (police state or church) with wafers and magically-written texts who’ve spent the last decades (I’m thinking of Jimmy Carter’s 1979 speech) ensuring that the basic science we needed to be doing to get to energy independence, with efficient solar cells and fuel algaes and fusion, would be here now.
It’s not merely that these people are not on our side. They’re committed to a path that destroys the enlightened parts of the world and impoverishes what’s left. They send women home. They kill gays. They burn libraries. They close schools. They believe god should be in government, shellfish are an abomination, and anybody who disagrees should be stoned.
Jung wrote a great deal about the religious function. It’s time you scientists started to understand, as the economists are finally beginning to understand, that we are not a rational species, and absent considerable assistance, we make lousy decisions.
PZ Meyers gets this, and is willing to step outside the ivory tower of soft-toned elitist disagreement and go toe-to-toe, on an almost daily basis, with these ignorant creeps in the language they understand. Somebody has to fight the slime mold in the basement or it takes over.
Both of your voices are needed, but please do not add your voice to those who hit him from the rear.
The easiest thing in the world to do is to make religious people angry. The reason is that they believe in magic, and deep down or subconsciously they know this. Whether it is water into wine, pumpkins into coaches or a wafer into the body of Christ categorically the ideas are all the same. Stripping away the theological or mythological particularities these all amount to supernatural or magical interventions that transform one thing into another. I suspect that deep down in the subterranian regions of the most ardent believer in a religion there is some neural circuitry saying “it ain’t so.” It takes little argumentation to get that little circuit to scream loudly. When that happens these people get really mad.
This is one reason there is so much fuss over evolution. They hate the whole idea because to them what this does is to get that “it ain’t so” voice talking loud in their heads. This can be accomplished without the antics of PZ Myers. I suppose that PZ wants to demonstrate he could use a eucharistic wafer as toilet paper without thunderbolts and lightning zapping him. That undoubtedly will be the case, but his demonstration may fail to change many minds. In the end believers just build an even bigger wall to try and seal off that “it ain’t so” voice.
Lawrence B. Crowell
One thing I allways have problems with in cases like Myers finds himself in now and that is if self-censorship is a good thing? Now if he had decided not to post this post like he did, would he then be practising self-censorship? When is self-censorship a good thing? What is the difference of self-censorhip and being polite?
I am just wondering because I recall vagualy that the first sign of a totalitarian system is that people start to practice self-censurship. But there has to be some kind of a balance between being polite in conversation and self-censurship that doesn’t lead to a totalitarian system, right?
Just wondering.
Cheers
Oli
“There is a lot of craziness here. People are sending death threats and attacking someone’s employment because of hypothetical (not even actual) violence to a wafer.”
That is the funniest thing I have read in a long time!!
I read PZ a lot. He runs a great blog. I hope this doesn’t affect his blogging or his job either!!
This is insane to the nth power
There is I think a difference between debunking something, or showing where its argument fails, and engaging in silly stunts. It is one thing to debunk a fortune teller, but another to commit her crystal ball to a hammer. The line is a bit thin. When it comes to the cartoons depicting Mohammad or Islam in an unflattering light that is acceptable. It is another to enter a Mosque and spill pig’s blood — which BTW you might not come out of alive.
These things are magic, and just as Linus has a right to wait for the great pumpkin on Halloween night, so too people have a right to believe in supernatural ideas. Convincing society that the world does not work by magic, even if told it does by ancient texts, is going to be a long term project. This will take continued research to roll back the event horizon of ignorance, education to instill proper thinking skills, and effort to create a social sense of what might be called natural philosophy. Little stunts will not accomplish this.
Lawrence B. Crowell
On the contrary, it’s an essential feature. Civilisation was created by rational thinkers, not magical thinkers. Progress, science, democracy, equality, liberty, etc, are a result of people thinking rationally and logically about the world, reasoning and questioning, testing and observing, abstracting and synthesising. Religious people are not fully human because they refuse to use or genuinely lack the critical faculties which define a modern human being. So why should we treat them with respect when they haven’t earned it? While they continue with their irrational belief in gibberish and nonsense, they fully deserve our ridicule and contempt. Oh, and to the god-believers I would add eco-zealots, animal-rights activists, right-wing libertarians, crackpots & conspiracy theorists, and New Age spiritualists.
As a child, George Gamow swiped a communion wafer and brought it home to examine it under a microscope. Finding it identical to a common cracker, and not at all like human tissue, he immediately rejected his religion.
If someone could demonstrate that a consecrated wafer is in fact transubstantiated, then I suppose that messing with it could be criminal, just as tampering with a corpse is considered a crime. But as Gamow found, it is just a stupid cracker.
Of course Gamow wasn’t RC, he was Eastern Orthodox — maybe their magic incantations don’t take?
Joshua’s comparison of the communion wafer to a baseball is a little silly. The consecration of the Eucharist is the central ritual of Catholicism. It is at the very heart of the Church’s theology and ritual. Anyone who’s been to a Catholic church — especially the older ones, in Europe and elsewhere — has seen the elaborate paraphernalia that accompanies the Eucharist. There are chapels where a consecrated host is placed in a monstrance and venerated twenty-four hours a day — someone is always there to worship, not the wafer, but God through the wafer (the “perpetual adoration”).
Now I agree that to take the Church’s dogma about the communion wafer literally is silly. It doesn’t become Jesus’s body; it’s just a cracker. Well, so what? If a little kid believed, and told you, that a favorite stuffed animal had magical powers, would you grab the animal, spit on it, and tear it to shreds in front of him? So maybe religious believers are, when it comes to rational understanding of the world, not much better than little kids. It’s still creepy to get your kicks by pissing other people off.
My difficulty with both sides of the religion/secular humanism argument is that both treat the other like a problem to be fixed. Religious belief is not something to be eradicated like smallpox anymore than secular humanism is. There are extremist on both sides, crazies in both camps, social problems that arise from both world views. Both points of view have a value and sometimes they even (gasp!) co-exist quite comfortably. The only reason mockery is called for in any argument is as a corrective mirror, but it seldom functions that way. People don’t like to be mocked, so they tune it out and the message is lost.
Listening to arguments like these, I’m reminded of the opera lovers I know, so many of whom are completely convinced that, “of course you’ll love this! You just have to hear this person, that aria, this conductor, see that production! It’s so wonderful! How could you not love it? I love it!” Opera is a matter of taste, beliefs are a matter of conscious choice. No amount of sincere insistence of any kind is going to change either. Changes in belief happens from the inside out.
And from the disinterested distance of someone who’s in the process of making changes in my beliefs, both sides of this argument sound too damn much alike. Richard Dawkins has not done the secular humanists any favors. He’s your Oral Roberts.
Oops.. Sorry, I meant the Jurassic period!
I have the deepest respect for your even handed response to this ridiculous debacle, Sean. I’d mail you a gift-wrapped box of Wheat Thins if I knew where you lived or thought it appropriate.
Initially my opinion was very similar to Sean’s, but, as satire, it works. PZ’s post came off as somewhat childish and petty, but the reaction to it was spectacularly obtuse. In the end, you have people equating desecrating a cracker with violence against actual people, not to mention threatening violence. Heck, they’re calling out additional security for the Republican National Convention (which has what again to do with Catholicism?) for fear of cracker stealing. That puts PZ firmly in an old tradition of satire - offending people by pointing out the absurdities of their position and watching the lengths they’ll go to avoid admitting they’re wrong. Which, to be clear, they are: crackers don’t transform into the flesh of Jesus.
My hope is that humanists can not only patiently explain why God and any accompanying metaphysical superstructure is unnecessary and unsupported by the facts, but also provide compelling role models for living a life of reason, which includes the capacity for respectful disagreement.
Say what? Considering the uncertain grasp we have of basic issue of why there is a universe/s, why it/they is this way and not another way, and what that happens to be very convenient for life, somewhere at least - there is no excuse for saying that. (And the statement references the general philosophical concept of a First Cause, not any particular traditional conception. The latter are irrelevant to the sort of argument folks like Plato and Aristotle would have about why something exists, is like this, etc.)
As I explained before, using fundamental rules about the way things act to explain phenomena they are involved in does not explain the rules themselves. I note, critically, there is no explanation here (patient or otherwise) “why God and any …. is unnecessary and unsupported by the facts.” I’ve seen people try here and in Pharyngula, etc., and I can’t prove they are wrong. But, I and others can tangle them up in enough issues about modal realism, existential selection problem, etc., to show there is no way they can get away with pretending they can justifiably make such statements. It’s basically a very tricky question with an unknown and unproven answer, and we can’t even prove whether it’s provable/meaningful or not.
PS: What PZM and the like are doing to needle religious believers is very tacky and immature, aside from the issue of “who’s right” about ultimate issues or even evolution etc. I am not a “religious believer” because I use philosophical reasoning and not traditions or revelations to find likely truths about ultimate issues. Such people are left out of the debate, except for big figures like Paul Davies. The culture likes bi-polar oppositions; hence e.g. liberals/conservatives but forget libertarianism, etc.
BTW, most ADers (Anthropic Design aficionados, like me) don’t want the FC needing to meddle in the universe once that’s here (ID?) because the more the universe can accomplish on its own, the more clever the AD was to begin with. As for multiple universes, bring me one in a test tube or at least show us a picture, literal measurement that’s not just an interpretative claim of what happens here, etc, and I’ll respect that hypocritically unpositivist dodge a lot more. The whole issue is full of ironies like that, and the hard-liners at both ends don’t get that and aren’t helping us understand ultimate questions.
PZ’s remarks aren’t a very good strategy for spreading freethought and atheism though. (Not that I think that was his intent.) There’s a place for ridicule, but it’s a mechanism that divides people. You have to make sure that the people you’re trying to convince are on your side of the divide; you aren’t going to convince the people you’re ridiculing.
I have no problem with PZ as a provocateur. I just think he shouldn’t waste his ammunition. It isn’t clear what he was trying to accomplish except getting a rise out of the usual suspects. If he had a book coming out or was attacking a particular person or policy it might have made some sense. It’s one thing to poke a mule with a stick to get the cart rolling. It’s another thing to poke a mule with a stick so that it kicks you.
P.S. My problem with PZ is that he is a puritan.
Other Sean: if you know something is very important to someone, then that should be enough for you to choose not to mess with it.
devicerandom: Why?
A mature and ethical person wouldn’t need to ask. Basic consideration for other people’s feelings should be enough reason to avoid offending them unless you fell compelled to make an ethical “statement” to the greater good (e.g., offend people who believe in reflexively supporting our leaders, because you want to fight the use of torture, etc.)
I think the appeal of this irreverency chic stuff is to adolescent types who think it’s funny to play practical jokes and wear tee shirts with smart-ass lines on them, etc; it’s the South Park kiddies. Grow up. It isn’t actually funny to grown ups. It’s just boorish and reinforces the image (very accurate IMHO but why advertise it?) that nowadays, skeptics and new atheists are often snooty brat types and not gentlemanly doubters like Bertrand Russell. Worse, they indulge contradictory ironies like doubting a First Cause beyond the universe, but casually throwing around “multiple universes” as excuses for not needing God. Their forbears realized that consistency meant just not believing in anything at all we couldn’t find. Both of those developments oddly parallel what happened to political conservatives: Note the devolution from Barry Goldwater and even Reagan to Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage; their nastiness and their odd embrace of contradictory notions about strict construction, expanded executive powers, etc.
Aloysius, I did not intend for this to become a discussion of the Church’s teachings on homosexuality, but allow me to respond to your comment.
I think that Christians today make to big of a deal about religious teachings about sexuality, especially in regards to homosexuality. It is hardly mentioned in the Bible, and homosexual practices are discussed only briefly in the Catholic catechism, where it is put into the same category as masturbation, pornography, and fornication. It is not singled out as being worse than any other sort of sin.
There is also a paragraph about the need for homosexual people to be “accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity” and stating that “Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”
I don’t expect you to agree with these teachings, but maybe you will see them as less bigoted than you thought they were. Or maybe not. And it is probably the case that people use the Church’s teachings to justify their own prejudice, but bigotry is by no means the official teaching of the Catholic Church.
Good post. This is why I don’t read PZ’s blog (and to some extent Bad Astronomy either). I am a strong agnostic (what most people would call atheist), but I look down on assholes more than on the indoctrinated.
I can understand and sympathize with those who, like jre (#32) think that emotional distress should not be caused without real justification. However, in order to do so and live as an ex-pat here in the deep south of the US would be impossible. I have very good friends who, since my knowing them, have become deeply devout Christians (as far as I can see, there is no correlation between their conversions and them knowing me!). My being an atheist clearly and evidently causes them emotional distress (as evidenced from their remarks and actions). What is one to do? Should I convert?
As for the value of ridicule, I make full use of it (along with healthy doses of science) whenever a student in one of my classes challenges evolution or any aspect of the paleo-sciences. I realize that I’m not going to convince that individual that they are patently wrong. But, I may convince some of the quieter students who are sitting on the fence, or those who are having doubts about their faith. And yes, I have evidence that this happens in the fact that people have come up to me later and thanked me for showing how ridiculous some of these beliefs are; they had thought similarly, but didn’t realize that others thought that way.
Lastly, as is obvious from his writings, PZ was reacting to the patent insanity of those making threats against the Florida student. As others have pointed out on this forum, context is everything.
Many have a strong feeling that being nice and discussing things on a rational level is the more “humane” way to do things - anything else is just not cricket. Well, that might have been true in the days of Jeeves and Wooster (though I suspect not). Just today I see in the news over here that Bush Jr, Trent Lott and their ilk are claiming that not one drop of oil was spilled during Katrina. I see that the HHS is re-defining the time of conception based on the results on a Zobgy poll!!!!! The former is being used to argue for allowing off-shore drilling. The latter may have the effect of making the pill, IUDs and other contraceptive devices harder to get. And no one in the mainstream media calls these people on these patent lies and ridiculous methodologies.
So, I’m sorry if it offends people’s sense of decency, but if peoples beliefs lead them to make major decisions that affect not only themselves, but also those around them, and those decisions are based on sheer craziness, lies or a lack of ability to cope with reality, then yes, I will cause them emotional distress. And whilst on the subject, what about the emotional distress the likes of Pat Robertson, George W. Bush, Trent Lott, Bill O’Reilly and many more locals here in Athens cause me every time they try to force their irrationality on me. Sorry, I fight fire with fire, though only after I’ve tried the more “humane” approach.
Adrian
p.s. In the name of full disclosure, I was once Christian, my PhD supervisor was (and presumably still is) a devout Catholic.
Luzid,
Yeah, I thought about the fact that atheists, by definition, don’t believe in anything (as far as God is concerned), when I wrote my first post. But I thought that making that distinction would be unnecessary because everyone would know my intention, plus it would have made the post even longer.
But I’m glad that I was able to give you something to be smugly right about.
However, you are “wrong, wrong, wrong” in saying that PZ is attacking a belief, not the believers. If you want to attack a belief, you say it’s untrue, and maybe you point out the reasons that you think it’s wrong. You don’t mock it and threaten to do things that would emotionally distress the believers. That’s not going to do anything other than rile people up.
Furthermore, if you attack someone’s deeply-held belief as something that only an irrational tard unworthy of any human respect would believe, then yes, you are attacking that person.
Sean,
As a regular reader, I appreciate this post. You remained self-consistent while exemplifying respect for others.
Was the analogy perfect? Hardly. Then again, they seldom are.
Some who have commented seem to disregard the different meanings for the word “respect”. Respecting intelligence denotes esteem or admiration. However respect as you have outlined is not borne out of esteem, but is inherent in each person. I can disagree, I can think someone foolish, but respect is a deserving social convention that smoothes out many wrinkles.
Just as many here (likely rightfully so), consider intellect the pinnacle of human abilities, there are others who would say kindless, generousity, empathy trump intellect. To such, they might have little emotional or social respect for many of us. But that should never give them the right to disrespect us for our founded beliefs.
Neal B (#74)
I love the characterization of Russell as a “gentlemanly doubter”. For his day, he caused considerable outrage. So did Huxley. And neither were above spicing their writings or debates with ridicule when they felt it was deemed necessary. The founders of this nation also made it quite clear how they felt about religion, especially as it was practiced in their day - again, they were often less than polite. Some of the more well-known US writers are known for their brilliant use of ridicule, sarcasm and wit.
So, I’d be curious to know if the general consensus is that Russell, Huxley, Adams, Paine, Jefferson, Twain, Mencken etc should be regarded as adolescents and snooty brats?
Genesis 2:23 - And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
That’s pretty early on in the bible. I’d love a religious Christian person to explain to me how the bible, as the Word of God, can be interpreted in a way that I don’t find grossly offensive.
Symbols are objects, acts, events, qualities that serve as tangible formulations of beliefs, longings, judgments, attitudes of an individual. When dearly held symbols are derided, owners of such symbols may react any which way. What PZ did was a symbol of derision of Donahue’s symbol. Donahaue made sure he went a notch higher and “specialized some more in being outraged”. Man will go to war for the destruction of one’s symbols. Anyone argue with jihad? I learned religion is a system of symbols that establish powerful and pervasive motivations in men. It formulates ideas of an order of existence. When such order of existence is threatened, anything can happen. And any discussion on the integrity of one’s actions is rendered moot and academic.
By the way, the symbolism in the cracker is at one end of the continuum while that of the rattle is at the other end. The former is a symbol of one’s Creator and the latter a symbol of one’s created, if I may create a binary. One can decide which destruction of which will yield the greater imbroglio.
You have a great post. There is always a “political unconscious” in every text, so F. Jameson said.
Other Sean:
Nope. You’re still wrong. He’s attacking the ridiculous belief about the wafer itself, not the believer - no matter how deeply-held that belief is, it is NOT a part of that person except by choice (unlike, say, one’s ethnicity or sexual orientation).
As an aside, I don’t feel smug. I was just correcting a common erroneous claim believers make about nonbelievers. We have no faith, and we don’t choose to not believe.
Great discussion. I put a link to it on the Harvard Humanist group blog.
I find it interesting, although not surprising given CV’s demographics, that most commenters are atheists or critical towards religious beliefs.
I both agree and disagree with Sean. Disagreement first:
Alice’s delusional rattle is a harmless symptom, and forcefully taking it from her only causes damage. It is not going to help her get over the grief that is the true origin of that delusion. In the case of organized religion, and the share of fundamentalist activism that it invariably comes with, the delusion is dangerous to the extent that it attacks our lives and freedom, can doom our civilization, and us as a species - the rattle is an icon that they try to make us worship by all means, sizing the educational system, the government, the police, and finally all free thinking, to chase us right back onto the trees (the stone age actually had some - behold - science), probably through a few devastating wars along the way.
That being said, the rattle/cracker is a mere symptom and desecrating it does not solve the problem. It is an efficient way to create necessary controversy by drawing attention to outrageous acts committed by religious zealots, and tear down their masks of righteousness by coaxing them to show their true face. Maybe there are better ways, not sure.
In the case of moderate religious people, I agree with Sean. There are legions out there who are decent, intelligent, and are religious because they received the same kind of unfortunate brainwashing that many of us received when we were little. It’s probably not far off to assume that if you approach a decent, mature person with aggressive, disrespectful, arrogant behavior that resembles teenage rebellion, you slam the door and lose them. Apart from the fundamental issue that this behavior is contrary to humanistic principles of human interaction, we would forget that these people are not religious because they are stupid, arrogant, etc. - I believe many have just not made the leap out of the religious cage yet. I was brought up Christian myself - turning atheist was not an easy step, and one of the achievements that I am now most proud of, because it took courage, and probably exposure to the right experiences. Moderate, thinking religious people are probably the best candidates to eventually abandon their beliefs and join the secular part of humanity, but they will certainly be much less likely to do so if atheism comes across as an aggressive anarcho crowd. Actions like desecrating crackers, or blasphemy challenges on YouTube, probably have a place among the noisy publicity battle, maybe you can reach kids this way. Mainstream secularism, though, needs to be decent and respectful.
Luzid,
I guess neither of us is going to convince the other that they are wrong.
I tend to think that the more important part of a person’s humanity is that which they have chosen: their beliefs, their thoughts, the way they choose to live their lives. I identify myself more strongly with my religious beliefs, my worldview, and my intellect much more strongly than I do with features that I was born with, such as ethnicity and sexual orientation. My beliefs and thoughts are what distinguishes me from all the other heterosexual,